The Top 5 Most Notorious Outlaws (7 page)

The Regulators were stunned by the bloodshed and the loss of their leader. Gathering up their wounded, they left Roberts behind, who died a painful death the next day. Ironically, Roberts and Brewer were buried side by side.

The gunfight at Blazer’s Mill only served to further tarnish the image of the Regulators; some felt that Roberts had been ambushed and appreciated how he continued to battle despite his fatal wounds.  The Regulators went back to San Patricio to plot their next move. In the spring, a grand jury handed down indictments in the Tunstall murder, as well as indictments in the killings of Brady, his deputy, and Roberts. William H. Bonney was one of the men wanted for the murder of Sheriff Brady and Buckshot Roberts.

George Coe in later years, clearly missing his trigger finger

With Brewer dead, the Regulators elected Frank McNab, a former cattle detective, as their new leader. Meanwhile, John Copeland was appointed the new sheriff to replace Brady, which was a bit of a stroke of luck for the Regulators since he was friendlier to them than The House. The new sheriff was often seen out in the saloons and gambling halls with the Regulators, never getting around to serving the warrants that he had for their arrest. McSween also returned to town when the embezzlement charges were dismissed.

During this time, the Kid preferred to go to McSween’s house instead of the saloon. On many nights, Mary Early, the preacher’s wife, played the piano in McSween’s parlor, and the Kid liked to go there and sing. Early recalled that the Kid and any of the other Regulators that joined him sang with enthusiasm, “They stood behind me with their guns and belts full of cartridges; I suppose I was off tune as often as on it as I felt very nervous, though they were nice and polite.”

On April 29, 1878, the Seven Rivers Posse, Dolan’s new posse, headed to Lincoln to join up with Dolan’s other men. The group stopped for a break at the Charles Fritz Ranch on the Rio Bonito, about nine miles out of town. The Fritz family passed the word that Frank Coe, McNab, and another of the Regulators, Ab Saunders, would be by that day to get water for their horses. The posse waited and they shot at the Regulators as they passed by on their way to the spring. When it was over, McNab was dead, Saunders was wounded and captured, and Coe’s horse was killed, forcing him to surrender. Coe was taken to Dolan’s store when the posse rode back into town.

When word got back to the Regulators about the new posse, they scattered throughout the town. Another gun battle broke out, allowing Frank Coe to simply walk back to his crew. Sheriff Copland had had enough and finally called out the army for assistance. Buffalo soldiers were sent into Lincoln with orders to arrest anyone involved in the war, resulting in the arrest of 30 men, who were taken back to Fort Stanton.  Copland asked that the men be remanded to his custody, but when the men were released to him, he could do nothing other than to order them to stop fighting.

However, neither side was willing to quit yet. By early May 1878, the Regulators had replaced yet another killed leader, this time with Josiah “Doc” Shurlock, who was deputized by Sheriff Copland. Meanwhile, the partnership between Dolan and Riley was also in the process of formally ending. On May 14, a group of Mexican-American and white riders, with Scurlock and Josefita Chavez in the lead, swept into the Seven Rivers area and overtook a camp of Dolan’s men, killing their cook, Manuel “Indian” Segovia. Two of Dolan’s men were also wounded but managed to escape. The Regulators also took a couple dozen of the horses and mules from the camp and set the cattle free.

What the Regulators did not realize was that the cattle and horses did not belong to Dolan and Riley anymore. They were the property of Tom “Boss” Catron, one of the most powerful men in the region, who was not at all pleased about his cattle being scattered into the plains. He sent an angry letter to Governor Axtell insisting that law and order be restored. He also pointed out that the sheriff was friendly with the Regulators. Even though he had no authority to do so, Axtell removed Copland as sheriff and hand-selected George Peppin.

As with any war, both sides spent their last weeks trying to get in as many shots and take as many casualties as possible before the war inevitably had to end. Such was the case with the Lincoln County War, which continued with a barrage of gunfights and bloodshed into the summer of 1878. Unfortunately for Peppin, Congress had recently passed the Posse Comitatus Act, forbidding military intervention in civil disturbances unless authorized by an act of Congress or the Constitution. However, in violation of the act, Colonel Nathan Dudley intervened in Lincoln County on July 19, bringing with him a howitzer and a Gatling gun with 2,000 rounds of ammunition.

At this point, many of the Regulators left town, while those that remained holed up in McSween’s house. When they refused to surrender, Peppin set the house on fire, and as the fire burned into the night, the Regulators and the McSweens plotted their escapes. McSween finally agreed to surrender, but as he walked toward his yard, his body was hit with several bullets and he was killed. Dolan’s posse had won. As their crowning achievement, they made two of McSween’s grief-stricken men play their fiddles as they cried, while the victorious Dolan crew danced around the dead bodies and fired their guns into the air. Others ran for Lincoln’s only street and looted Tunstall’s store. The war was over, but the corruption continued on.

What remained of the Regulators now used Fort Sumner as their home base. The exact movements of the Kid during this time are not known, but several of the Regulators quit and he became the new leader. With the Kid in the lead, they stole horses and 150 head of cattle from the Fritz ranch, the site of Frank McNab’s murder, and moved on toward the town of Tacosa in the Texas Panhandle. The town was a popular cattle stop and trading center, as well as a good place to unload stolen cattle. Billy’s loyal friend, Tom O’Folliard, was likely with him throughout these times.

It was here that the Kid met a young doctor named Henry Hoyt, who also became a close friend. Hoyt confirmed years later that the Kid was active in horse trading, gambling, and target shooting, but he apparently did not like whiskey. He was only in the saloons so he could gamble. Many times, Hoyt encouraged the Kid to take off for Mexico or South America, where he could blend in and start a fresh life, but the Kid refused. Tacosa suited him well as a temporary stop-off, with its weekly dances and pretty senoritas in festive dresses.

The woman he really loved, though, was Paulita Maxwell, the younger sister of Pete Maxwell in Fort Sumner. Pete was the son of Lucien B. Maxwell, a rich land baron who bought the abandoned military fort and developed it into a town. Pete was not happy about his sister’s relationship with the Kid, and unfortunately for the Kid, he also happened to be friends with Pat Garret, who the Kid would soon come to know all too well.

When the Regulators officially disbanded, the Kid and O’Folliard were regularly seen about town in Fort Sumner. Things had changed since they were in Texas, though. President Rutherford B. Hayes, tired of the chaos in New Mexico, fired Samuel Axtell and appointed Civil War veteran Lew Wallace as governor. Wallace had a controversial Civil War career due to the battle of Shiloh, and he later became best known for the novel
Ben-Hur
, but now he found himself trying to sort out a mess in the Southwest. One of Wallace’s first actions as governor was to issue a statement that he would grant amnesty to anyone involved in the Lincoln County War, assuming they were not already under criminal indictment. On December 22, 1878, the Kid and O’Folliard turned themselves in for the purpose of getting a proclamation of amnesty from Wallace, but the Kid was facing two murder indictments and was not eligible for amnesty. After a few hours, figuring they might have inadvertently placed themselves in a predicament, the Kid and O’Folliard walked out and fled.

Lew Wallace

It is not exactly clear what made the Kid decide to try and make peace with his enemies, but on February 18, 1879, a year to the day of Tunstall’s murder, the Kid and some of his friends went to Lincoln to meet James Dolan and his men. Upon the Kid’s arrival, Jesse Evans suggested to Dolan and his men that they should shoot the Kid, to which he allegedly responded, ‘’I don’t care to open negotiations with a fight, but if you’ll come at me three at a time, I’ll whip the whole damned bunch of you!’’

Whether or not that’s true, it seemed the famous adversaries eventually reached a truce, and everyone except the Kid sealed the deal with several shots of whiskey. However, the Kid became alarmed when he witnessed the drunken group of men shoot and kill Huston Chapman. The man, who only had one arm, was a successful attorney and had taken Susan McSween’s case in the murder of her husband, making him a sworn enemy of Dolan’s crew. Even though there is nothing to suggest that he was involved, the Kid was now associated with another murder.

Governor Wallace ordered that anyone involved in Chapman’s murder be arrested. On March 13, 1879, he received a letter from the Kid offering information about Chapman’s murder in exchange for amnesty. The governor agreed, but told the Kid that he had to be willing to be part of a “fake arrest.” Wallace said that if the Kid complied, “I will let you go scot free with a pardon in your pockets for all your misdeeds.”
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After ensuring that O’Folliard was part of the deal, the Kid agreed.

Thus, that March Billy the Kid met Governor Wallace in person, allegedly with his revolver in one hand and a Winchester rifle in the other. The deal called for the Kid to stay in the Lincoln County jail for a bit before testifying, and during his short stay, the Kid scrawled on one of the prison’s wooden doors, ‘’William Bonney was incarcerated here first time December 22, 1878; second time March 21st, 1879, and hope I never will be again.” Wallace was baffled when local minstrels serenaded the Kid as he and O’Folliard played cards with their guards, and he described the scene in a letter to Secretary of the Interior Carl Schurz, ‘’A precious specimen named ‘The Kid,’ whom the sheriff is holding here in the Plaza, as it is called, is an object of tender regard. I heard singing and music the other night; going to the door, I found the minstrels of the village actually serenading the fellow in his prison.”

Billy the Kid’s testimony was used to indict John Dolan, but the District Attorney himself was affiliated with The House, and he refused to set the Kid free after his testimony. Eventually, the Kid was put under house arrest in Lincoln in the home of Juan Patron.

Over 200 criminal indictments were filed against 50 men involved in the Lincoln County War. Most had the charges dropped or they just disappeared, but this was not the case for the Kid, who appeared to be the scapegoat that the men who were actually responsible for the war needed. District Attorney William Rynerson, a colleague of James Dolan, had no intention of letting the Kid get away unscathed, and it seems unlikely that Wallace ever intended to honor his deal with the Kid. Wallace later told a reporter that he was not sure why the Kid would expect clemency from him. The Kid would write a letter complaining to Wallace, ‘’I have done everything that I promised you I would and you have done nothing that you promised me.’’ Ultimately, the only man to ever be tried and convicted for crimes committed during the Lincoln County War was none other than William H. Bonney. While this no doubt annoyed the Kid, Dolan and his group’s attempt to paint him as one of the large instigators of the Lincoln County war eventually had the side-effect of making him a legendary frontier outlaw, as the Kid would be credited for much of the war’s violence, even though he personally perpetrated little of it.   

The Kid ran away before he could be taken into custody, but once again, rather than disappearing into Mexico, he went to Las Vegas, New Mexico to earn some money at the gaming tables. In early 1880, Billy the Kid would have one of the most famous run-ins of his life. That January, the Kid was at a saloon in Fort Sumner when a Texan named Joe Grant loudly bragged he would kill Billy the Kid if he ever encountered him. According to legend, the Kid asked to see Grant’s gun, and rotated the gun’s cylinders so that the hammer would fall on an empty chamber the first time Grant pulled the trigger. After telling Grant he was the Kid, the drunken Grant fired his revolver, only to have the hammer fall on an empty chamber. The Kid then responded with a shot to the chin, instantly killing him. The Kid would later famously claim of the Grant shooting, “It was a game for two, and I got there first.”

Other variations of the Grant story have popped up, but all of them involve the Kid making sure the next shot was an empty chamber. In one telling of the story, the Kid’s back was turned, and when he heard the click of the dry fire of the gun, he whirled around and shot the man.

It was also at some point during this time that he posed for a ferrotype photo in Fort Sumner, the only authenticated photo of him that exists.

In November 1880, the handsome and tall Pat Garrett was elected sheriff of Lincoln County. Later that month, Garrett tracked the Kid down at the Greathouse-Kuch ranch and when Jim Carlyle, a blacksmith who was a member of Garrett’s posse, was killed, the Kid was implicated again, although he denied it. The negative publicity against the Kid grew and, for the first time, he was referred to in print at “Billy the Kid,” which only added to his notorious outlaw image. The Kid again reached out to Governor Wallace to insist that the way he was being portrayed was inaccurate, but Wallace not only ignored him, he issued a bounty on his head: $500 for the capture of Billy the Kid.

Pat Garrett

Promising a $500 reward stepped up the manhunt and newspapers gave accounts of every movement of Garrett’s Panhandle Posse. Garrett caught up with the Kid again on December 19, 1880, ambushing his group in Fort Sumner. O’Folliard was killed in the ambush, but the Kid, now devastated at the loss of his friend, made it to a one-room stone house at Stinking Springs with four other men. On December 23, Garrett, acting on a tip, surrounded the house and unleashed a hail of gunfire, thinking he had just seen the Kid come out. The person he actually saw and killed was Charlie Bowdre, who had come outside to feed his horse. Garrett then shot the horse so that its body would block the doorway and serve as a barricade.

Garrett and his group now waited out Billy the Kid and the remaining outlaws inside, and though legends that Garrett and the Kid were friends are inaccurate, the two engaged in a playful banter during the siege. Once Garrett’s group started cooking food, Garrett invited the Kid to come out to eat, while the Kid replied by inviting Garrett to “go to hell”. Finally, out of food and options, the outlaws surrendered and were allowed to eat along with Garrett’s group. Upon surrendering, the Kid allegedly said to Garrett, “’Pat, you son-of-a-bitch, they told me there was a hundred Texans here from the Canadian River! If I’d a-known there wasn’t no more than this, you’d never have got me!’’

Garrett took the Kid into custody to much fanfare in New Mexico, making himself a hero. Reporters swarmed the Kid and were surprised to see that he did not act like the cold-blooded killer that they expected. The Kid even said to one of the reporters, “’Advise persons never to engage in killing.” Miguel Antonio Otero was the governor of New Mexico Territory between 1897 and 1907 and a lawyer in 1880. He recalled meeting the Kid in Las Vegas, where he was in shackles waiting to go to Santa Fe for his murder trial. Otero said, “I liked the Kid very much. Nothing would have pleased me more than to have witnessed his escape.”
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