Billy the Kid

by Robert M. Utley

  “You are a damned liar,” cut in Rudabaugh. “We all three shot at him. You and I fired one shot apiece and the Kid twice.”13

  The possemen went even further, accusing Billy alone of shooting Carlyle. According to their version, given to a reporter, they “saw Carlyle leap from the window and dash down the hill toward their intrenchments. He had not gone far, however, when they saw the Kid throw half his body through the window, and, taking deliberate aim, brought down poor Carlyle, killing him instantly.”14

  Thus, who killed Carlyle remains unclear. Bonney, Wilson, and Rudabaugh almost certainly shot at him, and possemen may have targeted him also, as Billy contended. As with the Brady slaying, at least one of Billy’s bullets probably found its mark, but he cannot be regarded as the sole killer of the blacksmith. At this point in his career, therefore, Billy still may be credited unequivocally with no more than two killings—Windy Cahill and Joe Grant.

  Even before the shooting of Carlyle, Billy and his friends had strained the tolerance of the citizens of White Oaks. Now, Carlyle’s death lifted Billy to the rank of arch-villain. As Pat Garrett (or Ash Upson) later wrote, the blacksmith’s “bloody murder excited horror and indignation, and many who had viewed the career of the Kid with some degree of charity now held him in unqualified execration as the murderer of an exceptionally good man and useful citizen.”15

  At almost exactly the same moment, Billy’s activities on the Pecos caught up with him. One of the proprietors of the Las Vegas Gazette, W. S. Koogler, returned from a journey down the Pecos full of indignation over the infestation of outlaws that prevented the territory’s eastern plains from fully realizing their agricultural and stock-raising potential. He wrote a complaining letter to Governor Wallace and then, early in December 1880, ran a long article in the Gazette denouncing the “powerful gang of outlaws harassing the stockmen of the Pecos and Panhandle country, and terrorizing the people of Fort Sumner and vicinity.” The gang consisted of “from forty to fifty men, all hard characters, the off scourings of society, fugitives from justice, and desperadoes by profession.”

  They spend time in enjoying themselves at Portales, keeping guards out and scouting the country for miles around before turning in for the night. Whenever there is good opportunity to make a haul they split up in gangs and scour the country, always leaving behind a detachment to guard their roost and whatever plunder they may have stored there.

  This army of outlaws, concluded Koogler, “is under the leadership of ‘Billy the Kid,’ a desperate cuss, who is eligible for the post of captain of any crowd, no matter how mean and lawless.”16

  Other newspapers took up the refrain, spreading Billy’s name and stories of his alleged exploits throughout the territory. His reputation even leaped beyond New Mexico, for on December 27, 1880, the New York Sun, drawing on the Gazette, ran a long story about the amazing outlaw chief. And no longer was he just “Kid”—the outlaw West was full of Kids. Now he was the much more personal and glamorous “Billy the Kid.”

  In most respects the newspaper stories were essentially accurate. Forty or fifty outlaws, or even more, had in truth imposed a reign of thievery and terror on New Mexico from Las Vegas to Seven Rivers and from the Sierra Blanca to the Staked Plains. But they did not operate as a single gang, and they did not accord allegiance to a single chief, certainly not to a youth of twenty-one. Yet within a matter of two weeks, all New Mexico came to look on “Billy the Kid” as the premier outlaw of the Southwest.

  The Gazette’s article undermined Billy’s campaign for release from the murder charges against him. In particular, it prejudiced Governor Wallace and discouraged him from extending the help he had promised in Lincoln almost two years earlier.

  In a long letter to the governor, Billy denied that he captained an outlaw band. “There is no such organization in existence,” he wrote. “So the gentleman must have drawn very heavily on his imagination.” He conceded that “Billy, ‘the Kid,’ is the name by which I am known in the Country,” but added that he had not followed a life of crime at the Portales. That was a tale, he said, “put out by Chisum and his tools.” Instead, “I have been at Sumner since I left Lincoln making my living gambling.”

  Billy also told the governor about the recent shootout at the Greathouse ranch. He had gone to White Oaks at the summons of Ira Leonard, “who has my case in hand. He had written to me to come up, that he thought he could get Everything Straigtind up.” But Leonard was not at White Oaks, and before Billy could follow him to Lincoln the possemen jumped him at Coyote Springs, shot his horse from under him, and then cornered him at the Greathouse ranch. He refused to surrender to them because they had no warrant for his arrest, “so I concluded that it amounted to nothing more than a mob.” The posse itself, not he, shot and killed Carlyle.17

  Whatever the mix of truth and fiction, Billy’s letter shows that he wanted Wallace to believe him to be an innocent victim of a malevolent John Chisum and that he still hoped for the governor’s help in avoiding the murder charges facing him. The letter, however, failed to move Governor Wallace, who gave it to the Las Vegas Gazette to print and ridicule.

  In Santa Fe, even before receiving Billy’s self-serving letter, Governor Wallace swiftly gave official sanction to the portrait etched in such bold strokes by the newspapers. Koogler had written to Wallace about conditions on the Pecos, and Wallace, casting about for some means of helping the beleaguered stockmen, settled on a reward. The Gazette’s article of December 3 supplied the name—Billy the Kid. Although he had only recently urged Leonard to new efforts in behalf of Billy, the governor probably reasoned that the crimes attributed to him by the newspapers dissolved any lingering obligations. On December 13, the day after Billy wrote his letter, Wallace posted a reward of five hundred dollars for the apprehension and delivery to the sheriff of Lincoln County of “Bonney alias ‘the Kid.’”18

  Although the press had laid the groundwork, only the governor could have conferred on Billy the ultimate in outlaw status—a price on his head.

  Almost overnight, Billy Bonney had exploded into notoriety, not only in New Mexico but across the nation as well. The quickening tempo of his criminal activity in the autumn months of 1880 qualified him for a share of the notoriety, but only a small share. The rest of his fame was a newspaper creation. Because he was now the outlaw celebrity of the Southwest, and because anyone who ran him down would receive a reward of five hundred dollars, “Billy the Kid” headed the list of wanted criminals.

  14

  The Capture

  When in the neighborhood of Fort Sumner, Billy Bonney drifted from one bunking place to another. Sometimes he camped in vacant rooms of the old fort buildings, sometimes with congenial Hispanic sheepherders on the surrounding plains, sometimes with the scattering of Anglo cattlemen. In June 1880, the federal census enumerator found him living with Charley Bowdre and recorded him as “cattle worker,” aged twenty-five (instead of the correct twenty). In August he put up at the dwelling of a stockman named Starke, where the attraction was a woman who had left her husband for a more exciting life.1

  Favored stopping places were the Yerby and the Wilcox-Brazil ranches. The former, where Charley Bowdre and Tom Pickett worked, stood at the head of Arroyo Cañaditas, twenty miles northeast of Fort Sumner. As foreman, Charley lived there with Manuela, and Billy and his comrades often stayed there.

  The latter ranch, a partnership between Thomas W. Wilcox and Manuel S. Brazil, stood about midway between Sumner and the Yerby headquarters, just below the forks of Taiban Creek and near a seep named Stinking Springs. Wilcox and Brazil extended their hospitality because of past friendship but also, increasingly, because they feared for their lives if they did not. Here, as elsewhere around Fort Sumner, Billy’s welcome was beginning to wear thin.

  Whether he sensed the rising animosity or not, Billy had commenced to think seriously of moving on, as friends like Dr. Hoyt had urged. The fiascos at Coyote Springs and the Greathouse ranch had been setbacks, and with
Wilson and Rudabaugh he had endured a humiliating trek back to Sumner on foot. There he ran into further causes for despair. One was the recent “raid” on Fort Sumner engineered by Azariah Wild.

  With Joseph Lea and Pat Garrett, Azariah Wild had begun to hatch his ambitious scheme as early as November 4. As deputy U.S. marshals, Garrett and Olinger would lead a “posse comitatus” of fifty men north from Roswell. At Fort Sumner they would combine with Frank Stewart and the Panhandle cowboys in a sweep of the outlaw haunts. Barney Mason would report on where the fugitives were most likely to be found.2

  Originally set for November 21, the operation encountered its first delay when Barney Mason, en route from Fort Sumner to Roswell, paused at the Diedrick ranch at Bosque Grande. There Dan Diedrick invited him to undertake a mission in behalf of the counterfeiters—a trip to Mexico to dispose of thirty thousand fake dollars in exchange for cattle. When informed of this, Wild could not resist the temptation to use Mason as a double agent, and he sent him to White Oaks to develop the invitation further with West and Sam Diedrick. There, as already recounted, Mason chanced on the Kid and his friends in the West and Diedrick corral, and he also discovered that the tumult stirred by their activities had spooked the counterfeiters and had caused them to put Mason’s assignment on hold.

  Other delays followed. For one, snowstorms swept the mountains and plains, making travel difficult. For another, a distemper epidemic immobilized large numbers of horses. At last, however, an expedition numbering thirteen men pushed off from Roswell on the night of November 29. Garrett and Olinger led, Mason accompanying.

  On the edge of Roswell the posse chanced to meet Sam Cook, one of Billy’s partners in the theft of Padre Polaco’s horses and the fight at Coyote Springs, where Cook had become separated from his cohorts. Locking Cook up in Roswell, the party proceeded up the Pecos to the Diedrick ranch at Bosque Grande. Here they hoped to find men for whom they had warrants. Instead they scooped up two other wanted men, John J. Webb, Rudabaugh’s old friend from Las Vegas, and George Davis, a horse thief. Both had just broken out of the Las Vegas jail. Here too Garrett received a message from Lea, in Roswell, telling of the Kid’s fight on the twenty-seventh at the Greathouse ranch.3

  Fort Sumner, New Mexico, 1880–81

  The Fort Sumner raid fell far short of Wild’s expectations. Garrett learned from Beaver Smith that the Kid, Wilson, and Rudabaugh had not yet returned from White Oaks but that Bowdre and O’Folliard were at the Yerby ranch. Riding up the Cañaditas, the posse jumped Tom O’Folliard and chased him in a running gun battle from which he escaped only because he rode a fresher mount than did his pursuers. At the Yerby ranch they seized two mules and four horses, stolen property Billy claimed as his. They then rode all the way over to the “outlaw stronghold” at Los Portales, but found no purloined stock.

  Returning from Los Portales, Garrett learned that Charley Bowdre wanted to square himself with the law. On December 5, in a truce parley arranged by Tom Wilcox, Charley met with Garrett on the road just outside Sumner and talked over the possibility of surrendering and facing trial for the murder of Buckshot Roberts. Garrett told him that Joseph Lea and fellow Roswell stalwarts would help him if he would cut his ties with the Kid and other outlaws. Charley said he would try, although he could not help but feed them when they came to the Yerby ranch. Garrett warned that he better act quickly, before the posse ran him down and killed or captured him.4

  The grand sweep envisioned by Wild had fizzled. Garrett’s expedition netted two fugitives, but not the ones sought. Despite a courier sent from Roswell, Stewart’s Texans remained on the Pecos. A third initiative, by the “White Oaks Rangers” who had cornered Billy at the Greathouse ranch, also petered out when the pursuers gave up the chase. On December 6 Garrett and Mason, with prisoners Webb and Davis in tow, set forth from Fort Sumner for Las Vegas. Olinger led the rest of the posse back to Roswell.

  Within a day or two after Garrett’s departure, the Kid, with Wilson and Rudabaugh, limped into Fort Sumner. Here Billy learned that the Las Vegas Gazette had named him New Mexico’s star outlaw and called for his apprehension, that Garrett’s posse had seized his stock and almost caught Tom O’Folliard, and that Charley Bowdre was on the point of defecting. As a result of his parley with Garrett, Charley had abandoned his dwelling at the Yerby ranch, moved Manuela into Fort Sumner, and now camped at various places on the range.

  Uniting with O’Folliard and Tom Pickett, the Kid, Wilson, and Rudabaugh remounted themselves and divided their time among the Yerby ranch, the Wilcox-Brazil ranch, and Fort Sumner.5 When in town they bunked in one of the vacant rooms of the old military hospital building on the east edge of the compound. Manuela Bowdre and her mother occupied other rooms of this building, and Charley stayed there when he was in town. On most nights the men were to be found in Beaver Smith’s saloon, drinking and gambling.

  They also planned their departure from Fort Sumner, for they had decided that the time had come to pull up stakes and leave the area altogether. During this period, on December 12, Billy wrote his disingenuous letter to Governor Wallace proclaiming his innocence of all wrongdoing.

  Three days later, on December 15, Bowdre also took pen in hand to enlist the good offices of Joseph Lea. Charley told of vacating the Yerby ranch and taking to the open range. “I thought this a duty due Mr. Yerby,” he wrote, “for if there is nothing to eat at the ranch no one will go there & there will be no chance of a fight coming off there.” He thought the law should quit hounding him, he told Lea. Only the misfortune of an indictment distinguished his case from that of dozens of other participants in the Lincoln County War and prevented him from pleading the governor’s amnesty and going free. If Lea could intercede with Governor Wallace and get the charges dropped, Bowdre wanted to settle down and lead an honest life.

  As for Billy Bonney and Billy Wilson, Bowdre informed Lea that they would probably move elsewhere and start life anew. “I saw the two Billies the other day,” he wrote, “& they say they are going to leave this country. That was my advice to them for I believe it is the best thing they can do.” According to Garrett, Bonney also wrote to Lea announcing his intention to “leave the country for good.”6

  As Garrett had informed Bowdre, however, he and his men “were after the gang and would sleep on their trail until we took them in, dead or alive.” Still bearing the deputy U.S. marshal’s commission that empowered him to operate beyond Lincoln County, Garrett had been far from idle. In Las Vegas he met up with Frank Stewart, the Panhandle stockmen’s detective, and learned that they had dispatched two parties of cowboys to search for their stolen cattle in New Mexico. Numbering a dozen or more men, with two chuck wagons, this expedition was on the Pecos below Anton Chico, bound for White Oaks. With Mason and Stewart, Garrett set forth to overtake the Texans.7

  The three men reached the camp of the cowboys early on December 15. The ranch owners had not told the hands the whole truth about their mission, only that they were to recover stolen cattle. In seeking volunteers for a quick dash on Fort Sumner, therefore, Stewart and Garrett spoke guardedly. Most of the men guessed the purpose, and not all wanted to tangle with the Kid and his friends. Six men volunteered, while the rest elected to continue on the road to White Oaks.8

  The party laid over for a night and a day in Puerto de Luna, where they rested their horses, warmed themselves in Grzelachowski’s store, and tried to recruit more fighters. Emboldened by free-flowing whiskey, the townsmen signed up in force only to vanish when the departure time came the next day, December 17. “Without shame they had sneaked off into the night,” commented Charles Rudulph, who with George Wilson and the brothers Juan and José Roybal represented Puerto de Luna and rounded out the posse at thirteen men.9

  Already on the seventeenth, Garrett had commissioned José Roybal as a spy. Padre Polaco had recommended the young Hispanic as exceptionally reliable, and that afternoon he proved it. Nosing around Fort Sumner, he discovered the presence of all the fugitives—Bonney, Rudabau
gh, Wilson, Bowdre, Pickett, and O’Folliard. In the evening, under graying skies, Roybal crossed the Pecos and headed up the road toward Puerto de Luna. Suspicious, Pickett and O’Folliard followed, halted the boy, and grilled him at length. With an air of innocence, José explained that he was but a simple sheepherder searching for stray sheep. Convinced, O’Folliard and Pickett returned to town.10

  Near midnight, at a ranch about twenty-five miles up the Pecos, Roybal linked up with Garrett and his men and relayed his observations in Sumner. After a hasty meal of “pickled tripe, roast beef, and plenty of horse feed,” according to Lou Bousman, the riders resumed their journey, flurries of wind-driven snow stinging their faces.

  Billy and his friends, meantime, were alert to an approaching danger, as the action of O’Folliard and Pickett in following Roybal suggests. The mail carrier from Las Vegas had told them that Pat Garrett and Barney Mason were on their way back to Sumner, but he had known nothing of the eleven other men who now rode with them. On the night of the seventeenth, after Roybal had left town, Billy and his comrades rode out too, putting up for the night at the Wilcox-Brazil ranch. They intended to return on the nineteenth with a load of beef, stock up on provisions, and carry out their intention to seek new fields of endeavor. According to Rudabaugh, their destination was Mexico.11

  Amid densely falling snow, Garrett and his posse reached Sumner before daybreak on December 18, only to discover that the quarry had skipped town the night before, after Roybal’s departure. Carefully, skillfully, Garrett set about baiting a trap to lure them back. Hiding his men in the old military hospital on the east edge of the compound, Garrett himself went visibly around the community. He talked with one Yginio García, suspected of being a compadre of the Kid’s, who was about to leave for his place south of town. Garrett refused to let him go, but then gave in to his pleas that his children needed milk.