Some legends had it that Billy had become a gold miner in Deadwood Gulch, where he shot down another prospector in an argument over a claim. Later, it was said, he got together a gang of outlaws rustling cattle in Montana, one more time escaping the hangman by a hair. He had by then raised a luxurious mustache to hide his rodent-like front teeth, which were his hallmark.
Then a little luck came his way. He was hired by Buffalo Bill as a rootin’-tootin’ cowboy in Cody’s Wild West Show. He performed in London, where a titled, moneyed young lady took a shine to him. The Kid took her for his wife and, together with her money, took her to New York. He had been born in Manhattan, but had been taken west in early childhood. Now he was curious to explore the city of his birth. He bought a swank brownstone house in Chelsea and there he and his wife settled down. By then he had adopted the name of Henry McCarty, because this happened to be his real, original name by which nobody knew him. His wife taught him manners and savoir faire. They dined at Delmonico’s, O’Henry’s Old Steakhouse, and Lüchow’s with its fine continental cuisine. They went to the theater and vacationed at Saratoga. Then his wife died in childbirth together with the baby.
He sold the brownstone, which had become too large for him, and moved into the Hoffman House Hotel. His wife had left him enough money to last his lifetime. He changed his mustache to a distinguished-looking “Prince of Wales” beard. One could watch him sitting near the Hoffman House bar, under the famous Bouguereau painting of naked nymphs and fauns, sipping bourbon while scanning the New York Police Gazette. He went to races, cockfights, dogfights, and boxing matches. He did some drinking, wenching and gambling. Most of the time he was unspeakably bored. The years went by, one by one. His hair turned white. In 1936 he celebrated his seventy-fifth birthday by going on a solitary drunk. A great yearning seized him to revisit the places that had seen him in his youthful glory. He was sure that after more than half a century nobody would recognize him. Certainly, the old charges against him must long have been dropped. He packed his valise, took a sleeper to Santa Fe, and from there took a bus to Lincoln, arriving there—a typical city slicker and tourist, toting a Kodak box camera.
Time had been kind to Lincoln. It had aged gracefully without much change. The Kid had a snort in the old whiskey mill in which he had killed a hombre or two. He gave a fiver to an old geezer who was cadging drinks at the bar, asking him to take him to the town’s biggest attraction—Billy the Kid’s grave. On the way they found their steps dogged by an old toothless crone, half-Indian by the looks of her.
“That vieja,” his guide told Billy, “is a bruja, a witch. She was one of the Kid’s queridas, not the only one, I assure you. She is loco. She thinks the Kid is alive and will come back to marry her.”
“Remind me to give her a few dollars on the way back. I feel sorry for her.”
“You are too generous, sir. She will only drink it up. This Celsa is just an old puta. Worthless. Don’t waste time on her.”
They stood before the grave with the old hag hovering in the background. The Kid studied the inscription:
THE BOY BANDIT KING.
HE DIED AS HE LIVED.
“Very nice,” said the Kid. At this very moment he felt a giant fist gripping his heart, squeezing the life out of it. He writhed in pain. Daylight turned into night. He was twenty-one again, hearing faint footsteps, saying; “Quién es? Is it you, Pat Garrett, my old amigo?” But it was Death, not Garrett, who had finally caught up with him.
Thus Billy the Kid—El Chivato—died once more, this time for good. The old woman knelt down beside the Kid’s body, bathing his face with her tears, covering it with kisses, sobbing, “Billee, mi corazón, mi amor, you have come back to me at last!”
A Whale of a Fellow with a Gun
The most bizarre of all gunfighters was Clay Allison, a man with the knack of inventing novel ways of killing his fellows. He was known as the “Corpsemaker,” and his reputation was such that saloonkeepers closed shop when they saw him coming. He had a volcanic temper that erupted into insane violence whenever he had painted his nose. As one witness of Allison’s anger put it; “Throw a drink into him and he’s hell turned loose.”
It is certain that he was not right in the head. One who knew him commented on a crazy light dancing in Clay’s eyes that chilled the blood of even the toughest hombre. A Jekyll and Hyde type, Allison was forever seesawing between elation and brooding melancholy. When in a good mood, he could play the charming southern gentleman with an exaggerated reverence for sacred womanhood. In a jocular frame of mind he would often gallop up and down Main Street, stark naked, except for sombrero, boots, spur, and gunbelt, standing upright in his stirrups, shouting pleasantries to the ladies while waving the proof of his manhood at them. He usually ended his Lady Godiva act by inviting all bystanders to have their “phlegm cutters,” at his expense, in the nearest watering spot.
Strangely enough, Clay looked upon himself as a solid citizen who would not hurt a fly unless in defense of law and order. When a Missouri newspaper ran an article about the death of his fifteenth victim, the deeply offended Allison wrote a letter of protest to the editor: “I have at all times tried to use my influence toward protecting the property holders and substantial men of the country from thieves, outlaws and murderers, among whom I do not care to be classed.” When asked about his profession, he often replied simply, “I am a shootist.” An acquaintance concluded that Clay “was a whale of a fellow with a gun.”
Clay Allison was born in 1840 on a farm in Tennessee. A fanatic adherent to the cause of Secession, he enlisted in the Tennessee Light Regiment of Artillery at the outbreak of the Civil War, but his thirst for military glory remained unquenched. He was abruptly dismissed from the service on grounds of insanity. His discharge papers noted that “Clay Allison is incapable of performing his duties as a soldier, due to a blow on the head received in childhood. Emotional or physical excitement produces paroxysms of various character, partly epileptic and partly maniacal.”
Notwithstanding, he later joined Nathan Bedford Forrest’s raiders as a rebel guerrilla. After the war he went West to escape, as he said, the goddam Yankee bluebellies and carpetbaggers.
He punched cows along the Brazos River in Texas, raised hell in southern Colorado, and in 1870 acquired a ranch in Colfax County, New Mexico. He quickly gained notoriety for his many violently eccentric exploits. Once, at the end of a cattle drive, he arrived at Cheyenne, Wyoming, with a raging toothache. He hot-footed it to the nearest of two dentists in town. The luckless ivory puller drilled a hole into the wrong tooth, hitting the nerve. Without saying a word, Clay got up, went to the second dentist, had the cavity filled, and returned to the first practitioner. Pinning the poor fellow down in his own dentist’s chair, Clay produced a pair of pliers and, at gunpoint, pulled one of his victim’s teeth without benefit of anesthesia. He was trying to wrench out a second tooth when the “patient’s” anguished cries for help drew a crowd, which made Allison desist in practicing vengeful dentistry. According to legend, Clay actually pulled three teeth, his victim being none other than the renowned “Doc” Holliday, the death-dealing, tubercular dentist, gambler, and shootist. It is, unlikely however, that a character like Doc would have tamely submitted to Clay’s “three teeth for one” onslaught.
At Animas, Colorado, one of the rough new towns sprouting like mushrooms along freshly laid railroad tracks, swarming with gandy dancers, cardsharps, and “soiled doves of the prairie,” Clay and his brother John made a nuisance of themselves inside a dance-hall saloon by tripping the light fantastic with six-guns strapped to their thighs against all regulations. Summoned by nervous customers, Marshal Charlie Faber invited the pair to drop their artillery and hand it over to him for safekeeping during the rest of the evening.
“Why us?” Clay objected politely, his hands poised over the butts of his peacemakers. “Why single us out when all the other boys in here are allowed to keep their guns?” He was grinning amiably, but the light was dancing in his eyes. Fab
er left quietly, only to return shortly toting a double-barreled “greener” loaded with 00 buckshot. Ordinarily, even the boldest pistolero paled in the face of this fearful weapon, and Faber was sure that the mere sight of it would suffice to reestablish his authority. He could not have been more wrong. When the smoke lifted, the marshal was dead from two bullets, one from each brother, in his heart. John ended up with his right arm smashed by buckshot. Clay escaped unhurt.
For this little ruckus Clay was quite willing to have himself arrested and stand trial, but only on the condition that he could first see to it that his brother was properly cared for in the hospital at Fort Lyon, and that he himself would be neither handcuffed nor chained. There had been dozens of witnesses to the shoot-out, but, strange to say, not a single one of them showed up when the trial opened. Neither could twelve men, good and true, be found to serve as jurors. Case dismissed.
Bringing Clay to justice was a recurring and frustrating problem. Clay killed a Mexican, called Alvarez, seemingly just for the fun of it. Court was in session somewhere in Colfax County. The sheriff found Clay bending elbows at the bar of the St. James Hotel at Cimarron. He approached his quarry with trepidation: “Clay, the judge wants you for makin’ that greaser die of lead poisonin.’ ”
“All right, but don’t ask me to come unheeled.”
Clay took his Winchester and his two Colt .45s and the two of them ambled off to the courthouse like old pals.
“That’s a mighty nice hat you’re wearing, marshal,” Allison remarked casually. “Let me have a look at it.”
The marshal obliged. Allison folded the brand-new imposing headgear three ways, tossed it high into the air, and put three bullets through it before it touched ground. “There, friend,” he said, handing the poor man the hat that now resembled a sieve, “now you can say you’ve been under fire.”
In court the clerk read the warrant while the judge contemplated Clay’s armament, ordering: “Marshal, disarm the defendant!”
“Clay,” the marshal pleaded timidly, “why don’t you let me have your weapons for a while. I’ll take good care of them.”
“Well, now. I came here quiet and peaceably, but I’ll be doggone if I give up my shooting irons.”
The judge was growing impatient: “Marshal, disarm the prisoner. The dignity of this court must be upheld.”
“Your honor, the prisoner don’t like it.”
“Goddamn it to hell, marshal, the defendant must and will be disarmed before I start hearing this case.”
“Your Honor, if you insist, you’ve got to disarm him yourself. I’ll be damned if I’ll try. I’ve got a wife and kids.”
“Under these circumstances, this court stands adjourned. Case dismissed!”
In 1870, swigging toothache medicine in an Elizabethtown, New Mexico, whiskey mill, Clay was accosted by a distraught woman, wailing that her husband had run amok, killing several people, and had wound up cutting the throat of his own baby daughter. Always willing to help a lady in distress, Clay, together with a drinking companion, broke into the jail where the presumed murderer was held. They dragged him to a nearby slaughterhouse and there hanged him from a projecting roof beam. Not yet satisfied, Clay cut off the man’s head, impaled it on a stick, and with his ghastly trophy galloped thirty miles to Cimarron, where he exhibited it, among guffaws of maniacal laughter, to the customers of Henri Lambert’s saloon. According to legend, the head’s original owner had fallen victim to a false rumor. His widow was not pleased.
A bowlegged human named Mace Bowman was practicing fast draws in the backyard of Lambert’s establishment. Bowman was supposed to be faster with a gun than Clay, who at once went to see whether this was true. The two of them engaged in a friendly contest, trying to outdraw each other, shooting at bottles, tin cans, chickens, and whatever else could serve as a target. It quickly became obvious that Bowman was a lot faster on the draw than Clay, who showed signs of getting riled.
“Let’s you and me have a real shoot-out with no holds barred,” Clay suggested. “Then we’ll see if you can outdraw me.”
“I’ve got a better notion,” said the suddenly very apprehensive Bowman. “Let’s go inside and see which of us can outdrink the other.”
It was an offer Clay could not refuse. They tossed off one shot after the other neat until becoming booze-blind, when Clay proposed another kind of amusement. They took off their boots and socks, stripped down to their longjohns, and began firing away at each other, particularly at their feet, not to maim and kill, but “to make each other dance.” The bardog bobbed and ducked all afternoon, “more than a hundred times,” to avoid being hit by volleys of bullets. The fun lasted until the two hell-raisers’ supply of ammunition was exhausted. Miraculously, nobody was hurt, but the damage to the bottled goods lined up on the backbar was terrific.
Clay Allison has been called a “man of grim originality”—not without reason. Take, for instance, his bizarre fight to the death with “Chunk” Colbert. Chunk was a gunslinger with fourteen notches carved in the handle of his revolver. Intent on adding a fifteenth, he came down from Colorado to Raton, gunning for Clay. He had no particular reason for it, except that he wished to enhance his reputation as a bad hombre. Clay ignored Chunk, neither trying to meet nor to avoid him. To everybody’s stupefaction, because Chunk had made no secret about his intentions, he and Clay behaved like old pals when they finally bumped into each other. They caroused together for a day or two, painted the town red, frequented a couple of cathouses and entertained themselves with shooting out lamps and windows, all the time keeping a watchful eye upon each other.
“Let’s you and me have a horse race,” Chunk suggested.
“Why not?” said Clay.
Chunk had the faster horse and won the race, which instantly put Clay into his “sod-pawing” mood. They started arguing and Clay slapped Chunk across the face.
“We might just as well start killin’ each other now,” said Chunk offhandedly, rubbing his cheek.
“Good idea!” Clay agreed. “But let’s do it in a special way to give the citizens a good show.” He proposed having a shoot-out on horseback, specifying that he and Chunk should take their stations opposite each other, some two hundred yards apart, and at a given signal spur their horses into a dead run, firing at will as they came thundering on. They were just about ready to climb into their saddles when the bell inside the Clifton House summoned its customers to the table. “Let’s put on the nose bag and eat first,” said Chunk. “We ought to see that the dead one goes to hell with a full stomach.” “Let’s,” Clay agreed. “I’m kind of gut-shrunk myself.”
They went into the place and sat down at a table opposite each other, their six-shooters on their laps. They ordered a huge mess of ham, eggs, and potatoes, with coffee and whiskey on the side. One account has it that Clay ordered “coffee and pistols for two,” but of course they had brought their artillery with them. They ate in silence, seemingly totally absorbed in filling their bellies, taking their time. They sat like this for almost an hour, lazily stirring the coffee with their gun barrels, always putting their Colts back on their laps, knowing that one, perhaps two, would never rise from the table. It says much for the Raton citizens’ sangfroid that the place was full of other diners and gents painting their tonsils at the bar, intent upon watching the show, taking a big chance of being hit by a stray bullet once the shooting started.
Slowly and deliberately, Chunk laid down his fork and put his right hand under the table, seemingly fishing for his napkin, but it came up instead with his Colt .45. As he fumbled in a desperate hurry to beat Clay to the draw, his gun barrel got caught under the table’s edge. The shot was deflected, the bullet whizzing harmlessly by Clay’s head. Clay did not miss, neatly drilling a hold through Chunk’s skull above the left eye. Chunk fell forward, his face coming to rest on his plate, settling among whatever was left of his order of “grunt an’ cackle.” Thus he expired “with egg on his face.”
Clay went on eating
as if nothing had happened, encouraging the fascinated onlookers to do the same. When he had finished, he pushed back his chair, rose, and addressed his audience: “Gentlemen, the proposed fight is now off, owing to an accident to one of the principals.”
Clay’s most famous, novel, and grotesque duel occurred as the result of an argument with a neighbor about the location of a fence. Clay’s emotional Vesuvius erupted. A fight to the finish was in order. Clay specified the manner in which the duel was to be fought. The neighbor, obviously a citizen with his bark on, agreed. Both first uprooted an unmarked headstone from a nearby bone orchard, dragging it to the site of the proposed fight. They then dug a trench seven feet square. They stripped and jumped, stark naked, into the pit, armed with bowie knives of equal length. By mutual consent they battled savagely until one of them was killed. The fight was long and terrible, but at last Clay emerged the victor, though dripping blood from many wounds. Both combatants had agreed before the fight that the trench in which they struggled should become the loser’s grave. Wasting no time, Clay covered his opponent’s body with earth removed during the digging. Also according to their agreement, he set up the headstone above the grave—suitably engraved.
Those who expected Clay Allison to end his life as spectacularly as he had lived it were to be disappointed. On July 1, 1877, he was hauling sacks of grain on his heavy buckboard. As he started his team, one of the sacks began to fall off. Clay made a grab for it, lost his balance, and toppled from his seat. As he lay prone on the ground, one of the rear wheels rolled over him, breaking his neck, killing him instantly. He was thirty-seven years old and had, as well as can be determined, killed eighteen men. His mourners were few.
The King of the Pistoleers
A potpourri of contemporary quotations.
“Six feet one in his moccasins, deep-chested, with quiet gray eyes, clear and calm as a woman’s, an almost womanly gentleness of expression, bright chestnut hair floating over his shoulders—it does not seem a promising picture to those who would hear of adventure. But that small, muscular hand had taken deadly aim at scores of men; before the gaze of that eye many a bold border spirit had quailed. He was the ‘Magnificent,’ Wild Bill Hickok, the terror of evil-doers.”
Legends and Tales of the American West Page 29
