To Hell on a Fast Horse

by Mark Lee Gardner

  The Kid read Hudgens’s letter out loud to the gang, and they burst out laughing. They sent Steck back with a note of their own. “You can only take me a corpse,” the Kid had written—which would have been perfectly acceptable to the posse. The negotiations continued back and forth until Hudgens proposed a face-to-face talk with Billy Wilson. He swore that if Wilson declined to surrender, he would let Wilson go back in the house. Wilson declined, of course, but he, the Kid, and Rudabaugh requested that Jimmy Carlyle be sent inside the house to talk about the situation—Wilson is said to have known Carlyle when they were youths in Ohio.

  Hudgens thought this a very bad idea, but Greathouse, who had come outside with Steck, offered himself as a hostage to guarantee Carlyle’s safety. The deputy sheriff still objected, but Carlyle was determined to talk to the outlaws. He took off his gun belt and walked across the open ground to the house and was let in.

  Carlyle may have been well liked, but he was also a fool. His presence in the house did little more than entertain the outlaws. There was plenty of whiskey in the store, and Carlyle joined in far too many rounds. Eventually, an inebriated Carlyle insisted on leaving, while the outlaws demanded that he stay. At the same time, the posse was getting impatient; Carlyle had been in the house for hours. They sent in another note that said if Carlyle was not released within five minutes, they would kill Greathouse. This surely sobered the blacksmith. But what happened next sent Carlyle into a panic. One of the men in the posse fired a single shot, and Carlyle immediately assumed that Greathouse was dead. This frightened him so much that he jumped up and ran for a window, crashing through the panes and tumbling onto the ground outside. Carlyle was bleeding, but he got up and scrambled for the breastworks. Billy let loose with his Colt Lightning, firing two shots at the fleeing man. Rudabaugh and Wilson each fired once. Carlyle collapsed just ten feet from the window. He was dead.

  The lawmen opened up with everything they had. Kuch and Steck, who were caught outside the house when Carlyle was killed, ran for the breastworks—until they realized the posse was shooting at them. It was only after several dozen shots that they realized their mistake and stopped firing. The murder of Carlyle demoralized everyone. And the posse had not been whiling away their time in a warm dwelling with plenty of whiskey to take the edge off. It was damn cold, and there was no food or water. Hudgens called his men back from their positions around the house; they would go find shelter and wait for reinforcements. The posse saddled up and rode off, leaving Carlyle’s crumpled body on the ground.

  Billy must have grinned smugly as he watched them leave. Once it was dark outside, he, Wilson, and Rudabaugh trudged through the snow to a friend’s ranch before setting out for Anton Chico, where they were met by Jim Greathouse, who had been released by the posse shortly after Carlyle was killed. Greathouse gave the outlaws horses to ride, and they headed to the Yerby ranch (northeast of Fort Sumner) and met up with Tom Folliard, Charlie Bowdre, and Tom Pickett. The Kid may have had an entertaining tale to tell his pals, but Carlyle’s cold-blooded murder was met with public outrage. Many of those who had remained sympathetic to Billy, who thought he had gotten a raw deal in the Lincoln County War, now were disgusted, if not horrified, by his actions. Maybe the Kid was just a heinous killer after all.

  AS A HARSH WINTER settled in over New Mexico Territory, Special Operative Azariah Wild methodically planned for a surprise raid on Fort Sumner. He had a long list of the outlaws he wanted to capture, and the Kid and Billy Wilson were at the top. At the same time, the cattlemen of the large ranches in the Texas Panhandle organized a force of cowpunchers to ride into the Territory and help root out Billy and the gang of rustlers and recover what stolen stock they could find. And even though Pat Garrett would not begin his term until January 1, 1881, he was not going to wait two months or even two days to fulfill his promise to bring law and order to southeast New Mexico. Sheriff Kimbrell appointed Garrett a deputy sheriff and then politely got out of the way. Garrett was also invested with the powers of a deputy U.S. marshal. Wild had recommended Garrett to U.S. Marshal John Sherman in Santa Fe, but Sherman ignored the request. However, when Wild received by mail two commissions for another man he had recommended, he simply scratched out the name on one of the commissions and wrote in: Patrick F. Garrett.

  Wild noted triumphantly that, “I have now had men commissioned as Deputy U.S. Marshals who will execute warrants of arrests or die in the attempt.”

  On November 20, 1880, Garrett arrived in Lincoln to meet with Wild about their plans for the Sumner raid. Garrett had his friend Barney Mason with him. Twenty-six years old and a native Virginian, Bernard “Barney” Mason had spent some time in Texas before settling in New Mexico, where, like Garrett, he had worked for Pete Maxwell. Mason did not have much of a reputation as a gunman, but he had been in a strange sort of gunfight in a Fort Sumner store. On December 29, 1879, with no apparent warning, a thirty-four-year-old drifter named John Farris fired three errant shots at an unarmed and very surprised Mason, who quickly ran out of the building. Mason was not gone long, though. He went to get his revolver and returned to shoot Farris twice in the chest. He was never charged in the killing and the episode was quickly forgotten.

  Mason knew the Kid, Billy Wilson, and the rest of Fort Sumner’s outlaw element and got on with them well. Wilson even boarded with Mason and his wife, Juana, when the gang was in Fort Sumner. Yet Mason had come to offer Garrett his help in bringing in the rustlers. The Kid, as well as some of Fort Sumner’s residents, later viewed Mason as a turncoat. Mason, however, had to make a choice: either his friend Garrett or the gang. He chose Garrett. Wild hired Mason as an “informer” at two dollars a day plus expenses.

  Mason told Wild he had seen Wilson with counterfeit bills, and that he had been propositioned by Dan Dedrick (one of the counterfeiting ringleaders on Wild’s list) about taking a large amount of counterfeit money to Mexico and purchasing a bunch of cattle for Dedrick. Mason also said that the Kid and Wilson had left Fort Sumner on November 15 with sixty head of stolen horses and that they planned to return to the Pecos in two to three weeks. Mason thought the outlaws could be easily arrested at his house when they returned.

  At the end of their meeting with Wild, Garrett started back for Roswell to organize his posse while Mason headed for White Oaks for a few days of snooping. The posse would be led by Garrett and a fellow deputy U.S. marshal, Bob Olinger (another Wild pick), and would be made up of Garrett’s Roswell neighbors. Wild arrived in Roswell by stagecoach on November 24, and Mason got there three days later. On Monday, November 29, Wild sent a rider with a message for Frank Stewart, the leader of the Texas Panhandle posse, which was reported to be at Puerto de Luna. Wild wanted Stewart to know what Garrett and Olinger planned to do. He wanted to use the various posses to catch both the counterfeiters and cattle thieves. Later that same day, Garrett asked his neighbors to meet him in Roswell after dark. Everything was ready for a bold raid on the outlaws.

  At approximately 9:00 P.M., Garrett and Olinger led their twenty-man posse out of town. Their first stop would be Bosque Grande and Dan Dedrick’s ranch, some thirty miles to the north. Garrett had been told that the Kid, Wilson, and any others with them were traveling on foot, and he suspected that they would go to Dedrick’s to get horses. The posse reached the Dedrick place at daybreak, but the Kid and Wilson were not there. Garrett did surprise and capture two men who had recently escaped from the Las Vegas jail. Taking along their two prisoners, the posse pushed on to Fort Sumner, where they hoped to finally corral the Kid and gang, but that was another disappointment. The place was dead quiet; not a single man they were hunting was then in the town. Here Garrett received a letter from Captain Lea, which told him for the first time what had happened at the Greathouse-Kuch place—the murder of Jimmy Carlyle and the Kid’s escape.

  Garrett found a Fort Sumner resident who he believed could confirm if the Kid had been around or not. The man assured Garrett that Billy had not yet returned but that Charlie Bowdre
, Tom Folliard, and Tom Pickett were at the Yerby ranch near Las Cañaditas. Garrett allowed his men a short time for breakfast and then they started for the Yerby place. Garrett had a federal warrant for Bowdre in connection with the Bernstein killing at the Mescalero Agency. Maybe, he thought, he could salvage something of this raid yet.

  The last thing Garrett wanted to do was alert the men at Yerby’s ranch to his approach, so over the next few miles he kept the posse off the main trail and stopped regularly on various high points to use his field glasses to scan the country. When they were eight miles from their destination, Garrett spotted a single horseman in the distance, riding toward Yerby’s. The rider was Tom Folliard, and Garrett quickly put together a plan to intercept the Kid’s best buddy. He knew of a pass through the hills where they had the best chance of surprising and capturing Folliard. What Garrett did not remember about the pass—actually, more of a ravine—was the overgrown weeds and brush, as well as loose rock, which made for extremely tough going. When Garrett and two of his men finally rode out of the ravine and onto the hard road, they were within three hundred yards of Folliard, and they scared the hell out of him. Folliard put the spurs to his mount and flailed away at the horse with his quirt. He then worked the lever of his Winchester like a jackhammer, firing back behind him at his three pursuers (the rest of the posse was still struggling in the ravine). Putting their horses into a hard gallop, Garrett and his men returned the fire, wounding Folliard’s horse in the thigh. But the ravine had taken its toll on Garrett’s horses, and, more significantly, Folliard’s horse was damn fast; outlaws generally try to steal the best horses. All Garrett could do was watch as Folliard quickly pulled away.

  Folliard reached the Yerby place well ahead of the posse and warned the other members of the gang. They were long gone by the time Garrett and four of his men came in view of the ranch, but he thought there was a slight chance that the fugitives might be holed up in the ranch house waiting to fight it out with the posse. With his blood still pumping from the chase, Garrett proposed that the five of them split up and charge the house from different directions. His men, not as gung ho as their leader, urged the sheriff-elect to wait until the rest of the posse came up. When the full posse did advance on the ranch house, they only encountered Bowdre’s fetching wife, the twenty-five-year-old Manuela, and a Hispanic servant woman. Both women tried their best to pretend they were surprised and terrorized.

  When he returned to Fort Sumner, Garrett decided to take a stab at Los Portales, sixty-five miles southeast of Fort Sumner. A conspicuous rock formation rising fifteen feet above the surrounding plains, Los Portales was on a cattle trail running from Fort Sumner to the Texas Panhandle, a path the Kid liked to use for moving stolen stock. Its overhanging limestone ledge is believed to have been the inspiration for the formation’s name, because it resembled several porches, portales in Spanish. Two springs bubbled up from beneath the ledge, and a good-sized cave in the rocks provided adequate shelter from the elements. The Billy the Kid who was “always looking into the future” envisioned a stage line running by Los Portales one day, and when that day came, he hoped to operate a station there. The Billy the Kid of the present thought the remote springs were an excellent place to gather stolen horses and cattle and alter their brands.

  At the very least, Garrett believed he could recover some sixty cattle the Kid was thought to be hiding at Los Portales. When the posse arrived, though, they located only two cows and calves and a yearling. Inside the cave, the posse found some musty flour, a little salt, and a pile of blankets. Garrett later learned that the Kid had moved the stolen stock to a location fifteen miles away. Los Portales, then, was another bust for Garrett and his posse. On their return journey, they stopped at a ranch co-owned by Thomas Wilcox and Manuel Brazil, twelve miles east of Fort Sumner. Billy and the gang also liked to hang out at the Wilcox-Brazil headquarters, even though the owners found this rather exasperating. The posse had dinner in the ranch house, and over the meal Wilcox told Garrett that Charlie Bowdre was anxious to meet with the lawman. Bowdre wanted to make some kind of deal with the authorities. Garrett left instructions for Bowdre to meet him at 2:00 P.M. the following day, December 9, where the road forked, two miles east of Fort Sumner. Bowdre, Garrett cautioned, should come unarmed.

  Bowdre showed up, but he was not unarmed. Garrett saw the six-shooter on Bowdre’s hip and launched into the man: “Look here, you’ve betrayed my confidence.” The sheriff-elect maintained a stern tone throughout the exchange and showed Bowdre a letter from Captain Joseph C. Lea that promised Bowdre that if he gave up his old ways and dumped his thieving friends, an effort would be made to get him released on bail, after which he would have a chance to “redeem himself.” Bowdre was not completely happy with these terms, nor did he believe Lea or Garrett would come through for him. Still, he assured Garrett he would sever his relationship with the Kid and the others. Of course, Bowdre quickly added, he would have to feed the boys when they were at his ranch, but he would try not to shelter them. Garrett ended the meeting with a final warning: “I told him if he did not quit them or surrender, he would be pretty sure to get captured or killed, as we were after the gang and would sleep on their trail until we took them in, dead or alive.” For Charlie Bowdre, those last words of Garrett proved tragically prophetic.

  MANY OF THE HORSES ridden by Garrett’s men had become sick (not surprising considering the hard miles of snow and ice they had covered), so Garrett disbanded his posse at Fort Sumner, sending all but Barney Mason back to Roswell under the charge of Bob Olinger. Garrett still had his two Las Vegas prisoners to deal with at Fort Sumner, however. He had written the sheriff at Las Vegas about the prisoners upon his first arrival at Sumner a little over a week earlier but received no reply, so he decided to get the prisoners there himself. It would be good to get into a real town and have a decent bath. Garrett hired a man with a wagon to haul the two wanted men.

  Garrett’s small party started for Las Vegas on December 10. On the road, he received word that a sheriff’s posse sent from Las Vegas to retrieve the prisoners was then at Puerto de Luna, and Garrett left the main road to find them. He met the “posse” eight miles from the village, and it had picked up a good number of recruits there, so that it now numbered more than twenty wannabe heroes. Garrett was not impressed, describing the posse’s approach later as resembling a “whirlwind of lunatics,” the men boasting and puffing and causing their horses to prance and race about. One of the prisoners, John J. Webb, began giving serious thought to what this posse might do to him and his companion after Garrett and his men left. Arriving at Puerto de Luna, Webb offered Garrett $10 to stay with him until they reached Las Vegas. Garrett told Webb to put his money away; he would accompany the prisoners to Las Vegas.

  As the prisoners were escorted to the blacksmith shop to get fitted with irons, Garrett walked into Padre Polaco’s store, sat down on the counter, and helped himself to a hard cracker. That’s when two village toughs, who had followed Garrett into the mercantile, decided to test the lawman. Juan Maes, twenty-seven years old, stepped up to Garrett and threw up his hands, saying, “Here I am, take me.”

  “I don’t want you, man,” a dumbfounded Garrett exclaimed.

  Maes turned and walked away, but it was far from over, for next Marino Leiva, the village’s “big bully” and a known thief, approached Garrett.

  “No cabrón like Pat Garrett can take me,” Leiva said.

  “I don’t want anything with you; I have no warrant to arrest you,” Garrett told him.

  Failing to get a rise out of Garrett, the twenty-five-year-old Leiva then walked out to the store’s porch, all the while running his mouth about Pat Garrett and bragging about himself. Garrett, unable to enjoy his cracker in peace, got up off the counter and followed Leiva outside.

  “Go ’way from here,” Garrett ordered, and as he spoke, he gave Leiva a hard push, so hard it knocked the man to the ground.

  Leiva sprang back up, drawing his six-shooter
as he did so. When Garrett saw Leiva go for his pistol, the lawman drew his as well. Leiva got off two quick shots, both missing their mark. Garrett accidentally fired his six-shooter prematurely, the bullet kicking up the dirt at Leiva’s feet. But his second shot, rapidly following the first, struck the bully in the left shoulder, the slug passing completely through his body. Leiva turned and ran for his horse, firing back as he fled. Barney Mason, who had been outside the store, drew his pistol and chased after Leiva, getting off several shots before Leiva reached his or someone else’s horse and galloped away.

  Garrett went back into the store, followed soon after by Mason. Garrett placed his Winchester within easy reach and continued eating his cracker. If anybody wanted to pester him again, he would be more than willing to accommodate. Soon, one of the deputies, Francisco Romero, walked in and told Garrett he was under arrest for shooting at Leiva. He ordered the sheriff-elect to turn over his weapons. An exasperated Garrett made it clear to Romero that while he had no intention of evading the law, there was no way he was going to turn over his arms, especially after one man from the town had just tried to kill him. Mason then picked up his own rifle.

  “Shall I cut the son-of-a-bitch in two, Pat?” Mason barked.

  Garrett told him to calm down; there was no need to shoot the deputy. At this point, Padre Polaco, a good friend of Garrett’s, began to talk some sense into Deputy Romero, who left the store. The next morning, Garrett visited the local alcalde (justice of the peace) about the arrest, and after a few questions, the alcalde told Garrett he was free to go. Garrett was more than happy to oblige, departing Puerto de Luna that day with Mason, the posse, and their prisoners for Las Vegas.