To Hell on a Fast Horse

by Mark Lee Gardner

  An article in the Chicago Daily Tribune of Dec. 29, 1880, but dated Las Vegas, Dec. 28, stated that a compromise was reached whereby Sheriff Romero and two men were allowed to travel with Garrett’s party to Santa Fe to seek the governor’s permission to return Rudabaugh to Las Vegas. Albert E. Hyde, in his 1902 article, wrote of a similar compromise, supposedly suggested by Garrett himself. No such compromise is mentioned by James East, J. F. Morley, Miguel Antonio Otero, or Garrett, and in fact, the Las Vegas Gazette of Dec. 27 chastised Sheriff Romero for not attempting just such an arrangement.

  The pie episode is from Morley’s letter to East of Nov. 29, 1922.

  Billy’s quoting the proverb “Those who live by the sword…” is from a letter of James H. East to Charlie Siringo, Douglas, Arizona, May 1, 1920, as quoted in Charles A. Siringo, History of “Billy the Kid” (Santa Fe: Charles A. Siringo, 1920), 105.

  The now-iconic image of the Kid appeared in the Jan. 8, 1881, issue of The Illustrated Police News, which stated that it received the original from Las Vegas chief of police E. Roberts, who obtained it from Lincoln County. The engraving was printed again in the Illustrated Police News of Mar. 5, 1881. Chief of Police Roberts may have been Eugene Roberts, who is listed in the 1880 U.S. Census as a thirty-eight-year-old saloon keeper living in East Las Vegas. See Robert G. McCubbin, “The Many Faces of Billy the Kid,” True West 54 (May 2007): 60–63.

  Miguel Antonio Otero fondly recalled his visits to Billy in the Santa Fe jail in his books, My Life on the Frontier, 214, and The Real Billy the Kid, With New Light on the Lincoln County War (New York: Rufus Rockwell Wilson, Inc., 1936), 179.

  The postal inspector was named Carson, and his letter of Jan. 11, 1881, is transcribed in James W. White, The History of Lincoln County Post Offices (Farmington, N.Mex.: James W. White, 2007), 83–84.

  Billy’s letters to Governor Wallace have been published many times. Scanned images of this correspondence, with the exception of Billy’s letters of Mar. 13, 1879, and Mar. 2, 1881, are available on the Indiana Historical Society’s website (www.Indiana-History.org) as part of a digital image collection titled “Lew Wallace in New Mexico.”

  For Billy’s bay mare, see the Las Vegas Gazette, Jan. 4, 1881, and the Las Vegas Daily Optic, Mar. 12, 1881. The pistol W. Scott Moore presented to Frank Stewart, a Colt Frontier Six-Shooter in caliber .44–40, serial number 56304, was auctioned off by Rock Island Auction Company in December 2006, for a hammer price of $92,000.

  Billy’s escape attempt was reported in the Santa Fe Daily New Mexican of Mar. 1881.

  Governor Wallace’s recollection of Billy’s blackmail scheme is in the Fort Wayne Morning Journal-Gazette, July 13, 1902.

  Incidents of Billy’s trip to Mesilla were reported in the Santa Fe Daily New Mexican of Apr. 2, 3, and 7, 1881. The Kid’s low opinion of the Mesilla jail was reported in Newman’s Semi-Weekly of Apr. 20, 1881.

  In 1876, 250 citizens of Grant County petitioned to have Judge Warren Bristol removed for various legal improprieties. Judge Bristol’s record for murder convictions was praised in a long article in the Rio Grande Republican of Apr. 29, 1882. Two months later, however, the same newspaper condemned the judge for grossly undervaluing his real and personal property on his tax assessment. On the day of Bristol’s funeral, Jan. 17, 1890, the business houses of Deming, New Mexico, Bristol’s place of residence, were closed “as a mark of respect for the Judge’s memory.” See New Mexico Biographical Notes, Robert N. Mullin Collection, Haley Memorial Library and History Center, Midland, Texas; Rio Grande Republican, June 10, 1882; and The Deming Headlight, Jan. 18, 1890.

  Editor Simeon Newman’s rant against a delay in the Kid’s legal proceedings is from the Apr. 2, 1881, issue of Newman’s Semi-Weekly.

  For Billy’s plea of no jurisdiction in the Roberts case, see Newman’s Semi-Weekly, Apr. 6, 1881.

  My description of Simeon Newcomb is from Patrick H. Beckett, ed., Las Cruces, New Mexico, 1881: As Seen by Her Newspapers (Las Cruces: COAS Publishing and Research, 2003), 65–66. For Albert J. Fountain, see Gordon R. Owen, The Two Alberts: Fountain and Fall (Las Cruces: Yucca Tree Press, 1996); and A. M. Gibson, The Life and Death of Colonel Albert Jennings Fountain (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1965). Fountain’s mob law comments are quoted in Owen, 193.

  Billy’s wish for a pistol in his jail cell was reported in Newman’s Semi-Weekly of Apr. 9, 1881.

  Court Clerk George R. Bowman’s recollections of the trial are in Helen Irwin, “When Billy the Kid Was Brought to Trial,” Frontier Times 6 (Mar. 1929): 214. Bowman’s account, like many primary sources touching on the Kid and Garrett, must be used with caution. I suspect that Bowman’s quotes were embellished rather liberally by Irwin, who first published Bowman’s recollections in the Fort Worth Star Telegram of Dec. 2, 1928.

  The defense’s proposed jury instructions and Judge Bristol’s charge to the jury are illustrated and transcribed in Randy Russell, Billy the Kid: The Story—The Trial (Lincoln, N.Mex.: The Crystal Press, 1994). The three witnesses for the Territory were Isaac Ellis, Bonifacio Baca, and Jacob B. “Billy” Mathews. Surprisingly, Simeon Newman did not report on the substance of the Kid’s trial in the pages of his Semi-Weekly, even though he was inclined to devote much space to Kid news items. It is possible that the Mesilla News, a weekly, reported details of the trial, but that week’s issue has not survived.

  According to Lew Wallace, Billy responded to Bristol’s sentence with the following: “Judge, that doesn’t frighten me a bit. Billy the Kid was not born to be hung.” Wallace’s account was first published in a 1902 newspaper article, and how Wallace obtained this information is unclear, for he was nowhere near the trial. Billy’s words, however, mirror similar comments and sentiments he is known to have made. See “Gen. Lew Wallace’s New Outlaw Hero,” Fort Wayne Morning Journal-Gazette, July July 13, 1902.

  Billy’s letter to Caypless is as quoted in William A. Keleher, Violence in Lincoln County, 1869–1881 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1957), 320–321.

  Editor Newman’s interviews with the Kid were never published. His newspaper ceased publication in Las Cruces with the Apr. 20, 1881, issue.

  Billy’s views on Governor Wallace and the promised pardon are from the Mesilla News of Apr. 16, 1881. Governor Wallace’s dismissive comments on the Kid’s plight are from the Las Vegas Gazette, Apr. 28, 1881.

  My description of Billy and his guards as they departed Las Cruces is from Newman’s Semi-Weekly, Apr. 20, 1881, and Robert Olinger’s statement of expenses for transportation of William Bonney, Apr. 21, 1881, Lincoln County Clerk’s Office, Carrizozo, New Mexico.

  The description of Billy’s stop at Blazer’s Mill with his guards is from Paul Blazer to Eve Ball, Nov. 20, 1963, interview typescript, Box 4, Folder 1, Eve Ball Papers (MSS 3096), L. Tom Perry Special Collections Library, Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah; and Almer Blazer, “The Fight at Blazer’s Mill, in New Mexico,” Frontier Times 16 (Aug. 1939): 465.

  Mrs. Lesnett’s visit with Billy is from Mrs. Annie E. Lesnett to Edith Crawford, Sept. 30, 1937, interview typescript, American Life Histories: Manuscripts from the Federal Writers Project, 1936–1940, Library of Congress American Memory website.

  2. TRAILS WEST

  For Garrett’s new hero status, see the Daily New Mexican, Dec. 28, 1880. The gift of $100 in gold was reported in the New Mexican of Dec. 30, 1880.

  The will of Patrick F. Jarvis, dated Dec. 13, 1852, is found in Probate File No. 904, Cobb Memorial Archives, Valley, Alabama. Jarvis, who died in December 1852, willed his wife, Margaret Jarvis, two slaves named Fanny and George. However, the will specified that at the death of Margaret Jarvis, the slave George was to go to his grandson Pat Garrett, and the slave Fanny was to go to his granddaughter Margaret Garrett. As Margaret Jarvis is believed to have died a few months after Patrick, her grandson, Pat Garrett, became a slave owner at the age of two. Jarvis also willed his daughter Elizabeth (Pat Garrett’s mother) two slaves
named Big Ben and Little Ben. On Pat Garrett’s paternal side, his great-grandfather, Miles Garrett, was a veteran of the Revolutionary War.

  For John L. Garrett’s Alabama slave ownership, see the slave schedules for the 1850 U.S. Census, 19th District, Chambers County, Alabama.

  Garrett’s recollection of how he earned his first dollar is from the El Paso Herald, Aug. 24, 1905.

  The Garretts, overseer John Yates Coleman, and the Garrett slaves are in the 1860 U.S. Census, 7th Ward, Claiborne Parish, Louisiana.

  For John Coleman’s enlistment in the Twenty-seventh Louisiana, see the Civil War Soldiers and Sailors System at www.itd.nps.gov/cwss/index.html.

  The disposition of the Garrett estate is recounted in Leon Metz, Pat Garrett: The Story of a Western Lawman (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1974), 8–9. Metz states that John and Elizabeth Garrett’s children refused to live in the household of Larkin Lay and their sister Margaret. However, the 1870 U.S. Census for the 7th Ward, Claiborne Parish, Louisiana, shows all the Garrett siblings but Pat and Elizabeth Ann (who was likely married by this time) residing with the Larkins.

  Emerson Hough, a friend of Garrett’s, provides the date for Garrett’s departure from Louisiana in The Story of the Outlaw: A Study of the Western Desperado (New York: The Outing Publishing Company, 1907), 293.

  Garrett came to the Dallas area with John Lowry. See the short sketch of Garrett’s career published in the Daily Review, Decatur, Illinois, Dec. 14, 1901.

  The Garrett quote about being homesick is from the El Paso Herald, Aug. 24, 1905.

  Garrett’s encounter with the Uvalde County cattleman and subsequent employment as a cowboy is according to W. Skelton Glenn, “Pat Garrett as I Knew Him on the Buffalo Ranges,” typescript, Box 16, Leon C. Metz Papers. The Glenn manuscript is a significant source for information on Garrett, particularly his time as a buffalo hunter. However, Glenn developed a strong animosity toward his former partner; thus, his manuscript should be used with caution. Also, it is apparent that Glenn plagiarized a small portion of Emerson Hough’s The Story of the Outlaw.

  For the killing of Joe Briscoe, I have relied heavily on the Glenn manuscript. I have made one change to the Garrett quotation that precipitates his fight with Briscoe. In the manuscript, Glenn has Garrett saying, “No one but a damn Irishman would have more sense than to try to wash anything in that water.” This is, of course, not the slight that Garrett obviously intended, and I have substituted “Anyone” for “No one.” See also Robert N. Mullin, “Pat Garrett—Two Forgotten Killings,” Password to (Summer 1965): 57–59; and Meadows, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid as I Knew Them, 102.

  Garrett spoke of meeting Bat Masterson in an interview published as “He Shot Billy the Kid,” Kansas City Journal, July 20, 1902, clipping typescript in Maurice G. Fulton Collection, University of Arizona Library Special Collections, Tucson. For Wyatt Earp’s recollections of Garrett, see Stuart N. Lake, Wyatt Earp, Frontier Marshal (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1931), 169, 210.

  For reports on the decimation of the Texas bison herds and estimates on hides received, see the Galveston Daily News, Mar. 12 and May 3, 1878.

  For more on the Glenn-Garrett party’s troubles with the Comanches, see Metz, Pat Garrett, 18–19.

  Garrett and Glenn’s abandonment of the buffalo range and arrival at Fort Sumner is described by Glenn, “Pat Garrett as I Knew Him,” and Hough, The Story of the Outlaw, 294–295. Glenn claimed that the trip to New Mexico Territory was undertaken to locate a new hunting camp in the Pecos Valley. But as it is well documented that the bison was essentially nonexistent in the region by this time, it is hard to take his explanation seriously.

  For Lucien Maxwell and his family, see Lawrence R. Murphy, Lucien Bonaparte Maxwell: Napoleon of the Southwest (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1983).

  My description of Garrett upon his arrival at Fort Sumner is from Emerson Hough, “The Imitation Bad Man,” Washington Post, Jan. 21, 1906; and Glenn, “Pat Garrett as I Knew Him.”

  The Garrett quotes about getting a job and his exchange with Pete Maxwell are as quoted in Hough, The Story of the Outlaw, 295–296.

  That Garrett and his companions had shacked up with some Hispanic women at Fort Sumner is from Frank Coe, interview with J. Evetts Haley, San Patricio, New Mexico, Aug. 14, 1927, J. Evetts Haley Collection. Coe commented that, “The buffalo hunters were the hardest set of men I believe I ever saw.”

  Paco Anaya, a resident of Fort Sumner beginning in 1876, remembered Garrett’s arrival very differently. He states, in an account written in 1931, that Pat showed up at Maxwell’s corrals in August 1878 looking “like a tramp.” Garrett pitched in with the branding for two days, but he was not paid for his labors and he was never hired by Maxwell as a cowboy. Paulita Maxwell Jaramillo offers still another version, stating that Garrett went up to Pete Maxwell’s house and asked for a job as a cowboy. She claimed she stood behind her brother when he greeted Garrett at the door. See A. P. “Paco” Anaya, I Buried Billy, ed. James H. Earle (College Station, Tex.: Creative Publishing Company, 1991), 74–75. Paulita’s account, as well as her description of Garrett, is in Walter Noble Burns, The Saga of Billy the Kid (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Page & Co., 1926), 196.

  The weekly Fort Sumner bailes are noted by Paulita in Burns, The Saga of Billy the Kid, 185.

  Metz, Pat Garrett, 40, mentions the hog business. Burns, The Saga of Billy the Kid, 171, states that Garrett partnered with Beaver Smith in a store and saloon. Paco Anaya says that Garrett partnered with a Sam Lock in a “little cantina” at Fort Sumner. Anaya may be referring to Fred S. Locke, who is enumerated in the 1880 U.S. Census as a thirty-eight-year-old “Saloon Keeper” living in East Las Vegas. Anaya is the source for the story of Garrett butchering stolen cattle. See Paco Anaya’s I Buried Billy, 76–77.

  The John Meadows quote about Garrett being a “working devil” is from his interview with J. Evetts Haley, Alamogordo, New Mexico, June 13, 1936, J. Evetts Haley Collection. Meadows, an important source for information on Billy and Garrett, was a friend of both men. He served as a deputy sheriff under Garrett beginning in 1896.

  The newspaper mentions of Billy’s age that I am referencing appear in Newman’s Thirty-Four of Jan. 26, 1881, and Newman’s Semi-Weekly of Apr. 2, 1881. Newman’s Thirty-Four stated that it got its information on Billy’s age from the White Oaks Golden Era, adding that “it ought to know.” Some authors have asserted that the November 23 birth date was assigned to the Kid because it was the same as Garrett’s ghostwriter Ash Upson’s. However, I have been unable to locate any contemporary document that verifies that Upson’s birthday was indeed November 23. The earliest reference I have for that date is Walter L. Upson, The Upson Family in America (New Haven, Conn.: The Tuttle, Morehouse & Taylor Co., 1940), 179. It has been argued that Upson, who boarded in the Kid’s household in Silver City, remembered Billy’s birthday precisely because it was the same as his own. All of which leads nowhere.

  Many historians and buffs have attempted to sort out Billy’s childhood; their works are cited in my bibliography. See particularly Jerry Weddle, Antrim Is My Stepfather’s Name : The Boyhood of Billy the Kid (Tucson: Arizona Historical Society, 1993); Waldo E. Koop, “Billy the Kid: The Trail of a Kansas Legend,” The Trail Guide 9 (Sept. 1964):1-19; Robert N. Mullin, “The Boyhood of Billy the Kid,” in Frederick W. Nolan, ed., The Billy the Kid Reader (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2007), 214-224; and Jack DeMattos, “The Search for Billy the Kid’s Roots,” Real West 21 (Nov. 1978): 12-19, 39.

  Billy’s brother, Joseph, is found in the 1880 U.S. Census for Silverton, San Juan County, Colorado, as a seventeen-year-old miner with a birthplace of New York. He is enumerated as Joseph Antrim, and his father’s birthplace is also given as New York. His mother’s is given as England. Interestingly, some former schoolmates of the McCarty brothers remembered Joseph as being the eldest. Also, newspaper accounts from the early 1880s stated that Joseph was a half brother of Henry.

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nbsp; For Wichita, see L. Curtis Wood, Dynamics of Faith: Wichita, 1870-1897 (Wichita: Wichita State University, 1969); Stan Hoig, Cowtown Wichita and the Wild, Wicked West (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2007); and 1870 U.S. Census for Wichita Township, Sedgwick County, Kansas. My source for the number of longhorns that crossed at Wichita during the 1870 season is the Galveston Daily News, July 7, 1870.

  The quote regarding Denver’s healthful qualities is from The Alton Telegraph, Alton, Illinois, Feb. 17, 1871.

  The Antrim-McCarty marriage was documented in both the county marriage book and the records of the Presbyterian Church. Copies of these marriage records are in the William H. Bonney Collection (AC 017-P), Fray Angélico Chávez History Library, Palace of the Governors, Santa Fe.

  The observations of the Santa Fe Sentinel on the rush to Silver City are from the Galveston Daily News, June 25, 1873. Some accounts claim that the Antrims first settled in the mining camp of Georgetown, eighteen miles northeast of Silver City. If so, it was a very brief sojourn, no more than a few weeks, if not a few days. See Weddle, Antrim Is My Stepfather’s Name, 2

  My source for wages in Silver City is The M’Kean County Miner, Smethport, Pennsylvania, Apr. 3, 1873.

  The Louis Abraham and Harry Whitehill quotes are from Weddle, Antrim Is My Stepfather’s Name, 6; and Mullin, “The Boyhood of Billy the Kid,” 221.

  Harry Whitehill stated that Henry McCarty was the “Head Man in the [minstrel] show,” which would have made him the interlocutor. See Robert C. Toll, Blacking Up : The Minstrel Show in Nineteenth-Century America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1974).

  My sources for Ash Upson are Maurice G. Fulton to Eve Ball, no date, Box 20, Folder 21, Eve Ball Papers; Mrs. Jerry Dunaway to Eve Ball, Lovington, New Mexico, Feb. 29, 1948, interview typescript, Box 11, Folder 2, Eve Ball Papers; and James D. Shinkle, Reminiscences of Roswell Pioneers (Roswell, N.Mex.: Hall-Poorbaugh Press, 1965), 8-24.