Another similarity between the two men is the number of men they were each supposed to have killed- ranging from five to twenty-five, roughly the same range attributed to Billy the Kid. Of course, these similarities alone do not definitively prove that “Billy the Kid” and the “Texas Kid” are the same person, or even that the events described in the article even happened in the manner claimed by the article’s author. They do, however, show that there was an actual “bad man” known as the “Texas Kid” that was active during the period Brushy claimed and that he is described in very similar terms as Billy the Kid.
This, however, is not the only historical evidence of a man that goes by the moniker of the “Texas Kid”. There are in fact, other references to men of this name. We should be reminded, however, that the mere historical mention of a specific name would only have value if it somehow linked that name with the person in question, like in the story above. After all, don’t many men have similar nicknames such as “shorty”, “slim”, or “Tex”? How then could one be certain that a historical reference refers to the proper person? The answer lies in the specific details on the reference. Time, place, characteristics, and associations must all match. References must therefore be considered in context and it can often be frustrating when searching history to support or prove things without cross referencing historical records.
Fortunately, however, there is ample evidence in history to support Mr. Robert’s claims. For example, Brushy stated that over the years he was well acquainted and friendly with a veritable “Who’s Who” list of Wild West celebrities, from Belle Starr to Jesse James to Buffalo Bill Cody to Tom Waggoner. In fact, he claimed he knew Buffalo Bill so well that he rode in his famous Wild West Show over several summers and even spent a lot of time at his personal ranch breaking horses.
He further claims that Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show wasn’t the only time he performed. Brushy says from the spring of 1902 until 1904 he spent some time doing his own Wild West Show. During that period he says he used the name “Texas Kid” which was also the same name he had used throughout his life and the reason he was selected as a government scout when riding with Teddy Roosevelt’s Rough Riders.
It is interesting therefore that in the New York Times on March 10, 1901 the following PLAYBILL appears listing a performance at Huber’s Fourteenth Street Museum:
“Dick Parr and Texas Kid, Government Scouts, with all of their Wild West apparatus”
PLAYBILL notice from the March 10, 1901 issue of the
NEW YORK TIMES
This event was also advertised in by Huber’s in the same issue:
HUBER’S 14TH STREET ADVERTISEMENT
The presence of this PLAYBILL is an amazing corroboration to Brushy Bill’s account. It undeniably establishes the presence of a performer known as the Texas Kid in the Spring of 1901 who was formerly a government scout that was conducting a Wild West Show...exactly when Brushy claimed to be doing exactly that under that exact name.
Even more amazing is that this “Texas Kid” was touring with a man by the name of Dick Parr.
Dick Parr is not a recognizable name in modern America today but at the time he was one of the most famous scouts in American history. He had served among other things as “Chief of Scouts” for General Sheridan during his Western Campaign and also for the 7th Calvary under Hancock. He later served on General George Custer’s personal staff. In addition to his army service he had lived more than 22 years with hostile Indians. His skill as a scout was perhaps equal to or greater than Buffalo Bill himself. In fact, Buffalo Bill hired him as his own “Chief of Scouts” and held him in extremely high regard. Clearly this “Texas Kid” kept some pretty auspicious company and was quite notable himself to share equal billing with someone like Dick Parr on the PLAYBILL announcement.
Granted, at the time Huber’s 14th St. Museum was considered a bit of a dive in a seedy part of town and the attractions there were not exactly Broadway, however, it was also a known venue and the place where Harry Houdini made his debut. Brushy never claimed that Wild West Shows made him rich, but the idea that he did what he could to get by and moved from town to town and job to job as needed fits his narrative perfectly.
The reality of it all is that this short mention in an obscure PLAYBILL is a smoking gun in Brushy’s favor and establishes a direct link to Buffalo Bill Cody and his Wild West Show. It is yet another contemporary historical record that supports the claims made in 1949 of a destitute old cowboy living in a trailer in Hico, Texas.
This record positively and definitively establish a link between the “Texas Kid” and the claims made by Brushy Bill Roberts. There is no one else that has ever presented themselves to history and claimed the name “Texas Kid” except William Henry Roberts. According to Roberts, the Texas Kid was in fact a government scout, he did indeed know those close to Buffalo Bill Cody, and he had his own Wild West Show apart from Buffalo Bill’s.
The fact that “The Texas Kid” is mentioned at all in the record is amazing and speaks to the level of respect that Roberts carried with the peers of his day. Dick Parr was a bonafide hero and Army veteran. He was regarded as a top expert during a time in American history when the country was filled with outlaws, apaches, and settlers-each of whom were men of extraordinary skill themselves. But then, the man who was variously known as Billy the Kid, Kid Antrim, Texas Kid, Kid Hugo and Brushy Bill Roberts was equally accomplished himself. One could fairly say that he was more than a hero in the eyes of those that knew him. Billy was a true friend and loyal companion that in the passing of time became a legend. It is unfortunate that history has cast him as an outlaw. As he said “I never robbed no stagecoaches” and he was both a soldier and a lawman during his adult life, committed to doing right. It was only during his youth and early twenties that he crossed the line into illegal behavior, and typically then only in extenuating circumstances.
Brushy continued, "I went back to Mexico about 1907 and three of us started another ranch known as the Three Bar. In 1910 the revolution came along, and we had to start fighting again. We joined with Carranza's men, and later with Pancho Villa. I was captain of 1o6 men, all mounted on steeldust horses from our ranch. Our steeldust horses could outdistance the Spanish ponies of the Federals. We left Mexico in 1914, coming across the border at Brownsville, Texas. The Mexican revolution broke us up. We lost everything we had, about $200,000 between the three of us.
"In 1912 I met Mollie Brown of Coleman, Texas, and we were married. She was a member of the old Brown family, of Brownwood, Texas. We went back to east Texas and then into Oklahoma, in the trading business again. Later on I had a ranch in Arkansas, near Oklahoma. I kept on riding bucking horses and doing about anything I could find to do. I worked in the oil fields of Oklahoma. When oil was struck in east Texas, I went to Gladewater. I worked for the city of Gladewater as a plainclothesman. I aided Green, the Chief of Police. It was here that I took part in breaking up a gang of bank robbers holed up in the Sabine River bottom.
"Molly died in 1919. I married Louticia Ballard in 1925, with whom I lived until her death in 1944. Then I married Melinda Allison, in November, 1944."
That brought Brushy Bill up to date. He had little to be proud of at the end. He was old and poor, and just another old character to most people. He had memories, but he couldn't talk about the ones that meant most to him—not until he decided to "come out," and then they were beginning to fade.
He commented to Morrison on the difficulty of bringing those far-off events into focus:
"Sixty-nine years is a long time to recollect some of those things. I never forgot some. I'll never forget that trial at Mesilla . . . the fight at Blazer's. He was pouring it on us. Got Brewer too…almost got me . . . McSween's house burning . . . my jail break when I killed them two guards . . . that fight with Garrett's posse at that rock house on Christmas. The reason I can't forget about some of those times is that I was fighting for my life. You wouldn't forget about them either, would you?
"All these years I have been running and hiding when I knew I wasn't wrong. But I had to hide. Been thinking about it more since I don't have long here anymore. I want to get straightened out before I die, I do. I've been a good useful citizen and I think I deserve a break. If we have to go to court I can still tell 'em a few things. That Ring bunch was terrible. I'm not afraid to talk if you don't let them lock me up.
"Sixty-nine years is a long time to recollect, my friend."
STILL ABOVE GROUND IN 1950?
Brushy Bill Roberts beside the grave of Billy the Kid. Snapshot taken July 6, 1950, at Fort Sumner, New Mexico
THE TINTYPE AND DELUVINA’S SCARF
Billy traded the tintype for the multicolored angora wool scarf woven by Deluvina Maxwell and wore it about his head on his way to jail
TWO .44’S
At the top is the six-shooter carried by Bill Roberts from the nineties until his death- a Colt’s single-action Frontier Model, serial number 176903. At the bottom is the weapon taken from Billy the Kid when he surrendered to Garrett- a Colt’s single-action Frontier Model, serial number 0361, made in 1874. These revolvers were chambered to fire ammunition that would also fit popular rifles of the day
THE OLD COURTHOUSE
Taken about 1884. The man on the extreme left is John W. Poe
A STUDY IN EARS
Brushy Bill Roberts at fourteen [inset] (photography made at Fort Smith, Arkansas); at seventeen [top, left] (taken, according to his story, at Dodge City with the Jones brothers); at twenty-seven [lower left] (crayon portrait made at Butte, Montana); at fifty-five [top right] (Brownville, Texas); and at eighty-five [lower right] (Hamilton, Texas). Note the protruding left ear
CHAPTER 8: THE TANGLED WEB
BRUSHY BILL was a hard man to back track. He had wandered over many lands, had used a dozen aliases, and had covered his trail wherever he could. He had, in fact, spent seventy years making it hard to believe that he could be anybody but Brushy Bill Roberts.
He was resentful of any attempt to pin a Billy the Kid label on him. He once wrote to Morrison about an Oklahoma woman who wanted to write him up: "She said she had three affidavits that people knew me in 1887. . . . These men said I was Billie the Kid. I told her she thinks she caught a sucker. I ain't putting out nothing. . . . I don't like for other people to meddle with my business."
In various ways he tried to lay false scents. One was by writing up his history the way he wanted it told. He set down his story in a series of paper-covered composition books—the kind schoolboys use for their class exercises—and in a couple of loose-leaf notebooks. One of the latter is dated 1925. He started over two or three times and told the tale approximately the same way in each case.
It is a wild and woolly narrative. He pictures himself as traveling all over the West making a living riding outlaw horses, serving as a frontier peace officer, working for the Anti-Horse Thief organization in Oklahoma, running a traveling rodeo show, soldiering, and ranching. He makes his age out to be eight years less than it would have been if he fought in the Lincoln County feud, and telescopes events that happened in the seventies with others that must have occurred in the eighties and nineties. Much of it may be fiction. It is impossible about now to say how much of it is true, and it would take years and a lot of money to find out.
One fact hits the reader between the eyes at once: there is not one single reference to Lincoln County, Billy the Kid, Pat Garrett, or anything else that might connect Brushy Bill Roberts with the cattle troubles in New Mexico. In fact, the author never places himself closer to the Ruidoso country than the Diamond A ranch, many miles to the west.
This is almost enough to make a skeptic laugh Brushy Bill out of court. But then comes the thought that the complete omission of all such detail might be highly significant. Brushy Bill certainly knew plenty about New Mexico troubles and the people who fought in them. He must have been on the inside somehow, Why should he have passed this chapter over completely unless he had something to conceal?
There is a possibility that he did write down some of the things he was trying to hide. Three of his notebooks have disappeared; Morrison had a brief look at them. but the old man would not allow him to make a real examination or to take many notes. After his death, Morrison and Mrs. Roberts looked for those books and could not find them. Morrison thinks Bill destroyed them just before he left for his disastrous interview with the governor in Santa Fe, thinking they might be incriminating evidence if he should be arrested and sent to jail, as he feared he might be.
There is some reason to believe that he spent all his mature life impersonating one of his own relatives. This was the real Ollie Roberts, a cousin, who was born in 1867, ran away from home about 1884, and was killed in the Indian Territory in a difficulty about some stolen horses.
As Brushy Bill told it, he and his side-kick, Indian Jim, were scouting for stolen stock one time and reached a community named Shakerag, here they expected to pick up some contraband horses. The deputy sheriff at this place reported that he had killed two men who were in possession of the animals, and they all went out to bury the bodies.
The deputy searched the dead men, appropriated their money and personal effects, and was going on with the burying when Bill recognized one of the victims as his cousin Ollie. He looked under the mane of one of the horses and found the brand of the Anti-Horse Thief Association, realized that his cousin was working for the law, and stopped the proceedings at once. "We know this man," he said to the deputy. "He ain't no horse thief."
Using his leverage as an officer, he took over his cousin's belongings, intending to return them to the boy's family. He probably hung onto them, however, for when he finally located the survivors at Sulphur Springs, Texas, they took him for the runaway boy and he let them think he was.
Dudley Heath, who was married to Billy's cousin Martha, was dubious. "That's not your brother," he told her. But Ollie's mother took Brushy Bill to her bosom as a long-lost son, and members of the family, down through the years, called him Ollie and supposed he was the son of the woman who claimed him. When the time came to straighten the record out, there were many difficulties. Brushy Bill often had his doubts about going through with it, and he hated to own up to a good many things he supposedly had done. He would grow red in the face and object violently: "Now you're trying to get me to admit I did that, and I won't do it. I won't admit it!"
Morrison would fuss back at him, "Do you want me to take this case or not? If you don't I'll take my hat and walk right out of that door. How do you expect me to do anything for you if you won't talk?"
And the old man would look sheepish and try to be frank.
Morrison got some of it on his tape recorder, and more of it in his notes, but he had to be careful. The sight of pencil and paper made Roberts uneasy, and sometimes he would shut up like a clam when Morrison began to scribble. When he did get strung out he told whatever came into his head, seldom following a straight line of narrative, and his story, as set down in these pages had to be assembled from various interviews where he added details about this or that episode.
Morrison planned to go over all of it with him as soon as Governor Mabry acted favorably on the application for pardon. But then the whole show went to pieces. Mabry refused to act. The old man died. Nothing further could be done.
Governor Thomas J. Mabry
In one interview Bill talked at some length about the people who knew, or had known, who he was, and about the trouble he had in keeping under cover. Buffalo Bill, he said, had been acquainted with Wild Henry Roberts and was aware of the identity of Henry's son. Pawnee Bill was another who knew, and there is some evidence to support this contention. In 1938, the newspapers picked up a story from the Associated Press that Pawnee Bill and a group of friends were laying plans to visit the Southwest in search of Billy the Kid, whom they believed to be still alive.
Tom Waggoner, who backed Brushy Bill as a bronc rider at Cheyenne in 1889, knew whom he was backing, according
to Brushy Bill.
Judge Parker, of Fort Smith, Arkansas, told Bill he knew who he was when he came up for appointment as Deputy United States Marshal, and at first said he would have no goddam outlaws working for him. However, he changed his mind.
Bill went on to tell about a good many more:
"A lot of dead men in those days showed up in Old Mexico later on. They would leave Texas for New Mexico. Then from here they would go to Old Mexico or California. A lot of them never left New Mexico because they never got caught. Longwell went to El Paso and opened up a stable. I saw lots of him after I went into Old Mexico. He knew Garrett did not kill me. He knew George Cole, who I stayed with sometimes in El Paso after that killing in Fort Sumner. They knew Tex Moore, too. Tex worked for Chisum but he was not in that war. Tex knows who I am too, he does. John Selman knew Garrett didn't kill me.. saw Selman at Cole's saloon in El Paso in the 90's. He was afraid to say anything, though. He followed me outside and we talked. He had no use for Garrett. Almost killed Garrett in the Panhandle before the Lincoln County War. He said Garrett killed a man that did not need killing. I had helped Selman when he needed help and he was ready to help me now. But I wasn't ready to come out yet.”
"I started to come clean when that revolution broke out there in Old Mexico. I talked to a lawyer in El Paso about it, but I lost everything in that Mexican war. Come out with one horse and riding rig. Didn't intend to make myself known after that. They would not have let me alone if I'd come out that time. I didn't want no more trouble, so I just lived Brushy Bill, that's all.”
Billy the Kid: An Autobiography Page 11
