Billy the Kid
1859 - 1881
Billy the
Kid's career began in Silver City, New Mexico Territory, where he killed a
hulking blacksmith who had insulted his mother. The boy was 12 years of age when
he left home. He never returned again. He lived in hellhole towns and
sagebrush beds from the border up to the Panhandle.
John Chisum's
daughter tells us that Billy was really a very nice boy with a winsome smile and
carefree ways. He was a talented musician, and could do a fine fandango. He was
very polite, almost like a Mexican, even gracious. But he had a temper which
could flare up suddenly in a roar of gunfire out of an old sloppy boot holster,
with no remorse, no regrets.
He polished off three Apaches from
Chiracahau in Arizonaland, and then in Camp Bowie he closed the rubbery lips of
a Negro blacksmith who called him a pleasant "mistah Billy Goat." He teamed up
with another youth, and the two of them cut down several men in bars and
gambling halls and cut a swath of hell along the border.
John Chisum was
the cattle king of the Pecos, and his stock were easy pickings for the
Murphy-Dolan outfit who owned a small spread and a merchandising company in the
little town of Lincoln. This outfit loaned money to certain army officers who
were very grateful, and in return gave them beef contracts to fill on the Indian
Reservations. To do this was simple, although Murphy-Dolan's own ranch only ran
3000 head. They hired gunhand Billy the Kid and others to ride out with a
running iron and rustle up 3000 head each year from Old John Chisum, who knew it
but could not prove it out of his vast cattle empire.
An upstanding
gentleman by name of McSween became old John's lawyer, and another Englishman by
the name of Tunstall bought a store to compete with the Murphy-Dolan outfit up
the road a bit. Billy the Kid quit the rustlin' outfit to go to work for Mr.
Tunstall out on his small Rio Feliz Ranch.
Colonel Murphy (he'd put in a
hitch) had a temper and he didn't like the way things were stacking up. That
damned Tunstall had a nerve of opening a store and taking billy! So he called in
Sherrif William Brady and told him to form a posse and ride over to the Rio
Feliz, to look for some of his stolen horses, and if Tunstall became unwieldy to
shoot him down. Among those deputized into the posse were a few gun-happy lads
who had worked with Billy.
They found Tunstall on horseback on his way
into Lincoln. Jesse Evans pulled out a pistol and shot him on sight, and Morton
blasted him in the head as he slid to the ground from his horse.
When
the Kid heard of this outrage, he sore he would kill every man who had a hand in
it. This was carried out when he rode down Morton and Baker, shooting them out
of their saddles. Then Frank McNab was next. He was cut down before he could
flex a muscle. The famed Lincoln County War was on.
Old John Chisum had
to go east; he wanted no part of it now since the eyes of the nation were on it
and the newspapers had picked it up. In the meantime, Billy barricaded himself
with several others in the McSween home. The kid's killing of Sheriff Brady
brought an indictment of murder against him.
For Stanton troops arrived
in July, 1878, and Colonel Dudley ordered a cannon placed in the road and a
cease fire. While negotiations were in progress, some of the Murphy-Dolan outfit
stole around back and set the house ablaze. Several were killed, among them
McSween, and Billy was turned out to run for his life.
All this news
finally reached Washington. President Rutherford Hayes named Lew Wallace the new
governor of New Mexico. He was told to go down into the country and tame it. He
met Billy the Kid, and told him if he would stand trial and testify in the
Chapman slaying - Mrs. McSween's one-armed lawyer had been tormented and killed
and Billy had witnessed it all - he could go scot-free. So Billy gave himself
up, and as nothing came from the case, he skipped his flimsy jail and headed for
Fort Sumner.
An old friend of the Kid's, a tall rangy individual by the
name of Pat Garret, was elected the new sheriff, and finally ordered by Governor
Wallace to bring the Kid in. This was done, and again the Kid was jailed. In
reality, the governor did nothing for him, ignored him completely and worked on
his famous novel, "Ben Hur," at night and shades drawn tight.
The Kid
was taken to Lincoln and jailed there, awaiting his hanging, and made his famous
escape by killing deputies Bell and Ollinger. He made off to Fort Sumner where
Pat Garrett found him in a the dark bedroom and blasted him in the dark. Billy
the Kid died at 21, having killed 21 men during his gunslinging career, a victim
of circumstances, and many claim the duke of the Lincoln County War.
Calamity Jane | Clay Allison | Curly Bill | Dave Mather
Doc Holliday | Jesse James | Jim Courtright | Joaquin Murrietta
John Ringo | John Wesley Hardin | King Fisher | Luke Short
Old Man Clanton | Pat Garrett | Wild Bill Hickok | Wyatt Earp
OK Corral | Artist - Lea Franklin McCarty