Billy the Kid Read online

  Billy the Kid

  A Short and Violent Life

  Robert M. Utley

  University of Nebraska Press:

  Lincoln & London

  Copyright © 1989 by Robert M. Utley

  All rights reserved

  Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

  Utley, Robert Marshall, 1929–

  Billy the Kid: a short and violent life / Robert M. Utley.

  p. cm.

  Bibliography: p.

  Summary: Examines the career of the young outlaw whose life and death were an expression of the violence prevalent on the American frontier.

  ISBN 0-8032-4553-X

  ISBN 0-8032-9558-8 (pbk.)

  ISBN-13: 978-0-8032-9558-2 (pbk.: alk. paper)

  ISBN-13: 978-0-8032-9566-7 (electronic: e-pub)

  ISBN-13: 978-0-8032-9567-4 (electronic: mobi)

  1. Billy, the Kid. 2. Outlaws—Southwest, New—Biography. 3. Southwest, New—History—1848— 4. Frontier and pioneer life—Southwest, New. [1. Billy, the Kid. 2. Robbers and outlaws. 3. Frontier and pioneer life—West (U.S.)] 1. Title

  F786.B54U87 1989

  364.1'552'0924-dc19 [B]

  [92] 89-30022 CIP AC

  For Paul Andrew Hutton

  Friend,

  Neighbor, Valued Critic

  Contents

  List of Illustrations

  Preface

  Acknowledgments

  1. The Kid

  2. The Adolescent

  3. The Outlaw

  4. The Ranch Hand

  5. The Avenger

  6. The Assassin

  7. The Shootout

  8. The Warrior

  9. The Fire

  10. The Drifter

  11. The Bargain

  12. The Rustler

  13. The Celebrity

  14. The Capture

  15. The Sentence

  16. The Escape

  17. The Execution

  18. The Legend

  Notes

  Sources

  Illustrations

  Following page 110:

  Billy the Kid

  Main Street in Silver City, New Mexico

  Lincoln, New Mexico

  Fort Stanton

  Frederick T. Waite

  Charles and Manuela Bowdre

  Thomas O’Folliard

  John H. Tunstall

  Alexander A. McSween

  Jimmy Dolan and his mentor, Murphy

  Johnny Riley

  Jacob B. Mathews

  Sheriff William Brady

  Blazer’s Mills

  Richard Brewer

  Joseph H. Blazer

  Lieutenant Colonel Nathan A. M. Dudley

  Robert Beckwith

  Governor Lew Wallace

  Judge Warren Bristol

  John Simpson Chisum

  A bill of sale in the Kid’s handwriting

  Dave Rudabaugh

  Bob Olinger

  Godfrey Gauss

  The Lincoln County Courthouse

  Pat Garrett, John William Poe, and Deputy

  The Maxwell house at old Fort Sumner

  Marshall Ashmun Upson

  Following page 196:

  1861 Colt’s Navy, converted

  Winchester ’73 rifle

  Winchester carbine

  1873 single-action Colt’s Army handgun

  Colt’s double-action .38 “Lightning”

  Greener shotgun

  Sharps Model 1874 sporting rifle

  Sharps carbine

  U.S. Model 1873 Springfield rifle

  Springfield carbine

  Maps

  The West of Billy the Kid, 1873–81

  Lincoln and Vicinity, 1878–81

  Lincoln, New Mexico, in 1878

  Fort Sumner and Vicinity, 1880–81

  Fort Sumner, New Mexico, 1880–81

  PREFACE

  “Quien es? Quien es?”

  With those words—“Who is it? Who is it?”—the youth threw away a critical moment of time. In the darkened bedroom, he could not make out the figure crouched at the head of Pete Maxwell’s bed. He thought he was among friends, and his hesitation cost him his life.

  The crouching form belonged to Pat Garrett, sheriff of Lincoln County, and those fateful words told Garrett exactly who faced him. He did not hesitate, but grabbed his six-shooter from its holster and fired two shots point-blank. One slammed into the boy’s chest, the other rebounded from the adobe wall and splintered the headboard of Maxwell’s bed. Billy the Kid crumpled to the floor, dead. He was but twenty-one years old.

  All that was mortal died on the floor of Pete Maxwell’s bedroom at old Fort Sumner, New Mexico, on that night of July 14, 1881; but almost at once an immortal Billy the Kid rose from the dead, ultimately to expand into a mighty legend of global impact. Few figures from the past have so profoundly stirred the human imagination. Among peoples everywhere, the name prompts instant recognition and evokes vivid images.

  Stripping off the veneers of legendary accumulated over a century exposes neither hero nor villain, but a complex personality. Of the Kid as person and the Kid as outlaw, the reality both sustains and contradicts the legend.

  By the time of his death, the public had already come to look on Billy the Kid as larger than life, a peerless outlaw in a land full of outlaws. Until near the end of his life, he could thank the newspapers for this standing. His actual exploits did not support the reputation. Then a sensational capture, trial, and escape gave validity to the newspaper portrait, and a violent death, publicized to the entire nation, fixed it indelibly in the public memory for all time.

  Common outlaw, uncommon personality, inspiration for a giant in the pantheon of American heroes—such was Billy the Kid. So all-encompassing is the giant of legend that he has buried the man of reality.

  Yet the reality is worth seeking. A legend cherished by all the world lends significance to a life that is otherwise of concern mainly to a handful of antiquarians. Because of the legend, the life invites scrutiny, to see if it can be compressed into its true human dimensions, and to discover what it tells about violence on the American frontier and, indeed, violence in American society.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Either directly in the preparation of this book, or indirectly through my work on High Noon in Lincoln: Violence on the Western Frontier (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1987), I have profited from the generous aid of many people, whose contributions I acknowledge with gratitude.

  In Midland, Texas: J. Evetts Haley and his efficient and friendly staff of the Haley History Center—Beth Schneider, Robin McWilliams, and Cindy Burleson.

  In Santa Fe, New Mexico: State Archivist Michael Miller and his able, always helpful associates at the New Mexico State Records Center and Archives; Orlando Romero, Arthur Olivas, and Richard Rudisill of the Museum of New Mexico History Library; Thomas Caperton, director of New Mexico State Monuments; Michael E. Pitel of the New Mexico Economic Development and Tourism Department; and Donald R. Lavash, formerly historian at the State Records Center and biographer of Sheriff William Brady.

  In Lincoln, New Mexico: R. G. Miller, Robert L. Hart, and John Meigs of the Lincoln County Heritage Trust; Jack Rigney and his staff of the Lincoln State Monument; and Nora Henn of the Lincoln County Historical Society.

  In Tucson, Arizona: Professor Harwood P. Hinton of the University of Arizona, whose wise counsel has been unfailingly helpful; Jerry Weddle, who generously shared his own new and important research findings; Bruce Dinges of the Arizona Historical Society; and David Laird, university librarian, and Louis Hieb, head of Special Collections, University of Arizona Library.

  Also John P. Wilson of Las Cruces, New Mexico, outstanding authority on Linc
oln County; Doyce P. Nunis, Jr., of the University of Southern California; Allen Barker of Pine Grove, California; Jack DeMattos of North Attleboro, Massachusetts; Frederick W. Nolan and Joseph G. Rosa of London, England; Rose Diaz of the University of New Mexico Library in Albuquerque; Philip J. Rasch of Ojai, California; Don McAlavy of Clovis, New Mexico; Byron Price of the National Cowboy Hall of Fame in Oklahoma City; Claire Kuehn of the Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum in Canyon, Texas; Thomas A. Mason and Connie McBirney of the Indiana Historical Society in Indianapolis; Eileen Bolger of the Denver Federal Records Center; Professor Richard Maxwell Brown of the University of Oregon; and Kenneth Pate of Azle, Texas, who assembled the photographs of firearms and furnished the technical data.

  Finally, my heartiest thanks are reserved for two people who commented constructively and often decisively on the entire manuscript: Professor Paul Andrew Hutton of the University of New Mexico, to whom this book is dedicated; and Melody Webb of the National Park Service, who also happens to be my wife.

  1

  The Kid

  Until the final few months of his life, the youth destined for immortality as the West’s most famous outlaw was known not as Billy the Kid but simply as “the Kid.” He acquired the label as a teenager, when he first began to associate with men. To the day of his death, his boyish face and slim figure stamped him as a kid. So did his behavior, uniformly characteristic of youth, untouched by adult maturity. A kid he remained throughout his short and violent life, ended by a bullet at twenty-one. More than any other trait, youth shaped the personality and directed the life of Billy the Kid.

  The Kid’s origins are shrouded in mystery and buffeted by controversy. A corps of diligent researchers has tracked him in census records, city directories, baptismal and marriage registers, newspapers, and other sources. Discoveries have been tantalizingly suggestive but rarely conclusive.

  That he was in Santa Fe, New Mexico, on March 1, 1873, is indisputable. On that day, as a lad of thirteen, Henry McCarty stood with his brother Joe as witness to his mother’s marriage. The ceremony took place in the First Presbyterian Church, with the Reverend D. F. McFarland administering the vows as William Henry Harrison Antrim, age thirty, took in marriage the widow Catherine McCarty, age forty-three.1

  The ceremony probably formalized a relationship of some years’ duration. Bill Antrim and Catherine McCarty had known each other since 1865, when they met in Indianapolis, Indiana. A Civil War veteran, Bill drove a hack for an express company. How, when, where, and by whom Catherine had been widowed are disputed questions. Almost certainly she had moved with her two young sons from New York City, but why to Indianapolis is not known. She told the compilers of the Indianapolis city directory for 1868 that she was the widow of Michael McCarty.2

  The West of Billy the Kid, 1873–81

  Without much doubt, Catherine and her husband (if she had one) were Irish immigrants, tiny specks in the multitude that rushed American shores as a result of Ireland’s potato famine. Henry and Joe, therefore, probably lived their first years in the impoverished Irish ghettos of Manhattan (or maybe Brooklyn). If Catherine and a husband named Patrick resided at 210 Greene Street, then Henry was born on September 17, 1859, and Joe later. If Catherine lived at 70 Allen Street with an unnamed husband (or no husband), then Henry was born on November 20, 1859, and Joe five years earlier. Except as an irritatingly elusive question, it makes little difference which. Henry came out of New York’s Irish slums, but he made his name and fame in New Mexico.3

  In 1870 both Antrim and the McCartys turned up in Wichita, Kansas. With Bill’s help, Catherine had lifted her family from ghetto origins. Both grew sufficiently prosperous to acquire real estate in the infant frontier community, and Catherine ran a successful business in the heart of town. “The City Laundry is kept by Mrs. McCarty,” heralded the local newspaper in the spring of 1871, “to whom we recommend those who wish to have their linen made clean.” A decade later, after Henry had achieved renown as Billy the Kid, the Wichita editor observed that “many of the early settlers remember him as a street gamin in the days of longhorns.”

  Soon the “street gamin” became a suburbanite, for Catherine acquired a quarter-section homestead on the outskirts of Wichita. Antrim, surely with the aid of Henry and Joe, built a cabin, dug a well and storm cellar, and planted hedges and fruit trees. The McCartys and “Uncle Bill” Antrim gave every sign of putting down roots in their new Kansas home.4

  Abruptly, however, in June 1871 the widow McCarty sold her property and two months later vanished from Wichita forever. Antrim left too, although his purchase of additional land that summer may have signified an intent to return some day. Almost certainly, a diagnosis of tuberculosis prompted Catherine to search for higher, drier, more healthful climes. The little group made its way to Denver, Colorado, and from there soon turned south to New Mexico.5

  The Territory of New Mexico was a land of vast distances; of rugged mountains, parched deserts, and grassy plains; and of a cultural medley of Hispanic, Anglo, and Indian that did not always mix well. In the middle 1870s, before the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railroad crept over Raton Pass bringing revolutionary change, New Mexico was also a land of rudimentary transportation, of isolation and parochialism, of poverty and privation relieved by only nominal prosperity, of centuries-old cultural institutions and infant political and economic institutions, of ineffective government, and of endemic violence.

  Like all other western territories not yet pacified by the railroad, New Mexico knew violence as a condition of life. The raw frontier lured adventurers from all over the nation. They formed a population characterized by youth, daring, ambition, energy, recklessness, greed, contempt for restraints, and a casual view of suffering and death. They rocked New Mexico with violence and lawlessness.

  In New Mexico as in other territories, four influences incited this class of men to violence. First was ambition—the scramble for quick money and the power that went with it. Second and third were liquor and guns. Nearly everyone went armed, and nearly everyone drank constantly and often heavily. The combination proved deadly.

  Fourth, and possibly most compelling, was the “code of the West.” Among the young bravos who flocked to the frontier, the code governed male relationships. “I’ll die before I’ll run,” enjoined the tradition of violent self-defense and self-redress. The code had originated in Texas, flowing northward on the great cattle trails of the post—Civil War decades. Demanding personal courage and pride and reckless disregard of life, it commanded practitioners to avenge all insult and wrong, real or imagined; never to retreat before an aggressor; and to respond with any degree of violence, even death.6

  Uncle Bill with Catherine and the two boys settled first in New Mexico’s capital city. Santa Fe lay in a spacious and scenic valley rimmed by mountain ranges, with the peaks of the Sangre de Cristos looming in its rear. Setting the model for other Hispanic communities, it consisted of prosaic adobes rising fortresslike along narrow streets radiating from a central plaza. In this square the historic Santa Fe Trail, commercial link with “the states” since 1821 and now shrinking with the approach of the railroad, reached its destination. Travelers lodged at the Exchange Hotel, the fonda on the southeast corner of the plaza. The venerable “Palace of the Governors,” moldering with almost three centuries of governmental use, fronted the plaza on the north.

  Although predominantly a Hispanic community, Santa Fe gave business and political fealty to a small Anglo elite. The governor and other federal officials were party faithfuls with claims on the president’s patronage—not large claims, however, for remote New Mexico was not looked on as a choice political reward, and appointees rarely transcended mediocrity. Together with a band of shrewd lawyers and businessmen, certain territorial officials made up a loose cabal of opportunists that political enemies labeled the “Santa Fe Ring.” Members denied that it even existed, and except as an unorganized fraternity of common interest it may not have. But insiders enjoyed modest
bonanzas by trafficking in old Spanish land grants, the public domain, and contracts for supporting the territory’s huge federal establishment, especially Indian agencies and army forts.

  From Santa Fe, shortly after the marriage of Bill and Catherine on March 1, 1873, the Antrims turned south. Slicing the territory down the center, the Rio Grande connected northern to southern New Mexico. Tracing the river, the Camino Real, New Mexico’s colonial lifeline, still served as the thoroughfare south to Albuquerque and across the dreaded Jornada del Muerto to the lush Mesilla Valley.

  A rich bottomland watered by the Rio Grande, the Mesilla Valley lay at the western foot of the jagged Organ Mountains. With a population of about three thousand, the valley was the agricultural, commercial, and social heartland of southern New Mexico. Mesilla, a Hispanic village on the banks of the Rio Grande, served as seat of Doña Ana County. Two miles distant, Las Cruces grew rapidly as Anglo businessmen competed for dominance over the economy. More than four hundred farms testified to the fertile soils of the valley.

  Typical New Mexican towns of squat adobe structures and narrow streets, Mesilla and Las Cruces invited the scorn of eastern travelers. “They are the dirtiest and filthiest places I have yet visited,” declared one; “the people seem to lack life and energy.” Putting up at the Mesilla Hotel, this “tired and dusty stranger” discovered a drove of hogs rooting combatively beneath his window. “The noise day and night was intolerable, and the stench arising from them was excessively offensive.”7

  The Antrims veered west from the river to make their new home in Silver City, ninety miles northwest of the Mesilla Valley. Silver City nestled in the southern foothills of a tangled mass of mountains. For decades, Spaniard and American alike had mined the gulches of the area, but the strike that produced Silver City did not occur until 1870. By the middle 1870s, the settlement had evolved into a community that prided itself on “eastern” dwellings and a predominantly Anglo population. “Strangers who recently made their first visit to Silver City,” noted a Las Cruces newspaper, “tell us they are astonished to find a real American town with fine two story brick buildings and a live energetic people so far on the southwestern frontier.”8