Billy the Kid Page 18
As Garrett doubtless foresaw, word of his presence in Fort Sumner swiftly reached the Kid and his friends. On the road south of Sumner, two of Billy’s occasional accomplices, Bob Campbell and José Valdez, met Yginio García. He told them that he had just seen Pat Garrett in Fort Sumner. While Valdez hurried to Sumner to learn more, Campbell scrawled a message to Billy and sought out a boy to speed it to the Wilcox-Brazil ranch. Alarmed by Campbell’s note, Billy called off his trip into town; the snowstorm made travel difficult anyway. The next morning, however, he instructed Juan (or Johnny) Gallegos, Wilcox’s young stepson, to ride into Sumner and scout the situation.
In Fort Sumner, meanwhile, Garrett had talked with José Valdez and suspected his purpose. On the morning of the nineteenth he spotted Juan Gallegos and guessed his assignment also. Both Wilcox and Brazil hosted the Kid and his friends through fear rather than friendship, Garrett knew, and he hoped that they might be enlisted in his mission. Approaching Juan, Garrett persuaded him to aid in tricking Billy. Next the lawman hunted up José Valdez and forced him to write a note to Billy stating that Garrett and a posse had been in Fort Sumner but had pulled out and were headed for Roswell. Finally, Garrett himself penned a message to Tom Wilcox divulging his plans and asking his aid in trapping Billy. Bearing both notes, with a warning not to get them mixed up, Juan returned to the ranch.
The note delivered to Billy by Juan Gallegos produced the intended effect. Shouting scorn for the timid lawmen, the Kid and his companions at once readied their horses for the ride into Sumner. The storm had abated, snow lay deep on the plains, and banks of fog reflected a bright moon.
In the old hospital building, that night of December 19, the posse settled in to wait. Garrett felt certain the fugitives would come and would stop at Manuela Bowdre’s rooms before going elsewhere. He posted Lon Chambers outside to keep watch while he, Barney Mason, Tom Emory, and Bob Williams spread a blanket on the floor next to the blazing fireplace and launched into a game of poker. Jim East wrapped himself in a blanket and curled up in a corner to get some sleep. About 8:00 P.M. Chambers opened the door and announced horsemen approaching on the road from the east.
“Get your guns, boys,” said Garrett. “None but the men we want are riding this time of night.”
The lawmen slipped out the door. With Chambers and one of the Roybal brothers, Garrett took a station in the shadows at the east end of the porch, where harness hung on the wall to provide added concealment. Mason and the others went around the building in the opposite direction to intercept the outlaws if they continued toward the town’s plaza (the old parade ground).
O’Folliard and Pickett rode in the front, the others lagging behind. The two spurred their horses up to the building, and O’Folliard’s horse nuzzled his head under the portal roof.
“Halt,” shouted Garrett.
Startled, Tom went for his pistol, and both Garrett and Chambers fired their Winchesters at the same time. The horse reared and dashed off, Tom crying in pain. The two then fired at Pickett, who also yelled as if hit and galloped away.
The rest of Garrett’s men appeared at the other end of the building and opened a random fire, ineffective in the thickening fog. The Kid and his remaining companions swiftly reined about and, with their horses kicking up clods of snow, galloped off on the road to the east.
Tom O’Folliard’s horse trotted away for about 150 yards, then wheeled and drifted slowly back to the building, Tom slumping in the saddle.
“Don’t shoot, Garrett,” he stammered. “I’m killed.” Garrett’s bullet had caught Tom in the left chest, just below the heart.12
The possemen helped Tom off his horse, carried him inside, and laid him on Jim East’s blanket near the fire. The poker group resumed their game, and East sat down by the fire.
“God damn you Garrett,” exclaimed Tom. “I hope to meet you in hell.”
“I would not talk that way, Tom,” replied Garrett. “You are going to die in a few minutes.”
“Aw, go to hell, you long-legged son-of-a-bitch,” said Tom.
“The game went on,” East related, “and the blood began running inside Tom. He began groaning and asked me to get him a drink of water. I did. He drank a little, lay back, shuddered, and was dead.”13
The other outlaws fled back to the Wilcox-Brazil ranch. Rudabaugh’s horse had been hit and died along the way. Dave climbed up behind Billy Wilson for the rest of the ride. According to Garrett, Tom Pickett bolted off to the north. Although unhit, he was “nearly scared to death. He went howling over the prairie, yelling bloody murder.” After a run of twenty-five miles, the horse collapsed, and he had to make his way on foot to the Wilcox-Brazil ranch.14
“Depressed and disheartened,” in Garrett’s words, Billy and his partners paused only briefly at the ranch. Fearful of a swift pursuit by the posse, they pulled off into the hills. Throughout the next day, December 20, as another snowstorm swept the plains, they remained in hiding, keeping their field glasses trained on the ranch to see whether Garrett and his men appeared. After dark, the four crept back to the sheltering buildings, reunited with Tom Pickett, took supper, and plotted the next move. Although suspicious that Wilcox and Brazil had somehow contributed to their surprise in Fort Sumner, they decided nonetheless to send Brazil into town on a scouting mission.
Garrett and his men stuck close to their fireplace on December 20, either likewise plotting strategy or simply uncertain of the next move. Several of the Texans went up the road to the east and found Rudabaugh’s dead horse, but the new snow had erased the outlaw trail. Garrett had a coffin made. “We buried Tom Folliard rather unceremoniously,” said Charles Rudulph, “with all his pursuers and a few villagers in attendance.”15
On the morning of December 21, Manuel Brazil came into Fort Sumner on his scouting assignment for Billy and went directly to Garrett. The two arranged for Brazil to return to the ranch and tell the outlaws that Garrett was in Sumner “with only Mason and three Mexicans” and that he “was considerably scared up and wanted to go back to Roswell, but feared to leave the plaza.”16
Brazil did not go back to the ranch until the next day, the twenty-second. There he relayed the tale that Garrett had concocted and played his dangerous double game skillfully enough to dupe Billy. The Kid wanted to ride into Sumner and fall on Garrett and his single deputy, but Charley Bowdre, probably still hoping that Lea would help him get free of the law, objected.17 Instead, that night the five fugitives ate heartily, then set forth in the snow on the road to the east. Brazil promptly saddled up and headed toward Sumner, reaching there at midnight stiff with cold and his beard full of ice.
At once Garrett mounted his dozen men and pounded out of Fort Sumner in the frozen night. Brazil went ahead to check the ranch, then came back and met the posse with word that the outlaws had not returned but that their trail in the snow could be plainly followed by the light of a bright moon. Garrett suspected that the trail would lead to an abandoned rock house, once the shelter of a sheepman, that stood near Stinking Springs about three miles east of the Wilcox-Brazil ranch. About 3:00 A.M. on December 23, the pursuers drew close to their objective.
All five outlaws—Bonney, Rudabaugh, Bowdre, Wilson, and Pickett—lay wrapped in their blankets on the floor of the rock house, their snores plainly audible to the lawmen creeping into positions outside. Pressed by Garrett, discomfited by the loss of O’Folliard, they meant to leave the Fort Sumner country altogether. Regarding the Wilcox-Brazil ranch as unsafe, they had ridden over to the rock house to spend the night before pulling out. It was a one-room structure, with openings that had once been a door and a window. The men had led two of their horses inside and had tied the other three outside to projections of the vigas that supported the flat roof.
Leaving Juan Roybal to tend the horses, Garrett divided his force and worked into positions on two sides of the house. He himself led one party up an arroyo that provided cover within easy firing distance of the door and window while Stewart circled with the r
emaining men to the rear of the house. Garrett wanted to rush into the house at once, but Stewart demurred. The lawmen therefore picked firing positions and settled into the snow to await daybreak.18
As the frigid white landscape brightened with first light, Garrett’s men saw a single figure, carrying a nose bag full of grain for the horses, emerge from the house. Convinced that the Kid would not allow himself to be taken without a fight, Garrett had resolved not to try but to shoot at once when he had the fugitive in his sights. The others, he felt sure, would then surrender. A “Mexican” hat with a wide brim, together with other distinctive clothing, satisfied Garrett that here was his man. At Garrett’s signal, his companions took careful aim with their Winchesters and fired as one. Reeling from the impact of the bullets, the man fell back into the doorway and vanished inside.19
The fusillade had not struck the Kid but his friend and comrade of the Lincoln County War, Charley Bowdre. Billy Wilson shouted to Garrett that he had hit Bowdre, who wanted to surrender. Garrett assented, if Bowdre would come out with his hands up.
“They have murdered you, Charley,” Garrett heard the Kid say, “but you can get revenge. Kill some of the sons-of-bitches before you die.” Pulling Charley’s belt around so that the holstered pistol hung in front of his body, the Kid shoved his friend out the door.
His hands in the air, Bowdre staggered slowly to where Garrett waited, whispered “I wish, I wish, I wish—I’m dying,” and collapsed.
“I took hold of him,” said Garrett, “laid him gently on my blankets and he died almost immediately.”20
Shortly afterward, Garrett noted movement in the rope that bound one of the outlaw horses. Obviously, the fugitives were pulling their mounts inside prior to making a break. Just as they were about to get one through the door, Garrett fired, dropping the horse in the doorway. To put a stop to this tactic, Garrett took careful aim and cut the ropes tying the other two animals, which sprang away from the house and trotted off.21
The desperate predicament of the outlaws did not dampen Billy’s good humor. For a time he and Garrett bantered back and forth, the Kid inviting Garrett in for coffee, Garrett inviting the Kid out to surrender. “The Kid told him to go to hell,” recalled East.
“We heard them picking on the other side of the house,” according to East, evidently in an attempt to break through or at least fashion firing ports. “Garrett sent Tom Emory and me around to stop that,” East continued. “We fired a shot or two at the place and they stopped.”
Billy was trapped and he knew it. Garrett’s quick thinking and accurate aim had thwarted the escape plot, as Billy later admitted. “If it hadn’t been for the dead horse in the doorway I wouldn’t be here,” he told a Las Vegas reporter several days later. “I would have ridden out on my bay mare and taken my chances of escaping. But I couldn’t ride out over that, for she would have jumped back, and I would have got it in the head. We could have stayed in the house but there wouldn’t have been anything gained by that for they would have starved us out. I thought it was better to come out and get a good square meal.”22
Garrett, meantime, had the needs of his own men in mind. He took half of them to the Wilcox-Brazil ranch and fed them breakfast, then sent the other half. Late in the afternoon, in preparation for a long siege, Brazil drove up in a wagon loaded with firewood, horse feed, bacon, and other “grub.” The aroma of roasting meat wafted into the rock house and evoked Billy’s vision of “a good square meal.” Almost at once, at about 4:00 P.M., a dirty white rag tied to a stick fluttered from the window. Rudabaugh shouted that they wanted to surrender. Garrett replied that they could come out with their hands up.
Rudabaugh emerged alone. He said that all would give up if Garrett could guarantee their protection from violence—a pressing concern to Rudabaugh because of the sentiment against him in Las Vegas. He wanted to make certain they would be taken to Santa Fe and arraigned on federal charges rather than turned over to Las Vegas authorities. Garrett acceded. Rudabaugh went back into the house. Shortly, all four came out with their hands up.
As they approached, Barney Mason leveled his rifle at the Kid and exclaimed, “Kill the son of a bitch, he is slippery and may get away.”
Mason, as East observed, was “a damned old no-good troublemaker.” East and Lee Hall “threw our guns down on him and said: ‘If you fire a shot we will kill you.’” Barney backed off.23
From the Wilcox-Brazil ranch Garrett sent three men with a wagon back to the rock house for the body of Bowdre. Mrs. Wilcox fed the entire bunch, and they spent the night at the ranch, the prisoners closely watched and their guards instructed to shoot them on the slightest provocation. Of the captives, Rudulph recalled: “There was Billy, cheerful and chattering, excitement lighting up his face; Rudabaugh, also joyful and talkative; Tom Pickett, scared half to death, pondering his fate; and Billy Wilson, probably the least to blame, ashamed and uncommunicative.”24
Shortly before noon on December 24, the lawmen and their catch reached Fort Sumner, where they paused long enough to iron the prisoners and eat a hearty meal. While there, Billy presented Jim East with his Winchester rifle. But, as East remembered, “old Beaver Smith made such a roar about an account he said Billy owed him, that at the request of Billy, I gave old Beaver the gun.”25
After the men had eaten, a Navajo woman appeared. She was Deluvina Maxwell, a captive of the Ute Indians liberated by Lucien Maxwell in her youth and now, at twenty-two, a voluntary “slave” of the Maxwells. She said that Mrs. Maxwell, the widow of Lucien, asked if Garrett would let Billy come for a last farewell with her daughter Paulita. Consenting, Garrett assigned Jim East and Lee Hall to serve as guards. Dave Rudabaugh had to go too, since he and Billy were shackled together.
At the Maxwell house, the men found “Mother” Maxwell, Deluvina, and Paulita. Mrs. Maxwell asked if Billy could be freed long enough to go into the next room with Paulita and “talk awhile.” Although the two probably had things other than escape in mind, East and Hall believed “it was only a stall of Billy’s: to make a run for liberty.” They refused, and as East told it, “The lovers embraced, and she gave Billy one of those soul kisses the novelists tell us about, till it being time to hit the trail for Vegas, we had to pull them apart, much against our wishes, for you know all the world loves a lover.”26
Another, less romantic scene also unfolded at Fort Sumner. As the procession drew up at the old hospital, recalled Charles Rudulph, “we were met by a deranged, lamenting Manuela Bowdre. She kicked and pummelled Pat Garrett until she had to be pulled away.” Garrett asked Jim East and Lou Bousman to carry the corpse into Manuela’s rooms. “As we started in with him,” said East, “she struck me over the head with a branding iron, and I had to drop Charlie at her feet. The poor woman was crazy with grief.” Garrett told Manuela to buy Charley a new suit for his burial and have it charged to him. He also paid someone to dig a grave.27
In the early afternoon, Pat Garrett led his horsemen out of Fort Sumner on the road up the Pecos.
On this same day, Joseph C. Lea sat at his desk in Roswell and wrote a letter to Governor Lew Wallace. In it he told of Charley Bowdre’s dilemma and his desire to free himself from his fellow outlaws and lead an honest life. Bowdre, wrote Lea, was “a man far above ordinary in point of intelligence.” All who knew him “say you can depend on his word & I have no doubt of it.” At present he was “a man between two fires.” But if the governor would talk with the district attorney and get the charges against Bowdre dropped, Lea and his friends thought it “decidedly best for the country and all concerned.” “We had better try to make a good man of him,” he concluded, “& we have many reasons for believing that we can.”28
It was Christmas Eve of 1880. Lea folded his own letter with Charley Bowdre’s letter to him of December 15 and sealed them in an envelope addressed to Governor Wallace in Santa Fe. To the north, Pat Garrett stowed his prisoners in Brazil’s wagon and set out from Fort Sumner for the long cold ride to Las Vegas. And in the aba
ndoned hospital building at Fort Sumner, the grieving Manuela Bowdre dressed her dead husband in a new suit paid for by Pat Garrett, laid out his body, and encircled it with glowing candles.29
15
The Sentence
Late in the afternoon the day after Christmas 1880, Sunday, a rider galloped into the Las Vegas plaza with word that Pat Garrett and Frank Stewart were approaching town with Billy the Kid and three of his gang. “People stood on the muddy street corners and in hotel offices and saloons talking of the great event,” reported the Gazette. As the procession rolled into the plaza, thronged with excited citizens, “astonishment gave way to joy.” Manuel Brazil drove the wagon containing the four outlaws while Garrett, Stewart, Barney Mason, Jim East, and Tom Emory rode guard on all sides.1
From the veranda of the Grand View Hotel, one of the spectators noted that Billy the Kid was chained to Dave Rudabaugh, “a fierce looking, dark-bearded man, who kept his slouch hat pulled well down over his eyes, and who looked neither to the right nor to the left.” Billy, in contrast, “was in a joyous mood. . . . He wore a hat pushed far back, and jocularly greeted the crowd. Recognizing Dr. Sutfin [the hotel proprietor], he called, ‘Hello, doc! Thought I jes drop in and see how you fellers in Vegas air behavin’ yerselves.’”2
The grand entry into Las Vegas highlighted a trait that had been gaining strength in Billy Bonney for nearly a year, as his name took on increasing prominence. At Fort Sumner and White Oaks, at the Greathouse ranch, during the siege and surrender at Stinking Springs, and now in daunting circumstances at Las Vegas, his behavior stamped him as irrepressibly cocky. He reveled in his new notoriety, and he poured out his conceit in bursts of lighthearted banter that harmonized well with his extroverted personality. The Las Vegas crowds greeted Rudabaugh with loathing, but they looked on the Kid with the curiosity and wonder due a celebrity.