Billy the Kid Read online

  Billy had seen Roberts’s cartridge belt and pistol on his saddle and knew how many rounds the magazine of his carbine held. When Roberts had emptied his weapon, therefore, the Kid dashed to the porch and, thrusting his Winchester at Roberts, pulled the trigger. At the same instant Roberts shoved the muzzle of his empty carbine into the Kid’s midriff, knocking him breathless and deflecting his aim. The bullet smashed the doorjamb. Quickly, once again, the Kid backed out.8

  Roberts did not remain weaponless for long. Although in searing pain from his stomach wound, he stumbled into the room behind him. On a wall mounting he spotted Dr. Blazer’s single-shot Springfield rifle and found a box of cartridges that fit it. Dragging a mattress from a bed, he barricaded the door, lay down with the rifle, and made ready to continue the fight.

  Brewer was furious over the intransigence of Roberts and the casualties incurred in trying to arrest him. “He ordered me to go into the room to put the man out,” recalled David Easton, “which I refused to do. I begged Brewer to take his men and go off. Brewer replied that he would have that man out if he had to pull the house down.” Brewer next turned on Dr. Blazer and Agent Godfroy, who had come in for dinner, and commanded them to get Roberts out of the house. When they also balked, Brewer threatened to burn it down. Finally, he set off to try to get Roberts himself.9

  Crossing the river on a footbridge, Brewer circled around the corral and made his way down the valley toward the mills. About 125 yards west of the big house, he came across a pile of logs, assembled for Blazer’s sawmill. Crawling in behind the logs, he discovered that his rifle covered the entire west side of the big house, including the open door to Blazer’s office. Taking careful aim on the door, Dick fired.

  Inside Blazer’s office, Brewer’s bullet slammed into the wall behind Roberts, blowing particles of adobe onto the floor. Glancing down the valley, Roberts saw smoke from Brewer’s rifle drifting away from the logs. Propping Blazer’s rifle on the mattress, he sighted on the log where the smoke had been and waited. Soon the top of Brewer’s head appeared. Buckshot squeezed the trigger. The big Springfield blasted. The bullet hit Brewer in the left eye, leaving a tiny blue mark, then blew the back of his skull into fragments.

  “After that no one tried to get Roberts,” observed Frank Coe. They knew he would die, and three of their own were hurting badly. Middleton had taken a severe chest wound that all thought would prove fatal. Dr. Blazer did what he could for the wounded, and Agent Godfroy provided a government wagon to transport them over the mountain.

  En route the Regulators met Dr. Daniel Appel, Fort Stanton’s military surgeon, who had already been summoned by a courier from Blazer’s Mills. He gave some first aid, then hurried on to minister to Roberts.

  The bullet in Middleton’s lung did in fact prove fatal, but not for another seven or eight years. Almost miraculously, he continued to fight with the Regulators. As for George Coe, the Reverend Doctor Ealy recalled that “I took off a thumb and finger for him after that fight.”10

  Back at Blazer’s Mills, no one dared approach Roberts’s little fortress. He would not believe that his assailants had left. Finally Dolan storekeeper John Ryan made his way warily up the slope from the west with a white flag. A little old man and a friend of Roberts’s, he managed to get close enough to be recognized. Dr. Blazer tended Roberts until Dr. Appel arrived that night, but the wound was plainly fatal.

  Buckshot Roberts died the next day. A carpenter nailed together two coffins, covered them with black muslin and lined them with white, and the two dead men were given a Christian burial on the hillside behind Dr. Blazer’s big house.

  On the heels of the Brady murder, Blazer’s Mills cost the McSween faction still more public sympathy. Even the death of the popular Brewer—“one of nature’s noblemen,” McSween called him—did not offset the feeling that Buckshot Roberts had fallen before an overwhelming and somehow unfair onslaught. His courageous defense, moreover, earned the admiration of people who set high store on skilled gunfighting. And the reports, however untrue, that the Regulators had plotted to kill Judge Bristol and his fellow travelers angered people who saw the courts as the only hope of ending the warfare in Lincoln County.

  Once again, Billy Bonney had cemented his bonds to his comrades of the “iron clad” and had demonstrated his dedication to the Regulator mission. By rushing Roberts in the doorway of Blazer’s office, he had also once again shown the brand of reckless bravery that had sent him into the street, under fire, after the killing of Brady. Neither their purpose nor their performance at Blazer’s Mills gave the Regulators much to brag about. But for Billy it was one more exciting experience in the education of a gunfighter.

  8

  The Warrior

  Jimmy Dolan and his friends had good reason to expect the district court to revive their flagging fortunes. Judge Warren Bristol, a timid man easily frightened by guns and gunmen, had for years tended to sustain Murphy and then Dolan in their legal undertakings. The judge usually affected an air of impartiality, but not so the prosecuting attorney for the district, William L. Rynerson. A great hairy giant with a turbulent past in New Mexico politics, he unblushingly sided with Dolan against McSween.

  The partiality of Bristol and Rynerson, however, failed to make the spring 1878 term of district court turn out well for Dolan. The grand jury, although demoralized by conditions in Lincoln County and intimidated by gunmen of both sides, found the courage to back McSween personally. Despite a long lecture from Judge Bristol in which he abandoned judicial detachment altogether and virtually commanded the jurors to indict the lawyer for embezzlement, they steadfastly refused. “We fully exonerate him of the charge,” they insisted, “and, regret that a spirit of persecution has been shown in this matter.”1

  The grand jury dealt less resolutely with the violence that had racked the county since February. The jury heard many witnesses, few of whom could have offered any but hearsay evidence, and ended by returning indictments that fell indiscriminately on guilty and innocent while omitting men everyone knew to be guilty.

  The indictments showered on both factions. In the Tunstall killing, both Billy Morton and Tom Hill had gone to their reward, but murder indictments named Jesse Evans and also three of his gang who were not even at the scene. At the same time, indictments as accessories to the murder accused Dolan himself, together with Billy Mathews.

  For the murder of Sheriff Brady, the Kid was indicted along with John Middleton and Henry Brown, and for Hindman’s death Fred Waite was indicted, but the others in the Tunstall corral that morning drew no mention. Alone among the Regulators at Blazer’s Mills, Charley Bowdre stood charged with murdering Buckshot Roberts. The killing of Morton, Baker, and McCloskey eluded the official notice of the grand jury altogether.

  Other setbacks afflicted Dolan. For one, Jesse Evans was no longer available “to do his part.” On March 9, the very day of the demise of Morton, Baker, and McCloskey, Evans and Tom Hill had tried to rob the camp of a sheep drover near Tularosa, west of the mountains. In an exchange of gunfire with a camp attendant, Hill had been killed and Evans so badly wounded in the wrist that he had gone to Fort Stanton for medical treatment. Here, Rob Widenmann at last succeeded in serving the federal warrant he had carried for months, and Evans once more found himself behind bars, this time those of the more secure lockup at the fort.2

  Far worse for Dolan, he and Riley finally plunged into bankruptcy. Tom Catron foreclosed on the mortgage he had held since January. He sent his young brother-in-law, Edgar Walz, to take charge of the Dolan firm’s assets. The big store in Lincoln closed its doors.3

  If all this were not enough, Dolan hobbled around on crutches with a leg in splints. On March 11, in Lincoln, he had dismounted before his horse came to a halt, and he wound up with a broken leg.4

  Dolan sustained still another reverse of fortune in the appointment of a new sheriff. To replace Brady, the county commissioners named John Copeland, post butcher at Fort Stanton. A hulking man of thirty-seven, he
moved and thought slowly, and he could be influenced by almost anyone of stronger will. One such was McSween, and Sheriff Copeland quickly fell under his domination. Particularly galling to the Dolanites, Copeland carried arrest warrants for the Kid, Middleton, Brown, Waite, and Bowdre, the Regulators indicted by the grand jury, yet he failed to serve them.

  The Regulators made their headquarters at the McSween house, now reoccupied, following the dismissal of the embezzlement charge, by Mac and Sue. The gunmen elected Frank McNab their new captain, replacing the dead Brewer. With Squire Wilson still sidelined pending another election, McNab obtained a commission as deputy constable from Gregorio Trujillo, justice of the peace at San Patricio. Despite this new cloak of legality, the Regulators launched no new operations. Elated over the advent of a friendly sheriff, they spent their days carousing. Copeland shared freely in the festivities with the very men for whom he carried arrest warrants.5

  A pastime that especially appealed to Billy Bonney was singing. Mary Ealy played Sue’s piano (she boasted both piano and organ) as the men gathered around to sing. “And how they did sing,” Mary remembered. “They stood behind me with their guns and belts full of cartridges; I suppose I was off tune as often as on it as I felt very nervous, though they were very nice and polite.”6

  While the Regulators partied, the Dolanites plotted a comeback. The new sheriff needed some help, they decided, in understanding his responsibilities, especially in recognizing his obligation to arrest the killers of Brady, Hindman, and Roberts. Billy Mathews and George Peppin, still claiming to be deputies by appointment of Brady, gathered a few men and rode down to the Pecos to organize a posse. They signed up about twenty Seven Rivers cowboys, most of them veterans of the posse that had attached Tunstall’s cattle in February, and headed for Lincoln.7

  On the afternoon of April 29 the posse paused for a rest at the Fritz ranch nine miles below Lincoln. Here they learned of the approach of three of the enemy. Regulator chief Frank McNab, Frank Coe, and Ab Saunders, Coe’s in-law and hired hand, were on their way to the Coe ranch. At the Fritz ranch the three men rode squarely into an ambush. A volley of gunfire dropped their horses. Saunders took a slug in the hip that would ultimately prove fatal. McNab ran up a gully pursued by Manuel Segovia (“Indian”) and was shot and killed. Coe sprinted up another gully but surrendered when he saw that he was trapped.8

  During the night the possemen took positions in the timber on the east edge of Lincoln, opposite the Ellis store. A few, with Coe as prisoner, moved up the river on the north side, crossed, and slipped into the Dolan store. Although closed in bankruptcy, it was in charge of Catron’s agent, Edgar Walz.

  The Regulators learned of their peril the next morning, April 30, when a messenger brought word to Sheriff Copeland in the McSween house that a force of deputies had come to help him arrest the Kid, Middleton, Bowdre, Waite, and Brown. Quickly, the Regulators fanned out through town and took up firing positions. George Coe, on the roof of the Ellis store, spotted one of the enemy sitting on a cow skull several hundred yards distant, hunched over and unrecognized even as a man.

  “I’ll lift whatever it is out of there with this old Sharp’s rifle,” said Coe to Henry Brown. He took careful aim and fired.

  As Coe remembered, “My bullet cut through the flesh of both the man’s legs—they were crossed in front of him—and cut a gash nearly six inches long through his hip, about 440 steps away.” The victim was “Dutch Charley” Kruling, the only casualty of the Battle of Lincoln.9

  Firing erupted from both sides. The men in the Dolan store rushed into the street and ran toward the Ellis store, leaving Frank Coe to walk away a free man. At once they encountered a hot fire from rooftops and behind adobe walls. Pulling back, they turned north, crossed the Bonito, and made their way downstream to unite with their confederates. For four hours the two sides exchanged fire without hurting anyone.

  Meantime, a confused Copeland had sent to Fort Stanton for military aid. About 3:30 in the afternoon Lieutenant George W. Smith arrived with twenty black cavalrymen. Gesturing wildly with his pistol, Copeland led them to the lower end of town. Smith rode between the battle lines and waved his uniform cap. Several of the enemy came forward for a parley. Which men did he want arrested? the lieutenant asked the sheriff.

  “I want the whole damn business,” replied Copeland.

  Fearing assassination, none of the attackers would surrender to Copeland, but at length agreed to give up to the army. Smith sent them around town on the north side of the river to avoid more shooting, then conducted them to Fort Stanton.

  Billy Bonney did not stand out among the defenders of Lincoln. Presumably he simply fired at the Dolan men from a rooftop. With Bowdre, Middleton, and others, he then left Lincoln. They tarried in and around San Patricio while McSween and Dolan indulged in legal sparring that made almost everyone look like buffoons.

  Caught in the middle was a new presence at Fort Stanton. On April 4, the day of the shootout at Blazer’s Mills, Lieutenant Colonel Nathan A. M. Dudley had assumed command of the fort. A handsome, soldierly figure, he was also vain, pompous, quarrelsome, and bibulous. His stormy temperament did not equip him for the subtle role his superiors expected him to play in the troubles besetting Lincoln County. Military involvement in civil affairs, although common, rested on shaky legal foundations, and army meddling in southern elections and eastern railroad strikes had given the issue political sensitivity as well.

  Reflecting Captain Purington’s prejudices, Colonel Dudley quickly formed a dislike for McSween and his allies. When Sheriff Copeland called for help on April 30, however, the colonel dutifully dispatched Lieutenant Smith to the rescue. As a result, Dudley wound up with a small army of Dolanites whom the sheriff wanted detained. McSween moved swiftly to produce the legal grounds for the request, for Copeland soon appeared with a warrant, issued by the compliant justice of the peace at San Patricio, for the arrest of eighteen of the Mathews-Peppin posse for the murder of Frank McNab.

  Dudley thought Copeland less than impartial and told him so. To give force to this sentiment, he had three of the Dolan men swear affidavits against McSween and the Regulators for “riot” and sent a messenger across the mountain to obtain a warrant for their arrest from the justice of the peace at Blazer’s Mills. Presenting it to Copeland, together with a cavalry detachment, Dudley delivered a stern lecture and sent the baffled sheriff forth to do his duty.

  This warrant, of course, contained Billy Bonney’s name besides about twenty others, including McSween’s. With Bowdre and Middleton, the Kid almost got caught in the net. On the evening of May 2, McSween bought them dinner at Dow’s store in San Patricio. Afterwards, they headed back for the mountains just as the military posse rode into town. Sheriff Copeland shrank from serving his warrant on McSween, but the escort commander, Lieutenant Goodwin, insisted. Once again McSween found himself in the toils of the law.

  But not for long. On May 4, worried about the legal requirement for a speedy examination of prisoners, Copeland asked Dudley to release them to his custody. Dudley complied. With thirty men on his hands, most of them unruly, Copeland did not know what to do next. Bewildered, he simply turned them loose with the injunction to go home and quit feuding. “Both parties seem to have had a scare,” Dudley commented dryly.10

  The Regulators now elected their third captain, Doc Scurlock, who promptly planned an operation to the Seven Rivers country. Most of the Dolanites released at Fort Stanton on May 4 had gone down to the Pecos to help Johnny Riley meet a beef contract by bringing a herd up to the Indian agency. Their names were on the warrant issued by Justice Wilson in February, and in addition Scurlock presumably carried the warrant for Mathews stemming from the grand jury’s accessory indictment in April. With a deputy’s commission from Copeland, Scurlock rode with a more substantial cloak of legality than had shielded any previous Regulator campaign.

  Besides the usual “iron clads,” including Billy Bonney, Scurlock also led a contingent of Hispanics t
hat augmented his force to more than twenty gunmen. The Hispanics followed their own deputy, Josefita Chavez. An unkind critic thought this a shrewd gambit of McSween’s, a “master stroke to draw the Mexican population of this county into the fight.” Copeland, he charged, was “ordered to take Mexicans on his next posse, get a few of them killed and thus rouse the whole county against Dolan & Co.”11

  On May 15 the Regulator force stormed into the Dolan cow camp near Seven Rivers. They seized twenty-five horses and two mules and did all they could to scatter the cattle in every direction. They also seized the camp cook, who turned out to be Manuel Segovia (“Indian”). He had been with the Mathews posse in February, as well as the bunch that bushwhacked Coe, Saunders, and McNab. He was believed, probably correctly, to be the man who had killed McNab.

  Mindful of the fate of Morton, Baker, and McCloskey, “Indian” felt himself certain to be executed.

  “Don’t let them kill me,” he implored of Francisco Trujillo.

  While riding up the river, Trujillo overheard Scurlock, Chavez, and Bonney talking about killing the prisoner. Trujillo observed to Chavez that the law ought to be allowed to run its course.

  Charley Bowdre rode up and said, “Come on, Francisco, let us be running along.” The two spurred ahead.

  “When Charley and I had gone about fifty yards we noticed that the Indian had gotten away from his captors and was riding away as fast as he could. Billy the Kid and Jose[fita] Chavez took after him and began to shoot at him until they got him.” Thus another Regulator captive had fallen while trying to escape.12

  All this activity, surprisingly, took place within a mile of Johnny Riley, Billy Mathews, and the Seven Rivers bravos. Rather than risk an open battle, they hung back and did not even challenge the aggressors. Riley contented himself with complaining to Colonel Dudley and hinting that if a military escort were not sent to his aid the Indians might not get fed. Dudley knew that beef could be obtained locally, however, and thought Riley had enough well-armed men to take care of himself. Thus the Regulators returned unmolested to Lincoln.13