The Top 5 Most Notorious Outlaws (8 page)

‘’People thought me bad before, but if ever I should get free, I’ll let them know what bad means.” – Billy the Kid to a reporter from the Daily New Mexican after his capture at Stinking Springs.

After being arrested by Garrett, the Kid was taken from Fort Sumner to Las Vegas, New Mexico, where he was also given a chance to speak to reporters. The Kid was apparently playful, as he mentioned to one reporter, ‘’What’s the use of looking on the gloomy side of everything? The laugh’s on me this time. Is the jail at Santa Fe any better than this? This is a terrible place to put a fellow in.” The question about Santa Fe was made in reference to the fact that the Kid was on his way there next, and while he was imprisoned there for the next three months he asked Lew Wallace for clemency. Not surprisingly, Wallace didn’t oblige, telling the Las Vegas Gazette, ‘’I can’t see how a fellow like him should expect any clemency from me.’’

The charges in the Roberts killing were dropped, but the Kid was found guilty of Brady’s murder and was sentenced to hang on May 13, 1881. The Kid offered no words in his defense. With that, he was taken to jail in Lincoln, where he was regularly taunted by Bob Ollinger, who, along with Deputy James Bell, was ordered to guard his cell. Ollinger blamed the Kid for the death of his friend, Bob Beckwith, and never let him forget it.

The Lincoln County Jail

On April 28, with Garrett away, the Kid somehow got out his cell and managed to arm himself. Some suggest that he asked to use the outhouse behind the courthouse and a friend planted a gun for him nearby. At any rate, the Kid swung his heavy handcuffs at Bell, then maneuvered a gun into position and shot and killed Bell, who fell into the courthouse yard. As someone ran for help, the Kid grabbed Ollinger’s shotgun from Garrett’s office. When Ollinger approached the building, the Kid pointed the gun out the open window, said, “Hello Bob!” and blasted Ollinger’s body with buckshot, killing him instantly. The Kid then forced the cook at gunpoint to get a pickax and remove his shackles. From the courthouse balcony, the Kid shouted to the growing crowd that he had not meant to kill Bell, but he would kill anyone that tried to prevent his escape. When the Kid took off on the deputy clerk’s horse, some say he was singing. The same horse, now without its famous rider, came back into town two days later.

After this most daring escape, it would have surprised nobody if he had finally left the country. Instead, 3 months later the rumor was that the Kid hadn’t gone far at all; in fact, the story was that the Kid was back in the Fort Sumner area, around where he had been captured in December. Nobody was more surprised than Pat Garrett that the Kid, once again, did not leave the area. Perhaps it was because Paulita Maxwell was pregnant, which could explain why the Kid ended up in the Maxwell house. Garrett had heard that the Kid was in Fort Sumner but didn’t believe it at first. Finally, when Pete Maxwell confirmed it, Garrett rode out to the Maxwell house on July 14, 1881.

Shortly after 9:00 p.m. that summer evening, Garrett and two of his men waited for the Kid in a peach orchard. After midnight, they approached the house. It was dark and the Kid was without a hat and boots. In his stocking feet, he walked toward the porch, on his way to cut some meat from a freshly slaughtered deer hanging on the Maxwell’s porch. The Kid saw men in the dark and drew his gun from his waistband. “Quien es?” he said, asking in Spanish, “Who is it?” He repeated the question in English and Maxwell said to Garrett, “El es”, meaning “It’s him.” Garrett fired twice and 21 year old Billy the Kid was dead.

Naturally, there have been countless variations of the events of that night, some portraying Garrett as acting in self-defense, others making him out to be a murderer. One account had Garrett talking to Maxwell, a friend of the Kid’s, when the Kid entered the room to their surprise. One theory even goes so far as to claim Garrett bound and gagged Paulita and hid behind her waiting for the Kid to come back to the house, whereupon they shot him. All accounts agree that the Kid did not recognize Garrett and never fired his gun.

Billy the Kid was buried alongside friends O’Folliard and Bowdre

For decades after the Kid’s death, most took Pat Garrett’s
The Authentic Life of Billy the Kid
as a factual biography. The book, which was ghostwritten by Ashton Upson, was published in April 1882. Historians have verified that Garrett’s book about the Kid is filled with errors, presumably to make the Kid look like a cold-blooded killer and to make Garrett look like the hero that finally stopped him. At the time, Garrett received some heat for the manner in which he killed Billy the Kid, so there’s no question he wanted to use his version to portray himself in a more positive light. An updated edition, published in 2000, contains footnotes from historian Frederick Nolan, which help set the record straight.

Nevertheless, the damage done from Garrett’s book had deep roots and set the stage for a lot of the mythmaking about the Kid’s life. The first edition of the book did not sell well, but by 1954, it was considered a factual reference book. By the 1960s, the book was in libraries in the U.S. and Europe and by the 1970s, the book was in its 10th printing. In an effort to make himself look heroic and to clear his name with those that suggested he unfairly ambushed the Kid, Garrett created one of the greatest legends of the West, even if the legend was based on fiction.

What followed was a slew of dime novels and movies featuring the Kid as the early 20th century equivalent of a bad boy rock star, leaving a trail of dead bodies in his wake. Unlike some icons of the West, the Kid left behind no family to see to it that his story was told correctly, and the lack of solid facts about the Kid’s life made it easier to create a legend. If there is no easy way to refute a story, then it lingers as if the possibility remains that it is true.

With such a gap in knowledge, Billy the Kid has plenty of myths to match the legend. One thing that Billy’s quotes and his contemporaries’ comments suggest is that everyone agreed he was a fairly friendly, witty young man. Regulator Frank Coe later said of him, “I never enjoyed better company. He was humorous and told me many amusing stories. He always found a touch of humor in everything, being naturally full of fun and jollity. Though he was serious in emergencies, his humor was often apparent even in such situations. Billy stood with us to the end, brave and reliable, one of the best soldiers we had. He never pushed in his advice or opinions, but he had a wonderful presence of mind. The tighter the place the more he showed his cool nerve and quick brain. He never seemed to care for money, except to buy cartridges with. Cartridges were scarce, and he always used about ten times as many as everyone else. He would practice shooting at anything he saw, from every conceivable angle, on and off his horse.” Frank’s cousin George described the Kid as “a brave, resourceful and honest boy. He would have been a successful man under other circumstances. The Kid was a thousand times better and braver than any man hunting him, including Pat Garrett.”

Given his legendary ending, like Jesse James, plenty of people came forward in later years claiming that Billy the Kid was not the man killed by Garrett in 1881. One Texan known as Brushy Bill claimed to be the Kid, despite the fact his physical appearance and birth date didn’t match the Kid’s. Brushy Bill had also once claimed to be part of Jesse James’s gang. Not surprisingly, no historian has ever lent credence to Brushy Bill’s claims, but Brushy Bill’s home town of Hico, Texas opened up the “Billy The Kid Museum” to capitalize off the buzz.

In addition to arguments over how many people the Kid killed, there has been a persistent debate over which hand he shot those people with. Part of the confusion came from the fact that one of the ferrotypes commonly seen was a mirror image of the original. For that reason, Billy the Kid was often believed to be left-handed. Others insist that the Kid was right handed, and Clyde Jeavons, a former curator of the National Film and Television Archive, explained the effect of the ferrotype’s mirror image: “You can see by the waistcoat buttons and the belt buckle. This is a common error which has continued to reinforce the myth that Billy the Kid was left-handed. He was not. He was right-handed and carried his gun on his right hip. This particular reproduction error has occurred so often in books and other publications over the years that it has led to the myth that Billy the Kid was left-handed, for which there is no evidence. On the contrary, the evidence (from viewing his photo correctly) is that he was right-handed: he wears his pistol on his right hip with the butt pointing backwards in a conventional right-handed draw position.” Ironically, the debate overlooked the fact that the Kid may very well have been ambidextrous: newspaper accounts at the time claimed the Kid shot guns “with his left hand as accurately as he does with his right” and that “his aim with a revolver in each hand, shooting simultaneously, is unerring.”

In many ways, the entire state of New Mexico became the Kid’s family over time and adopted him as one of its own. Of course, there are financial reasons behind this since Billy the Kid brings in more tourist dollars to the state today than cattle ranching. His only photograph, a 25-cent tintype, was purchased for $2.3 million in a 2011 auction. The image from that tintype can be seen on countless items ranging from mugs to hats to shot glasses at the Kid’s own museum in Fort Sumner.

Some New Mexicans have gone so far as to suggest that Billy the Kid should be pardoned for his crimes because Governor Lew Wallace did not keep his end of his bargain with the Kid. Randi McGinn, an attorney from Albuquerque, filed a formal petition for the pardon and set off a debate that raged in New Mexico for seven years. Governor Bill Richardson set up a website to get opinions from the public, although descendants of Pat Garrett and Lew Wallace were clear in their opinion. They were outraged and felt that a pardon was disrespectful to the memories of Garrett and Wallace. In his last day in office on December 31, 2010, Richardson announced on ABC’s “Good Morning America” that he gave it serious thought, but that he was not going to pardon the Kid without having a better understanding of why Wallace did not follow through with the pardon.

However, where Billy the Kid really seemed to find his home was among the Mexican-American ranchers in the state who were victimized by the corrupt political system. They were sympathetic to the Kid, partially because they sympathized with his cause, but their acceptance of him was more complex than that. The Mexican-Americans that encountered the Kid embraced him because he embraced them back. The Kid moved easily in the Mexican-American community at a time when many white men would not even consider such a thing. He learned their language, danced their dances, ate their food, and loved their young girls, which may have ultimately led to his demise.

Governor Otero recalled that the Kid was different than other boys his age, obviously affected by being on his own as a child and primarily being in the company of men older than he was. He said that the Kid was bright and eager to learn. Otero was also the first person to try to explain the Kid’s special relationship with the Mexican-Americans from the Mexican-American point of view when he published
The Real Billy the Kid: With New Light on the Lincoln County War
in 1936. Otero not only challenged the version of history told from the point of view of the white men, he exposed the level of corruption that the white men brought on the citizens on the county. Historian Frederick Nolan, an acknowledged expert on Billy the Kid, said that there is still much to be learned about the Kid’s folk hero status in the Mexican-American culture, but the information will need to come from “that side of the cultural divide.” Perhaps that information will shed more light on William Henry McCarty’s life, more than just his legend.