The Story of the Outlaw Part 11

Leonard, of Lincoln, to defend the prisoner, and Leonard got him acquitted of the charge of killing Bernstein on the reservation. He was next tried, at the same term of court, for the killing of Sheriff William Brady, and in March, 1881, he was convicted under this charge and sentenced to be hanged at Lincoln on May 13, 1881. He was first placed under guard of Deputies Bob Ollinger and Dave Woods, and taken across the mountains in the custody of Sheriff Garrett, who received his prisoner at Fort Stanton on April 21.

Lincoln county was just beginning to emerge from savagery. There was no jail worth the name, and all the county could claim as a place for the house of law and order was the big store building lately owned by Murphy, Riley & Dolan. It was necessary to keep the Kid under guard for the three weeks or so before his execution, and Sheriff Garrett chose as the best available material Bob Ollinger and J. W. Bell, a good, quiet man from White Oaks, to act as the death watch over this dangerous man, who seemed now to be nearly at the end of his day.

Against Bob Ollinger the Kid cherished an undying hatred, and longed to kill him. Ollinger hated him as much, and wanted nothing so much as to kill the Kid. He was a friend of Bob Beckwith, whom the Kid had killed, and the two had always been on the opposite sides of the Lincoln county fighting. Ollinger taunted the Kid with his deeds, and showed his own hatred in every way. There are many stories about what now took place in this old building at the side of b.l.o.o.d.y little Lincoln street. A common report is that in the evening of April 28, 1881, the Kid was left alone in the room with Bell, Ollinger having gone across the street for supper; that the Kid slipped his hands out of his irons--as he was able to do when he liked, his hands being very small--struck Bell over the head with his shackles while Bell was reading or was looking out of the window, later drawing Bell's revolver from its scabbard and killing him with it. This story is not correct. The truth is that Bell took the Kid, at his request, into the yard back of the jail; returning, the Kid sprang quickly up the stairs to the guard-room door, as Bell turned to say something to old man Goss, a cook, who was standing in the yard. The Kid pushed open the door, caught up a revolver from a table, and sprang to the head of the stairs just as Bell turned the angle and started up.

He fired at Bell and missed him, the ball striking the left-hand side of the staircase. It glanced, however, and pa.s.sed through Bell's body, lodging in the wall at the angle of the stair. Bell staggered out into the yard and fell dead. This story is borne out by the reports of Goss and the Kid, and by the bullet marks. The place is very familiar to the author, who at about that time practiced law in the same building, when it was used as the Court House, and who has also talked with many men about the circ.u.mstances.

The Kid now sprang into the next room and caught up Ollinger's heavy shotgun, loaded with the very sh.e.l.ls Ollinger had charged for him. He saw Ollinger coming across the street, and just as he got below the window at the corner of the building the Kid leaned over and said, coolly and pleasantly, "h.e.l.lo, old fellow!" The next instant he fired and shot Ollinger dead. He then walked around through the room and out upon the porch, which at that time extended the full length of the building, and, coming again in view of Ollinger's body, took a second deliberate shot at it. Then he broke the gun across the railing and threw the pieces down on Ollinger's body. "Take that to h.e.l.l with you,"

he said coolly. Then, seeing himself free and once more king of Lincoln street, he warned away all who would approach, and, with a file which he compelled Goss to bring to him, started to file off one of his leg irons. He got one free, ordered a bystander to bring him a horse, and at length, mounting, rode away for the Capitans, and so to a country with which he had long been familiar. At Las Tablas he forced a Mexican blacksmith to free him of his irons. He sent the horse, which belonged to Billy Burt, back by some unknown friend the following night.

He was now again on his native heath, a desperado and an outlaw indeed, and obliged to fight for his life at every turn; for now he knew the country would turn against him, and, as he had been captured through information furnished through supposed friends, he knew that treachery was what he might expect. He knew also that sheriff Garrett would never give him up now, and that one or the other of the two must die.

Yet, knowing all these things, the Kid, by means of stolen horses, broke back once more to his old stamping grounds around Fort Sumner. Garrett again got on his trail, and as the Kid, with incredible fatuity, still hung around his old haunts, he was at length able to close with him once more. With his deputies, John Poe and Thomas P. McKinney, he located the Kid in Sumner, although no one seemed to be explicit as to his whereabouts. He went to Pete Maxwell's house himself, and there, as his two deputies were sitting at the edge of the gallery in the moonlight, he killed the Kid at Maxwell's bedside.

Billy the Kid had very many actual friends, whom he won by his pleasant and cheerful manners and his liberality, when he had anything with which to be liberal, although that was not often. He was very popular among the Mexicans of the Pecos valley. As to the men the Kid killed in his short twenty-one years, that is a matter of disagreement. The usual story is twenty-one, and the Kid is said to have declared he wanted to kill two more--Bob Ollinger and "Bonnie" Baca--before he died, to make it twenty-three in all. Pat Garrett says the Kid had killed eleven men. Others say he had killed nine. A very few say that the Kid never killed any man without full justification and in self-defense. They regard the Kid as a scapegoat for the sins of others. Indeed, he was less fortunate than some others, but his deeds brought him his deserts at last, even as they left him an enduring reputation as one of the most desperate desperadoes ever known in the West.

[Ill.u.s.tration: From a painting by John W. Norton "THE NEXT INSTANT HE FIRED AND SHOT OLLINGER DEAD"]

Central and eastern New Mexico, from 1860 to 1880, probably held more desperate and dangerous men than any other corner of the West ever did.

It was a region then more remote and less known than Africa is to-day, and no record exists of more than a small portion of its deeds of blood.

Nowhere in the world was human life ever held cheaper, and never was any population more lawless. There were no courts and no officers, and most of the scattered inhabitants of that time had come thither to escape courts and officers. This environment which produced Billy the Kid brought out others scarcely less dangerous, and of a few of these there may be made pa.s.sing mention.

Joel Fowler was long considered a dangerous man. He was a ranch owner and cow man, but he came into the settlements often, and nearly always for the immediate purpose of getting drunk. In the latter condition he was always bloodthirsty and quarrelsome, and none could tell what or whom he might make the object of his attack. He was very insulting and overbearing, very noisy and obnoxious, the sort of desperado who makes unarmed men beg and compels "tenderfeet" to dance for his amus.e.m.e.nt. His birth and earlier life seem hidden by his later career, when, at about middle life, he lived in central New Mexico. He was accredited with killing about twenty men, but there may have been the usual exaggeration regarding this. His end came in 1884, at Socorro. He was arrested for killing his own ranch foreman, Jack Cale, a man who had befriended him and taken care of him in many a drunken orgy. He stabbed Cale as they stood at the bar in a saloon, and while every one thought he was unarmed. The law against carrying arms while in the settlements was then just beginning to be enforced; and, although it was recognized as necessary for men to go armed while journeying across those wild and little settled plains, the danger of allowing six-shooters and whiskey to operate at the same time was generally recognized as well. If a man did not lay aside his guns on reaching a town, he was apt to be invited to do so by the sheriff or town marshal, as Joel had already been asked that evening.

Fowler's victim staggered to the door after he was stabbed and fell dead at the street, the act being seen by many. The law was allowed to take its course, and Fowler was tried and sentenced to be hanged. His lawyers took an appeal on a technicality and sent the case to the supreme court, where a long delay seemed inevitable. The jail was so bad that an expensive guard had to be maintained. At length, some of the citizens concluded that to hang Fowler was best for all concerned. They took him, mounted, to a spot some distance up the railroad, and there hanged him.

Bill Howard, a negro section hand, was permitted by his section boss to make a coffin and bury Fowler, a matter which the Committee had neglected; and he says that he knows Fowler was buried there and left there for several years, near the railway tracks. The usual story says that Fowler was hanged to a telegraph pole in town. At any rate, he was hanged, and a very wise and seemly thing it was.

Jesse Evans was another bad man of this date, a young fellow in his early twenties when he first came to the Pecos country, but good enough at gun work to make his services desirable. He was one of the very few men who did not fear Billy the Kid. He always said that the Kid might beat him with the Winchester, but that he feared no man living with the six-shooter. Evans came very near meeting an inglorious death. He and the notorious Tom Hill once held up an old German in a sheep camp near what is now Alamagordo, New Mexico. The old man did not know that they were bad men, and while they were looting his wagon, looking for the money he had in a box under the wagon seat, he slipped up and killed Tom Hill with his own gun, which had been left resting against a bush near by, nearly shooting Hill's spine out. Then he opened fire on Jesse, who was close by, shooting him twice, through the arm and through the lungs.

The latter managed to get on his horse, bareback, and rode that night, wounded as he was, and partly trailed by the blood from his lungs, sixty miles or more to the San Augustine mountains, where he holed up at a friendly ranch, later to be arrested by Constable Dave Wood, from the railway settlements. In default of better jurisdiction, he was taken to Fort Stanton, where he lay in the hospital until he got ready to escape, when he seems to have walked away. Evans and his brother, who was known as George Davis--the latter being the true name of both--then went down toward Pecos City and got into a fight with some rangers, who killed his brother on the spot and captured Jesse, who was confined in the Texas penitentiary for twenty years. He escaped and was returned; yet in the year 1882, when he should have been in the Texas prison, he is said to have been seen and recognized on the streets of Lincoln. Evans, or Davis, is said to have been a Texarkana man, and to have returned to his home soon after this, only to find his wife living with another man, and supposing her first husband dead. He did not tell the new husband of his presence, but took away with him his boy, whom he found now well grown.

It was stated that he went to Arizona, and nothing more is known of him.

Tom Hill, the man above mentioned as killed by the sheep man, was a typical rough, dark, swarthy, low-browed, as loud-mouthed as he was ignorant. He was a braggart, but none the less a killer.

Charlie Bowdre is supposed to have been a Texas boy, as was Tom Hill.

Bowdre had a little ranch on the Rio Ruidoso, twenty miles or so from Lincoln; but few of these restless characters did much farming. It was easier to steal cattle, and to eat beef free if one were hungry. Bowdre joined Billy the Kid's gang and turned outlaw for a trade. It was all over with his chances of settling down after that. He was a man who liked to talk of what he could do, and a very steady practicer with the six-shooter, with which weapon he was a good shot, or just good enough to get himself killed by sheriff Pat Garrett.

Frank Baker, murdered by his former friend, Billy the Kid, at Agua Negra, near the Capitans, was part Cherokee in blood, a well-spoken and pleasant man and a good cow hand. He was drawn into this fighting through his work for Chisum as a hired man. Baker was said to be connected with a good family in Virginia, who looked up the facts of his death.

Billy Morton, killed with Baker by the Kid, was a similar instance of a young man loving the saddle and six-shooter and finally getting tangled up with matters outside his proper sphere as a cow hand. He had often ridden with the Kid on the cow range. He was said to have been with the posse that killed Tunstall.

Hendry Brown was a crack gun fighter, whose services were valued in the posse fighting. He went to Kansas and long served as marshal of Caldwell. He could not stand it to be good, and was killed after robbing the bank and killing the cas.h.i.+er.

Johnny Hurley was a brave young man, as brave as a lion. Hurley was acting as deputy for sheriff John Poe, together with Jim Brent, when the desperado Arragon was holed up in an adobe and refused to surrender. The Mexican shot Hurley as he carelessly crossed an open s.p.a.ce directly in front of the door. Hurley was brown-haired and blue-eyed; a very pleasant fellow.

Andy Boyle, one of the rough and ruthless sort of warriors, was an ex-British soldier, a drunkard, and a good deal of a ruffian. He drank himself to death after a decidedly mixed record.

John McKinney had a certain fame from the fact that in the fight at the McSween house the Kid shot off half his mustache for him at close range, when the latter broke out of cover and ran.

The tough buffalo hunter, Bill Campbell, who figured largely in b.l.o.o.d.y deeds in New Mexico, was arrested, but escaped from Fort Stanton, and was never heard from afterward. He came from Texas, but little is known of him. His name, as earlier stated, is thought to have been Ed.

Richardson.

Captain Joseph C. Lea, the staunch friend of Pat Garrett, and the man who first brought him forward as a candidate for sheriff of Lincoln county, died February 8, 1904, at Roswell, where he lived for a long time. Lea was said to have been a Quantrell man in the Lawrence ma.s.sacre. Much of the population of that region had a history that was never written. Lea was a good man and much respected, peaceable, courteous and generous.

One more southwestern bad man found Texas congenial after the close of his active fighting, and his is a striking story. Billy Wilson was a gentlemanly and good-looking young fellow, who ran with Billy the Kid's gang. Wilson was arrested on a United States warrant, charged with pa.s.sing counterfeit money; but he later escaped and disappeared. Several years after all these events had happened, and after the country had settled down into quiet, a certain ex-sheriff of Lincoln county chanced to be near Uvalde, Texas, for several months. There came to him without invitation, a former merchant of White Oaks, New Mexico, who told the officer that Billy Wilson, under another name, was living below Uvalde, towards the Mexican frontier. He stated that Wilson had been a cow hand, a ranch foreman and cow man, was now doing well, had resigned all his bad habits, and was a good citizen. He stated that Wilson had heard of the officer's presence and asked whether the latter would not forego following up a reformed man on the old charges of another and different day. The officer replied at once that if Wilson was indeed leading a right life, and did not intend to go bad again, he would not only leave him alone, but would endeavor to secure for him a pardon from the president of the United States. Less than six months from that time, this pardon, signed by President Grover Cleveland, was in the possession of this officer, in his office in a Rio Grande town of New Mexico. A telegram was sent to Billy Wilson, and he was brave man enough to come and take his chances. The officer, without much speech, went over to his safe, took out the signed pardon from the president, and handed it to Wilson. The latter trembled and broke into tears as he took the paper.

"If you ever need my life," said he, "count on me. And I'll never go back on this!" as he touched the executive pardon. He went back to Texas, and is living there to-day, a good citizen. It would be wrong to mention names in an incident like this.

Tom O'Folliard was another noted character. He was something of a gun expert, in his own belief, at least. He was a man of medium height and dark complexion, and of no very great amount of mental capacity. He came into the lower range from somewhere east, probably from Texas, and little is known of him except that he was in some fighting, and that he is buried at Sumner with Bowdre and the Kid. He got away with one or two bluffs and encounters, and came to think that he was as good as the best of men, or rather as bad as the worst; for he was one of those who wanted a reputation as a bad man.

Tom Pickett was another not far from the O'Folliard cla.s.s, ambitious to be thought wild and woolly and hard to curry; which he was not, when it came to the real currying, as events proved. He was a very pretty handler of a gun, and took pride in his skill with it. He seems to have behaved well after the arrest of the Kid's gang near Sumner, and is not known in connection with any further criminal acts, though he still for a long time wore two guns in the settlements. Once a well-known sheriff happened, by mere chance, to be in his town, not knowing Pickett was there. The latter literally took to the woods, thinking something was on foot in which he was concerned. Being reminded that he had lost an opportunity to show how bad he was he explained: "I don't want anything to do with that long-legs." Pickett, no doubt, settled down and became a useful man. Indeed, although it seems a strange thing to say, it is the truth that much of the old wildness of that border was a matter of general custom, one might also say of habit. The surroundings were wild, and men got to running wild. When times changed, some of them also changed, and frequently showed that after all they could settle down to work and lead decent lives. Lawlessness is sometimes less a matter of temperament than of surroundings.

Chapter XVII

The Fight of Buckshot Roberts--_Encounter Between a Crippled Ex-Soldier and the Band of Billy the Kid_--_One Man Against Thirteen._

Next to the fight of Wild Bill with the McCandlas gang, the fight of Buckshot Roberts at Blazer's Mill, on the Mescalero Indian reservation, is perhaps the most remarkable combat of one man against odds ever known in the West. The latter affair is little known, but deserves its record.

Buckshot Roberts was one of those men who appeared on the frontier and gave little history of their own past. He came West from Texas, but it is thought that he was born farther east than the Lone Star state. He was long in the United States army, where he reached the rank of sergeant before his discharge; after which he lingered on the frontier, as did very many soldiers of that day. He was at one time a member of the famous Texas rangers, and had reputation as an Indian fighter. He had been badly shot by the Comanches. Again, he was on the other side, against the rangers, and once stood off twenty-five of them, although nearly killed in this encounter. From these wounds he was so badly crippled in his right arm that he could not lift a rifle to his shoulder. He was usually known as "Buckshot" Roberts because of the nature of his wounds.

Roberts took up a little ranch in the beautiful Ruidoso valley of central New Mexico, one of the most charming spots in the world; and all he asked was to be let alone, for he seemed able to get along, and not afraid of work. When the Lincoln County War broke out, he was recognized as a friend of Major Murphy, one of the local faction leaders; but when the fighting men curtly told him it was about time for him to choose his side, he as curtly replied that he intended to take neither side; that he had seen fighting enough in his time, and would fight no man's battle for him. This for the time and place was treason, and punishable with death. Roberts' friends told him that Billy the Kid and d.i.c.k Brewer intended to kill him, and advised him to leave the country.

It is said that Roberts had closed out his affairs and was preparing to leave the country, when he heard that the gang was looking for him, and that he then gave them opportunity to find him. Others say that he went up to Blazer's Mill to meet there a friend of his by the name of Kitts, who, he heard, had been shot and badly wounded. There is other rumor that he went up to Blazer's Mill to have a personal encounter with Major G.o.dfroy, with whom there had been some altercation. There is a further absurd story that he went for the purpose of killing Billy the Kid, and getting the reward which was offered for him. These latter things are unlikely. The probable truth is that he, being a brave man, though fully determined to leave the country, simply found it written in his creed to go up to Blazer's Mill to see his supposedly wounded friend, and also to see what there was in the threats which he had heard.

There are living three eye-witnesses of what happened at that time: Frank and George Coe, ranchers on the Ruidoso to-day, and Johnnie Patten, cook on Carrizzo ranch. Patten was an ex-soldier of H Troop, Third Cavalry, and was mustered out at Fort Stanton in 1869. At the time of the Roberts fight, he was running the sawmill for Dr. Blazer. Frank Coe says that he himself was attempting to act as peacemaker, and that he tried to get Roberts to give up his arms and not make any fight.

Patten says that he himself, at the peril of his life, had warned Roberts that d.i.c.k Brewer, the Kid, and his gang intended to kill him. It is certain that when Roberts came riding up on a mule, still wet from the fording of the Tularosa river, he met there d.i.c.k Brewer, Billy the Kid, George Coe, Frank Coe, Charlie Bowdre, Doc Middleton, one Scroggins, and Dirty Steve (Stephen Stevens), with others, to the number of thirteen in all. These men still claimed to be a posse, and were under d.i.c.k Brewer, "special constable."

The Brewer party withdrew to the rear of the house. Frank Coe parleyed with Roberts at one side. Kate G.o.dfroy, daughter of Major G.o.dfroy, protested at what she knew was the purpose of Brewer and his gang. d.i.c.k Brewer said to his men, "Don't do anything to him now. Coax him up the road a way."

Roberts declined to give up his weapons to Frank Coe. He stood near the door, outside the house. Then, as it is told by Johnnie Patten, who saw it all, there suddenly came around upon him from behind the house the gang of the Kid, all gun fighters, each opening fire as he came. The gritty little man gave back not a step toward the open door. Crippled by his old wounds so that he could not raise his rifle to his shoulder, he worked the lever from his hip. Here were a dozen men, the best fighting men of all that wild country, shooting at him at a distance of not a dozen feet; yet he shot Jack Middleton through the lungs, though failing to kill him. He shot a finger off the hand of George Coe, who then left the fight. Roberts then half stepped forward and pushed his gun against the stomach of Billy the Kid. For some reason the piece failed to fire, and the Kid was saved by the narrowest escape he ever had in his life.

Charlie Bowdre now appeared around the corner of the house, and Roberts fired at him next. His bullet struck Bowdre in the belt, and cut the belt off from him. Almost at the same time, Bowdre fired at him and shot him through the body. He did not drop, but staggered back against the wall; and so he stood there, crippled of old and now wounded to death, but so fierce a human tiger that his very looks struck dismay into this gang of professional fighters. They actually withdrew around the house and left him there!

Each claimed the credit for having shot the victim. "No," said Charlie Bowdre, "I shot him myself. I dusted him on both sides. I saw the dust fly out on both sides of his coat, where my bullet went clean through him." They argued, but they did not go around the house again.

Roberts now staggered back into the house. He threw down his own Winchester and picked up a heavy Sharps' rifle which belonged to Dr.

Appel, and which he found there, in Dr. Blazer's room. Brewer told Dr.

Blazer to bring Roberts out, but, like a man, Blazer refused. Roberts pulled a mattress off the bed to the floor and threw himself down upon it near an open window in the front of the house. The gang had scattered, surrounding the house. d.i.c.k Brewer had taken refuge behind a thirty-inch sawlog near the mill, just one hundred and forty steps from the window near which this fierce little fighting man was lying, wounded to death. Brewer raised his head just above the top of the sawlog, so that he could see what Roberts was doing. His eyes were barely visible above the top of the log, yet at that distance the heavy bullet from Roberts' buffalo gun struck him in the eye and blew off the top of his head.

Billy the Kid was now leader of the posse. His first act was to call his men together and ride away from the spot, his whole outfit whipped by a single man! There was a corpse behind them, and wounded men with them.

Thirty-six hours later there was another corpse at Blazer's Mill. The doctor, brought over from Fort Stanton, could do nothing for Roberts, and he died in agony. Johnnie Patten, sawyer and rough carpenter, made one big coffin, and in this the two, Brewer and Roberts, were buried side by side. "I couldn't make a very good coffin," says Patten, "so I built it in the shape of a big V, with no end piece at the foot. We just put them both in together." And there they lie to-day, grim grave-company, according to the report of this eye-witness, who would seem to be in a position indicating accuracy. Emil Blazer, a son of Dr.

Blazer, still lives on the site of this fierce little battle, and he says that the two dead men were buried separately, but side by side, Brewer to the right of Roberts. The little graveyard holds a few other graves, none with headboards or records, and gra.s.s now grows above them all.

The building where Roberts stood at bay is now gone, and another adobe is erected a little farther back from the raceway that once fed the old mountain sawmill, but which now is not used as of yore. The old flume still exists where the water ran over onto the wheel, and the site of the old mill, which is now also torn down, is easily traceable. When the author visited the spot in the fall of 1905, all these points were verified and the distances measured. It was a long shot that Roberts made, and down hill. The vitality of the man who made it, his courage, and his tenacity alike of life and of purpose against such odds make Roberts a man remembered with admiration even to-day in that once b.l.o.o.d.y region.