The Pot Thief Who Studied Billy the Kid (38 page)

Thanks to the best whiskey I ever drank, I slept soundly on the couch. Okay, it may have been the quantity of whiskey rather than the quality that aided my sleep, but I felt refreshed in the morning.

We drove to Lincoln and had breakfast at the
The Wortley Hotel
, actual motto:
No Guest
s Gunned Down in Over 100 Years.
ÀYears.

Lincoln was
the county seat of the largest county in the United States until other counties were carved out of it.
The town faded into obscurity and was replaced as count
y seat by Carri
zozo. The
historical
buildings were eventually taken over by the state as a museum.
Be
c
ause
Lincoln
ha
d the courthouse, jail, sheriff’
s office and
saloons
in its heyday
, it was als
o the place where many
e
pisodes
of the Lincoln County War
played out, including Billy the Kid’s
most
famous jail break.

I asked our waiter about it, and he was happy to oblige.
Because
Lincoln is
now
more
a museum
than a town
,
everyone there is a tourist guide either formally or informally.

He point
ed
across the street.

“Billy was over there wearing
shackles
and waiting to be hanged.
Marshall Bob O
linger
was
sitting at this very table.
Billy was being guarded by
Deputy James Bell
.
Billy ask
ed Bell to take him to the outhouse behind the
courthouse.
When they
got back inside the courthouse
, a pistol shot was heard.
Bell ran out of the
courthouse
an
d fell dead from a bullet wound.”

Susannah said, “I’ll bet someone hid a
pistol in the outhouse so Billy
could get it.”

“Yep, that’s
what most people figure. Billy
then gets Ol
inger's shotgun
from the armory and positions himself by
that window,” he says, again pointing across the street.

“Olinger jumped up
from this table
when he heard the shot and charged outside
.
‘
Did Bell kill the Kid?
’
he yelled out.
A man named
Godfrey
Gauss
re
plied
, ‘No,
The Kid has killed Bell
.’ Billy called out from the window, ‘
Hello Bob
’
. O
l
inger
sees the shotgun
and replies to Gauss, ‘
Yes, and he's killed me too
’. Which Billy
does by blasting him with both
barrel
s.”

Susannah shuddered.

“How c
ould he do all that in shackles?
À
” I asked.

“He was famous
for having thin wrists. He
slipped the
shackles off with ease
.”

“Olinger and Bell must not have known that,” said S
usannah. “It was smart of Billy
to leave the shackles on until h
e was ready to make his move. Ga
ve them a false sense of security.”

Our wait
er told us Billy threw the shot
gun through the window onto Olingers body then went back to the armory for
a Winchester rifle, two pistols and two cartridg
e belts loaded with ammunition.

“Q
uite a crowd ha
d
gathered
by that point. Billy
tal
ked to them from the balcon
y, telling them he hadn’t planned
to kill Bell
. He was just going to lock him in the cell. But Bell ran
,
so Billy said he was left with no choice. He also t
old
them he d
idn’t
want to kill anyone else, but he w
ould
if anyone
tried to
interfere with his escape.
The manager of this hotel
grab
b
ed a gun to stop the escape but was
restrained
by two friends with cooler heads. If our manage
r
tried to do that today, no one on the staff wou
l
d lift a finger,” he sa
id
with a scowl.

“That’s awful,” Susannah said.

He g
ave
us a big smile. “
Just kidding.
We
all love
Vic and Cathy
.”

“So he got away?” I asked.

“Yeah, he took a horse
belonging to Billy Burt
, the county clerk. He said to the crowd, ‘
Tell Billy Burt I'll send his pony back, a
nd don't look for me this side o
f Ireland.
Adios
, boys
’.
And he rode out of town singing.”

We walked across to the courthouse museum
and paid the five dollar admission fee. Susannah studied the various old artifacts while I read the
letter
s
exchange
d between Lew Wallace and Billy
the Kid.

One from Billy dated
March 4, 1881
read as follows:

To
Gov. Lew Wallace

Dear Sir

I wrote
y
ou a little note the day before yesterday but have received no answer. I
e
xpect you have forgotten what you promised me, this
m
onth two years ago, but I have not and I think
y
ou had ought to have come and seen me as I requested you to. I have done everything that I promised you I would and
y
ou have done nothing that
y
ou promised me.

I think when
y
ou think the matter over
, y
ou will come down and
s
ee me, and I can then
e
xplain
e
verything to
y
ou.

Judge Leonard
p
assed through here on his way
e
ast in January and promised to come and
s
ee me on his way back, but he did not fulfill his
p
romise. It looks to me like I am getting left in the
c
old. I am not treated right by Sherman
.
H
e lets Every Stranger that comes to see me through Curiosity in to see me, but will not let a Single one of my friends in,
n
ot even an Attorney.

I guess they mean to
s
end me up without giving me any Show but they will have a nice time doing it. I am not
e
ntirely without friends.

I shall
e
xpect to
s
ee you some time today.

Patiently Waiting
,
I am truly Yours Respect
fully.

Wm. H. Bonney

Another one started:

Sir, I will keep the appointment I made but be sure and have men come that you can depend on
.
I am not afraid to die like a man fighting but I would not like to be killed like a dog unarmed.

I was struck by the simpl
e
prose of
this
young man who had only two years of formal schooling.
In my opinion
, both his writing and his behavior were more forthright
than Lew Wallace.

39

We left Lincoln and
headed west on U.S 70. About halfway through the Mescalero Apache Reservation we turned left on NM 244 up to Cloudcroft. My parents used to rent a cabin there in the summer when it was too hot in Albuquerque. At almost 9,000 feet
, it’s never hot in Cloudcroft.

I told
Susannah
about my conversation with Cactus Truesdell.

She was giving me one of those looks. “You are so gullible. To begin
w
ith, there is no way his father went to school with Billy the Kid
. Billy
die
d
in the nine
teenth century.”

“It was
late
in the
nine
teenth century. Cactus is over eighty. His father was
also
over eighty when he died.
So the
two of them stretch back 160 years.”