To Hell on a Fast Horse (2 page)

The towering Garrett then ordered the delegation to get down off the train, and they slunk back to the crowd empty-handed.

Garrett next turned to his prisoners, telling them that he and his deputies were going to fight back if anyone tried to enter the car. More important, he told the prisoners he would arm them if a gun battle broke out. He would need their help to defend the car.

The Kid’s eyes glistened at that. “All right, Pat,” he said. “All I
want is a six-shooter. There is no danger, though. Those fellows won’t fight.”

Miguel Otero then addressed the mob. A stocky fellow, he was a forwarding and commission merchant and prominent political figure in the Territory. He urged the men to let Garrett carry out his official duty. Otero also cautioned them about the consequences of delaying the U.S. mail, but it is hard to imagine that a matter as small as that had much effect on those bent on seeing “Dirty Dave” hang.

The standoff on the tracks had now stretched to about forty-five minutes when postal inspector J. Fred Morley approached Garrett.

“I have been an engineer,” he told the lawman, “and if you will let me, I’ll slip down through the mob, get in the cab, pull the throttle open, and we’ll get out of here.”

“Good, go do it,” Garrett said.

Morley made his way to the locomotive, but he did more than simply pull the throttle open—he hit it
wide
open. The heavy wheels spun, grabbed hold, and the cars lurched ahead. The mob was stunned and did not move. Realizing there was nothing they could do to stop the train now, the men who were holding the locomotive’s engineer and fireman released their prisoners, who quickly jumped aboard the moving train.

“By the time we got to the end of the siding,” remembered Jim East, “it seemed like we were going a mile a minute, and the Mexicans stood there with their mouths open.”

The
Gazette
reporter watched as Billy, still leaning out his window, waved his hat, grandly inviting the reporter to call on him in Santa Fe. He then shouted “Adios” and disappeared.

In an instant, all the tension inside the smoking car vanished. “There was plenty of whisky in the car,” Miller remembered, “and a deal of it was drank.”

The train stalled at the top of Glorieta Pass, just twenty-one miles from Santa Fe, where Garrett got lunch for his prisoners, and Billy
amused his fellow passengers by demonstrating just how far he could bite into a piece of pie.

Miller studied the Kid intently: “His costume was quite on the Mexican order, his language much the same. His curly brown locks and handsome face would have attracted attention anywhere, and, while looking at him and listening to his conversation, it was difficult to believe that I was in the presence of such a red-handed murderer.”

Before the train reached the territorial capital, Billy casually remarked to Garrett, “Those who live by the sword, die by the sword.”

The train finally pulled up to the Santa Fe depot that evening, where Garrett turned over his prisoners to Deputy U.S. Marshal Charles Conklin. It had been just eight short weeks since Garrett had won the sheriff ’s election in Lincoln County (his term would not officially begin until January 1, 1881). In that time, despite a great expanse of territory and bitterly cold temperatures and heavy snow, his posse had tracked down the Kid and his cohorts, killing Tom Folliard and Charlie Bowdre in the process. It was a remarkable feat, accomplished by someone with absolutely no prior training as an officer of the law. But Garrett’s great triumph was not capturing the Kid and his gang.

His moment had come when he faced down that lynch mob led by the San Miguel County sheriff. Garrett had grit and the power to intimidate, that was clear, and he had a sense of duty. Of utmost importance to Garrett was keeping one’s word—he detested liars. That he put his life—and the lives of his men—at risk to keep the promise made to his prisoners says a lot about the man’s character. There are other times in Pat Garrett’s life when his sense of right and wrong can be questioned, his actions faulted, but on that tense December day in Las Vegas, Garrett’s moral compass held steady on true north.

IF BILLY HAD DIFFICULTY
taking in his sudden celebrity, he would have been stunned to learn that not only was he making national
headlines, but his talents as a bona fide outlaw had grown to truly impressive proportions. Thanks to the telegraph, news of his capture appeared from Chicago to Boston with a delay of just twenty-four hours. The report on the front page of the
Chicago Daily Tribune
of December 29 was typical: “The notorious gang of outlaws composed of about 25 men who, under the leadership of ‘Billy the Kid,’ have for the past six months overrun Eastern New Mexico, murdering and committing other deeds of outlawry, was broken up last Saturday morning by the killing of two and the capturing of four others, including the leader.” The
Tribune
article then recounted the thrilling details of the Las Vegas standoff.

Just days later, the
Illustrated Police News,
a weekly published in Boston, ran a genuine portrait of the “Boy Chief of New Mexico Outlaws and Cattle Thieves.” The engraving was based on a tintype the Kid had made at Fort Sumner some months before. The
Police News
’s depiction of a smirking Billy in rumpled frontier garb, posed with Winchester and six-gun, was much more than a journalistic coup; it was the first appearance of what would become one of America’s most iconic images.

Billy’s capture and confinement became the talk of the territorial capital. On December 30, the
Santa Fe New Mexican
carried no less than four news items pertaining in some way to the Kid. Their focus that day was the Santa Fe jail, a dismal, one-story adobe building on Water Street, two blocks’ distance southwest of the plaza. Well aware of Billy’s reputation as an escape artist, the jail’s custodians were paying careful attention to their noted prisoner. “He is shut up in a stone cell to which even the light of day is denied admittance,” the
New Mexican
reported, “and only when some of the jailers or officers enter can he be seen at all.” Yet Billy remained cheerful and, according to the newspaper, still hoped to pull off an escape.

The Kid received a steady stream of visitors. The Otero brothers, Page and Miguel Antonio, brought him chewing gum, candy,
pies, nuts, tobacco, and cigarette papers. The Oteros had ridden on the train with Garrett and the prisoners to Santa Fe, and like many others, they had become fascinated by the outlaw. Nearly the same age as Billy, Miguel was destined to become the first Hispanic territorial governor of New Mexico and would one day publish his own book on the outlaw. Other visitors came on official business, such as the postal inspector who interviewed Billy and his fellow prisoners in early January 1881, about several stagecoach holdups. “William Bonney (alias ‘The Kid’) is held for murder,” the inspector wrote his supervisor. “He is supposed to have killed some 11 men, but that is an exaggeration, four or five would be quite enough. He is about 21 or 23 years of age born in New York City, and a graduate of the streets.”

Engraving of Billy the Kid from the
Illustrated Police News,
Boston, January 8,1881.
Robert G. McCubbin Collection

Between entertaining his guests and the numerous gawkers, Billy devoted his energies to getting out of jail, in more ways than one. “I would like to see you for a few moments if you can spare [the] time,” the Kid wrote Governor Lew Wallace. No one bothered to tell Billy that Wallace was not then in Santa Fe. No matter, when Wallace returned to the capital in early February, he made no effort to visit the jail’s celebrity prisoner.

Billy had no money to pay for legal help, so he agreed to sell his renowned bay mare to lawyer Edgar Caypless. Taking possession of the horse was another matter entirely. Posse member Frank Stewart had made a big show of the Kid’s mare when he came into Las Vegas with the captured outlaws in December, telling everyone how Billy had
given
the animal to him. At that time, Stewart and Garrett were the toast of the town, and when hotel proprietor W. Scott Moore presented Stewart with a beautiful factory-engraved Colt pistol valued at $60, Stewart gave the Kid’s mare to Moore’s wife, Mary. The mare and its transfer to Mrs. Moore made for a cheery piece in the
Las Vegas Gazette,
which said that Mary Moore “now has the satisfaction of owning one of the best, if not the best animal in the territory.” Caypless filed a suit of replevin against W. Scott Moore, but the judgment
he eventually won did not come until July—far too late to do Billy any good.

Billy was still hoping he could pull off an escape—that is, until the surprise jail visit of Sheriff Romulo Martínez and Deputy U.S. Marshal Tony Neis. The officers, it turns out, had offered some easy money to one of the jail’s inmates to keep an eye on the other prisoners. Having been tipped off by this informant, Martínez and Neis arrived at the jail that day around suppertime. The Kid and his cohorts, Rudabaugh, Billy Wilson, and Edward Kelly, watched as the lawmen went straight to one of the beds, found it packed full with dirt and rocks, and then dragged the ticking aside to discover an impressively large hole in the floor. Had it not been for the snitch, Billy would have been a free man in one or two nights more. Instead, he got extra shackles and closer scrutiny from his guards.

On March 2, Billy again wrote to Governor Wallace. “I wish you would come down to the jail and see me. [I]t will be to your interest to come and see me. I have some letters which date back two years, and there are Parties who are very anxious to get them but I shall not dispose of them until I see you. [T]hat is if you will come imediately [
sic
].” The Kid’s baiting of Wallace was met with continued silence from the Governor’s Palace. “I knew what he meant,” Wallace related years later. “He referred to the note he received from me [at Lincoln in 1879]…. He was threatening to publish it, if I refused to see him.”

Two days later, Billy sent yet another letter to the governor: “I Expect you have forgotten what you promised me, this month two years ago, but I have not and I think you had ought to have come and seen me as I requested you to. I have done everything that I promised you I would, and you have done nothing that you promised me….[I]t looks to me like I am getting left in the cold. I am not treated right by [U.S. Marshal] Sherman, he 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, Not even an Attorney. I guess they mean to send me up
without giving me any show, but they will have a nice time doing it. I am not intirely without friends.”

Billy was to be transported nearly three hundred miles south to Mesilla, where he would be put on trial in a change of venue to Doña Ana County. On March 27, Billy wrote Wallace one last frantic note from the Santa Fe jail: “for the
last
time
I ask, Will you keep your promise. I start below tomorrow send awnser [
sic
] by bearer.” No answer came from the governor, except for the implied one the following day when the Kid and Billy Wilson were escorted onto a southbound train under armed guard. Accompanying the prisoners were the Kid’s sometime-attorney, Ira Leonard, twenty-nine-year-old U.S. Deputy Marshal Neis, and the Santa Fe chief of police, Francisco “Frank” Chavez. Fearing trouble from the Territory’s considerable lynch-happy element, officials tried to keep the two Billys’ impending departure quiet, but word got out anyway. Upon reaching Rincon, the last station on the line, some six or seven troublemakers were waiting for them. Neis, armed with a shotgun and a six-shooter, and Chavez, cradling a rifle, hurried the Kid and Wilson off the train and toward the shelter of a nearby saloon.

“Let’s take them fellows anyhow,” barked one of the roughs.

“You don’t get them without somebody being killed,” Neis shouted back.

Once inside the saloon, Neis secured a back room where his party could wait it out until their stage was leaving the next morning for Las Cruces and Mesilla. But just outside, and making no effort to conceal their conversation, the roughs were doing their best to talk themselves into making a grab for the prisoners.

Billy became visibly shaken; Neis was clearly not as stable as Garrett in this kind of situation. Imagining that the mob’s goal might actually be to
free
the Kid and Wilson, Neis yelled that he would shoot the two prisoners before allowing them to be taken from his custody. Finally, some levelheaded bystanders talked sense into the crowd,
convincing them that the guards could not be overpowered short of bloodshed. The mob dispersed and their grumblings faded away. After a calm but restless night, the officers and prisoners boarded the stage the next morning unmolested.

At Las Cruces, thirty-three miles southeast of Rincon, Billy again attracted a crowd, but these townspeople were more curious than anything else. It was not every day that the Territory’s most notorious criminal made an appearance on Main Street, and the certainty that he would hang before long made the Kid even more of a not-to-be-missed spectacle. One of the gawkers asked, “Which is Billy the Kid?” Before anyone in the party could answer, Billy placed his hand on Ira Leonard’s shoulder, and with a straight face exclaimed, “This is the man.”