To Hell on a Fast Horse (31 page)

Garrett’s encounter with the Uvalde County cattleman and subsequent employment as a cowboy is according to W. Skelton Glenn, “Pat Garrett as I Knew Him on the Buffalo Ranges,” typescript, Box 16, Leon C. Metz Papers. The Glenn manuscript is a significant source for information on Garrett, particularly his time as a buffalo hunter. However, Glenn developed a strong animosity toward his former partner; thus, his manuscript should be used with caution. Also, it is apparent that Glenn plagiarized a small portion of Emerson Hough’s
The Story of the Outlaw
.

For the killing of Joe Briscoe, I have relied heavily on the Glenn manuscript. I have made one change to the Garrett quotation that precipitates his fight with Briscoe. In the manuscript, Glenn has Garrett saying, “No one but a damn Irishman would have more sense than to try to wash anything in that water.” This is, of course, not the slight that Garrett obviously intended, and I have substituted “Anyone” for “No one.” See also Robert N. Mullin, “Pat Garrett—Two Forgotten Killings,”
Password
to (Summer 1965): 57–59; and Meadows,
Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid as I Knew Them,
102.

Garrett spoke of meeting Bat Masterson in an interview published as “He Shot Billy the Kid,”
Kansas City Journal,
July 20, 1902, clipping typescript in Maurice G. Fulton Collection, University of Arizona Library Special Collections, Tucson. For Wyatt Earp’s recollections of Garrett, see Stuart N. Lake,
Wyatt Earp, Frontier Marshal
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1931), 169, 210.

For reports on the decimation of the Texas bison herds and estimates on hides received, see the
Galveston Daily News,
Mar. 12 and May 3, 1878.

For more on the Glenn-Garrett party’s troubles with the Comanches, see Metz,
Pat Garrett,
18–19.

Garrett and Glenn’s abandonment of the buffalo range and arrival at Fort Sumner
is described by Glenn, “Pat Garrett as I Knew Him,” and Hough,
The Story of the Outlaw,
294–295. Glenn claimed that the trip to New Mexico Territory was undertaken to locate a new hunting camp in the Pecos Valley. But as it is well documented that the bison was essentially nonexistent in the region by this time, it is hard to take his explanation seriously.

For Lucien Maxwell and his family, see Lawrence R. Murphy,
Lucien Bonaparte Maxwell: Napoleon of the Southwest
(Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1983).

My description of Garrett upon his arrival at Fort Sumner is from Emerson Hough, “The Imitation Bad Man,”
Washington Post,
Jan. 21, 1906; and Glenn, “Pat Garrett as I Knew Him.”

The Garrett quotes about getting a job and his exchange with Pete Maxwell are as quoted in Hough,
The Story of the Outlaw
, 295–296.

That Garrett and his companions had shacked up with some Hispanic women at Fort Sumner is from Frank Coe, interview with J. Evetts Haley, San Patricio, New Mexico, Aug. 14, 1927, J. Evetts Haley Collection. Coe commented that, “The buffalo hunters were the hardest set of men I believe I ever saw.”

Paco Anaya, a resident of Fort Sumner beginning in 1876, remembered Garrett’s arrival very differently. He states, in an account written in 1931, that Pat showed up at Maxwell’s corrals in August 1878 looking “like a tramp.” Garrett pitched in with the branding for two days, but he was not paid for his labors and he was never hired by Maxwell as a cowboy. Paulita Maxwell Jaramillo offers still another version, stating that Garrett went up to Pete Maxwell’s house and asked for a job as a cowboy. She claimed she stood behind her brother when he greeted Garrett at the door. See A. P. “Paco” Anaya,
I Buried Billy,
ed. James H. Earle (College Station, Tex.: Creative Publishing Company, 1991), 74–75. Paulita’s account, as well as her description of Garrett, is in Walter Noble Burns,
The Saga of Billy the Kid
(Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Page & Co., 1926), 196.

The weekly Fort Sumner
bailes
are noted by Paulita in Burns,
The Saga of Billy the Kid,
185.

Metz,
Pat Garrett,
40, mentions the hog business. Burns,
The Saga of Billy the Kid,
171, states that Garrett partnered with Beaver Smith in a store and saloon. Paco Anaya says that Garrett partnered with a Sam Lock in a “little cantina” at Fort Sumner. Anaya may be referring to Fred S. Locke, who is enumerated in the 1880 U.S. Census as a thirty-eight-year-old “Saloon Keeper” living in East Las Vegas. Anaya is the source for the story of Garrett butchering stolen cattle. See Paco Anaya’s
I Buried Billy,
76–77.

The John Meadows quote about Garrett being a “working devil” is from his interview with J. Evetts Haley, Alamogordo, New Mexico, June 13, 1936, J. Evetts Haley Collection. Meadows, an important source for information on Billy and Garrett, was a friend of both men. He served as a deputy sheriff under Garrett beginning in 1896.

The newspaper mentions of Billy’s age that I am referencing appear in
Newman’s Thirty-Four
of Jan. 26, 1881, and
Newman’s Semi-Weekly
of Apr. 2, 1881.
Newman’s Thirty-Four
stated that it got its information on Billy’s age from the
White Oaks Golden Era,
adding that “it ought to know.” Some authors have asserted that the November 23 birth date was assigned to the Kid because it was the same as Garrett’s ghostwriter
Ash Upson’s. However, I have been unable to locate any
contemporary
document that verifies that Upson’s birthday was indeed November 23. The earliest reference I have for that date is Walter L. Upson,
The Upson Family in America
(New Haven, Conn.: The Tuttle, Morehouse & Taylor Co., 1940), 179. It has been argued that Upson, who boarded in the Kid’s household in Silver City, remembered Billy’s birthday precisely because it was the same as his own. All of which leads nowhere.

Many historians and buffs have attempted to sort out Billy’s childhood; their works are cited in my bibliography. See particularly Jerry Weddle,
Antrim Is My Stepfather’s Name : The Boyhood of Billy the Kid
(Tucson: Arizona Historical Society, 1993); Waldo E. Koop, “Billy the Kid: The Trail of a Kansas Legend,”
The Trail Guide
9 (Sept. 1964):1-19; Robert N. Mullin, “The Boyhood of Billy the Kid,” in Frederick W. Nolan, ed.,
The Billy the Kid Reader
(Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2007), 214-224; and Jack DeMattos, “The Search for Billy the Kid’s Roots,”
Real West
21 (Nov. 1978): 12-19, 39.

Billy’s brother, Joseph, is found in the 1880 U.S. Census for Silverton, San Juan County, Colorado, as a seventeen-year-old miner with a birthplace of New York. He is enumerated as Joseph Antrim, and his father’s birthplace is also given as New York. His mother’s is given as England. Interestingly, some former schoolmates of the McCarty brothers remembered Joseph as being the eldest. Also, newspaper accounts from the early 1880s stated that Joseph was a half brother of Henry.

For Wichita, see L. Curtis Wood,
Dynamics of Faith: Wichita, 1870-1897
(Wichita: Wichita State University, 1969); Stan Hoig,
Cowtown Wichita and the Wild, Wicked West
(Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2007); and 1870 U.S. Census for Wichita Township, Sedgwick County, Kansas. My source for the number of longhorns that crossed at Wichita during the 1870 season is the
Galveston Daily News,
July 7, 1870.

The quote regarding Denver’s healthful qualities is from
The Alton Telegraph,
Alton, Illinois, Feb. 17, 1871.

The Antrim-McCarty marriage was documented in both the county marriage book and the records of the Presbyterian Church. Copies of these marriage records are in the William H. Bonney Collection (AC 017-P), Fray Angélico Chávez History Library, Palace of the Governors, Santa Fe.

The observations of the
Santa Fe Sentinel
on the rush to Silver City are from the
Galveston Daily News
, June 25, 1873. Some accounts claim that the Antrims first settled in the mining camp of Georgetown, eighteen miles northeast of Silver City. If so, it was a very brief sojourn, no more than a few weeks, if not a few days. See Weddle,
Antrim Is My Stepfather’s Name,
2

My source for wages in Silver City is
The M’Kean County Miner
, Smethport, Pennsylvania, Apr. 3, 1873.

The Louis Abraham and Harry Whitehill quotes are from Weddle,
Antrim Is My Stepfather’s Name,
6; and Mullin, “The Boyhood of Billy the Kid,” 221.

Harry Whitehill stated that Henry McCarty was the “Head Man in the [minstrel] show,” which would have made him the interlocutor. See Robert C. Toll,
Blacking Up : The Minstrel Show in Nineteenth-Century America
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1974).

My sources for Ash Upson are Maurice G. Fulton to Eve Ball, no date, Box 20,
Folder 21, Eve Ball Papers; Mrs. Jerry Dunaway to Eve Ball, Lovington, New Mexico, Feb. 29, 1948, interview typescript, Box 11, Folder 2, Eve Ball Papers; and James D. Shinkle,
Reminiscences of Roswell Pioneers
(Roswell, N.Mex.: Hall-Poorbaugh Press, 1965), 8-24.

Chauncey Truesdell as quoted in Weddle,
Antrim Is My Stepfather’s Name
, 15.

For Billy’s planned heist of the candy/furniture store, see Allie Anderson, “Billy the Kid,” typescript, Box 4, Folder 2, Eve Ball Papers.

The Harvey H. Whitehill interview appeared in the
Silver City Enterprise
, Jan. 3, 1902. My description of Whitehill comes from William C. McGaw, “Billy Was Just Another Brat at Silver City,”
El Paso Herald-Post
, Nov. 5, 1960.

The robbery of the Chinese laundry and Billy’s subsequent jail escape were reported in the
Grant County Herald
, Silver City, Sept. 5 and 26, 1875. The operators of the laundry, Charley Sun and Sam Chong, are enumerated in the 1880 U.S. Census. Sun, thirty years old, was still residing in Silver City with his wife and two daughters; occupation, “Washing & Ironing.” Chong, twenty-five years old and single, had relocated to Tucson, Arizona, where his occupation was “works in Laundry.” The quote from Sheriff Whitehill’s daughter appears in Josie Bishop, “Wild Women of the West,”
The American Weekly,
Dec. 15, 1946. Josie was not born until 1875, the same year as the Kid’s arrest, so she is not speaking here from firsthand observation. She also claimed to have played with Billy the Kid as a child, which is patently false.

Mary Chase’s recollections of her former student were related by her daughter, Patience Glennon, to Bill McGaw,
El Paso Herald-Post,
Dec. 17, 1960.

For more on Billy’s activities in Arizona Territory, see Weddle,
Antrim Is My Stepfather’s Name
; and Lee Cotten, “True Tales of Billy the Kid: The Kid in Arizona, 1875-1877,”
The Kid
(Mar. 1990): 7-15 and ( July 1990): 10-19.

The William Antrim quote ordering Billy to “get out” is from Harry Whitehill as quoted in Weddle,
Antrim Is My Stepfather’s Name,
31.

The reference to the Kid being a “lightweight” at the Hooker ranch is from Weddle,
Antrim Is My Stepfather’s Name,
35.

For information on John R. Mackie, see Frederick Nolan, “First Blood: Another Look at the Killing of ‘Windy’ Cahill,” in Nolan, ed.,
The Billy the Kid Reader
, 226-227.

The quote from Miles L. Wood about Billy and Mackie is from an undated manuscript by Wood in the Robert G. McCubbin Collection, Santa Fe, New Mexico.

It is significant that Billy was overtaken by the Camp Grant troopers near McMillen’s Camp. Researcher Jerry Weddle determined that one of the miners at McMillen’s Camp at this time was none other than William Antrim. Henry’s stepfather was back in Silver City, New Mexico, by February 24, 1877. See Weddle,
Antrim Is My Stepfather’s Name
, 36 and 64 n. 63.

The original complaint of Lewis C. Hartman, dated Feb. 16, 1877, is in the Robert G. McCubbin Collection. The complaint is the first written reference to Billy’s soon-to-be-famous sobriquet.

Miles Wood’s account of his arrest of Billy and Mackie at Hotel de Luna and the difficult task of keeping Billy locked up is quoted from Weddle,
Antrim Is My Stepfather’s Name
, 39 and 41.

For “Windy” Cahill, see Philip J. Rasch,
Trailing Billy the Kid
, ed. Robert K. DeArment (Laramie, Wyo.: National Association for Outlaw and Lawman History, 1995), 182-193; 1870 U.S. Census for Camp Crittenden, Pima County, Arizona Territory; and Statement of Second Lieutenant William J. Ross regarding discharge of Francis Cahill, Prescott, Arizona, Nov. 2, 1874, Yavapai County Board of Supervisors (RC 113), Box 1, Folder 1, Arizona State Library, Archives & Public Records, Phoenix.

Gus Gildea is a key source for what happened between Billy and Cahill in Atkins’s saloon, including the exchange of words between the two as they struggled on the floor. Gildea’s recollections are found in J. Fred Denton, “Billy the Kid’s Friend Tells for First Time of Thrilling Incidents,”
Tucson Daily Citizen
, Mar. 28, 1931; and the
El Paso Herald-Post
, July 12, 1934.

The Garrett quote about Billy refusing to stay whipped is from
The Authentic Life of Billy,
the Kid, 9.

Cahill’s deathbed deposition appeared in Tucson’s
Arizona Weekly Star
of Aug. 23, 1877. It is reproduced in Cotten, “True Tales of Billy the Kid: The Kid in Arizona,”
The Kid
( July 1990): 10.

Chauncey Truesdell claimed to have witnessed the last meeting of Billy and his brother, Joseph. He has Henry arriving at the Nicolai farm with two Indian companions, which seems far-fetched. See Truesdell as quoted in Weddle,
Antrim Is My Stepfather’s Name
, 46-47.

Billy’s former teacher related to her daughter many details about Billy’s visit to her home in Georgetown, including how Billy told her of his tearful meeting with brother Joseph and their good-bye kiss. See the
El Paso Herald-Post
, Dec. 17, 1960.