To Hell on a Fast Horse (35 page)

The
Daily New Mexican
for May 1 through May 3 contains the coverage of Billy’s escape from Lincoln. For examples of the varied newspapers that carried the Kid’s escape on their front pages, see the
Chicago Tribune,
May 5, 1881;
The Helena Independent,
Helena, Montana, May 18, 1881; and
The Janesville Daily Gazette,
Janesville, Wisconsin, May 5, 1881.

The quote from the anonymous Lincoln correspondent cautioning Governor Wallace appears in the
Daily New Mexican
of May 3, 1881, as does Wallace’s reward notice for the Kid.

The story of Governor Wallace practicing his pistol shooting at the Palace, previously unknown, comes from the
Chicago Daily Tribune,
Mar. 13, 1892. It was related by someone who claimed to have been with Wallace in Santa Fe, although the storyteller’s name is not revealed in the article.

For Garrett’s feelings of guilt in the deaths of Olinger and Bell, see his
Authentic Life of Billy, The Kid,
123.

Pat Garrett served as the executor of Bob Olinger’s estate. The estate inventory, prepared by Garrett, was brief: one wallet with papers, no value; one shotgun, Whitney patent (serial #903), broken, no value; one Elgin watch (serial #979197), value one dollar; one set clothes, no value. Interestingly, there is no mention of Olinger’s revolver in the inventory. According to Eve Ball, his revolver, field glasses, and gauntlets were presented to Lily Casey, with whom he is said to have been engaged. See Lily Klasner,
My Girlhood Among Outlaws,
ed. Eve Ball (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1972), 185 and 188. The wallet and papers Olinger had on him the day he was killed, complete with bloodstains, are on display in the Lincoln County Clerk’s Office, Carrizozo, New Mexico.

Garrett’s words to Hough that he knew he would have to kill the Kid are quoted from Emerson Hough,
The Story of the Outlaw: A Study of the Western Desperado
(New York: The Outing Publishing Company, 1907), 305.

Barney Mason’s efforts in tracking the Kid and his uncomfortable encounter with the outlaw are chronicled in Garrett,
Authentic Life of Billy, The Kid,
124; the
Las Vegas Gazette,
May 12 and 15, 1881; the
Las Vegas Morning Gazette,
June 16, 1881; and the
Las Vegas Daily Optic,
May 14, 1881. Although the majority of accounts agree that Billy stole Montgomery Bell’s horse at Fort Sumner, Frank T. Encinias wrote that Saval Gutiérrez stole the horse for Billy’s use. Encinias obtained his information on the Kid from interviews with Saval Gutiérrez, Jesus Silva, Jose Lobato, and several other Fort Sumner Hispanos. The interesting Encinias account is only available in a rare untitled and undated pamphlet.

The news report claiming that Billy was hanging around Fort Sumner because of a girlfriend was published in the
Chicago Tribune,
June 13, 1881.

For the Billy/Paulita relationship, see Frederick Nolan, “The Private Life of Billy the Kid,”
True West
47 (July 2000): 38–39. After receiving the news of Billy’s Lincoln escape, Sheriff James W. Southwick wrote Garrett to inform the lawman that while
Billy was incarcerated in Mesilla, he had shown Southwick a letter from “his Girl a Miss Maxwell.” Because she was “very much struck on Billy,” Southwick suggested that Garrett keep a close watch on her. See James W. Southwick to E. A. Brininstool, Springfield, Illinois, Sept. 18, 1920, Box 3G468, Folder 2, E. A. Brininstool Collection, Center for American History, University of Texas at Austin.

In an interview with author Walter Noble Burns, Paulita supposedly denied that she was Billy’s sweetheart. However, she told a different story to Miguel Antonio Otero in a 1926 interview, or so Otero claimed to a newspaper reporter in an article published on July 14, 1926, presumably in the
Santa Fe New Mexican
. My source is a clipping in the Charles Siringo Papers (AC 212), Fray Angélico Chávez History Library, Santa Fe.

Another Fort Sumner woman linked with Billy the Kid was Abrana García, whose son, José Patrocinio “Pat” García, was rumored to have been fathered by Billy. See Elbert A. García,
Billy the Kid’s Kid: The Hispanic Connection
(Santa Rosa, N.Mex.: Los Products Press, 1999).

Garrett’s comments regarding his purposeful respite in pursuing the Kid, as well as his doubts about the Kid’s presence at Fort Sumner, are in his
Authentic Life of Billy the Kid,
125.

For my description of the Kid’s death and the events immediately preceding, I have relied primarily on the firsthand accounts of Garrett, his deputy, John W. Poe, and contemporary newspaper reports from the
Daily New Mexican
and the
Las Vegas Daily Optic
. Garrett’s version is found in his July 15, 1881, report to the governor as published in the
Daily New Mexican,
July 19, 1881; his interview with the
Las Vegas Daily Optic,
July 18, 1881; his interview with the
Daily New Mexican,
July 21, 1881; his 1882 account as published in his
The Authentic Life of Billy, the Kid;
his interview that appeared in “Plucky Patrick Garrett,” a newspaper clipping dated Nov. 26, 1900, Pat Garrett Clippings File, Denver Public Library (possibly published in the
Denver Times-Sun
); his 1902 interview originally published in the
New York World
and copied in various forms in several other newspapers, including the
Kansas City Journal,
July 20, 1902,
Galveston Daily News,
Aug. 3, 1902, and the
Davenport Daily Republican,
Davenport, Iowa, Aug. 7, 1902; and his account as quoted in Hough,
The Story of the Outlaw,
307–311. John Poe’s version appears in
An Illustrated History of New Mexico
(Chicago: Lewis Publishing Co., 1895); his 1917 letter to Charles Goodnight, published in Nolan, ed.,
The Billy the Kid Reader,
331–338; and his own
The Death of Billy the Kid
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1933). I am skeptical of a great deal of Poe’s version of events. He claims much of the responsibility for the Kid’s demise, from getting Garrett to travel to Fort Sumner in the first place to then persuading Garrett to visit Maxwell on the night of July 14 (Poe does not address why he failed to seek out Maxwell himself while he was in Fort Sumner for several hours earlier in the day). I suspect that Poe, perhaps envious of the massive attention received by Garrett, purposely enhanced his role in the affair.

The importance of the U.S. mail in Garrett’s efforts to locate the Kid has generally been overlooked. In his July 15 report to the governor, Garrett wrote that he “had received several communications from persons in and about Fort Sumner, that William Bonny, alias the Kid, had been there, or in that vicinity for some time.” James B. Gillett, a former Texas Ranger and a friend of Garrett’s, wrote in 1923 that “Pat
Garrett told me out of his own mouth that a certain merchant in Fort Sumner had written him that the Kid was there hanging around Pete Maxwells, as Kid was stuck on one of Pet[e]s half breed daughters.” Garrett told the
Las Vegas Daily Optic,
in the interview cited above, that “the first definite information he received that the ‘Kid’ was at Fort Sumner was contained in a letter written to him by Manuel Brazil.” See James B. Gillett to E. A. Brininstool, Marfa, Texas, Feb. 21, 1923, Box 3G469, E. A. Brininstool Collection.

For information on Thomas “Kip” McKinney, see Nolan,
The West of Billy the Kid,
280; 1870 U.S. Census for Uvalde County, Texas; F. W. Grey,
Seeking Fortune in America
(London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1912), 110; and Frank M. King,
Wranglin’ the Past: The Reminiscences of Frank M. King
(Pasadena, Calif.: Trail’s End Publishing Co., 1946), 173. Interestingly, McKinney was a cousin of Tom Folliard, and on his deathbed, Folliard had asked Barney Mason to tell McKinney to write his grandmother back in Texas and inform her of his death. Of Garrett, Poe, and McKinney, only McKinney failed to leave a written account of the shooting of the Kid. However, James B. Gillett employed McKinney as a cowhand for “many months” at the Estado Land and Cattle Company, and Gillett wrote that McKinney “told about the same storey as Powe and Garrett” (Gillett to Brininstool, Feb. 21, 1923). A much less reliable source is one Howell Johnson, county attorney for Pecos County, Texas, who in 1933 claimed that Kip McKinney told him that McKinney and not Garrett had shot Billy (
El Paso Herald-Post,
Nov. 25, 1933). In recent years, historians and outlaw buffs have pounced upon a fanciful tale in Grey’s
Seeking Fortune in America
that has Garrett and McKinney tying and gagging Billy’s girlfriend (presumably Paulita) so that Garrett could then ambush the unsuspecting lover from behind a sofa. The historians and buffs infer that Grey got this account directly from McKinney, but Grey makes no such claim. Grey’s other whoppers include the assertion that the Kid was a “half-breed Indian” and that Billy supposedly “originated, or at least brought to perfection, the art of whirling a gun and shooting” (p. 118). Grey apparently did know Kip McKinney, but, needless to say, his book should be used with caution.

For information on the Colt and Winchester Garrett confiscated from Billy Wilson at Stinking Spring, see Mary’n Rosson, “The Gun That Killed Billy the Kid,”
Old West
14 (Winter 1977): 6–9, 32, 36–37.

There are conflicting accounts regarding Billy’s destination after leaving the peach orchard. Jesus Silva claimed Billy came to his dwelling. Paco Anaya preserved testimony from Celsa and Saval Gutiérrez wherein they said Billy came to their residence. The conversation I quote between Celsa and Billy is from Anaya,
I Buried Billy,
125–126. The Anaya/Gutiérrez account is supported by a 1951 signed affidavit from Celsa’s son, Candido, in which he said the Kid stopped in their home the night he was killed. Candido stated that he saw Billy pick up the butcher knife the outlaw was later killed with; the knife belonged to his mother. The Candido Gutiérrez affidavit is reproduced in Frederick Nolan, “The Saga of the Kid Butcher Knife,”
The Outlaw Gazette
(Billy the Kid Outlaw Gang, Inc.) 10 (Nov. 1997): 7.

There has been some debate over the years as to whether or not the Kid was armed with his pistol when he was shot by Garrett. Miguel Antonio Otero claimed that Jesus Silva and Deluvina Maxwell both stated to him “most positively” that Billy had only
his butcher knife when they first observed the body. However, Jesus Silva contradicted himself when he told newspaperman Jack Hull in 1938 that he saw Billy’s body with a knife in one hand and a pistol in the other. Remember, after he was confident that the Kid was dead, Garrett entered the room and at some point examined the Kid’s pistol to see if it had been fired. He would not then have placed the pistol back on the floor, which might explain why those who entered the room afterward saw only a butcher knife—that is, if we are to accept the claims of Deluvina and Silva on this matter, which I do not. It is ludicrous to think that the Kid would have gone anywhere without a firearm. And it is highly unlikely that the Kid would have confronted Deputy Poe if armed only with a butcher knife.

The best description of Deluvina Maxwell is found in a letter by Jack Potter written on Feb. 15, 1949, and published in Rose P. White, “Full Many a Flower…,”
The New Mexico Folklore Record
4 (1949–50): 15–16. Potter knew Deluvina in the 1880s. The Paulita Maxwell quote about Deluvina is in Burns,
Saga of Billy the Kid,
195. Deluvina was interviewed by J. Evetts Haley at Fort Sumner, June 24, 1927. Interestingly, in that interview she claimed that she did not see Billy’s body until the following morning. The interview is in the collections of the Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum, Canyon, Texas.

John Poe’s recollection regarding Paulita’s lack of emotion is from Walter Noble Burns’s rejected draft chapter for
Saga of Billy the Kid,
Box 16, Leon C. Metz Papers.

Although Garrett and others have referred to the jury that investigated the Kid’s death as a “coroner’s jury,” there was no coroner present. A copy of the handwritten verdict of the jury, written entirely in Spanish, is in the Frank W. Parker Papers, NMSRCA. Evidence that Saval Gutiérrez and fellow jury members José Silva and Lorenzo Jaramillo were illiterate is obtained from the fact that they did not sign their names to the verdict but instead made their marks next to their names.

Hispanic old-timers of Fort Sumner who were interviewed in the 1920s and 1930s about Billy’s death and its aftermath include Jesus Silva, Frank Lobato, Vicente Otero, and Anastacio Trujillo. See Otero,
The Real Billy the Kid,
155–158, and Jack Hull, “Only One Man Living Who Saw ‘Billy the Kid’ in Both Life and Death,”
Clovis News-Journal,
Clovis, New Mexico, July 13, 1938.

The account of the Kid’s funeral comes from an article by Jack Potter, who was not an eyewitness but claimed to have obtained his information from Fort Sumner residents in 1884. Potter’s account is reprinted in Nolan,
The Billy the Kid Reader,
339–342. In another article, Potter claimed that Billy’s grave marker bore the following words: “Billy the Kid (Bonney)/July 14, 1881.” He added that in the left-hand corner there appeared a small inscription in a woman’s handwriting (he does not explain how he identified the gender of the inscription’s author): “Dormir Bien Querido,” which Potter translated as “sleep well, dear one.” Potter, a popular New Mexico storyteller, seldom felt constrained by the truth. On a visit to the cemetery in January 1882, a special correspondent for the
Las Vegas Daily Optic
reported that the Kid’s marker contained only the stenciled words “Billy the Kid” the
Optic
article even provided a facsimile of the inscription. See Colonel Jack Potter, “Post-Mortem on Billy the Kid,”
Ranch Romances
73 (First May Number, 1937): 131–133; and Marc Simmons,
Stalking Billy the Kid: Brief Sketches of a Short Life
(Santa Fe: Sunstone Press, 2006), 175.