The year 1873 saw the introduction of two game-changing firearms—the Winchester Model 1873 lever-action rifle and the Colt M1873 Single Action Army (aka “Peacemaker”) revolver. What set them apart from the array of available arms was that they were among the first chambered for center-fire metallic cartridges to be used in tandem.

Each firearm initially used its own proprietary round. The Model 1873 was chambered for the .44-40 Winchester cartridge, which went on to become one of the most popular rounds in firearms history. Purpose-built for the U.S. Cavalry, the Peacemaker was initially designed with a 7½-inch barrel, for accuracy at longer ranges, and chambered for use with the hard-hitting .45 Colt round. Not to rest on its own laurels, Colt then offered civilian versions of its revolver chambered for Winchester’s increasingly popular .44-40 cartridge, as well as the latter’s .38-40 and .32-20 rounds, thus sparing anyone who owned both firearms from having to carry two different calibers of ammunition. As attested by the images on the following pages, everyone from lawmen and outlaws to everyday cowhands and shepherds to headline entertainers were soon snapping up both manufacturers’ Model 1873s.

Another aspect that set apart the 1873s was shrewd marketing, including testimonials from famed Westerners of the era. Winchester and Colt each advertised its guns through such motivated Western dealers as E.C. Meacham, of St. Louis, and Carlos Gove, of Denver. Winchester’s 1875 catalog featured praise from Wild West showman Buffalo Bill Cody, who wrote the company on behalf of prospective buyers, “For hunting, I pronounce your improved Winchester the boss.” Writer Ned Buntline, whose florid dime novels birthed many of the legends associated with Buffalo Bill, tirelessly hyped both the Winchester ’73 and the Colt Single Action Army. For much of his career Texas Ranger Frank Hamer, the man who in 1934 brought outlaws Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow to ground, carried a Colt Peacemaker he dubbed “Old Lucky.” Bill Tilghman, the famed U.S. marshal out of Oklahoma, was known to carry both a Winchester ’73 and a Peacemaker, as did notorious outlaws Billy the Kid and Pearl Hart, though clearly not to either manufacturer’s detriment. 

Winchester produced a whopping 720,000 Model 1873 rifles through 1923, while Colt rolled out more than 357,000 first-generation Single Action Army revolvers through 1940. By then both companies had claimed the title “The Gun That Won the West” for their respective Models 1873. The Peacemaker is still in production, and modern-day replicas of both firearms remain popular among present-day cowboy action shooters. They’ve certainly earned their reputation. 

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At least a half dozen times in his life Wyatt Earp placed himself in harm’s way by pinning a tin star to his lapel. He policed two Kansas cow towns—Wichita and Dodge City—before making headlines in Tombstone, Arizona Territory. Chroniclers also record later stints as a deputy in Kootenai County, Idaho, and Cibola, Ariz. But few recall the time Earp served as a lawman in frontier Alaska amid the Klondike Gold Rush.

By year’s end 1896 Earp had hit a low point. Financial woes had forced him and common-law wife Josephine Sarah Marcus (“Sadie” to Wyatt) to change addresses often in San Francisco, for a time even living with her parents. Then came a break, as he agreed to referee a high-profile heavyweight boxing match between up-and-coming Cornishman Bob Fitzsimmons and brawler Tom Sharkey that December 2. Things went bad from the start. As Earp climbed through the ropes into the ring, he revealed a concealed .45-caliber Colt revolver, which he had to surrender on the spot to a police captain before the crowd of 15,000.

In the eighth round Fitzsimmons landed a devastating uppercut, and Sharkey fell forward rather than backward, receiving what may have been an unintentional blow to the groin from Fitzsimmons. After ordering the fighters to their corners, Earp declared Sharkey the winner, citing Fitzsimmons’ foul. The crowd exploded with anger.

Fitzsimmons’ promoters took the decision to court, the boxer’s attorney claiming Earp had telegraphed friends to bet on Sharkey. Though the judge dismissed the baseless allegation as hearsay, the damage was done. Adding insult to injury, Earp was fined $50 for having carried the concealed pistol into the ring. 

His reputation sullied and pockets empty, Earp was desperate for an income. In stepped fate.

On July 14, 1897, the steamship Excelsior docked in San Francisco, disembarking gold-bearing prospectors rife with rumors of a major strike in Canada’s Yukon Territory. Two days later the steamer Portland unloaded “a ton of gold” in Seattle, confirming the rumors. At the time Wyatt and Sadie were in Yuma seeking funds for a mining venture. They sold everything they had for the passage to Alaska. 

Within months more than 40 ships sailed for Alaska from San Francisco alone. Many were derelicts scheduled to be broken up in shipyards.

By then Earp himself had become something of a derelict. Pushing 50, he had grown a belly and jowls, and his trademark handlebar mustache had begun to turn gray.

Other Old West derelicts would make their way to the Klondike. Denver con man Jefferson “Soapy” Smith told his cousin, “Alaska is the last West,” before heading north to terrorize Wrangell and Skagway. Serial adventurer Luther “Yellowstone” Kelly ventured to Alaska to map the interior. Lawman Frank Canton, John Clum of Tombstone and Geronimo fame, showman “Arizona Charlie” Meadows, Denver madam Mattie Silks and “Captain Jack” Crawford, the “Poet Scout” of the West, all went north.

Wyatt and Sadie had underestimated their travel costs, given gold rush prices, and were close to going broke as their ship approached Wrangell, Alaska.

Wrangell had always been a wild place. During the gold rush a flotilla of riverboats hauled prospectors and cargo from its port up the Stikine River into the Canadian interior. Town itself comprised a motley collection of 139 cedar plank and log structures. It also held a courthouse, a jail, a customhouse, a sawmill, a brewery, a boardinghouse, a restaurant, a handful of saloons, three stores and a shoemaker’s shop. Rough plank boardwalks kept locals out of the mud under what seemed a constant rain. 

Though Soapy Smith made his headquarters up the coast in Skagway, his gang initially held Wrangell in the same grip of terror, demanding a percentage of each saloon’s take and openly robbing and even murdering prospectors along the trails leading to the interior. That Wrangell was the only place in Alaska where dance hall girls performed in the nude spoke volumes about the port.

The U.S. marshal for the District of Alaska was desperately seeking a deputy to temporarily police Wrangell, as the man he’d hired wouldn’t arrive for weeks. The marshal had been keeping law and order as best he could, but eventually he’d have to return to the district capital at Sitka. It must have seemed a godsend, then, when out of the blue none other than Wyatt Earp approached him about the position. Earp considered Wrangell a “hell on wheels” town, worse than Tombstone had been. Still, he needed the money, so he accepted the temporary duty.

Realizing he represented the hated law to a sordid collection of gunmen, prostitutes, pimps, gamblers and thugs, Earp planned to sit things out as quietly as possible until his replacement arrived. That the Smith gang controlled vice in town was to his advantage. He and Bat Masterson had had dealings with Soapy when the three of them were mining the miners in Creede, Colo. How much Earp was counting on that acquaintance in order to survive in Wrangell is unclear. But he knew that as long as he kept his nose out of Soapy’s business, he’d be safe.

Then it happened. One evening a burly town tough got drunk and began shooting up a saloon. Bystanders sent for the pudgy marshal. When Earp arrived and demanded the man surrender his gun, the intoxicated shooter broke into a smile. “I know you!” he exclaimed. “You’re Wyatt Earp!” Twenty years earlier Earp had thrown the man and his drunken cowboy cohorts out of a Dodge City saloon. For the rest of that evening in Wrangell the antagonists stood at the bar reminiscing about the “good old days.”

Though amused by the incident, Earp also recognized it as a close call and a reminder to lay low for the duration of his time in town. Thankfully, within 10 days of Wyatt and Sadie’s arrival his replacement arrived. As soon as the new deputy marshal stepped from the gangplank, the couple caught the first northbound steamer to Juneau. Local wags joked that Wrangell had proved “too wild for Wyatt.” 

In Juneau the couple learned Sadie was pregnant, and they decided to return to San Francisco. Better to deliver their child in her parents’ home than on the Alaskan frontier. No sooner had they arrived Stateside, however, than Sadie suffered a miscarriage.

The lure of riches soon drew the couple north to Alaska again. This time they took the “rich man’s route,” sailing up the Yukon River bound for Dawson. But they were iced in for the winter. Come spring, they drifted back downriver and soon headed to the new strike in Nome, where Earp opened the Dexter, the only two-story saloon in the district. So, it was back to mining miners.

When the Earps finally left Alaska, in 1900, they carried $85,000 on them.  

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Wyatt Earp 

The “Lion of Tombstone” was over the hill, pudgy and graying when he headed for the Klondike in 1897, initially accepting a temporary stint as a lawman in Wrangell, Alaska. He and a pregnant Sadie, his common-law wife, turned back at Juneau. A year later they again tried for the Klondike, setting out on the “rich man’s route” up the Yukon River from St. Michael, Alaska, before becoming iced in that winter with boxing promoter Tex Rickard and novelist Rex Beach. Finally giving up on the Klondike, the Earps joined the Nome Gold Rush, Wyatt and a partner opening the two-story Dexter Saloon. 

Jack London

If London hadn’t ventured north, he would have been forever linked to maritime literature for his 1904 novel The Sea-Wolf. On arrival in the Klondike in 1897 he was no longer the young innocent. Among other escapades, he helped save a family from drowning on the Yukon River and spent weeks patronizing Klondike saloons. A year later, broke and battling scurvy, he continued downriver to the Bering Sea and worked his way home to California on a steamer. London was not only a great writer, but also the real deal.

Bill McPhee

McPhee drifted into the Yukon in 1888 and later opened saloons in Forty Mile, Dawson City and Fairbanks. He grubstaked such successful prospectors as C.J. Berry and Frank Dinsmore, Berry later returning the favor by paying to rebuild McPhee’s fire-ravaged Fairbanks saloon. During the bitterly cold winter months McPhee transformed his Dawson saloon into housing for the poor, saving their lives. Not until 1921 did age and failing eyesight finally force the saloonman into retirement in San Francisco.

Jefferson “Soapy” Smith

Elbowed out of Denver in 1897, Smith and gang headed north for the Klondike just as it boomed. Soon he controlled both Wrangell and Skagway through murder, intimidation and imaginative con jobs. It all proved bad for legitimate business, as homebound prospectors instead opted for the onward Yukon River route. Soapy met his end in a classic 1898 gunfight with vigilante Frank Reid on Skagway’s Juneau Wharf.

Clarence “C.J.” Berry

Top dog of the “Klondike Kings,” Berry started out as one of McPhee’s bartenders before the saloonman grubstaked him. C.J. found so much gold that he reportedly left a bucket of nuggets and a bottle of whiskey outside his cabin with a sign reading, Help Yourself. Unlike most riches-to-rags prospectors, however, he invested in oil-rich properties in California, exponentially increasing his fortune.

Harriet Pullen

The pioneering Pullen arrived in Skagway with only $7 and began making pies to sell to prospectors. With her profits she bought a cabin, sent for her husband and four kids and started a freighting business hauling goods over the White Pass Trail. When the rush subsided, she opened the Pullen House. Catering to high society, the hotel made Harriet and family a fortune. She died there in 1947.

Sam Steele

The enduring image of the Mounties stems from the Klondike, and the superintendent of the North-West Mounted Police division in the Yukon was Steele. With relatively few men the no-nonsense Steele established customs posts atop passes into the Yukon, ensured prospectors brought enough goods to support themselves and tamped down on crime, bringing order out of disorder.

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The title surely attracts attention, but as David Thomas relates in the preface to his new book, ‘Dirty Dave’ Rudabaugh, Billy the Kid’s Most Feared Companion, Rudabaugh’s contemporaries never applied the catchy “Dirty Dave” sobriquet to the gunfighter. Rudabaugh did join up with Billy the Kid, but just how feared Dave was is debatable. Certainly, in retrospect there wasn’t much reason to fear Rudabaugh (spelled Radenbaugh in the only U.S. census in which his name appears). The author does an excellent job of debunking the myth that Rudabaugh was a nasty and, yes, dirty bully who killed and brutalized people.

Rudabaugh was, according to Thomas, “an exceptionally smart, well-educated man” who mostly proved treacherous only to fellow wrongdoers. For example, while six men committed the Jan. 27, 1878, train robbery at Kinsley, Kan., Rudabaugh was the only one not to pay the price for that crime. He confessed and was freed after turning state’s evidence against his fellow robbers. After leaving Kansas, Rudabaugh hired on as a constable in Las Vegas, New Mexico Territory, not that a badge deterred him from partnering with two outlaws to rob a stagecoach 4 miles south of town on Aug. 14, 1879. Another trio was falsely arrested, but Rudabaugh later confessed and named his partners in crime. Just over a year later Rudabaugh repeated his performance—partnering with another pair of outlaws to rob a stagecoach north of Fort Sumner on Oct. 16, 1880, then later confessing and naming his accomplices.

Drawing on a never-before-published trial transcript, Thomas relates in detail how Rudabaugh was falsely accused and later convicted of the murder of jailer Antonio Lino Valdez during a visit Dave made with one John J. Allen to the Las Vegas jail on April 2, 1880. The pair got away clean, but a few weeks later Rudabaugh apparently did kill Allen, the one who actually murdered Valdez. By mid-October Dave was hanging out in Fort Sumner with Billy the Kid and cohorts. 

On Dec. 23, 1880, Sheriff Pat Garrett captured both Rudabaugh and the Kid at Stinking Springs. Like Billy, Dave was slated to be hanged but escaped that fate (both successfully broke jail in 1881). While Billy succumbed to a fatal bullet from Garrett at Fort Sumner on July 14, 1881, Rudabaugh found sanctuary in Mexico until shot down and beheaded by a grocer in Parral on Feb. 18, 1886. Thomas, a standout researcher who has produced 10 books in his Mesilla Valley History Series, provides the provenance of two well-known but controversial photographs in which the outlaw’s head appears minus the body.

‘Dirty Dave’ Rudabaugh, Billy the Kid’s Most Feared Companion

By David G. Thomas, Doc45 Publishing, 2023

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These are ten of the most interesting Westerners who spent time in the Centennial State.

Bent Brothers 

William and Charles Bent partnered with Ceran St. Vrain in the best known trading post west of the Mississippi. Established in 1833 on the Santa Fe Trail in what today is southeastern Colorado, Bent’s Fort was a gathering spot for travelers, trappers and traders. The Bent brothers forged lasting relationships with the Cheyennes and Arapahos. 

Kit Carson 

Christopher “Kit” Carson began his career trapping beaver in the Colorado Rockies and hiring on as a hunter at Bent’s Fort. In the 1850s he served as an Indian agent, working for peace on behalf of his friend Ute Chief Ouray. Late in his career he commanded Fort Garland before taking up ranching in the San Luis Valley. Carson died at Fort Lyon on May 23, 1868, and was initially buried beside wife Josefa at their home in Boggsville. 

Chief Ouray 

Born in 1833, the year of the shooting stars in tribal lore, the Ute chief sought peace with the U.S. government and preservation of his tribe’s hereditary lands at the height of the Indian wars. By life’s end he and wife Chipeta lived in a six-room house on a 300-acre farm along the Uncompahgre River near Montrose. Following his death on Aug. 24, 1880, despite Ouray’s best efforts, the government relocated the Utes to reservations in Utah.

Buffalo Bill Cody 

William Frederick Cody earned his reputation as an Army scout, his nickname as a buffalo hunter for the railroads and fame for touring worldwide with the best known Wild West show in American history. At age 13, however, he’d reportedly earned little during the 1859 gold rush to what would become Colorado. In later life he repeatedly visited his sister in Denver, where he died on Jan. 10, 1917. Cody is buried atop Lookout Mountain near Golden. 

Doc Holliday 

Tubercular dentist turned professional gambler and gunman John Henry Holliday came West for his health. After risking his life in Tombstone, Arizona Territory, backing the Earp brothers in the O.K. Corral fight and aftermath, Holliday made his way to Colorado, where he gambled in Trinidad, Pueblo and Leadville. The reputedly curative waters of Glenwood Springs failed to remedy his tuberculosis, and he died there on Nov. 8, 1887.

Baby Doe Tabor 

The beautiful Elizabeth Bonduel McCourt divorced her worthless first husband in 1880, moved to Leadville and met silver magnate Horace Austin Warner “Haw” Tabor, who left his wife of 25 years to marry Baby Doe. Alas, Horace died destitute in 1899, leaving the widowed Baby Doe penniless once again. Her body was found frozen to her cabin floor in 1935.

Alferd Packer 

Self-proclaimed wilderness guide Packer and five fellow travelers suffered in the San Juan Mountains during the harsh winter of 1874. The only one to emerge alive, Packer later confessed to cannibalism. Though he denied having killed the others, evidence suggested otherwise. Convicted of manslaughter, he served 18 years before being paroled in 1901. Packer died on April 23, 1907, in Deer Creek and is buried in Littleton Cemetery, a stone’s throw from this writer’s house. 

Margaret Brown 

A celebrated survivor of the 1912 sinking of RMS Titanic, this Colorado socialite, activist and philanthropist is best remembered as the “Unsinkable Molly Brown.” Known to family and friends as “Maggie,” she married mining engineer James Joseph Brown in Leadville in 1886, and in 1894 the successful couple bought a Victorian mansion in Denver preserved today as the Molly Brown House Museum. Maggie died in her sleep on Oct. 26, 1932.

Tom Horn 

He served at times as a scout, soldier, range detective and Pinkerton agent, but Horn became notorious as a paid-for-hire killer. In 1900, while working for the Swan Land & Cattle Co. in northwest Colorado, he gunned down suspected rustlers Mat Rash and Isom Dart. In 1902 Horn was convicted of having murdered 14-year-old rancher’s son Willie Nickell near Iron Mountain, Wyo., and on Nov. 20, 1903, he was hanged in Cheyenne. His brother brought Tom’s body to Boulder for burial.

Ann Bassett 

The first white child born in Browns Park, an isolated northwest Colorado valley notorious for rustling and illegal land grabs, Ann Marie Bassett was in the thick of the action for much of her life. After Tom Horn’s 1900 killing of Mat Rash, her fiancé, Bassett sought vengeance against Horn’s employer, cattle baron Ora Haley. Tried twice for cattle rustling, she was found not guilty both times. In an interview given just before her death on May 8, 1956, Bassett said, “I did everything they said I did and a helluva lot more.”

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Billy the Kid—“unquestionably New Mexico’s best-known citizen, past or present,” note authors Kurt House and Roy B. Young—is a name that flavors this book and so many others the way chile verde does Southwestern cuisine. But Chasing Billy the Kid is far more than another Kid book or, for that matter, another book featuring Pat Garrett, the lawman best known for chasing Billy, catching him at Stinking Spring in December 1880 and shooting him down in Fort Sumner in July 1881. House and Young, both members of the Wild West History Association (WWHA), argue that unsung lawman Frank Stewart co-led the posse that caught Billy and gang at Stinking Spring. Furthermore, they contend, that recognition was stolen from Stewart “by glory-seeking associates Garrett, Charlie Siringo and certain lesser lights” in the hunt for the infamous outlaw also known as William H. Bonney, Kid Antrim and Henry McCarty.

This impressive book came to fruition because House, a firearms expert and collector, acquired a factory-engraved, pearl-handled Colt revolver once presented to Stewart by a grateful hotel owner in Las Vegas, New Mexico Territory. House wanted to learn more about the man behind that prized Colt, so he and WWHA compatriot Young went about the challenging five-year task of discovering as much as possible about Stewart’s long and eventful life. For starters they learned “Frank Stewart” was an alias of German immigrant John Wallace Green, who was born Oct. 23, 1852, and immigrated to the United States with his parents in 1858. Why he took an alias is uncertain, but perhaps he’d wanted to keep his identity secret while working as a stock detective. Stewart received accolades for his prominent role in the pursuit and capture of the Kid, but that gratitude faded fast. His name was all but forgotten for 140 years, despite having served New Mexicans in many different roles, as detailed by the authors. Among other occupations, Stewart worked as a railroad detective, a deputy sheriff and a ranch foreman. He was also arrested for horse theft in 1887 and lived to tell the tale. He married at age 48 in September 1903. By then he’d returned to using his given name. Green died at age 83 on May 11, 1935, and lies in an unmarked grave.

With this 423-page tome the authors may have succeeded in restoring John Green/Frank Stewart to his rightful place in Western history. While the book serves well as the first biography of a fascinating Westerner, it also includes a wealth of information about the Kid and nuggets of information (much new) about a cast of Lincoln County War characters, including Secret Service Agent Azariah Faxon Wild and Billy’s pals Charlie Bowdre and Billie Wilson. In a valuable 45-page appendix the authors have something to say about many of the people involved in the lives of the Kid and Stewart/Green. Another interesting appendix covers the guns used by participants in the Lincoln County War. The book is loaded with photographs and documents, many from the vast collection of the late Bob McCubbin, to whom the authors dedicate the volume.

Chasing Billy the Kid

Frank Stewart and the Untold Story of the Manhunt for William H. Bonney
By Kurt House and Roy B. Young, Three Rivers Publishing,
2022

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Stuart N. Lake—part biographer, part con man—was looking to land a whale. 

Having secured an agreement to pen Wyatt Earp’s biography, Lake managed to conduct just eight interviews with the legendary Western lawman before prostate-related health problems did for Wyatt what gunfighters in Dodge City, Tombstone and other tough towns could not. On Jan. 13, 1929, 80-year-old Earp died in Los Angeles. Undeterred, Lake resolved to complete the biography anyway. If he had to support the facts with rumors, half-truths and fabrications, so be it. Who would know?

In the meantime, Lake needed money. Hoping for a big score, on Aug. 31, 1929, he wrote to William Randolph Hearst, the newspaper tycoon and son of the late mining magnate George Hearst. In the letter Lake dangled a cane Hearst supposedly gave Earp in Tombstone. The biographer’s account of how George came to present Wyatt with the cane is quite the tale.

On arriving in Tombstone in 1881 after a perilous trip through Sonora, Mexico, and Arizona Territory to assess mining properties, Hearst learned from an undercover Wells Fargo agent that the “Curly Bill–John Ringo gang of outlaws” had concocted a scheme to kidnap and ransom him. For protection Hearst’s friends convinced him to have Earp—the one lawman the Cowboys feared—join him on his next excursion. When the two returned safely to Tombstone, Earp refused Hearst’s offer of money, so instead George gave Wyatt his cane. Lake wrote:

“Your father had a walking stick, made of buffalo bone and hand-carved by some Indian, which he had carried for several years, ever since it had been given to him by the chief of a tribe—Sioux, I think—during a visit to the Deadwood country, in the course of which your father promised to exert his influence in behalf of certain matters of moment to the tribesmen. He had this stick in his hand at the time of parting from Wyatt Earp in Tombstone and, as Wyatt himself told me on several occasions, insisted that he accept it as a memento of their trip through the Arizona wilderness.…

“Wyatt was reluctant to accept the gift, but your father climbed into the Benson stage and left the marshal standing in Allen Street with the stick in his hand. For the next 47 years, until his death, Wyatt Earp kept the buffalo-bone cane with him wherever he went.…After his death Mrs. [Josephine] Earp gave the stick to me.”

Passed from a Sioux chief to George Hearst to Wyatt Earp, the buffalo-bone cane certainly had a rich history. But was it all hogwash? Could it be Lake was trying to flimflam W.R. Hearst into buying a worthless stick of no historic value? By examining the actions and whereabouts of Earp and George Hearst when both were in Arizona Territory, we can determine whether Lake’s story behind the buffalo-bone cane holds up or is the stuff dreams are made of.

Hearst Heads to Arizona Territory

In September 1878, feeling his oats after having acquired the richest gold mines in the Black Hills, Hearst turned his attention to the silver diggings in Arizona Territory. A year earlier Army scout turned prospector Ed Schieffelin had wandered into Apache country east of the San Pedro River in search of gold. Fellow scout Al Sieber had reportedly warned Schieffelin he’d find nothing but his tombstone. But the gamble paid off. Schieffelin struck a rich vein of silver and named his claim Tombstone after Sieber’s jest. A flood of prospectors had followed, giving rise to the namesake settlement and drawing Hearst’s attention.

Born into a slave-owning family in Missouri Territory on Sept. 3, 1820, George Hearst traded the reliable income of the family-owned farms and general store for the capricious promise of the California Gold Rush. Reaching the diggings in the fall of 1850, Hearst scrabbled about for several years at various enterprises. He made his first real killing during the frigid winter of 1859–60 by driving a pack of mules laden with tons of silver the 250 miles southwest from Virginia City, Utah Territory (in present-day Nevada) to San Francisco for smelting. By the time the first shots of the Civil War rang out at Fort Sumter, S.C., Hearst was a millionaire. Given his almost oracular mining successes, Hearst helped accelerate the rush to Tombstone merely by showing interest. 

Wyatt Earp was among the silver seekers who took notice.

Born in Monmouth, Ill., on March 19, 1848, Earp had followed a meandering path to law enforcement stints in Lamar, Mo., and Wichita and Dodge City, Kan. Having largely tamed the latter cow town by the fall of 1879, Wyatt swallowed the lure of El Dorado and headed for Tombstone. Earp and traveling companions—Wyatt’s common-law wife Mattie Blaylock, his brother James and Jim’s wife, Bessie, and her children—may have raised eyebrows when they stopped en route in Las Vegas, New Mexico Territory, to seek out John Henry “Doc” Holliday and Doc’s common-law wife, “Big-Nose” Kate Horony. After all, Doc had killed cantankerous Army scout Mike Gordon in a local saloon that July, and the safest way to not provoke the tubercular gambler was to stay the hell away from him. But Wyatt counted Doc as one of his truest friends, and together they traveled to Arizona Territory. In Prescott they added Wyatt’s brother Virgil and his common-law wife, Allie, to their party, which reached Tombstone in the closing weeks of 1879.

Wyatt’s projected moneymaking enterprise was a bust. “I intended to start a stage line when I first started out from Dodge City,” he recalled. But two lines were already operating in Tombstone, so he sold his outfit. By July 1880 he was working as a shotgun messenger for Wells Fargo. He was still guarding the stages that ran between Tombstone and Benson when Hearst appeared in Arizona Territory.

On Feb. 4, 1880, Hearst checked into Tucson’s Cosmopolitan Hotel. In May he ventured to Sonora, Mexico. There Hearst met with the Elias family and purchased from them the Boquillas land grant, some 10 miles northwest of Tombstone, which included the Contention silver mine. On June 12 Hearst was in Harshaw, Arizona Territory, within 10 miles of the southern border, where he acquired and began improving an old Mexican property colloquially known as “the Trench.” Although a dearth of lumber forced a temporary halt to construction, the Trench soon boasted a 40-foot tunnel and a shaft plunging 106 feet. From there Hearst traveled on 50 miles northeast to the Boquillas grant. Some of the land he sold, while on the most promising sections he began work on a railroad, started a cattle ranch and built up the Contention mine.

On July 18 Hearst sent an update from Tucson to business partner James Ben Ali Haggin. “I have done more and accomplished less, so far than I would like,” he wrote. “I assure you this is the hardest place to accomplish anything I have ever met.” Hearst was soon back in San Francisco.

Although it is conceivable that between Feb. 4 and July 18, 1880, Hearst may have ridden in a Wells Fargo stagecoach with Earp as his protector—potentially forging a lasting friendship—no such connection can be found in contemporary letters, diaries, or newspaper accounts. Newspapermen would have been especially keen to spot Wyatt speaking with the mining magnate during Hearst’s visit to Arizona Territory late the following year, for in the interim Earp would eclipse Hearst as the most talked-about man in the territory.

Fear in Tombstone

Stepping off a train at the Tombstone depot late on Christmas Day 1881, Hearst found a different town than the one he’d left. Fear rather than festivity pervaded the air.

The tensions revolved around an ongoing bloody feud between the Earps and a band of rustlers and killers known as the Cowboys. Under the nebulous leadership of gunmen Curly Bill Brocius and Johnny Ringo, the Cowboys particularly chafed at a new ordinance that prohibited the carrying of firearms within town limits. Enforcing the ban were Wyatt and brothers—once again lawmen. Virgil was the city marshal (police chief), Wyatt and younger brother Morgan his assistant marshals. Although Doc didn’t wear a star, on October 26 he’d backed the Earps in a gunfight behind the O.K. Corral that had claimed the lives of three Cowboys—Billy Clanton and brothers Tom and Frank McLaury. Virgil and Morgan had been shot, Doc grazed. Wyatt, miraculously, was unhurt.

Hearst, a pragmatist who had taken a neutral stance during the Civil War, wanted nothing to do with the dispute. Three days after his return to Tombstone, the feud hit another flash point. At 11:30 p.m. on December 28 Virgil was ambushed outside the Oriental Saloon. Though his left arm was shattered by buckshot, the city marshal survived.

George W. Parsons, who befriended the Earps in Tombstone and later served as one of Wyatt’s pallbearers, noted Hearst’s Jan. 3, 1882, return to town on the evening stagecoach. “Met George Hearst this morning and had quite a talk,” Parsons wrote in his journal the next day. “He seems to like the camp.” 

Parsons recorded Hearst’s continued presence in camp on a “cold and frightfully windy” Friday, January 13. Despite the wind and ice, Hearst was planning to head up into the Dragoon Mountains, some 15 miles to the northeast. Given the ever-present threat of highwaymen and Apaches, Hearst needed the services of a gunhand who knew the lay of the land. If Hearst considered hiring Wyatt, he soon dismissed the notion. Instead, he tapped another Tombstone man who fit the bill—John Henry Jackson.

Born in Ontario, Canada, on April 18, 1840, Jackson had arrived in Tombstone in the spring of 1879. He and sister Francis shared an adobe house on Bruce Street and had an interest in the Omega claim. After converting a leased livery stable on Allen Street into a boardinghouse and restaurant, he’d purchased city attorney Marcus P. Hayne’s ranch in Cochise Pass and other interests in the Dragoons. To Hearst’s purposes, the 41-year-old had a commanding presence and an intimate knowledge of the mountains.

On the morning of January 14 Hearst, Jackson and a party of four others left Tombstone by stagecoach. After examining the Defiance mine, Jackson, Hearst and Hiram M. French saddled three horses from the team and rode to the more remote Dragoon, Black Jack, Hidden Treasure, Star, Lake Superior and Elgin mines. Returning to the stagecoach, they hitched their horses and, tired and hungry, drove the team back to Tombstone, dining at the popular Fourth Street restaurant Jakey’s. “Hearst was very favorably impressed with the mines,” the Tombstone Epitaph wrote. “We trust that his favorable report upon his return to San Francisco will set the great mining operators of the Pacific Coast to thinking that, after all, Arizona is worth looking after a little.”

On January 16, amid a snowy mix, Hearst purchased a stake in the Contact mine for an initial $5,000; $10,000 more soon followed, and Hearst would expend another $6,000 to develop it.

Although it didn’t snow the next day, Parsons recorded there was “much blood in the air this afternoon. Ringo and Doc Holliday came nearly having it with pistols.…Bad time expected with the Cowboy leader and D.H. I passed both, not knowing blood was up. One with hand in breast pocket, and the other probably ready. Earps just beyond.” Before either man could draw, Officer Jim Flynn pulled Ringo away, while Wyatt strong-armed Doc in the opposite direction.

In his 1931 biography Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshal Lake claimed Wyatt rode out from Tombstone with Hearst the day after the Doc–Ringo scrape:

“The Curly Bill gang was plotting to kidnap United States Senator George Hearst, then on inspection of Cochise County mining properties, and to hold the capitalist for ransom. Senator Hearst, however, insisted on making his trip, so the [Tombstone] Safety Committee asked Wyatt to accompany him. With Wyatt, Hearst spent a week riding and camping in the mountains and desert without molestation.”

If Lake is to be believed, Hearst and Wyatt were inspecting mining properties between January 18 and 25. But, according to the Tombstone Weekly Epitaph, Hearst left town on January 22 in the company of Jackson and George A. Berry. Their destination was the Winchester Mountains, some 50 miles to the north. Wyatt left Tombstone a day later in the company of Doc, Morgan and five other men. Each was conspicuously armed with a Winchester rifle, a shotgun and two pistols. Wyatt carried a warrant for the three Cowboys—Pony Diehl and brothers Ike and Phin Clanton—he held responsible for Virgil’s shooting.

Lake’s timing was off. It’s also hard to imagine Hearst would have wanted to place himself amid the feud by standing anywhere near Wyatt. That Lake repeatedly refers to Hearst as “Senator,” though Hearst wasn’t appointed to the Senate until 1886, makes the claim even more suspect. 

Jackson was back in Tombstone on January 24, organizing a separate posse to ride out and arrest Ringo. A week later Hearst left for Mexico. While the citizens of Tombstone held their breath, awaiting the next dustup between the Earps and the Cowboys, disturbing news came in from Sonora: George Hearst had been murdered.

On February 13 a Mexican rode into Tombstone telling a wild story. While making their way along a tributary of the Sonora River north of Arizpe, 100 miles south of Tombstone, Hearst and party had been massacred by Indians. News of Hearst’s death spread like wildfire and was telegraphed to his partners Haggin and Lloyd Tevis in San Francisco.

Addison E. Head, a friend of Hearst’s from their days prospecting Nevada silver, was aghast, but for a different reason. He was in telegraphic contact with the wandering magnate, who was very much alive. When Hearst returned to Tombstone on February 19, speculation abounded the Mexican had conjured the rumored massacre from the bottom of a bottle of mescal. A few days later Hearst left by train for Los Angeles. William Pinkerton, a scion of the Pinkerton National Detective Agency, was also aboard. It does not appear the detective was there to keep an eye on Hearst—but with the crafty Pinkertons, you never knew. 

Cowboy Shootout

In spring of 1882 the Earp–Cowboy feud reached its bloody crescendo. 

On March 18 Morgan was shot dead by a Cowboy assassin while shooting pool in the Campbell & Hatch Billiard Parlor as Wyatt stood by helplessly. Two days later Wyatt, who weeks earlier had been appointed a deputy U.S. marshal, gunned down Frank Stilwell near the Southern Pacific depot in Tucson, an act of vengeance that kicked off what historians call the “Earp Vendetta Ride.” To avenge Morgan, Wyatt had formed a posse composed of men from both sides of the law. Considering Wyatt a rogue agent, Arizona Territory Governor Frederick A. Tritle directed Cochise County Sheriff Johnny Behan to bring Earp to justice.

Around 11:15 on the morning of March 22, Wyatt, Doc, Sherman McMaster, and “Turkey Creek” Johnson caught up with Florentino Cruz, who was chopping wood in a camp below the South Pass of the Dragoon Mountains. The next day Cruz’s body was found with four bullet wounds, including one to his right temple.

On March 24 Earp finally shot it out with Curly Bill. Wyatt had been hoping to get the drop on the Cowboys at Iron Springs (present-day Mescal Spring) but was outnumbered and surprised from ambush. This time the posse comprised Wyatt, Doc, McMaster, “Texas Jack” Vermillion, Jack Johnson and Wyatt’s youngest brother, Warren. Arrayed against them were Curly Bill, Milt Hicks, Johnny Barnes and a half dozen other Cowboys. Despite the odds and Curly Bill’s gun skills, Wyatt put a shotgun blast through Curly Bill’s chest. He then drew his pistol, shooting Hicks in the arm and Barnes through the chest. With Curly Bill and Barnes dead, and the Earp posse having suffered only one casualty—Texas Jack’s horse—the remaining Cowboys fled.

When Hearst returned to Tombstone the first week of April, he needed a bodyguard more than ever. Jackson was unavailable, however. Appointed a deputy U.S. marshal in the Earps’ stead, he’d been ordered by Governor Tritle to raise another posse to bring in Wyatt and party.

Hearst had other ideas.

Accepting Hearst’s offer, Jackson guided Hearst and Head some 120 miles east into New Mexico Territory’s Victorio Mountains. This was wild country, inhabited by Mexican gray wolves, mountain lions and grizzly bears. Undaunted, Hearst and Head established an expansive cattle ranch in Deming, 20 miles beyond the mountains, purchasing for $12,000 former Texas Ranger Michael Gray’s 1,000-acre property, which two years earlier Gray had paid squatter Curly Bill $300 to vacate. This acquisition, ultimately renamed the Diamond A Ranch, marked the beginning of Hearst’s New Mexican cattle barony.

On April 15 Wyatt, Doc and the others arrived in Silver City, New Mexico Territory, 45 miles northwest of Deming. The next day they sold their horses and boarded a Deming-bound stagecoach. By the time the Earp party reached that dusty New Mexico Territory town, Hearst, Head and Jackson had returned west. Hearst reached Tombstone on April 23, while Wyatt boarded a train north for Albuquerque. From there Earp drifted to Colorado, Idaho and California, then north to Alaska before settling in Los Angeles for keeps. His final resting place is beneath a tombstone at the Hills of Eternity Memorial Park in Colma, south of San Francisco, within 1,000 feet of George Hearst’s family mausoleum.

So, did Hearst give Earp the cane? It doesn’t seem likely. As Lake tells it, Hearst acquired the cane in Deadwood after having brokered a deal on behalf of a Sioux chief, but there is no evidence he had any such dealings with Indians in the Black Hills. The same goes for the supposed Cowboy plot to abduct him. Most telling, the dates don’t add up.

Walking stick aside, Hearst delivered Earp an even greater gift. By retaining the services of Jackson in the spring of 1882, he inadvertently made certain that formidable marshal spent the last days of the Earp Vendetta Ride protecting Hearst rather than chasing Wyatt. 

As for the cane itself, it kicked around for decades before turning up at one of Brian Lebel’s Old West Auctions at the Will Rogers Memorial Center in Fort Worth, Texas. Both Lake’s typewritten letter and the cane were authenticated—as much as they could be—and on June 6, 2015, they were auctioned off. Starting at $20,000, the lot hammered down at $65,000. Whether or not the cane ever belonged to George Hearst or Wyatt Earp, the surrounding mythology made it worth its weight in gold. 

Matthew Bernstein teaches at Matrix for Success Academy and Los Angeles City College and is the author of George Hearst: Silver King of the Gilded Age. For further reading he recommends The Dragoon Mountains, by Lynn R. Bailey; Wyatt Earp: The Life Behind the Legend, by Casey Tefertiller; and Ride the Devil’s Herd: Wyatt Earp’s Epic Battle Against the West’s Biggest Outlaw Gang, by John Boessenecker.

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Wild Bunch gang leader Butch Cassidy (real name Robert LeRoy Parker) and cohort the Sundance Kid (Harry Alonzo Longabaugh) are known for having robbed trains and committed various other crimes without killing anyone. Not so Wild Bunch member Kid Curry, born Harvey A. Logan in Iowa in 1867. In my 2012 book He Rode With Butch and Sundance: The Story of Harvey “Kid Curry” Logan I note that Curry has generally been credited with eight or nine killings, some sources stating the figure as high as 40. But such figures are unreliable. “The only killing that can definitely be attributed to Curry, arguably in self-defense, was the result of his saloon brawl with miner ‘Pike’ Landusky in Montana,” I wrote back then. “Still there are modern writers who persist in placing him at the scene of nearly every suspected Wild Bunch killing, even when it can be shown that time, distance and other circumstances make this highly unlikely if not impossible.”

In retrospect, that doesn’t preclude the possibility Curry killed more than once. Two contemporary sources suggest a realistic toll, while the available evidence offers up the most likely candidates for consideration as Curry victims.

Alleged Victims

The first assertion comes from one of Curry’s avowed enemies—Robert A. Pinkerton, who operated out of the New York office of his father’s Pinkerton National Detective Agency. Pinkerton appeared to ignore the apocrypha about Curry when wiring the chief of police in Knoxville, Tenn., after the Kid’s capture east of town on Dec. 15, 1901: “Send you and all concerned hearty congratulations on important arrest made. Logan is one of the worst criminals in the West. He is a leader of train and bank robbers, and as such has no equal. He has committed three murders and is an expert jail breaker. Suggest that you put guard on him day and night.”

The second source of Curry’s possible kill count is the outlaw himself. The Kid spent much of the week before his capture drinking and shooting pool in the Knoxville bars. A local paper reported that he regularly flashed a roll of $20 bills and a couple of revolvers. When full of liquor he boasted to fellow patrons he was “something of a man himself” and claimed to have made three men “bite the dust.” One might assume Curry, when drunk and bragging, would have been inclined to claim a more impressive figure. But as he stated a more credible toll of three, a number that happens to agree with that quoted by Pinkerton, it stands to reason the Kid was telling the truth, or something very close to it.

In their 1954 Pictorial History of the Wild West authors James D. Horan and Paul Sann provide a Pinkertonlike chronological list of killings most commonly attributed to Curry. Rife with misspelled names and incorrect dates, it tallies nine such victims, though the authors credit no official agency or any other source for that matter. The list, with corrections in brackets, follows:

1. [Powell] “Pike” Landusky, Landusky, Mont.—Dec. 25 [27], 1894

2. Sheriff Hagen [Josiah Hazen], Conners [Converse] County, Wyo.—June 5, 1899

3 & 4. Norman brothers [actually two unrelated Mormon men, Andrew Augustus “Gus” Gibbons and Frank LeSueur, St. Johns, Ariz.]—June [March 27] 1900

5. Sheriff Scarborragh [former Deputy U.S. Marshal George Scarborough], Apache County, Ariz. [Deming, N.M.]—July 1901 [April 5, 1900]

6 & 7. Sheriff John [Jesse M.] Tyler, Moab [Grand] County, Utah, and deputy [posse member] Sam Jenkins—May 16 [26], 1900

8. Oliver Thornton, Painted [Paint] Rock, Texas—March 27, 1901

9. James [“Jim”] Winters, Montana— July 26 [25], 1901

A similar list compiled by Pinkerton agent Lowell Spence records seven murder victims, minus George Scarborough and Oliver Thornton. Spence submitted his list for the agency records along with a document titled “Logan’s Log,” in which the Pinkerton agent describes having diligently tracked Curry’s activities from June 2, 1899, to Dec. 15, 1901. Logan’s Log does not list five killings attributed to a gang of five that rampaged through Arizona Territory and Utah in spring 1900. It mentions only three victims: Thornton, Josiah Hazen and Jim Winters. Spence apparently wasn’t certain who killed Thornton; he notes only that George and Ed Kilpatrick were indicted for the crime, though “Logan [was] in it too.”

Does the omission of five killings in Logan’s Log mean Spence believed Curry had no hand in those murders? Furthermore, did the Pinkerton man intend to attribute the seven killings on his overall list to Curry alone or to the Wild Bunch in general? While the seven included Landusky, the latter’s name is absent from Logan’s Log. It’s possible Spence considered Curry’s first killing a matter of record not requiring further documentation. After all, the testimony of witnesses at a coroner’s inquest into the Landusky murder is irrefutable. To sum up, Pinkerton agent Spence’s nominees for the Kid’s kill count include at least Landusky, Hazen and Winters. Note, however, that none of the above referenced documents lists another killing often attributed to Curry—that of Deputy Sheriff William “Billy” Deane, of Johnson County, Wyo., in 1897.

Some writers assert that by early 1899 Curry had accompanied Cassidy and gang member William Elsworth “Elzy” Lay to southwestern New Mexico Territory and there, under the alias Tom Capehart, hired on at the WS Ranch near Alma. This bit of mythology may have been started by New Mexico cowhand, detective and ranger Charles A. Siringo. “‘Kid Curry’ knew every foot of this whole country, as he had been a cowboy along the line of New Mexico and Arizona under the name of Tom Capehart,” Siringo asserts in his 1919 autobiography, A Lone Star Cowboy. “Several years previous Capehart had shot and killed Geo. Scarborough.” Subsequent Wild Bunch/Curry biographers, including Horan, Charles Kelly and Brown Waller, repeated Siringo’s assertion, adding their own surmises.

As Capehart was among the prime suspects in the gang of five (which included Wild Bunch members Will Carver and Ben Kilpatrick) believed to have murdered Gus Gibbons, Frank LeSueur and Scarborough in Arizona Territory and Jesse Tyler and Sam Jenkins in Utah, Curry was thus tied to those killings under that presumed alias. The only problem with that erroneous assumption is that the real Tom Capehart, a Texas cowhand, was working at the WS Ranch at the time Curry was said to have hired on. It would have been ludicrous for the Kid to have assumed as an alias the name of someone with whom he was reportedly working.

In fact, no known sources place Curry in the Southwest at the time of the five known murders attributed to the gang of five. Allowing for Landusky as one of the Kid’s victims, that leaves four men to consider as possibly having met death from Curry’s guns—Deane, Hazen, Thornton and Winters.

Examining the Evidence

Deputy Sheriff Billy Deane was shot down on April 13, 1897, some two years and four months after the death of Landusky. Johnson County Sheriff Al Sproul had hired Deane specifically to arrest cattle thieves. Although he was considered a cool and determined man, Deane’s decision to ride out alone to capture or kill fugitive outlaws was pure foolishness. He set out south from Buffalo and on the morning of April 13 confronted two members of a gang of rustlers at the Griggs’ family-run post office. The gang, apparently intent on getting its mail, was thought to have included “Flatnose” George Currie and the two “Roberts boys” (aliases then used by Curry and the Sundance Kid). Deane pushed hard for a gunfight, but the rustlers rode off.

Deane went in pursuit, and a few hours later, near the Kaltenbach sheep ranch, he spotted four men he took to be the rustlers riding toward him. Drawing to within 400 or 500 yards of them, the deputy jumped from his horse and shot at the oncoming riders. Promptly dismounting, the four returned fire. Three of their bullets found their mark, and Deane bled out within minutes. Witnesses testified that as many as seven men shot at the deputy, two having ambushed him from a draw or cutbank.

Given the evidence, or lack thereof, Deane is not a good candidate to mark down as one of Curry’s victims. Even though the prime suspects were members of the Hole-in-the-Wall Gang, they were never officially identified, and authorities made no arrests in the killing. The April 22 Buffalo Bulletin reported that the jury at a subsequent coroner’s inquest found “the deceased came to his death from a gunshot by parties unknown.” With four to seven men shooting at a range of 400 to 500 yards, it would be next to impossible to identify Curry, let alone single him out as the responsible gunman.

Little more than two years later, on June 5, 1899, Converse County, Wyo., Sheriff Josiah Hazen was ambushed while trailing three men suspected of the Union Pacific train robbery at Wilcox three days earlier. The posse tracked the fugitives—George Currie, Kid Curry and the Sundance Kid—to a spot along Castle Creek, roughly midway between Casper and the outlaw hangout also known as Hole-in-the-Wall. Sheriff Hazen and Dr. John F. Leeper of Casper (though some sources claim the second man was Union Pacific Special Agent Frank Wheeler) dismounted and walked up a draw, searching for the tracks of the outlaws’ horses. Hazen found the trail and called to Dr. Leeper. The latter had approached to within feet of the sheriff when the outlaws suddenly opened fire from concealment.

The newspapers called it a volley or succession of shots, one posseman recalling the reports of three distinct guns. “At the first shot Sheriff Hazen threw up his hands,” reported the June 8 Wyoming Derrick, “shot through the abdomen, the ball entering the right side and passing through.” The outlaws kept the posse pinned down for the next several minutes to cover their escape north along the creek. Hazen was taken first to Casper, then to his home in Douglas, where he died early the next morning.

The June 10 Cheyenne Daily Sun-Leader stated that some members of the posse had “returned a few shots…but the robbers could not be seen and, [as] they use smokeless powder, could not be separately located.” Although no one in the posse could be sure who’d shot Hazen, there’s a possibility the bandits themselves knew. First, the two parties had been in much closer proximity than those in the Deane confrontation. Second, this gunfight had pitted just three outlaws against two posse members. Finally, if we’re to believe the report that the first shot had been distinct from the volley or succession of three, the bandits may have known who among them fired the fatal bullet. Hazen certainly could have been one of the men Curry claimed to have made “bite the dust.”

Trying to identify the person who murdered Oliver Thornton is, at this late date, an exercise in futility. Wild Bunch members Curry, Carver and Ben Kilpatrick were present at the latter’s Planche Spring family farm, between Eden and Paint Rock, in Concho County, Texas, in late March 1901. They were relaxing and laying low in the wake of a fall 1900 celebration with Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid in Fort Worth, during which they posed for the infamous “Fort Worth Five” photo. They had designated the cow town as a rendezvous point after having split forces to hold up both a Union Pacific train at Tipton, Wyo., and the First National Bank of Winnemucca, Nev.

On March 23, 1901, Butch, Sundance and the Kid’s companion, Ethel Place, arrived in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on a steamship out of New York City. On or around the same date the other three gang members, who’d been posing as dealers in polo ponies and touring west Texas in a rubber-tired buggy, arrived at the Kilpatrick family farm. 

On March 27, the day of the Thornton shooting, Ben’s younger brothers, George, Ed and Felix, and his sisters, Ola and Alice, were also present. An initial report of the killing appeared in the April 6 Devil’s River News, out of Sonora, Texas. “The reports which have been received in San Angelo are meager and conflicting,” the newspaper equivocated, before spilling details:

“Oliver Thornton, who was an employee of Ed Dozier and working on his farm, had been greatly troubled by hogs belonging to the Kilpatricks.…He went over to the Kilpatrick house to ask them to keep their hogs out. Ed Kilpatrick, George Kilpatrick and Walker were playing croquet. [Thornton, armed with a Winchester] threw down on the crowd and demanded that they keep the hogs out of Dozier’s premises. Ed Kilpatrick stated that the hogs were [his brother] Boone Kilpatrick’s, and that they wanted no trouble, and that Walker then shot him.”

“Walker” was Charles Walker, an alias of Will Carver. Curry, also present, was using the alias Bob McDonald. While the Pinkertons knew those aliases, local authorities were unfamiliar with them, a fact the Kilpatricks exploited to initially mislead those investigating the shooting.

George Kilpatrick later identified Walker as Carver and claimed McDonald had killed Thornton. However, the newspaper’s description of Walker as “a small man weighing from 135 to 140 pounds, dark complexion, heavy brown mustache, a bald head and aged between 35 and 40 years” more closely resembled Curry than Carver. Several months later Kilpatrick’s older brother Boone (who wasn’t present at the shooting) told St. Louis detectives Carver had done the killing, though Boone deemed it justifiable homicide, insisting Will had shot Thornton as the latter was thumbing a shell into his shotgun.

“In considering our outlaws, Will Carver and Harvey Logan,” author John Eaton writes, “we have trouble in finding a motive. In a robbery or in self-defense these men would kill for the profit and preservation of their lives, but never over an argument concerning someone else’s hogs.…A killing would tell the law where they are and have it close in on them, just as this one did.” That same assumption is true of Ben Kilpatrick. A news item from St. Louis published in the November 19 Billings (Mont.) Gazette reported that Kilpatrick, while in custody, claimed to have killed Thornton to save the life of his brother (Ed or George), whom Thornton had covered with a pistol.

Texas rancher John Loomis referred to his neighbors the Kilpatrick boys as “natural born criminals” and suggested a younger outlaw (meaning either Ed or George) had killed Thornton in a bid to impress veteran gang member Carver. In March 1902 the younger Kilpatrick brothers were duly arrested and tried for the Thornton murder, but both were acquitted.

Taken as a whole, the evidence suggests that no one, except Carver and the Kilpatricks, was aware of Curry’s presence in the region or even knew what he looked like. Thus, there really isn’t any concrete evidence Curry had anything to do with Thornton’s murder.

The final man under consideration as one of the Kid’s possible victims is Montana rancher Jim Winters. After the July 3, 1901, Great Northern train robbery near Wagner, Mont., Curry, Ben Kilpatrick and O.C. “Deaf Charley” Hanks hid out in the Missouri Breaks until those hunting for them wearied of the pursuit. Around 6 a.m. on July 25, eight days after the posses disbanded, Winters had stepped out the back porch of his ranch house to brush his teeth when struck in the abdomen by two bullets. One slug lodged in his stomach, the other shattered his spinal column.

Among those alerted by the shots were six young Easterners staying at the ranch that summer to help with the haying. Sources differ as to whether Abe Gill, Winters’ stepbrother and partner, was also present that morning. A subsequent inquest lists the six Easterners as witnesses, one of whom reported having seen someone he didn’t recognize run up a coulee some 150 yards away in a crouched position. Warning shots from that shooter, or shooters, kept the six hands pinned down until about 8:30 a.m., when two were finally able to ride north to Harlem for a doctor.

Authorities found empty .30-40 Winchester shell casings beside an old hog pen west of the ranch house, behind which the killer (or killers) had taken up a firing position. From there two sets of footprints led to a campsite in a creekside willow thicket. On the ground were the butts of several hand-rolled cigarettes, while the shod prints of two or three horses led away from the creek. The evidence suggested two or three men had waited several hours for Winters to show himself. Authorities speculated the shooter had ridden away first, while his accomplice, or accomplices, provided covering fire. A three-man posse followed but soon lost the trail of the bushwhackers.

The next day, the 26th, the Fort Benton River Press named the Curry gang as prime suspects. “The Curry gang and their sympathizers have had it in for Winters ever since the latter killed John Curry about five years ago, an occurrence which was justified by Curry commencing to fire at him with a six-shooter,” the newspaper wrote. “[John] Curry claimed the Tressler Ranch, which Winters had bought, and tried to enforce his claim by ordering its owner out of the country.”

Winters had recently told Siringo he expected to be waylaid and killed by John’s brother, Kid Curry. But five years had passed since the Winters/John Curry gunfight, and all that time Kid Curry hadn’t shown any inclination to seek revenge. Anyway, Winters had plenty of other enemies. Residents of north-central Montana’s Little Rockies, for example, were not happy Gill and Winters had invited the various barroom posses to camp on their ranch. While they supposedly scoured the country for the Great Northern bandits, posse members had cut barbed wire fences, ridden through neighbors’ grain fields and intermittently ducked into Landusky to fill up on whiskey and shoot up the town. One upset neighbor reportedly threatened that unless Winters reimbursed him for damaged crops, he’d “get what Johnny Curry got.”

The verdict of the inquest was Winters had been killed “by some person or persons unknown to this jury.” On September 3, after a thorough investigation, a Fort Benton grand jury was only able to conclude Winters had been murdered “by a fugitive from justice…one of the parties to said [Great Northern] train robbery.” While the grand jury lacked the evidence to charge Curry with murder, Winters may well have been the final victim on the Kid’s list of three men he made “bite the dust.”

In determining the identities of the alleged three (not nine) victims of Curry’s guns, with Pike Landusky as a given, the other two were most likely Josiah Hazen and Jim Winters. But without any confirmation from Robert Pinkerton or Curry himself, their identities will have to remain as speculation.

On June 7, 1904, Curry and two cohorts robbed a Denver & Rio Grande train outside Parachute, Colo. Two days later, on being cornered and wounded by a posse, the Kid fatally shot himself in the head. Questions inevitably arose over whether the dead man was in fact Curry, but Knoxville authorities who had interacted with the outlaw during his 1901–02 stay in their county jail identified the body from photos as that of Harvey Logan, alias Kid Curry. Confirmation of the deceased’s identity came in the form of a 3-inch scar atop his head—the relic of a wound inflicted on Curry by a nightstick-wielding Knoxville policeman. 

Seattle author Mark T. Smokov has long had an interest in Kid Curry and other Western outlaws. Smokov’s book He Rode With Butch and Sundance: The Story of Harvey “Kid Curry” Logan is recommended for further reading along with Harvey Logan: Wildest of the Wild Bunch, by Donna B. Ernst, and Will Carver, Outlaw, by John Eaton.

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The year was 1879, and while the Lincoln County War was over, central New Mexico Territory still bore scars from the violence of that factional conflict. No longer welcome in the embattled county seat of Lincoln, hard cases like Billy the Kid, pals Tom O’Folliard and Billy Wilson, and latecomer “Dirty Dave” Rudabaugh had to find new haunts in which to hang their hats. While several shady locales appealed to such fugitives, perhaps none checked the boxes as thoroughly as the mining camp of White Oaks.

That fall partners John Wilson, Jack Winters and George Baxter were prospecting for gold in the Jicarilla Mountains little over a mile west of where White Oaks would soon sprout. As the story goes, Wilson was out for a stroll after supper when he happened across an outcrop containing gold. Some say Wilson himself was a fugitive at the time of his lucky strike. That would certainly account for his decision to sell out to his partners that very afternoon for $40, a pony and a bottle of whiskey. Wilson’s North Homestake claim ended up being worth a half million dollars.

With the discovery of gold in what became known as Baxter Gulch, miners rushed in by the hundreds, intent on finding easy riches. Residents named the tent city that sprang up after white oaks that thrived on the brim of a local spring. In his memoirs White Oaks pioneer Morris B. Parker, who arrived in camp in 1880, recalled the nascent settlement:

These were the embryonic days of White Oaks, and they were no doubt full of fun, tragedy and disappointment—local history in the making.…I was too young to be greatly impressed by such matters. Nevertheless, the mixed character and culture of the residents, both mobile and fixed, was evident. They ranged from ignorant nomads—cowboys and prospectors—to college graduates. They included good men and bad, gold-hungry adventurers and people who just came to look around.

Within two years more than a dozen gold mines were in operation. The most profitable and enduring were the North and South Homestake and the Old Abe. By the turn of the century gold production at the White Oaks District totaled $3 million.

Unlike the ephemeral tides of fortune, however, White Oaks’ founders intended for their town to endure and from its inception envisioned a community offering the finer things. Thus it grew rapidly in the 1880s, attracting a civilized Eastern population as had no other town in the Southwest. In October 1882 surveyors plotted the townsite, on an 80-acre rectangular patch of land, and the U.S. Land Office signed off in May 1883. Its cornerstones remain firmly embedded in the hard earth. By 1888 White Oaks boasted 1,000 residents who availed themselves of everything from a private educational academy to an opera house. Its first newspaper, the White Oaks Golden Era, fired up its presses in December 1880, while the Lincoln County Leader put out its first edition on Oct. 21, 1882, and published weekly until Dec 2, 1893. They were the largest papers in the region outside of The Las Vegas Gazette, published nearly 130 miles to the north.

As the founders of White Oaks took the time to have their town properly surveyed and plotted, much of its structure and design was recorded through extant tax and property records. Still, a clear picture of its early years has been lacking. For one, while the mining camp may have experienced a formal upbringing, it had a rough and violent start. Between 1879 and ’84 it was not a place for the faint of heart.

Not just any town could attract the likes of Billy the Kid, yet he and his gang became familiar figures in White Oaks as they hurrahed about its dusty streets. The West & Dedrick livery stable provided them a place to sell livestock stolen from ranches as far south as Tularosa and north to Puerto de Luna. The stable also served as a haven of sorts when things got too hot.

Its half dozen saloons welcomed Billy and his outlaw pals with their gambling tables and women of ill repute. Of note was the Pioneer, a showplace at the heart of the town. George Curry (who later served a term as territorial governor of New Mexico) recalled it as “a palace of lights, mirrors, and boasting a long mahogany bar.” A tongue-in-cheek retrospective article in The Albuquerque Tribune stated, “Proprietors of the Pioneer saloon sold three different grades of whiskey at three different prices—all of it taken from the same barrel.” The Pioneer was likely where attorney Ira Leonard stayed in 1880 while representing Billy the Kid, perhaps sharing a beer with the Kid while ironing out the details of the pardon Billy felt Territorial Governor Lew Wallace owed him. Leonard was one of the attorneys who later defended the Kid at the latter’s murder trial in Mesilla, New Mexico Territory.

On the evening of Nov. 23, 1880, Lincoln County Deputy Sheriff Jim Redman, a part owner in the Pioneer, was sitting on the saloon’s front porch when the Kid, Billy Wilson and Rudabaugh rode by, and Billy took a potshot at him. Redman happened to be a friend of the Kid’s pal O’Folliard, so it is likely Billy only fired the shot as a warning. The prior evening the outlaw trio had gotten into a shootout at Coyote Spring, north of town, with a posse joined by Redman and led by his saloon partner and fellow deputy Will Hudgens. It was also at the Pioneer—two months after the Kid’s infamous April 28, 1881, escape from the Lincoln County Courthouse—someone tipped off Deputy John W. Poe that Billy was laying low in Fort Sumner. Weeks later, on July 14, Sheriff Pat Garrett would gun down the Kid.

The Pioneer was hardly the only lively spot at “the Oaks,” as residents nicknamed the town. Its abundance of tent saloons, dance halls, gambling houses and billiard halls attracted a range of Westerners, from honest citizens looking for a bit of fun to hard cases looking to blow off steam. Given the prevalence of ranches in and around Lincoln County, the Oaks became a gathering point for cattle rustlers. It was also the site of a counterfeit ring run simultaneously out of the West & Dedrick stable by William H. “Harvey” West and brothers Sam, Dan and Mose Dedrick. That double duty would be the undoing of the partners in crime.

In early 1880 West and partner Sam Dedrick passed $400 in counterfeit bills to purchase the stables from Kid cohort Billy Wilson. Unaware the bills were counterfeit, Wilson put them into circulation, soon attracting the attention of the feds. When the Secret Service appointed Special Operative Azariah Wild to investigate the matter, the Dedrick brothers wisely fled. That December at Stinking Springs, far to the northwest, Garrett and posse would catch up to Wilson. Ultimately convicted in March 1882 of passing counterfeit bills, he was sentenced to seven years in prison. However, Wilson escaped the Santa Fe jail before he could be transported to a federal prison in Missouri.

There was too much opportunity and money to be made legally in White Oaks for the town to have remained unruly long. Among the leading citizens who had high hopes for the growing community were Dr. Alexander G. Lane and Judge Franklin Houston “Frank” Lea.

Dr. Lane arrived in White Oaks in May 1880 to open a drugstore and soon took up mining, an interest he pursued for the remainder of his life. He served as the town’s first treasurer and built an impressive two-story home that doubled as his office. Before a school was set up in White Oaks, the doctor taught local children in the living room of his house.

Among the earliest settlers in White Oaks, Judge Lea was instrumental in the founding and organization of the town. He helped build the first hotel, White Oaks House, and ran a grocery and trade store on the west side of town. Though he had ridden with William Quantrill’s pro-Confederate bushwhackers during the Civil War, Lea served respectably as justice of the peace in the Oaks’ early years.

Among the notorious defendants to appear before Judge Lea was “Whiskey Jim” Greathouse, who owned a large ranch a few miles north of White Oaks and often bought stolen livestock from Billy the Kid and cohorts. On Nov. 27, 1880, four days after having taken a potshot at Deputy Redman in White Oaks, Billy holed up with Wilson and Rudabaugh at the Greathouse ranch. When a posse tried to flush them out, Deputy Jimmy Carlyle was killed in the crossfire. In March 1881 Lea arraigned Greathouse as an accessory to murder. Though he escaped prosecution on that charge and started a successful freighting business, the rancher maintained a sideline buying and selling butchered beef from rustlers.

Despite White Oaks’ increasing prosperity and influential citizenry, its potential for growth had limits. In that era few towns of any size could survive independent of a railroad, and White Oaks proved no exception. As production at the mines slowed in the late 1880s, the need to lure a railroad to town took on increased urgency. Alas, it wasn’t meant to be. According to oft-repeated rumors, the approaching El Paso & Northeastern Railroad bypassed White Oaks due to the greed of town fathers who had supposedly hiked land prices and then smugly waited for EP&NE executives to pay their inflated prices. No extant period documentation supports this claim. To the contrary, in December 1892 the Lincoln County Leader reported that townspeople stood ready to pay a subscription fee of $50,000 in the form of bonds payable to the railroad’s principal financier, James Gould. Twenty-one leading citizens had contributed $24,500 and were confident they could raise the balance, thus ensuring the arrival of the railroad and survival of White Oaks, whose population had peaked at more than 2,000 souls.

In the meantime, cruel fate intervened. On December 2, amid negotiations, word reached White Oaks that Gould had died at home of tuberculosis. Eight days later Lincoln County Leader editor William Caffrey wrote a less than flattering farewell to the magnate:

Jay Gould Dead

On Friday of last week the name of Jay Gould was expunged from off of the page of life, and his soul went out to meet the Maker of rich and poor.

For many years the “Little Wizard” has been recognized as the Napoléon of finance in this country.…However much men may have envied him in the past, the present holds no one who’d care to share his couch. His name, here, is now no more talismanic than that of a pauper. He has gone where there are no class distinctions, where all are clothed alike and titles are unknown.

In the wake of these disparaging remarks the town of White Oaks died with Gould. Prior to the financier’s death the route survey had been completed and secured, the land for the depot held, and the right of way secured. But in the wake of Gould’s death the EP&NE bypassed White Oaks for the whistle stop of Carrizozo, 12 miles to the southwest. Whether Caffrey’s callous comments had triggered the reversal is uncertain.

District mines continued production into the early 1900s, but by then White Oaks’ promising shimmer had faded and the population plummeted. By mid-century only a handful of holdouts remained. Among them was Susan McSween Barber, the widow of Lincoln County War victim Alexander McSween, who’d rebounded to become the “Cattle Queen of New Mexico.” She lived in a small house on the north side of town until her death at age 85 in 1931.

 In 1970 the National Register of Historic Places recognized White Oaks as a historic district. Today it’s home to a handful of residents, scattered period buildings, a volunteer fire department, a Vietnam memorial and a few businesses, including the No Scum Allowed Saloon. South of town is Cedarvale Cemetery, whose internees include McSween Barber and James W. Bell, the younger of two Lincoln County deputies (the other being Bob Olinger) slain by Billy the Kid during the latter’s infamous April 28, 1881, jailbreak from the county courthouse in Lincoln. Such men and women deserve to be remembered, as does White Oaks.  

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With smoking six-guns Billy the Kid blazed a path across American folklore as wide as the Chisholm Trail. Fact and fiction meld inscrutably in the tales of the young desperado in a tradition rumored to have been started by Billy himself when he claimed to have gunned down 21 men, “One for every year of my life.”

Countless books, articles and big- and small-screen productions have made the highlights of his brief life common knowledge to even the most passive Western aficionado. Young Billy first broke jail in Silver City, New Mexico Territory, in September 1875, killed a reputed bully in Arizona Territory in August 1877, then returned to his adoptive territory. By that November he was riding for English businessman/rancher John Tunstall in turbulent Lincoln County. When Tunstall was shot down in February 1878, the Kid and the other self-proclaimed Regulators sought revenge against his killers, setting off the Lincoln County War. Things heated up on April 1 when Regulators gunned down the county’s corrupt sheriff, William Brady, then boiled over in July amid a five-day fight between the competing factions that culminated with the burning of the McSween house and killing of businessman Alexander McSween.

After the war the fugitive Kid, who had supported McSween, elected to remain in the county. That unwise decision led to Billy’s capture at Stinking Springs in December 1880, followed by a busy April 1881 marked by the Kid’s conviction for Brady’s murder at trial in Mesilla and his bold escape from the Lincoln County Courthouse, during which he killed two of Sheriff Pat Garrett’s deputies. Swearing never to be caught alive again, the Kid got his wish when shot down by the relentless Garrett on July 14, 1881, in friend Pete Maxwell’s bedroom at the latter’s family ranch in Fort Sumner.

Stories of the Kid’s romances have also made the rounds. Paulita Maxwell, a daughter of prominent rancher Lucien Bonaparte Maxwell and sister to Pete, was popularly believed to have been one of Billy’s lovers. Some even allege she was pregnant with Billy’s baby at the time Garrett gunned down the fugitive Kid in her older brother’s bedroom. Another rumored lover of the man known as William Bonney was Sallie Lucy Chisum, a niece of cattle baron John Chisum, although it is far more likely they were just friends.

But other stories rarely make it into the history books, tales of horse races, knife play, poker games and dances. Though less dramatic than such events as the public shooting of Sheriff Brady or the ambush killing of Deputy Bob Olinger from a second-story window of the Lincoln County Courthouse or Billy’s alleged romances with Paulita and Sallie, such anecdotes paint a more complete picture of the daring youth who captured the imagination of so many American readers.

As part of the federal Works Projects Administration (WPA), which between 1935 and ’43 put some 8.5 million people to work to alleviate unemployment amid the Great Depression, the Federal Writers’ Project (FWP) sent hundreds of writers nationwide to record the life stories of a broad swath of Americans. The resulting documents offer a unique glimpse into the past, recording diverse facets of interviewees’ lives, from their occupations and religious practices to their political views and even their favorite meals. Amid the fascinating tales of those who settled the West, alongside thrilling accounts of Indian raids and cattle rustling, is the occasional offhand reference to Billy the Kid. 

Not all such recollections should be accepted at face value, of course. “One of the perils of a Kid/Lincoln County War historian,” explains one such historian, James Mills, “is having to differentiate between the realistic recollection of old-timers and where they got a little carried away or their memory muddled in some cases.”

Case in point is a tale told by Francisco Gomez, who was 83 years old when interviewed in 1938. Gomez had worked for the McSweens and claimed to have ridden with the Kid against a pair of rowdies who shot up Lincoln. “[Civil War veteran] Captain [Saturnino] Baca was sheriff then,” Gomez said, “and some tough outlaws came to Lincoln and rode up and down the streets and shot out window lights in the houses and terrorized people.” At Baca’s request, the old-timer alleged, Billy led Gomez, José Chavez y Chavez and two other men on a hunt for the badmen. “The outlaws went to the upper Ruidoso, and we followed them. We caught up with them and shot it out with them. One of the outlaws was killed, and the other ran away. None of us were hurt.”

In all fairness, decades had passed between the time of the alleged events and when Gomez related his story. As historian Mills notes, however, Baca had finished his term as sheriff before Billy ever arrived in Lincoln County. “The incident may well have occurred while Baca was sheriff, but Billy wouldn’t have been involved,” Mills said.

So, was Gomez mistaken about the Kid’s involvement or wrong about who was sheriff at the time? Either seems feasible. But Gomez had other clear recollections of Billy. “He used to practice target shooting a lot,” the old-timer recounted. “He would throw up a can and would twirl his six-gun on his finger, and he could hit the can six times before it hit the ground.”

Interviewed by the FWP at age 82 in 1937, Annie E. Lesnett was married to a local storekeeper and hotelier and was the mother of two young children at the time of the Lincoln County War. Acquainted with Billy, she corroborated his skill with firearms. “The Kid was one of the quickest, most accurate shots in the Southwest,” she recalled. “He often said, however, that he wished he were as accurate with a six-gun as he was with a rifle. He was good with a pistol but excellent with a rifle.”

According to Jack Robert Grigsby, who was born in Tyler, Texas, in 1854, orphaned as a boy and moved to Lincoln County when he was 16, Billy was just as adept with a knife. In a cattle camp near Hackberry, Texas, Grigsby looked on as the Kid got into a fight with a fellow hand that quickly turned violent. “Billy cut the Negro across the side of the face and down the back with a long butcher knife,” Grigsby recalled. The victim fled, then collapsed. As the wounded man pleaded for his life, the Kid snapped, “Oh, shut your damn mouth! I have already done all to you that I want to.” Billy’s reaction, as reported by Grigsby, coincides with other accounts of the Kid’s cool detachment. “Billy stood there and wiped the blood off of the knife with his hands…as unconcerned as if he hadn’t done a thing. But he left after that. He was afraid the officers would hear of this and would get him for other things he was wanted for.”

The Kid certainly had a fearsome reputation. George Bede, who arrived in New Mexico Territory in 1877 and worked on Chisum’s Jinglebob Ranch near Roswell for five years, had regular interactions with Billy. “Whenever I met him, he acted mighty decent,” Bede recalled, “and ’twas generally said about him that he never turned a fellow down that was up against it and called for a little help. But, also, the folks ’lowed he would shoot a man just to see the fellow give the dying kick. ’Twas said he got a powerful lot of amusement out of watching a fellow that he didn’t like twist and groan.”

Apocryphal or not, such tales stood the Kid in good stead at times. Take, for example, an anecdote from Ambrosio Chavez, whose cousin Martín was a friend of Billy’s. Chavez recalled a prize match between Martín’s mare and a fast horse owned by a group of passing Texans. The bet was three fat beeves. But when Martín’s mare won the race by a wide margin, the Texans cried foul and angrily refused to honor the wager. Shortly thereafter the Kid arrived at Martín’s for a visit, and on hearing the story, he determined to visit the Texans and set the matter straight. “The women at Martín’s ranch just begged Billy not to go to collect the bet,” Chavez said, “as they were afraid that there would be trouble over it, and that Billy might get killed. But Billy just laughed at them.” Armed with two pistols and two cartridge belts, the Kid rode into the Texans’ cattle herd and shot down three of their best animals. He then told Martín to have the Texans deliver the meat. “The Texans were so scared when they found out that he was Billy the Kid that they broke camp and left right away.”

Another tale that cast the Kid in a heroic light came from Pedro M. Rodriguez, who was born in Lincoln County in 1874. His 1938 interview centers on Indian fighting, specifically his father’s service in then Captain (and future Lincoln County sheriff) William Brady’s 1st Regiment New Mexico Volunteer Calvary, headquartered at Fort Stanton. “In those days,” Rodriguez said, “the Indians roamed all over Lincoln County and were always killing people and stealing cattle and horses.” When Indians threatened the family cattle herd, Pedro’s grandfather gathered a posse of cowboys, the Kid among them, to ride into Turkey Canyon and drive the cattle down to the Ruidoso. Halfway up the canyon some two dozen Mescalero Apaches, led by Chief Kamisa, intercepted the wranglers. Amid a parley the Indians subtly moved in to surround the cowboys. Keeping a cool head, the Kid instructed his fellow hands in Spanish to tighten up their horses’ cinches and follow him. “Billy mounted his horse, with a six-gun in each hand, and started hollering and shooting as he rode toward the Indians. The rest of the men followed, shooting as they went. They broke through the line of Indians, and not a one of the men were hurt.” The cowboys then rounded up the cattle and returned them to Rodriguez’s corral. “The next morning Kamisa and a band of Indians came to my grandfather’s house.” A deal was struck, and for the paltry price of three beeves the Apaches vowed to leave Rodriguez’s herd alone. “The Indians kept their promise and never stole any more cattle.”

For every story that paints Billy as a steely gunman, just as many describe an amiable young man many called friend. Gomez remembered the Kid’s big roan horse. “Billy would go to the gate and whistle, and the horse would come up to the gate to him. That horse would follow Billy and mind him like a dog.” Lesnett also had benign recollections of the Kid. “He was very fond of children,” she said. “He called my little boy [Irvin] ‘Pardie’ and always wanted to hold the baby [Jennie Mae].…He also had a little dog…[that] would jump up on the Kid until he would laughingly pull his gun and begin firing into the ground. The dog would playfully follow every puff of dust, yelping joyfully.” Billy also frequented local dances. According to Ella (née Bolton) Davidson, who shared a memorable spin around the floor with the Kid, many a local hostess believed “the Kid had been led into evil paths and, through kindness and friendliness of hospitality, might be led back into the straight and narrow way.”

Many people spoke of the polite young outlaw with overt fondness. Berta (née Ballard) Manning was 10 years old in 1879 when she settled with her family in Fort Sumner. “Yes, I remember Billy the Kid real well,” she recalled. “He was not rough looking and was very quiet and friendly. I never saw anything ugly about him or in his manners.…He was kind and could be a good friend. But I am sure we should not make a hero of Billy, for after all he was a bandit and a killer.” Berta’s brother, Charles Ballard, had a similar impression of the Kid. “I remember good times I had with Billy the Kid,” he recalled. “He was not an outlaw in manners—was quiet but good company, always doing something interesting. That was why he had so many friends. We often raced horses together.” Charles also touched on the Kid’s reputation as an outlaw. “Billy was credited with more killings than he ever did. However, there were plenty that could be counted against him. It was reported he was the one who killed [McSween attorney Huston] Chapman when Chapman refused to dance when ordered, but Billy had nothing at all to do with that shooting.”

Recollections of the Kid in the FWP interviews paint a picture of a young man seemingly caught up in circumstances beyond his control. But however congenial a friend he may have been, he was indisputably an outlaw. J.H. “Jake” Byler spent his adult life punching cows and shared hair-raising tales about stampedes, gunfights and cattle rustling. “I ran cattle all over west Texas, from Tom Green to the Pecos and from there to New Mexico,” he recalled. While working as a hand for Tularosa Basin rancher Pat Coghlan, who had a government contract to furnish beef to reservation Indians, Byler learned not to question where the cattle came from. “A new hand knew better than to ask questions,” he said. “If he had any sense at all, he kept his mouth shut and stuck to duty. If he didn’t, he didn’t last long.

“Billy the Kid was doing his part of the stealing [of cattle] on the Pecos and selling to Coghlan,” Byler said. “I’ve slept many a night right by Billy and never asked a question, just got up next morning and took the cattle he had brought in up to the reservation without a word.” But rustling wasn’t the Kid’s only source of illicit income. According to Byler, Billy worked a side deal with local stage drivers. At a prearranged point the Kid would meet a stage, take the driver’s gun, make off with the strongbox and then split the take with the driver. To thwart the young outlaw’s depredations, the stage company outfitted one Sam Perry with fast horses and his pick of possemen and set him off in pursuit of the Kid. “Sam was a crook too,” Byler asserted. “He came by where Tress Underwood and I were working and tried to get us to go with him. He said Billy the Kid’s hideout was on the border, that he knew where it was, and that we could sell out to him and split, then get us an old pack jack, trudge back and tell that the Kid and his gang overpowered us and took everything we had.” Byler and Underwood declined the offer, but some weeks later Perry returned “just as he had planned, leading the old jack and loaded down with money. He took us into Silver City, and we all got drunk.”

Obviously, the Kid was not the only rustler to ride the range. Rumor had it even Garrett had ridden and rustled beeves with Billy. “Pat had been a partner of Bill’s before Pat went to farming and ranching,” Bede claimed. “Under some sort of an arrangement Pat surrendered and was not sent to prison.” Bede lived for a time on Garrett’s ranch and claimed the Kid came by frequently at the rancher’s invitation. “When Pat became a lawman, he sent for Billy.” According to Bede, who “heard some of the chinning,” Garrett tried to persuade the Kid to give up his desperado lifestyle, but Billy would have none of it. “I guess the Kid hankered for his amusement of watching shot men kick and groan.” In support of his allegation, Bede offered another anecdote:

I am sure father and I heard the last words the two men said on the subject of the Kid’s surrender.…The Kid was mounted and ready to leave, and Pat said to him, “Billy, you can see it my way, I guess?”

“No, Pat,” the Kid said.

“Well, you understand I have to either resign or kill you, and I am not going to resign.”

“You mean that you’ll try to kill me’, the Kid answered while laughing; and then he rode off, saying, “So long, pardner.” It was some spell after that last call of the Kid’s when Pat killed the fellow.

Not all old-timers, though, accepted the fact of the legendary outlaw’s death. “There seems to be evidence that Billy the Kid was not killed by Garrett but that he lived to be an old man down near Marfa, Texas,” said Dr. John Randolph Carver, who was interviewed in Fort Sumner at age 67 in 1937. Carver cited three reasons so many people refused to believe the Kid had died that night in Maxwell’s bedroom. “One is that his sister came out to see him and then did not go to his grave but went directly east. That his horse was never seen again is another reason. Third is that Pete Maxwell and Pat Garrett were his friends, and that a Mexican was buried instead of Billy the Kid.”

As with Elvis, Amelia Earhart and others, tales of the Kid’s survival and rumored sightings abound. Take a story told by Elbert Croslin, who made a living as a rodeo performer and claimed to have run afoul of Billy during a poker game. For the record, Croslin was born in 1885, four years after Garrett killed the Kid.

Croslin’s undated interview centered on bronco-busting and other wild adventures out West. He related one particularly punishing series of rides in Bonham, Texas. “I took so many falls that it hurt my pride quite a bit,” he said. “I didn’t even want to stay around, so I caught some freight trains and went to New Mexico.” While in Portales the broke, recovering rider found himself spectating at a poker game, drawn to it by the pistols and heaps of gold coins stacked on the table before each player. “I’d seen money like that in banks before,” Croslin recalled, “but not out in public.” He proceeded to “sweat the game,” skulking along the fringes to study poker hands and learn each player’s style. When one of the men made a foolish play, Croslin grunted in derision. Bad move. “He jumped around so quick that I never realized he was moving till he was facing me, and, Lawd! Lawd! he had his six-shooter pointed at my biscuits.” Noting Croslin was a mere lad, the player grabbed him by the shirt collar, dumped him outside on the boardwalk and returned to the game without uttering a word.

Angered and humiliated, Croslin decided to seek revenge. “I thought I was some pumpkins, and I also thought that since they didn’t know me, I could get away with tough stuff, and they’d just think I was sure tough.…I finally made up my mind to get [my] pistol and go kill the man.” As Croslin returned to the hotel lobby with gun drawn, the white-faced proprietor snatched the gun from his hand. “You wouldn’t have a chance with that man,” he explained. “Why, he’s Billy the Kid, one of the best and fastest pistol toters the world has ever seen.” Sobered by the warning, Croslin left his six-gun behind and caught the first homeward-bound freight train. Further down in his interview he mentions having later joined a party of drovers trailing a herd past Stinking Springs, a known hangout of the Kid. “I took it up for another chance to see Billy,” he said. “I was disappointed, though, because a fellow named of Pat Carret [sic] had already killed him somewhere. I think that’s the way it was. Anyway, I never saw him.”

“After I got back home,” he recalled, “I had quite a few tales to tell about the cowpunchers, and did I tell about Billy the Kid. Of course, it goes without saying that I never told what really happened between him and me. The tale I told had a different ending!”

One may assume Croslin was simply relating a tall tale to his interviewer. “I always was kind of a hand to brag on anything,” he admitted. It’s likely the well-meaning barkeep simply told the cowhand his intended “victim” was Billy the Kid to spare the youngster trouble. Still, it appears Croslin believed the claim, or he wouldn’t have joined a cattle drive past one of the Kid’s hangouts. Or, perhaps in the same way present generations still idolize Elvis, folks who grew up in Billy’s shadow may have earnestly believed the Kid still roamed the West. Either way, stories like Croslin’s undoubtedly fueled the popular notion Billy had survived and may ultimately explain why so many people embraced the claims of such impostors as “Brushy Bill” Roberts, who insisted he was the Kid right up until his death on Dec. 27, 1950.

While the credibility of Billy the Kid encounters in many of the FWP interviews remains in question, that doesn’t make them any less interesting or entertaining. Aside from tales about the Kid, the interviews contain plenty to hold one’s interest. Charles Ballard, for instance, served as a Rough Rider during the Spanish-American War and rode in the honor guard amid Theodore Roosevelt’s second inaugural parade in 1905. In his interview Byler held forth on Indian raids, knife fights and barroom brawls around the poker table. His story of Billy the cattle thief and stage robber was but one anecdote from his own long life of adventure.

Whether or not we believe such tales of the legendary Billy the Kid, the FWP interviews in the archives of the Library of Congress represent a valuable collection of American folklore and Western heritage. While they may not stand up to historical scrutiny, they sound mighty fine when shared around a campfire.  

Mark Iacampo, who once performed stunts as a Rough Rider at the Rawhide Western Town in Scottsdale, Ariz., is a freelance writer for publications on three continents. For further reading he recommends Billy the Kid: The Endless Ride, by Michael Wallis; The Real Billy the Kid, by Miguel Antonio Otero Jr.; and the Library of Congress collection American Life Histories: Manuscripts From the Federal Writers’ Project, 1936 to 1940, searchable online at loc.gov/collections/federal-writers-project.

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On Monday, March 28, 1881, Billy the Kid and Billy Wilson were escorted from their jail cells in Santa Fe, New Mexico Territory, to the train depot by Deputy U.S. Marshal Tony Neis and Police Chief Frank Chavez. Accompanying the lawmen and their handcuffed prisoners was attorney Ira E. Leonard. Though they were being transported to Mesilla, nearly 300 miles to the south, to face trial for serious crimes—the Kid for having killed Lincoln County Sheriff William Brady and Andrew L. “Buckshot” Roberts, Wilson for counterfeiting—the pair must have been elated at their relative freedom. They had been locked up in the Santa Fe jail for 91 days.

The southbound train went only as far as Rincon, some 30 miles shy of Mesilla. As the party disembarked, they were confronted by a mob of “roughs” who intended to wrest Billy from his escorts. Marshal Neis was able to shepherd the Kid and Wilson to a saloon across the street where he and Chief Chavez barricaded themselves and their prisoners in a back room. Neis, not knowing whether the mob intended to free or to lynch Billy, advised his prisoners that if the door were breached, his first action would be to “turn his guns loose” on them. Disinterested men on the outside eventually convinced the roughs to disperse.

The next morning the party took the stagecoach to Mesilla, passing through Las Cruces. Hostile crowds were waiting at both places. On reaching their destination, Neis and Chavez turned over the Kid and Wilson to Doña Ana County Sheriff James W. Southwick, who placed the pair in the two-cell Mesilla jail, which already held 14 prisoners. The jail was within a high-walled placita. Forming one wall of the placita was the Mesilla Courthouse, which served as a primary school when court wasn’t in session. Katherine Stoes, a student the year Billy was tried, described the courtroom:

At the back end of the room is a small platform on which are a table and chair for the judge. On either side of the platform is a small table with two chairs. In one corner of the back wall is a large bookcase with the glass missing from one door. At the other corner is a stove in front of the fireplace. There is no other furniture in the room except 16 or 18 wooden benches without backs. In front of the desk was a small clearance where the lawyers came to make their pleas.

The jurors sat in the first two rows of benches. During deliberations they were cloistered in Joshua Sledd’s Casino Hotel, one block south of the plaza. Witnesses were also isolated there prior to their testimony. The court paid Sledd $2 a day for the use of his hotel, one of three in Mesilla at the time.

The Third District Court, in which the Kid and Wilson were to be tried, had jurisdiction over both federal and territorial cases. Court regulations required it to address federal business before territorial business, so each morning the court would open in federal session. After the federal business wrapped up, that session would adjourn, and the territorial session would open. The district magistrate, in this case Judge Warren Henry Bristol, presided over both sessions. Territorial lawyers sometimes served as prosecutor in federal cases and as defense lawyer in territorial cases, or vice versa. The court met six days a week, resting on Sundays.

The Kid appeared before Judge Bristol first thing on March 30 to face charges of murder and accessory to murder in the killing of Buckshot Roberts, who’d been mortally wounded on April 4, 1878, amid the Lincoln County War. The case was being pursued in federal court, as the site of the killing, Blazer’s Mill, was on the Mescalero Apache Indian Reservation. Jurisdiction over reservations was limited to the federal government.

The Kid pleaded destitution, and Bristol appointed Leonard as his attorney. Leonard then asked the court for time to prepare Billy’s defense, and the court granted the motion. The next day, March 31, the Kid appeared before Judge Bristol and pleaded not guilty to Roberts’ murder.

On April 6 Billy’s trial for the murder of Roberts opened. At the suggestion of attorney Albert Jennings Fountain, Leonard moved Billy’s not guilty plea be withdrawn and the case dismissed, as the federal government lacked jurisdiction. Leonard argued that although Blazer’s Mill, the site of Robert’s killing, sat amid reservation land, the mill itself was on private land. Thus, the site fell under territorial jurisdiction.

Acting Attorney General Simon Bolivar Newcomb filed a demurrer, arguing while it was true the federal government lacked jurisdiction, that fact was irrelevant to the case. Judge Bristol overruled Newcomb’s demurrer, quashed the indictment and ordered Billy “go hence without delay.”

Of course, the Kid was not free to simply walk out of the courthouse. After granting a dismissal in the Roberts murder case, Judge Bristol remanded Billy to the custody of Sheriff Southwick to be held for trial in the killing of Sheriff Brady.

The next day, in federal session, Billy Wilson’s counterfeiting trial opened. Defense attorney Sidney Barnes (Leonard could not represent Wilson, as he had been subpoenaed as a witness against him) immediately requested a change of venue to Santa Fe, a motion opposed by Newcomb. Bristol agreed to send the case to Santa Fe. 

On April 8, in territorial session, the Kid appeared before Judge Bristol to answer for the killing of Brady. He again pleaded destitution. Newcomb represented the territory, while the court assigned Fountain and John D. Bail as Billy’s lawyers. They pleaded not guilty on behalf of their client.

Jury selection followed. The opposing sides went through the jury pool and three dozen talesmen before finding 12 mutually acceptable jurors. Almost all the potential jurors were Hispanic. An analysis of Fountain’s strategy shows he rejected the only four Anglos in the jury pool, suggesting he believed his client had a better chance with an all-Hispanic jury. The prosecution logged only six objections and found all four Anglos acceptable.

Census data gives us a picture of the jurors. They ranged in age from 27 to 56. All were married, except one widower. Six were farmers, and two were freighters. Five could not read or write. Territorial law required jurors to be male citizens, heads of families and between 21 and 60 years of age.

The Kid’s trial began the next day. The prosecution called four witnesses to testify against him—Jacob B. Mathews, Saturnino Baca, Bonifacio Baca and Isaac Ellis. Because no known transcript survives, it is necessary to reconstruct their testimony.

Mathews was one of four deputies walking down Lincoln’s main street with Brady on April 1, 1878, when the sheriff was killed. He would have testified about having suddenly come under fire and Brady getting hit, then sprinting to shelter and returning fire on the ambushers. Mathews would have identified the source of the firing as the corral of the late English rancher John Tunstall, who’d been murdered on Feb. 18, 1878. He would have recounted having seen the Kid and Jim French dash out from behind the corral and seemingly attempt to recover something from Brady’s body.

Saturnino Baca had been teaching school in the torreón, a fortress built in the 1850s for protection against Apache raiders, when Brady was killed. Bonnie Baca, Saturnino’s oldest son, had been in the street when the killing occurred. Both would have testified to having seen Brady fall and then the Kid and French run to the body. Ellis also would have testified to having seen Brady fall, as he was outside when Brady was shot.

No witnesses spoke in Billy’s defense.

The critical question is whether any of these witnesses had seen who fired the fatal shots. The answer is no. They knew the shooting came from behind Tunstall’s 10-foot-high corral wall (or gate in some accounts), but none was in a position to see the gunmen.

Behind the corral wall at the time of the shooting were eight men—Billy, French, John Middleton, Henry Brown, Fred Waite, Frank McNab, Robert Widenmann and Sam Corbet. Yet, strikingly, a grand jury had indicted only the Kid, Middleton and Brown for Brady’s murder. French, though spotted running from the corral with Billy to search the sheriff’s body, was not indicted. Did the grand jury have an evidentiary basis for selecting the trio, or did they just not know who else was behind the wall?

Many researchers have wondered whether Billy testified in his own defense. He did not.

The history of testifying in one’s own defense is surprising. Being able to tell one’s side of events when accused of a crime would seem a fundamental right. Yet it is a relatively recent legal right of a defendant.

Under English common law a defendant had no right to testify in his own defense, as he was presumed an incompetent witness due to self-interest. This was true for both civil and criminal cases.

As English common law formed the basis for U.S. law, defendants in the United States also had no right to testify in their own defense—at least initially. In the 1860s American legal scholars started to advocate for such a right. The first state to permit a defendant to testify in his own defense, in civil cases, was Maine, in 1864. Massachusetts followed suit in 1866, then Connecticut in 1867. Legal reformers then argued that defendants in criminal cases should be able to testify in their own defense. In 1869 New York became the first state to permit the practice in such cases.

In February 1880 the New Mexico Territorial Legislature passed a law permitting a defendant to testify in his own defense. Thus, Billy had the right to relate his side of the shooting to the jury. Why did he not?

Perhaps Fountain was so unfamiliar with the novel practice of having a defendant testify on his own behalf that he didn’t consider the option. The author has been unable to find any case prior to the Kid’s in which Fountain put a defendant on the stand to testify in his own defense. Or maybe Billy simply refused to plead on his own behalf—he had done it, Brady had deserved it, and he was not going to lie about it.

The latter explanation seems unlikely. At the time of Brady’s killing Fountain, founding editor of The Mesilla Valley Independent, had interviewed one of the men behind the corral wall (likely the Kid) and reported, “One of the murderers subsequently stated that Brady was killed by accident; that it was their intention only to kill [George] Hindman, as one of the murderers of Tunstall; and that one of the shots intended for Hindman took effect on Brady.”

With that statement Fountain had grounds to argue the killing of Brady had been unintentional. He could have called defense witnesses to bolster the argument. Corbet, among those behind the corral wall when Brady was shot, was in Mesilla during Billy’s trial. Why had Fountain not called him as a witness?

Following the witnesses’ testimonies and respective attorneys’ arguments, Judge Bristol presented the jury instructions for their deliberation. This was the decisive moment of the trial.

Territorial law required that to convict a defendant of first-degree murder, the jury must be certain beyond a reasonable doubt the defendant did it and equally certain the act was intentional.

Fountain prepared instructions to the jury that explained and emphasized these two requirements. Bristol rejected those instructions. Instead, he presented the jury with three pages of dense instructions of his own, instructions that, as far as the author has been able to determine, were longer than any presented to a jury by Bristol during his judgeship.

Regarding the requirement they be certain the defendant had killed Brady, Bristol told the jury that even if they did not believe the Kid had fired the fatal shot, they could still find Billy guilty for having encouraged, incited, aided in, abetted, advised or commanded the killing. As none of those actions could be proved without the testimony of a participant in conversations preceding the shooting, that part of Bristol’s instructions was irrelevant, its purpose seemingly to confuse the jury.

Regarding intention, Bristol instructed the jury this way:

As to this premeditated design, I charge you that to render a design to kill premeditated, it is not necessary that such design to kill should exist in the mind for any considerable length of time before the killing.

If the design to kill is completely formed in the mind but for a moment before inflicting the fatal wound, it would be premeditated, and in law the effect would be the same as though the design to kill had existed for a long time.

In effect Bristol asserted the intention to kill need exist for only a “moment” to qualify as premeditation. Such a definition of intention would qualify almost every crime as premeditated.

Bristol had his complex instructions read to the jury in English and then given to them in written English for use in their deliberations at the Casino Hotel. Yet few of the jurors (perhaps none) spoke English. The editor of Newman’s Semi-Weekly, a short-lived Las Cruces–based newspaper, addressed a similar oversight regarding the conviction of Frank C. Clark for first-degree murder in the same court session:

We desire to call the attention of the court and bar to the manner in which trials are conducted in this county through the medium of interpreters.…We on Thursday watched for several hours the progress of the trial of Clark for murder. Here was a man being tried for the highest crime known to the law; his life hung in the balance, and he was certainly entitled to all the protection and all the guaranties which the court and the laws of his country could throw around him. He was entitled to an impartial trial; and in this term “impartial” is embraced the right of his attorneys to advance and explain any theory of the case which they might consider would relieve him of the terrible suspicion resting upon him. If their theory is not thoroughly and lucidly explained, and the abstract principles and ideas advanced by them are not interpreted to the jurors in a manner to be perfectly understood by them, then it appears to us that Clark has just ground of complaint that a fair trial has been denied him. We maintain that this was not done; and any Spanish scholar who watched the proceedings will bear us out.

There is reason to believe such obstacles to a fair trial were also a factor in the Kid’s trial. If such obstacles did exist, his trial would be viewed today as a mockery of justice. On April 9, 1881, the jury found Billy guilty of Brady’s murder.

Almost every author who has written about the Kid and the Lincoln County War has questioned why there is no surviving transcript of Billy’s trial. Most have speculated that either no transcript was made or else the transcript was lost or stolen.

In fact, the court clerk would have made a transcript, as territorial law mandated the transcription of trial proceedings. But another rule of the court was that if attorneys did not appeal a case, the court would not pay a clerk to make a formal copy for the case file, as that would have been considered an unnecessary expense.

On April 13 Billy returned to court to learn his fate. Judge Bristol sentenced him to hang “by the neck until his body be dead,” on May 13, “between the hours of 9 of the clock in the forenoon and 3 of the clock in the afternoon.”

Billy had several grounds on which to appeal his conviction. One was that Bristol had given the jury its instructions in English, though none of the jurors could read or necessarily speak English. Another was that Bristol had instructed the jurors they could only consider first-degree murder or acquittal. Territorial law recognized five degrees of murder, and had the jury been permitted to consider all options, they likely would have convicted Billy of a lesser charge. Over the next 18 months defendants convicted of first-degree murder would appeal their convictions on both of these grounds.

Fountain filed no appeal for the Kid, however, as Billy lacked the money to pay for one. Territorial law required the state to pay for a destitute defendant’s legal representation in a trial, but not for an appeal.

On April 16, three days after his sentencing, an escort of six men—Bob Olinger, David Wood, Daniel Reade, Tom Williams, Billy Mathews and John Kinney—loaded the Kid into an ambulance (wagon) for transport to Lincoln. “[Billy] was handcuffed and shackled and chained to the back seat of the ambulance,” reported Newman’s Semi-Weekly. “Kinney sat beside him; Olinger on the seat facing him. Mathews faced Kinney…and Reade, Wood and Williams [were] riding along on horseback on each side and armed to the teeth.”

They were transporting the Kid to Lincoln to hang because territorial law mandated a defendant sentenced to death be hanged in the county in which the crime was committed. On April 21 Billy’s escort delivered him into the custody of Lincoln County Sheriff Pat Garrett.

Seven days later the Kid escaped from jail at the Lincoln County Courthouse, killing Deputies Olinger and James Bell in the process. On July 14, at about midnight, Sheriff Garrett fatally shot the Kid in friend Pete Maxwell’s bedroom at the latter’s family ranch in Fort Sumner—62 days after Billy would have died by hanging.  

this article first appeared in wild west magazine

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Catherine McCarty sang along to the popular tune “La Paloma” and twirled around the wooden dance floor, her 12-year-old son’s hands in hers. Surely the tune resonated with other women like her who’d left Ireland long ago. Words to the two-step jig, in Spanish and English, flowed together this day in 1873 in the Southwestern town of Silver City, New Mexico Territory.

The music, courtesy of a squeezebox, fiddle and guitar, reached a crescendo and then ended. Billy bowed to his mom, and she curtsied to him. She and Billy often sang and danced together, making quite the pair. The crowd clapped enthusiastically as Catherine laughed, her smile infectious, her love of music and dancing shared by her son.

While little is known about Catherine’s early life, a few facts have emerged, thanks to relentless researchers. She appears to have left Ireland aboard the steamship Devonshire during the Great Famine of the mid- to late 1840s and arrived in New York City in 1846. Born around 1829 (a fairly reliable guess, as her 1874 obituary lists her age as 45), she was around 17 when she stepped foot on American soil. Prior to 1855 immigrants would have disembarked on the docks on the east side of Manhattan, where little processing took place. (Through 1890 people were welcomed at the Emigrant Landing Depot, popularly known as Castle Garden, in Battery Park, while the famed Ellis Island didn’t open until 1892.) Passenger records list Catherine’s occupation as “servant.” Common in that era, indentured servants typically worked for wealthy families up to seven years before earning the freedom to make their own way, as Catherine did.

After arriving in America, immigrants of many nations, particularly the Irish, chose to band together in close-knit communities. Catherine likely did too, at least for a while. As she listed her occupation on arrival, she likely already had work lined up. It’s not known where she was first employed, but records indicate that by 1860 she was living in Utica, N.Y., where she worked for the John Munn family. Around 1861 she gave birth to William Henry McCarty, who lives on in infamy as Billy the Kid. That said, despite much research by many people, exactly when and where the Kid was born is not a settled matter. The identity of his father is also anyone’s guess, though in an 1868 census in Indianapolis, where Catherine lived for several years, she listed herself as the widow of one Michael McCarty.

Most historians believe William Henry (aka “Billy”) to be Catherine McCarty’s older son. Though many give his birth year as 1859, Billy himself claimed to have been born around 1861, and many intriguing hints point that way. Joseph (aka “Josie” or “Joe”) Bonney McCarty was born some two years after Billy and cited 1863 as his birth year in census forms. Question is, how did Joe acquire the middle name Bonney, and why did Billy later adopt it as an alias?

A theory that makes sense of the Bonney connection suggests that while living in Utica and working for the Munn family, Catherine engaged in a tryst with a neighbor. In the 1860 census we find that eight doors up the street (according to the 1858/59 city directory) lived brothers John J. and Edward Finch Bonney, who were older and younger than Catherine, respectively. Rumors flew of a liaison, but with which brother is unclear. Was Billy and Joe’s father a Bonney? Is that why Catherine gave Joe the middle name of Bonney and how Billy lit on it as an alias?

In that place and time, had 30-something indentured servant Catherine and one of the Bonney brothers produced offspring, what would have happened? The Bonney family probably would have chafed at the potential tarnishing of their upper-class reputation. After all, Catherine was probably Irish Catholic, while they were likely of English Protestant ancestry, a combination akin to fire and gasoline. What then to do with the love child/children? Why not send them and their mother as far west as possible? By then trains ran clear to Indianapolis. That is the probable sequence of events for Catherine and her young sons, for they soon traveled to the edge of the frontier. Though speculation, the Bonneys may have set her up financially, buying her silence.

In any case, Catherine was no average woman of the 1860s. Although she claimed the title of widow, she was not the undereducated, “poor widow woman” of Irish immigrant stereotype. Catherine was smart, likable and educated and had a good eye for business. By all accounts, she was also a good mom, protecting her sons and doing whatever necessary to see they succeeded in life.

By 1868 she had moved to Indianapolis, the exact reason open to speculation. What we do know is in that year’s census she listed herself as the widow of Michael McCarty. Why did she identify herself as such? Likely because she was. Moreover, society of the day would have shunned a woman who admitted to having birthed one (or both) of her children out of wedlock. It was far more respectable to claim widowhood, a status all too common after the Civil War.

Life must have been difficult in booming Indianapolis. In order to support her boys, Catherine operated a laundry and sold baked goods. She may have taken in boarders, another common occupation, as many soldiers had mustered out of service and needed a place to ground themselves while reacclimating to civilian life.

More is known about William Henry Harrison Antrim, the man who became Catherine’s husband and her boys’ stepfather, than is known about the McCarty clan. Born in Huntsville, Ind., in 1842 (making him a dozen years Catherine’s junior), Bill was the fifth of seven siblings. His father, Levi, was a merchant and proprietor of a hotel in nearby Anderson. While in school Bill and siblings washed dishes, hauled wood and waited tables at the hotel.

In June 1862 the 20-year-old Antrim enlisted for three months in the Union Army, mustering in as a private with the 54th Regiment of the Indiana Infantry. After marching the 42 miles to Indianapolis with fellow volunteers, Antrim spent three months on guard duty at Camp Morton before mustering out of service. Remaining in the city, he moved to 58 Cherry St. and became a driver and clerk at Merchants Union Express Co., within a few blocks of the McCarty residence on North East Street.

Housing the steam locomotives bringing goods and people to and from the West, Indianapolis was abuzz with commerce. Coal powered the economic boom. Darkening the sky, the resulting coal smoke made eyes and noses water and breathing difficult. Little thought was given to what effects such particulates in the air would do to people’s health. Progress was at hand, and nothing would stop commercial growth.

Was this where Catherine contacted tuberculosis, then known as consumption? In 1870, whether for clearer air or the excitement of moving to a growing frontier town, she and her boys (Billy, around 9, and Josie, 7) shrugged off the gray skies and cold, wet winters and headed west for Wichita, Kan.

Bill Antrim joined them.

In 1869 the government opened the Osage Indian trust lands in Kansas to the general public for homesteading. Requirements? Move onto a 160-acre quarter section of land and within five years perform certain improvements. Catherine’s tuberculosis must have been a driving factor in their decision. Doctors knew her only hope—no cure, just hope—was a move to a drier climate with clear air. Wichita had both.

Aware of the potential stigma of cohabiting as unmarried adults, Catherine and Bill took up separate residences. Bill bought a small plot of land 6 miles northeast of town, on which he built a cabin and worked as a farmer, while Catherine and the boys moved into a building on North Main Street, living above the room out of which she ran a laundry service.

In the heart of Wichita’s growing business district, her City Laundry attracted a steady stream of customers from the day she opened. Her business did well enough to merit mention in the March 15, 1871, inaugural edition of The Wichita Tribune:

City Laundry

The city laundry is kept by Mrs. McCarty,

to whom we recommend those

who wish to have their linen made clean.

Her hands were in hot, sudsy water from dawn to dusk, drawing from mounds of used sheets from the various brothels and the shirts and trousers of cowhands and businessmen alike. 

Since the only school, an abandoned army dugout, had literally fallen in on itself, Catherine set aside time to teach her boys reading, writing and ciphering. Billy became an avid reader and later wrote captivating letters, including several inquiries to New Mexico Territory Governor Lew Wallace about a possible pardon for murders committed during the Lincoln County War. Bucking convention, Catherine also involved herself in local politics. Out of 124 leading citizens to sign a petition for the town’s incorporation, she was the only woman. She even attended the board of trustees meeting. The town officially incorporated on July 21, 1870.

Wichita boomed after incorporation, soon boasting the third largest population of any Kansas town. Unfortunately, the bad elements multiplied right alongside the good. Wanting better for her sons, Catherine sought to shelter them from the influences of town rowdies. Turns out, avoidance proved impossible. 

In the spring of 1871, just down the street from the City Laundry, a deputy U.S. marshal engaged in a shootout with a fugitive that left the marshal wounded and the wanted man dead. No doubt the boys heard the gunfire, and they may have witnessed the shooting. Within days Catherine moved herself and the boys out of town and into Antrim’s cabin. Public opinion be damned—she wanted her sons safe. 

As Catherine’s laundry business prospered, she invested in land. Among other parcels, she acquired a vacant lot downtown and a quarter section adjacent to Antrim’s property. Bill, meanwhile, bought the property on which the laundry sat, as well as an adjacent plot. He deeded both to Catherine.

In a sworn deposition from the period Antrim noted the McCarty family had moved out of the city and been living on the quarter section adjacent to his since March 4, 1871. For it Catherine had paid $1.25 per acre, or a total of $200 cash (more than $4,600 in today’s dollars), and she paid in full. With help from the boys Bill had built the family a cabin “12 by 14 feet, one story high, board roof, one door and two windows.” 

That summer Catherine and sons, likely with help from Bill, cultivated 7 acres and set out 57 fruit trees. Fencing off one section with split rails, they put in long rows of Osage orange trees. In late summer Billy and Josie picked sand plums along the creek and riverbanks, while Catherine and Bill enjoyed the pleasure of elderberry wine. Life was certainly sweet for the blended family.

Historians have debated how Billy came to be known on period documents as Henry McCarty, but it makes logical sense. When Catherine teamed up with Bill Antrim, that made one too many “Bills” in the household. Thus, to avoid confusion, she may have taken to calling her son by his middle name, Henry. Childhood friends in Silver City later confirmed the Kid’s given name was William. Those friends added that while he never liked being referred to by his middle name, he would answer to both Billy and Henry.

Just when things were looking up, Catherine’s tuberculosis returned with a vengeance. A stifling hot laundry is far from an ideal workplace for someone battling the disease. There she sat day after day laboring among tubs of dirty clothing boiling in soapy water and a tub of cold water into which she could plunge her hands to prevent scalded flesh. Amid that humid, closed-in environment her tuberculosis took hold, and her health plummeted.

Hospitals were a rarity on the frontier, leaving the sick few options but bed rest, though those suffering from tuberculosis might opt to move to a healthier climate. Such was Catherine’s choice.

In August 1872 Catherine sold her Wichita holdings and made ready to move to Denver. Though members of Antrim’s family had recently relocated to Wichita, he followed Catherine and her boys west. Frontier travel in the 1870s was rough. There were no rest areas with toilets, running water and vending machines, no fast-food joints to fill a hungry belly, no overhead lights at night under which to sleep. Far from averaging 60 miles per hour, like today’s vehicles, horse- or ox-drawn wagons might make 20 miles a day. Travelers like the McCartys and Antrim had to rely on their own wits and know-how to survive the journey. Although rare, Indian attacks remained a concern, as Cheyennes, Sioux, Kiowas, Comanches and Kaws still roamed the Great Plains and were not welcoming of migrants. In the wake of the Army’s 1868–69 winter campaign against the Plains Indians, the worst of the violence was over, and things were relatively calm on the Kansas fronter. But scattered incidents were a reality. As there was safety in numbers, the McCartys and Antrim did not travel alone.

The four stayed awhile in Denver, Bill likely working a stint as a teamster for Wells Fargo. In 1872 the “Mile-High City” was a bustling, hustling town. After the discovery of gold at the confluence of Cherry Creek and the South Platte River in 1858, the camp had grown into a sprawling settlement almost overnight. While mining remained the biggest attraction, people afflicted with tuberculosis and other maladies also flocked to Colorado, drawn by the clear, dry air. Springing up across the region, luxurious resorts for consumptives offered hot baths and other restorative treatments. Catherine, though likely priced out of such exorbitant resorts, was able to partake of the dry, sunny climate and fresh, invigorating mountain air.

For reasons unknown within months the McCartys and Antrim left Denver, heading south on the Santa Fe Trail over Raton Pass. By year’s end 1872 they landed in Santa Fe, the capital of New Mexico Territory, amid the aspen-laden Sangre de Cristo Mountains. Beyond its outermost dwellings cornfields hemmed in the city from the west, south and east, while prairie bordered it on the west. Spanish conquistadors had dubbed the city La Villa Real de la Santa Fe de San Francisco de Asis (The Royal City of the Holy Faith of St. Francis of Assisi), a mouthful of a name later residents had reduced to Santa Fe.

Catherine must have enjoyed the life in the dry and dusty Southwestern capital. Horse racing was a big draw, and sporting folk had laid out a course along the road to the mining district of Cerillos. Footraces in town along Lincoln Avenue also drew crowds, promising purses of $100 or more. Some citizens objected to holding such footraces on Sundays, though they didn’t seem to mind if it were a race of the four-legged kind.

Hispanic residents held fandangos and bailes almost every night. As more Americans arrived in town, they brought their own homegrown dances, including masked balls and a social “hop” at Fort Marcy. But Billy was immediately, inexorably drawn to the bailes, as an adult often traveling miles to attend one. With music provided by violins, guitarróns, vihuelas and sometimes harps and coronets, the bailes also proved irresistible to his spirited Irish mother.

It was here Catherine married Bill Antrim on March 1, 1873, at the First Presbyterian Church. Her boys signed the register as witnesses.

In search of the perfect place to call home, the newly minted family left Santa Fe, soon landing in the south-central New Mexico Territory burg of Silver City. In it Catherine saw an established town that offered her boys a stable life. Amid a productive district pockmarked by silver mines, Silver City boasted numerous businesses, including a bowling alley, dance hall, apothecary, post office and various commercial stores. Stagecoaches, freight wagons, prairie schooners, wagons and buggies crisscrossed the valley.

Fortunate to find an available small cabin downtown (most families had to settle for tent living), Catherine opened a laundry, sold baked goods and took in boarders. Her charity and largesse were legendary. “Many a hungry ‘tenderfoot’ has had cause to bless the fortune which led him to her door,” wrote ghostwriter Ash Upson in Pat Garrett’s The Authentic Life of Billy, the Kid. “In all her deportment she exhibited the unmistakable characteristics of a lady—a lady by instinct and education.”

Antrim found work at Richard Knight’s butcher shop, but his heart and soul were in mining. The region around Silver City on into eastern Arizona Territory was rife with diggings and men searching for the elusive ore. An obsessed Antrim spent more and more time away from Catherine and her boys. When he wasn’t off mining either in Arizona Territory or Mogollon, New Mexico Territory, he frequented the gambling houses in Silver City, often losing at the faro and poker tables any money he’d earned through his labors.

Meanwhile, Catherine and 12-year-old Billy spent many happy hours at the festive bailes. “Mrs. Antrim could dance the Highland Fling as well as the best of the dancers,” recalled Louis Abraham, Billy’s best friend. 

Neighbors remembered Catherine as a jolly Irish lady, her blue eyes sparkling, full of life and mischief. Despite her illness, they recalled, she showed fortitude and good cheer, traits also evident in Billy. Always the doting mom, Catherine baked after-school treats for her sons and friends, who loved their visits to the Antrim home. “She always welcomed the boys with a smile and a joke,” Abraham said. “The cookie jar was never empty.”

“To those who knew [Billy the Kid’s] mother, his courteous, kindly and benevolent spirit was no mystery,” wrote Upson. “She was evidently of Irish descent. Her husband called her Kathleen. She was about the medium height, straight and graceful in form, with regular features, light blue eyes and luxuriant golden hair. She was not a beauty but what the world calls a fine-looking woman. She kept boarders in Silver City, and her charity and goodness of heart were proverbial.”

Despite outward appearances, the stress of physical labor and emotional strain of her illness continued to take a toll on Catherine’s health. Those suffering from tuberculosis are not only plagued with hacking coughs and chest pains but also severe fatigue, making rest and a stress-free lifestyle essential. But Catherine was not getting that. Her husband was often absent, and she had two boys to support.

As the disease ate away at Catherine’s sturdy frame, those halcyon days in Silver City ended far too soon. “She was a sweet, gentle little lady,” a friend recalled, “as fond of her boys as any mother should be.” Toward the end Catherine asked best friend Clara Truesdell to care for her sons when she was gone. Clara agreed. Within a week of their conversation, on Sept. 16, 1874, Catherine, 45, finally succumbed.

As usual, husband Bill Antrim was away mining, which left funeral details to Catherine’s friends and her boys. Abraham’s father hammered together her coffin, and a stream of neighbors walked with Billy and Joseph behind the casket-laden wagon. Catherine is buried in Silver City’s Memory Lane Cemetery.

Set adrift, Billy, 13, and Joe, 11, stayed with the Truesdell family until Antrim found his way home. He placed the boys with Knight the butcher. Then, figuring he was done raising kids, he again skipped town. By late 1874 Henry and Joe had become separated. Knight sent Billy to live with the Truesdells. Surely, Billy clung to that family—people he knew and who had liked his ma—as a lifeline. The family had recently bought the Star Hotel on Hudson Street, renovated the business and renamed it the Exchange (a popular hotel name out West).

Joe was sent to live with Joe Dyer, a proprietor of the New Orleans Club, where the 12-year-old worked for his keep cleaning, serving liquor and running errands. Unfortunately, growing up in such an environment without any parental supervision or guidance, Joe also gambled and drank. He was even spotted by a childhood friend smoking at a Chinese opium den. Within a couple of years Joe was thoroughly submerged in that vice-ridden world.

Unlike Billy, Joe retained Antrim’s last name throughout his life. A drifter, opium fiend and alcoholic, Joe worked stints as a card dealer, gambler, miner, room clerk and day laborer. On one occasion, either in Trinidad, Colo., or Albuquerque, he met Pat Garrett, the onetime sheriff of Lincoln County, N.M., who killed brother Billy on July 14, 1881. After a long conversation that went unrecorded, they shook hands and went their separate ways. In 1883 Joe was working as a cook in an Albuquerque hotel, which would have been a convenient place to meet Garrett. He later worked as a bartender in El Paso before wandering back north to Denver. Along the way he fathered a child and then married.

If Joe had any success gambling, he didn’t hold onto his money long. He died penniless in Denver on Nov. 25, 1930. His unclaimed body was donated to the Colorado Medical School. 

Stepfather Bill Antrim’s life continued to center on mining. After living mostly in eastern Arizona and south-central New Mexico, he spent winters in El Paso and eventually moved to Adelaide, Calif., living out his later years with a niece. In the wake of Billy’s death Antrim is not known to have spoken about his stepsons. He died at age 80 in 1922. 

Catherine’s death had left 13-year-old Billy adrift without guidance and security. Had she lived, William Henry McCarty might never have become Billy the Kid.  

Award-winning author and New Mexico native Melody Groves writes what she loves most—Westerns, both fiction and nonfiction. For further reading she recommends The Illustrated Life and Times of Billy the Kid: The Final Word, by Bob Boze Bell; Billy the Kid: The Endless Ride, by Michael Wallis; and Antrim Is My Stepfather’s Name: The Boyhood of Billy the Kid, by Jerry Weddle.

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Davy Crockett

No, not that Davy Crockett. A reputed bully in Cimarron, this Davy — either a grandson or grand-nephew of the Alamo legend — gained infamy for having murdered three U.S. 9th Cavalry buffalo soldiers at the bar of the St. James Hotel in 1876. Acquitted, but fined $50 for having carried a gun in town, he rampaged through Cimarron, often riding his horse into saloons and firing into the ceiling. Townspeople soon tired of his antics. On Sept. 30, 1876, Sheriff Isaiah Rinehart and posse shot and killed Crockett after the bully refused to surrender.

Billy the Kid

Orphaned at 13, William Henry McCarty struggled to live in the adult world. Slight in stature, he compensated with his pleasing personality, charming wit and, when pushed, his gun. A natural leader, he hung around Lincoln and became a Regulator. The Kid’s short life ended on July 14, 1881, when shot by Lincoln County Sheriff Pat Garrett.

Clay Allison

Known for extreme violence, and implicated in many vigilante jail break-ins and lynchings, the notorious gunman reportedly once rode through Mobeetie, Texas, wearing nothing but his six-shooter and gun belt. Allison homesteaded near Cimarron, where on Nov. 1, 1875, he prevailed in a shootout at the St. James Hotel, killing Francisco “Pancho” Griego.

Black Jack Ketchum

Outlaw Tom “Black Jack” Ketchum partnered with older brother Sam, robbing businesses and trains. The brothers later joined the notorious Hole-in-the-Wall Gang. In 1899 Tom foolishly attempted to rob the same train at the same spot brother Sam had held it up weeks earlier (to Sam’s demise). This time the engineer recognized Tom and shot him from his horse. Captured and convicted, Black Jack went to the gallows on April 26, 1901, in Clayton, which had never hanged anyone before. The rope proved too long, and as Ketchum had gained weight in prison, his head snapped off when his body dropped through the trap. All of him is buried in Clayton’s cemetery.

Pat Garrett

Best known as the Lincoln County sheriff who killed Billy the Kid, Garrett was also a buffalo hunter, bartender, Texas Ranger captain, promoter of irrigation schemes near Roswell and U.S. customs inspector. Appointed Doña Ana County sheriff in 1896, he was tasked with tracking down the murderers of Colonel Albert Jennings Fountain and his 8-year-old son, who’d gone missing earlier that year. He never did — officially, anyway. Garrett himself was murdered en route to Las Cruces on Feb. 29, 1908. His killer(s) were never brought to justice.

Lew Wallace

Author of the bestselling 1880 novel Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ, Wallace was also the governor of New Mexico Territory (1878–81) who promised Billy the Kid a pardon and then reneged. Wallace then served (1881–85) as U.S. minister to the Ottoman empire. The only fond memories he had of New Mexico, he admitted, was the time he devoted to painting landscapes in an alley behind the Palace of the Governors when not busy writing. 

Doña Tules

A woman of refinement and fashion, María Gertrudis Barceló was a prominent saloon owner and professional gambler in Santa Fe. Known as Madame La Tules, she was charming with a sharp business acumen and became an influential member of society during the Santa Fe Trail heyday. Tules reportedly contributed freely to families in need, the Catholic Church, charities and the government. She still died with a fortune on Jan. 17, 1852.

Colonel Albert Fountain

An attorney in Mesilla, Fountain was perhaps best known for having represented Billy the Kid in 1881 — though he lost, and the Kid was convicted of murder. Following a stint in the Union Army during the Civil War, Fountain settled in Texas where he served in the state Senate and as lieutenant governor. In 1873 he moved to Mesilla, where he served as a lawyer, probate judge and court clerk. He founded the Mesilla Valley Independent newspaper and the Mesilla Valley Opera House, known today as the Fountain Theater. On Feb. 1, 1896, he and son Henry disappeared near White Sands. They had been ambushed, but their bodies were never found, and no one ever paid for the crime.

Juan Maria (Giovanni) Agostini-Justiniani

This eccentric son of Italian nobility left home in his late teens to wander France and Spain and later trekked all over South, Central and North America. At age 62 he walked with a wagon train from Kansas to Las Vegas, New Mexico Territory, and then south to Mesilla. Considered a mystic by many, El Ermitaño (“The Hermit”) reportedly healed people and prophesied. Living in a cave in the nearby Organ Mountains, he promised Mesilla residents he would light a fire every Friday evening to signal he was fine. On April 17, 1869, not seeing the fire, investigating villagers discovered he’d been killed. His murder also remains unsolved.

Sadie Orchard

Strong-willed Sarah Jane “Sadie” Creech Orchard (1859–1943) wore many hats in the gold and silver mining camp of Kingston in the 1880s. Flamboyant Sadie established a brothel on ironically named Virtue Street, owned and drove a stagecoach line, ran a hotel and restaurant, and rode horses as well as any man. A philanthropist, she helped build a church and aided those stricken during a smallpox epidemic.

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Bob Olinger is the bully we all love to hate. A favorite recurring scene in big-screen Hollywood Westerns depicts the contemptible deputy getting his just desserts from the muzzle of a shotgun wielded by Billy the Kid in Lincoln, New Mexico Territory, in 1881.

Such depictions invariably focus on the lawman’s personality flaws. It’s worth noting, however, he had managed to win the undying love of one Lily Casey, to whom he was reportedly engaged at the time of his murder. An early resident of Lincoln, Casey (married name Lily Klasner) fondly recalled their romance in her posthumously published 1972 memoir My Girlhood Among Outlaws, a veritable trove of information about Lincoln County War figures she knew personally.

The Kid’s life story had another chapter after he killed Deputies Olinger and James W. Bell while escaping from the Lincoln County Courthouse on April 28, 1881. Not so Olinger. His body was reportedly taken to Fort Stanton and there interred without ceremony. Popular belief, old photos, magazine articles and local legend all suggest he is buried at the back of the old Fort Stanton Cemetery. If there ever was a marker on the slain deputy’s grave, it has long since disappeared.

Who Was Bob Olinger?

Ameredith Robert B. Olinger was probably born in 1850 (other sources say 1841) in Carroll County, Indiana. By 1856 his family had migrated west to Delaware, Polk County, Iowa, moving again in 1858 to Mound City, Linn County, Kansas Territory. After that came moves to Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma), Texas and, in 1876, New Mexico Territory.

While serving a stint as marshal of the rough-and-tumble Lincoln County town of Seven Rivers, Bob killed two men in gambling disputes on separate occasions. Olinger participated in the 1878 Lincoln County War as a member of the Lawrence Murphy–James Dolan faction. (Billy fought for the opposing faction headed by John Tunstall, Alexander McSween and John Chisum.) Months later, Olinger gunned down one Bob Jones amid a rivalry stemming from another gambling dispute, though county authorities dismissed a murder charge against him in October 1879. That same month Pat Garrett was elected Lincoln County sheriff and appointed Bob one of his deputies.

Olinger’s reputation as a “bully with a badge” mostly stems from his nasty treatment of the Kid while Billy was Garrett’s prisoner in Lincoln. Billy got his revenge that fateful day in April 1881 when he blasted Bob with his own shotgun, killing him instantly. The deputy faded into history, as did the whereabouts of his grave. His end is where my curiosity began.

What About Bob?

After reading about Olinger’s probable burial location, I went on a hunt in Fort Stanton. Alert to my old enemies, snakes, I examined existing headstones in the old post cemetery. While nothing definitive popped up, two distinctly different graves toward the back of the burial ground stood out. They matched the scant available information, so I thought it would be an easy search. Little did I imagine it would turn into a monthslong investigation.

Along the way I crossed paths with several interesting people. At present-day Fort Stanton Historic Site, managed by the state, I spoke with Ranger Javier Trost about Olinger’s grave. He in turn put me in contact with Kenneth Walter of the New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs, whose knowledge of Fort Stanton history is unmatched. Walter has researched burial records, autopsy records, maps, surveys, patient rolls, soldier deaths, military burial removals, cemetery records and just about everything else on paper about the site and its history. He’s also mapped and photographed almost every inch of the fort and surrounding grounds.

While playing phone tag with Walter, I got a text from Steve Sederwall, a former federal officer and onetime mayor of Capitan, New Mexico, who has long been interested in the Billy the Kid story. (He once tried to prove the Kid had not been killed in Fort Sumner, New Mexico Territory, on July 14, 1881.) It turned out Sederwall was also interested in pinpointing Olinger’s grave. Agreeing that any lawman killed in the line of duty deserves a grave marker and should not be forgotten, we arranged to meet with Walter together.

Mapping It Out

To that meeting Walter brought not only books, surveys, letters and reports with burial details but also documents specifying who was buried where in the cemetery. Complicating matters was the fact that in 1896 the Army had moved soldiers’ graves from recently deactivated Fort Stanton to Santa Fe National Cemetery, and records of that reinterment effort are spotty or nonexistent. Sederwall and I had noted widespread disturbance on the grounds of the post cemetery, but had Olinger’s remains also been moved?

According to a map of the old Fort Stanton Cemetery, Olinger rests in Plot No. 69. But period records indicate an Army colonel was buried in that plot until reinterred in Santa Fe. Neighboring Plot No. 71 holds the remains of Murphy-Dolan gunman Charlie “Lallacooler” Crawford, who was shot on July 17, 1878, amid the five-day Battle of Lincoln (the climactic event of the war) and died a week later at the Fort Stanton hospital. But his grave, too, lacks a marker. Other records are contradictory and incomplete, and distances between graves do not match those shown on maps. Most likely the Army did not disturb Bob’s grave, and he remains buried at Fort Stanton. But where if not in Plot No. 69? Walter offered another possibility.

Within a half mile of Fort Stanton are several long-forgotten historic sites Walter has since rediscovered and documented. Among them is a cemetery in use around the time Olinger was buried in spring 1881. Today only scattered stones remain to mark its boundaries. It is a lonesome place, with a beautiful view of the distant Sierra Blanca. Though records are lacking, it’s possible Olinger was instead buried there. If so, his body lies alongside dozens of others in unmarked, untended graves. Trying to find and identify his remains in that ghost cemetery would take far more extensive research and plenty of luck. Perhaps somewhere (in someone’s attic or a storage bin at Fort Stanton) there is a record book, report or survey that lists the internees and their respective locations.

Meanwhile, the mystery of where Bob Olinger lies remains unsolved. No matter where old Bob rests— the old Fort Stanton Cemetery, the abandoned cemetery discovered by Walter or another location — it is undoubtedly an unmarked grave. I hope to one day discover and mark the spot, for no matter his faults, the slain deputy deserves more than his legacy of meanness. 

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Was outlaw Kid Curry (the alias of Harvey Logan) really the deadliest of the gang that came to be known as the Wild Bunch?

That question is considered by historian Michael Bell, who first took a great interest in the Wild Bunch at age 13 in England, when he watched the classic Hollywood Western “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.” Bell shares his expertise on Curry/Logan in this video made for the Wild West History Association, which has shared it with Wild West and HistoryNet.

That same question is considered by Mark T. Smokov, author of “He Rode With Butch and Sundance: The Story of Harvey ‘Kid Curry’ Logan,” in his article “How Deadly Was Kid Curry?” which will appear in the Winter 2023 issue of Wild West (on sale Nov. 8, 2022).

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It is one of the most famous photographs in Western history. Five well-dressed outlaws gaze into the camera—two of them destined to be immortalized 69 years later in the Paul Newman–Robert Redford film Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. They since have been dubbed the “Fort Worth Five,” as they sat for the portrait in a Fort Worth, Texas, studio. But the identity of the photographer and the story of how the picture became a national phenomenon are equal parts myth and misinformation. Interviewed in the August 2008 Wild West, the late Bob McCubbin, a noted collector of Old West photographs and then president of the Wild West History Association, repeated the old canards that the photographer had placed the image “in his studio window” and made copies “for distribution to law enforcement around the country,” neither of which is true. Following is the real story, told for the first time, of how five outlaws came to have their picture taken in a Fort Worth studio on a November day in 1900—and why a sixth man and seventh man were just as important toward making that photograph an icon of Western history.

‘laying low’ in fort worth

It all started with the robbery of the First National Bank in Winnemucca, Nev., at noon on September 19, 1900, by a trio of men, members of a gang loosely styled the “Wild Bunch.” The nucleus of the gang consisted of Harvey Logan (aka “Kid Curry”), George “Flat Nose” Currie, Ellsworth “Elzy” Lay, Robert LeRoy Parker (aka “Butch Cassidy”) and Harry Alonzo Longabaugh (aka “the Sundance Kid”). Historians have called them the last and greatest Western outlaw band. For roughly five years (1896–1901) the Wild Bunch bedeviled law enforcement, eluding pursuit by some of the most respected lawmen of their day, including Joe LeFors, Lowell Spence, Charles Siringo and William Pinkerton. Although there was some mystery at the time about the identities of the Winnemucca robbers, all evidence points to Butch, Sundance and newcomer Will Carver. (There is no credible evidence that a fourth outlaw, Ben Kilpatrick, was waiting with fresh horses outside of town.) As the robbery involved a national bank, it brought in not only state and local authorities but also the feds; the gang could not just ride across the border into Utah or Idaho to make its getaway.

The boys headed south to drop out of sight and enjoy a little R&R with their loot—more than $32,000 in gold coins. They found their way to Fort Worth via the Fort Worth & Denver City Railway. Fort Worth in 1900 had almost 27,000 people and two busy train stations. The boys could easily have slipped into town without being noticed. In fact, Butch and Sundance, posthumous fame to the contrary, were almost unknown to Texas lawmen at the time.

It was in the little city on the Trinity that the Fort Worth Five came together. Joining Butch, Sundance and Carver were Ben Kilpatrick (aka “the Tall Texan”) and Harvey Logan. At the time Logan had the biggest reputation, being wanted for murder, armed robbery and jailbreaks in no fewer than seven Western states or territories. Everyone, it seemed, was after Logan, if not his confederates, and Fort Worth was a good place to lie low until the heat died down.

The boys spent several weeks (November–December) together in what was part reunion and part “howdy” affair. While they knew each other by reputation, they had never all worked together on the same job, so getting acquainted was an important element of their visit. They made the most of it, partaking of Fort Worth’s lowbrow pleasures, specifically, the girls and the saloons. While making the rounds, they holed up at a nondescript boardinghouse named Maddox Flats. The boys could have afforded any of the city’s first-rate hotels, but they were more comfortable staying in the sort of cheap walk-up favored by those who crave anonymity.

They felt safe on the streets of Fort Worth, 1,600 miles from the scene of their latest crime, and had no reason to suspect that either the Pinkertons or Wells Fargo could track them there. They could carouse in public, throw around money and sleep in real beds. Following their usual pattern, sooner or later they would blow all their illgotten loot or just get antsy to get back to “work,” whereupon they would hit the road and disappear as mysteriously as they had arrived.

An indication of just how safe they felt is that Will Carver tied the knot with Callie May Hunt (aka “Lillie Davis”), a well-traveled prostitute then working for a local madam. Their marriage license is dated December 1, 1900. The other boys preferred to keep their amorous options open at this point.

an ill-considered pose

For reasons unknown, on November 21, a Wednesday, the boys decided to dress up and have their portrait taken in one of the city’s professional studios. (There is no doubt about this date, as it is printed on the individual mug shots subsequently reproduced for the Pinkerton circulars.) They seem not to have been celebrating any particular occasion, unless it was Will and Callie May’s engagement. Perhaps they wanted to hit some of the high-tone uptown saloons such as the Palais Royal, which admitted only “gentlemen.” Or they may have sat for the portrait on a lark, as a keepsake of their visit to Fort Worth. Regardless, such an appalling lapse in judgment must have been liquor-fueled.

The portrait studio they picked was John Swartz’s gallery at 705½ Main. (The 700 block was on the edge of Hell’s Half Acre, an area of cheap saloons and bawdy houses; the “½” part of the address indicates it was upstairs.) Fortytwo-year-old Swartz and brothers David and Charles had been working in the city as photographers since 1885. In 1888, after a three-year apprenticeship with eldest sibling David, John had struck out on his own, and by 1896 he had established himself as a respected photographer. Like many professional photographers of the day he favored an upstairs location to take advantage of natural lighting. John considered himself an artiste, not just a technician, and guaranteed that customers would find his portraits both “artistic and attractive.”

Swartz’s medium was the cabinet card, which had been around since the 1860s. The image was mounted on heavy stock with the photographer’s logo and other information often printed on the front. It was the preferred format for a formal sitting, and John was a master of the studio portrait. In February 1900, Eastman Kodak had introduced the dollar Box Brownie camera, which allowed any yahoo to become a photographer. If the boys had simply bought a Brownie and snapped away, they could have spared themselves a lot of grief. But they opted for the old-fashioned formal studio portrait.

Swartz’s gallery sat above Sheehan’s saloon, which may have been where the boys hatched the portrait idea over a few rounds. The fancy duds they wore did not represent much of an investment for a bunch of high rollers living off stolen loot. They could have purchased the outfits off the rack and added the bowlers for no more than $3 or $4 dollars per man. The nicest men’s clothing store in Fort Worth at the time was Washer Brothers, at Eighth and Main streets, where they would have been treated like gentlemen and still gotten a good price. Regardless of where they got their attire, these were not rented or borrowed clothes.

The boys climbed the stairs on the side of the building to the second floor and entered Swartz’s well-appointed waiting room. There they must have admired examples of the photographer’s work on display. Swartz was running one of his periodic specials, 12 pictures for $1.75. The cost for the same pictures in Kansas City or St. Louis would have been anywhere from $2.50 to $5 per dozen. The boys probably ordered a dozen, took two prints each, and in a burst of generosity let the photographer keep one or two for himself. Or perhaps Swartz just liked the five- man portrait so much he made a copy for himself.

Dressed to the nines and well lubricated, the boys were ready for their close-up and would have agreed with the subsequent assessment of a newspaper reporter that they were a “dudishlooking” bunch. All Swartz had to furnish for the shoot were three chairs and a painted canvas backdrop. He arranged his subjects (although they may have had some say in the matter) with Longabaugh, Kilpatrick and Cassidy seated in front, left to right, and Will Carver (left) and Harvey Logan (right) standing behind them. It’s possible Carver and Logan stood because they were the big shots of the gang, as 19thcentury photographers commonly had the most important member(s) of any grouping stand for a portrait. If that was the case, it is ironic, given how the relative status of the Fort Worth Five later turned upside down. Regardless of his importance at the time, Logan, eyes unfocused and a bowler pushed back on his head, looks about three sheets to the wind.

The boys may have returned the next day to pick up their prints. Swartz probably never saw them again after that, as they skipped town after Will and Callie May got hitched. Perhaps they were beginning to feel the heat of the national manhunt, or maybe they had just grown bored and were ready to move on. In any event they had scratched their itch to pose for posterity. The boys had indulged their collective vanity, had some fun and had no reason to pay a third visit to the studio. For his part, Swartz was so impressed by his portrait of the five strangers that he made the fateful decision to display a copy in a prominent place in his waiting room.

the portrait goes public

Most of the story to this point is conventional. Now, however, the tale enters previously unexplored territory. Wild Bunch aficionados have always claimed that John Swartz placed the photo in his front window, where either a passing Pinkerton operative or Wells Fargo detective recognized the outlaws and arranged to distribute their mug shots across the West. There are two main problems with this scenario. First, no one has ever been able to provide the name of the alleged Pinkerton operative much less explain what he was doing in Fort Worth. Early Wild Bunch historian Charles Kelly suggested the agent was Wells Fargo’s Fred Dodge, but Dodge never makes such a claim in the detailed diaries he kept. Second, no passerby on the street could have seen any photo through the window of Swartz’s second-floor studio; the only way to see examples of the photographer’s work was to go upstairs and enter his waiting room.

Western historians do agree that John Swartz took the picture and that it was the key element in the downfall of the gang. The real story of how the portrait went national is more interesting than either the Pinkerton or Wells Fargo scenario. The first person to recognize the importance of the photo was Fort Worth detective Charles R. Scott, a 21-year veteran of the Fort Worth Police Department who had started out as a beat cop and worked his way up to chief detective by 1900. Scott was in charge of the department’s “Rogue’s Gallery,” mug shots of every perpetrator booked in town, as well as photos sent to Fort Worth by other agencies. To obtain mug shots, city police had to escort prisoners to a professional studio. Swartz was the photographer of record for the department in 1900. It was not glamorous or artistic work, but it provided a steady little income.

It was Scott’s job to take perps down to 705½ Main for their sittings and then return later for their mug shots. He was on one such run when he caught sight of the Wild Bunch photo displayed in Swartz’s waiting room. As a veteran detective and keeper of the FWPD Rogue’s Gallery, he had seen enough wanted circulars of Harvey Logan and Will Carver to recognize them. Scott once boasted to a newspaper reporter, “There is not a thief or smooth man in the country who can drop in here [Fort Worth] without being spotted at once.” On top of that, he had a good secondhand description of the pair from his brother Hamil Scott, who had been the Wells Fargo express agent on the Texas Flyer when it was held up near Folsom, New Mexico Territory, on July 11, 1899, by the Ketchum Gang (Sam Ketchum, Elzy Lay, Will Carver and Harvey Logan). Two of the three were not masked (Carver and Logan?), and as Hamil Scott told superiors afterward, “I would know them anywhere.”

Now something clicked in Charles Scott’s memory. Taking the photo from Swartz’s waiting room, he rushed back to headquarters to check it against his files. He knew or could guess at the identities of three of the men in the photograph (Logan, Carver, Kilpatrick), either from the Folsom robbery or their Texas connection. Someone else would have to identify the other two. Elated at his discovery, Scott quietly raised the alarm. The first thing he learned was that “the birds had already flown the coop.” All he could do was get word out to those who could use the information.

Scott wired the nearest office of the Pinkerton National Detective Agency, in Denver, whose operatives were definitely interested in his lead. The portrait was what one Pinkerton man, interviewed later by The San Antonio Light, called their “first real break” in tracking down the Wild Bunch. Scott forwarded the photo to them, though not until he had shown it around town, bragging about breaking the case. Pinkerton was not ready to celebrate just yet. It issued the first wanted circulars on May 15, 1901. The only three outlaws from the group portrait to appear on that first circular were Parker, Longabaugh and Logan—each in a cropped mug shot with such vital information as height, build, complexion and eye color. It was thanks to the Pinkerton agency (not John Swartz) that “every law officer and hundreds of watchful civilians got copies of the photograph,” stated one of its operatives years later.

mug shot to manhunt

How significant was the Fort Worth Five photograph? In August 1902 (Mich.) Times The Bay City did a little early-day “Photoshopping” to pull just Longabaugh and Cassidy out of the original, labeling them “the two most desperate bandits in the country.” Four years later The Lexington (Ky.) Herald reprinted the original portrait but added the known fates of the five, their names printed beneath the image. From Texas to the Great Lakes, John Swartz’s photograph had become national news. Who knows how long the Wild Bunch might have continued to operate with impunity if not for the outlaws’ impulsive visit to his studio.

The photo didn’t just break the Wild Bunch manhunt wide open; it also became part of Fort Worth lore, and for years local historians searched old newspapers for anything to confirm the provenance of the picture. Focusing on the period 1901–02, they drew a blank. One mystery was why the Fort Worth papers made no mention of the outlaws’ historic 1900 visit, even after authorities fingered three of them as the men who had held up the Winnemucca bank and pulled other jobs throughout the West. The silence in the newspapers was deafening—and inexplicable. The question of the photo’s provenance became more than just a scholarly debate; it had the potential to cause Fort Worth great embarrassment, given that its multimillion-dollar business district, redeveloped in the 1980s, was dubbed “Sundance Square” in tribute to one-half of the infamous outlaw duo.

Now we can at last verify the Fort Worth provenance of the John Swartz studio portrait: The proof comes from a November 23, 1902, Fort Worth Telegram article naming detective Charles Scott as the man who discovered the photograph and adding that the tip-off for Scott was recognizing Harvey Logan among the group. This newspaper item in turn calls for re-examination of the very history of the Wild Bunch, particularly the pecking order of the Fort Worth Five. It was later writers and filmmakers —starting with Charles Kelly and his 1938 book The Outlaw Trail: A History of Butch Cassidy and His Wild Bunch—who first crowned Cassidy and the Sundance Kid the gang leaders, relegating Logan and Will Carver to supporting roles. But the lawmen who chased the boys in 1900 considered Logan the true head of the Wild Bunch.

Like most newspaper articles, the November 1902 Fort Worth Telegram item scrambled some of the facts. It placed the date of the gang’s visit a year later—after the July 3, 1901, Wagner, Mont., train job—and mentioned only “three pals” in the picture with Logan, not four. But it is clear nonetheless the reporter is referencing the celebrated Swartz portrait.

credit where credit is due

It’s not hard to figure out why the true story behind the famous photo was lost to time. Detective Scott died on April 7, 1902, seven months before local papers broke the story of the outlaws’ historic visit, and by year’s end the gang itself was finished. Authorities in Sonora, Texas, cornered and killed Will Carver on April 2, 1901. Ben Kilpatrick was arrested in St. Louis on November 5, 1901, convicted of passing stolen federal banknotes and sentenced to 15 years in the penitentiary. (He served 10.) Harvey Logan was arrested near Jefferson City, Tenn., in December 1901, escaped from jail in Knoxville in June 1903, then was shot down near Parachute, Colo., in June 1904 after robbing one more train. At the time he was, as historian Jay Robert Nash puts it, “the most hunted outlaw in America.” Butch and Sundance, with the Kid’s paramour Etta Place, wisely skipped the country in early 1901, sailing to South America, where both likely died in a shootout with Bolivian soldiers in November 1908. Their downfall all began with the Fort Worth photo. It’s no wonder a Pinkerton agent dubbed it the “bad-luck picture.”

As for poor Charles Scott, he never got the credit he deserved for putting the soon-to-be famous photo into circulation. In a testimonial by Fort Worth Police Chief Bill Rea at the time of Scott’s death, Rea stated he could not recall “any great cases in which Mr. Scott was responsible for bringing criminals to justice.” Rea did, however, provide the key as to how Scott was able to break the Wild Bunch case wide open: “He knew by sight almost every professional thief in the Southwest.” Unfortunately for Scott’s legacy, by the time the authorities connected all the dots and smashed the Wild Bunch, the detective was no longer around to explain his role in stopping the gang.

As for the other uncredited star of the case, John Swartz continued to operate his photography studio in Fort Worth until 1912 (see another of his photos on P. 16 of this issue), but those were not happy years. He was falling ever deeper into debt, and his marriage was crumbling, leading him finally to sell out to a rival, lock, stock and glass plates. Sometime after 1920, his wife and children gone, he decided to get out of the business completely and leave Texas, returning to the family farm in Mount Jackson, Va., where some 40 years earlier the young man had dreamed of going West to become a professional photographer. Now he was a broken man with no family and no career, only a roof over his head provided by older brother Lemuel. On January 17, 1937, Swartz, 78, died at Manassas, Va. The following year historian Charles Kelly published The Outlaw Trail.

The Swartz brothers left behind a substantial if unacknowledged body of work, all of it Texas-focused. When researchers sought the story behind John’s Fort Worth Five portrait, they always looked in the wrong direction, crediting either the Pinkertons or Wells Fargo with breaking the case and focusing on San Antonio instead of Fort Worth. William Pinkerton even traveled to San Antonio to interview notorious Madam Fannie Porter, reputedly a confidante of the gang, and she filled the famous detective with lots of blarney. He spent no time in Fort Worth. Pinkerton’s flawed investigation became the starting point for waves of Wild Bunch historians who followed—some respected, some not so respected. None could ever fit all the pieces together.

An iconic, if infamous, image

The parade passed by Charles Scott and John Swartz. The only folks ever to cash in on the Fort Worth Five have been the dealers and collectors who buy and sell the copies of the photograph that occasionally come on the market. No one knows how many first-generation images exist, but everyone agrees it’s a seller’s market. The latest sale of an “original” Wild Bunch photo went in 2000 to a Canadian collector for a cool $85,000.

Today the legend of the photograph is too big to be killed off. It will keep its hold on the public consciousness long after this article has been forgotten. That’s the way collective memory works. And, like every legend, it has many versions. The Smithsonian Web site floats the preposterous tale that the boys sent a copy of the photo to the Pinkertons. They were never that drunk. The Web site also relates the more credible story that the boys had the effrontery to send a copy to the Winnemucca bank along with a thank-you note from Butch. The number of copies of the photograph in public and private hands today seem to support the conclusion that the five Wild Bunch members purchased Swartz’s “12-fora-dollar-seventy-five” special.

In 1999 the Smithsonian named the picture one of the iconic images of the American West, and today it resides proudly in the holdings of the National Portrait Gallery, the Library of Congress, the Denver Public Library’s Western History Collection and the University of Oklahoma Libraries’ Western History Collections, among other repositories. Historians frequently request the image as they churn out a never-ending stream of words about the gang. TheWild Bunch shares that rare kind of cult following in Western history enjoyed by such figures, events and places as George Armstrong Custer, the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral and the Alamo.

So give Charles Scott his due as the sharp-eyed detective who first recognized the importance of the picture, but also give credit to photographer John Swartz. Without the iconic image he created with his camera—perfectly capturing the spirit, the look and the defiant confidence of the Wild Bunch— there would be no legend of the Fort Worth Five. Swartz created five timeless celebrities that day. WW

Wild West frequent contributor Richard Selcer and co-author Donna Donnell write from Fort Worth. Suggested for further reading: Butch Cassidy: A Biography, by Richard Patterson; and The Sundance Kid: The Life of Harry Alonzo Longabaugh, by Donna B. Ernst. Originally published in the December 2011 issue of Wild West.

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Wyatt Berry Stapp Earp stood toe to toe with Stafford Wallace Austin, court-appointed receiver of the bankrupt California Trona Co. The date was Oct. 23, 1910, and Earp, the “Lion of Tombstone,” had been reduced to working as a hired gun for a spurious survey party in southern California’s desolate Searles Valley. Though 62 and gray-haired, he retained the raw-boned, physically intimidating presence of his younger days in Arizona Territory.

“What are you doing in this camp?” Earp demanded.

Earp’s concern was understandable. Accompanying Austin were four men armed, he recorded in his journal, “with all the weapons they could collect.” Confronting them were, Austin recalled, “the best-equipped gang of claim jumpers ever assembled in the West. It consisted of three complete crews of surveyors, the necessary helpers and laborers, and about 20 armed guards, or gunmen, under the command of Wyatt Berry Stapp.” The gunmen included Earp’s friend and sometime deputy Arthur Moore King, a former Los Angeles police detective. At stake were mineral claims of tremendous worth.

Valley namesake John Wemple Searles, a luckless Forty-Niner, had arrived in Southern California in the early 1860s and settled in the vicinity of present-day Trona. Though he was looking for gold and silver, what he found in the surrounding dry lake bed was borax, a valuable mineral with many uses. Searles filed claims on the property, and by 1873 his San Bernardino Borax Mining Co. was in production. He hauled his product 200 miles south to the port of San Pedro in huge wagons drawn by legendary 20-mule teams. When the Southern Pacific Railroad reached the desert town of Mojave in 1876, the wagon trip was shortened to about 80 miles. In 1895, however, weak demand prompted Searles to sell his firm to Francis “Borax King” Smith, of the Pacific Coast Borax Co., who shuttered the operation the next year.

For more than a decade various operators made repeated unsuccessful attempts to economically mine the lake for not only borax but also potash, soda ash, trona and sodium sulfate. By 1910 the claims were under the control of California Trona, which had borrowed heavily to finance construction of two experimental plants to facilitate mineral recovery. The company went bust before completing the plants. When the claims went into receivership, federally appointed receiver Austin came to secure the property from competing claimants.

Born in 1862 and raised in Hawaii, Austin was an 1886 graduate of the University of California, Berkeley. Four years later he met and married his wife, noted author Mary Austin, in Bakersfield. In 1892 they settled in Lone Pine, Calif., at the foot of the Owens Valley. There Wallace taught school and was later elected superintendent of Inyo County schools. In 1905 valley residents banded together to confront Los Angeles officials over the city’s acquisition of water rights in the valley. Civil engineer William Mulholland had used straw buyers and other underhanded means to enable the city to pipe Sierra Nevada runoff to a reservoir in the San Fernando Valley. When Owens Valley locals woke to what was happening, they sought to stop the project. But Mulholland and company had dotted their I’s and crossed their T’s. Construction continued on the Los Angeles Aqueduct, which today provides one-third of the city’s water needs. A year later the estranged Austins left the valley and went their separate ways. Wallace was working as a lawyer in Oakland in 1909 when his firm was appointed receiver of the Searles Valley claims.

Earp’s path to Searles Valley was a long and winding one. Following the storied 1881 gunfight near the OK Corral in Tombstone, Arizona Territory, and his subsequent vendetta ride, he returned to Dodge City, Kan., for a while to help out politically embattled saloon owner and friend Luke Short. He subsequently turned up in Colorado, Idaho, California, Arizona, Nevada and Alaska, mostly engaged in the saloon and gambling hall business while seeking his fortune mining for silver and gold. Although he’d done his share of “lawing,” as he called it, Earp didn’t feel particularly called to police work. But for him and his brothers alike it had proved a reliable, albeit risky, way to make a living when their entrepreneurial ventures failed, as they usually did.

By 1910 he was dividing his time between Los Angeles and Vidal, a southern California settlement down near the Colorado River, where he held mining claims. The Los Angeles Police Department sometimes hired him and Arthur King, at $10 a day each “off the books,” to track down fugitives. While the department strictly adhered to legal means, Earp, as was his custom, did not. He and King even brought back wanted men from Mexico, extradition laws be damned, not that the department asked any questions. The partners’ reputation for success landed them a job in the fall of 1910 heading up a security team to protect survey crews hired by Los Angeles attorney Henry E. Lee. Acting on behalf of an Eastern mineral concern, Lee sought to move in on the Searles Valley claims held by the bankrupt California Trona.

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As receiver of the struggling company’s assets, Austin was legally in possession of the claims and, in fact, actively engaged in improving the property and dealing with creditors, as required by law. Lee must have known that, but the potential of earning millions of dollars from the idle mineral claims loomed large. Given the 20 armed guards he’d hired to protect his survey crews, he clearly expected resistance. When Lee’s surveyors set up camp and went to work, Austin “considered it necessary to make some show of force in protecting our claims.” At sunrise on October 23 he and four armed men visited the camp.

After issuing his verbal challenge, Earp sought to wrest away a shotgun carried by one of Austin’s men. Austin in turn drew a pistol and ordered Earp to release the shotgun, which he did. But things were just heating up. “I’ll fix you!” Earp barked.

From that point in the standoff accounts vary. According to King, Earp ducked into a nearby tent, emerged with a Winchester rifle and again squared off with Austin. “Back off or I’ll blow you apart,” he said, “or my name is not Wyatt Earp!” He then fired the Winchester into the ground beside Austin—“the nerviest thing I had ever seen,” King noted—forcing the latter to back down and leave. Austin had a different recollection. “Just as things seemed to have quieted down,” he recalled, “one of the excited jumpers accidentally discharged a gun. No one was hurt, but it was a very tense moment for all of us. Having failed to dislodge the enemy, the next day I called for a U.S. marshal, and when he arrived, the claim jumpers were all arrested and sent home, including Wyatt Berry Stapp, none other than the famous marshal Wyatt Stapp Earp.” Two years later Lee put together another survey crew, but a federal court intervened to protect California Trona’s claims.

Austin’s actions kept the firm afloat, and the mineral works have remained in operation to this day. In 1914 he was appointed Trona’s first postmaster, and four years later American Trona, the successor to California Trona, hired him as its Los Angeles office manager. As for Earp, the Searles Valley “potash war” represented his last known armed confrontation. He’d spend his waning years hobnobbing with Hollywood types and trying to get a film made of his storied life.

In each print edition of Wild West we tie the lead reviews to the cover story. For the Autumn 2022 issue that meant finding a passel of books and films relating to Billy the Kid and/or his adopted New Mexico (a territory at the time, as the “Land of Enchantment” didn’t gain statehood until Jan. 6, 1912, more than 30 years after Billy met his end at the muzzle of Sheriff Pat Garrett’s gun in Fort Sumner). New Mexico native author and Wild West contributor Melody Groves was up to the challenge, and below is her list of films with a New Mexico angle, if not always relating to the Kid. We’ve included a peek at the trailers to whet your appetite for Westerns. Let us know if we missed any. WW

Young Guns (1988, Morgan Creek Productions, on DVD and Blu-ray)

Considered one of the more historically accurate of all Billy the Kid films, it retells the misadventures of the infamous New Mexico outlaw. Filmed in and around the state, the star-studded movie brings a youthful energy to the tales of Billy and his compadres. Featuring Emilio Estevez (as the Kid), Kiefer Sutherland, Lou Diamond Philips and Charlie Sheen, along with veteran Western stars, this action-packed film has plenty of authenticity and verve.

Appaloosa (2008, New Line Cinema and Axiom Films, on DVD and Blu-ray)

Based on a Robert B. Parker novel, this film was co-written by director Ed Harris and Robert Knott and stars Harris, Viggo Mortensen and Renée Zellweger. Terrorized by a local rancher, the townspeople of Appaloosa, New Mexico Territory, hire lawman Virgil Cole (Harris) and his deputy, Everett Hitch (Mortensen), to protect and regain control. Filmed in New Mexico, it was deemed by one reviewer “a well-made, satisfying, traditionalist Western with some odd quirks and turns.”

High Noon (1952, Stanley Kramer Productions, on DVD and Blu-ray)

This iconic Western based on author John W. Cunningham’s 1947 short story “The Tin Star” is set in the fictional town of Hadleyville, New Mexico Territory. Gary Cooper stars as Marshal Will Kane, the quintessential lawman going toe to toe with badmen on Main Street at, yes, high noon. First though, the newlywed marshal must decide whether to face the four revenge-minded badmen—played by Ian MacDonald, Sheb Wooley, Robert J. Wilke and Lee Van Cleef—or leave town with Quaker wife Amy (Grace Kelly). Despite getting no help from townsfolk (Lloyd Bridges, Lon Chaney Jr., Thomas Mitchell et al.), Kane does his duty. Nominated for seven Academy Awards, it won four.

I sent a man up five years ago for murder. he was supposed to hang. now he’s free

Chisum (1970, Batjac Productions, Warner Brothers, on DVD and Blu-ray)

Set in New Mexico Territory, this Western is loosely based on events and characters of the 1878 Lincoln County War. Presenting such historical figures as Billy the Kid (Geoffrey Deuel), John Chisum (John Wayne) and John Henry Tunstall (Patric Knowles), writer Andrew J. Fenady and director Andrew V. McLaglen brought to film the iconic American story of powerful landowners vs. powerful businessmen.

The Missing (2003, Revolution Studios, Imagine Entertainment, on DVD and Blu-ray)

Directed by Ron Howard, this spooky film is based on author Thomas Eidson’s 1996 novel The Last Ride. Set in 1885 New Mexico Territory and filmed in the state, the film is especially notable for its authentic use of the Apache language. Father and daughter Samuel Jones (Tommy Lee Jones) and Maggie Gilkeson (Cate Blanchett) battle not only each other but also the elements and attackers. Well received among American Indian populations, The Missing sparked cultural pride with its authenticity.

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In early September 1948, almost 75 years after the infamous Jesse James train raid at Gads Hill, Missouri, a man cutting timber near the robbery site stumbled onto a small cavelike opening in the side of a hill. He thought little of it at the time and after finishing his work returned home. A couple of weeks later, he mentioned the incident to a neighbor, who recalled a local legend.

For decades, his friend said, it had been told that during their retreat from Gads Hill in 1874, Jesse and his gang had hidden all or part of the train loot somewhere in the Ozark hills of Wayne County. Perhaps this cave was the place.

Excited about the prospect of instant wealth, the woodcutter headed back to the woods. This time he brought along a flashlight instead of an ax. After crawling a few yards into the cave, he came upon a sizable room. There he discovered what was later reported to have been a large bundle of paper money, a ‘hatful’ of old coins and a muzzleloading rifle.

When he returned home and told the neighbor of his unusual find, rumor mills began to grind. The story spread, and big city news reporters, eager to get the story of Jesse James’ lost treasure, soon flocked to the scene.

A so-called reliable source claimed that the coins and currency taken from the cave amounted to more than $100,000 and that he had personally seen $10,000 in old gold coins in the woodcutter’s possession. A newspaper told of an armored vehicle parked in front of the man’s house, and adding even more interest to the unfolding drama was the reported arrival of two agents from the U.S. Treasury Department who had come to investigate the matter. All this created quite a stir, and the sleepy little village of Gads Hill, which had enjoyed so many years of peace and tranquility since the train robbery, found itself once again in the national spotlight.

The hubbub went on for several days; then, as quickly as the story had broken, it began to unravel. The woodcutter, it turned out, had not discovered Jesse James’ lost treasure after all, but only a crumbling book, a rusty old rifle with a rotten, worm-eaten stock and some 2-cent pieces (the oldest dated 1886, four years after Jesse’s death). He was surprised himself to learn he had found $100,000.

‘Only thing I ever told about,’ he said, ‘was finding the gun and a few coins.’

The poor fellow was apparently not to blame for the wild exaggeration. It was, as one newspaper put it, ‘merely the workings of normal backyard gossip.’

And so the story, like so many other debunked myths surrounding Jesse James, was laid to rest. On October 8, 1948, the St. Louis Globe-Democrat printed a final article that poked fun at the whole affair. Its headline appropriately read: ‘Jesse Fizzles Again.’

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In 1926 author Walter Noble Burns published “The Saga of Billy the Kid,” the first book-length biography of the Kid since Charlie Siringo’s “History of Billy the Kid,” published in 1920. As Burns explained to readers, the unprovoked, sadistic murder of Englishman John Henry Tunstall on Feb. 18, 1878, was the event that kicked off the bloody Lincoln County War. Tunstall was killed while attempting to flee from a “posse” of at least two dozen men led by just deputized Jacob Mathews. The posse, little more than a lynch mob backed by Tunstall’s bitter business rivals Lawrence Murphy and James Dolan, included at least four notorious outlaw gunmen. Fleeing with Tunstall were Billy the Kid, Robert Widenmann, Richard Brewer and John Middleton. The men were driving a string of horses from Tunstall’s ranch on the Rio Feliz to Lincoln, as Tunstall wanted to save the animals from confiscation by the posse.

Motivated by the account of the murder in Burns’ book, two of Tunstall’s nephews traveled in April 1927 from England to Lincoln, New Mexico, to seek their uncle’s grave. They met with rancher George Coe and others still living in the Lincoln area who had known the late merchant and rancher. Coe took the pair to the spot where the Englishman had been murdered, and they marked it with a stack of rocks. Those interested in the history of the Lincoln County War owe a bouquet of thanks to Coe and the unnamed Tunstall nephews for their efforts.

That October rancher and New Mexico Representative James V. Tully, of Glencoe, wrote Paul A.F. Walter of the New Mexico Historical Society with a suggestion: “There should be a marker for the spot back of my ranch on the so-called Tunstall Trail, nailed on a juniper tree, to show where [Tunstall] was slain. This is now nearly forgotten.”

In the fall of 1929 Dr. William Alexander Osborne, dean of the medical school at the University of Melbourne, Australia, traveled to Lincoln to research the Lincoln County War. His interest, as he told an Associated Press reporter, “was aroused because Tunstall, the first victim of the range war, was an Englishman.” Stimulated by the publicity generated by Dr. Osborne’s visit, the U.S. Forest Service erected an official monument at the murder site that December. The site is thickly forested today, and it is challenging to mentally picture what it looked like on that fateful Monday when Tunstall was murdered.

The canyon where Tunstall was killed descends from a relatively flat plateau in the hills above and to the south of Glencoe, within the Smokey Bear Ranger District of the Lincoln National Forest. Calling it a valley is perhaps a better description. According to the Kid, in a sworn deposition provided to U.S. Department of Justice Special Investigator Frank Warner Angel, Tunstall’s party had just reached the mouth of the canyon, or the “brow of the hill” as Billy described it, when they sighted the posse riding “at full speed” behind them. Billy and Middleton were trailing some distance behind the other three, who were not riding together. Brewer and Widenmann were 200 to 300 yards to Tunstall’s left, off the trail. Tunstall was riding about 100 yards to the right of the trail, out in front of his horses, who were following the trail.

cause of the lincoln county war

Billy and Middleton raced forward to warn those riding ahead. The two had just reached Brewer and Widenmann when the posse commenced firing. The lead men in the posse, Tom Hill and William S. “Buck” Morton, were some distance in front of the main body. Billy said he, Widenmann and Brewer turned their horses left and rode “over a hill towards another, which was covered with large rocks and trees, in order to defend [ourselves] and make a stand.” Middleton galloped toward Tunstall, yelled a warning, and then veered left and joined Billy, Widenmann and Brewer.

According to the sworn testimony of posse member Albert Howe, Hill and Morton, having spotted Tunstall off on his own, galloped toward the Englishman, who stopped, turned and faced them. Hill called out for Tunstall to approach, assuring he would not be hurt. At the same time the pair stealthily drew their weapons. Tunstall rode closer, expecting to talk. Without warning, Howe said, “Morton fired and shot Tunstall through the breast, and then Hill fired and shot Tunstall through the head.” Howe’s testimony is thirdhand, however. The only witnesses were the killers themselves. But the evidence suggests certain conclusions.

Hill and Morton may have thought that with Tunstall positioned directly in front of them, it would be harder for any potential witnesses riding up from behind to know whether the Englishman had drawn on them. That was their alibi: He had shot first, and they had returned fire in self-defense. Someone also shot and killed Tunstall’s horse. Morton and Hill then dismounted and just had time to remove two cartridges from the Englishman’s pistol and drop it beside his body before the other posse members arrived on the scene. In a despicable act of mockery someone placed Tunstall’s hat beneath his dead horse’s head and beat the Englishman about the head with the butt of a gun.

That evening John Newcomb, Patricio Trujillo, Florencio Gonzales, Lázaro Gallegos and Ramón Baragón went after Tunstall’s body. “We could not get up the canyon in a wagon, so we packed it on a horse,” Gonzales recounted. “The body was lying by his dead horse’s head, with his and his horse’s head right together.” Newcomb added telling details. “The corpse had evidently been carried by some persons and laid in the position in which we found it,” he noted. “A blanket was found under the corpse and one over it. Tunstall’s overcoat was placed under his head, and his hat placed under the head of his dead horse. By the apparent naturalness of the scene we were forced to conclude that the murderers of Mr. Tunstall placed his dead horse in the position indicated, considering the whole affair a burlesque.…We found his revolver quite close to the scabbard on the corpse. It must have been placed there by someone after Tunstall’s death. We found two chambers empty, but there were no hulls, or cartridge shells, in the empty chambers; the other four chambers had cartridges in them.”

Billy the Kid and other self-appointed “Regulators” sought vengeance. On March 9 they killed Morton and another of the posse members along Blackwater Creek. On March 14 Hill took a fatal bullet while trying to rob a sheepherder’s camp. Then, on April 1, six Regulators, including the Kid, ambushed Lincoln County Sheriff William J. Brady and four of his deputies, killing the sheriff and Deputy George Hindman. There was no turning back. The Lincoln County War was in full swing.

CLUes to a murder

A number of writers have wondered why Tunstall’s horse was shot and posed as it was. The answer is that the murderers knew about Tunstall’s deep love of horses, particularly a bay Thoroughbred named Colonel, who was in the string the Englishman been driving that day. Colonel was incurably blind. Tunstall had rescued the horse from the Fort Stanton butcher pen and tended him since. The gruesome death-scene posing of Tunstall and his horse was a final, depraved act of contempt.

On Feb. 18, 1978, the 100th anniversary of Tunstall’s murder, the Lincoln County Historical Society placed a second commemorative marker at the site, which is difficult to find. One can park within a half mile of it, but there are no markers to show where to begin hiking. Perhaps that too will be remedied someday. WW

For directions to the commemorative marker visit HMDB.org and enter the search term “Tunstall murder site.”

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