The Saga of Billy the Kid/Chapter 18

Due west from Lincoln the Kid rode. A mile and a half out he turned north-by-west into Baca road. Here Bonito Cañon widens into a beautiful valley. Down across the bottom-lands and vegas he passed, his horse at a swift gallop. The hay meadows, full of new grass, spread about him enamelled with wild flowers. Now and then a jackrabbit stood on its haunches and eyed him curiously. An occasional field lark piped an accompaniment to his pony's drumming hoofs.

The drowsy murmur of the Bonito River began to fill his ears, its winding course for miles up and down the valley marked by groves of walnut, box-elder, cottonwood, and willow. Here and there in the distance he had a glimpse of a white slant of rapids or a long reach of shining water. Never drawing rein, he splashed across the stream where, under shade of trees, it poured over golden gravel at the Baca ford.

On the benches of land beyond, he kept on through the ploughed fields, at the edges of which stood the adobe houses of Mexican farmers. Through a deep gap in the bulwark of colossal yellow piñon-splotched hills ahead loomed Capitan Mountain, deep in purple sleep. On a height over which the trail climbed he turned in his saddle for a farewell look at Lincoln. Far across the sunlit valley, the little town, half-buried in blooming orchards, seemed a picture of peace. He wondered what was ​happening there, what furore of excitement his escape had aroused, what hurried plans of pursuit were taking shape. His distant view from the hilltop was the last he ever had in life of the mountain village that had been the scene of his most thrilling exploits and desperate adventures. A moment more and the valley was left behind and he was swallowed up between the towering walls of Baca Cañon.

A few miles up the cañon where the trail turned west along the foot of the mountain range stood the little adobe jacal of Jesus José Padilla. Directly above it Capitan peak went up to the blue sky in heavily wooded, tumultuous slopes. The clatter of hoofs brought old man Padilla to the door.

"Tengo mucho hambre, amigo," said the Kid, dismounting with a clank of leg chains. "Tiene Usted alguna cosa para comer?"

The Mexican bustled about the house and set out bread, goat's cheese, and cold coffee, upon which Billy fell with gusto.

"Ahora dame un pedaso de papel," said the Kid when he had finished eating. Padilla brought him a piece of writing paper upon which in pencil the Kid wrote a note to Billy Burt, county clerk at Lincoln, on whose black horse he had escaped. The missive read, according to Martin Chavez, who saw it later:

Folding the note in his bandanna handkerchief, the Kid tied it to one of the cantle strings on the saddle and, taking the bridle off the horse's head, fastened it securely ​to the pommel. Then turning the pony's head toward Lincoln, he gave it a resounding slap on its hind quarters and off it went briskly down the cañon road homeward bound. At dusk Old Man Goss was surprised to see the animal standing at the bars of the jail pasture in Lincoln. Billy Burt, thankful enough to get back the horse, which he never expected to see again, preserved the note for years and spoke with a certain touch of kindliness of the Kid ever afterward.

On foot, the Kid struck westward from Padilla's, avoiding the road and keeping well back in the timbered hills where progress was slower but safer. All the while he expected every minute to see a posse clatter by in pursuit, but none appeared. The red sun sank behind the mountains, and in the stillness of dusk he came back to the lonely trail, where he made better speed. It was far in the night and the moon was up when he turned northward and began the long climb through Capitan Gap. Walking was not his habit. All his life he had been half centaur. Encumbered by his leg irons and weighted down by his rifle, two six-shooters, and two heavy, full-charged cartridge belts, travelling over the mountain roads was slow and wearying.

While crossing the pass, he turned off the trail a little north of the crest of the divide and lightened his load by hiding one of his six-shooters in the forks of a juniper tree. He told Sepia Salazar in Las Tablas of this cache and suggested, if he wanted a good gun, that he go and find it. His directions were explicit. The juniper tree stood in the pass, he said, one hundred and twenty steps off the road to the east on the far side of a rocky gully and at the foot of a cliff overgrown with moss and vines. Salazar hunted for the gun and failed to find it. He told some of ​his friends later who also searched for it without success. As years went by Billy the Kid's six-shooter hidden in the forks of the juniper tree in Capitan Gap became a tradition like Captain Kidd's buried treasure. It is still talked about in that country, and many people have hunted for it; but if it was ever found, the finder kept the secret—and the gun—to himself.

The Kid arrived early in the morning at the goat ranch of José Cordoba. Greatly astonished was Cordoba to see him here at his door.

"I thought," he said, "they were getting ready to hang you in Lincoln."

"Maybe they are," replied Billy, "but I won't be there."

"What is that rattling sound I hear when you walk?"

"My leg irons. Can you take them off?"

"Facilmente, amigo. Come with me."

Cordoba maintained a wayside smithy where he did odd jobs of tinkering and horseshoeing for the neighbourhood. He conducted the Kid into the blacksmith shop where, with file and pincers, Benito Rodriguez. Cordoba's helper, soon freed the Kid's ankles of their steel gyves.

"Now," said the Kid, standing up and stamping his unencumbered feet, "I am myself again. I will never wear any such things on my legs again unless they put them on me dead."

Cordoba invited him to get some sleep on his bed but the Kid declined.

"Pat Garrett and his men may come riding along any minute," he said. "If they do," he added, "I'll get Garrett the first one. I won't care much what happens to me then. I'll get a little sleep in the woods somewhere on the road to Las Tablas."

​"Ygenio Salazar lives in Las Tablas now, and if you look him up, he will take care of you," Cordoba told him, and gave him directions how to find the house.

"You bet I'll look up my old compadre," said Billy, and he started off again along the mountain trail.

Las Tablas is a little Mexican village near the edge of the foothills on the north side of the Capitan range. It was night, and a half-moon was shining when the Kid drew near. Following Cordoba's directions it was easy to pick out the home of Ygenio Salazar, close friend of other days who had fought by his side in the three days' battle at the McSween house in Lincoln. Hidden on a dark hillside by the road, the Kid gave a shrill whistle.

"I was getting ready for bed," so Salazar tells the story, "when I heard the whistle. I cocked my ears. It was repeated several times. I said to my wife, 'What do you suppose that is?' She was a little alarmed. 'I don't know,' she answered, 'but you better stay in the house.' Those were bad times and I had made enemies in the Lincoln County war. I hesitated to investigate. But the whistle kept up so persistently that at last I opened the door and stepped outside. The hills were dark. The village was silent; most everyone had gone to bed. I could see nobody. Again I heard the whistle. It came from close by. I walked up the road toward it. Finally I made out a man standing at the edge of some piñon brush, and he was waving at me.

"I could hardly believe my eyes when I saw Billy the Kid standing before me. The news of his escape had not yet travelled across the mountains.

"'Nombre de Dios, Billy,' I said, 'can this be you?'

"'It's me, all right, Ygenio,' he answered.

"'Why, I dropped in to see you only—— When was it?'

​"'A week ago.'

"'And you were a prisoner then, bound hand and foot and sentenced to die on the gallows in only a few days more.'

"'Yes, Ygenio, but the idea of dying on the gallows somehow didn't have any special attraction for me. So I pulled my freight. I was sorry to disappoint a lot of people who expected to see a good show but I had other plans. But, say, amigo, I'm hungry. Can't you rustle me something to eat?'

"I took him to my home and my wife cooked him a nice, hot meal. He was nervous inside four walls, and as soon as he had eaten, he and I went off into the brush where we sat down on the ground and Billy told me the details of his escape. He said he had been watching and waiting for just such an opportunity ever since he had been a prisoner. He felt sure, if he could get a weapon, he could shoot his way out. All his plans centred on getting a weapon. He did not think there ever would be a possibility of getting Ollinger's six-shooter; Ollinger watched him too closely all the time. Bell was not so vigilant. He played cards with Bell every day, and at every game he figured how he could grab Bell's revolver. He seemed to feel a real regret at Bell's death.

"'Bell had been good to me,' he said. 'I never intended to kill him and I wouldn't have done so if he had permitted me to lock him in the armoury. It was foolish of him to run down the stairs. Then there was nothing left but to kill him. He ought to have known that; and I couldn't have missed him if I had tried.'

"But when the Kid told of Ollinger's death, he spoke with bitterness and, even in the darkness, I could see his eyes flash.

​"'Ollinger was the meanest man that ever lived,' he said, 'and I hated him worse than any man on earth. When I shot Bell, I thought Ollinger would do exactly what he did—come running over to see what was the matter. As I stood by the window with the shotgun ready for him and saw him start across the road, I knew I had him. He played right into my hand. But I didn't want him to die without knowing I was the man who killed him. So I called, 'Hello, Bob,' to make him look up. You ought to have seen his face when he saw me sighting at him over the barrel of his own gun with which, just a little while before, he had threatened to kill me. He knew he was gone, and the coward's eyes popped out of his head with terror. It was the happiest moment of my life when I pulled the trigger and filled him full of buckshot. My only regret was that I could kill him only once. No matter what chances I had to take, I never would have left Lincoln until I had killed him.'

"I asked the Kid what he proposed to do now," Salazar continued. "He said he was going to Fort Sumner to see his sweetheart.

"'It will be very dangerous to go there,' I told him. 'Garrett's posses will soon be scouring the country for you, and Fort Sumner will be one of the first places they will search. You ought to start for the border at once and get into Mexico where you will be safe.'

"'I'm going to see my girl,' he said, 'if it costs me my life.'

"We talked until midnight. He wouldn't come to my house to sleep. He was expecting pursuit and thought it wiser to sleep out. I brought him some blankets and he made his bed down in the brush.

"'I will never be taken alive again, Ygenio,' he said ​as we parted for the night. 'I got too close to a rope for comfort. If they get me again, it will have to be with a bullet.'

"He meant every word of that," Salazar added. "I knew they would have to kill him ever to take him again. He was plainly desperate."

The Kid hung about Las Tablas two days. Salazar saw him several times more, and the Kid met several other Mexicans, including Sepia Salazar and Martin Chavez, now a merchant in Santa Fé. To Chavez, an old friend, he also confided that he was bound for Fort Sumner to see his sweetheart. As he was about to leave the mountains now and strike off across the plains, he needed a horse again. José Jorado borrowed a pony for him from Andy Richardson, manager of the Block ranch. So from peaceful little Las Tablas the Kid rode out of the hills northward for Fort Sumner, his sweetheart's black eyes his lure and guiding stars and the winding trail Destiny's road leading toward the final, inevitable tragedy.

Back in Lincoln, no sooner had the Kid galloped out of town than the street, empty a moment before, suddenly swarmed with excited men, women, and children. Everybody had something to say as to what could have been done or should have been done. Wise plans were advanced for locking the stable door after the horse had been stolen. But there was no pursuit. The prudent villagers did not feel called upon to follow such a dangerous fugitive, who had left behind two corpses as proof of his prowess, and decided to leave the chase to officers paid to risk their lives in such work. They viewed the two dead bodies with curious interest but, strangely enough, left them lying where they had fallen until Sheriff Garrett's return next day. They thronged into the courthouse to read ​the story of the tragedy as best they might in what tell-tale evidence remained. The monte layout was still spread on the table, the matches and scattered deck of cards near it and the jack of hearts on the floor. Bell's six-shooter with one chamber empty was found in the armoury where the Kid had laid it when he rearmed himself. At the turn of the back stairs, the bullet that had killed Bell was embedded in the wall. The hole is there to this day. It must have been a centre shot. Between the top of the stairs and the hole in the wall is a straight line about on a level with a man's heart.

Though at least two hours elapsed, by the most reliable estimates, between the time Bell and Ollinger were killed and the moment the Kid rode away, no plans of any kind were made by Lincoln citizens to prevent his escape. Alec La Rue, the storekeeper, had a thought of interfering and Lincoln still talks about his thought as rather heroic. When he heard the shot that killed Bell, La Rue stepped out on the front porch of his store in time to see Ollinger fall. Then, hurrying back into the house, he got his shotgun and was on the point of rushing out when his wife threw her arms around his neck and dissuaded him. So, instead of rushing out, he locked up his store and remained discreetly inside until the Kid was well on his way to the mountains.

"I was a little boy," says Miguel Luna, "and was spinning tops with Savero Gallegos in the road in front of La Rue's store. When I heard the shot that killed Bell, I stood looking toward the courthouse wondering what it meant. I saw Ollinger run across the street and the Kid lean out the window with a queer smile on his face and shoot him down. Savero Gallegos and I hid among the ruins of the old McSween home and watched develop​ments. We saw old Goss chasing Billy Burt's pony in the jail pasture. Then we saw the Kid bucked off the first time he mounted. That surprised us because we had seen him ride many a time and he was a cracker-jack rider. As he rode out of town, he met Manuel Baldano, who now lives in Carrizozo. Manuel had a new rope and Billy asked him for it to use in picketing his pony Manuel said it was his brother's, and wouldn't give it to him. But Billy was in a hurry just then and didn't have time for arguments. So he threw a gun down on the boy and got the rope. He tossed Manuel a dollar as he galloped away."