The Saga of Billy the Kid/Chapter 8

Bill Roberts didn't amount to much. He was just a nobody, people said. He was a stocky, square-cut, homely little man of middle age, illiterate, commonplace, poorly dressed. He used to ride an old bay mule, and Lincoln County folks could hardly conceal their smiles when he jogged along the road, kicking the patient beast in the ribs with his heels, his elbows flapping up and down. He kept to himself, never had much to say, had few friends. The question of his courage was never discussed; nobody thought Bill Roberts worth discussing from any angle.

But Bill Roberts had courage; not the ordinary courage of ordinary men, but the courage that nothing can daunt and nothing conquer and that does not know the meaning of fear. Bill Roberts's courage rose above his ignorance and homeliness, the ridiculousness of his sorry figure on his old bay mule, above life, above death, to heights of supreme heroism. His battle at Blazer's sawmill in the Mescalero Apache Indian reservation with odds of thirteen to one against him, and the thirteen the most desperate professional fighters of the McSween faction, including the redoubtable Billy the Kid, is rated in the Southwest as one of the gamest single-handed fights in the history of the frontier. He lost his life in the fight but death did not rob him of victory.

Roberts was a Texan. He had served for years in the ​army and rose to the rank of sergeant; as a soldier he took part in campaigns against the Kiowas and Comanches and was badly shot in an Indian battle. He had been a member of the Texas Rangers and saw hard service with them along the Rio Grande. He had killed a man somewhere in Texas, it was said, and when twenty-five Rangers came to arrest him, he turned at bay and they riddled him with bullets before they took him. He carried a considerable quantity of lead in him for the rest of his life. Wherefore he was known as "Buckshot Bill" Roberts. These old wounds had left him so badly crippled he could not raise a rifle to his shoulder. Inability to raise a rifle to his shoulder was a serious handicap in that part of the country. He overcame his handicap by learning to shoot from his hip with remarkable accuracy.

Roberts was settled on a little ranch in Ruidoso Valley when the Lincoln County war broke out. There are two stories as to his attitude toward the feud. While he had been a friend of Murphy he had been no enemy of McSween and, it is said, he declared his intention of remaining neutral. Neutrality was not regarded just then as a crowning virtue. War was in the air and no pacifist was tolerated. A man had three choices: he had to be either against Murphy or against McSween or against public sentiment; and one choice was about as dangerous as another. When one of his neighbours asked him about this report of his neutrality, Roberts, it is said, replied in his slow way: "I don't aim to take sides. I've seen enough fighting. All I ask is to be let alone. My fighting days are over."

This is one story.

But, according to the other, Roberts allied himself with the Murphy faction. When, as the tale goes, Murphy ​offered a reward of one hundred dollars apiece for the scalps of McSween men, Roberts, his enemies say, went gunning for Murphy's foes with the design of feathering his nest with some of this blood money. Frank Coe, who was at Blazer's sawmill when Roberts made his last fight, still alludes to him as "one of Murphy's scalp hunters." But the fact that he never took any scalps and never shot anybody and never got any blood money might seem to discredit this story. There was, too, a rumour that Roberts was a fugitive from justice and was wanted in Texas for murder. There was another that he was a deserter from the army. So a certain mystery still clings to Roberts. But nobody cared about his past. Neither did his sympathies in the vendetta, one way or the other or neither way, arouse any special interest or comment. Bill Roberts was generally regarded as a man of no consequence.

Soon after the murder of Morton and Baker at Black Water Spring, Billy the Kid and Charlie Bowdre had a brush with Roberts in the neighbourhood of San Patricio on the Ruidoso. Roberts is said to have fired on them without warning, and in the little battle that followed a number of shots were exchanged without injury to any of the combatants. The details of this fight are vague. How or why an encounter between such desperate fighting men ended ingloriously without bloodshed, nobody to-day seems to know. It may have been this skirmish that caused the McSween faction to swear out a warrant against Roberts. On what charge the warrant was based is not known, but there was such a warrant, and it was in the hands of Special Constable Dick Brewer when he set out from Lincoln for the lower country on his second scouting expedition after McSween's enemies.

Brewer had with him on this man-hunt Billy the Kid, ​Frank and George Coe, Charlie Bowdre, John Middleton, Hendry Brown, Tom O'Folliard, Jim French, Stephen Stevens, Bill Scroggins, and two others whose names have been forgotten, thirteen in all. They did not find Roberts but Roberts found them. While they were nooning at Blazer's sawmill, Roberts came splashing across Tularosa River on his old bay mule to meet his heroic death.

Frank Coe attempted to act as peacemaker and tried to save Roberts, but Roberts was as stubborn as he was brave and refused to be saved. Coe told the story of the fight in detail years afterward when he and his cousin, George Coe, were the only surviving eyewitnesses. It was a plain, unvarnished tale, seeming somehow to lack any special dramatic interest. But then Roberts was not in any way dramatic; only an illiterate, homely, commonplace fellow, looking as little like a hero as any one could imagine. The man who didn't amount to much simply fought his fight against desperate odds, did the best he could, and died. That's all there was to it.

"Brewer had heard that several men we were looking for were in Rinconada in the Mescalero reservation," said Coe, "and we went there but found nobody. We camped for the night in Rinconada and next day rode to Blazer's mill on Tularosa River. We got there about ten o'clock in the morning and Brewer ordered dinner. While we were eating, Middleton, who had been left outside to guard our saddle horses, came and reported to Brewer that 'a mighty well-armed man' had just ridden from across the river on a bay mule and was hitching down at the corral. That didn't excite anybody much, as well-armed men were common in the country just then, and we went on eating. I happened to get through first and went out into the yard. Roberts, with a rifle in his hand, was coming up from the ​corral. I knew him well and he and I had been friendly, he had frequently stopped at my place on the Ruidoso; and we said 'Hello' and shook hands. Then we went around the house and sat down in a side door to talk.

"'We've got a warrant for you, Bill,' I said.

"'The hell you have,' said Bill.

"'Yes, and I'm glad you rode up because now we won't have the trouble of hunting for you. You better come on in the house and see Brewer and surrender.'

"'Me surrender?' said Bill.

"'Why, of course. There ain't any way out of it now.'

"'Well, we'll see about that.'

"'There are thirteen in the gang, Bill," I said, 'and if you don't surrender peaceable, it means simply they'll kill you. You wouldn't have a chance on earth.'

"'As long as I've got a load in old Betsy here,' replied Roberts, patting the butt of his Winchester, 'there ain't nobody going to arrest me, least of all this gang.'

"'Now, don't be foolish, Bill," I argued. 'There ain't no sense in resisting and getting yourself killed.'

"'I'd be killed if I surrendered.'

"'What makes you think that?'

"'Didn't I try to kill Billy the Kid and Charlie Bowdre last week? If those two fellows got their hands on me now, they'd kill me sure.'

"'No, they wouldn't. You surrender and nobody will hurt you.'

"'Yes,' said Bill, 'that's what they told Morton and Baker. I know this gang.'

"Well, I must have talked to Roberts nearly half an hour, trying to persuade him to surrender, but I might as well have talked to his mule; there wasn't any surrender in that fellow. I knew if he didn't give up what the fel​lows would do to him, and as he and I had been friends I didn't want to see him get hurt. It seemed funny while we were sitting there that he didn't make a break to get away, knowing that thirteen men who were looking for him were just inside the house and believing in his heart they meant to kill him. But he didn't make a move; didn't seem the least disturbed; just went on talking quietly.

"When the gang got through eating dinner, they walked out the front door and in a moment here they all came around the corner of the house, Charlie Bowdre in advance. Roberts rose in a leisurely sort of way from where he had been sitting in the door and stood facing them at a distance of not more than fifteen feet. As soon as Bowdre saw Roberts he cracked down on him with a six-shooter.

"'Throw up your hands, Roberts,' he said, 'or you're a dead man.'

"'Not much, Mary Ann,' replied Roberts, still as cool as you please; and he brought his rifle to a level at his hip.

"Bowdre and Roberts fired point-blank at each other and at the same time. Bowdre's bullet struck Roberts in the chest and went clear through him, giving him a death wound. Roberts' shot cut Bowdre's gun belt from around his waist so it fell to the ground, and Bowdre jumped back around the corner. The others opened fire now. But wounded to the death, Roberts did not retreat an inch. There were a dozen of the most desperate fighters in the Southwest blazing away at him at close range; but the little man only staggered up against the wall and went on pumping lead.

"He bored Middleton through the body just above the heart; Middleton stumbled around the corner and fell unconscious. Another bullet tore off George Coe's trigger ​finger and knocked the six-shooter out of his hand; and he, too, jumped out of sight. Fighting like a tiger at bay, Roberts, in less time than it takes to tell it, had the field to himself and not a foe in sight; every man in the crowd had disappeared around the corner.

"In this lull in the battle, he backed into the shelter of the door. Just then Billy the Kid, late in getting into action, came into view between the house and a road wagon standing near. He fired twice, but Roberts being inside the door, the Kid could not get a bead on him. From where I stood back along the wall, I yelled to the Kid to get back and motioned to him with my hand, and he ducked out of sight just as Roberts fired a shot that, I'll bet, didn't miss the Kid by an inch.

"Roberts was sick from his wound; I could hear him groaning. But his fighting spirit was as brave as ever. He slammed and locked the side door and went through the house into the front room and, firing again through the front door, sent his enemies rushing around the house out of range. He had churned all the shots out of his Winchester by this time; so he threw the gun aside and got a heavy Sharp's rifle—an old buffalo gun—which he found standing in a corner. Then he pulled a mattress off the bed and, dragging it across the floor under the open front window, lay down on it and prepared to keep up the fight. Nobody was ever able to figure out how, shot through and through as he was, he managed to do all this; his vitality was as marvellous as his nerve.

"Brewer and the rest of us now held a council of war. Billy the Kid wanted to rush the front door. Some of the others agreed to this. But I told them Roberts couldn't live three hours, was as good as dead already, and there wasn't any sense in any more of us getting shot up or ​perhaps killed by any such daredevil foolishness. An argument arose as to who had shot him. Billy the Kid and George Coe both claimed the credit; but they were both wrong; Bowdre shot him. 'I dusted him on both sides,' said Bowdre. That was a way those fellows had of talking; he meant his bullet had knocked dust out of Roberts' clothes where it went in and where it came out.

"Brewer was determined to have Roberts dead or alive. He called to Doctor Blazer to bring Roberts out of the house. Doctor Blazer wouldn't do it. Brewer threatened, if he didn't, he would burn the house down. Still Doctor Blazer refused. This made Brewer mad clear through; he didn't want to give Roberts time to die but was bound to kill him at once, if possible, and have it over with. He crept down around the barn and outhouses and, keeping under cover, got into position behind a pile of saw logs near the mill and a hundred yards directly in front of the house. From this ambush he sneaked over two or three shots which went through the window beneath which Roberts was lying and knocked the plaster off the back wall of the room but drew no answering fire. I suppose Brewer thought Roberts was nearly done for and he became a little careless. He raised his head above the logs to have a look. Roberts happened to have his Sharp's rifle resting at a level on the window sill at that exact moment, and he let fly a ball that struck Brewer square in the middle of the forehead and tore off the top of his head. It was a long shot and slightly downhill and a great piece of marksmanship, though I figure the shot was to a certain extent accidental and Roberts couldn't have done it again once in a hundred trys. But once was enough, and Brewer simply slumped over dead where he lay at full length behind the logs and never made another move.

​"With Brewer dead, the rest of us decided to go away from there. We knew it was only a question of a short time when Roberts would cash out, and there was nothing we could gain by hanging around. Besides, our own wounded required attention: Middleton dangerously hurt, Coe with his finger shot off, and Bowdre with a sharp pain in his side where Roberts' rifle bullet had struck his cart ridge belt. We got a government ambulance and, placing the wounded men in it, drove over to my Ruidoso ranch where we passed the night and then on to Roswell where we found a surgeon. It was several weeks before Middleton recovered. Doctor Blazer, we afterward learned, sent to Fort Stanton for the army surgeon to come and see what could be done for Roberts, but Roberts died before the doctor got there."

They buried Roberts and Brewer the day after the fight in a little private burial plot on a knoll near the mill. John Patten, an old trooper of the Third Cavalry, mustered out at Fort Stanton in 1869, and at that time boss sawyer at Doctor Blazer's mill, and who lived in that country long afterward, said they were buried in the same coffin and the same grave. According to Patten’s story, he made the coffin himself out of rough mill lumber, and he ought to have known. Emil Blazer, Doctor Blazer's son. however, declared they were buried close together and side by side but in separate graves.

But whether in one grave or two is no matter now. Their last resting place is unmarked by any headstone and overgrown with grass and weeds; and there they still lie, these two desperate men who died hating each other, fighting each other to the death, and sleeping together through all eternity.