The Saga of Billy the Kid/Chapter 9

Sheriff Brady was annoyed. His plans for a quick and decisive Murphy victory had miscarried. The savage fighting spirit of Murphy's enemies had surprised him. The McSween faction was sweeping all before it and seemed in a fair way to overthrow Murphy's power and rise itself to supremacy.

Sheriff Brady was up to his eyes in the feud. With frankness and enthusiasm he had thrown the power of his office on the Murphy side. Why not? Murphy was his friend. He owed to Murphy not only his personal fortunes but his office. As honest as most men, he honestly believed Murphy represented whatever law and justice were in the vendetta. Defeat for Murphy meant ruin for himself. In fighting for Murphy, he was fighting for his own interests. His attitude, it must be admitted, was incompatible with the impartial performance of his duties as sheriff; it was neither fair nor legal; but at least it was fundamentally human.

When Murphy had decided that Tunstall should be killed, Sheriff Brady organized the posse and dispatched it on its tragic mission. Thus he launched the war, though in the episode he served only as the cat's-paw to pull Murphy's chestnuts out of the fire. Whether he knew in advance the posse's purpose was murder may not now be definitely determined; but it is logical to assume ​that he did. Certainly he condoned the murder and shielded the murderers. Though he regarded with cool detachment the killing of Tunstall by Murphy men, the killing of Morton and Baker by McSween men stirred his bitter resentment. Both crimes were equally atrocious, but he took no steps to apprehend the murderers of Tunstall while he planned to hunt to the death all who had had part in the murder of Morton and Baker.

Billy the Kid, by whose hand Morton and Baker had died, was the special target of Sheriff Brady’s wrath. The sheriff had procured the offer of a reward for this young outlaw dead or alive, which, according to popular interpretation, meant preferably dead. But if Sheriff Brady hated the Kid, the Kid hated him with equal fervour. While Sheriff Brady sought to compass the Kid’s death as the murderer of his friends Morton and Baker, the Kid determined upon the sheriff’s death as the man responsible for the murder of his friend Tunstall. So the sheriff sought personal vengeance against the Kid, and the Kid sought personal vengeance against the sheriff. But these deadly quests differed according to the characters of the two men. Sheriff Brady relied upon his deputies to carry out his design; the Kid depended upon himself.

Sheriff Brady, Deputy Sheriffs George Hindman and “Dad” Peppin, and Circuit Court Clerk Billy Matthews foregathered in front of Murphy's store in Lincoln at ten o'clock on the morning of April 1, 1878. All were men of mature years except Matthews, who was a brisk, smart fellow in early manhood.

“Judge Warren Bristol of Mesilla has sent me word,” said Sheriff Brady, “that he will not hold the regular term of the Circuit Court in Lincoln this April. He has been informed there is a plot among the McSween men against ​his life in which Billy the Kid is the ringleader, and if he attempts to hold court here, these McSween assassins will shoot him down as he sits on the bench. The judge does not propose to risk his life in such a dangerous community, and he has ordered me, as a matter of routine form, to open and adjourn court this morning. That's why I have asked you boys to meet me here. We will go to the courthouse now and carry out Judge Bristol's orders."

So the four men started out for the courthouse near the other end of town. All were armed with Winchesters and six-shooters; unusual equipment, it might seem, for men whose purpose was to open court, but hardly amenable to criticism in that place and time. They walked at moderate pace, indulging in casual converse, carrying their rifles in their hands, as soldiers would say, at trail.

The morning was unclouded and the sun was bathing Bonito Valley in brightness and warmth. So clear was the air, they could almost count the blades of new grass springing up among the piñons on the mountain walls of the cañon. They could see from one end of the town to the other; the grove of shade trees about Bonito Inn where the road makes a slight bend and which now obstructs the view was not in existence, and Jimmy Dolan's residence which evolved into the little hostelry directly across from the McSween store had not yet been built. The McSween home, the McSween store, the Church of San Juan, and the adobe homes in their flower gardens along the quiet street stood sharply etched in every detail in the bright sunshine. Just beyond the church was the building used as the courthouse, perhaps a quarter of a mile away. A few villagers were abroad; a Mexican shouted now and then to his plough team turning up the earth in black furrows in a field back of the church.

​"Billy the Kid, I hear, has picked up a new fellow for his gang," remarked Billy Matthews.

"Yes?" said Sheriff Brady.

"Name's Tom O'Folliard," Matthews went on. "Hails from Texas somewhere. Wandered into the Kid's camp over on the Ruidoso on foot, they say. How he got there nobody knows. Didn't have a gun; didn't have a horse; didn't have nothing. Just wanted to fight."

"He'll get his fill of fighting if he fools around in this country long," observed Hindman.

"They say McSween keeps his fighting men on good pay," cut in Peppin.

"If our boys run into him, his money won't do him much good," said Brady.

"Well," continued Matthews, "when the Kid saw this big, gawky, solemn-looking fellow, he thought somebody had put up a joke on him. But the cuss was so earnest, Billy decided to take a chance and rustled up an old buffalo gun and a crow-bait pony for him, and now the recruit is a regular warrior. Worships the Kid, they say, and is ready to fight a buzz-saw if the Kid bats his eye."

"The Kid thinks he's some pumpkins since the Morton and Baker murder," said Brady. "That little horse thief is working to the end of his rope. He's just about due, and it don't matter to me much how he's got, so he's got. Hanging's too good for him."

So they talked as they strolled along the dusty road.

They passed the McSween house; it was silent; Mr. and Mrs. McSween were away on a visit to John Chisum, McSween's partner, at South Spring Ranch. Captain Saturnino Baca was sitting on his front porch across the street; he waved to them in greeting and they waved back to him. As they came to the McSween store, they nodded ​to a few Mexican loungers smoking cigarettes on the long porch.

They reached a point in the road fifty feet, perhaps, beyond the McSween store. Still walking leisurely and interested in their gossipy talk, they did not see six heads lift furtively and six pairs of eyes peep dangerously above the top of a low adobe wall that came out flush with the street at the east end of the McSween store, forming a corner of the side and back yard. Billy the Kid, Charlie Bowdre, Tom O'Folliard, Jim French, Frank McNab, and Fred Wayte suddenly straightened up with cocked rifles in their hands from the ambush where they had been lying in wait.

"Billy the Kid," Sheriff Brady was saying, "will never——"

A volley of rifle bullets from the adobe wall cut short his sentence. The sheriff threw up his arms wildly, flinging his rifle ten feet away; he staggered forward a few steps and crashed to the ground. His three companions took to their heels, bullets singing around them. Billy Matthews and "Dad" Peppin reached a little Mexican house close by on the south side of the road and dashed to safety through the door. Hindman kept to the road in his flight. A rifle ball struck him in the back between the shoulders; he stumbled on a little farther and fell in front of San Juan Church.

"Dammit," said Billy the Kid in business-like tones as he pumped another cartridge into his Winchester, "I didn't care so much about old 'Dad' Peppin but I'm sorry we didn't get Matthews."

However, all things considered, it was a fairly good workmanly job in the Kid's critical estimation. Though he had failed to "get" Matthews, there was at least something else that appealed to him as worth getting—Sheriff ​Brady's rifle and six-shooter, both new and brightly furbished. The Kid was canny even in assassination.

"I think I could use those guns," he said. "Come on, Wayte, let's get 'em."

He and Wayte vaulted over the wall and walked out into the road to where Brady lay. Wayte gathered up the rifle; Billy was stooping over the prostrate form unbuckling the cartridge belt with the six-shooter in its holster, when Billy Matthews, from the Mexican house in which he had found refuge, opened fire. His first bullet cut through the flesh of the Kid's hip and wounded Wayte in the thigh. These two hustled back to the shelter of the adobe wall, carrying with them, however, both the sheriff's rifle and his six-shooter; the Kid, taking time, it is said, to fire a bullet into Brady's head by way of grace shot to make sure of the death of his enemy.

For nearly half an hour Hindman lay in the hot sun where he had fallen, no one in the village daring to venture to his side. He was dying. He called for water. Still the panic-stricken people remained in their houses. At last, Port Stockton, saloon keeper, bad man, killed later in Durango, Colorado, bravest of all in Lincoln town, dipped up water in his hat from an asequia and took it to the dying man. Hindman, supported in Stockton's arms, took a deep drink and fell back dead.

Sheriff Brady had been riddled with eight or ten bullets, some of which had passed entirely through him. Hindman was shot only once. It is impossible to say who killed either. Hindman's death was by some attributed to Billy the Kid; by others, to Frank McNab.

Billy Matthews's shot at the Kid, it may be mentioned, had been winged with hatred. Only a few days before, Matthews, a staunch Murphy partisan, had met the Kid ​in Lincoln street; the Kid had taken a snap shot at him, his bullet missing him by inches and splintering the jamb of a door into which Matthews dodged. The wound Matthews gave the Kid was not serious; the Kid, as Frank Coe expressed it, "did not stop riding," indicating a trifling injury, riding being his customary locomotion. Wayte's thigh wound was likewise superficial.

Mrs. McSween, who at this writing, 1924, is Mrs. Susan E. Barber of White Oaks, had this to say of the incident:

"The murder of Sheriff Brady was Billy the Kid's own doing and was without excuse or palliation. McSween had had no inkling that such a plot was in the wind. If he had known, it is doubtful if he could have prevented it. He was not the man to 'ride the whirlwind and direct the storm' of the Lincoln County war. He found himself helpless to control the wild and lawless forces by which he was surrounded and his principles of humanity and religion weighed as nothing against the ferocity of Billy the Kid and his followers.

"Leaving moral considerations out of the question, the murder was bad diplomacy. It was worse than a crime; it was a blunder. It flouted public opinion and gave the McSween cause a blow from which it never recovered. McSween upbraided Billy the Kid when he next saw him. In my presence, he said:

"'Your crime, Billy, was not only cold-blooded but foolish. You could have done nothing more serious against my interests if you had tried deliberately to injure me. I cannot afford to appear to uphold you in the perpetration of such outrages. I propose to have you indicted and brought to trial for this assassination. This is a duty I owe to my conscience and to the public.'

"These were McSween's words as nearly as I can re​member them," added Mrs. Barber, "and I believe, if he had lived, he would have done exactly as he said and procured the Kid's indictment for this infamous murder."

The murder of Sheriff Brady left the law in Lincoln County without even a figurehead. Through Brady, the Murphy faction had controlled the county's legal machinery. This had enabled it to make legal gestures with a certain flourish of good theatre and to give its actions legal verisimilitude in the public mind. To save its face, the McSween faction meanwhile had had recourse to the accommodations of sail-trimming Justice of the Peace Wilson and the appointment of special constables. Now that the McSween faction had swept into power on Billy the Kid's rifle volley, it hastened to consolidate its position by acquiring a sheriff of its own; and staging what may be regarded as a mock election, dominated by its gunmen, it placed John Copeland of Lincoln in the sheriff's office. Copeland was an honest, complacent man of little force. As sheriff, he served his purpose as a simulacrum, lived at the McSween home, and pursued an innocuous course under McSween's mild, religious despotism. He did nothing of consequence during his brief term of office and remains a mere name in the story of the Lincoln County war.

Billy the Kid—eighteen years old, if you please—was now the dominant figure in the situation. When Special Constable Dick Brewer lost his life in the fight with "Buckshot Bill" Roberts at Blazer's sawmill, his mantle as leader of the McSween fighting forces descended upon the shoulders of Billy the Kid. The prestige of this youthful desperado as fighter and killer was by this time firmly established. His will, backed by his six-shooter, was the law of the land. He ruled by terror, balked at ​nothing, and was recognized by friends and enemies alike as the personification of deadliness.

But the Kid's ascendancy proved a powerful weapon in the hands of his foes. The Murphy faction refused to surrender without a struggle the power that went with the control of the shrievalty and carried its case before Governor Samuel B. Axtell at Santa Fé. The fame of the Lincoln County war had spread far beyond the confines of New Mexico; it had given New Mexico a reputation for lawlessness and violence at a critical time when emigration westward was at flood tide, and such a reputation was bound to have a serious, if not disastrous, effect on the settlement of the territory. The territorial authorities had pondered ways and means to end the reign of terror, but had been unable to devise effective measures. In urging Governor Axtell's intervention, the Murphy leaders, while pointing out the illegality of Sheriff Copeland's election, presented as their most telling argument the deplorable condition of a vast region helpless in the power of such a murderous young outlaw as Billy the Kid. Though they left the tale only half told, there was a logic in their plea and Governor Axtell removed Copeland from office and appointed in his stead George W. Peppin, familiarly known as "Dad" Peppin, as sheriff of Lincoln County.

Thus, at one stroke, Governor Axtell reëstablished the Murphy faction in power, placed the shrievalty again in its control, and, in a manner, gave it the prestige of executive endorsement.

Though doubtless Governor Axtell was actuated by what he regarded as the best interests of New Mexico, his action was fatal to his own political fortunes. U. S. Commissioner Angell—the same who, by counting Indian noses on the Mescalero reservation, had once uncovered ​Murphy's dishonesty in the matter of government contracts—took exception to the governor's partisanship and carried the war to Washington. There he laid the whole Lincoln County embroglio before President Rutherford B. Hayes. Convinced that Governor Axtell had been influenced by his friendship for leaders of the Murphy faction, that his method of intervention was unwise and unwarranted, and that, in the removal of Sheriff Copeland and the appointment of Sheriff Peppin, he had exceeded his authority, President Hayes removed the executive from office and sent out General Lew Wallace as governor with "extraordinary powers" and instructions to bring to an end as speedily as possible the bloody vendetta that had brought disgrace upon the territory and reëstablish law and order.

So the echoes of Billy the Kid's six-shooters were heard two thousand miles away and reverberated in the White House and the legislative halls of the national capital.

Sheriff Peppin burned some gunpowder in honour of his new job. Having organized a posse of twenty men in the lower Pecos Valley, he started back for Lincoln, where Billy the Kid and a number of McSween men were in quarters. He was halting for early supper at the Fritz ranch in Bonito Cañon, a few miles south of Lincoln, when Frank McNab, Frank Coe, and Jim Saunders, riding by, stopped for a drink at the Fritz spring, which comes gushing from a rocky cliff by the road in such volume of crystal-clear water that it was used then, and is still used, to irrigate the farm. The three men had their first intimation of the proximity of enemies when bullets began to knock up dust about them. Springing into their saddles, they dashed down the cañon with the Peppin men in pursuit, eager to kill McNab, an old Chisum foreman who had ​taken part in Sheriff Brady's assassination and had been with Billy the Kid when Morton and Baker were murdered. McNab's mount was shot early in the chase and Saunders's saddle turned at about the same time, unhorsing him. They struck for the side hills of the cañon on foot but were shot down before they reached shelter. McNab crawled into some underbrush and died. Saunders was disabled by bullets which broke his ankle and gave him a bad wound in the hip. Coe seemed on the point of escaping when his horse was killed by a marvellous shot at twelve hundred yards. As Coe dragged himself free of his fallen steed, Bob Ollinger rode up and leaped from his horse, and the two men emptied their six-shooters at each other. Coe took refuge in an arroyo as the other possemen closed in. Following a parley he threw his revolver out of the ditch and surrendered.

"The Peppin men told me McNab was dead and Saunders dying," said Coe in telling the story. "I begged them to go and get Saunders. 'He's a good man,' I said, 'and it's a shame to let him die out there alone.' They sent a buggy out for him and put him to bed in the Fritz ranch house. Then they started for Lincoln, taking me along as prisoner, and camped at the edge of town for the night.

"About a dozen McSween men were garrisoning the Ellis House. George Coe, my cousin on picket duty next morning at sun-up, saw Bill Campbell, of the Peppin posse, scouting a quarter of a mile off, down by the Bonito. George was a crack rifle shot and at that distance he broke Campbell's leg, bringing him down. His shot opened the battle, which lasted half the day. The Peppin men shot from the cover of outlying houses, the McSween men keeping up a steady answering fire. McSween bullets ​were soon pattering all around me and I hinted delicately to Wallace Ollinger, Bob's brother, who was guarding me, that I wouldn't seriously object to being somewhere else. He wasn't any too comfortable himself, and he took me across the river and, skirting through the hills, brought me to the Murphy store in the other end of town. A half-dozen Murphy men were there and they put me, for safe keeping, upstairs in the same room Billy the Kid occupied later when he was a prisoner under sentence of death.

"The firing was growing heavy down at the Ellis House. Wallace Ollinger wanted to get into the fighting; he was tired of guarding me. He tossed me a six-shooter. 'Take care of yourself,' he said, and walked out of the room. When the other Murphy men asked him where I was, he said, 'Upstairs,' and some of them started up to get me. I stood at the head of the passageway with the gun Ollinger had given me and told them, if they came up, I would kill them. They decided they didn't want me bad enough to take that chance and all of them went away and joined in the battle. I strolled down street to the McSween home where I was safe among my friends.

"The battle ended with nobody killed when the Murphy forces drew off into the hills. Saunders and Bill Campbell were sent to the military hospital at Fort Stanton, where they occupied adjoining cots and had terrific quarrels every day until they recovered from their wounds."

The late spring and early summer of 1878 were busy times for Sheriff Peppin. With the moral support of the territorial government, he spent his time in strengthening his forces for the decisive battle which both sides realized was now near at hand.

His scouts kept a sharp watch on the movements of the Kid, and when they located the McSween leader with ​half-a-dozen followers at Chisum's South Spring Ranch in Pecos Valley, Deputy Sheriff Marion Turner with a large posse surrounded the place. A desultory fire was kept up on both sides for hours. At last one of the ranch hands rode away under a shower of bullets and brought back twenty-five cowboys from one of Chisum's camps a few miles distant. When these reinforcements came galloping over a hill, Turner and his men got on their horses and hurried back to Roswell. The Kid and his men left for Lincoln next day.

The Turner posse trailed the Kid at a safe distance all the way to Lincoln, making no effort to come to close quarters, and rode into town an hour or so after the Kid and his followers had gone into quarters in the McSween home. The bloodless little skirmish at Chisum's headquarters ranch served as a curtain-raiser to the big battle that practically ended the Lincoln County war.