Billy the Kid is perhaps the most legendary figure in the history of the American frontier. He died very young, at the age of 21, with only four enemies shot, but the American press of the second half of the 19th century romanticized his image and made a sensation out of him, and he remained a legend. However, the short path of Billy the shooter gave enough reasons for this.
In 1950, a decrepit old man applied to New Mexico Governor Thomas Mabry for a pardon. The procedure is routine in American jurisprudence, but that case caused a real sensation. The old man asked for clemency for murders he committed 70 years ago. According to his claim, his name then was Little Billy the Kid (Billy the Kid). According to the official version, Billy the Kid was killed by Sheriff Pat Garret on 14 July 1881. However, an old Texan named Brashee William Roberts claimed that he was the famous bandit Billy.
Indeed, many of those who knew Billy the Kid during his lifetime claimed that Roberts was the Billy Kid. The scars on Roberts' body matched the descriptions of the wounds Billy had received during the shootings. The governor of New Mexico offered Roberts a meeting and promised that the conversation would be private, something the old man was very insistent on. However, when he arrived at the meeting, he saw a huge crowd of journalists, historians and gawkers. From the surprise he had a stroke and instantly forgot everything. He could not even remember his own name. Roberts could not answer a single question. He returned home and died of a heart attack a month later. So one legend spawned another. Even as late as 1881, many people did not want to believe that Billy the Kid, that “Robin Hood” of New Mexico, had been murdered.
Billy the Kid's real name was Henry McCarthy. He was born in New York City in 1859 near what is now the Brooklyn Bridge. Henry lost his father very early in life, he and his older brother Joe were raised by his mother Catherine. When the children were still young, she decided to seek happiness in the Wild West. They eventually settled in the tough town of Silver City, New Mexico Territory. Katherine remarried, but died of tuberculosis a year later.
Henry tried to get along with his stepfather, took any job - was an assistant in the shop butcher, scrubbed floors and cleared tables in the hotel. But the glory of the ganfighter beckoned to him. He started with horse stealing, but on the second theft caught and was arrested. Henry managed to escape, however. He disappeared in the neighboring state of Arizona for two years. He returned to New Mexico in 1877, taking a new name, William H. Bonney.
In August of that year, Billy killed a man for the first time at Fort Grant. A local blacksmith named Cahill was constantly bullying and beating Billy. One day he couldn't take it anymore and shot his abuser. He had to run away again, heading to Lincoln County, where the legend of Billy the Kid began.
In Lincoln County, a war was brewing between two cattle companies, one led by Irishmen Dolan, Reilly, and Murphy, the other by English immigrant John Tunstall. Murphy and his supporters used blatantly criminal methods: they drove small ranchers off the land, illegally fenced off pastures, and threatened their rivals. They were supported by the governor of New Mexico. Tunstall, on the other hand, was in favor of fair competition and long trials. The 18-year-old Billy became a cowboy on Tunstall's ranch.
Lincoln Sheriff William Brady18 February 18, 1878 arrived with a posse at the Tunstall ranch to confiscate cattle allegedly stolen from competitors. However, he was rebuffed. The group of Tunstall cowboys was led by ranch manager Dick Brewer and Billy the Kid. It did not come to a gunfight. Brady went to Lincoln for reinforcements.
English also decided to go to town to seek justice. Billy gathered a group of eight cowboys to accompany him. On the road to Lincoln, Billy and his men went ahead and did not notice that Tunstall had fallen behind. Suddenly they heard shouts and gunshots down the road. Billy looked back. In the rising dust lay the bloody body of Tunstall. Beside him stood thirteen horsemen in a semicircle. They were riflemen from Sheriff Brady's posse. A moment later they scattered. Billy and his friends rushed toward Tunstall, hoping that he was alive. No one thought of the chase. From that moment the “Lincoln Cattlemen's War” began.
Tunstall's killers were deputy sheriffs. However, Dick Brewer also received a deputy sheriff's star from a Lincoln justice of the peace and formed his own “regulator” posse with Billy. As a result, both groups were given judicial powers and had the right to arrest each other. Immediately blood was shed. Several of those involved in the murder of Tunstall were killed. Although Sheriff Brady was not at the scene of the murder, and it is documented, it was still him that Billy and his friends believed to be the main culprit in the death of their patron. They ambushed him right on Lincoln Street, killing Brady himself and his deputy. The “regulators” were now outlaws. Just a few days afterward, during a shootout at Blazer's mill, Dick Brewer was ridiculously killed. Billy the Kid became the leader.
Tunstall's company and his ranch were now run by his friend and Billy Kid's friend Alex MacSween. He was sort of “his regulators' man” in Lincoln, secretly helping Billy and his friends while trying to get justice by sending letters to Washington.
In the end, the endless skirmishes and gunfights culminated in a battle that was huge by the standards of backwoods Lincoln, which history calls the “Bloody Battle of Lincoln Streets”. One night a detachment of “regulators” stopped at the MacSween house, the gunmen hired by the Murphy-Dolan-Riley Company immediately surrounded the house. The besieged answered all calls for surrender with volleys. The standoff continued for several days, and when the regular troops arrived they did not interfere in any way. At night, with frantic firing, the “regulars” broke into the corral where the saddled horses were standing. The return fire killed Alex MacSween, a man who never wanted to take up arms. A clerk in his office, who hardly fired a shot, was also killed. All the men of Billy's posse, who were actually being hunted, survived. They hid in the hills around Lincoln.
Alex MacSween's letters to Washington played a role. Special Agent Frank Warner Angel was sent to the county to investigate the circumstances of the “cattlemen's war.” Engel, working as an undercover agent, collected written testimony about everything that happened from supporters of both warring factions. Billy the Kid also testified. The conclusion of the Washington agent was unambiguous - in the unleashing of the Lincoln War is guilty of the group Murphy-Dolan-Riley. They were also to blame for the murder of John Tunstall. This was possible, in Angel's opinion, only with the help of the corrupt governor of the New Mexico Territory, William Axtell, who was removed from office for this. No one else, however, was penalized.
Axtell's place was taken by Lew Wallace, then the most famous man in the United States. He was a remarkable personality - a general who fought on the side of the North during the Civil War of 1861-1865 years, writer, author of the famous novel “Ben Gur” (on which in the fifties was made a famous movie starring Charlton Heston). The new governor proposed to U.S. President Hayes to declare amnesty for all participants in the bloody events, expecting that this would force them to stop shooting.
Meanwhile, Little Billy and his friends continued to hide. At Fort Sumner, he met a man who played a fateful role in his life. His name was Patrick (Pat) Floyd Garrett. This former buffalo hunter was already over thirty, he worked as a bartender in the saloon local criminal authority Beaver Smith. Billy and Pat became fast friends.
In the fall of 1878, the detachment of “regulators” began to disintegrate. Lew Wallace managed to persuade Little Billy to come to Lincoln for a secret meeting. Wallace promised Little Billy that if he testified in the case, he would receive a full pardon. Believing in justice for the first and last time, the Kid agreed.
As might be expected, the entire trial was nullified, even Governor Wallace could do nothing. The killers were released in the courtroom. Once again the politicians had defeated the cowboys. Billy was disappointed. As agreed, he had allowed himself to be shackled and abide by all the rules of confinement. Billy had one remarkable feature - very small hands and wide wrists. He simply slipped out of the handcuffs, walked out of the makeshift prison that no one was guarding, got on his horse and rode away. Then Billy swore to his friends that he would never believe any politician again.
Billy headed for Fort Sumner, which had long since become his headquarters. Here, in a drunken brawl, he killed aspiring gunfighter Joe Grant. The sheriff of Lincoln County became his friend Pat Garret, who decided to quit his old life and become a good citizen. But the main troublemaker in his territory was his friend Billy the Kid, who was a horse thief. It was a serious crime that Pat Garret had to stop.
Garret got a posse together and started in pursuit of Kid's gang. He surrounded them at a place called Stinky Creek. Billy and his men slept in a small mud hut. Early in the morning Charlie Bawdries came out of the house to water the horses and immediately fell in a hail of bullets. He managed to crawl inside, but died instantly in Billy's arms. The Kid and his men might have gotten away, but the door was propped open by a horse killed in the firing. After a short siege they decided to surrender. Their fate was sealed - the main charge against Billy was the charge of murdering Sheriff Brady. Billy again appealed for clemency to Governor Wallace, but the latter, busy with his own political career, decided not to help the young gunfighter anymore.
The kid was sentenced to execution by hanging. The most interesting thing is that Billy did not accuse his friend Pat of anything. A telling incident occurred when Billy and his friends were about to be transported by rail from Las Vegas, New Mexico to Santa Fe, the capital of the New Mexico Territory, after their arrest. One of Billy's posse members, Dave Rudebaugh, had earlier killed a police officer, a Mexican national. Las Vegas Mexicans gathered with guns in hand to capture Rudebaugh and lynch him. Pat Garrett and one deputy blocked the way of the armed mob. The skirmish was witnessed by a local reporter who testified later that Billy shouted enthusiastically: “Pat, release me from my handcuffs and give me a gun. I'll disperse this filthy mob. You have my word that I'll let you handcuff me again afterward.” The reporter claimed that Garret hesitated - he wanted to give Little a gun, but was undecided. In the end, however, he managed to negotiate with the angry crowd himself.
When the indictment was announced, it seemed that Billy the Kid's adventures were over. But an event occurred that made Billy famous throughout the United States. He managed to escape. It was this escape that made him a legend, so bold and handsome was he. In a strange irony of fate, Billy's prison in Lincoln was made in the home of his former enemy Murphy. He sat there on the second floor under the constant guard of two of Pat Garrett's deputies, Bob Olinger and Joe Bell. The Kid and Olinger hated each other, and the latter was always looking for an excuse to kill the Kid when he tried to escape. Bob Olinger loaded his double-barrel with eighteen dimes especially for him.
On April 18, 1881, Garret went for a few days around the county to collect taxes. Olinger took the other prisoners across the street to a saloon to feed. The baby asked to go to the restroom, which was outside. Joe Bell took him. There was only one witness to what happened next - an old man named George Goss. As he approached the house where Billy was being held, Bell suddenly fell out of the door, and, after walking a few steps, dropped dead beside Goss. A few moments later Bob Olinger, who was leading the arrested men out of the saloon, received a charge of buckshot directly from a second-story window and died instantly.
Researchers are still lost in speculation as to what happened. There are two main versions. Either someone planted the gun in the bathroom, or Billy managed to get the Colt out of the gun pyramid. Billy, he seemed to believe he was immortal. His friends told him that if he didn't leave New Mexico, the law would catch up with him sooner or later. But Billy would not leave.
Pat Garrett was strangely slow after this escape. He was slow in his pursuit. There was even talk about whether Garret had arranged Billy's escape. The boy had escaped from Lincoln in April, and the sluggish search had been going on for nearly three months.
But on July 14, 1881, Pat Garrett's posse arrived at the ranch of Pete Maxwell, a mutual friend of Pat and Billy. They sat in ambush until nightfall. Then Garrett decided to enter the house. As he disappeared through the doorway, Faenk Poe saw a half-dressed figure. The man asked in Spanish, “Who are you?” then rushed into the house. From there, another question was heard in English, “Pete, who are those guys wandering around in your yard?” At the same instant two shots rang out in quick succession. Garret came out of the house, and said to Frank Poe, “It was the Kid. He ran into me, and I think I shot him.”
Billy the Kid was buried in the old military cemetery at Fort Sumner next to his friends Tom O'Foliard and Charlie Baudry. On their shared grave stone, someone wrote just one word, “Friends,” a few days later. That's when the rumor started that Billy the Kid hadn't died during his run-in with Pat Garrett. That Garret let his friend get away, killing another man in the process. However, those who buried the coffin claimed that it was Billy they buried. Where the truth and where the lies lie lie, I guess we'll never know.