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The Enigma of Billy the Kid: More Than Just a Legend?
Who was Billy the Kid, really? Was he the “psychotic moron from the slums of New York” as some historians (or perhaps, movie scripts!) would have you believe? Or maybe, a misguided but decent youth, caught in a whirlwind of events beyond his control, just like that movie with John Wayne suggested? Others, like in Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid with Kris Kristofferson, paint a picture of a man simply on the losing side, punished for daring to defy the powerful.
No matter which version you fancy, there’s no denying that Billy the Kid – also known as William Bonney, Henry McCarty, and even Henry Antrim – has truly fired the imagination of the American public for ages. His story, boy, it just sticks with ya, doesn’t it?
Born in 1859, most likely in the bustling streets of New York City, young Billy’s journey was anything but ordinary. After a brief pit stop in Kansas, his mother eventually settled in New Mexico, where our protagonist would ultimately earn his lasting fame. Now, to call him a moron? Hardly. Billy actually received some formal schooling during his time in Silver City, New Mexico. Up until his mother’s passing in 1874, his life, believe it or not, was pretty darn normal for a youngster growing up on the wild Western frontier. What a time to be alive, huh?
The Murky Years and the Spark of Legend
For several years after his mother’s death, Billy the Kid’s activities get a bit… fuzzy. From what we can piece together, he was quite fond of a good gamble, and it seems almost certain he dabbled in various rustling operations across New Mexico, Arizona, and even Texas.
Some folks reckon he might have killed a man in Fort Grant, Arizona, in 1877. But the real legend, the one that cemented his place in history, began in 1878 when Billy found himself hopelessly embroiled in the infamous Lincoln County War in New Mexico. Did he know what he was getting into? Probably not, but then again, who ever does?
Billy had drifted into Lincoln County around 1877, initially working as a cowboy for rancher John Chisum, and then later for English rancher and businessman John Tunstall. Tunstall and his lawyer, Alex McSween, found themselves in a heated business rivalry with a formidable group led by Major L.G. Murphy and James Dolan.
Both sides had their fingers in many pies: mercantile, financial, and livestock interests dominated the Lincoln County area. Generally speaking, the Murphy/Dolan group is considered the less savoury of the two camps. And, wouldn’t you know it, there’s quite a bit of evidence suggesting they were involved in widespread cattle rustling against Tunstall and John Chisum. Talk about shady dealings!
The Lincoln County War Erupts: Vengeance and the Law
Curiously, both sides of this escalating conflict maintained their own sets of “law officers,” and various legal maneuvers were constantly being executed by one side against the other. It was a real tangled mess, I tell ya. In mid-February 1878, Sheriff William Brady, the lawman for the Murphy/Dolan faction, ordered a posse to serve some legal papers on John Tunstall. This posse, by all accounts, was drunk and just itching for a fight. Tragically, they gunned Tunstall down in cold blood. Now, here’s where fate intervened in a big way: Billy the Kid happened to be in the area at the time of the murder.
Can you imagine the fury? Billy swore vengeance on the men who killed his employer, and it appears he single-handedly accounted for up to eight of the men in that ill-fated posse over the next several months. Among the dead was none other than Sheriff Brady himself. It was this particular killing, the one involving the sheriff, that would eventually land the Kid behind bars and ultimately lead to his untimely demise at the tender age of 21. A sad end for a young man, wouldn’t you agree?
You might’ve noticed, I used the word “killed,” not “murdered,” when referring to the men who met their maker at the hands of Billy the Kid. Why the careful word choice? Well, in the confusing legal atmosphere of Lincoln County, Billy was actually acting as a “special constable” or deputy sheriff at the time of these killings. So, while his methods were certainly… extreme, he did possess some veneer of officialness when he dispatched members of that errant posse. It’s a complicated legal landscape, ain’t it?
The Five-Day Battle and Its Aftermath
The Lincoln County War reached its boiling point during the Five Day Battle, which raged from July 14–19, 1878. Imagine: up to eighty men on each side engaged in a ferocious gun battle right there in the streets of Lincoln, New Mexico. The tide of battle turned decisively against the Tunstall/McSween forces when a Colonel Dudley, from nearby Fort Stanton, led 39 soldiers directly into the streets of Lincoln during the height of the conflict.
While Dudley and his men didn’t actively participate in the shooting, they did everything in their power to assist the Murphy/Dolan forces. (Later, after the dust settled, the War Department actually found Dudley’s actions to be improper, and wouldn’t you know it, one William Bonney was among the battle veterans who testified against him.)
When the smoke finally cleared, there were numerous casualties on both sides, including Alex McSween, who perished trying to escape from his burning house. Billy the Kid, ever the survivor, successfully escaped from that very same inferno. With McSween and Tunstall dead, the army openly intervening on the side of the Murphy/Dolan faction, and the shrewd land baron John Chisum artfully staying on the sidelines, the remaining members of the Tunstall/McSween deputies were now effectively branded as outlaws and became fugitives.
Just ponder this for a moment: if the Tunstall/McSween forces had won the Five-Day Battle, Billy the Kid and his associates might very well have become the sole law enforcement officials in Lincoln County. How different history might have been!
The Ambivalent Reaction and the Final Hunt
The official reaction to Billy the Kid over the next two years was, to say the least, strangely ambivalent. The Kid even had at least one meeting with New Mexico Governor Lew Wallace (the famed author of Ben-Hur) to discuss the terms under which the Governor might pardon him. (Interestingly, all other participants in the Lincoln County War had already been pardoned as part of a general amnesty.)
The Governor and the so-called “moron” exchanged several lively and surprisingly civil letters. And, for a time, the Kid continued to roam freely around New Mexico, seemingly oblivious to the fact that he was now, officially, a hunted man. Finally, on March 21, 1879, the Kid surrendered peaceably, based on the promise of a pardon from Governor Wallace. However, the Kid later made a daring escape when it became clear that the terms of the pardon were not going to be honored by the state. You can’t trust everyone, can you?
Ultimately, on December 23, 1880, the Kid and his gang were cornered and captured near Stinking Springs, New Mexico, by Deputy Sheriff Pat Garrett, an acquaintance and quite possibly a former friend of Billy the Kid. Imprisoned in Lincoln for the “murder” of Sheriff Brady two years prior, the Kid performed one of his most audacious feats: he killed his two guards and made a daring escape from the jail on April 28, 1881. But the Kid’s days were numbered, alas.
Garrett tracked him relentlessly to nearby Fort Sumner, New Mexico, and on July 14, 1881, Garrett gunned down Billy the Kid in an ambush at the house of Pete Maxwell, the owner of the fort. A dramatic, fatal end.
Billy the Kid: Killer or Crusader?
So, after all this, what’s the verdict? Was Billy the Kid a cold-blooded, ruthless murderer as some eager tellers of tales would suggest? Or was he some kind of saintly “Robin Hood of the Pecos,” as others earnestly claim? The true answer, as is often the case with complex historical figures, is probably somewhere in between.
There’s ample evidence that Billy the Kid was a cattle rustler at various times during his short career, so that effectively removes him from the saint category, wouldn’t you say? But a cold-blooded killer in the traditional sense? Most of the killings attributed to Billy the Kid occurred while he was acting in the capacity of a “special constable,” meaning he had at least some legal justification for those actions, even if he clearly took the law into his own hands a few too many times.
And while his murder of two guards as he escaped from jail in 1881 certainly can’t be condoned, it is extremely murky as to whether the Kid even deserved to be in jail in the first place. Plus, he was slated to hang in just two weeks’ time at the point of his escape! Let us at least attach some doubt, then, to both extreme versions of the character of Billy the Kid. He was a product of his time, a survivor in a brutal world. What do you think?