Billy’s guards supposedly drew a deadline in chalk across the middle of the room — should Billy ever step over it, he would be shot. If true, it was no doubt Olinger’s idea. The other guard, Bell, apparently treated the prize prisoner well; Garrett said that the Kid ‘appeared to have taken a liking’ to Bell. Garrett, by his own account, also treated Billy fairly. In his The Authentic Life of Billy the Kid, Garrett said that Billy acknowledged that the sheriff had only done his duty ‘without malice, and had treated him with marked leniency and kindness.’ But based on how the Kid treated Bell on April 28, it’s hard to imagine that he would have shown any ‘leniency’ toward Garrett had the sheriff been in Lincoln instead of out collecting taxes that fateful day.

Subscribe Today

• Did you enjoy our article?
• Read more in Wild West magazine
• Subscribe online and save nearly 40%!!!
 

Between 5 and 6 p.m. on the 28th, Olinger took the five other prisoners across the street to Sam Wortley’s hotel for dinner. Billy remained in his room, with Bell keeping watch. It is commonly accepted that the Kid asked Bell to take him to the outhouse in back of the courthouse. Bell obliged. The men went outside, Billy still in his leg-irons and chains and with handcuffs still on. Once back in the building, Billy the Kid made his move.

Godfrey Gauss, who had cooked for Tunstall and was living in a house behind the courthouse with Sam Wortley, happened to be outside at the time. He heard a shot, and when he looked up, he saw Bell burst out of the courthouse’s back door. ‘He ran right into my arms, expired the same moment, and I laid him down dead,’ Gauss later said. Bell had been shot through the body.

Olinger, still dining at the hotel, heard the shot and came outside with the five prisoners. Gauss called out to him, asking him to hurry back across the street. Olinger did so, without the prisoners. As he entered the courthouse yard, Olinger heard his name called by somebody else — somebody from above. When Olinger looked up, he saw his own double-barreled shotgun pointing down at him from an upstairs window on the courthouse’s east side. Somehow, Billy had been able to get the shotgun out of Garrett’s office. ‘I stuck the gun through the window and said, ‘Look up, old boy, and see what you get,” recalled Billy. ‘ Bob looked up, and I let him have both barrels right in the face and breast.’ Olinger died instantly.

Billy then spotted Gauss behind the courthouse, but Billy wasn’t after any more blood. Both men who had been guarding him were dead, and Gauss was a friend. Billy asked him to throw up a pickax, and Gauss did not hesitate in coming to the aid of a friend in need. The Kid then requested a saddled horse as he worked the pick on the chain connecting his shackles. Gauss brought the horse. By then, the Kid had quite an audience — the five other prisoners and many of Lincoln’s fine citizens. Nobody tried to interfere with Billy’s plans. No doubt some of them had nothing against Billy. According to some accounts, the Kid shook hands with a lot of folks before riding out of town. Even more of them may have been paralyzed by fear. Garrett thought so. In any case, Billy found no reason to rush. One of the witnesses said that by the time Billy finally rode off, Bell and Olinger had been dead for more than an hour.

One of the big questions afterward was how Billy the Kid had managed to get a revolver and shoot Bell. Sheriff Garrett, who learned of the escape the next day (April 29), certainly wanted to know. After returning from White Oaks, he examined the building and interviewed Gauss and other witnesses. Garrett said he found that the room serving as the armory had been broken into; he also discovered a bullet in the wall of the stairwell. The bullet had apparently ricocheted off the right-hand wall, passed through Bell’s body and lodged in the opposite wall. From that evidence, he surmised that Billy had obtained the revolver from the armory.

But how had Billy been able to get away from Bell and reach the armory? Garrett’s explanation was that Billy — with leg shackles and all — had somehow hurried ahead of Bell on the way back from the outhouse, gone inside the courthouse well ahead of the deputy, rushed up the stairs and broken into the armory. Breaking into the armory would have been easy, Garrett said, because even when the door was locked, it could be opened with a push. One of the men watching from the street said that when Billy appeared on the upper porch in front of the building, he ‘had at his command eight revolvers and six guns [rifles]‘ — weapons undoubtedly filched from the armory. Of course, Billy would have only grabbed one loaded gun at first, which was all he needed to dispatch Bell as the deputy came up the stairs. But more questions arise. Was there time for Billy to do all that? Why did Bell dawdle so? If the Kid had managed to get so far ahead, wouldn’t Bell have drawn his gun and shot him?

Help HistoryNet by bookmarking to