The Hunting of Billy the Kid

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In the fall of 1879, after his attempts to negotiate a pardon through New Mexico Territorial Governor Lew Wallace had come to nothing, William H. Bonney, a k a “the Kid” (and best known today as Billy the Kid), decided to put some psychological distance between himself and Lincoln County and made old Fort Sumner his base of operations. By the following year, he had become a full-time rustler. His methods, like the men who rode with him, were rough and ready. The Kid and his gang would steal horses up and down the Pecos Valley and drive them to a ready market in Tascosa, the newest, rowdiest cow town in the Texas Panhandle. When their money ran out, they would steal stock on the open Panhandle range and drive it across into New Mexico Territory for sale, with no questions asked, to the self-styled “King of Tularosa,” rancher Pat Coghlan, who had a contract to supply beef to the Mescalero Apache reservation adjacent to Fort Stanton beginning July 1, 1880. When there were no horses to steal, they rode over to the Panhandle anyway and stole the big ranches there — such as the LX and LIT — blind. It’s more than possible that Pat Garrett, who would be elected sheriff of Lincoln County on November 2, 1880, and his close associate Barney Mason accompanied the Kid and his men on some of these raids.

Within a year the Kid’s depredations had reached such a level that in the fall of 1880 the newly formed Panhandle Stockmen’s Association hired a range detective, a former LX cowboy who called himself Frank Stewart (although what his qualifications were and how he got them are a matter for conjecture), to take some men with him to New Mexico Territory and identify the rustlers and whoever was purchasing their stolen cows. The party consisted of Garrett H. “Kid” Dobbs, Lon Chambers and Lee Hall from the LX, plus Charlie Reasor, who was half Cherokee, from LIT.

At Coghlin’s Tularosa ranch they found LIT hides in the coral, but when they questioned the butcher, former Lincoln County Sheriff George Peppin, he told them he had a clean bill of sale and it was going to take a lot more than a verbal notice to get him to quit. When on top of that someone told the Texans that Billy the Kid was in the area, and that if he ran into them he would wipe them out, Stewart decided discretion was the better part of valor and led his men back to the Panhandle. Cowboy Charlie Siringo takes up the story in his 1885 book A Texas Cowboy:

This made [LX foreman Bill] Moore mad, so he concluded to rig up an outfit of his own and send them over after the cattle, hence he sending out after me. My outfit, after getting it rigged up, consisted of a chuck wagon with four good mules to pull it, a cook and five picked men, named as follows: James East, Lee Hall, Lon Chambers, Cal Pope (Polk) and last but not by any means least “Bigfoot” Wallace [Frank Clifford]…. On starting, Moore gave me these orders. “Stay over there until you get those cattle or bust the LX company. I will keep you supplied in money just as long as they have got a nickel left, that I can get hold of. And when you get the cattle, if you think you can succeed in capturing “Billy the Kid,” do so. You can hire all the men you need; but don’t undertake his capture until you have first secured the cattle.”

At Tascosa we met Stuart [Stewart], who had succeeded in raising a little crowd to join us. Mr. [W.S.] McCarty, boss of the LIT ranch, had furnished five men, a cook and chuck wagon; and Torry [Ellsworth Torrey] shoe [TS] ranch was further up the [Canadian] river, a wagon and two men, while a man named Johnson furnished a man and a wagon. The LIT outfit was in charge of a fellow by the name of Bob Robertson, whose orders were to get the stolen cattle before trying to capture the Kid, but in the meantime to be governed by Stuart’s orders.

“We left the LX ranch, went by Tascosa and got enough grub to last us to the Pecos,” Jim East later recalled. “We went right up the [Canadian] River past Sperling’s [ranch] where we camped one night, to San Hilario above Fort Bascom and cut across to the Pecos. Charley [Siringo] said, ‘Now, I’ll go on to Las Vegas, buy grub, and you fellows can go straight across to Anton Chico and wait there until I get back. That would save about seventy-five miles driving for us.’” In Cal Polk’s freewheeling account of the trip. Siringo “started on ahead to Las Vegas with the male [mail] carrier to get corn [for the horses]. He told us to go to Antion Cheeko on the Pacos River and there wait until he came with the corn. We went ahead and got there on Sunday [November 27, 1880] at 12 oclock. Just as we all rode up into town the cathlick church broke and the Mexacans coming out of it. They all stoped and gazed at us, and wondered what was the matter. We all had 2 belts full of cartridges a peace around us and was armed to the teeth with six shooters Bowie knives and Winchesters on our saddles.” Polk went on to tell of a close encounter with the Kid:

Tags: Historical Figures, The Wild West

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