MARC SIMMONS BOOKS FROM SUNSTONE PRESS:
Yesterday in Santa Fe (1989)
Turquoise and Six-Guns (2000)
New Mexico Mavericks (2005)
Stalking Billy the Kid (2006)
OTHER PUBLISHED WORKS:
Witchcraft in the Southwest (1974)
Coronados Land (1991)
The Last Conquistador, Juan de Oate (1991)
Massacre on the Lordsburg Road (1997)
Following the Santa Fe Trail, A Guide (2001)
Spanish Pathways (2001)
Kit Carson & His Three Wives (2003)
by Ron Kil.
All photographs and illustrations are from the authors
collection unless otherwise indicated.
The introduction, Billy the Kid and the Lincoln County War, was first published in American History Illustrated, vol. XVII, no. 4, June 1982, pp. 40-44, and appears courtesy of Primedia History Group, 741 Miller Drive SE, Suite C1, Leesburg, VA.
Book design by Vicki Ahl
2006 by Marc Simmons. All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.
Sunstone books may be purchased for educational, business,
or sales promotional use. For information please write:
Special Markets Department, Sunstone Press,
P.O. Box 2321, Santa Fe, New Mexico 87504-2321.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:
Simmons, Marc.
Stalking Billy the Kid: brief sketches of a short life / Marc Simmons.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 0-86534-525-2 (softcover: alk. paper)
ISBN 978-1-61139-427-6 (e-book)
1. Billy, the Kid-Anecdotes. 2. Outlaws-Southwest, New-Biography-Anecdotes. 3. Southwest, New-Biography-Anecdotes. 4. Frontier and pioneer life-Southwest, New-Anecdotes. I. Title.
F786.B54S56 2006
364.1552092-dc22
[B]
2006015282
WWW.SUNSTONEPRESS.COM
SUNSTONE PRESS / POST OFFICE BOX 2321 / SANTA FE, NM 87504-2321 /USA
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PREFACE
O utlaws and gunfighters! They represent some of the most colorful and exciting figures who inhabited the Wild West. Our fascination with their violent and often abridged lives can be traced to a public fondness for unusual, dramatic, and eye-opening stories. Invariably, the careers of frontier desperadoes read like a western soap opera turned out by Hollywood script writers.
New Mexico in the days of the Territory had its fair share of hard-bitten men who rode sideways of the law. It became a catch basin for rogues in the vivid phrasing of Governor Miguel Otero. According to him, outlaws on the run from Texas, the Indian Territory, Colorado, and Arizona crossed the line into the wilds of New Mexico where they found a safe haven. The tales of their evil and bloody doings furnish a stirring chapter in the modern history of the state.
All summary accounts of New Mexico badmen must begin with William Bonney, alias Billy the Kid. Unquestionably, he was the Wests most famous outlaw. For such a short life, much of it spent in a backwater territory, the Kid made quite a splash. No other New Mexican is better known world wide than he, even though at first glance his fame would seem to rest upon nothing more than a string of criminal acts.
At the time of his death in 1881, the twenty-one year old Billy had many friends among the local Hispanic population, as well as female admirers who found him romantic and charming. In some precincts, he was spoken of as a boy Robin Hood who stole from the wealthy and shared his spoils with the poor, although that depiction of him had more basis in myth than reality. Nevertheless, upon news of his death by the gun, newspapers throughout the nation seemed to agree with the sentiments expressed editorially in the Grant County Herald of Silver City (July 23, 1881): The vulgar murderer and desperado known as Billy the Kid has met his just desserts at last.
It has been said that the verifiable facts about Billy the Kids career are so thin that they scarcely fill a few pages. His biographer Robert M. Utley expressed it this way: The Kid most people know is a product of this process [of mythmaking], a folk hero encrusted with so many layers of legend as to defy historical inquiry. That notwithstanding, numerous writers over the past century have accepted the challenge, churning out books and articles innumerable with the full expectation that each and all will find a readership, so beguiling is the name and life of this mercurial and forever youthful figure in frontier history.
Over more than a half century of my trafficking in Southwest history, I have been privileged to meet many of the authors and historians who have dealt with Billy the Kid and his story. The list includes Ramon F. Adams, Joel Jacobsen, Donald R. Lavash, J. Frank Dobie, Robert M. Utley, John P. Wilson, William Keleher, Howard Bryan, Leon Metz, and C.L. Sonnichsen.
One thing I learned from them was that you cannot write about the Kid and remain neutral. It seems one has to accept him either as a murdering little punk with no redeeming qualities, or as simply a misguided young man who was driven to a life of crime by chance and circumstance. There is scarcely any middle ground.
One man who attempted to find some was Governor Otero. He had been personally acquainted with Billy. In his memoirs published in 1936, Otero stated that Billy the Kid I can honestly say was a man more sinned against than sinning.
Yet it remains difficult to define with precision the magnetic qualities possessed by the Kid that continue to attract a devoted following. Among the oddest of their number was Bonnie Parker who with her confederate and lover Clyde Barrow robbed banks in the Southwest during the 1930s. When both died, ambushed by lawmen on May 23, 1934 in eastern Louisiana, a single book was discovered in their bullet-riddled car, Walter Noble Burns, The Saga of Billy the Kid. It is on display today in the Depot Museum at Arcadia, Louisiana. The binding has disintegrated and the worn pages are held together by a ribbon.
Folk historian Don Dorais tells me that he believes Bonnie rather than Clyde was reader of the book, and that under its influence she may have seen in their crime spree parallels with some of Billys activities. Indeed, he thinks Bonnie Parker may have consciously copied his lawless career path, having succumbed to the Kids glamour-image.
Since I have written about New Mexico history for more than forty years, it was perhaps inevitable that now and then I should publish articles on Billy the Kid. Thus upon request, I was able to assemble here a collection of my varied writings pertaining to some of Billys real or imagined deeds. Each piece that follows in this book opens a small window on an aspect of his tumultuous life, or casts light upon others whose fortunes intersected with his.
