The Peacemakers by Robert L Wilson

Author:Robert L Wilson
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781510709256
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing
Published: 1992-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

Rose of the Cimarron, a member of the Doolin Gang. Her revolver the large-framed Model 1878 double action Frontier Colt.

Equally renowned as a desperate outlaw was Billy the Kid, born Henry McCarty in the East (1859, possibly New York City’s Irish slum). He was already in the Wild West by the time he was twelve. A succession of brushes with the law as a teenager led him ultimately, at age eighteen, to join the forces of English rancher John Tunstall, in Lincoln County, New Mexico.

The Lincoln County War was one of the hardest-fought of frontier wars. Gaining a reputation as a fun-loving but cool-nerved rustler, ladies’ man, and killer, the Kid was pursued by New Mexico peace officers and his enemies in the Murphy faction of the war. After a failed attempt at amnesty, with Governor Lew Wallace (author of Ben Hur), the Kid was soon hunted down by the 6-foot-4-inch Sheriff Pat Garrett, an old friend.

Appointed sheriff in 1880, Garrett arrested the Kid and four members of his gang just before Christmas. While in prison, sentenced to be hung, the Kid engineered one of the most daring escapes of any Western outlaw. While under escort to relieve himself, Billy slipped out of his handcuffs, knocked down the guard, J. W. Bell, and shot him. The Kid then grabbed the shotgun of Bob Olinger, a bully who had taunted Billy with that very gun, and awaited the deputy’s return from a nearby restaurant.

Responding to the shot which killed Bell, Olinger ran to the jail, to be greeted by the Kid, with the welcome “Look up, old boy, and see what you get.” With that Olinger was struck by the charges from both barrels, loaded with Olinger’s own specially packed buckshot. The vengeful Kid smashed the shotgun and threw it at the hated Olinger’s body: “Here’s your gun, Goddamn you. You won’t follow me with it any longer.”

About an hour later a very relaxed Kid rode out of town, after greeting some of the cowed townsfolk, apologizing to the dead Bell, and nudging Olinger’s body with his boot: “You are not going to round me up again.” An eyewitness reported that the Kid had “at his command eight revolvers and six guns.”

Some months later, on the night of July 14, 1881, Pat Garrett again caught up with the Kid, and shot him in a darkened room at the Pete Maxwell house, Sumner, New Mexico. The Kid knew that he was being followed, and was surprised in his pants, shoeless, but armed. Garrett saw the figure: “He must have then recognized me, for he went backward with a cat-like movement, and I jerked my gun and fired.” Moving to the door and stepping outside, Garrett hugged the wall and gasped, “That was the Kid that came in there onto me, and I think I have got him.”

Garrett, feted far and wide for killing the Kid, was not popular with admirers of the young and spunky outlaw. Guns and watches were presented to Garrett, and years later President Theodore Roosevelt appointed him a customs collector.

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