Alexander McSween, a lawyer, John
Chisum, a famous cattleman with huge herds in the area, and Tunstall
led a faction of roughnecks against another powerful faction in the county
that was led by two Irishmen, Lawrence Murphy (founder of L. G.
Murphy & Co.) and J.J. Dolan (James Dolan).
John H. Riley also became a
partner with Murphy and Dolan in their mercantile and banking operation.
Dolan and Riley owned a large general store called The House in the
county's seat, Lincoln, which was the focal point for a virtual monopoly
of the county's trade. The proprietors of The House also had close ties to
influential territorial officials in Santa Fe, New Mexico and with local
law enforcement and a political/criminal organization called the Santa Fe
Ring lead by Thomas B. Catron.
In the fall of 1877, shortly after McCarty
(Billy) was hired by Tunstall, violence broke out. The House
proprietors Dolan and Riley obtained a court order to seize some of
Tunstall's horses as payment for an outstanding debt. The posse formed to
recover the horses contained many criminals, most members of a gang of
outlaws known as "The Boys", led by a transplanted Texas
desperado named Jesse Evans. At one time, a youthful Billy the
Kid had been a member of the gang, as was outlaw William Bresnahan,
better known as Curly Bill Brocius, who would shoot to infamy as
the nemesis of lawman Wyatt Earp.
On February 18, 1878, members of the
Dolan posse cornered John Tunstall in rural Lincoln County. When the
rancher challenged the deputies, he was shot dead by Jesse Evans, William
Morton, and Tom Hill. Tunstall's murder was witnessed from a
distance by several of his men, including Billy the
Kid.
Tunstall's surviving cowhands were
deputized to apprehend his killers. Thus known as The Regulators,
they sought to avenge his murder and further the interests of Tunstall's
partners, Alexander McSween and John Chisum. While the
Regulators at various times consisted of dozens of American and Mexican
cowboys, the main dozen or so members were known as the "iron
clad". They were; Billy the
Kid, Richard Brewer, Frank
McNab, Josiah "Doc" Scurlock, Jim French, John
Middleton, George and Frank Coe, Jose Chavez y Chavez, Charlie
Bowdre, Fred Waite, and Henry Brown.
The Regulators immediately set out
to apprehend the Dolan cowboys on their arrest warrants. First and
foremost was William Morton, who was cornered by the iron clad in the
countryside near the Rio Peņasco. Morton surrendered after a five mile
running gunfight on the condition that Morton and his fellow deputy
sheriff, Frank Baker, would be returned alive to Lincoln. Even
though Regulator captain Dick Brewer admitted he would have
preferred to have killed them, he gave the two his assurance they would be
safely transported to Lincoln. However, some Regulators insisted on doing
away with their prisoners. Their efforts were balked by one of their own, William
McCloskey, a friend of Morton.
On March 9, 1878, the third day of the
journey back to Lincoln, in the Capitan foothills along the Blackwater
Creek, the Regulators made their move. McCloskey tried to stop them, only
to get his brains blown out (by Frank McNab according to one
account). McCloskey's sudden murder made William Morton and Frank
Baker attempt a desperate break for freedom, only to be gunned down en
masse by the Regulators, with none other than Billy the
Kid finishing them off. Ironically, on this very same day, Tunstall's other
two killers, Tom Hill and Jesse Evans, were put out of
action while trying to rob a sheep drover near Tularosa, New Mexico. In
the gun battle, Hill was killed and Evans severely wounded.
On April 1, 1878 Regulators Jim French,
Frank McNab, John Middleton, Fred Waite, Henry
Brown and Billy the
Kid ambushed Sheriff William Brady
and his deputies on the main street of Lincoln. Brady and George
Hindman were killed by a slew of Winchester rifle slugs. Once the
shooting stopped, Billy the
Kid and Jim French broke cover
and dashed to Sheriff Brady's body, either to get his arrest warrant for Alex
McSween or to steal his rifle. No matter what, a surviving deputy, Billy
Matthews, drilled both men with a rifle bullet through their legs.
French was wounded enough to the point where he couldn't ride, having to
be hidden temporarily by Sam Corbet in a crawlspace in Corbet's
house.
Just three days after the murders of
Brady and Hindman, the Regulators headed southwest from the immediate area
around Lincoln, ending up at Blazer's Mills, a sawmill and trading post
that supplied beef to the Mescalero Apache Indians. Here, they
blundered into gunfighter Buckshot Roberts, whose name was on their
arrest warrant. In the ensuing gunfight, Roberts was mortally wounded, but
not before killing Regulator captain Dick Brewer and wounding John
Middleton, Doc Scurlock, and George Coe.
After Brewer's death, Frank McNab was
elected captain of the Regulators, only to be killed in an ambush by Dolan
allies nine miles southeast from Lincoln on April 29, 1878. Upon his
death, Doc Scurlock was named the new captain.
The morning after McNab's death, the
Regulator "iron clad" took up defensive positions in the town of
Lincoln, trading shots with Dolan men as well as U.S. cavalry men. The
only casualty was Dutch Charley Kruling, a Dolan man wounded by a
rifle slug fired by George Coe at a distance of 440 yards.
By shooting at government troops, the
Regulators gained their animosity and a whole new set of enemies. On May
15, 1878, they gained some revenge by storming the area around Seven
Rivers and capturing Manuel Segovia, the cowboy who had killed Frank
McNab. Segovia was seen trying to escape, only to be gunned down by Billy the
Kid and Josefita Chavez. Around the time of Segovia's
death, the Regulator "iron clad" gained a new member, a young
Texas cowpoke named Tom O'Folliard, who would become Billy the
Kid's best friend and constant sidekick.
Into the summer, the large confrontation
between the two forces materialized on the afternoon of July 15, 1878,
when the Regulators were surrounded in Lincoln in two different positions;
the McSween house and the Ellis store. Facing them were the
Dolan/Murphy/Seven Rivers cowboys. In the Ellis store were Doc Scurlock,
Charlie Bowdre, John Middleton, Frank Coe, and
several others. About twenty Mexican Regulators, led by Josefita Chavez,
were also positioned around town. In the McSween house were Alex
McSween and his wife Susan, Billy the
Kid, Henry Brown, Jim
French, Tom O'Folliard, Jose Chavez y Chavez, George
Coe, and a dozen Mexican cowboys.
Over the next three days, shots and
shouts were exchanged but nothing approached an all-out fight. One
fatality was one of the McSween defenders, Tom Cullens, killed by a
stray bullet. Another was Dolan cowboy Charlie Crawford, shot at a
distance of 500 yards by Doc Scurlock's father-in-law, Fernando
Herrera. Around this time, Henry Brown, George Coe, and Joe
Smith slipped out of the McSween house to the Tunstall store, where
they chased two Dolan men into an outhouse with rifle fire and forced them
to dive into the bottom to escape.
The impasse remained until the arrival of
U.S. troops under the command of Colonel Nathan Dudley. Upon firing
cannons at the Ellis store and other positions, Doc Scurlock and his men
broke from their positions, as did Josefita Chavez's cowboys, leaving
those left in the McSween house to their fate.
By the afternoon of July 19, the house
was set afire. As the flames spread and night fell, Susan McSween
was granted safe passage out of the house while the men inside continued
to fight the fire. By 9 o'clock, those left inside got set to break out
the back door of the burning house. Jim French went out first, followed by Billy the
Kid, Tom O'Folliard, and Jose Chavez y Chavez.
The Dolan men saw the running men and opened fire, killing Harvey
Morris, McSween's law partner. Some troopers moved into the back yard
to take those left into custody when a close-order gunfight erupted. Alex
McSween was killed, as was Seven Rivers cowboy Bob Beckwith. Francisco
Zamora and Vicente Romero were killed as well, and Yginio
Salazar was shot in the back, while three other Mexican Regulators got
away in the confusion, to rendezvous with the iron clad members yards
away.
Ultimately, the Lincoln County War
accomplished little other than to fester distrust and animosity in the
area and to make fugitives out of the surviving Regulators, most notably Billy the
Kid. Gradually, his fellow gunmen scattered to their various
fates, and he was left with Charlie Bowdre, Tom O'Folliard, Dirty
Dave Rudabaugh, (never known as "Arkansas Dave" in reality)
and a few other friends with whom he rustled cattle and committed other
petty crimes.
Eventually Pat Garrett and his
posse tracked down and killed Tom O'Folliard, Charlie Bowdre,
and Billy the
Kid himself in July 1881. All three were buried in
Fort Sumner, New Mexico. The main word on their tombstone symbolizes their
friendship and the brotherhood of the "iron clad", forged in the
Lincoln County War; "PALS".
Billy the Kid: A Short and Violent Life,
by Robert M. Utley, University of Nebraska Press, 1989.
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