Billy the Kid: Henry
McCarty
(November 23, 1859 [1] – July 14, 1881)
Contents: Biography
| Early Life | Lincoln
County Cattle War | Lew
Wallace and Amnesty | Pat Garrett | Escape
from Lincoln | Death | Notoriety,
Fact vs. Fiction | Left-handed
or Right-handed? | Claimants
to the title | Brushy Bill | John Miller
| References | Notes
 Henry McCarty
better known as Billy the Kid, but also known by the aliases Henry
Antrim and William Harrison Bonney, was a 19th century
American frontier outlaw and gunman who was a participant in the Lincoln
County War. He was reputed to have killed 21 men, one for each year of
his life, but the actual total is probably closer to nine (four on his
own and five with the help of others).
Short and agile, Billy the Kid had blue eyes, smooth
cheeks and prominent front teeth. Many newspaper reporters said, "Billy
is handsome and very easy going." He was also personable and quick to
laugh,[2]
but these qualities masked a fierce temper and a single-minded resolve which,
combined with superior shooting skills and an almost animal cunning, served to
make him a dangerous outlaw. His most noticeable apparel was a sugar-loaf
Sombrero hat with a wide green decorative band.
Although little known in his own lifetime, Billy
the Kid was catapulted into legend in the year after his death when
his killer, Sheriff Patrick Garrett, published a wildly
sensationalistic biography of the outlaw called The Authentic Life of
Billy, the Kid. Beginning with Garrett's self-serving account, Billy
the Kid would grow into perhaps the most famous and symbolic figure of the
American Old West.
Little is known about Billy's
background, but he is thought to have been born on Allen Street, in the
lower east side of Manhattan Island, New York. His parents were of Irish
Protestant descent, but their exact names, and thus Billy's own surname,
are not known for certain. Variations for his parents' names include: Catherine
McCarty or Katherine McCarty Bonney for his mother and William
Bonney or Patrick Henry McCarty for his father (who probably
died around the end of the Civil War). In 1868, his mother met William
Antrim and, after several years of hopscotching around the country
with Henry and his half-brother Joseph in tow, the couple married and
settled in Silver City, New Mexico in 1873. Antrim found sporadic work as
a bartender and carpenter, but soon became more interested in prospecting
for fortune than in his wife and stepsons. Despite this, young Billy
sometimes referred to himself by the surname 'Antrim'.
Faced with an indigent husband, Billy's
mother took in boarders in order to provide for her sons. She was by now
afflicted with tuberculosis, even though she was seen by her boarders and
neighbors as "a jolly Irish lady, full of life and mischief."
The following year, on 16 September 1874, his mother died and at 14 Billy
was forced to find work in a hotel. The young boy, boasting that he was
the only kid who ever worked for him that didn’t steal anything,
impressed the manager. His schoolteachers said that the young orphan was
"no more of a problem than any other boy, always quite willing to
help with chores around the schoolhouse."
On September 23, 1875, Billy the Kid was
arrested for hiding a bundle of stolen clothes for a man playing a prank
on a Chinese laundryman. Two days after Billy was thrown in jail, the
scrawny teen escaped by worming his way up the jailhouse chimney. From
that point on, Billy would more or less be a fugitive.
He eventually found work as an itinerant
ranch hand and shepherd in southeastern Arizona. In 1877, he became a
civilian teamster at Fort Grant Army Post in Arizona with the duty of
hauling logs from a timber camp to a sawmill. The civilian blacksmith at
the camp, Frank "Windy" Cahill, took pleasure in bullying
young Billy. On August 17 Cahill attacked Billy after a verbal exchange
and threw him to the ground. Billy the Kid retaliated by drawing
his gun and shooting Cahill, who died the next day. Once again Billy was
in custody, this time in the Camp's guardhouse awaiting the arrival of the
local marshal. Before the marshal could arrive, however, Billy escaped. It
has sometimes been reported that the encounter with Frank Cahill
took place in a saloon.
Again on the run, Billy, who had begun to
refer to himself as Willam H. Bonney, next turned up in the house
of Heiskell Jones in Pecos Valley, New Mexico. Apaches had stolen
Billy's horse, which forced him to walk many miles to the nearest
settlement, which was Mrs. Jones's home. She nursed the young man, who was
near death, back to health. The Jones family developed a strong attachment
to Billy and gave him one of their horses.
In Depth: Lincoln
County (New Mexico) War
In the fall of 1877 Billy moved to
Lincoln County, New Mexico and was hired as a cattle guard by John
Tunstall, (an English cattle rancher, banker, and merchant), and his
partner, Alexander McSween (a prominent lawyer).
A conflict, soon to become known as the
Lincoln County Cattle War, had begun between the established town
merchants (called "The House") and the ranchers. Events turned
bloody on February 18, 1878, when Tunstall, unarmed, was caught on an open
range while herding cattle and shot to death by members of "The
House". Tunstall's murder enraged Billy and the other ranch hands.
They formed their own group called The
Regulators, led by ranch hand Richard "Dick" Brewer, and
proceeded to hunt down two of the members of the posse that had killed
Tunstall. They captured Bill Morton and Frank Baker on March
6th, and killed them on March 9th. This occurred near Agua Negra. While
returning to Lincoln they also killed one of their own members, a man
named McCloskey, whom they suspected of being a traitor.[3]
On April 1st, Regulators Jim French,
Frank McNab, John Middleton, Fred Waite, Henry Brown and
Billy ambushed Sheriff William Brady[4] and his deputy,[5]
killing them both. Billy was wounded while trying to retrieve a rifle
belonging to him, taken from him by Brady in an earlier arrest.[3]
On April 4th, they tracked down and
killed an old buffalo hunter known as Buckshot Roberts, whom they
suspected of involvement in the Tunstall murder, but not before Roberts
shot and killed Dick Brewer, who had been the Regulators' leader up
until that point. Two other Regulators were wounded during the gun battle,
which took place at Blazer's Mill.[3] Billy took over as leader of the
Regulators following Brewer's death. Under indictment for the Brady
killing, Billy and his gang spent the next several months in hiding, and
were trapped, along with McSween, in McSween's home in Lincoln on July 15,
1878, by members of "The House" and some of Brady's men.
After a five-day siege, McSween's house
was set on fire. McCarty and the other Regulators fled, Billy killing a
"House" member named Bob Beckwith in the process. McSween
was shot down while fleeing the blaze, and his death essentially marked
the end of the Lincoln County Cattle War.
In the autumn of 1878, former Union
General Lew Wallace became the new territorial governor of New
Mexico. In order to restore peace to Lincoln County, Wallace proclaimed an
amnesty for any man involved in the Lincoln County War who was not already
under indictment. Billy, who had fled to Texas after escaping from
McSween's house, was under indictment, but Wallace was intrigued by rumors
that the young man was willing to surrender himself and testify against
other combatants if amnesty could be extended to him.
In March of 1879 Wallace and Billy, now
back in the Lincoln area, met to discuss the possibility of a deal. True
to form, Billy greeted the Governor with a revolver in one hand and a
Winchester rifle in the other. After taking several days to consider
Wallace's offer, Billy agreed to testify in return for amnesty.
The arrangement called for Billy to
submit to a token arrest and a short stay in jail until the conclusion of
his courtroom testimony. Although Billy’s testimony helped to indict John
Dolan, (one of the powerful "House" faction leaders), the
district attorney disregarded Wallace's order to set Billy free after
testifying. Instead, Billy was returned to jail in June 1879. A natural
escape artist, McCarty slipped out of his handcuffs and fled.
For the next year and a half, Billy
survived by rustling, gambling and killing. In January 1880, during a
well-documented altercation, he shot dead a would-be outlaw named Joe
Grant in a Fort Sumner saloon. Joe Grant was boasting that he
would kill the "Kid" if he saw him, not realizing the man he was
playing poker with was "Billy the Kid." In those days, people
only loaded their revolvers with five bullets, there were no safeties and
a lot of accidents.
The "Kid" asked Grant if he
could see his ivory handled revolver, while looking at the weapon Billy
cycled the cylinder so the hammer would fall on the empty chamber. Billy
then let Grant know who he was, when Grant fired, nothing happened and
Billy shot him dead. When asked about the incident later, he remarked,
"It was a game for two, and I got there first". He became a
fixture around Fort Sumner on the Pecos River.
Billy drew enough attention to himself
through his activities as a cattle rustler that he and his gang were
pursued by a posse and trapped inside a ranch-house (owned by friend James
Greathouse at Anton Chico in the White Oaks area) in November 1880. A
posse member named James Carlysle[6] ventured into the house under
flag of truce in an attempt to negotiate the group's surrender, with
Greathouse being sent out as a hostage for the posse.
At some point in the night it became
apparent to Carlysle that the outlaws were stalling, when suddenly a shot
was accidentally fired from outside. Carlysle, assuming the posse members
had shot Greathouse, decided to run for his life, crashing through a
window into the snow outside. As he did so, the posse, mistaking Carlysle
for one of the gang, fired on him and killed him. Realizing what they had
done and now demoralized, the posse scattered, allowing Billy and his gang
to slip away. The Kid later wrote to Governor Wallace claiming innocence
in the killing of Carlysle and of involvement in cattle rustling in
general.
During this time, the Kid also developed
a fateful friendship with an ambitious local bartender and former buffalo
hunter named Patrick Garrett. Running on a pledge to rid the area
of rustlers, Garrett was elected as sheriff of Lincoln County in November
1880, and in early December of that year he put together a posse and set
out to arrest Billy, now known almost exclusively as Billy the Kid
and carrying a $500 bounty on his head.
The posse led by Garrett fared much
better, and his men closed in quickly. On December 19, Billy barely
escaped the posse's midnight ambush in Fort Sumner, during which one of
Billy's gang, Tom O'Folliard, was shot dead. On December 23rd, he
was tracked to an abandoned stone building located in a remote location
called Stinking Springs.
While Billy and his gang were asleep
inside, Garrett's posse surrounded the building and waited for sunrise.
The next morning, a cattle rustler named Charlie Bowdre stepped
outside to feed his horse. Mistaken for Billy, he was shot dead by the
posse. Soon afterward somebody from within the building reached for the
horse's halter rope, but Garrett shot and killed the horse. (The horse's
body then blocked the only exit.) As the lawmen began to cook breakfast
over an open fire, Garrett and Billy engaged in a friendly exchange,
Garrett inviting Billy outside to eat, Billy inviting Garrett to "go
to hell." Realizing that they had no hope of escape, the besieged and
hungry outlaws finally surrendered later that day and were allowed to join
in the meal.
Billy the Kid
was jailed in the town of Mesilla while waiting for his April 1881 trial,
and spent his time giving newspaper interviews - he was by now a famous
local figure - and peppering Governor Wallace with letters seeking
clemency. Wallace, however, refused to intervene. Billy’s trial took
exactly one day, and resulted in his conviction for killing Sheriff Brady
- the only conviction ever secured against any of the combatants, on
either side, in the Lincoln County Cattle
War.
On April 13, he was sentenced by Judge
Warren Bristol to hang. The execution was scheduled for May 13 and he was
sent to Lincoln to await this date, held under guard by two of Garrett's
deputies, James Bell and Robert Ollinger, on the top floor
of the town's courthouse. On April 28, while Garrett was out of town,
Billy stunned the territory by killing both of his guards and escaping.
The details of the escape are unclear.
Some historians believe that a friend or Regulator sympathizer left a
pistol in a nearby privy that Billy was allowed to use, under escort, each
day. Billy then retrieved this gun and after Bell had led him back to the
courthouse, turned it on his guard as the two of them reached the top of a
flight of stairs inside. Another theory holds that Billy slipped his
manacles at the top of the stairs, struck Bell [7]
over the head with them and then grabbed Bell's own gun and shot him. [3]
However it happened, Bell staggered out
into the street and collapsed, mortally wounded. Meanwhile, Billy scooped
up Ollinger's [8] ten-gauge double barrel shotgun and waited at the
upstairs window for Ollinger, who had been across the street with some
other prisoners, to come to Bell's aid. As Ollinger came running into
view, Billy leveled the shotgun at him, called out "Hello, Bob!"
and shot him dead. The townsfolk supposedly gave him an hour that he used
to remove his leg iron. The hour was granted in thanks for his work as
part of "The Regulators." After cutting his leg irons with an
axe, the young outlaw borrowed (or stole) a horse and rode leisurely out
of town, reportedly singing, leaving the terrified townsfolk in his wake.
The horse was returned 2 days later.[3]
Billy the Kid's
freedom would prove short-lived, however. Responding to rumors that
McCarty was still lurking in the vicinity of Fort Sumner almost three
months after his escape, Sheriff Garrett and two deputies set out on July
14, 1881 to question one of the town's residents, a friend of Billy's
named Pete Maxwell. Near midnight, as Garrett and Maxwell sat
talking in Maxwell's darkened bedroom, the Kid himself unexpectedly
entered the room. There are at least two versions of what happened next.
One version says that as the Kid entered,
he could not recognize Garrett in the poor light. Billy drew his pistol
and backed away, asking "¿Quién es? ¿Quién es?" (Spanish for
"Who is it? Who is it?"). Recognizing Billy's voice, Garrett
drew his own pistol and fired twice, the first bullet hitting Billy just
above his heart and killing him instantly.
In a second version, Billy entered
carrying a knife, evidently headed to a kitchen area. He noticed someone
in the darkness, and uttered the words "¿Quién es? ¿Quién es?",
at which point he was shot and killed in ambush style.
Although the popularity of the first
story persists, and does reflect Garrett in a better light, many
historians contend that the second version is probably the accurate one. [9][10]
Henry McCarty,
alias Henry Antrim, alias William H. Bonney, alias Billy
the Kid, was buried the next day in Fort Sumner's old military
cemetery, between his fallen companions Tom O'Folliard and Charlie
Bowdre. A single tombstone was later erected over the graves, giving
the three outlaws' names and with the word "Pals" also carved
into it.
As with many men of the old west dubbed gunfighters,
his reputation outweighed the actual facts of gunfights he was involved
in.
Despite being credited with the killing
of 21 men in his lifetime, Billy the Kid is only known to have
participated in the killing of 9 men. Five of them were during shootouts
in which several of the "Regulators" took part, therefore making
it unknown whether or not it was Billy's bullets that did the killing. Of
the remaining four Billy’ victims, two were in self-defense gunfights,
and the other two were the killings of Deputies Bell and Ollinger during
his jail escape.
For most of the 20th century, it was
widely assumed that Billy the Kid was left-handed. This belief came
from the fact that the only known photograph of Billy, an undated
ferrotype, shows him with a Model 1873 Winchester rifle in his right hand
and a gun belt with a holster on his left side, where a left handed person
would typically wear a pistol. The belief became so entrenched that in
1958, a biographical film was made about Billy the Kid called The
Left Handed Gun starring Paul Newman.
It wasn't until late in the 20th century
when it became general knowledge that the familiar ferrotype was actually
a reverse image. This version shows Billy's Model 1873 Winchester with the
loading port on the left side. All Model 1873s had the loading port on the
right side, proving the image was reversed, and that Billy was, in fact,
wearing his pistol on his right hip. Even though the image has been proven
to be reversed, the idea of a left handed Billy the Kid continues
to widely circulate.
Perhaps because many people heard both of
these arguments and confused them, it is widely believed that Billy the
Kid was ambidextrous. Many Billy the Kid sites describe him as
such. [1] [2] [3] [4]
In 1950, a lawyer named William
Morrison located a man in West Texas named Ollie P. Roberts,
nicknamed Brushy Bill, who claimed to be the actual Billy the Kid, and
that he indeed had not been shot and killed by Pat Garrett in 1881.
Almost all historians reject the Brushy Bill claim. Among other problems,
the real Billy the Kid spoke Spanish fluently and could read and write,
whereas Brushy Bill apparently could not speak Spanish at all, and was
illiterate.
Despite this and discrepancies in birth
dates and physical appearance, the Town of Hico, Texas (Brushy Bill's
residence) has capitalized on the Kid's infamy by opening the Billy The
Kid Museum.
Another claimant to the title of Billy
the Kid, thought less likely to be a hoax, was John Miller, whose family
claimed him posthumously to be Billy the Kid in 1938.
Miller was buried at the state-owned
Pioneers' Home Cemetery in Prescott, Arizona. Tom Sullivan, former
sheriff of Lincoln County, and Steve Sederwall, former mayor of
Capitan, disinterred the bones of John Miller in May 2005. DNA
samples from the remains were sent to a lab in Dallas, Texas to be
compared against traces of blood taken from a bench that was believed to
be the one Billy's body was placed on after he was shot to death. The pair
had been searching for the physical remains of Billy since 2003, beginning
in Fort Sumner, New Mexico and eventually ending up in Arizona. To date,
no results of the DNA tests have been made public.
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