Billy the Kid’s story has been told many times, and the tale truly is among the most
famous classic western folk tales.
As I am currently doing a small series on folk heroes of the Wild West, I couldn’t
help but dedicate a video to Billy the Kid, whose name has become synonymous with the
Wild West.
Without further ado, I hope you’ll enjoy the story of Henry McCarthy, more commonly
known as Billy the Kid.
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Henry McCarthy
The real name of Billy the Kid was Henry McCarthy, born in eighteen-fifty-nine in New York to
Catherine, and a father whose identity has been a topic of debate, though sources state
his name was Patrick McCarthy.
His mother remarried William Antrim after Patrick passed away and moved to Silver City
in new Mexico where William worked in the mines.
Henry’s mother contracted tuberculosis and when Henry was fifteen, she passed away in
eighteen-seventy-four, after which he had to fend for himself.
You see, his stepfather wasn’t too keen on raising him and broke contact soon after
Catherine’s death.
Though Henry worked a side-job at a hotel, he was sixteen when he first went astray,
as he was arrested for being in the possession of stolen clothes and weaponry.
It made the Sunday Herald, not necessarily because of the severity of the crime but because
he managed to escape from his prison cell, climbing through the chimney.
The same news report theorized that Billy was merely used as a tool by another older,
and more well-known criminal, Sombrero Jack.
Billy fled, crossed the border into Arizona, until he reached the Indian reservation nearby.
Around this time he actually adopted the name Billy himself, and due to his youthful look
people refer to him as ‘the Kid’.
He became a cowboy at the ranch owned by J.W. Smith but within two years he went astray
again as he killed his first man, a man that was notorious for being the town’s bully:
Frank Cahill.
Cahill outsized Billy, and when he insulted him and the two got into an altercation, Billy
managed to shoot Cahill in the stomach as he was thrown on the ground and jumped.
Cahill was mortally wounded and it didn’t take long for him to be arrested by the judicial
officer Miles Wood.
Once again, Billy managed to escape and from now on, he had to live on the run.
The Kid and John Tunstall
He didn’t waste any time and fled to Lincoln county, New Mexico, where he earned his money
as a rustler and gambler, until he met John Tunstall, an Englishman that owned a ranch
on the Rio Feliz.
The meeting was a little unorthodox as Billy was rustling Tunstall’s cattle when Tunstall
caught him.
He offered Billy a job instead of punishment, and a friendship grew between the two men.
Unfortunately it wasn’t meant to last, as two other men, the Irish immigrants Lawrence
Murphy and Jimmy Dolan, ruled the Lincoln County ruthlessly.
They owned “The House”, as they called the Murphy and Dolan mercantile and banking
operation.
They basically monopolized every industry in the Lincoln County, buying up land and
suppressing any competition.
They ensured protection of their monopoly with their own band of cronies, named the
Seven Rivers Gang.
Tunstall and his partner, the lawyer Alexander McSween were competitors to “The House”,
to which Murphy and Dolan didn’t take kindly.
A group of corrupt officials, let Murphy and Dolan rule the town as if it was their own
property, and they were not looking forward to competitors entering the scene.
As Tunstall was eager to compete, he offered reasonable prices and thus stole clients of
Murphy and Dolan.
After harrassing Tunstall legally, they tried to push him out in illegal manners, among
which provoking him to a gunfight with gunslingers they hired, most of whom were members of the
Jesse Evans Gang.
The town’s corrupt sheriff, William Brady, was in the pocket of the House as well and
was requested to ride onto Tunstall’s territory in order to confiscate cattle.
The news that Brady together with Murphy and Dolan’s men were moving towards Tunstall’s
territory, reached Tunstall and McSween.
In February eighteen-seventy-eight, Tunstall, Billy and a few other men rode out to meet
the trespassers on their ranch.
Once they met the group, a scuffle erupted in which Tunstall was singled out and shot
dead, while the rest of his men weren’t there to come to his aid.
Tunstall’s murder was the beginning the Lincoln County War, the conflict between these
two groups.
The Lincoln County War
After the killing of Tunstall, Billy and several other members of the group among which McSween
and Dick Brewer, swore to get revenge and formed the Lincoln County Regulators.
They managed to obtain murder warrants from the justice of the peace John B. Wilson and
from now on, their primary objective was to get vengeance.
About a month later, in March, the regulators found two men that were there when Tunstall
was killed; Frank Baker and William Morton.
As the regulators confronted them, both men tried to escape the regulators and were subsequently
shot.
They would not be the last ones.
On the first of April that same year, sheriff Brady and two other deputies walked down the
street as they were ambushed by the regulators.
William Brady and George Hindman were killed, riddled with bullets.
Three days later another firefight broke out between the Regulators and the Seven Rivers
Gang members.
This time however, two regulators by the name of Buckshot Roberts and Dick Brewer were killed.
In May two McSween men were found shot in a ditch by passer-bys, they were killed in
an ambush.
The Dolan faction now stepped up their harassment of McSween, and the conflict was slowly leading
towards its climax.
In July, McSween, together with Billy and a dozen or so other men rode out towards Lincoln.
Once arrived, Mcsween barricaded himself in his house together with his wife, sister and
nine other men.
Some others stationed themselves onto rooftops and at strategic locations in the town, and
the next couple of days would be a waiting game.
Upon hearing about this ‘siege’, or protest, Sheriff George Peppin came to Lincoln with
forty men, he had arrest warrants for the regulators, who defended themselves in the
barricaded house, which meant they could not be arrested.
While both sides were shooting at each other the firefight wasn’t heavy enough to force
a surrender.
Several regulators were killed however, and Sheriff Peppin decided to ask the nearby army
for help as the whole process took too long in his opinion.
The regulators still holding themselves up on rooftops now moved towards the McSween
house, which would be the main bastion for what was to come.
Sheriff Peppin returned a couple of days later, together with Colonel Nathan Dudley, who brought
a troop of soldiers, a gatling gun and a cannon with him.
The heavy weaponry was now aimed at the house and the women were allowed to leave, although
McSween’s wife refused.
After a standoff that lasted for a few more days, their firepower was unleashed on the
McSween house, to no avail, and Sheriff Peppin and colonel Dudley wanted to get the men out
of the house through a last attempt: They set the house on fire.
Misses McSween was allowed to leave the house once again, and now did so, as she plead with
the sheriff to put out the fire.
Sheriff Peppin, however, refused, and McSween and the others had to get out of the house
as they made a dash to the river behind the house.
As the men fled from the burning building, four men, including McSween, were killed.
Our Billy, shot in his thigh, though he did manage to flee together with multiple regulators.
The confrontation would enter the history books as the Battle of Lincoln, and would
leave five regulators and two soldiers dead.
After the Lincoln County War
Now that McSween was killed, the Lincoln County War came to an end as the McSween men weren’t
paid anymore.
This also meant, Billy had to find other enterprises in order to attain a living.
In August, suddenly there was a peak in cattle being rustled in New Mexico, and Billy the
Kid and his companions were blamed.
Because of his troubled past, Billy was wanted for theft and multiple murders.
A month later the news of the Lincoln County War and the corrupt Santa Fe Ring reached
Washington upon which president Rutherford Hayes fired Samuel Beach Axtell, a pro-House
governor, and replaced him with Lew Wallace, a well-known general that commanded troops
during the civil war, prolific writer and already an American hero during his lifetime.
Wallace attempted to stop the Lincoln County War hostilities and offered amnesty to the
participants of the Lincoln County War, except for Billy, as he killed a sheriff and his
deputy.
As this powershift in the higher offices of the county was going on, Misses McSween hired
a one-armed lawyer, Huston Chapman, to settle McSweens estate and sue colonel Dudley for
her husband’s death.
Chapman encountered two Lincoln men on the street a couple of days later, and he was
shot.
Billy witnessed to murder, together with Tom O’Folliard, and thus knew who had shot Chapman.
Billy wrote a letter to Lew Wallace, offering to testify before a Grand Jury against these
killers, who were members of the Jesse Evans Gang, and other members of the House, if Wallace
would grant him amnesty.
Wallace agreed, and offered Billy amnesty, upon which Billy turned himself in.
He was held in jail to await the trial but as he was imprisoned, Wallace skipped town
and Billy grew strong suspicions that he was being framed and Wallace would not hold up
to his end of the deal, and he would not be granted amnesty.
As he had become rather skilled in escaping from prisons, he did so once again and joined
his McSween friends.
The next couple of months, Billy would rustle cattle together with his gang, albeit as one
of the most wanted men of the United States.
He would feature in most newspapers issued in New Mexico, and most towns had wanted posters
for him.
Eighteen-eighty came along and Lincoln County was appointed a new sheriff, Pat Garrett.
This Garrett was dead-set on capturing Billy the Kid, and it didn’t take him long to
trace Billy and his gang.
He captured him, together with his posse of lawmen and several regulators were killed
in the ensuing shootout.
Billy surrendered, was transported back to Santa Fe and was eventually sentenced to hang
at the Lincoln Court House for multiple murders, among which that of Sheriff Brady.
He was locked up for a while in the Lincoln Court House, under guard by two deputies.
In April eighteen-eighty-one, after he had asked if he could stretch his legs outside,
Billy managed to slip out of his handcuffs, and managed to take the gun from one of the
deputies guarding him, James Bell, shooting him.
The other deputy, Bob Olinger, would meet the same fate.
Now with the deputies out of the way, Billy stole a horse and once again, fled town.
He would manage to stay under the radar for three months, as the most wanted men of the
entire country.
He was being hunted down by Pat Garrett now, as he killed two of his deputies, the whole
ordeal became even more personal.
As Billy was hiding, he fell in love with a girl, Paulita Maxwell.
Her brother, Pete Maxwell, supplied information to Garrett about Billy’s whereabouts.
He let Garrett know Billy was in Fort Sumner, and together with a gang of deputies, Garrett
left for Maxwell’s residence in order to question him.
As the men were up talking late at night, it was dark and the room was only dimly lit.
Suddenly, Billy the Kid walked in and couldn’t make out the shade of men sitting on the bed,
asking “Quien es?”, Spanish for “Who is it?”.
Garrett, recognizing Billy’s voice, shot him twice, killing him instantly.
It was July the fourteenth, eighteen-eighty-one, and it marked the end of Billy the Kid, who
was buried in a grave with a wooden cross.
Thank you for watching this video, I hope you found it interesting and what is a person
or event from the Wild West that you would like to know more about, and perhaps see a
video of?
Let me know your thoughts in the comments and if you enjoyed the video, consider subscribing
to my channel.
See you next time!