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He escaped and was returned; yet in the year 1882, when he should have
been in the
Texas prison, he is said to have been seen and recognized on the streets
of Lincoln.
Evans, or Davis, is said to have been a Texarkana man, and to
have returned to his home soon after this, only to find his wife living
with another man, and supposing her first husband dead. He did not tell
the new husband of his presence, but took away with him his boy, whom he
found now well grown. It was stated that he went to
Arizona, and nothing
more is known of him.
Tom Hill, the man above
mentioned as killed by the sheep man, was a typical rough, dark, swarthy,
low-browed, as loud-mouthed as he was ignorant. He was a braggart, but
none the less a killer.
Charlie Bowdre is
supposed to have been a
Texas boy, as was Tom Hill.
Bowdre had a
little ranch on the Rio Ruidoso, twenty miles or so from
Lincoln; but few
of these restless characters did much farming. It was easier to steal
cattle, and to eat beef free if one were hungry.
Bowdre joined
Billy the Kid's gang and turned
outlaw for a trade. It was all over with his chances
of settling down after that. He was a man who liked to talk of what he
could do, and a very steady practice with the six-shooter, with which
weapon he was a good shot, or just good enough to get himself killed by
sheriff
Pat Garrett.
Frank Baker, murdered by
his former friend,
Billy the Kid, at Agua Negra, near the Capitans, was
part
Cherokee in blood, a well-spoken and pleasant man and a good cow
hand. He was drawn into this fighting through his work for
Chisum as a
hired man. Baker was said to be connected with a good family in Virginia,
who looked up the facts of his death.
Billy Morton, killed with
Baker by the
Kid, was a similar instance of a young man loving the saddle
and six-shooter and finally getting tangled up with matters outside his
proper sphere as a cow hand. He had often ridden with the
Kid on the cow
range. He was said to have been with the posse that killed
Tunstall.
Hendry Brown was a crack
gunfighter, whose services were valued
in the posse fighting. He went to
Kansas and long served as marshal of
Caldwell. He could not stand it to be good, and was killed after robbing
the bank and killing the cashier.
Johnny Hurley was a brave
young man, as brave as a lion. Hurley was acting as deputy for Sheriff
John Poe, together with Jim Brent, when the desperado Arragon was holed up
in an adobe and refused to surrender. The Mexican shot Hurley as he
carelessly crossed an open space directly in front of the door. Hurley was
brown-haired and blue-eyed; a very pleasant fellow.
Andy Boyle, one of the rough and ruthless sort of warriors, was
an ex-British soldier, a drunkard, and a good deal of a ruffian. He drank
himself to death after a decidedly mixed record.
John McKinney had a
certain fame from the fact that in the fight at the
McSween house the
Kid
shot off half his mustache for him at close range, when the latter broke
out of cover and ran.
The tough buffalo hunter,
Bill Campbell, who figured largely in bloody deeds in
New Mexico, was
arrested, but escaped from Fort Stanton, and was never heard from
afterward. He came from
Texas, but little is known of him. His name, as
earlier stated, is thought to have been Ed Richardson.
Captain Joseph C. Lea,
the staunch friend of
Pat Garrett, and the man who first brought him
forward as a candidate for sheriff of Lincoln County, died February 8,
1904, at Roswell, where he lived for a long time. Lea was said to have
been a Quantrill man in the
Lawrence Massacre. Much of the population of
that region had a history that was never written. Lea was a good man and
much respected, peaceable, courteous and generous.
One more southwestern bad man found
Texas congenial after the
close of his active fighting, and his is a striking story.
Billy Wilson
was a gentlemanly and good-looking young fellow, who ran with
Billy the Kid's gang.
Wilson was arrested on a United States warrant, charged with
passing counterfeit money; but he later escaped and disappeared. Several
years after all these events had happened, and after the country had
settled down into quiet, a certain ex-sheriff of Lincoln County chanced to
be near Uvalde,
Texas, for several months. There came to him without
invitation, a former merchant of White Oaks,
New Mexico, who told the
officer that
Billy Wilson, under another name, was living below Uvalde,
towards the Mexican frontier. He stated that
Wilson had been a cow hand, a
ranch foreman and cow man, was now doing well, had resigned all his bad
habits, and was a good citizen. He stated that
Wilson had heard of the
officer's presence and asked whether the latter would not forego following
up a reformed man on the old charges of another and different day. The
officer replied at once that if
Wilson was indeed leading a right life,
and did not intend to go bad again, he would not only leave him alone, but
would endeavor to secure for him a pardon from the president of the United
States. Less than six months from that time, this pardon, signed by
President Grover Cleveland, was in the possession of this officer, in his
office in a Rio Grande town of
New Mexico. A telegram was sent to
Billy Wilson, and he was brave man enough to come and take his chances. The
officer, without much speech, went over to his safe, took out the signed
pardon from the resident, and handed it to
Wilson. The latter trembled and
broke into tears as he took the paper. "If you ever need my life," said
he, "count on me. And I'll never go back on this!" as he touched the
executive pardon. He went back to
Texas, and is living there to-day, a
good citizen. It would be wrong to mention names in an incident like this.
Tom
O'Folliard was another noted character. He was something of
a gun expert, in his own belief, at least. He was a man of medium height
and dark complexion, and of no very great amount of mental capacity. He
came into the lower range from somewhere east, probably from
Texas, and
little is known of him except that he was in some fighting, and that he is
buried at Sumner with
Bowdre and the
Kid. He got away with one or two
bluffs and encounters, and came to think that he was as good as the best
of men, or rather as bad as the worst; for he was one of those who wanted
a reputation as a bad man.
Tom Pickett was another not far from the
O'Folliard class,
ambitious to be thought wild and woolly and hard to curry; which he was
not, when it came to the real currying, as events proved. He was a very
pretty handler of a gun, and took pride in his skill with it. He seems to
have behaved well after the arrest of the
Kid's gang near Sumner, and is
not known in connection with any further criminal acts, though he still
for a long time wore two guns in the settlements. Once a well-known
sheriff happened, by mere chance, to be in his town, not knowing
Pickett
was there. The latter literally took to the woods, thinking something was
on foot in which he was concerned. Being reminded that he had lost an
opportunity to show how bad he was he explained: "I don't want anything to
do with that long-legs."
Pickett, no doubt, settled down and became a
useful man. Indeed, although it seems a strange thing to say, it is the
truth that much of the old wildness of that border was a matter of general
custom, one might also say of habit. The surroundings were wild, and men
got to running wild. When times changed, some of them also changed, and
frequently showed that after all they could settle down to work and lead
decent lives. Lawlessness is sometimes less a matter of temperament than
of surroundings.
Added September, 2007
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