 |
| Billy, photo by Ben Wittick (1845-1903) |
Billy the Kid. I mentioned last time that Collinson had encountered Billy the Kid during his trips to New Mexico. Collinson doesn’t admire Billy, but he believes he was treated unfairly as the only one ever brought to trial during the Lincoln County War. He considers much of his alleged criminal record to be implausible hearsay. And if his employer, John Tunstall, had not been murdered, we would never have heard of Billy.
When Collinson met Billy, he was unimpressed and described him years later as “only a boy” and “not much to look at”:
Everything he had on would not have sold for five dollars – an old black slouch hat; worn-out pants and boots, spurs, shirt and vest; a black cotton handkerchief tied loosely around his neck, the ever-ready Colt double-action .41 pistol around him and in easy reach; an old style .44 rim-fire, brass-jawed Winchester.
I should say he was about five feet, seven inches tall, and weighed perhaps 135 pounds. He had no chin, no shoulders, and his hands and feet were small. He needed a haircut. He had a pair of gray-blue eyes that never stopped looking around. (p. 118)
There are various accounts of the death of Deputy Dan Carlyle at the Greathouse ranch outside White Oaks, New Mexico, where a posse found Billy’s gang. Collinson’s version casts Greathouse as the villain, with a record of rustling cattle and selling liquor to Indians for horses. While Greathouse was questioned outside by the posse, Carlyle went into the ranch house as guarantee of his safe return.
 | ||||||
| Frederic Remington, Fighting Over a Stolen Herd, 1895 |
Billy had threatened to kill Carlyle if any harm came to Greathouse. Hearing a shot from outside, Carlyle dived for his life through a window, and Billy cut him down, as he’d promised. Collinson says, “I always figured the killing of Carlyle was the most uncalled-for of any of the Kid’s killings” (p. 170).
In fact, it has not been determined whether the posse, Billy’s gang, or both fired at Carlyle. The accounts make a good example of how hard it is to sort fact from fiction in writing the history of events like these. You can find a different account of the incident here.
As a footnote, it’s worth a mention that Collinson had been told there was a demand for shooters in Lincoln County. A marksman with a buffalo gun, he seriously considered hiring on there with either of the fighting factions, at $3.50 a day – until someone talked him out of it.
