The Kid

“Well, here it’s the art of the impossible. All calculations based on my earlier military and political experiences absolutely fail in New Mexico with so many officeholders on the take from those seeking commercial advantage.” The governor squeezed a pair of rimless pince-nez on his nose and lifted his box of manuscript to get W. H. Bonney’s letter from underneath it. “And so I welcome problems I feel I can handle, and one is outlawry in Lincoln County. I shall push those Black Knights without rest.”

With “Black Knights” Wallace was alluding to an Arthurian romance from the Middle Ages, so the reference went over Billy’s head. “Like I say, I’m just hoping for a clean slate and citizenhood. Your note to me gave promise of absolute protection.”

“Yes, and I shall be true to that promise.” Rereading the Kid’s letter, Lew Wallace asked, “You mention indictments. What kind?”

“Territorial for the killing of Sheriff William Brady, but I was just one of a half dozen shooters. And he deserved to die. The federal one was for the killing of Andrew Roberts on the Mescalero reservation, which I definitely did not do.” The Kid forgot to mention his killing of Windy Cahill in self-defense, but Arizona seemed to have forgotten that, too.

“You would end up testifying against yourself in all likelihood.”

“And that means?”

“Histories and narratives that would include your own activities. But that’s neither here nor there, for I am prepared to offer you clemency in return for your full, accurate, and truthful testimony before a grand jury.”

“Clemency?”

“Leniency, forbearance. You’ll go scot-free with my own official pardon for all your prior misdeeds.”

The Kid said he liked the sound of that but confessed the fear that those criminals he named would have him killed.

Wallace told him he’d order a sham arrest and lock him in handcuffs, then jail him with instructions of protective custody. The government would also be arresting those involved in the homicide of Huston Ingraham Chapman. And now, if the terms were agreeable to him, he could begin naming names.

“We ought to have all this in writing,” Billy said.

The Kid failed to understand the governor’s sneer as he said, “Not until I have your testimony.”

Which he guessed was a reasonable hitch to the bargain. The Kid offered the names of those who had joined in the parley on February 18, and then with hesitation he asked, “You are staying put as governor, right?”

Lew Wallace seemed defeated and sorrowful as he rocked back in his chair. “Oh, there will soon arrive the time when I have become fed up with this place. Then another governor will be in this hovel of a palacio and he’ll do just as I did, have the same ideas, undertake the same vain attempts, and with the same heartiness of effort he’ll soon cool in his zeal, then finally say, ‘All right, let her drift.’?”

The Kid was thinking the governor could have depressed the devil, but he stood and smiled as he said in good night, “Well, sir, I guess it’s time to pee on the fire and call home the hound dogs.”

The governor winced at the vulgarity and shooed the petty criminal off, saying, “I have to get back to my novel.”

* * *

Acting on further information, the governor sent a sixty-man cavalry detachment to Jimmy Dolan’s Carrizozo ranch and overwhelmed William Campbell, Jacob B. Mathews, and Jesse Evans, who were arrested and taken to the Fort Stanton stockade. But Jesse Evans and Billy Campbell convinced an infantry recruit from Texas to help them slink out of their loose imprisonment. Evans seemed to have the Kid’s knack for getting out of jails. Billy Campbell “skedaddled for Texas,” as Evans put it, and was never heard from again.

Worried that the escapees would be seeking vengeance, the Kid and Tom Folliard volunteered to be handcuffed by Sheriff George Kimbrell and were escorted to a friendly confinement in Juan Patrón’s store, where they played Mexican monte with the sheriff and other visitors and the Kid won big as the “house bank.” Writing of their jailing to the secretary of the interior, Wallace sarcastically noted, “A precious specimen named ‘the Kid’ whom the Sheriff is holding in the Plaza, as it is called, is an object of tender regard. Singing and music can be heard in the night as minstrels of the village actually serenade the fellow in his prison.”

Lew Wallace was so intrigued by the judicial intelligence of Susan McSween’s current lawyer that he chose Ira E. Leonard, a former judge in Missouri, to ensure fulfillment of the governor’s interests in the forthcoming spring term of the district court. But Wallace may also have foreseen that his efforts would fail, for he disassociated himself from the process.

Judge Warren Bristol and District Attorney William Logan Rynerson got to Fort Stanton for the grand jury proceedings on Sunday, April 13, and immediately confirmed the habeas corpus petitions—writs against illegal imprisonment—that were submitted on behalf of fifteen men associated with robberies and murder in the Lincoln County War. The fifteen were released from the fort’s stockade after go-and-sin-no-more instructions from Judge Bristol.

The grand jury was constituted with friends of Alexander McSween and handed down some two hundred indictments: against Lieutenant Colonel Dudley and ex-Sheriff Dad Peppin for arson; against Billy Campbell, Jimmy Dolan, and their accessory Jesse Evans for the homicide of Huston Chapman; a hundred against people already dead; and one against Tom Folliard for horse theft.

Tom Folliard and J. B. Mathews were interrogated about their activ

ities and, according to a prior agreement, were then given immunity from further prosecution under the governor’s proclamation of amnesty.

But when the Kid offered his full, accurate, and truthful testimony about the night of Huston Chapman’s murder and waited for District Attorney Rynerson to do just as he’d done for Tom and J.B., instead the scowling and freakishly tall and Rasputin-like Rynerson objected, “We find in the law no precedence for the governor’s presumption of the right to offer a homicidal felon a promise of clemency. The state therefore requests a continuance of prosecution.”

Judge Bristol granted it.

Sidney Wilson then took up the defense of Jimmy Dolan, urging a change of venue to Doña Ana County, for the partisan feelings in Lincoln County made a fair trial of his client impossible. Judge Bristol agreed. The Kid’s hearing for the murder of Sheriff Brady was shifted there as well.

* * *

Soon after the gavel fell on the grand jury proceedings, Fort Stanton also hosted the military court of inquiry that was meant to establish if Lieutenant Colonel Dudley should be court-martialed for the arson of the McSween residence, abetting in Alex’s murder, looting the Tunstall mercantile store, and “procuring base and wicked men to make false and slanderous charges against Mrs. McSween in order to ruin her reputation.”