“According to you.”
“Oh, I think there’s unanimity of opinion on that score,” Simon Newcomb said, and then the prosecutor smirked as he told Judge Bristol, “I have no more questions,” and executed half a bow before he went back to his table.
The Kid scowled at his attorney and asked, “Weren’t you going to object to any of that?”
The public defender explained, “It all happened so fast!”
Only the rites and formalities of the courtroom forced the trial to continue to Saturday, April 9, when Judge Bristol read aloud his nine-page summation of the case, instructing the jury that “if the defendant was present encouraging, inciting, aiding in, abetting, advising, or commanding this killing of Brady, he is as much guilty as though he fired the fatal shot.” Within the hour the jury returned a unanimous verdict that William H. Bonney was guilty of murder in the first degree. With sentencing announced for the following Wednesday, the Kid was hauled back to the foul jail cell he shared with Billie Wilson.
And there he found on his cot a perfumed letter from Paulita Maxwell that he read aloud to Wilson. “?‘Dear friend,’ she calls me. But she goes on to say, ‘Could I but draw you a picture of my heart it would contain nothing new, just the assurance that the early possession you obtained there, and the absolute power you have obtained over it, leaves not the smallest space unoccupied. I look back on our acquaintance as wondrous days of love and innocence, and with indescribable pleasure I have reviewed our years together and only seen an affection heightened and improved by time. Nor have these months of your absence and cruel imprisonment effaced from my mind the image of the dear man to whom I gave my heart.’?”
Although the letter did not seem finished, the Kid let the hand holding it fall to his side. Wilson asked, “Are you crying?”
The Kid lied that he wasn’t.
“Well, you should be,” Wilson said.
At five fifteen on April 13, the Kid was shackled and squired to his sentencing. In the courtroom Judge Bristol asked, “Have you anything to say
before your sentence is pronounced?”
The Kid glared fiercely but shook his head.
Judge Bristol looked down at handwriting in the floral Platt Rogers Spencer style and orated, “The defendant shall be confined in jail in Lincoln County until Friday, May 13th, 1881, when between nine a.m. and three p.m. he, the said William H. Bonney, alias Kid, alias Henry Antrim, shall be taken from his imprisonment to some suitable and convenient place of execution by the Sheriff of Lincoln County.” Judge Bristol lifted his scalding eyes to the Kid and with a sneer continued, “And then and there he shall be hanged by the neck until his body be dead dead dead.”
The frustrations and injustice got to the Kid then, and he shouted back, “And you can go to Hell Hell Hell!”
- 19 -
THE CONVICT
Authorities widely declared the Kid would be sent to Lincoln County in the next week, but to prevent either rescue or a vigilante lynching, Sheriff Garrett’s hirelings instead shifted him eastward at ten on the night of Saturday, April 16, the saloonkeeper Jacob B. Mathews walking into the miserable Mesilla jail and waking up the prisoner. The Kid packed his finer clothing in a haversack as he groused, “Worstest jail I’ve ever been in. Hot and filthy. Lice jumping off the mattress ticking. Tortillas and beans for all our meals. Water tasted like sewer runoff. And the skeeters whined at my head all night long.”
“We’ll keep ya comfy cozy in Lincoln,” Mathews said. And then he walked with the Kid in front of him, hatless, shuffling in shackles, his hands manacled. Watching the Kid’s gait, Matthews inquired with genuine curiosity, “How’s your leg where I shot ya?”
“Healed up just fine. Thanks for asking.”
Waiting outside for their prisoner with their shotguns upright near their shoulders were Deputy US Marshal Bob Olinger, a half-time deputy sheriff named David Woods, and the newly employed John Kinney, the founder of the gang he called the Boys and many times a murderer even before joining in the gun battle at Alex McSween’s.
Smiling when he saw the Kid in chains, Kinney said, “You sumbitch, you shot half my mustache off that night.”
“Well, I see it grew back.”
“Wanted to kill you daid right then but you was catlike.”
The Kid acidly said, “All in good fun, wasn’t it?” And then he was guided to a flat-roofed, blue-enameled Dougherty wagon that was on loan from Fort Stanton and was labeled in gold AMBULANCE. Sitting up above them holding the reins of his harnessed mule team was W. A. Lockhart, and next to him was D. M. Reade, cradling a sawed-off shotgun. Tom Williams and David Woods got on fine saddled cavalry horses to ride along outside the ambulance.
The Kid was counting his police guard and said, “Criminy sakes, you got seven men watching over me? I must be a dad-blamed monster!”
“Slick as snot is more like it,” Olinger said.
Mathews admitted, “We’re sorta sponging off Lincoln County. Each of us getting two dollars per diem, a dollar fifty a day for food and room, and ten cents a mile for the hundred forty-five miles to Lincoln. We go back gradual enough, stretch four days to five or six, we’ll be sitting pretty for weeks.”
Olinger said, “Whereas you’ll be the poor have-not getting nothing but grief from me from now on.”
Mathews and Olinger wedged themselves and their guns on the bench across from the Kid, and Kinney squeezed in beside him. Kinney was shorter than the Kid but stouter, and Olinger was large, a good seven inches over Billy’s height and at least a hundred pounds heavier. The Kid heard his mother saying, There’s a lot of body in those clothes.
Kinney told the Kid, “We’s already reckoned if any your friendly greasers try to free ya, we’ll just go ahead and shoot ya daid, get the execution over with sooner.”