Thu Feb 09 2012

Alexander Cockburn

Billy the Kid Revisited
April 24, 2002

LINCOLN -- This nicely rehabbed little place about 160 miles south by southeast from Santa Fe, N.M., is the wellspring of the Billy the Kid saga. He hung out here, was jailed here, escaped from jail here, and so forth. In this same saga, two of the eternal verities, military procurement and insurance, were the primal forces at work, along with the third verity, tardy authors.

In 1850, with the exception of coastal California and east Texas, there was barely a cow or steer west of the Mississippi. There were more cattle, nearly a million, in New York State than anywhere else. By 1870, the total was up to 15 million, and by 1900, that had doubled again to 35 million. Texas alone had 6.5 million. Industrial meat-eating had come of age.

U.S. army units needed beef to sustain them in their campaigns against Indians watching their protein disappear as cattle replaced bison. Based in Lincoln, N.M., Irish good old boys known as The House had the local meat contract stitched up with friendly U.S. Army officers in Fort Stanton. They rustled the cows from John Chisum's vast herds further south, grazed them on land stolen from the Hispanics, then sold them to the Army or drove them to Abilene, Texas, or up into Colorado. Everyone was happy, except for the Hispanics, the Indians and, presumably, the cows.

Enter the archetypical dude, John Henry Tunstall. He's a rich kid from England, with a fine horse imported from New York, the most refined clothing, the softest Indian blankets. His plan: After forming an alliance with a local lawyer, Alexander McSween, he will break the House, grab the meat contracts, steal all the business of Lincoln, N.M., from the Firm's store. Of course, this is standard business procedure, and the reason America is great. But an important part of the standard procedure is not to underestimate the opposition, which Tunstall fatally does. Irked by his maneuvers, the members of the House use the excuse of an insurance claim to go to Tunstall's ranch. Encountering the Englishman, they shoot him dead. Not long thereafter, they attack McSween's house, setting it on fire. McSween dies attempting to escape. Billy the Kid and others make their way through the flames to safety, as does Mrs. Susan McSween.

These Lincoln county wars are minutely documented in papers in the various museums in Lincoln, N.M., one of them endowed by oilman R.O. Anderson, based in Roswell, N.M., 70 miles east. Hundreds of articles and books, starting with Pat Garrett's memoir ghostwritten by Ash Upson and rushed out after Garrett had killed Billy, chronicle the Kid's final years on a daily, sometimes an hourly basis. Photographs by the thousands document all the players staring grimly into the camera. They include the famous tintype of Billy, which has promoted the erroneous notion that the Kid was left-handed.

But amid this wealth of mostly amateur history, there are huge and obvious gaps. Sex, for example. From Calvert and deLeon's "History of Texas" we learn that ratios in Texas in 1880 were 111 men to one woman. Same ratio 10 years later. Conditions in the bunkhouses must have been similar to those before the mast. My friend, the Austin, Texas-based writer Bill Broyles, who's researched the Billy saga extensively for a novel some smart publisher should speedily snap up, says Tunstall was gay and "very close to a German called Weidemann." The only other person for whom he appears to have entertained erotic attraction was his own sister. So maybe Tunstall's murder was a hate crime, to be requited by Billy. Was Billy gay? Maybe, like another mythic character, Neal Cassady, he was polymorphous in preference. He was certainly mourned by many Hispanic girls.

The town bike, as we used to say in Ireland, was Susan McSween, later known as "the cattle queen of the West." Her amorous activities were abundantly alleged in depositions on Col. Dudley's trial, She used to take Hispanic masons "down to the river." After McSween bit the dust, she took up with a one-armed lawyer with psoriasis who was gunned down on the main street in Lincoln, N.M., very near the Patron store, while looking for fresh milk for milk plaster for his face. She then married a man with a prolapsed rectum. Chisum, who gave her 500 cattle, was consorting with her even while McSween was alive. Her ranches were finally taken over by Fall and Doheny, who were the prime villains in the Teapot Dome scandal. My innkeepers at the Patron house are now part of a case battling the owner of Ruidoso racetrack from building a fourth golf course, thereby possibly depleting vital water supplies. All in the mainstream of American history.

Billy would probably have been OK, if New Mexico's governor, Lew Wallace, hadn't been trying to finish his novel "Ben Hur." The Kid was hoping to bargain his way out of a death sentence by snitching on his pals who had most recently gunned down the man with psoriasis, who was Susan the town bike's lawyer. Brooding on troublesome problems with Ben Hur's plot, Wallace allowed the switch deal to lapse. Instead of fleeing to Mexico, Billy was still angling for a pardon when Garrett nailed him. Never trust an author.

Alexander Cockburn is coeditor with Jeffrey St Clair of the muckraking newsletter CounterPunch. To find out more about Alexander Cockburn and read features by other columnists and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com. COPYRIGHT 2002 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.

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