A Cowboy Mafia War

William H. Bonney — a likable Irish-American scamp who got caught up in a war that hardened him into a killer, and made him one of the American West’s most enduring legends.

…. I intend to squeeze you. I don’t like your kind of people. I don’t like to see you come out to this clean country with your oily hair, dressed up in those silk suits, passing yourselves off as decent Americans. I’ll do business with you, but the fact is that I despise your masquerade, the dishonest way you pose yourself. Yourself and your whole fucking family.

Senator Pat Geary to Michael Corleone in “The Godfather, Part II”

An old cowboy poet pal of mine was profoundly offended years ago when I referred to the Lincoln County War of 1878 as a cowboy mafia war. I mean, he was pissed. Words were exchanged. Had to explain to my friend that he didn’t get to tell me what I think or what I can say. See, like Senator Geary, my pal didn’t like the idea of his West being sullied by equating its outlaw history with the urban gangsterism of the Mob.*

Well… too bad. I stick by the comparison. Despite the purportedly more romantic trappings of horses and Winchester rifles, the Lincoln County War was as vicious a gang war between rival commercial factions as any to be found on the streets of New York, Chicago, L.A. or New Orleans. Lucky Luciano, Santo Trafficante or Whitey Bulger would have recognized its contours instantly, though they might have scoffed at the paltry stakes.

“The House” operated by Irishmen Lawrence Murphy and James Dolan was the major mercantile outfit in Lincoln County. They sold their goods dear and paid bottom dollar for horses and cattle. It was a sweet monopoly. Small ranchers and cowboys didn’t like it, but you didn’t mess with The House.

When the young English rancher and banker John Tunstall undertook to establish a competing operation along with his partner Alexander McSween — H.H. Tunstall & Company—  The House took exception. Violent exception.

The House’s lawman-on-the-pad Sheriff William Brady took a posse out with a court order to seize some horses from Tunstall as payment for an outstanding debt. Tunstall ended up getting shot in the head. Y’know… whacked.

Some of Tunstall’s ranch hands — among them a young William H. Bonney (formerly Henry McCarty/Henry Antrim) — took their revenge by gunning down Brady and a deputy from ambush as they walked down the street in Lincoln, and the Lincoln County War was on.

The Regulators, as they styled themselves, tracked down the triggerman in the Tunstall hit — one William Morton. He and a compatriot named Frank Baker were “shot while attempting to escape” — possibly by Billy Bonney.

The War ended with the Regulators “going to the mattresses” — besieged in Alexander McSween’s house in Lincoln by gunmen of The House. U.S. Cavalry troops intervened — ostensibly neutral, but obviously favoring the Murphy/Dolan faction. The Regulators were burned out, McSween killed in the firefight. Billy Bonney escaped. An official pardon fell through and Billy took to rustling cattle for a living.

It was Billy’s subsequent tear across New Mexico — being captured and escaping after killing two lawmen — that would establish the legend of Billy the Kid.

Yeah, sorry ol’ buddy, but ambush and assassination, the murder of prisoners — all in the name of commercial gain for a business enterprise — that’s a Cowboy Mafia War.

* He simmered down. No blackout episodes in a Nevada brothel were required.