Untold Tales From The Days Of Billy The Kid

The Lincoln County War in New Mexico in 1878 and the ruckus in Tombstone, Arizona, in 1881-82 are two of the main load-bearing episodes underpinning the American mythology of the Wild West. The tales of feud and gunfight surrounding these very real episodes have been told over and over again in history and in fiction, in print and on film, sometimes quite brilliantly, other times with scant regard for truth or authenticity.

I have often expressed frustration at being presented yet another retelling of the saga of Billy the Kid or the Earp Bros. when there are many other worthy tales to tell. Yet, it is possible to find new ways to approach these ur-myths that adds value and deeper understanding of events that truly are compelling and emblematic of the nature of conflict in the Old West.

James B. Mills has done that with Billy the Kid: El Bandido Simpatico, and his new volume, In the Days of Billy the Kid: The Lives and Times of José Chávez y Chávez, Juan Patrón, Martín Chávez, and Yginio Salazar.

Mills brings to the foreground the experience of the Hispano players in the great drama of the New Mexico territory. It was, after all, their territory — the border crossed them when the United States conquered the territory in the U.S.-Mexican War of 1846-48. People of Spanish/Mexican heritage continued to play a very significant role in the territory, which I have seen as I delve into the Civil War campaigns on that far frontier.

William Bonney, aka Billy the Kid gravitated to the Hispano community. He found them simpatico, and they found him simpatico. In this latest volume, Mills delves in great detail into the unsung lives of several of the Kid’s compadres, combatants in the Lincoln County War.

It took me a bit to get to it, but once I did, I was fully drawn in to a volume that will surely stand as a definitive treatment of its subject. The timing turned out to be fortuitous, because I was just finishing up when my friend Eric Strobel sent me shots from his recent trip to Lincoln.

Eric insists — and I agree — that a raid into Lincoln County is mandatory.

Anyways…

Mills is an ace researcher and writes vividly. He’s operating out of Australia, which puts him at a disadvantage (less so in the digital age) — but then again, another Tier One Lincoln County War historian, the late Frederick Nolan, was operating out of the UK. Just shows you how potent the legends of the Old West are; it remains an international phenomenon.

Mills’ partisans have compelling stories — and lives that stretched beyond their participation in the Lincoln County War. Yginio Salazar, just a kid himself during the War, nearly bled out from wounds sustained in the firefight at the McSween House. That usually gets a sentence or two at most in retellings of the fight; Mills gives a detailed account. He survived and lived a long life that would find him hosting Hollywood movie stars exploring Lincoln with an eye to cinematic possibilities. He would always be proud of his association with Billy the Kid, and set straight those who saw the Kid as a stone killer.

José Chávez y Chávez is probably best-known to our generation through his portrayal by Lou Diamond Phillips in Young Guns. Chávez y Chávez was a hardcore outlaw, a bad hombre, whose outlaw trail extended well beyond the Lincoln County War and landed him in the territorial penitentiary. Amazingly, he lived to the age of 72.

Martín Chávez was a natural born leader of men, and probably the most accomplished man among the McSween faction. It was Chávez, along with 20 Hispano gunmen, who took up positions in the Montaño store during the Five Day Battle. He lived deep into the 20th Century, and became a highly successful businessman and a pillar of the Santa Fe community.

Mills profiled him in detail in an issue of True West Magazine.

No participant of the Lincoln County War accomplished as much in his lifetime as Martín Chávez. It is therefore perplexing as to how the leader of the McSween partisans during the five-day siege in Lincoln, also known as “The Big Killing,” became the most forgotten participant of the famous conflict. One can only scratch their head further when considering Martín was not only one of the closest friends of the legendary William “Billy the Kid” Bonney, but his own name was once known to everyone throughout the entire state of New Mexico.

History is capricious… perhaps Mills’ work will restore Chávez to the stature he deserves.

The fate of Juan Patrón is a painful one to contemplate. Highly educated, entrepreneurial, and with a flair for politics, Patrón was a partisan in two major frontier conflicts, the Horrell War and the Lincoln County War. He was a rising star in New Mexico, despite the challenges of operating in the face of the Anglo-American ascendancy. But he had a savage and fatal taste for alcohol, and it got him killed in a stupid and unnecessary gunfight over nothing, with a cowboy who clearly didn’t want to kill him.

All of this is laid out in compelling style — a neat trick in a volume so heavily researched and rich in detail. Mills has flair. The book itself is magnificent, a throwback to the days when a hardback book felt substantial, something more than cardboard, and it features evocative cover art by Bob Boze Bell.

This is a major work of frontier scholarship by any measure, a rewarding read and a volume any Frontier Partisan should be proud to have in his library.

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Among the plunder from the Reno Raid is a collection of Robert E. Howard’s Western tales I picked up in a Western Wear store in Virginia City. The End of the Trail: Western Stories, was a prestige publication of University of Nebraska Press, featuring an introduction by Rusty Burke. It also includes REH’s lengthy essay on the Lincoln County War, in the form of a letter to H.P. Lovecraft.

Howard had taken a road trip into New Mexico in June 1935, and it had a profound effect on him. Howard scholars surmise that the Carlsbad Caverns inspired the setting for the Conan yarn The Servants of Bit Yakin (aka The Jewels of Gwahlur), and that the Lincoln County War — or, more to the point, Howard’s vivid imagining of its psychological horrors — fed the mood of the final Conan tale Red Nails.

Keith West offers a fine post at Adventures Fantastic on his own road trip to Lincoln. Read it here.