This is not the only “Billy the Kid” pistol in existence. It would be a safe gamble to bet that there are a wagon load of them scattered over the United States.
The Winchester rifle taken from the “Kid” at the time of his capture at Stinking Spring, was raffled off in the spring of 1881, and the writer won it. He put it up again in a game of “freeze out” poker. As one of my cowboys, Tom Emory, was an expert poker player, I induced him to play my hand. I then went to bed. On going down to the Pioneer Saloon, in White Oaks, early next morning, the night barkeeper told me a secret, under promise that I keep it to myself. He said he was stretched out on the bar trying to take a nap. The poker game was going on near him. When he lay down all had been “freezed out” but Tom Emory and Johnny Hudgens. Just before daylight, Emory won all the chips, in a big show down, and I was the owner of “Billy the Kid’s” rifle for the second time, but only for a moment, as Johnny Hudgens gave Tom Emory $20.00 for the gun, under the pretense that Hudgens had won it. Emory almost shed tears when he told me of losing the rifle in what he thought was a winning hand. Of course I didn’t dispute it, as I had given a promise to keep silent.
“Billy the Kid” came very near having a stone monument placed on his grave for the benefit of posterity—so that the curious among the unborn generations would know the exact spot where this “Claude Duval” of the southwest was planted.
One day, on the Plaza in the city of Santa Fe, in about the year 1916, the writer met Mrs. Gertrude Dills, wife of Lucius Dills, the Surveyor General of New Mexico, a daughter of Judge Frank Lea of White Oaks, and a niece to that whole-souled prince among men, the father of the city of Roswell, Captain J. C. Lea. She suggested that the writer get up a subscription to place a lasting monument on the grave of “Billy the Kid,” so that future generations would know where he was buried. As a little girl, Mrs. Dills was once tempted to crawl under the bed, when “Billy the Kid” and gang shot up the town of White Oaks.
I at once went to the monument establishment of Mr. Louis Napoleon, and selected a fine marble monument, with the understanding that the inscription not be cut on it until after I had located the grave.
Many years ago, Will E. Griffin, who is still a resident of Santa Fe, moved all the bodies of the soldiers buried in the old military cemetery, at Fort Sumner, to the National Cemetery at Santa Fe. He says, when the work was finished, the only graves left in the grave-yard, were those of “Billy the Kid” and his chum, Tom O’Phalliard. On these two graves, close together, still remained the badly rotted wooden head boards.
Since then the old cemetery has been turned into an alfalfa field, and the chances are, all signs of this noted young outlaw’s resting place have been obliterated.
Soon after selecting the monument, I happened to be in the town of Tularosa, and brought up the subject to my old cowboy friend, John P. Meadows. He at once subscribed five dollars towards the erection of the monument. He said “Billy the Kid” had befriended him in 1879, when he needed a friend, and for that reason he would like to perpetuate his memory. He thought it would be no trouble to raise the desired amount in Tularosa, but the first man he struck for a subscription, Mr. Charlie Miller, former state engineer, discouraged him. Mr. Miller went straight up in the air with indignation at the idea of placing a monument at the grave of a blood-thirsty outlaw. Soon after this, Mr. Miller was murdered, when Pancho Villa made his bloody raid on Columbus, New Mexico.
This is as far as the grave of “Billy the Kid” came to being marked, as the writer has been too busy on other matters, to visit Fort Sumner and try to locate his last resting place.
In closing, I wish to state that with all his faults, “Billy the Kid” had many noble traits. In White Oaks, during the winter of 1881, the writer talked with a man who actually shed tears in telling of how he lay almost at the point of death, with smallpox, in an old abandoned shack in Fort Sumner, when the “Kid” found him. A good supply of money was given by the “Kid,” and a wagon and team hired to haul him to Las Vegas, where medical attention could be secured.