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.
