Infamous America - BILLY THE KID Ep. 7 | "Lincoln County War, Part 2"

Episode Date: December 18, 2019

The Lincoln County War ends with a murderous finale. The Dolan faction strikes a lethal blow, but it doesn't destroy the Regulators. The Regulators reach a crossroads. Each man must decide: is he in or out? For more details, please visit www.blackbarrelmedia.com. Our social media pages are: @blackbarrelmedia on Facebook and Instagram, and @bbarrelmedia on Twitter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The fire had devoured most of the house. The few remaining men crowded into the last room that was still intact. This was it. They'd held out as long as they could. They had no choice but to make a run for it. The plan was simple, mostly because there weren't many options. They would split into two groups. The smaller group would rush outside and sprint for the fence on the side of the burning house.

It would draw the attention of the gunmen out. outside and act as a distraction. The larger group would then sneak out of the house and move in a different direction to escape the burning building and the posse that waited outside. These men took off their boots so they could slip silently through the net waiting to capture them. The smaller group, five men and all, stood at the door. It was now or never. They crept outside, trying to stay hidden as long as possible. But soon enough, they were visible. in the firelight. They dashed for the fence. As the first man reached the gate, gunfire exploded out of the trees around the house, and the killing began. From Black Barrel Media, this is season

three of infamous America. I'm your host, Chris Wimmer. In this season, we're telling the story of the most notorious outlaw in American history, Billy the Kid. This is Chapter 7, Lincoln County War Part 2. The first four days of the five-day battle were mostly a stalemate. Alex McSween's 60 men occupied three locations at one end of town, and Jimmy Dolan's 40 men occupied a couple locations at the other end of town. They fired at each other continuously, but thus far, only one man had been seriously wounded. On the fourth day, Thursday, Jimmy Dolan made a move that would break the deadlock. He rode out of the first day. He rode out of out to Fort Stanton to meet Colonel Dudley.

Dolan said he'd heard a rumor that John Chisholm was on his way with more than 30 men and a small cannon. Those reinforcements would bring McSweene's numbers up to a hundred, and they'd have artillery. Dudley agreed to bring a detachment of soldiers to Lincoln, in spite of the Possecomitatis Act that strictly forbid him from doing so. He justified it by saying he was going there to protect the women and children, though it became clear he didn't care about either. And, just for good measure, he would bring a howitzer and a gatling gun. Colonel Dudley and a troop of 35 men marched into Lincoln the

following day, Friday, July 19, 1878. The soldiers were a mix of cavalry and infantry, and of course they had the cannon in the gatling gun. On his way into town, Dudley halted the troops near the Dolan store and told Sheriff Pepin he was not there to help them. He was there to protect the women and children. He didn't know which side occupied which buildings and he didn't care. But no one was supposed to fire on his men. That was forbidden above all else. With that, Dudley led his men to a patch of opened ground that was near McSween's house and directly across the street from one of the regulators three strongholds. As the soldiers made their camp, they trained the cannon on the store across the street.

When the regulators in the store saw the cannon pointed at them, they quickly decided that this was a terrible spot to make a stand. They slipped out of the store and retreated to the far east end of town to a building where Doc Skirlock, Charlie Bodry, and many others waited. In just 30 minutes, McSween's command of the town had to be. had vanished. When the day had started, his men outnumbered Dolan's men and could not have been moved from their positions without extreme loss of life. Now, with the arrival of the army, McSween's men were outnumbered and outgunned and cut off from each other. Half his force was

stuck at the east end of town. The other half was stuck in his house. Between them was the army. And now Dolan's men used the army as cover to move closer to McSween's home. Dolan's men surrounded the house and took up firing positions. Then Colonel Dudley informed Sheriff Pepin that a bunch of McSween's men vacated the store across the street from the campsite and had run down to a house at the end of the road. Pepin and a couple of his deputies hurried down the road to confront the men in the house. As they did, the army turned the cannon and the gatling. gun and trained them on the regulator's stronghold. With the artillery pointed at them,

the regulators jumped on their horses and escaped into the hills. McSween's situation had just gone from bad to worse. Two-thirds of his men were gone. He and his last remaining supporters were now trapped in his house. And now the army spun the artillery around and fixed it on McSween's home. With McSween's forces isolated, Sheriff Pepin organized a group of men to stack lumber against the adobe house so they could set it on fire and burn it to the ground. He put John Kinney in charge of the work party, and Kenny's men began piling wood around the outside of McSween's house. Then they doused it with coal oil. All this happened in full view of Colonel Dudley, who claimed he was there to protect women and children. but up to that point he had made no move to protect anyone, let alone women and children.

And he certainly didn't appear to be interested in protecting the two women and five children who were in McSween's home. When McSweene's wife Susan realized what Kenny's men were doing, she escaped from the home by crawling on her hands and knees. She ran up to Sheriff Pepin and demanded to know why he was preparing to burn her house down. He responded by saying, if you don't want your house burned, Tell your husband to surrender. Then she ran down the street to the military camp and screamed at Dudley. She said Pepin's men would kill McSween in his own house before they would try to arrest him.

On the surface, this whole thing was still about trying to serve arrest warrants. But law and order had vanished long ago from Lincoln County. When Susan finished her tirade, Colonel Dudley simply walked back into his tent. He ignored every word. Susan rushed back to the house, and as she did, she saw two men splash oil on the outside walls of the kitchen and lighted on fire. When she got back inside, she told McSween and the regulators what was happening. The other woman and one of her daughters put out the flames before they could do any real damage, but they wouldn't be as lucky with the second fire.

One of Pepin's men crept up to a wooden lean-to that acted as a summer kitchen, He lit the blaze and ran away. The regulators rushed to the burning wooden frame, but Pepin's men unleashed a volley of gunfire that drove the regulators back into the house. They couldn't get close enough to stop the flames, and the fire slowly took hold and began to burn the house. Thick black smoke curled into the sky

as everyone retreated to the rooms farthest from the flames. Later in the day, the fire reached a keg of gun. gunpowder. The explosion tore through the house and escalated the fire. The regulators and the women and children had been in the house for five days. They were dirty and ragged. Now they were coughing and choking on black smoke as the blaze worked its way toward them. McSween and the regulators agreed that the women and children needed to leave. Susan McSweene ran outside and begged Colonel Dudley to give them protection if they left the house. This time he agreed. Susan and the other woman, Elizabeth Shield, and her five children, escaped the burning home.

Now it was just Alex McSween and the regulators in the house. McSweene was overwhelmed. He was shutting down, unable to think. Billy grabbed him and slapped him and said they needed to make a run for it. But McSween was in a daze. So Billy took command of the situation. He outlined their escape plan. As the sunset and darkness closed in on the town, the McSween House was an enormous bonfire.

It lit up Lincoln as flames leapt into the sky. With the women and children safely out of the house and the regulators trapped inside, Pepin's men poured gunfire into the burning structure. The regulators returned fire, but they were badly outnumbered and confined to the last room in the house that had not been destroyed. Inside the home, the regulators huddled together and devised a desperate plan to break out of the burning house. Billy, Chavez, and a few others would lead the way. Five men crept out of a back door. Their intent was to rush through a gate in the fence on the side of the house,

sprint across the street to the Tunstall store, and draw fire from Pepin's men. Their distraction would allow the others to sneak out, hurry down to the Benito River behind the house and follow it until they escape town. Billy, Chavez, Tom O'Folliard, Jim French, Henry Brown, and Harvey Morris exited McSweene's house. They were initially hidden in darkness, but as they moved closer to the gate, they were illuminated by the light of the flames. Pepin's men spotted them and fired. The regulator sprinted for the gate.

They pulled their guns and returned fire as they ran. Harvey Morris died before he reached the gate. He was killed by a single bullet. Billy and the others couldn't stop. They burst through the gate and fired in all directions. But instead of trying for the Tunstall store, they broke for the river. Behind them, McSween and the others removed their boots and slipped silently out of the door. They slinked along an adobe wall toward a gate in the fence behind that.

house. As they got closer, they were confronted by a group of Pepin's men. Two of McSween's men dove into a nearby chicken house. As Pepin's men moved into the backyard, one of the men in the chicken house fired at a deputy. The shot killed the deputy on the spot, and with that, everyone opened fire. Several of McSween's men were able to escape, but not the two men in the chicken house. Pepin's men blasted holes in the shack and killed them both. Alex McSween was caught in no man's land. He couldn't make it to the gate or the chicken house, and he couldn't go back into his burning home.

He was shot five times in his backyard and fell dead near the deputy. As the McSween home burned to the ground, Alex McSween's body lay in his yard, exactly where it had fallen. So did the bodies of his three supporters who had died in the escape attempt. No one touched them.

Dolan and Pepin's men celebrated. They got drunk and fired their guns into the night sky as they cheered and sang about their great victory. Colonel Nathan Dudley and his soldiers stayed in their camp. They made no move to stop the fighting, no move to stop the fire, and no move to stop the celebration. The regulators fled into the hills outside Lincoln.

The core group was still intact. Billy, Chavez, Doc Scurlock, Charlie Bodry, Dirty Steve Stevens, John Middleton, Henry Brown, Jim French, Tom O'Folliard, George and Frank Coe, and several others. They were 19 men, and although they had suffered devastating losses, their mission was unchanged. They wanted revenge for the murders of their friends, which now included Alex McSweene, and they elected a new captain, Billy Bonnie. After the violent conclusion of the five-day battle, Colonel Dudley made a fateful prediction. He said that a deep revenge would be sought by Pepin's men for the death of the deputy in McSween's backyard. And an even stronger need for revenge would push the regulators. He was absolutely right.

The five-day battle changed nothing. The possees of Pepin and John Kinney still wanted to kill or capture every regulator, and the regulators wanted to kill or maybe capture the members of the posseys. But first things first, the regulators needed horses. When the regulators escaped Lincoln after the gunfight at McSween's house, they were painfully low on horses. They'd been forced to leave many behind in their haste. So their first stop was at the Indian Agency on the Mescalero Apache Reservation.

The agency had a corral full of horses and mules that were perfect for stealing. but the regulators didn't know they were riding straight into a feud between Indian agents. Dr. Blazer of Blazers Mill was fighting with the two men who ran this part of the agency, the distribution house for rations. As the regulators approached the distribution house, they split into two groups. One group went toward a spring to water its horses, and the other continued toward the corral. The second group ran headlong into what? was later described as a group of wild Indians.

The two sides fired at each other, and when they did, one of the Indian agents at the distribution house jumped on his horse and rode toward the shootout. He was killed in the confusion. During the gunfight, the first group of regulators hurried to the corral and stole all the horses. In the aftermath, the death of the Indian agent was laid at the feet of Billy Bonney and four other regulators.

But it's impossible to tell who killed the man. And with the feud raging between agents, there's been speculation that the wild Indians weren't Apaches at all. They were actually white men dressed up like Apaches, which was a tactic used in the West to blame Native Americans for things they had no part in. And these marauders could have intentionally killed the agent as a part of the feud. But whether it was the Apaches who were angry about the lack of rations,

or white men dressed like Apaches, or the regulators, the murder of the agent was blamed on Billy and his friends. It was another killing in their column. But the regulators weren't worried about that right now. They had a small herd of horses, and they drove the animals east toward the Chisholm range. John Chisholm was in St. Louis, but the regulators discovered the rest of the clan

in the middle of a cattle drive. The Chisholm operation was moving its cattle herd into the Texas panhandle to get it out of the war zone around Lincoln. The regulators blended their newly stolen horses in with the Chisholm herd and rode along with the group. As they all drifted toward Texas, Billy took the opportunity to renew his friendship with John Chisholm's niece, Sally. They were relatively close in age, and Billy was a notorious ladies' man. He sent her notes and gave her little gifts, but as the party neared Fort Sumner, they parted ways.

At Fort Sumner, the regulators were out of Lincoln County and out of the reach of Sheriff Pepin's posse. After the non-stop riding and fighting of the first seven months of the year, they felt like they could finally relax. At Sumner, the regulators hosted a party for the town, and Billy showed off his dance moves. He never failed to request his favorite song at these parties, Turkey and the Straw.

At Fort Sumner, two key members left the regulators for the time being. Doc Scurlock and Charlie Bodry took jobs at Pete Maxwell's ranch. They had families back in Lincoln and they needed to make steady money. As they dropped out for a while, the rest of the gang continued north. They partied for two days at Perto de Luna and sold their stolen horses. From there, they moved up the Pacas River to Anton Chico. And that's where their first reeled conventylus.

confrontation after the five-day battle happened, and where Billy took command of the regulators. For all intents and purposes, the Lincoln County War was done. John Tonstall was dead. Alex McSweene was dead. Sheriff Brady was dead. And Jimmy Dolan was bankrupt. That left just one thing to keep both sides going. Revenge. At Anton Chico, the regulators would see who was in and who was out. Sometime after the regulators arrived in town, they learned that the county sheriff and a small posse were at a saloon asking about them. The sheriff called them the Lincoln County War Party. Billy took the lead. He and the rest of the crew walked down to the saloon to confront the sheriff.

The sheriff and his posse were armed to the teeth, and so were the regulators. The regulators walked in, and according to the story, Billy strode up to the sheriff. He announced that they were the Lincoln County War Party. What did the sheriff want to do about it? Suddenly, the sheriff didn't want to do anything about it. He backed down from the challenge. He quickly remembered he had no warrants for their arrest. Billy gave the sheriff two final instructions.

Come up to the bar and have a drink with us, and then leave town. The sheriff and his posse did both. Billy and the gang stayed around town for several days, having parties each night, and then came the event that Frank Coe called the War Pow Wow. That night, in the hills outside town, the regulators lit a bonfire and talked about the future. Lincoln County was now firmly in the grasp of men who supported the Santa Fe Ring. The men the regulators had fought for were dead. For cousins Frank and George Coe, their time.

in New Mexico was done. There was nothing left to fight for. They told the gang they were going to Colorado. Billy replied that it wasn't over for him. He was going to get revenge for the murders of Tunstall and McSweene, and he was going to stay in the area and make his living stealing horses and cattle. The coes were done with that kind of life. They bid their goodbyes and headed north to Colorado.

The rest of the gang stayed with Billy and spent the next two months, stealing horses in the border country between New Mexico and the Texas Panhandle. They found a market for the horses in the growing town of Tascosa along the Canadian River. The regulators became fixtures in the small community. They sold and traded animals and drank and gambled and participated in horse races and shooting matches, which were always favorite pastimes in towns in the West. In one notable shooting match, the kid went up against Bat Masterson,

the former lawman from Dodge City, Kansas. But they both lost to a fellow named Temple Houston, the son of General Sam Houston, the first president of the Republic of Texas. Late in October 1878, the regulators reached another crossroads. Before the gang assembled for another meeting, Billy gave a horse to a young man named Henry Hoyt.

Hoyt was a doctor who drifted west in search of adventure, like so many young men after the Civil War. He and Billy had become friends, and Billy gave him the best animal in the herd that was controlled by the regulators. Many years later, Hoyt learned that the horse had belonged to Sheriff Brady. Brady had ridden it into Lincoln the day he had been killed by Billy Bonnie. After Billy presented Hoyt with the gift, the regulators had their final parting of ways. John Middleton, Henry Brown, and Fred Waite did not want to go back to November. Mexico. They wanted to keep riding east. Billy and his best friend, Tom O'Folliard, were determined to go

back to Lincoln to avenge the murders of John Tunstall and Alex McSweene. Or probably more accurately, Billy was determined. Tom went wherever Billy wanted to go. With that, John, Henry and Fred said goodbye. Three of the original regulators rode east, and the posse was broken for good. John Tunstall had been killed in a valley outside Lincoln. Alex McSween had been killed in his own backyard. Dick Brewer had been killed at Blazers Mill. Frank McNabb had been killed at a ranch near the Hondo River. Doc Scurlock and Charlie Bodry were working at Pete Maxwell's ranch.

Frank and George Coe had gone to Colorado. And now, John, Henry, and Fred were riding east across Texas. Billy and Tom turned their horses to the west and never saw many of their friends again. Next time on Infamous America, Billy and the former regulators who are still in the Mexico reach a tentative peace agreement with Jimmy Dolan's men. A new governor arrives and gives Billy hope of amnesty for his crimes. But a murder shatters the peace and the potential for a pardon.

Billy is back on the run, wanted for multiple murders, and powerful forces begin to align against him. That's next week on Season 3, Billy the Kid. Research assistance for this season was provided by Aaron Aylesworth. Original music by Rob Valier. Editing and sound design by Dave Harrison. I'm your writer and host, Chris Wimmer. If you enjoyed the show,

please leave us a rating and a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you're listening. Please visit our website, blackbarrelmedia.com, for more details, and join us on social media. We're Black Barrel Media on Facebook and Instagram and B-Barrell Media on Twitter. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next week.