Billy the Kid’s Texas vacation

A lot of what we know about Billy the Kid is dead wrong and that includes stories and information about the time he spent in Texas during what amounted to a working Texas vacation for Billy and his gang. Here are a few true facts, untrue facts, distortions, fictions, and outright lies about Billy the Kid in Texas, sorted out as best we can. 

He wasn’t Billy the Kid in Texas. Billy’s enduring sobriquet came after his stay in Texas. He did not name himself Billy the Kid; newspaper and magazine writers did that for him in 1880 after he assumed the alias William Bonney in 1877. His name at birth, in New York City in 1859, was Henry McCarty. Hank the Kid just doesn’t have the same ring. 

Billy the Kid helped form the Panhandle Stock Association. Billy arrived in Tascosa in the fall of 1878, fresh from the Lincoln County Wars in New Mexico, with about 125 stolen horses he intended to sell to big Panhandle ranches like the LX and XIT. The ranchers knew the horses were probably stolen but, dang it, they needed horses. By the time he left Texas he was stealing horses and cattle from those same ranchers. He continued the practice even after he moved his base of operations back to New Mexico. Fed up with the whole mess and more than ready to take matters into their own hands, the ranchers formed the Panhandle Stock Association. Pat Garrett, Billy’s (alleged) killer worked for the association.  

He once broke into a jail in San Elizario. A member of Garrett’s posse, Charles Frederick Rudolph, recounted in an 1880 manuscript how Billy rode from Las Cruces to San Elizario (just outside of El Paso) after learning that his friend, Melquiades Segura, was in jail there for murder. Billy arrived in San Elizario around 3 a.m. and knocked on the jail door to wake up the two Mexican guards. He told the guard who answered the door that he was a Texas Ranger and he had two American prisoners with him. The unsuspecting guard opened the door only to find himself staring at Billy’s .44 revolver, which woke the guards right up. Billy relieved the guards of their guns, replaced Segura with the guards, and threw away the key. Then he and Segura hightailed it to Mexico. 

Temple Houston did not best Billy and Bat Masterson in a shooting contest. In Tascosa, Billy mostly sold and traded horses but he took a little time off for horse races and target shooting contests. The fabled shooting match featuring Billy the Kid, Bat Masterson, and Sam Houston’s sharp-shooting lawyer son, Temple Houston (with Temple winning), never took place, but for many it is a story too good to verify. Billy the Kid was already dead (allegedly) and legendary lawman and gambler Bat Masterson was in Colorado when Temple Houston first strapped on his six guns and hung out his shingle in Tascosa in 1882.

Billy was as sober as a judge. One of Billy’s best friends in Tascosa was a young doctor, Henry F. Hoyt, who late in his life wrote about his rough-and-tumble pioneer days in the west. Hoyt said Billy was “expert at most Western sports with the exception of drinking.” Hoyt didn’t drink either, and so they bonded over coffee and soda pop. On his way out of Tascosa and Texas, Billy gave Hoyt a horse named Dandy Dick as a token of their friendship. Hoyt mentioned that he would be taking Dandy Dick through New Mexico and, you know, someone might think they recognized it or something, and there might be a messy misunderstanding…Billy scribbled out a bill of sale, recruited a few witnesses and sent Holt on his way. Years later, Hoyt found out New Mexico sheriff William Brady was riding Dandy Dick on the day he died of gunshot wounds in Lincoln County. 

Even women who didn’t know Billy remembered him. Tascosa belle Frenchy McCormick once said of Billy: “He was the best-natured kid and had the most pleasant smile I ever saw in a young man.” Frenchy must’ve been thinking of some other kid. She didn’t arrive in Tascosa until 1880. By then, Billy was in New Mexico, never to return to Texas. 

Or maybe he did. The record holds that Pat Garrett killed Billy the Kid near Fort Sumner, New Mexico in 1881, but some people will tell you that Pat Garrett never got it done, that Billy survived, went straight, and ended his life as Brushy Bill Roberts in Hico, Texas. Brushy Bill Roberts was the main person who said that, but enough people believed him, or at least thought it was another story too good to verify, that Hico celebrates Brushy Bill with a Billy the Kid Museum.