D  e  s  e  r  t     E  x  p  o  s  u  r  e     June 2005

Excerpts from Bob Alexander's

Six-Guns and Single-Jacks

1874: Henry Antrim—a.k.a. "Billy the Kid"—Hatches His First Crime

After classes the lads did what unsupervised boys do. While navigating the pitfalls on the road from childhood to maturity, at least according to Louis Abraham, the footloose boys frequently hung out at the William Antrim household, eating home-baked cookies and playing. Harry Vance Whitehill, one of the students, elaborates:

"The boys used to have a lot fun keeping race horses too. They would have someone be their race horse and would bet just for fun. I was Louie Abraham's race horse. Every time before a race Louie would come around with a bottle with something (I don't know what it was) in it, and say, 'Lift up your foot.' So I would lift up my foot and Louie would put some of the stuff out of the bottle on it. Of course, there wasn't anything to it and it couldn't help me win, but I always imagined that it would make me win and I could outrun anyone."

Other youngsters, or maybe some of these same boys, were up to just a little more than childish tomfoolery. There were several cases of petty theft, and even an instance of a saloon burglary where money from the "cash till" and several "buckets of whiskey" were taken. The blame was quickly laid at the doorstep of "obnoxious kids" whom the Mining Life newspaper editorially recommended "ought to be put to work sweeping the streets by day and locked up in the new jail at night."

Catherine Antrim, sorrowfully, about this time removed herself from Silver City and traveled south some 25 miles to the Mimbres Hot Springs. The natural springs were known throughout the Southwest. The hot mineral waters were just the ticket for men or women suffering this or that physical malady, the healing and rejuvenating bubbling of the warm waters promising a healthful and refreshing cure-all. Farsightedly, two former Texas lawmen, A. Kuhne and William "Billy" Watts, earlier had "filed a homestead claim and built a bath house and hotel." Perhaps, as has been written, in her condition it was a "last-ditch" try for Catherine Antrim, her tuberculosis worsening, her strength ebbing.

On the other hand, her son Henry had plenty of energy. Supposedly, he took the lead in hatching up a crime. Henry proposed to fellow juvenile Charles Ernest Stevens burglarizing Matt Derbyshire's store. The loot to be taken was a not-insignificant display of costume jewelry. According to the plan, the boys would race to Old Mexico, dispose of the swag, and count their pile of cash on the way back to Silver City. Charley Stevens agreed, then got cold feet—and snitched. He told his daddy, Isaac J. Stevens, who in turn updated legal authorities about the wayward Antrim kid, and the boys' scheme came to an abrupt end. Most probably to avoid a stern spanking, and in a desperate try at wriggling out of punishment, Charley Stevens tearfully blurted out that Henry "had him hypnotized."

—Chapter Six, Six-Guns and Single-Jacks
by Bob Alexander

1877: John Clum Captures Geronimo

United States governmental readjustment of Apache policy demanded a relocation of Chiricahuas to the miserably hot and forlorn San Carlos Reservation in Arizona Territory. John Philip Clum, the civilian Indian agent, young and bombastic, sanctimonious and enthusiastic, courageously daring and impetuously bold, was tasked with the assignment. The ever-elusive and unmanageable Geronimo continually made his "destructive raids" into southern New Mexico Territory, Arizona Territory and Old Mexico, then slipped into shielding sanctuary near Cañada Alamosa at Ojo Caliente, commonly referred to as the Southern Apache Agency. After one such raid Geronimo haughtily returned to the agency with as many as 100 stolen horses "and was outraged that he was refused rations for the days he had been absent." Military and civilian brass had grown plumb tired of the back and forth between raiding and rationing, killing and coddling. For the New Mexico Territory phase of his assignment, John Clum's orders from the commiss
ioner of Indian affairs were reasonably precise:

"If practicable, take Indian Police and arrest renegade Indians at Southern Apache Agency; seize stolen horses in their possession, restore property to rightful owners, remove renegades to San Carlos and hold them in confinement for murder and robbery. Call on military for aid if needed."

Agent Clum ordered the chief of Indian Police at San Carlos, Clay Beauford, a Medal of Honor recipient for his past "gallant conduct during campaigns and engagements with Apaches," to take 102 of his policemen and proceed by wagon road to Silver City, a meandering trip of several hundred miles. There, Clum, who would travel cross-country with 40 Apache police, would meet Beauford. Then the whole outfit would move over to Fort Bayard for consultation with military authorities and after that polite protocol proceed to Ojo Caliente. The April 1877 trip in pleasant spring weather should have been a lark for Clum's squad, a holiday. It wasn't. Desert travel was tough business. The Apache, who were traveling by foot, had to resole their moccasins every fourth day. Resolutely, though, they relentlessly trudged through "the dust, cactus, and broiling sun." At one point they were delayed 30 hours by a blinding sandstorm, a not-uncommon happening in Grant County's southern border country. At Silver City the tw
o platoons finally joined forces, and while there John Clum bought several horses, mounting 22 of his constables After conferring with Major James Franklin Wade, who had been ordered to provide tactical support, Clum and his men struck out for Ojo Caliente and a planned rendezvous with 9th Cavalry soldiers on April 22. Traveling the higher elevations was much more pleasant than their trip's first leg. As Clum recollected:

"During April the weather is delightful in the mountainous country over which our trail led, north from Silver City, New Mexico, where Beauford and my Apache militia company met me. Flowers, endless in variety and of rare beauty; varieties constantly changing with the varying altitudes. Antelope and deer afforded entertainment for our sharpshooters, and steaks and chops for the rest of us. Vast forest areas, the flash and song of mountain brooks, the whirr of quail, the mysterious depths of rugged cañons, here and there the soothing green of mountain meadows. Each day yielded its generous tribute of good things, in compensation for the fatigue involved in our strenuous march; each evening discovered in our camp, weary, hungry, good-natured groups about campfires, toasting bits of venison set on spits, puffing cigarettes; 'telling old tales beneath a tree, with starlit skies for canopy.' And ours was a democratic assembly. There was no saluting of superior officers. We were engaged in a serious undertaking.

Just how much actual hazard might be involved in our mission, none knew, but each one was there for effective action in any emergency."

At Ojo Caliente Clum and his horseback Apache police rode in, leaving Beauford and the dismounted platoon on the Indian Agency's outskirts—tucked away and out of sight. Learning that Geronimo and his band were in camp some three miles away, Clum began springing the jaws and setting the trap. No doubt he also was informed that many, maybe most, Chihenne didn't want Geronimo at Ojo Caliente—because his omen was that of a Raven, "one who always brings trouble and lives always on death." With Geronimo nearby, prompt action was necessitated. The situation presented "both a problem and an opportunity." Surely, if not taken into custody speedily, Geronimo would either attack the hated turncoat Apache police, or bolt and run for safe haven in Old Mexico.

Secreting 80 of his Apache police in an empty commissary storehouse before sunup, and not daring to await arrival of clamoring and clanking troops, John Clum sent word for the notorious outlaw Apache to come in for a confab. Geronimo himself later remarked: "The messengers did not say what they wanted with us, but as they seemed friendly we thought they wanted a council, and rode in to meet the officers." Thinking that Agent Clum only had with him the 22 mounted policemen, Geronimo arrived at the agency office—painted for war, heavily armed and coolly defiant. Brashly Geronimo warned Clum that he wasn't going to San Carlos, and that if the cocky little Indian agent wasn't pretty damn careful he and his whole damned Apache police force wouldn't make it back either, amplifying the threat with: "Your bodies will stay here at Ojo Caliente to make feed for coyotes."

Clum touched the brim of his tattered sombrero in a prearranged signal, and at once the storehouse doors swung open. Eighty Apache police, thumbs on rifles' hammers, surrounded Geronimo and his little band. The renegades' disbelief was palatable. They had been hoodwinked. Geronimo's thumb crept slowly toward the hammer of his .45-70 Springfield carbine. Clum's hand inched toward his Colt's .45 six-shooter, another preset gesture, and Beauford and his squadron shouldered their rifles, aimed at Geronimo's heart. Clum kept his eye on the Apache's thumb; "I saw it hesitate, just before it touched the hammer of his rifle. Intuitively, I knew that Geronimo had reconsidered; that he was my prisoner; that there would be no blood shed, unless we spilled it."

Clum employed an area blacksmith to fashion leg-irons from one-inch strips of metal wagon tires, connected by heavy chains 18 inches in length. These were riveted around the ankles of Geronimo and his cadre of personal bodyguards and sub-chiefs, who, in the absence of a guardhouse, were placed in a barbed-wire corral that was "horse high and bull strong." Apache police stood proud as threatening sentinels inside the enclosure. Clay Beauford with 20 of his Apache police shepherded Geronimo's remaining followers—a hundred "thoroughly humbled" warriors—to their ranchería, forced them to collect a few belongings, gathered the herd of stolen cattle and horses, and promptly made the three-mile trip back to Ojo Caliente headquarters. Groundwork for the Apache removal to San Carlos was now well underway. Then, according to the dogged Indian agent, "victors and vanquished lay down together, wrapped in their blankets, under the stars, and called it a day."."

—Chapter Seven, Six-Guns and Single-Jacks
by Bob Alexander

1882: Wyatt Earp Sneaks into Town

The "Earp boys" and a few of their cohorts decided it was time to vacate Cochise County, in a hurry! The aftermath of the previous year's shoot-out near Tombstone's OK Corral, had not boded well for the Earps: Brother Virgil had been bushwacked and seriously injured, while brother Morgan was assassinated while playing pool by a bullet fired through a window pane. Wyatt and "Doc" Holliday and a few of their pals committed some retributive killings of their own, becoming murderers themselves. Officially they assumed the role of devious fugitives when they ran ahead of legally drawn warrants. Indeed it was "a unique spectacle; a posse of federal lawmen forced from their district," writes Larry D. Ball in The United State Marshals of New Mexico & Arizona Territories, 1846-1912. It's been perceptively written, by Paul Mitchell Marks, that ol' Wyatt's appearance on the Tombstone stage left "indefinitely open to debate whether he had been part of the problem or part of the solution." The rights and wrongs of their actions are contested mightily even today, over a century after the six-shooter hubbub. For the context of this Old West story—Silver City's part—the facts, however, generally go unchallenged. On their flight to avoid lawful prosecution for homicides committed in Arizona Territory and, while riding on the dodge, the Earp crowd smartly forwent a quick Southern Pacific Railroad train ride and a trip through pulsating Deming. Knowledge of the posting of Dan Tucker at Deming was widespread. The fleeing Earp bunch opted not to put Dan Tucker and his steady companion, a W. Richards double-barreled shotgun, to the test.

That the Earps of Tombstone had contemporary fame as halo wearing lawmen is a ludicrously imposed myth, manufactured for 20th-century audiences. As Ed Bartholowmew puts it in Wyatt Earp—The Man and the Myth, "And, irony of irony, Wyatt Earp, the most well-known shootist or gunfighter in America's past, was never in a man-on-man gunfight or duel. It is true that because of his presence (the famous shootout; the Tucson rail yard, etc.) certain dead bodies were found, but how they were killed and by whom has never been established with certainty. This is indeed a lamentable record for America's premier 'gunfighter.'" At the time, many believed the Earps were pimps, gamblers and assassins, not lily-white town tamers. In fact, the editor of the Deming Headlight referred to their actions rather explicitly: "The Earp party riddled Frank Stilwell with bullets last. [sic] Murder is the order of the day in Tombstone and Tucson."

On horseback the dubious outfit obliquely cut through Mule Creek and alighted in Silver City. They came not as feted cavaliers, but as sneaks. Perhaps they too wished not to sample Sheriff Harvey Whitehill's true grit as a Southwestern frontier lawman! Slyly using fictitious names, the fugitives stayed but one anxious night, and their presence was not duly noted till after they'd gone:

"Last Saturday evening at about 10 o'clock the Earp boys' party and Doc Holliday arrived in Silver City. They went at once to the Exchange hotel to find the stage agent to make arrangements to leave the next morning on the Deming coach. [The Deming stagecoach stopped at Fort Cummings, and from there northbound passengers could make the short hop to Nutt for a Santa Fe Railroad connection, bypassing Deming completely.] They slept in some private house up town and took breakfast next morning at the Broadway restaurant, and as they had not registered at any hotel it was not known they were in town until after their departure. The party came horseback, and put up at the Elephant corral. They were all well mounted and armed to the teeth. One of the men, when asked his name, answered John Smith, and another Bill Snooks. This excited the suspicion of Mr. White, proprietor of the corral, and the next morning when they offered to sell him their horses, he refused to buy them, fearing to get himself in trouble. They offered six of their horses for $300 but as the horses were worth much more than that, this offer was also looked upon as unfavorable to them. They finally sold the six horses to Mr. Miller, who about to start a livery stable here. This done, they spoke to Mr. White about hiring a team to take them to Fort Cummings, but he advised them to go by stage, which they decided to do. The saddles and two horses they failed to sell were left here with Charley Bagsby." (The New Southwest & Grant County Herald, April 22, 1882)

The "Earp boys" made good their getaway. They deceptively handled a trip to Colorado. Thereafter the misfits effectively schemed to avoided extradition and a facing of the music in Arizona Territory. The Blind Mistress of Justice was simply outfoxed. The Earps' and Holliday's stories have been repeated, rehashed and regurgitated, but chiefly during the 20th century. Melodramatic chronicles—in this instance—have been the glorified and often fictionalized work-product of overzealous script-writers and movie producers trafficking in mythology and money. Sadly, sometimes absent the slightest hint of historic fidelity, rubbish has overvalued reality. Silver City folks, in truth, during those Old West days paid the scampering scalawags not too much mind."

—Chapter 11, Six-Guns and Single-Jacks
by Bob Alexander

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