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'In the Days of Billy the Kid' chronicles four men who rode with the New Mexico legend
“In the Days of Billy the Kid,” a book by James B. Mills, profiles four New Mexicans who knew Billy the Kid and rode with him during the Lincoln County War.
The four are named in the subtitle — “The Lives and Times of José Chávez y Chávez, Juan Patrón, Martín Chávez and Yginio Salazar.”
As young boys, the four moved with their families to Lincoln County where, Mills writes, “years of racial, political and commercially related violence” awaited them.
Patrón was described as a young man “of intellect and enterprise.”
Salazar was a longtime vaquero (cowboy) who loved New Mexican folksongs.
Chávez was a rancher who held public offices.
Of the four, Chávez y Chávez may have been the most violent. He left Lincoln County for San Miguel County where, by day, he worked as a policeman in Las Vegas, New Mexico, and by night he was a member of Las Gorras Blancas (The White Caps), a hooded vigilante band. The book spells it Los Gorras Blancas.
The book notes that in the 1880s it carried out after-dark raids, cutting miles of barbed-wire fences, breaking fence posts and torching homes of the wealthy. Las Gorras Blancas was protesting what it considered illegal private use of what had long been communal land.
The book describes thievery and warfare in Lincoln County in the years before the start of its infamous war.
Billy the Kid is hardly mentioned in the book’s first 100 pages, but he becomes a central character in the middle section as the author looks deeper into the fighting in Lincoln County.
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Numerous passages in the book slow the reader for one particular reason: Too many chapters are filled with lists of names of people lining up for skirmishes.
Here’s one example in Chapter 8: “Yginio Salazar was waiting alongside Billy Bonney, Tom Folliard, Tom ‘Joe Bowers’ Cullens and possibly José Chávez y Chávez and Martín Chávez as evening approached in Lincoln on Feb. 18, 1879.
“When Jimmy Dolan, Jessie Evans, Billy Mathews, Edgar Walz, George van Sickle, James Redman, and disreputable Catron cowboy Bill Campbell rode in from Fort Stanton, the two parties cautiously took cover behind some adobe walls.”
Evans suggested it was impossible to negotiate with Billy the Kid, so Evans said he would kill him.
The book says the Kid shouted to Evans, “We have met for the purpose of making peace. I don’t care to open negotiations with a fight, but if you’ll come at me three at a time, I’ll whip the whole damned bunch of you!”
Billy the Kid, gunslinger and cattle thief, was now a peacemaker? Who would have thought?
The confrontation did not result in a violent clash. Just the opposite. Walz, an Evans ally, is said to have tried to calm both sides. Billy the Kid and Dolan “eventually emerged from cover and shook hands in the street. … Handshakes were made all around and everyone headed into a saloon to celebrate the suspension of hostilities. They all enjoyed a drink and even sang songs together.”
Billy the Kid was quoted as having later said that it was time to “lay aside our arms and go to work.”
Was the Lincoln County War finally over? Maybe, but a short time later in the street, a drunk Campbell killed a one-armed lawyer with a partially bandaged face.
Another possible cause for reader tedium is that multiple monikers for Billy the Kid are sprinkled throughout the book.
Besides the obvious Billy the Kid, there are also references to Billy Bonney, William Bonney, Bill Bonney, Billy (the Kid) Bonney, Billie the Keed, El Bilito, Bilito, Beely and Kid Antrim. Readers would have been better served by having these variations on a single page at the back of the book.
After the factional fighting in Lincoln County subsided, Mills writes, violence increased in San Miguel County. It became “the most anarchistic county in Nuevo México,” the author writes.
In the book’s introduction, Mills writes that after researching Chávez y Chávez, Patrón, Chávez and Salazar, he believes he has broadened the knowledge base about territorial New Mexico’s Hispanic population.
As a result, he writes, the book is also “a history of racial conflict, ambition, political rivalry, bravery, greed, vengeance, theft, friendship, romance, good fortune, tragedy and rebellion” in the days of Billy the Kid, the Santa Fe Ring, Las Gorras Blancas and La Sociedad de Bandidos de Nuevo Mexico.
The Santa Fe Ring was an influential group of lawyers, land barons and politicians throughout the New Mexico Territory.
And as the name implies, La Sociedad de Bandidos was a criminal organization “with over two dozen Hispano ruffians and shady policemen,” according to the author. Its conference room was on the first floor of the Cantina Imperial in Las Vegas, New Mexico.
Chávez y Chávez was a leading member of La Sociedad besides being a secret member of Las Gorras Blancas, Mills writes. And he served time in the territorial prison on a murder conviction.
Mills is also the author of the biography “Billy the Kid: El Bandido Simpatico.”
