A FIRST-HAND DESCRIPTION OF BILLY THE KID

Back in years 1937-1939, as part of the New Mexico Federal Writers’ Project, Edith Crawford, the representative in Lincoln County, collected a number of interviews of Lincoln County pioneers.  These were never published and lost until the collection was brought to the attention of the Lincoln County Historical Society.  This vignette is based on that work and taken from the actual words spoken by the subject.

Francisco Gomez was born in the Manzano Mountains on September 17, 1854 and moved with his family to the New Mexico Territory village of Las Placitas in 1863 at age 9.  Las Placitas would become the town of Lincoln.  Francisco remembers that when he was about 18 years of age, circa 1872, he went to work for the McSweens and stayed in their employ for about two years.  Following the historical timeline, this would have really been in 1876 when Gomez was 22 years of age.

Francisco Gomez related that one winter Billy the Kid boarded with the McSweens for about seven months.  Now history tells us that William Henry McCarty Antrim, later William H. Bonney, known as Billy the Kid, was born in 1859 and arrived in Lincoln around the fall of 1877.  Billy lived at the Coe ranch that winter.  Gomez related his memories in 1939 and his mind’s calendar might have been off a bit.

“He was an awfully nice fellow” Francisco Gomez recalled, “with light brown hair, blue eyes and rather big front teeth.  He always dressed very neatly.”

Gomez went on to describe Billy’s gun play.  “He used to practice target shooting a lot.  He would throw up a can and would twirl his six gun on his finger and he could hit the can six times before it hit the ground.”

Billy the Kid rode a big roan horse about ten or twelve hands high, according to Gomez.  “All that winter when this horse was out in the pasture Billy would go to the gate and whistle and the horse would come up to the gate to him.  That horse would follow Billy and mind him like a dog.  He was a very fast horse and could outrun most of the other horses around there.”

Francisco Gomez stated that he quit working for the McSweens when the Lincoln County War broke out and that was in July of 1878, two months before his 24^th birthday.  Gomez was 84 years of age when he related this story in 1938.