RIDING WITH 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 Gomez related that while Captain Saturnino Baca was sheriff of Lincoln County, he rode with Billy the Kid.  Baca was elected sheriff in 1875 and served for three years.  Gomez would have been 21through 24 years of age during that time.  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.  The following probably happened during the winter of 1877-78 or spring of 1878 but surely before July, 1878 when the Lincoln County War broke out. 

“I never went out with Billy but once,” Gomez related.  “Captain Baca was sheriff then and once some tough outlaws came to Lincoln and rode up and down the streets and shot our window lights in the houses and terrorized people.”

That kind of activity sounds like the Horrell Brothers but they did their dirty deeds in Lincoln in December of 1873 which was before Billy the Kid arrived, before Baca was the sheriff, and when Gomez was a teenager.

“Captain Baca told Billy the Kid to take some men and go after these men,” Francisco Gomez remembered.  “Billy took me and Florencio and Jose Chaves and Santano Maes with him.  The outlaws went to the upper Ruidoso and we followed them.  We caught up with them and shot it out with them.  One of the outlaws was killed and the other ran away.  None of us were hurt.”

Francisco Gomez was acquainted with Billy because he also worked for McSween.  Gomez stated that he quit working for McSween and returned home to live with his father a quarter mile east of Lincoln 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.