To Hell on a Fast Horse Read Online Free PDF Page A

handwriting, as he was wearing his handcuffs—his guards were not about to take any chances with their condemned prisoner.
    The Kid also talked to the local newspapers, playing to both the public and Governor Wallace. Simeon Newman promised to publish Billy’s statements following the outcome of his appeal to Wallace for a pardon (or a commutation of his sentence).
    “We do not believe that the Governor should or will either pardon him or commute his sentence,” wrote Newman, “but we cannot refuse to a dying man the same fair play we should expect for ourselves.”
    When the Mesilla News asked Billy if he expected Wallace to pardon him, Billy said that, “Considering the active part Governor Wallace took on our side and the friendly relations that existed between him and me, and the promise he made me, I think he ought to pardon me. Don’t know that he will do it…. Think it hard I should be the only one to suffer the extreme penalties of the law.” Wallace had a much different take on the Kid’s plight, and he revealed as much to a Las Vegas Gazette reporter later that same month:
    “It looks as though he would hang, Governor,” the Gazette man commented to Wallace.
    “Yes, the chances seem good that the 13th of May would finish him.”
    “He appears to look to you to save his neck,” the reporter said.
    “Yes,” the governor replied, smiling, “but I can’t see how a fellow like him should expect any clemency from me.”
    The time for Billy’s departure for Lincoln—kept secret from the public—was set for Saturday, April 16, at approximately 10:00 P.M . To throw off possible rescue attempts, officials let it slip that Billy was not leaving Mesilla before the middle of the next week. Billy Wilson was not traveling with the Kid on this trip. Wilson was granted a continuance in his counterfeiting trial and would go back to Santa Fe on a change of venue. Several months later, Wilson escaped, never to be brought to trial again. No such luck for the Kid, who was uncharacteristically doubtful about his future.
    “I expect to be lynched in going to Lincoln,” he told the MesillaNews . And then, somewhat despairingly, he added, “Advise persons never to engage in killing.”
    Seven men, bristling with all manner of weapons, formed Billy’s escort for the 145 miles that stretched between Mesilla and Lincoln: Deputy Sheriff David Wood, Tom Williams, Billy Mathews, John Kinney, D. M. Reade, W. A. Lockhart, and Deputy U.S. Marshal Robert Olinger. These men were being paid $2.00 a day, plus $1.50 per day board and ten cents for each mile traveled. Billy had more than a little history with a few of his guards—they had been on opposite sides in the Lincoln County troubles—but the Kid seemed to get along with most of them all right. However, if there was any trouble, either from a rescue attempt or a lynching party, the guards had made it very clear that the first shots they fired would be directed at the Kid.
    Billy, handcuffed and shackled, rode in an ambulance (a covered spring wagon with seats that could be folded down to make a bed). A chain secured him to the ambulance’s backseat. Three guards rode horseback, one on each side of the vehicle and one at the rear. Inside the ambulance, Kinney sat beside the Kid. On the middle bench, facing Kinney was Billy Mathews. And sitting next to Mathews, staring straight into the Kid’s boyish face, was Bob Olinger, the one man with whom the Kid definitely did not get along.
    Their route took them through San Augustin Pass, across the Tularosa Basin (famed for its immense, shifting dunes of white sand), over the Sacramento Mountains, and through the Mescalero Apache reservation. On April 20, they spent the night at Blazer’s Mill, an old Regulator stomping ground and the scene of its infamous gun battle with Andrew Roberts. Early the next morning, with Joseph and Almer Blazer, a few idle mill workers, and his guards for an audience, Billy graphically recounted his