LINCOLN How’d Billy get the gun?
It will be 140 years ago on Wednesday, April 28, that outlaw Billy the Kid shot jail guard J.W. Bell on a staircase in the Lincoln County Courthouse, setting in motion his escape from the gallows, and adding another layer of gloss to his legend.
Billy the Kid escaped from the old Lincoln County Courthouse, pictured here, on April 28, 1881, killing two deputies in the process.(Jim Thompson/Albuquerque Journal)
Bell stumbled down the steps and out the courthouse’s back door before dying. Only moments before, the hapless guard and his prisoner, the Kid, had entered the building through that door after a visit to the outhouse.
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Sitting out in Lincoln National Forest, near Ruidoso, not far from Santa Fe, New Mexico, is a reservoir that at first might seem to be a perfectly peaceful and placid place. It’s called Bonito Lake, and among locals it is a popular place to go for a day outdoors. Here one can see fishermen, campers, and families having picnics at the lakeshore, making it all seem like a nice little spot for a day out. Yet beneath its placid water Bonito Lake holds a dark secret that many of the visitors might not be aware of, and indeed the very area is pervaded by a grim history of disaster, murder, and hauntings that thrums below the quiet exterior.
Caprock Chronicles: The Mescalero Apaches in West Texas
Sherry Robinson
Editor’s Note: The Caprock Chronicles are edited by Jack Becker a retired librarian from Texas Tech University Library. He can be reached at jack.becker@ttu.edu. Today’s article is by Sherry Robinson, the author of “I Fought a Good Fight: A History of the Lipan Apaches.”
When the government created a reservation for Mescalero Apaches in southeastern New Mexico in 1873, near Fort Stanton, it soon drew to it Lipans and a group the Spanish called Llanero Apaches.
The Army and Apaches alike hoped for peace, but the agency and post trader were swindling the government and the Indians. Blankets failed to arrive; food was spoiled. Often there was no food at all.