Killing Perea

A story related by an old-timer in 1930. Could this really have been one of the notches on the Kid's gun?

“Billy the Kid As Remembered By Many of the Las Cruces Folks” November 6, 1930 p.3

…Mr. Jose Gonzales has a very thrilling recollection of the Kid. In the early days when the Santa Fe railroad was just getting into action Albuquerque south, the parents of Mr. Gonzalez lived at San Marcial. The elder Gonzales kept a saloon in the old Mexican part of town. The railroad created in those days, in nearly every town it passed through a new center of activities, and the older part was called, and still is in many places, the “old town.”

When Jose was quite a young lad Billy the Kid and a man named Duke and two cowboys rode into the old town of San Marcial. All day the men were in evidence, drinking some, and acting as if they might intend to shoot up the town. Thinking serious trouble might be coming the elder Gonzales and Jose remained on duty all night, keeping the saloon open and lighted. About two o’clock the following afternoon his father sent young Jose to take a nap on a couch in a room back of the saloon. The bed was directly under a window opening on Main street. When just getting into a doze the boy was aroused by angry words. Sitting up, he saw that at that moment Billy, gun in hand, passing the window going north. A number of people were in the street, and opposite Jose’s window were some women, “ladies of the evening,” as we call them now. It appeared that the quarrel was over these women or about them, and between Billy and a Mexican named, as Mr. Gonzales recalls, Perea, a brave man and honorable as such things go among gamblers.

When Billy had gone a few paces, he and Perea still exchanging angry words in Spanish, the Mexican fired the first shot. As he was opposite young Jose’s window the boy quickly slid to the floor. Almost in the instant the whole thing was over. Billy and his companions had mounted their horses and ridden away. Perea lay dead. A perfectly innocent bystander, an old man who had before lived at Picacho, near Las Cruces, named Valencia, also lay dead. From indications, it appeared he had been shot by Billy, but the bullet must have struck a hard substance and bounced.

No effort was made to capture the outlaws. Indeed the Kid was really a favorite at San Marcial. Sometime before the foregoing events he had, in a dispute in that place over cards, defended a Mexican who was accused of cheating. This gave the Kid a good record in San Marcial. But in those days guns and accuracy in marksmanship really constituted law and authority. It was easier for one daring, fearless gunman to make fugitives of the whole of a little Mexican settlement than for the whole settlement, working in unity to capture a gunman.