Vicente Otero Remembers July 14

Below is a first-person adaptation from an interview and narrative found in Bryan Howard's True Tales of the American Southwest: Pioneer Recollections of Frontier Adventure.

Howard visited with and interviewed an elderly man named Vicente Otero in 1955. Otero, over 100 years old, told Howard he was in Fort Sumner on the night of July 14, 1881, visiting his cousin, also named Vicente Otero (presumably the one that Jesus Silva said had constructed Billy's casket).

Vicente Otero the Younger

Again: I've compiled the author's narrative and Otero's dialogue into a first-person paraphrased account:

Billy was just a little fellow who didn’t look dangerous at all. They say he killed quite a few people, but he always was very nice to me.

I was working as a freighter for John Chisum at the time Billy was killed. I had a contract with Chisum to pick up ranch provisions at the railroad in Las Vegas and haul them south down the Pecos River Valley to the Chisum Ranch headquarters near Roswell. I’d make the round trips with an ox-drawn wagon.

The last time I saw Billy the Kid alive was one afternoon while visiting my cousin at Fort Sumner. His name was Vicente Otero, also. I walked into the saloon and was greeted by the Kid. Billy and I talked for a while, and had a few drinks together. I don’t remember now what it was we talked about.

I stayed at my cousin’s house that night, and in the morning I was told that Pat Garrett had killed Billy during the night at the Maxwell house. I got up and walked over to Maxwell’s house.

Pat Garrett was at the door of Pedro Maxwell’s bedroom, and he wouldn’t let me go in. The door was open, though, and I could look inside, and I saw Billy lying there dead, just inside the doorway. They had put him on Pedro’s bed, and he was lying there on his back with blood all over his chest, and his feet hanging down to the floor. Another officer on the scene started talking about getting some people together for a coroner’s jury.

I didn’t want to be on the jury, so I got my wagon in a hurry and headed on north to Las Vegas.

The common talk in Fort Sumner was that Maxwell had sent word to Garrett that the Kid was hiding out at Fort Sumner. They said Billy had sent a letter to Pedro Maxwell saying that he was going to marry his sister. Maxwell didn’t want his sister to marry Billy, so he sent word to Garrett to come and get him.[1]

[1] source from: Howard, Bryan, True Tales of the American Southwest: Pioneer Recollections of Frontier Adventure, pp. 55-63 Clear Light Publishers, Santa Fe, New Mexico, 1998.