I found an interesting account involving Joe Grant and the Kid’s killing of Grant that I had never read before. This recollection is found in the December 26th, 1883 edition of Washington D.C.’s Evening Star. The title of the piece is “Pecossing: Life in New Mexico a Couple of Years Ago.” The narrator is never identified, but it had to have been a mail driver during that time period. It feels like a fabricated piece – but there may be some truth to the actual event described. Who knows?
Excerpted from the Evening Star, December 26th, 1883:
The worst thing that happened to me was when I was driving buckboard with the mail, from Fort Sumner up the river. One evening I had for a passenger a man named Grant – Joe Grant. He was a sort of gambler among the Mexicans at Sumner, and perhaps something of a horse-thief, although I don’t know about that.
When Joe got into the buckboard he had been having a few drinks, and he kept taking a snifter from a bottle every half hour or so. It was pretty well on to midnight, and I was about half asleep as the old mule jogged along a piece of good road, when all of a sudden Joe reached out his right arm and grabbed the lines and hollered whoa to the mule.
‘What are you doing?’ says I, and then ‘Git up!’ to the mule.
‘Stop,’ said Joe, and I knew by his voice that he meant mischief. Just then I caught sight of his pistol in his left hand, pointing under his right arm straight at my stomach. I was scared, I own. I hadn’t any pistol with me, and even if I had there wouldn’t have been a chance to use it.
‘Joe,’ says I, in a nice kind of way, ‘Joe, leave go the reins and let’s go on.’
He said ‘Stop,’ and I let the mule stop.
‘What do you want to do, Joe?’ I asked him, as sweet as you please.
‘You’ll see presently,’ says he.
‘Well,’ I said, ‘can’t you turn that gun away from my stomach? It makes a fellow feel uncomfortable where it is and you know I haven’t a shooter with me.’
At that he said, ‘Don’t you move,’ and out he jumped from the buckboard.
He fooled around, undecided like for a minute, and then says I to him, ‘Joe, if you mean business, why don’t you begin? If you don’t, get in and let’s be traveling.’
He says, ‘You’re a cool one’ – but I didn’t feel very cool, you better believe – and bless me if he didn’t get into the buckboard and let me go ahead without another word. He meant to kill me and go through the mail, that sometimes had a good deal of money in it, but he had taken about two fingers too much whisky and was a little unsteady, else that would have been my last drive. After that I always carried a six-shooter, and kept it very convenient to my hand, don’t you mind.
Well, I made up my mind that I’d have to kill Joe the first time I got a good excuse for taking the drop on him. After what passed that night he would feel uneasy about me, and some time or other would pop me to keep me from talking. But I was saved the trouble. Fort Sumner then was a terrible desperate place. There was a gin mill there, and every night when the boys were full they would be shooting around the street, so that it wasn’t safe to move out of doors after dark. One night Billy Bonney, or Billy the Kid as he was generally known – you’ve heard of him likely – walked into the saloon with two or three of his chums at his back. Joe Grant, who had come back to Sumner, was behind the bar, and just as soon as Billy stepped up, Joe threw down a Colt forty-five on him, and called out: ‘I bet the drinks I kill the first man!’
‘Done!’ said Billy, and he jerked out his double-action forty-one and held it pointing up alongside his head – so. With that Joe pulled the trigger of his pistol, but for some reason that nobody could find out the gun didn’t go off, and before Joe could recock it, although he was quick as lightning with a revolver, Billy had shot him three times – twice in the neck and once in the chin.
‘I’ve won the bet,’ was all that Billy said, as Joe doubled up, dead as a herring. Then Billy went behind the bar and helped the boys to the drinks.
Yes, sir; Billy hadn’t much sense, but he was clear grit when it came to a tight place.