A Gun Exchanged for Billy the Kid's Mare
And other historic firearms that sold at Rock Island Auction.
By: Meghan Saar 03/01/2007
“I want no man who hesitates,” Frank Stewart told his Panhandle stockmen when they had realized that they weren’t just rounding up some stolen steer near Fort Sumner—they were going after Billy the Kid and his gang.
Yet Frank Stewart and Lincoln County Sheriff Pat Garrett had a little fun along the way. While resting in Puerto de Luna, New Mexico, Garrett reported how Francisco Aragon entertained the men with his boasts that he, alone, would fight the desperadoes and turn them over to Garrett. The sheriff decided to play along with bold Aragon and, the next morning, he watched him try to recruit volunteers. Aragon was not ready by 10 a.m., nor 2 p.m., and finally declined to join in the fight. “It was with difficulty I prevented Stewart from roping and dragging him by the horn of his saddle,” reported Garrett in his book, The Authentic Life of Billy the Kid.
Eventually, the posse would make its way to Stinking Springs, where they surrounded an abandoned house and convinced the Kid, Billy Wilson, Tom Pickett and Dave Rudabaugh to surrender on December 23, 1880, by tempting their stomachs with meat roasting over a campfire (Charley Bowdre was shot and killed earlier). Stewart, Garrett and the rest of the men led the prisoners to Las Vegas. On the way, at Fort Sumner, the Kid had made a present of his favorite mare to Stewart because “he expected his business would be so confining for the next few months that he would hardly find time for horseback exercise,” Garrett reported.
The Las Vegas Gazette confirmed the gift of the mare and also reported that W. Scott Moore, the owner of the Adobe Hotel in Las Vegas, made a New Year’s present of a Colt Frontier six-shooter to Stewart. In return, Stewart gave Moore’s wife Billy the Kid’s mare, which she renamed “Kid Stewart Moore,” reported The Las Vegas Gazette on January 7, 1881. (Billy the Kid would dispute this gift, stating he actually sold his mare to his attorney, Edgar Cayplese.)
That frontier six-shooter sold for an $80,000 bid by Rock Island Auction during its December 2-4, 2006, collectible firearms auction. Other historic firearms were included in the auction that hammered in at around $8 million.
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