Bob Orlinger. Photo from author’s collection
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Hero-worshiping gunslingers of the 1880s were on both sides of the law. John Wesley Hardin was the undisputed killer of the West, but most towns had their own monarchs; Wild Bill Hickok ruled over Deadwood, Wyatt Earp controlled Tombstone, Dallas Stoudenmire tamed El Paso, Long-haired Jim Courtright dominated Fort Worth, and in California Joaquin Murietta killed anybody that looked at him crossways.
Bob Olinger’s place in New Mexico history roughly parallels Billy the Kid’s, as overblown as that statement may seem. His own mother remembered him with the following unique phraseology, "Bob was a murderer from the cradle, and if there is a hell hereafter then he is there."
The only difference between the Kid and Olinger is that Billy was an authentic badman while Olinger was a role-playing badman; the sort of imitation desperado who actually looked and acted the part of a real villain while hiding behind a badge. He killed with deliberation and premeditation, and death was a natural consequence to any man who crossed him.
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Lincoln County Courthouse where Billy the Kid was held prisoner
Photo courtesy Museum of New Mexico
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It began about 60 years after the events that inspired it took place, and it has been going on for about another 60 years since. It is “The Last Escape of Billy the Kid” and it is held yearly at Lincoln, New Mexico, where it all happened. Started in 1940 as part of the Quatro Centennial, the pageant was, and is, staffed entirely by local folks, many of whom are descended from the actual participants being portrayed. The first local man to play Billy the Kid was renowned artist Peter Hurd of San Patricio .
Back in 1881, three years after the close of the Lincoln County War and less than three months before his death, Billy the Kid made what is considered to be one of the most spectacular jailbreaks that ever took place in the Old West.
On the 28th of April, 1881, about dinnertime, the Kid managed to get hold of a pistol, and after dispatching one of his guards to the hereafter with it, grabbed a shotgun and sent the other guard on his eternal way, too. As jailbreaks go, it was unique in that after killing the two guards, Billy hung around town for something like an hour chatting with various friends and well-wishers before mounting up and heading out of Lincoln to find his own violent end.
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