On a freezing January 10, 1880, Jim Chisum, brother of the powerful Cattle King John Chisum, and his ranch hands had just recovered stolen cattle bearing the family’s “Jinglebob” brand, which had been badly altered. As they camped near Fort Sumner while driving the herd home, shadows emerged from the darkness: Billy the Kid and his gang rode straight into their camp firelight.
The Kid leaped off his horse and demanded to inspect the brands, cattle that may have been rustled by his own crew just days before. Tension hung thick, but instead of gunfire, Billy defused it with an invitation:
“Come to Fort Sumner for a drink.”
Whether to bury the hatchet or to set up a ruse to steal the cattle back, the group headed to Bob Johnson’s Cantina (also called Bob Hargrove’s Saloon), tucked in the northeast corner of the old quartermaster’s building.
Inside, chaos was already brewing. A belligerent drunk named Joe Grant (aka Texas Red) spotted Billy and barked an invitation to the bar. Grant ordered two drinks, one for himself and one for the Kid. As they stood there, Grant leaned back, eyed Billy coldly, and boasted:
“I bet I kill a man before you do.”
Billy shot back:
“What do you want to kill a man for?”
Grant fell silent. Some accounts say he’d threatened Billy earlier that day, either way, the words lingered like smoke in the Kid’s mind.
Billy called to his friends at the far end of the bar; Saval Gutierrez, Antonio Saavedra, Dolores Gutierrez, and Lorenzo Jaramillo:
“Come on up, boys, let’s have a drink!”
They slid closer, sharing their bottle.
That’s when Grant made his move. Sidling up to Chisum’s ranch hand Jack Finan, he slyly swapped pistols with him without his knowledge, carefully lifting Finan’s fine ivory handled revolver out and slipping his own in its place. But Billy saw it all.
The Kid approached casually:
“That’s a beauty of a gun, Joe. Mind if I take a look?”
Grant handed it over. Billy secretly spun the cylinder, expertly aligning it so the next pull would hit one of the three empty chambers, then returned it with a smile.
Moments later, Grant exploded from across the room:
“I want to kill John Chisum!”
His murderous glare locked on Jim Chisum. Billy intervened fast:
“You’ve got the wrong pig by the ear, Joe, that’s his brother!”
“That’s a lie!”
Grant roared, smashing bottles behind the bar in a drunken rage.
As the chaos unfolded, Billy’s friend, Francisco “Frank” Tafolla, a local tribesman (possibly Navajo) entered. Billy greeted him warmly:
“Line up, Frank!”
While they chatted, Grant crept up and sneered:
“I don’t mind that you line up with Mexicans, but I can’t line up with someone who lines up with Indians!”
Insulted, Frank stormed out, likely to fetch his gun. Billy stepped toward the door after him. In that instant, Grant raised the stolen ivory handled pistol, arm extended, and yelled:
“Billy!”
The Kid whipped around… click.
The hammer fell on an empty chamber.
Before Grant could cock it again, Billy drew and fired three lightning fast shots straight into Grant’s head. Joe dropped dead on the spot.
Panic erupted as patrons scrambled for the door, but Billy stopped them cold:
“Don’t leave, boys! I want you all as my witnesses to prove that I killed Joe Grant in self defense!”
The crowd gathered around the body in awe: the three bullet holes in Grant’s chin were so tightly grouped that a 50 cent piece could cover them all, the mark of a deadly accurate gunfighter.
Billy leaned over the corpse and muttered:
“I’ve been there way too often for you, Joe.”
The group marched to the home of Justice of the Peace Don Alejandro Segura. With no formal court, he still ordered Antonio Saavedra, Saval Gutierrez, and others to coffin and bury Grant.
Cleared of charges, Billy stepped outside, just as Frank Tafolla returned, gun drawn, demanding:
“Where is that son of a bitch?”
On hearing Billy had already killed Grant, Frank replied: If the Kid hadn’t, he would have.
Days later at Sunnyside Springs post office, Postmaster Milner Rudolph asked about the killing. Billy shrugged:
“It was nothing but a game of two, and I got there first!”
Some sources claim Grant was in Fort Sumner that night specifically to collect a bounty on Billy’s head, possibly offered by John Chisum
A witness who was at Hargrove’s Saloon during the killing said that less than two weeks earlier, Billy and his pals – Charlie Bowdre, Tom O’Folliard, Tom Pickett, Billy Wilson, and Dave Rudabaugh – were at the saloon, loafing around and playing cards, when unexpectedly John Chisum came wandering in out of the cold. John walked up to the bar and invited all the boys inside to have a drink, and that’s when he noticed Billy’s presence.
Chisum said,
“Oh, hello, Billy, I didn’t see you!”
Billy replied,
“I don’t think you want to see me.”
Chisum continued to coax Billy to have a drink. When John put his hand into his coat, maybe to get his money out, the Kid quickly pulled his pistol up and put it into John’s mouth, saying,
“Don’t move your hands, son of a bitch! Now bite this pistol and follow me, son of a bitch!”
As they moved around the room in a circle, the sound from John’s teeth scraping on the gun barrel could be heard in the silence of the room. Billy led John onto a pile of wood near the stove, took the gun out of Chisum’s mouth, and put it into his belly, ordering him to get on top of the woodpile. The Kid then instructed him to flap his arms like wings and cluck like a chicken. Billy turned to his compadres.
“Have you ever seen how owls fall out of the cottonwoods when you shoot them?”
Billy terrifyingly moved the trigger of his double-action pistol back and forth so that the hammer would rise and look like it was about to fall, before slowly going back down. The Kid yelled,
“Write me a check right now, or I’ll blow your head off!”
John replied,
“Billy, I swear I don’t have my checkbook, but I promise as soon as I get home, I’ll send you a check!”
Billy exploded,
“You are lying, you son of a bitch! How many times have you
told us lies? Because of you and your lies, we are here, exposed to the danger of being sent to the penitentiary for doing your bidding! You old son of a bitch! You are the cause of the death of many men who were much better than you! Many of us stood up on the front lines for you and McSween! You made promises to pay us…and what have you paid us?”
After a couple of minutes, Billy let up and then warned Chisum. “Get down. As soon as you get home, send me that money you always said you’d pay. I’ll give you ten days. If at that time you have not done it, I’ll go to your house and kill you!”
Shortly after that incident, the widow Luz Maxwell, queen of Fort Sumner, ordered Bob Johnson to close the cantina. Bob then sold the saloon to Justice of the Peace Don Alejandro Segura, who later moved the business.
Story based off of accounts given by Paco Anaya.
