Categories
“Counting the Cost”
It is a slow day in the small Florida town of Pumphandle, and the streets are deserted. Times are tough, everybody is in debt, and everybody is living on credit.
A tourist visiting the area drives through town, stops at the motel, and lays a $100 bill on the desk saying he wants to inspect the rooms upstairs to pick one for the night.
As soon as he walks upstairs, the motel owner grabs the bill and runs next door to pay his debt to the butcher.
The butcher takes the $100 and runs down the street to retire his debt to the pig farmer.
The pig farmer takes the $100 and heads off to pay his bill to his supplier, the Co-op.
The guy at the Co-op takes the $100 and runs to pay his debt to the local prostitute, who has also been facing hard times and has had to offer her “services” on credit.
The hooker rushes to the hotel and pays off her room bill with the hotel owner.
The hotel proprietor then places the $100 back on the counter so the traveler will not suspect anything.
At that moment the traveler comes down the stairs, states that the rooms are not satisfactory, picks up the $100 bill and leaves. No one produced anything.
No one earned anything. However the whole town is now out of debt and looks to the future with optimism.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how trickle-down economics works. Sorta…
The Lincoln County War wasn’t a war in any traditional sense. It was a vicious, drawn-out power struggle in southeastern New Mexico Territory that ran from 1878 to 1881, driven by greed, political corruption, and personal vendettas. It turned ranchers into gunmen, merchants into targets, and a teenage drifter named Henry McCarty into the legend we know as Billy the Kid.
More people have heard of Billy than have heard of the actual causes of the conflict, which is a shame. The Lincoln County War is one of the best examples of how the Old West actually worked — and how it fell apart. The firearms these men carried shaped every ambush, every last stand, and every street fight from Lincoln to Blazer’s Mills.
The House: Murphy, Dolan, and the Root Cause
To understand the Lincoln County War, you have to understand The House. Lawrence G. Murphy and James J. Dolan, both Irish immigrants, operated a general store in Lincoln known locally as “The House.” It wasn’t just a store — it was the economic and political engine of Lincoln County.
Murphy and Dolan controlled the lucrative government beef contracts that supplied Fort Stanton and the Mescalero Apache reservation. They extended credit to local ranchers at punishing terms. They had the county sheriff, William Brady, firmly in their pocket. As a result, if you wanted to do business in Lincoln County, you went through The House, or you didn’t do business at all.
Murphy was the senior partner, but by the mid-1870s his health was failing — he was drinking heavily and suffering from what was likely cancer. Dolan, younger and more aggressive, was increasingly running the operation. Their methods were simple: political patronage, economic coercion, and when necessary, violence. It was a system that worked as long as nobody challenged it.
The Challengers: Tunstall, McSween, and Chisum
The challenge came from three very different men. John Henry Tunstall was a 24-year-old Englishman from London who’d come to New Mexico Territory with his family’s money and ambitions of building a cattle empire. Alexander McSween was a Canadian-born lawyer who’d initially done legal work for The House but had broken with Murphy and Dolan over a financial dispute. Meanwhile, John Chisum was the biggest cattle rancher in the region, running tens of thousands of head across a territory the size of some eastern states.
In 1877, Tunstall opened a competing general store in Lincoln and, together with McSween, established a bank. This was a direct challenge to The House’s monopoly. Dolan and Murphy responded with legal harassment, filing lawsuits and getting court orders to seize Tunstall’s property.
Tunstall, for his part, wasn’t particularly diplomatic about the situation. He openly announced his intention to break The House’s grip on Lincoln County commerce. Poking that particular bear was going to have consequences.
The Murder That Started It All
On February 18, 1878, a posse led by William Morton — operating under a court order to seize Tunstall’s cattle and horses — caught up with Tunstall on the road to Lincoln. Tunstall was riding with several of his ranch hands, including Billy the Kid, Dick Brewer, John Middleton, and Fred Waite. As the posse approached, the ranch hands scattered into the hills. Tunstall, apparently believing he could resolve the situation peacefully, stayed on the road.
He was wrong. Members of the posse — including Morton, Jesse Evans, and Tom Hill — shot Tunstall dead. He was struck by two rifle bullets, one in the chest and one in the head. The posse then shot Tunstall’s horse and placed the dead man’s hat under the horse’s head, apparently as a gesture of contempt. A federal investigator, Frank Warner Angel, later determined that Tunstall had been murdered in cold blood.
Tunstall’s murder lit the fuse. His cowhands and supporters, including Billy the Kid, formed a vigilante group called the Regulators, with Dick Brewer as their leader. They obtained deputizations from a sympathetic justice of the peace and set out to arrest Tunstall’s killers — though “arrest” was an optimistic term for what they had in mind.
The Regulators Strike Back
On March 6, 1878, the Regulators captured William Morton and Frank Baker, two men identified as participants in Tunstall’s murder. Both prisoners were killed while allegedly “attempting to escape” on March 9. Additionally, a Regulator named William McCloskey, suspected of being a Dolan spy, was also killed during the incident.
On April 1, 1878, the Regulators ambushed Sheriff William Brady and his deputies on the main street of Lincoln, firing from behind an adobe wall next to Tunstall’s store. Brady was hit by at least a dozen rounds and died in the street. Deputy George Hindman was also mortally wounded. Billy the Kid was later charged with Brady’s murder — one of the few legal consequences anyone faced during the entire Lincoln County War.
Three days later, on April 4, the Regulators killed Andrew “Buckshot” Roberts at Blazer’s Mills in a close-range gunfight that also cost Dick Brewer his life. Roberts, despite being gut-shot in the opening volley, barricaded himself in a building and fought for hours with a Springfield rifle, killing Brewer with a shot to the head. It was one of the most remarkable last stands in frontier history — a dying man who refused to quit.
Washington Intervenes
The bloodshed in Lincoln County eventually got Washington’s attention. The British government filed a formal complaint over Tunstall’s murder — he was, after all, a British subject killed under questionable legal authority. In response, President Rutherford B. Hayes dispatched a special investigator, Frank Warner Angel, whose report documented a pattern of corruption, murder, and abuse of legal process by the Dolan-Murphy faction.
In September 1878, territorial governor Samuel Axtell was replaced by Lew Wallace — yes, the same Lew Wallace who wrote Ben-Hur. Wallace arrived with instructions to restore order. He issued an amnesty proclamation and even met secretly with Billy the Kid in March 1879, reportedly offering the Kid a pardon in exchange for testimony against Dolan’s allies in the murder of Huston Chapman, a one-armed lawyer who’d been gunned down on the streets of Lincoln.
Billy held up his end and testified before a grand jury, but the pardon never materialized. Wallace had a novel to finish and a territory to govern, and keeping promises to a teenage outlaw apparently ranked low on his list.
The Five-Day Battle of Lincoln
The Lincoln County War reached its climax in the Five-Day Battle of Lincoln, fought from July 15 to July 19, 1878. Alexander McSween returned to Lincoln with approximately 41 supporters. He positioned about ten men in his own home and distributed the rest throughout the town, including at the Ellis store. Opposing them were Dolan’s forces, reinforced by a contingent of Seven Rivers cowboys and backed by Sheriff George Peppin.
For four days, the two sides exchanged fire across the town of Lincoln. Neither side could dislodge the other. Then, on the night of July 18-19, Dolan’s men set the McSween house on fire. As the flames spread room by room, the trapped Regulators had no choice but to attempt a breakout.
McSween tried to surrender. He was shot nine times and killed. At least four other Regulators died in the escape attempt. Bob Beckwith, a Dolan supporter, was also killed in the chaos — reportedly hit by friendly fire, though accounts vary. However, Billy the Kid and several other Regulators managed to slip through the Dolan lines in the darkness and escape into the hills.
The Five-Day Battle effectively ended the organized phase of the Lincoln County War, though the violence continued to sputter for years afterward. Billy the Kid continued his career of cattle rustling and gunfighting until Pat Garrett shot him dead at Fort Sumner on July 14, 1881. Lawrence Murphy died of cancer on October 20, 1878, just months after the battle. James Dolan was eventually indicted for Tunstall’s murder but acquitted; he later acquired Tunstall’s property and died on his ranch in 1898.
The Guns of the Lincoln County War
The firearms carried during the Lincoln County War were the standard arms of the late 1870s frontier. Understanding what these men carried helps explain how the fighting unfolded — and why certain engagements played out the way they did.
Colt Single Action Army
The Colt Single Action Army — introduced in 1873 and chambered most commonly in .45 Colt — was the dominant revolver on the New Mexico frontier. By 1878, the Peacemaker (as it came to be known) was available from Colt in multiple barrel lengths, from the short-barreled “Sheriff’s Model” to the standard 7.5-inch cavalry length.
In 1878, Colt began offering the Single Action Army in .44-40 Winchester as the “Frontier Six-Shooter,” which allowed a man to carry one caliber of ammunition for both his revolver and his rifle. On a frontier where resupply was uncertain, that mattered enormously.
Winchester Model 1873
The Winchester Model 1873 was the lever-action rifle of the era. Chambered in .44-40 Winchester (and later .38-40 and .32-20), it was a fast-handling repeater that could be fed through a loading gate on the right side of the receiver. It held up to 15 rounds in its tubular magazine in the full-length rifle configuration. For more on Winchester’s history and how they dominated the frontier market, see our detailed company profile.
For men fighting at the ranges typical of Lincoln County — across a street, across a corral, from behind an adobe wall — the Winchester ’73 was an ideal weapon. It wasn’t a long-range precision arm, but in a close-quarters gunfight in a frontier town, rate of fire mattered more than ballistic performance at distance. Compare that to the broader role lever-action rifles played across the entire American West.
Colt Model 1877 “Thunderer” — Billy the Kid’s Sidearm
The Colt Model 1877 “Thunderer” deserves special mention because it was Billy the Kid’s known sidearm. The 1877 was Colt’s first double-action revolver. The “Thunderer” variant was chambered in .41 Long Colt, while the “Lightning” was in .38 Long Colt.
When Pat Garrett killed Billy the Kid at Fort Sumner in 1881, the outlaw’s pistol was examined and described as “a self-cocker, calibre .41” with “five cartridges and one shell in the chambers.” That’s a Thunderer with five live rounds and one spent case — a gun that had recently been fired, or at least loaded on an empty chamber for safety.
Springfield Model 1873 “Trapdoor”
The Springfield Model 1873 “Trapdoor“ also saw use in the Lincoln County War, particularly among participants with military connections. The single-shot .45-70 Government was the standard U.S. Army longarm of the period, and surplus or stolen examples were common on the frontier. At the fight at Blazer’s Mills, Buckshot Roberts used a Springfield rifle to devastating effect from a barricaded position.
Sharps Carbines and Frontier Logistics
Sharps carbines were also present in Lincoln County, though less common than the Winchester repeaters. The Sharps was a single-shot breechloader built for accuracy and power at longer range — a fundamentally different tool than the fast-cycling Winchester. Some participants carried Sharps .50-caliber carbines, surplus from the buffalo hunting trade and Indian Wars. For context on how Sharps rifles shaped other frontier battles, see our coverage of Billy Dixon’s legendary shot at Adobe Walls.
But the real story with firearms on the New Mexico frontier wasn’t which guns men carried — it was keeping them fed. Lincoln County in 1878 had no railroad and limited general stores. Ammunition had to be freighted in by wagon from Las Vegas, Santa Fe, or further.
A man carrying a Winchester in .44-40, a Colt in .45, and a Springfield in .45-70 needed three different cartridges, and running dry on any one of them turned an expensive weapon into a club. That logistical reality is a big part of why the .44-40 “Frontier Six-Shooter” pairing was so popular — cutting your ammunition needs from three calibers to two was a genuine tactical advantage when the nearest resupply point was a three-day ride.
Shotguns on the Frontier
Shotguns were present as well. Double-barreled shotguns loaded with buckshot were common frontier weapons, particularly useful for close-range fighting in and around buildings. During the Five-Day Battle, with men shooting from houses and stores at targets across narrow streets, a shotgun loaded with buckshot was arguably more practical than a rifle.
What It Actually Meant
The Lincoln County War wasn’t a simple tale of good guys and bad guys, though Hollywood has tried to make it one for over a century. Tunstall and McSween were challenging a corrupt monopoly, but their own methods weren’t always noble. The Regulators committed murders that were justified as law enforcement but looked a lot like revenge killings. Dolan’s faction was corrupt and violent, but they operated with the cover of legal authority for most of the conflict.
What the Lincoln County War really illustrated was the fragility of law and order in a territory where political power, economic control, and legal authority were all concentrated in the same hands. When that system was challenged, there was no neutral institution capable of resolving the dispute peacefully. The result was three years of bloodshed in a county that had maybe 2,000 residents.
That’s what happens when the law and the monopoly are the same thing. Today, Lincoln, New Mexico, still stands as a State Historic Site where you can walk the same streets and see the firing positions for yourself.
Further Reading
If the Lincoln County War grabbed your attention, these books go deeper than any article can. Robert Utley’s High Noon in Lincoln is the definitive academic history of the conflict — meticulously sourced and fair to all sides. His Billy the Kid: A Short and Violent Life is the best biography of McCarty/Bonney, cutting through a century of myth to get at the documented record.
Frederick Nolan’s The Lincoln County War: A Documentary History compiles primary sources — letters, court documents, depositions — that let you read what actually happened in the participants’ own words. His The West of Billy the Kid is a photographic companion piece with over 250 images, many published for the first time, that puts faces and places to the names in the story.
For a more narrative approach, Mark Lee Gardner’s To Hell on a Fast Horse reads like a thriller while sticking to the historical record — it’s the first dual biography of Billy the Kid and Pat Garrett, and Robert Utley himself called it “superb narrative history.” Michael Wallis’s Billy the Kid: The Endless Ride takes a revisionist angle, exploring why the Kid became one of America’s most enduring folk figures.
For broader context on the firearms and conflicts of the American frontier, our articles on Jesse James’s weapons, Annie Oakley, and Sam Bass cover other key figures of the same era and the guns they relied on.