The Ballad of Buckshot Roberts
By Robert E. Howard
(Killed on the Tularosa River, New Mexico, 1878, in the Bloody Lincoln County War)
Buckshot Roberts was a Texas man;
(Blue smoke drifting from the pinyons on the hill.)
Exiled from the plains where his rugged life began
(Buzzards circling low over old Blazer Mill).
On the floor of ‘dobe, dying, he lay,
Holding thirteen men at bay.
Thirteen men of the desert’s best,
True-born sons of the stark Southwest.
Men from granite and iron hewed—
Riding the trail of the Lincoln feud.
Fighters of iron nerve and will—
But they saw John Middleton lying still
In the thick dust clotted dark and brown,
Where Roberts’ bullet cut him down;
So they crouched in cover, on belly or knee,
Warily firing from bush and tree.
Even Billy the Kid held hard his hate,
Waiting his chance as a wolf might wait,
His cold gaze fixed on the brooding Mill
Where the black muzzle gleamed on the window sill.
There on the floor Bill Roberts lay,
His life in a red stream ebbing away:
Weather beaten and snarled and scarred,
Grown old in a land where life was hard,
Soldier, ranger and pioneer,
Rawhide son of the Last Frontier.
Indian forays and border wars
Had left their mark in his many scars.
He had coursed with Death—and the pace was fast:
But he knew he had reached the end at last.
Shot through and through and nearly done—
Close he huddled his buffalo gun,
Propped the barrel on the window sill—
The firing ceased, and the land was still.
They knew he had taken his mortal wound,
And they waited like silent wolves around,
All but Dick Brewer who led the band:
His fury burned him like a brand;
Reckless he rose in his savage ire,
Stood in the open to aim and fire.
Roberts laughed in a ghastly croak,
His finger crooked, and the old gun spoke.
Blue smoke spat, and the whistling lead
Tore off the top of Brewer’s head.
Roberts laughed, and the red tide welled
Up to his lips—the echoes belled
Clear and far—then faint and far,
Like a haunting call from a twilight star.
The gnarled hands slid from the worn old gun;
A lark flashed up in the golden sun;
A mountain breeze went quivering past—
So he came to the long trail’s end at last.
Buckshot Roberts was a Texas man
(Nightwinds sighing over Ruidosa-way)—
Heart and blood and marrow of a fighting clan!
(So the Tularosa whispers in the dawning of the day.)
Howard wrote the above poem about Buckshot Roberts who was detailed in the last episode (chapter 5) of the Black Barrel Media series on Billy the Kid. Buckshot was born Andrew L. Roberts sometime in 1831. He was a Texan and served as a Texas Ranger, then later in the Civil War. After the war, he became a frontiersman and buffalo hunter. He earned his nickname after his body was filled with buckshot from a shotgun blast and he lived. He worked for James Dolan and thus, become part of the fight against the Lincoln County Regulators during the gunfight a Blazer’s Mills. He died on April 5, 1878.
Although the majority of famous gunfights that took place in the Old West have been heavily embellished, the fight at Blazer's Mills is one of the few where reliable sources have described a feat of profound ability and toughness. Despite being a Howardian iron man, Roberts died at Blazer's Mills, following a shoot-out with the Regulators, who believed that Roberts had been involved in the murder of their boss, John Tunstall. They famously included Henry McCarty (Billy the Kid), who played a part in that fight. It was, however, Regulator Charlie Bowdre who fired the fatal shot that killed Roberts, although Roberts shot dead one Regulator, Dick Brewer, at the same location, and wounded several others.
