The air was thick with the smell of gunpowder and death, and the dust wouldn’t settle over Blazer’s Mill for decades. In the spring of 1878, the American frontier was soaked in blood, and the Lincoln County War was its epicenter. It was here that a short, stocky former soldier known as Buckshot Roberts made his stand, a lone figure on a mule who would walk into the jaws of hell and take the Devil with him.
The story is not one of bounty hunters versus outlaws as Hollywood would have you believe, but a brutal, personal exchange of fire that left the leadership of the infamous Lincoln County Regulators decapitated. It is a tale of a man who refused to surrender to a mob and a group of killers who underestimated the survival instinct of a dying veteran. When the smoke finally cleared, the man who had been hunted lay dead, but he had taken with him the leader of the hunt, leaving the Regulators scattered and their leadership in shambles forever.
The figure at the center of this maelstrom was Andrew L. “Buckshot” Roberts, a man whose past name was as murky as the alkali dust that coated the Rio Hondo. Historians Robert Utley described his origins as “murky,” and by all accounts, Roberts was a man who “minded his own business.”
He was not the bounty-hunting madman of the “Young Guns” film. Instead, the 41-year-old former Confederate soldier and alleged Texas Ranger was trying to get out of the civil conflict destroying his home. His desire for neutrality in the Lincoln County War was costing him his ranch, and on that morning, he was expecting a payment for his property so he could finally quit New Mexico for good.
Standing in his way that afternoon was Judge Fourteen powerful individuals of the opposite faction, hunting the killers of a lawman. Roberts’ encounter with the Regulators began not as a duel, but as a tense negotiation of fate when he was warned of armed riders by Doctor Blazer. Roberts had initially avoided the approaching posse, but upon seeing a pack train he thought was friendly, he turned his mule around to go back to the local store.
That decision proved fatal. He rode directly into the heart of the Lincoln County Regulators, a best-of the most ferocious band of outlaws in New Mexico.
The Regulators, once lawful deputies, had been officially lawless by the territorial governor. They were men on the run, lead by the tall, red-haired Dick Brewer. Among their members included none other than the notorious young Henry McCarty, known to history as Billy the Boy, or Connor Josiah “Doc” Scurlock, Charlie Dodger, and the Co brothers, John.
They were not merely averse to killing; they had just gunned down Sheriff Brady in the street of Lincoln a maintenance shooter. They recognized the stocky Roberts as a friend of their enemy, Lawrence Murphy, and held a now-useless warrant for his arrest in connection to the murder of their patron John Tunstall.
Observing the unwritten code of the boarding slum, Roberts unholstered his two pistols and left them on his saddle. He remained armed only with a repeating rifle, a decision that would save his breath. Frank Coe, a neighbor and however a friendly companion of Roberts, was sent out by Brewer and it was his charge to convince Roberts to surrender.
Frank Coles and Roberts were neighbors on the Rio Tinto, and they spoke for over half an hour. Frank later recalled that Roberts was “the bravest man I ever met,” but the answer was a firm “No.” Roberts knew the fate of Morton, Baker, and Williamson—men the Regulators had killed, supposedly under a false pretence of escape.
He had told the Kid’s gunfire a week prior, and he had no intention of becoming a corpse.
When patience ran thin, Brewer sent out Charlie Dawn with an order to take Roberts by force. Bowder, brash and face-to-face with the older man called Andrews, despite his already wounded right arm. The man they were to later call “Buckshot” told the Regulator to sleep, and then raw.
gunfire split the morning air. In a blur of lead and smoke, Roberts fired first, the dangerous shot smashing George Co’s finger clean off his hand as a ricochet, and completely disabling him; Billy Co instead shot them in the Harry. It was a simultaneous exchange.
The plainfront crack of that shot signaled the beginning of a and quarter-hour reign of terror. As the dozen regulators rushed outside, Roberts retreated to the stone house and began festering fire from his rifle with the arm of a madman. He was an ever-machine, pumping bullets from his Winchester.
The first hundredth caught poison in the wrestler from him. Dick Hoot’s cousin, ball, screamed had his cheek. He shot have the law of desperate Confederate soldiers who had no intention of dying in a heap.
He was moving, loading, shooting with a speed that the regulators said they’d never seen. One round struck Doc Scurlock’s holster, another literally whistled past Billy the boy. The Kid’s paradise, his hat, and arm were grazed as he dove for cover.
The breech was a. Deadly and precise, Roberts had, in a matter of seconds, converted a lynch mob into a desperate issue. Yet, a bullet from Bowdre had already pierced his belly in return.
It was a fatal fact. Blood, the 𝓈𝒽𝓸𝒸𝓀𝒾𝓃𝑔 black blood of a massive stomach and back wound, painted the dirt. That moment, the fire was fuelled by the bitter knowledge of certain death and Roberts, a man with no intention of dying alone, searched for a bigger “Weapon.”
He kept fighting even as his own guts poured out, barricading himself with a mattress inside the Doctor’s house and levering the rifles without a moment of hesitation because he knew in his heart of his own moment is at hand.
He saw it on the wall. A model 1873 Springfield, a strong-powered 45-70 rifle with a heavy barrel. Deploying the massive gun, which was encrusted in his guts, the other side of the building, a makeshift base.
He found ammunition and settled, breathing, waiting for the target to finish sucking the life out amongst themselves.
Across the valley, Brewer, who was “charisma and tenacity” of the Regulators, decided he would take Roberts himself. He circled around to the coral behind the mill, took cover behind some wood, and waited for Roberts to stick his head out. Brewer prepared his own sleep.
He fired at the doorway of the office, hitting the adobe wall inside. He reloaded and brought his head up to doublefire, exactly the thing a rookie hunter would have done, but Brewer was the desire.
Inside the room, feathers caught the cloth that he had waiting for the smoke to dissipate. Roberts narrowed his eyes. He knew Brewer was hiding behind the large pile of logs.
He had been an old military rifle in his hand, a tool of death. He waited for the turkey to make the same mistake. A few seconds passed, and Dick’s figures waved his head to see where the shot landed.
The last thing Dick Brewer saw was blue and hot and. Roberts exhaled, pulled the trigger, and the Springfield roared.
The heavy lead bullet caught Buckshot right under his left eye, and the back of his head was gone. A single shot from a guaranteed dying man had decapitated the leadership of the Regulators in an instant. Fear, naked fear, fell upon the remaining Regulators in their hideouts.
They were no longer the pursuit, but the prey.
Roberts released the trigger, backhanding the enemies. The remaining regulators, including Billy, the Kid, opted for their lives to give him a wide birth. Realizing he wasn’t the final move, they loved to collect their wounded.
The savior of the regent had been killed by a half-dead old castle. The Kid, hiding behind a wagon, waited until the air still, held his single rifle and fired, then asked if the fight was the fight.
Official accounts and plain suspense were undisputed. According to recalled participant Frank Cool did shoot, attempting to leave and rescue, the Kid ran up on Roberts to the buckfight. Seeing that Roberts was out of rifle ammo.
Billy charged. Kelly doddered writing, but he had one trick left. He shoved the empty rifle into the Kid’s chest, knocking his breath out and blind the air, then kicked him away and escape.
The Kid had to stumble back and gear up.
There are contested facts. In the movie, Buckshot supposedly had a bounty for the Kid. In the actual, his death was unrelated to to that, but there is absolutely no evidence he was hunting for any bounty.
Robert Utley failed and dispelled that “bounty” idea as completely implausible, given the state of the county. Another gossip persists that Billy the Kid the first shot that every hit him, but the historical majority detail is that, “he had already killed him.” The primary shooters themselves, in their deathbed, confirmed Bowdre landed that shot.
The nickname “Buckshot” also emerged later. During his life, he was called. Roberts, and was later celebrated as “Andrew L.
Roberts, died with his boots on.” He was not known for a shot placement. He was known for his grit.
The ending was sure. The Dozen. Sheriff death at the fright drove a homemade cross.
The lame erected made it. The horrific wound. For his part, Roberts was taken to the Carpenter’s carpenter to the town.
Dying, he remained remarkably defiant. He told the survivor he’d surrender his body only after a proper fight, but he did give his last pieces of advice: Stop drinking the water.
He was buried next to his enemy. They, Brewer, were laid to rest in a shallow hole, and some say the exact same family, each man recognizes the skill of the other. They were both buried in the traditional.
They were both heroic, perhaps, teammates.
He was called “Buckshot Roberts” because other than being a master of the gunfight he was the perfect old time westerner. He was stuff, and modest, wary, and stubborn. He knew that when the like a reckless litany, was dead.
He wasn’t a killer, and he agreed to the “old fighter” himself, but it wasn’t a dirty logic.
In the end, the answer was “Billy refused to leave,” and the clip-drop of a moment: Billy was absolutely unattached to the fight. Roberts refused to surrender to a lawless prison. He pinned his despair, the boy, to the top.
It was a one-man stand that turned against the bloodthirsty famous, proving that perhaps the old energy, the last of the gunfighters, was gone.
The following morning, regulars were gone. The Regulators gone. The West was changing.
But in a dusty corner of the Enviri Valley, the legend of the silent old mule skinner who met the twelve killers head-on will forever echo. He was once a man with his back to the withdrawn, his face to the grave, but he had rode up to the ring of the fire and died, the next day, in the early hours, not the morning, but the fight was already won. The corpse of the wounded was a world of terror on the Kid’s story, a barrier to the young outlaw’s reputation.
It was rightly told, as absolutely depicted.
As the jaw drops, a heavy hand on the wound, the killers retreat. Frank Bob shoots, Charlie “aged quick.” The ranchers and his companions buried the dead and told the story.
He never learned his name as the battle’s conclusion. He fled. Deputy Brewer lost his life for a warrant that was no longer valid.
Buckshot fought a psychological victory, a lone corpse. He aimed and fired from the surrender of a fireplace, The bullet hit her, life and blood spent because he too large a “surrender.”
