Another Accounting of the Infamous Jim Gililland

As told by his great niece Viola Smith-Hobbs

22 September 2002

[Editor's Note: James Robert Gililland was born 22 March 1874 in Brown, Texas, the son of William Franklin Gililland and Rosetta Rosella Moore. He died 8 August 1946.]

Uncle Jim was a hired gun for Oliver Lee. He and Oliver Lee were accused of killing Colonel Albert J. Fountain and his son, Henry, at Chalk Hill, New Mexico at the point of the White Sands. The feud was over politics and a range war.

February, 1892

At Chalk Hill a seventeen year old boy, Fajardo, with an old man and two women, said he noticed three horsemen following the road a mile or so ahead of the buggy. He called the mailman's attention to them and they watched as the men turned aside from the road and kept their distance. Fountain pulled along side to talk to the mailman and Fajardo and seemed uneasy.

He asked, "those three men ahead--do you know who they are? They've been traveling in front of us for miles. I am afraid they are going to attack us."

"Then why don't you turn back and spend the night at Luna's and we can go together to Las Cruces tomorrow.?"

"No I have to be in Las Cruces tonight, I'll push along and take my chances."

The next morning the mailman kept is eyes peeled for any clue to what might have happened the day before. He noted that the Fountain buggy had turned out of the road just beyond Chalk Hill. He got out of his buggy and followed on foot for thirty or forty yards until he saw the tracks of other horses. Convinced that the worst had happened, he stumbled back to his rig and headed for home with all the speed he could muster. By six that evening he had told his story and Las Cruces was in and uproar.

A posse including Fountain's grown sons was formed and they rode to Chalk Hill. They found that a man had squatted behind a green bush commanding the mouth of the cut and had left two empty cartridges behind him. The track of a pony was plainly visible on the north side of the road, where Fountain could not have seen the rider till he emerged from the cut. Where the buggy turned off the road to the south, the lead horse behind the vehicle had shied across the tracks as if frightened. The posse deduced that the man behind the green bush had held Fountain up while the horseman rode up to take charge. Then the three mysterious riders had closed in and encircled the buggy.

The entire group moved a hundred yards off the road, where the buggy stopped again and the lead horse swung around once more. The stop here had lasted some time. The horses had stamped their feet restlessly and a number of cigarette papers were scattered about. It was here that they found the blood. The long grass and the sleet concealed it from the first searchers, but a week or ten days after the murder it was discovered. There was a patch a few inches wide where the sand was soaked to a depth of more than a foot, and blood was spattered over the area six feet across. John Meados, a good frontiersman who spent a lot of time on the case, figured that Fountain had been shot where the buggy first stopped; that the blood had collected in his overcoat; and that the stain had been made when the horses veered off the road at a run, throwing Fountain out of the right side of the buggy. There were signs that a blanket had been laid out beside the stain, and that something heavy had been placed on it. The Posse followed the traces of the buggy, over rough ground and through high grass nearly straight east. Miles later they found the buggy abandoned on the edge of the red sand dunes twelve miles or so from Chalk Hill. Henry's little hat was still in the telescope suitcase. The colonel's tie was hanging on a wheel spoke, and the note given to the Colonel at Lincoln which said, "If you drop this we will be your friends. If you go on with it you will never reach home alive."

The posse tracked where three men had made camp 5 miles further than the wagon. They continued eastward toward the Jarillas, a rugged mass of granite and limestone which rises some three hundred feet above the valley floor halfway between the Organs and the Sacramentos. Nine or ten miles long and four or five miles wide, this lonesome range of hills is broken into several sections, with passes between. Oliver Lee's country lay just beyond. A few miles eastward was sone of his ranches called Wildy Well and twelve miles farther to the north east, lay his Dog Canyon headquarters. Just before it reached the hills, the trail divided. One horseman turned off and went through the second pass toward the Wildy Well. The other two riders, with one of Fountain's horses, took the first or northernmost pass and appeared to be heading the for the mountain, possibly for Dog Canyon. The posse had no water and almost froze before they got to the Cox ranch on the side of the Oregon Mountain.

July, 1982

Gililland, Lee and W.W. Cox were branding calves when two of Sheriff Pat Garrett's deputies, Clint Llewellyn and Jose' Espalin, showed up. Espalin was not too serious about his obligations as a deputy apparently, however, when he made occasion to speak to Lee as he open the gate to ride away that afternoon "Cuidado!" he said under his breath. "Watch out!"

Thus having declared himself secretly in sympathy with the man he was supposed to be after, he rode over to Garrett's ranch a few miles north of the San Augustin Pass and reported that Lee and Gililland were headed for the Wildy Well. By this act he made himself the Benedict Arnold of southern New Mexico and the cattle people never did forgive him.

Garrett and his men saddled in haste and rode the 38 miles from the Garrett ranch to Wildy Well. Garrett, Clint Llewelly, Esspalin, Ben Williams, and Kent Kearney arrived at daylight. The place was quiet. They dismounted some distance from the house and tied their horses to a fence. There was an adobe dwelling with a wagon shed attached at right angles; a corral, outbuildings, pump house, and a big dirt water tank.

A couple of horses were standing in the corral. Moving fast and silently, Garrett eased through the unlocked door. There were two persons in bed in the main room--cowboy Madison and his wife. Garrett was embarrassed and rejoined his men in the corral.

Young McVey, who was in the house appeared in the door, ran around the house, and seemed to be trying to signal to somebody on the roof. The posse got the idea at once. The men were up there lying behind the adobe parapet. Garrett went back inside and asked Madison to go up and tell them to surrender. Madison declared that he had no idea where Lee and Gililland were.

Disgusted, Garret went out and motioned to his men to come on. They would have to get up on the roof of the lean-to wagon shed and do the job themselves. All but Williams and Llewellyn followed Pat onto the shed. Williams took shelter behind a galvanized water tank that stood a short distance away. Llewellyn was detailed to keep and eye on the Madison family.

Neither Gililland nor Lee woke up during the excitement below. Both were still sound asleep when the shooting began. Apparently Kearney jumped the gun. The ethics of the situation demanded that the men on the roof should be called on to surrender. If they refused or offered to fight, it was all right to let them have it.

Garrett seems to have ordered the sleeping men to throw up their hands, and Kearney took the words as a signal to fire, and Pat was not far behind his deputy in shooting. Oliver Lee said he awakened when a bullet tore into the roof right under his stomach. He raised his rifle and fired at Garrett, Pat ducked so fast that Lee thought he'd hit him.

Everybody in the posse but Kearney tumbled off the roof and took cover in the wagon shed. Kearney continued to stand up and fight until both Lee and Gililland hit him and he fell to the ground. Groaning, he was dragged to the wagon shed with the rest.

The fight took two minutes and the posse remembered that Lee laughed as he fought. Lee called down, "You are a hell of a lot of bastards to shoot at a man when he is asleep."

"Are any of you hurt?" Garrett called back.

"No, but you've got yourself into a hell of a close place."

"I know it. How are we going to get away from here?"

To emphasize his mastery of the situation Lee put a few bullets through the roof of the shed, one of which struck a wagon tire close to Garrett and bounced off.

"You'd better surrender," said Pat.

Lee laughed at him, "Pat, don't you think we've go the best of it?"

"Don't you think I know it?" replied Garrett.

"I wouldn't surrender to you anyway. I know you intend to kill me. You've said so, plenty of times."

Garrett assured him, "That's a lie, Oliver. You'll be perfectly safe in my hands."

"We've got you where we want you and we don't have to surrender. You pull off and give us a little time and we'll promise not to shoot any of you when you get out from shelter."

"I doubt that." said Garrett.

"When I give my word I keep it." replied Lee. They had to trust him so one by one the men came out from under the shed, looking over their shoulders at the two figures lying behind their Winchesters on the roof, and made their way as fast as they could without absolutely running to the horses they had tied to the fence outside the yard.

Two of them were comic figures. Jose' Espalin had taken off his shoes when the posse crept up to the house. Now he was retreating in his bare feet, dodging grass burrs and having a bad time of it. Williams, who had taken cover under the water tank, had come to grief when half a dozen Winchester bullets went through and deluged him with water. He was half drowned when he crept out and started for his horse. Kearney died when they got him home to LaLuz.

Oliver Lee and Jim Gililland went on the lamb and hit out in the San Andreas at Gene Rhode's Ranch. They refused to give up to Pat Garrett, but offered to surrender, which they did about a year later. The trial was held in Hillsborogh and Jim and Oliver were acquitted for lack of evidence for Killing Fountain and his son.