On April 4, 1878, a short, stocky man known as Buckshot Roberts rode up to Blazer’s Mill in the rugged country of southern New Mexico. He was there on quiet business, waiting for a payment that would let him sell his ranch and leave the territory for good. Instead, he walked into a confrontation with fourteen armed men who had ridden into the valley to arrest him. The fight that followed would end with two men dead, several others wounded, and a legacy of stubborn courage that outlived them all.
Roberts remains a shadowy figure today. Historians know him as Andrew L. Roberts, though the middle initial is all that survives of his full name. He was likely born in 1837, and some say he served in the U.
S. Army, reaching the rank of sergeant. His gravestone claims he fought for the Confederacy. The nickname Buckshot did not appear in print until 1907, long after his death, when author Emerson Hough published Story of the Outlaw.
Before that, he was known by other names, possibly Bill Williams, and his past was murky enough that even the respected historian Robert Utley called its origins unclear. Roberts rarely spoke of his own history and kept to himself. According to Hough, Roberts spent years in the Army, worked with Buffalo Bill Cody hunting meat for the railroads, and eventually became a Texas Ranger. Some stories say he was shot with buckshot during a fight with Comanches or Kiowas, and that he later killed a man in Texas, forcing him to flee when fellow Rangers tried to arrest him.
The accounts differ wildly, with one contemporary, George Coe, claiming Roberts ran into a regiment of Texas Rangers and killed several single-handedly while escaping. No official records confirm any of this, but it is certain that by the time he reached New Mexico, Roberts had only limited mobility in his right arm. He could not raise a rifle to his shoulder, so he fired from the hip. For a man in a country ruled by gunfire, that was a serious handicap.
Roberts made it work anyway. He settled on a small ranch in the Rio Hondo Valley of central New Mexico, a spot that Hough described as one of the most charming places in the world. He wanted only to be left alone. When the Lincoln County War broke out, he was known as a friend of Major Lawrence Murphy, one of the faction leaders.
But when the fighting men told him it was time to choose a side, Roberts answered that he intended to take neither. He had seen enough fighting in his time, he said, and he would fight no man’s battle for him. Yet Roberts did not stay neutral for long. He sometimes worked at a store owned by Murphy’s partner, James Dolan, and he rode with Dolan men on at least two posses.
He was present at the Tunstall ranch on February 12, 1878, and again six days later when the English rancher John Tunstall was murdered. It appears that Roberts and about half the posse stayed behind at the ranch during the killing itself, so he likely did not pull the trigger. But his name was on the warrant issued by Justice of the Peace John Wilson shortly afterward. Tunstall’s murder set off a chain reaction.
Wilson deputized Dick Brewer, a rancher, and Brewer formed a group called the Regulators. Among them was a young man named Henry McCarty, better known as William H. Bonney and later as Billy the Kid. Contrary to what many people believe, the Regulators were not all former Tunstall employees.
Billy the Kid was, but others like Doc Scurlock and Dick Brewer had ranches of their own. They saw Dolan and his men as their common enemies. On March 9, the Regulators captured Frank Baker and Buck Morton, two suspects in Tunstall’s murder. Morton, Baker, and another man named William McCloskey were all shot dead in an incident called the chase into Hondo.
That same day, Governor Samuel Axtell arrived in Lincoln, nullified Wilson’s appointment, and stripped the Regulators of their legal authority. Weeks later, the Regulators killed Sheriff William Brady in broad daylight on the main street of Lincoln. That changed everything. Even in the Wild West, men could not murder lawmen without consequences.
The Regulators now had targets on their backs. Roberts, despite his earlier talk of neutrality, joined a posse looking to bring them in. In late March, that posse had a running gunfight with Billy the Kid and Charlie Bowdre outside San Patricio. Nobody was hurt, but the bad blood between Roberts and the young outlaw was sealed.
Roberts’ neighbor on the Rio Hondo was Frank Coe, a cousin of George Coe, and a man with connections to the Regulators. Despite that, Roberts and Frank Coe got along well. Roberts sometimes spent the night at Coe’s house. Some believe Roberts was only riding with the Dolan men to earn enough money to leave the territory.
According to Utley, Roberts wanted no part of the troubles in Lincoln County and had already sold his ranch to someone in Santa Fe. He was only waiting for payment before clearing out completely. The check was supposed to arrive in the mail carrier’s pouch on the morning of April 4, which is why he came over the mountain to the South Fork and rode into Blazer’s Mill. The mill belonged to Dr.
Joseph Blazer, a dentist from Pennsylvania, who lived in a small adobe house with his family and operated a store out the back. The Indian agent Frederick Godfroy and his family lived in the larger house nearby. When Roberts arrived that morning, Blazer warned him about a group of armed men camped on the road to the west. They had killed one of the agency steers the night before.
Roberts correctly guessed they were the Regulators and made himself scarce. But he saw what he thought was a mail buggy heading toward the mill, so he turned his mule around and went back to meet it. It was a mistake. In his absence, the Regulators had arrived: fourteen men total, including Billy the Kid, leader Dick Brewer, Frank and George Coe, John Middleton, Doc Scurlock, Dirty Steve Stevens, Charlie Bowdre, Frank McNab, Henry Newton Brown, Fred Waite, John Scroggins, and two others who rode on before the fight.
That left an even dozen hardened men willing to kill. Roberts did not see their horses until it was too late. They were corralled in back. He figured he had done enough running and decided to stay and see what these men were made of.
Inside the mill, Mrs. Godfroy insisted that no firearms be carried where people were eating. Billy the Kid and the others stacked their guns on the porch or just inside the door. Only John Middleton kept his weapon, staying outside as a lookout.
It was he who spotted Roberts and warned the others. Dick Brewer still held a warrant for Roberts’ arrest, so he sent Frank Coe outside to talk. Roberts had already climbed off his mule and, following the house rules, removed his gun belt and draped it over his saddle horn. He kept a Winchester rifle in hand.
Frank Coe sat down with Roberts and begged him to surrender, talking for at least half an hour. Roberts refused. He told Coe that if it were just him, George Coe, and Dick Brewer, he would surrender without a problem. But he would not take his chances with Billy the Kid and Charlie Bowdre, not after the running gunfight a week earlier.
Brewer grew tired of waiting and sent out reinforcements. Charlie Bowdre came outside and yelled at Roberts to throw up his hands. Roberts simply said no. Bowdre reached for his pistol, and Roberts raised his rifle to his hip.
The two men fired almost simultaneously. Roberts’ shot hit Bowdre’s belt buckle, ricocheted, and shattered George Coe’s gun hand, destroying his trigger finger and thumb. Bowdre’s round hit Roberts in the belly. Frank Coe later recalled seeing dust fly from Roberts’ clothing when the bullet struck.
The rest of the Regulators spilled outside. Roberts backed into the doorway of Dr. Blazer’s office, working the lever of the Winchester with a fury. Frank Coe later said he had never seen a man handle a Winchester as fast as Roberts.
One of Roberts’ rounds caught John Middleton in the chest. Another hit Doc Scurlock’s holster and ran down his leg, burning like a hot iron. A round perforated George Coe’s shirt, and another nearly killed Billy the Kid, who had to take refuge between a wall and a wagon. That bullet only scratched his arm.
With lethal precision, Andrew Roberts had taken three Regulators out of the fight and sent the rest scrambling for cover. They had assumed he would surrender when faced with superior numbers. They had been caught off guard by what one historian called his almost suicidal bravado. Fatally wounded, outnumbered, and cut off from the pistols still hanging on his saddle, Roberts backed toward Blazer’s adobe house, still firing the Winchester.
Billy the Kid tried to time Roberts’ shots, counting in his head until he judged the rifle empty. He charged. Roberts shoved the empty rifle into Billy’s stomach, knocking the wind out of him, and sent the Kid retreating again. Roberts went searching for another weapon.
Hanging on the wall in Dr. Blazer’s office, he found a single-shot 1873 Springfield rifle chambered in . 45-70. He found a box of shells too.
He made a barricade of sorts from a mattress, loaded the Springfield, and prepared to sell his life dearly. Brewer tried to persuade one of the mill employees, David Easton, to flush Roberts out. Easton refused. Brewer appealed to Blazer and Godfroy.
They knew better than to approach a wounded man backed into a corner. So Brewer decided to handle it himself. He crept around back to the corral and took cover behind a pile of wood about a hundred yards from where Roberts was hidden. Taking careful aim, Brewer fired into Blazer’s office.
The bullet slammed into the wall behind Roberts, blowing particles of adobe onto the floor. Roberts glanced down the valley and saw smoke drifting from a pile of logs. He propped the Springfield on the mattress, sighted on the place where the smoke had been, and waited. Soon the top of Brewer’s head appeared.
Roberts squeezed the trigger. The big Springfield blasted. The bullet hit Brewer in the left eye, leaving a tiny blue mark, then blew the back of his skull into fragments. Dick Brewer was dead.
That was the end of the fight at Blazer’s Mill. Even Frank Coe later admitted that nobody else was willing to challenge Roberts afterward. Blazer, though only a dentist, fixed up the wounded as best he could and provided a wagon to carry John Middleton and George Coe about eighteen miles down the trail. There they met a surgeon from Fort Stanton who had already been summoned to tend to Roberts.
He treated the wounded Regulators and then continued on to the mill. By the time he arrived, Roberts was too far gone. He died the following day. Roberts and Brewer were buried right there at the mill.
According to some accounts, they shared a coffin. Their graves are still marked today, on what is now the Mescalero Apache Reservation, south of the Rio Hondo. As for who fired the fatal shot that hit Roberts in the belly, the accounts differ. Billy the Kid himself claimed he got off at least one shot during his charge, and some witnesses, including Dr.
Blazer’s son and grandson, insisted it was the Kid who killed Roberts. Most historians disagree, pointing to Charlie Bowdre as the man who fired the round that sealed Roberts’ fate. The exact circumstances remain unclear. Years later, Billy the Kid paid Roberts a backhanded compliment, saying, yes sir, he licked our crowd to a finish.
There is another version of the story, relayed by George Coe, in which Roberts, when ordered to throw up his hands, replied not much, Mary Ann in a sarcastic retort that may have been an insult aimed at Bowdre. And there is a claim, also from George Coe, that Roberts was not trying to leave the territory at all, but had actually been hired as a bounty hunter to track down the men who killed Sheriff Brady. Historian Robert Utley doubts this, noting that the county treasury was destitute and that there is no contemporary documentation for such a bounty. Whatever the reason for his presence at Blazer’s Mill, one fact stands: Andrew L.
Buckshot Roberts, a wounded, middle-aged rancher with a bad arm, took on a dozen armed men by himself. He killed their leader, shot three others, and put the fear of death into the rest before they finally brought him down. Nobody who was there ever forgot it.
George Coe carried the scar of that fight for the rest of his life, his trigger finger and thumb gone, visible in every photograph he ever took afterward.