December 9, 2025 • 44 mins
When the sun rose over Lincoln on July 15, 1878, the town wasn’t waking up — it was bracing for war.
Billy the Kid, Doc Scurlock, Tom O’Folliard, Jim French, and nearly sixty Regulators fortified the McSween home and Tunstall store, carving rifle portholes into adobe walls as they prepared for the inevitable clash with Sheriff George Peppin, The House, and their hired guns.
Across the street, Peppin and James Dolan transformed the Wortley Hotel and Murphy-Dolan store into military strongholds. Reinforcements thundered in from the west — the Jesse Evans Gang, John Kinney’s fighters, the Seven Rivers Warriors — men who weren’t there for law, but for blood and pay.
By mid-morning, Lincoln’s single dusty street had become a war zone. Civilians hid behind adobe as volleys cracked across the valley. The Torreón fell into a mini-siege. A newborn and her mother were caught in the crossfire. And the law — the real law — never came.
Day 1 of the Lincoln Siege was defined not by high casualties but by the birth of inevitability. Justice collapsed. Lines hardened. And the Regulators’ discipline kept them alive as Peppin’s men fell wounded behind their barricades.
This episode takes you inside that first day — the fortifications, the failed warrants, the battlefield psychology, and the quiet moments between gunfire when every man wondered whether dawn would be his last.
If you think you know Lincoln… you’ve never stood inside the smoke.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
John (00:13):
Justice was supposed to bring order to the frontier, but in Lincoln County.
Justice had worn itself thin, stretchedso tight between profit and pride
that it finally tore what filled.
The gap wasn't peace, it was silence,the kind that comes before a shot.
The lawman turned merchants.
(00:33):
The merchants had turned generalsand the courts had become
another kind of battlefield.
By the summer of 1878, the only truthleft standing in Lincoln was that
everyone believed they were right,and that belief had become permission.
To kill out here.
Justice didn't wear robes or carry scales.
(00:54):
It rode on horseback, carried abadge when it suited in a rifle.
When it didn't.
Men wrote their arguments and leadand let the wind carry their verdicts.
And in that wind, the soundof reason disappeared.
The people of Lincoln lived like theywere waiting for something, a trial,
a reckoning, a change that never came.
(01:15):
They built their town on promises that.
Had already gone bankrupt and by thetime the summer heat settled in, so had
mercy, the war was coming, but not thekind that earns a headline or a hero.
It would start with barricaded doors,end with burned walls and leave behind
nothing clean enough to call justice.
(01:39):
Hey Angela, how's it going today?
Angela (01:41):
Hey Joan.
I'm good.
How are you?
I'm good.
John (01:44):
It's Friday.
Angela (01:45):
It is Friday.
John (01:47):
It's Friday before a holiday weekend.
Yeah.
That's gotta be good news,
Angela (01:53):
man.
John (01:57):
You're
Angela (01:57):
really, it wasn't very convincing, was it?
Not
John (01:59):
terribly yet all.
No.
Angela (02:01):
Yay.
John (02:02):
Very.
How
Angela (02:03):
about that?
John (02:03):
That's better.
Alright, so you ready to dive into thisnext segment of Billy the Kids Saga?
Angela (02:10):
Let's
John (02:10):
figure it out.
Alright.
The war is kicking off.
Tonight, the war is kicking off.
Okay.
I mean, like the five daybattle, the big one kicks off.
Angela (02:21):
Ah,
John (02:22):
the big one.
Okay.
So when you spend long enough studying theLincoln County War, you start to wonder if
it was ever really about land or cattle,or if it was about pride wearing a badge.
This episode isn't justanother gunfight story.
It's the first day that the lawdecided to burn down with the town.
Angela (02:44):
Five days, dozens of men in a single street that
turned into a battlefield.
Lincoln wasn't a town anymore, it wasa verdict waiting to be carried out.
Everyone inside these wa, those walls,MCWE, Billy, the regulators, the house,
they were all trapped in the same place.
Each convinced justice was on their side.
John (03:04):
And the truth is, by that summer justice was gone.
What replaced it was survival and thekind of loyalty that only shows itself
when you've got nowhere left to run.
This is where the legend ofBilly, the kids, stop being rumor
and started becoming history.
Angela (03:22):
But as always, before we start, make sure you're following dark dialogue.
Gallows and gunfights.
Wherever you listen, leave a rating,tap the thumbs up and share it
with anyone who still believesThe West was built on truth.
John would like you tothink otherwise you can.
You can join the Dark Dialogue collective,our boots on the ground network,
supporting real world investigations andhistorical preservation@darkdialogue.com.
(03:48):
If you'd like to adopt a victim, supportus on Patreon or coffee, or get behind
the scenes case files on substack.
It's all there too.
And if you've got questions, tips,or just wanna talk history or you
know, smack John around a little bit.
Email us at info@darkdialogue.com.
John (04:07):
This is Dark Dialogue, gallows and Gunfights, where we let the past
take the stand and the guilty face.
The gallows,
the Road to Lincoln's final battle began.
(04:27):
Began long before the first shots of July.
It began with two deaths in the spring,Frank McNabb and Manuel Segovia, and
with them the last breath of restraintin a county already drowning in blood.
When Frank McNabb was ambushed outsidethe Fritz Rants on April 29th, 1878,
the regulators lost more than a captain.
(04:49):
They lost their balance.
McNabb had been steady, cautious,the kind of man who held the younger
writers back from suicide by pride.
His killers, Bob Beckwith, DutchCharlie Crewing, and Manuel Segovia.
Among the Seven Rivers warriors left hisbody in the dust and his men in shock.
Ab Saunders was cut down inthat same attack, so badly
(05:12):
wounded, he'd never ride again.
Franco was taken prisoner later,escaping under circumstances that
still read more like rumor than rescue.
What mattered was how it feltanother leader gone, another
funeral without answers.
Even those loyal to McSwain whispered thatthe war had crossed into something darker,
(05:32):
a contest that no longer recognized mercy.
Two weeks later, may the 15th,the regulators found Manuel
Segovia near Seven Rivers andsettled the account their own way.
There was no warrant, nopretense of law, only bullets.
Segovia fell where he stoodshot down in the open.
(05:53):
His death was vengeance forMcNabb, pure and simple.
And with it, every illusion of legalityburned away from that moment on.
No one in Lincoln County.
Expected arrest or trial only reprisal.
Through May and June, LincolnCounty turned into a maze of fear
Regulators struck at seven Riversoutposts, burned ranches, and
(06:15):
hunted known allies of the house.
In return, Murphy Dolan's writersSeven Rivers Men, remnants of
the Jesse Evans and John Kinney.
Gangs returned.
The favoring kind families wereharassed, travelers ambushed,
and every isolated ranch becamea question mark on the horizon.
Men like Billy the Kid, doc Scurlockand Chavez Chevez hardened fast.
(06:40):
Their days measured in raids and nights.
By who did he come back?
What began as vigilante justiceblurred into organized banditry.
Every killing was branded revengefor another, and every excuse
sounded righteous in the moment.
The civilians paid the price.
Neutral ranches were stripped barelivestock stolen by both sides.
(07:03):
Some families vanished in the night,loading wagons from Marcilla or
Fort Staton, leaving only smokebehind Lincoln County's map grew
quieter, emptier deadly air.
The shooting wasn't the onlyfront in the courtrooms.
The house tightened its grip allies inSanta Fe filled juries, bought signatures
(07:23):
and turned every indictment into a weapon.
The result was predictable.
Only regulators were charged.
Only McSwain's men were fugitives.
The same courthouse that hadabsolved dolan's killers now
branded Billy the Kid, A Murderer.
Meanwhile, mc swing supporters foughtback with telegrams and petitions.
Letters went out begging for federalinquiry for the US Army to step in
(07:47):
before the county tore itself apart.
The paper trail would later summonColonel Nathan Dudley and his soldiers
to Lincoln, a promise of order thatarrived too late and in the wrong uniform.
Every attempt to restorelawful government failed.
The sheriff's badge belonged toone faction, the judges to another.
In Lincoln County, justice hadbecome just another franchise.
(08:12):
By June, the war had eaten its conscience.
Respected men were gone, replacedby boys too young to remember
what peace had looked like.
Rumors, spread of lists, namesmarked for death on both sides,
and no one wrote unarmed.
Inside the regulators,grief curdled into fatalism.
They buried Brewer, McNabb, anda score of friends in two months.
(08:36):
Doc Scurlock.
Now, captain held the remnantstogether through discipline and prayer,
but every man understood the odds.
Each sunrise might be their last.
Within Murphy Dolan's house,the fear was just as thick.
Storefronts became bunkers, windowswere boarded, ammunition stockpiled.
The once prosperous business block nowlooked like a garrison waiting on the
(08:59):
siege that everyone knew was coming.
By early July, Laken was no longer a town.
It was an armed camp, Caldwellhouse, do store and McSwain's
Adobe, all bristled with gunman.
Fresh recruitments arrived fromTexas, from the Rio Grande and from
anywhere a man could earn by killingeach side had dug in certain that the
(09:22):
next exchange would decide everything.
The spring of 1878 had stripped awayevery disguised the war once war.
No lawmen, no outlaws, only survivors.
By the early summer of 1878, thewar in Lincoln County had entered
its strangest phase, a moment whenthe law itself became the weapon.
(09:44):
The regulators who fought to enforcejustice Now Justice had sworn
out warrants for their arrest.
Inside the courthouse, sheriffGeorge Pepin held the badge,
but his oath ran to the house.
He filled his posse with sevenrivers, men, dolans, and hired
killers who treated legal authoritylike another form of firepower.
(10:05):
Behind them stood the Santa Fe ring.
Men like Thomas Catone and DistrictAttorney William Ryerson, who made
sure every indictment cut only one way.
The murder dockets told the story.
Morton Baker, BradyHinman, Chapman Roberts.
Every killing tied to the regulatorsappeared before a grand jury.
While the crimes of the DO infectiondisappeared into ink and influence
(10:29):
by summer's turn warrants namednearly every regulator alive.
Billy the Kid, doc Gerlach, FredWeight, Charlie Bowry, Tom o Failure,
and even Alexander McSweeney himself,they weren't vigilantes anymore.
They were outlaws by decree.
With prices on their heads andwarrants on their back, the regulators
(10:50):
vanished into the wild country.
The Capitans, the Rio Ruso and theMescalero divide, they slept under pines,
kept fires low and rode only by night, notlong before they had carried commissions.
Signed by Justice of the Peace JohnWilson paper that made them lawman.
Then Governor Samuel Dale tore thosepapers apart with one proclamation,
(11:14):
revoking every writ and deputation.
Yesterday's posse hadbecome today's hunted men.
They moved in.
Small bands always armed,always ready for betrayal.
Each knock on a ranch door couldbe a friend food or a firing squad.
This was the moment the regulatorsstopped chasing justice and
(11:34):
started running from it.
Even in exile, AlexanderMcSwain kept fighting on paper.
He cleared his name ofthe Emil Fritz Insurance.
Embezzlement charges a victorythat proved what everyone already
knew, that the war had begun, notin the streets, but in the ledgers.
At the same time, McSwain's alliesmanaged to secure indictments against
(11:55):
James Dolan and John Riley for cattletheft and conspiracy in Tunsell's murder.
But justice in LincolnCounty had two doors.
One for the house, which was alway,which always stayed open, and one
for its enemies, which stayed barred.
Dolan and Riley walked freethrough the town while MCs Swen
hid like a thief in the brush.
(12:16):
Legal parody existed only on paper andpaper burned easily in New Mexico Wind.
It was during this exile that a new namewrote into the story, Tom O. Failure.
He was young, loyal,and fast with a horse.
The kind of man who made a fight feelless lonely, drawn to the regulators
around the time that Segovia fell, hesoon become Billy's closest friend,
(12:40):
a brother in every way that mattered.
Oh, failure's, arrivals, steadiedthe campfires, gave the fugitive
something like family again, andforged the brotherhood that would
carry them through the coming sge.
By June's end, Lincoln Countyhad no law that anyone trusted.
The courts were corrupt.
The badges compromised.
(13:00):
The oats forgotten.
What came next wasn't justice.
It was inevitability.
When the smoke finally rose above Lincolnin July, it would mark not just the
burning of a town, but the last trialthe West ever held without a jury.
By July of 1878, Lincoln Countywas a town waiting for judgment.
The regulators lost their captains, theirlegal authority, and half their friends.
(13:24):
Every rancher had chosen a side.
Every lawman had sold his souland still justice hadn't come.
The men who had sworn OST to protectthe law were now hunted by it.
The men who murdered in daylightwere now sitting behind desks,
giving orders under seal.
It was a county split clean downthe middle half fear, half Fury,
(13:45):
and Alexander McSwain was aboutto ride back into its heart.
McSwain had spent months as a fugitive,hiding from arrest warrants written
by the very men who'd ruined him.
But the lawyer turned insurgent, stillbelieved he could fight this war with
a pen, or at least die standing inhis own house with his wife Susan,
holding the line in Lincoln and everylegal remedy exhausted Nick s Swain
(14:09):
made a fateful choice to go home.
He would return to Lincoln, notas an outlaw, but as a citizen
reclaiming his name, even if it meantwalking straight into a crossfire.
On the evening of July 14th, 1878, justafter nightfall, the procession began
a caravan of conviction and desperationmoving quietly toward the town.
(14:33):
It wasn't just the ironclad regulators.
This time it was an army.
Among the rider were Billy theKid, doc Scurlock, Charlie Bowry,
Tom O Fired, and Jim French,the hardened nucleus of a cause.
Long past saving, butthere were new phases too.
Martine Chavez, a rancher from SanPatricio and two dozen Hispanic allies
(14:57):
who had watched the house choke up everyscrap of independence in the valley.
They came for loyalty, forvengeance, for survival.
And for the faint chance thatif they stood together, Lincoln
might still belong to its people.
When they rode into town thatnight, their numbers swelled
near 60 a force the regulatorshadn't seen since the war began.
(15:19):
It was an uneven company.
Veterans and volunteers, gunslingersand ranch hands each one bound to
the others by the knowledge thatthere was nowhere left to run.
Nick Swains public statement wasthat he had come home to reclaim his
property, that everyone knew better.
It wasn't about deeds or documentsanymore, it was about defiance, and
(15:40):
it was about time across the street.
James Dolan and JohnReilly wasted no time.
They fortified Montano's store, calledfor their allies, and sent word for
Sheriff George Pepin, who arrivedwith deputies and hired gunman.
Many from the Seven Riversin the Kenney gangs.
By dawn, both sides had dug in.
(16:00):
Lincoln was now two fortresses,staring each other down
across a single dusty street.
Some townsfolk fled before the first shot.
Others stayed boarding their windows,clutching rosaries, waiting for the
ward to decide who owned their town.
By the early hours of July 15th,rifles were loaded, pickets posted,
(16:21):
and both armies were watching thehorizon for the signal to begin.
For MCs, Swen, and his men, thiswas the last stand of belief that if
they could hold the town even for aday, they could prove they'd never
been the criminal's history tried tomake them, but to Dolan's house, this
wasn't a matter of politics anymore.
(16:42):
It was property, profit and pride,and they would burn Lincoln into ash
before surrendering an inch of it.
What happened next wasn'tjustice or law or even revenge.
It was inevitability.
When the Sun rose on July 15th,1878, the five Day Battle of Lincoln
began, and with it the death of theLincoln County War's last illusion
(17:04):
that anyone was still fighting for.
What was Ray?
When Alexander McSweeney andthe regulators rode back into
Lincoln, they didn't come to hide.
They came to fortify every step, everybuilding seized was part of a plan to
dig in before the house and SheriffPepins men could choke them out.
What followed was the transformation ofa frontier village into a battlefield.
(17:28):
The regulators move fast.
Billy the Kid, doc Scurlock Tom Fowler,Jim French Chavez Chevez, and nearly
60 armed men spread through the townlike a wave of intent at the East end.
They claimed the McSwain house atwo story adobe brick whose thick
walls and the elevated windows madethe made at the perfect stronghold.
(17:48):
Farther west, the T store and itscorrals were barricaded barrels
and crates stacked chest high.
Those two buildings formed a line ofoverlapping fire close enough that riders
could dash between them undercover.
The Ella's house Brinley toMcQueen's cause was occupied.
Next together with the Montano store,these posts created a fortified
(18:11):
spine down Lincoln's single street.
A defense line of adobe and nerverifleman took the upper windows sharp
shooters, perched behind loopholes inthe rooftops from Don's first light.
The straight was watched by adozen muzzles that never blinked.
Not every man loyal to thehouse made it back to safety.
Deputies Jack Long and Billy Matthewscaught in the open with several
(18:33):
others, found themselves cut off.
They sprinted for the Torreon, the oldSpanish stone tower that stood like a
sentinel opposite the Montano store.
Its walls were three feet thick.
It slits made for rifles instead of light.
When the regulators sealed the street,the men inside were trapped long, and
Matthew shouted for hell, but anyonebold enough to answer met a rain of
(18:56):
fire from the tonsil store in the Tonnowindows for the first time that morning.
The house found itselfbesieged in its own town.
With the Torreon cutoff andMcSwain's men dug in, Lincoln became
a patchwork of rival fortresses.
The regulators controlled theEastern and central blocks.
Dolan's fighters clung to thewestern end and the courthouse
(19:18):
area between them stretched agauntlet of dust, bullets, and fear.
Every corner was a potential ambush.
Every rooftop held a rifle.
Civilians dove for cellars,clutching children as gunfires.
Skip down the street.
Throughout the day, Ali's crackback and forth testing defenses.
Each side probed for weaknesses,but neither dare they full assault,
(19:40):
both waiting for reinforcements,rumored to be on the road.
Pepins Posse, the Seven Rivers,warriors and John Kinney's hired guns.
By late morning, Lincolnwas no longer a town.
It was a map of strongholdsseparated by open ground.
The line between law and outlawblurred into smoke and grit.
(20:01):
News of McSwain's Return hitSheriff George Pepin and James
Dolan, like a sparked to powderedPeppa and a house loyalist.
Freshly installed as sheriff.
Wasted no time.
He sent writers in every direction,summoning John Kinney, Marian Turner, buck
Powell, and the infamous Jesse Evans gang.
Within hours, the numbers swelled toabout 40 armed men, not ranch ends or
(20:23):
deputies, but hardened professionals.
These were men who had livedthrough the range wars on the
killings from Tularosa to Texas.
They didn't come for justice.
They came to finish the regulators.
Pepin made his headquarters inthe Wortley Hotel and the House,
the old Murphy Dolan store.
Both buildings commanded the heartof Lincoln's main street, perfect
(20:44):
ground for sniper scouts and stateand the staging of an assault.
From there, he began, the Encirclement.
Men were posted on rooftopsand behind Adobe corners.
Others took the high groundoverlooking the town.
Every alley became a firing line.
The goal was clear trap MCs swen starvedhim and crushed the regulator stand before
(21:05):
it could spread into open rebellion.
When the reinforcements arrived, gunfirefollowed, the houseman opened fire on the
MCs Swen house in the fortified stores.
Smoke rolled down the street as riflecracks echoed between the buildings.
The siege of Lincoln had officiallybegun a handful of Pepins gunmen.
(21:26):
Went down early, hit by return fire fromthe portholes inside their adobe walls.
The regulators shoutedorders and held steady.
It was an uneven fight, 40 against60, but every man knew this battle
would not be settled by numbers,but by nerve, by nightfall.
Lincoln was sealed in smoke in silence.
No side.
(21:47):
No side yet yielded ground, but the lineswere drawn, the defenses tested and the
war that would make legends had begun.
By the time the sun set onJuly 14th, 1878, Lincoln was
no longer waiting for a fight.
He was surrounded by one.
The regulators held theeast and the center of town.
Dolan and Pepins loyalists wereamassing on the Western rise and
(22:10):
riding hard into the darkness camethe killers who had liked the fuse.
John Kitty's man out of Las Cruces.
Marion Cerner's posse, buck Powell'scow hens, and the unpredictable
deadly Jesse Evans gang.
They were seasoned fighters.
Men who traded law for pay longbefore Lincoln ever heard of justice.
(22:31):
When they arrived, they didn'thesitate before the dust of
their horses had settled.
They opened fire on the MCs Swen house.
Their first volley marked the pointof no return, a sound that turned
a political feud into open war.
The opening shots left.
The regulators split across multiplestrongholds from the Montano house.
Billy, the kids saw the trap closing in.
(22:53):
He knew if McSwain's home fell.
The war ended there with them buriedinside it, so he ran with Tom f Jim
French, and several others at his side.
Billy Sprinted across open groundas bullets hissed through the dark.
A slug course splinters from ahitching post another smashed through
a shutter inches from his head.
But somehow miraculously, theyreached the McSwain house alive,
(23:17):
slamming the heavy door behindthem as the next volley struck.
The wall like hail.
The dash, no.
Lincolns Night Cement cementedthe bow lines pepins men
tightening the ring from the west.
The regulators barricaded in theeast, and between them, the town's
single street, a strip of dustthat would soon become a graveyard.
(23:38):
All through the darkness,the exchange never stopped.
Rifles cracked from doorways,pistols flaring from rooftops, and
the smell of black powder driftedlike a storm across the valley.
Both sides fortified by lantern light.
Dolan's gunman dug in behindwagons and adobe walls.
Inside McSwain's Home defenderstore up floorboards for firing ports
(24:01):
and braced the doors with barrels.
Every man knew the morningwould bring the real fight.
A siege that would only end one way.
D. Monday, July 15th, 1878,the Don came to Lincoln under
the shadow of loaded rifles.
The exchange of fire the night beforehad ended any illusion of restraint.
(24:22):
Now both sides face the new day with Grim.
Resolve the first full light of the siege.
Inside the McSwain house,men moved with quiet urgency.
Every piece of furniture became a barrier.
Mattresses feed sacks and crates werepiled waist high against the windows.
Anything that could slow a bullet founda place in the walls across the street.
(24:46):
The Tunstall store in the smaller AlliedAdobes were fortified the same way.
Ranch hands and gunmen turnedliving rooms into parapets and
kitchens into firing lines.
What had been a merchant's villageonly days before was now a barricaded
grid of dust, sweat, and gun oil.
Many of the regulators, men raised inthe saddle and familiar with adobe, took
(25:10):
to the walls with tools in hand, axes,shovels, even butcher knives, carved
narrow portholes through the clay.
Each slit offered a new angle downthe street, a safe place to rest,
a rifle, a window without exposure.
By mid-morning McSwain home and itsneighbors had became a, had become
a chain of miniature forts, eachlinked by sightline and purpose
(25:35):
from rooftops, doc Scurlock.
Billy the Kid, and Jim French surveyedthe street below the house, gunman,
pepins deputies, and hired mercenariesanswered from the Wortley Hotel,
the house store, and e, and everydarkened doorway they could claim.
With each shot, Adobe dustdrifted through the sunbeams,
(25:55):
like smoke from a dying fire.
Even amid the thunder ofrifles, Alexander McSwain still
tried to wage a legal battle.
Inside his barricaded home, clerksand loyalists scribbled out affidavits
petitions to the territorial courtsand to the army at Fort Staton,
pleading for intervention, forrecognition for anything resembling law.
(26:17):
It was a desperate act of faith in hissystem already weaponized against them.
Outside.
The only petitions being filed camefrom Winchester barrels by late
morning snip sniper fire swept LincolnSingle street men couldn't show a hat
brim without drawing a dozen shots.
One regulator fell out a window.
Another was grazed crossingfrom house to house.
(26:41):
Each impact was met with answeringfire from behind the sandbags.
Steady, disciplined, fatal.
As the sun reached its zenith, theday's gram choreography settled in.
The regulators vastly outnumbered,but anchored in the east end of town
refused every shouted offer to surrender.
(27:01):
They would hold their ground,whatever the cost across the way.
Pepins man, reinforced by Dolan'shired guns and seven rivers
fighters tightened their perimeter.
They had numbers, rifles, andtime, and they intended to bleed
the defenders into silence.
By Midday Lincoln's Main Street wasno longer a place, but a condition,
(27:22):
a strip of no man's land where theliving whispered beside the dead.
Civilians huddled in cellars, horsesbolted through crossfire, and in the
thick heat of July, the first day of thesiege settled into its rhythm, a war of
patience, bullets, and sheer endurance.
By the second morning of gunfireand Lincoln Alexander McSwain was
(27:43):
fighting on more than one front.
The bullets outside his wallswere only half the battle.
The rest came in the form of paper pinand principle, because in the chaos
of that siege, even the line betweenneighbor and enemy could shift overnight.
Across the street from the MCs SwenHouse, the Stonewall Poon still sheltered.
A handful of Golans men cutoff trapped, but not starving.
(28:06):
Somehow food, water, and messageswere slipping through the lines.
MCs Swen soon discovered the reason.
Santino Baca, a respected his landowner,whose home stood only a few doors away,
had become an unwitting supply line.
Bread, water, and whispersmoved through his doorway.
It wasn't open treason, it was survival.
(28:29):
But in the fever of that week, survivalfor one segment, death for the other.
McSwain's patients snapped.
He sat at his desk amid the stackedsand base and the muffled boom of rifles
and wrote a letter to Santino Baca.
It was not polite nor legalistic.
It was personal quote.
You have allowed your house tobecome a refuge for murders for
(28:53):
the purpose of taking my life.
You will vacate your property withinthree days, or I will consider
it a legitimate target end quote.
In that moment, MC Swen, lawyer,churchman, and husband, became a
commander issuing a military threat.
The siege had forced him to abandonthe courtroom for the code of war.
(29:14):
Inside the Bacca home, thereality was crueler than MCs.
Swen knew Mrs. Bcca had givenbirth just the day before.
The house smelled ofgunpowder and new life.
The midwife hadn't yet left whenthe next volley rattled the windows.
Leaving was not an option.
Staying meant livingbetween two firing lines.
(29:34):
Santino Bacca faced the impossible,defy the regulators and risk
annihilation or aid the house and bebranded a traitor to his own people.
Either way, someone's bulletalready had his name on it.
With his wife and newborns stillinside Baca dictated a desperate
letter to Colonel Nathan Dudley,commander at Fort Staton.
(29:57):
He begged for soldiers to intervene tosave his family, or at least bear witness
before his house became a battlefield.
But dudley's hands were tied.
The freshly passed Posse KatataAct forbade federal troops from
interfering in civil disputes.
There's a word, the Posse Katata Act.
Oh shit.
You don't know that one?
No.
(30:18):
Yeah, that's the one that's allover the news right now with the
National Guard being used in cities.
Everybody's saying that it'sviolating the Posse Kamata Act.
Angela (30:27):
I think you're just throwing darts at letters in the alphabet and
John (30:32):
Yeah.
Well, maybe so.
All Dudley could do.
That's fine.
All Dudley could do was sendLieutenant Daniel Appel to observe.
No relief, no escort, just observation.
The law meant to restrain.
Federal overreach had nowabandoned a woman in childbirth
to the mercy of Warren Gunman.
(30:53):
The Baca confrontation capturedeverything the five day battle had become.
There were no longer civilians,only victims waiting to be
claimed by one banner or another.
Property, ethnicity, allegianceall twisted together In a town
that no longer recognized the wordneutral, what began is a letter
became a microcosm of the war itself.
(31:15):
Law turned threat, neighborturned enemy, and mercy lost
beneath the roar of gunfire.
As the standoff deepened and threatsspread from house to house, Sangen Baca
made one final attempt to save his familyfrom the storm closing around them.
His letter to Colonel NathanDudley at Fort Stanton begged
for protection at Fort Stanton.
(31:37):
Colonel Dudley faced an impossible choice.
The new Posse comment act barred soldiersfrom stepping into civilian disputes.
Angela (31:46):
I'm sorry,
John (31:48):
I can't believe you have never heard.
No.
Angela (31:51):
I don't know why it's so funny, but
John (31:54):
damn not the word.
To march our men into Lincoln withoutfederal orders would risk his command
and ignite a political scandal thatwould outlast the war itself, but doing
nothing meant letting civilians diewithin writing distance of his post.
So deadly chose thenarrowest path available.
He sent Lieutenant Daniel lapel his postsurgeon to investigate A pal carried
(32:19):
no troops, no orders, and no weapons.
Only the authority of his uniform and thefaint hope that reason might still hold.
When a pale reached Lincoln, the airitself seemed alive with tension.
Then on both sides, itdug in behind Adobe walls.
Mc Sween house bristledwith rifle portholes.
The Matano store was alive withdefenders and across the street.
(32:43):
Dolan's men crouched inside the toon,firing bursts and shouting defiance.
A pale moved carefully between the lines.
A single unarmed man in theno man's land of Main Street.
He met with Santino Bacca, who describedhis family's peril, the weak mother,
the newborn, the straight bulletsthat struck the walls each hour.
(33:04):
From there, AEL went toMcSwain, who stood firm.
He would not leave again and he would nottolerate any house that aided his enemies.
Finally, AEL reached the toon speakingthrough its narrow slits to Jack Long
Billy Matthews and the others inside.
They told him they'd surrenderonly if US troops occupied
(33:26):
the tower and made it neutral.
Ground three sides, three truths,and not a single law that could,
that could reconcile them.
A pale brokered, a fragile understanding.
The Baca home and the Torreon would remainuntouched as soldiers could claim them as
neutral ground, and both fractions wouldhold fire while civilians remained inside.
(33:48):
McSwain agreed.
In principle, Dolan's men agreed indesperation, but the army could not
act and neutrality meant little to menwho'd already buried too many friends.
Pal rode back to FortStaten with his report.
His mission technically complete,his purpose entirely unfulfilled.
Behind him, Lincoln's gunfire,resumed, measured, and relentless.
(34:11):
As Sheriff Pepins reinforcementsbegan to filter in from the
west, the toon still held.
The Baca family still hid behindAdobe walls and the law once again
had arrived too late to matter.
When word rate Sheriff Pepin, theMcSwain and the regulators had
seized half of Lincoln's main Street.
The time for cautious law keepingwas over by the morning of July 15th.
(34:36):
Pepin wasn't a peace officer anymore.
He was a field commander in awar for his, for the town itself.
He.
Pepin moved fast.
He planted his flag inside the twobuildings that had anchored the house.
Since the feud began.
The Wortley Hotel and the Murphy Dolanstore known simply as the house they
set like Twin Bastions in the center ofLincoln, commanding both the crossroads
(34:58):
and the narrow artery of Main Street.
As the sun dropped behind the SacramentoMountains Lincoln Sied in the dying
Light, its main street line withbullet popped walls and the accurate
haze of spent gunpowder, the five daybattle had settled into its rhythm.
Bursts of fire shouts across thedust and the long taunt silences that
(35:20):
came when neither side dares to move.
First with the standoff dragging intothe late afternoon, sheriff George
Pepin decided to remind the worldthat his badge still meant something.
He called out Deputy Jack Long.
Handed him a stack of arrest warrantsand ordered him to march down the street
and serve them to arrest AlexanderMCs, Swen, Billy Bonney and Jim French,
(35:42):
right there in the middle of the siege.
It wasn't a mission ofjustice, it was theater.
An act meant to convince the watchingtowns, folk, and any soldiers at Fort
Staton that the law still lived inLincoln Long stepped into the open,
the warrants fluttering in one handand shouted towards the mc Sween house.
Come out by order of the lawfor one suspended heartbeat.
(36:06):
The town was silent then the regulatorsanswered gunfire, ripped through the
adobe and sent long diving for cover.
He hit the ground scrambled to hisfeet, and ran full tilt back to the
house alive only because the defendershad chosen to warn and not kill him.
The warrants he carried were stillintact, but so was the proof that no
(36:27):
one in Lincoln cared to honor them.
For the next several hours, the twosides traded fire at long range shots
cracked across main street and steadyrhythm, single rounds, answering
volleys, then silence by nightfall.
The count stood at close to ahundred shots, fired a testament.
Not to courage, but to stubborn endurance.
(36:48):
Miraculously, no men had fallen.
Only the horse in the Wortley corral.
Struck earlier when the first fightbroke loose smoke drifted over the
rooftops as lanterns winked out.
One by one, the regulators stayedtight in their barricaded homes,
listening for footsteps in the dark.
Across the way, Pepins men reloaded bycandlelight posting guards at every door.
(37:12):
Each side waited for theother to break the silence.
The first move to make the mistakethat would draw the next blood.
By the time the stars took tothe sky, Lincoln was quiet again.
No surrender, no victory.
Just two armies glaring at eachother through the darkness.
The town between them caught in thecrossfire of pride and vengeance.
(37:35):
The first day of the siege wasover, and though no bodies yet laid
cooling in the street, the smellof death was already in the air.
When the guns fell silent on thefirst night in Lincoln, the streets
lay empty, quiet, but alive withthe weight of what had begun.
For all the thunder that had rolledthrough the town that day, the
(37:56):
constant blood was strangely small.
No regulators did.
No bodies cooled in the dust.
Only the wounded moans of pepins menscattered and bandaged behind the
walls of the house broke the silence.
The regulators tucked behindsandbags and Adobe had fought
with precision in patience.
Their portholes had turnedcrude houses and fortresses.
(38:19):
They'd fired carefully, not wildly.
Each shot measured each risk weighted.
It wasn't luck that spared them.
It was discipline.
The men in McSwain's factionknew this wasn't a fight that
they could afford to lose.
They were defending not just theirhomes, but the last scraps of
justice left to them across the way.
Sheriff Pepins Alliance, 40 menstrong, hardened by range wars and
(38:43):
reputation had charged headlong intothe teeth of a well-laid defense.
At least five of them wentdown wounded before sundown.
Reminders that numbers andswagger could not always overcome
position and preparation.
When dust came, the attackersstopped firing, not because they
chose to, but because they had to.
(39:05):
By the ledger of Battle the day belongedto MCs, Swen, and his regulators.
They held the high ground, theadvantage in numbers and the
confidence that came with survival.
The towns folk watching fromdarkened Windows side truth.
The law refused to name that just asin Lincoln no longer wore a badge.
It wore a band l.
(39:25):
Even in victory, the regulatorsknew the walls were closing in.
The housemen would regroup more guns.
More guns would come riding up theroad, and the men trapped inside those
Adobe rooms would soon learn that eventhe strongest defense can crumble when
the fire spreads and mercy runs out.
That first night, Lincoln held its breath.
The battlefield was quiet, but the warhad just found its rhythm and the law, the
(39:50):
real law, the kind that protects ratherthan punishes, remain nowhere to be found.
When the sun went down on July 15th, 1878,the smoke still hung low over Lincoln.
The street was quiet now, no hoof beats,no shouting, just the sound of the wind
(40:12):
whispering through shattered glass.
The first day of the five day battle wasdone, and for all the bullets that had
torn through the town, it wasn't bloodthat defined the day it was resolved.
The regulators had heldtheir ground, 60 men strong,
surrounded, hunted, but unbroken.
They turned homes into fortressesand desperation into discipline.
(40:34):
Their courage had carried themthrough every volley, every ricochet,
every moment when the law mighthave come riding down that road.
And it didn't.
Across the way Sheriff.
Pepins man regrouped in candlelighttending wounds and counting ammunition.
They'd called themselves lawmen,but by nightfall they knew better.
They were soldiers.
(40:55):
Now fighting for a factionthat wore power like a badge.
Both sides waited in the dark, listeningfor the next shot, the next scream, the
next fire that would light up the valley.
Lincoln was no longer a town, it wasa verdict waiting to be delivered.
The law had fled.
And what remained were men withguns and grudges, barricaded
(41:17):
behind walls of adobe and pride.
And as the first stars broke over theblack sky, every man in that town knew
this wasn't going to end with an arrest.
It was going to end with a funeral.
Tomorrow we bring more blood,more smoke, and the sound of fire
consuming everything left standing.
But tonight, tonight, the victorsand the dam shared the same silence.
(41:41):
Each staring into the night wondering ifthey'd lived to see the dawn out here.
Justice never came riding.
Only men did.
Another day ends in Lincoln, onetown, two sides, and a thousand empty
promises from a law that never came.
Day one was a warning, thethunder before the storm.
(42:03):
But by the time the smoke clears justicein Lincoln County won't be measured in
verdicts or warrants only in who lives.
Lives long enough to bury the dead.
Angela (42:15):
The Battle of Lincoln isn't just a story of bullets and burned Adobes.
It's the story of what happenswhen greed, fear and politics choke
out the rule of law by nightfall.
On July 15th, both sides believed theywere fighting for what was right, and
that's what made it so deadly becausewhen everyone thinks they're the good
guy, no one ever walks away clean.
John (42:36):
The siege has only just begun.
In our next episode, we'll walk into date.
Two, the tightening noose, thefailed truces, and the first blood
drawn in earnest for Lincoln.
The night between the battles wasthe last breath before the fire.
If you're standing with us at the edgeof history, take a moment to like follow,
(42:57):
rate and review wherever you listen.
It helps keep the story alive andthe truth from fading into the dust.
Angela (43:05):
You can join our work@darkdialogue.com or reach out
with questions, case suggestions, orinsights at info at dark dialogue.
Dot com support our mission byjoining the Dark Dialogue collective.
The boots on the ground effort thathelps us search, document, and support
families still fighting for justice.
John (43:21):
Adopt a name, take a case, and keep a story alive through
our adoptive victim program.
You can also support us directlyon Patreon, coffee, or substack.
And every share, every listen,every word you spread keeps
the truth from being buried.
Angela (43:38):
History remembers the victors, but gallows and gun
fights remembers the victims andthe land that never let them rest.
John (43:46):
Until next time, keep searching, keep questioning, keep the past talking
and make the guilty face the gallows.
Justice was supposed to bring order to the frontier, but in Lincoln County.
Justice had worn itself thin, stretchedso tight between profit and pride
that it finally tore what filled.
The gap wasn't peace, it was silence,the kind that comes before a shot.
The lawman turned merchants.
(00:33):
The merchants had turned generalsand the courts had become
another kind of battlefield.
By the summer of 1878, the only truthleft standing in Lincoln was that
everyone believed they were right,and that belief had become permission.
To kill out here.
Justice didn't wear robes or carry scales.
(00:54):
It rode on horseback, carried abadge when it suited in a rifle.
When it didn't.
Men wrote their arguments and leadand let the wind carry their verdicts.
And in that wind, the soundof reason disappeared.
The people of Lincoln lived like theywere waiting for something, a trial,
a reckoning, a change that never came.
(01:15):
They built their town on promises that.
Had already gone bankrupt and by thetime the summer heat settled in, so had
mercy, the war was coming, but not thekind that earns a headline or a hero.
It would start with barricaded doors,end with burned walls and leave behind
nothing clean enough to call justice.
(01:39):
Hey Angela, how's it going today?
Angela (01:41):
Hey Joan.
I'm good.
How are you?
I'm good.
John (01:44):
It's Friday.
Angela (01:45):
It is Friday.
John (01:47):
It's Friday before a holiday weekend.
Yeah.
That's gotta be good news,
Angela (01:53):
man.
John (01:57):
You're
Angela (01:57):
really, it wasn't very convincing, was it?
Not
John (01:59):
terribly yet all.
No.
Angela (02:01):
Yay.
John (02:02):
Very.
How
Angela (02:03):
about that?
John (02:03):
That's better.
Alright, so you ready to dive into thisnext segment of Billy the Kids Saga?
Angela (02:10):
Let's
John (02:10):
figure it out.
Alright.
The war is kicking off.
Tonight, the war is kicking off.
Okay.
I mean, like the five daybattle, the big one kicks off.
Angela (02:21):
Ah,
John (02:22):
the big one.
Okay.
So when you spend long enough studying theLincoln County War, you start to wonder if
it was ever really about land or cattle,or if it was about pride wearing a badge.
This episode isn't justanother gunfight story.
It's the first day that the lawdecided to burn down with the town.
Angela (02:44):
Five days, dozens of men in a single street that
turned into a battlefield.
Lincoln wasn't a town anymore, it wasa verdict waiting to be carried out.
Everyone inside these wa, those walls,MCWE, Billy, the regulators, the house,
they were all trapped in the same place.
Each convinced justice was on their side.
John (03:04):
And the truth is, by that summer justice was gone.
What replaced it was survival and thekind of loyalty that only shows itself
when you've got nowhere left to run.
This is where the legend ofBilly, the kids, stop being rumor
and started becoming history.
Angela (03:22):
But as always, before we start, make sure you're following dark dialogue.
Gallows and gunfights.
Wherever you listen, leave a rating,tap the thumbs up and share it
with anyone who still believesThe West was built on truth.
John would like you tothink otherwise you can.
You can join the Dark Dialogue collective,our boots on the ground network,
supporting real world investigations andhistorical preservation@darkdialogue.com.
(03:48):
If you'd like to adopt a victim, supportus on Patreon or coffee, or get behind
the scenes case files on substack.
It's all there too.
And if you've got questions, tips,or just wanna talk history or you
know, smack John around a little bit.
Email us at info@darkdialogue.com.
John (04:07):
This is Dark Dialogue, gallows and Gunfights, where we let the past
take the stand and the guilty face.
The gallows,
the Road to Lincoln's final battle began.
(04:27):
Began long before the first shots of July.
It began with two deaths in the spring,Frank McNabb and Manuel Segovia, and
with them the last breath of restraintin a county already drowning in blood.
When Frank McNabb was ambushed outsidethe Fritz Rants on April 29th, 1878,
the regulators lost more than a captain.
(04:49):
They lost their balance.
McNabb had been steady, cautious,the kind of man who held the younger
writers back from suicide by pride.
His killers, Bob Beckwith, DutchCharlie Crewing, and Manuel Segovia.
Among the Seven Rivers warriors left hisbody in the dust and his men in shock.
Ab Saunders was cut down inthat same attack, so badly
(05:12):
wounded, he'd never ride again.
Franco was taken prisoner later,escaping under circumstances that
still read more like rumor than rescue.
What mattered was how it feltanother leader gone, another
funeral without answers.
Even those loyal to McSwain whispered thatthe war had crossed into something darker,
(05:32):
a contest that no longer recognized mercy.
Two weeks later, may the 15th,the regulators found Manuel
Segovia near Seven Rivers andsettled the account their own way.
There was no warrant, nopretense of law, only bullets.
Segovia fell where he stoodshot down in the open.
(05:53):
His death was vengeance forMcNabb, pure and simple.
And with it, every illusion of legalityburned away from that moment on.
No one in Lincoln County.
Expected arrest or trial only reprisal.
Through May and June, LincolnCounty turned into a maze of fear
Regulators struck at seven Riversoutposts, burned ranches, and
(06:15):
hunted known allies of the house.
In return, Murphy Dolan's writersSeven Rivers Men, remnants of
the Jesse Evans and John Kinney.
Gangs returned.
The favoring kind families wereharassed, travelers ambushed,
and every isolated ranch becamea question mark on the horizon.
Men like Billy the Kid, doc Scurlockand Chavez Chevez hardened fast.
(06:40):
Their days measured in raids and nights.
By who did he come back?
What began as vigilante justiceblurred into organized banditry.
Every killing was branded revengefor another, and every excuse
sounded righteous in the moment.
The civilians paid the price.
Neutral ranches were stripped barelivestock stolen by both sides.
(07:03):
Some families vanished in the night,loading wagons from Marcilla or
Fort Staton, leaving only smokebehind Lincoln County's map grew
quieter, emptier deadly air.
The shooting wasn't the onlyfront in the courtrooms.
The house tightened its grip allies inSanta Fe filled juries, bought signatures
(07:23):
and turned every indictment into a weapon.
The result was predictable.
Only regulators were charged.
Only McSwain's men were fugitives.
The same courthouse that hadabsolved dolan's killers now
branded Billy the Kid, A Murderer.
Meanwhile, mc swing supporters foughtback with telegrams and petitions.
Letters went out begging for federalinquiry for the US Army to step in
(07:47):
before the county tore itself apart.
The paper trail would later summonColonel Nathan Dudley and his soldiers
to Lincoln, a promise of order thatarrived too late and in the wrong uniform.
Every attempt to restorelawful government failed.
The sheriff's badge belonged toone faction, the judges to another.
In Lincoln County, justice hadbecome just another franchise.
(08:12):
By June, the war had eaten its conscience.
Respected men were gone, replacedby boys too young to remember
what peace had looked like.
Rumors, spread of lists, namesmarked for death on both sides,
and no one wrote unarmed.
Inside the regulators,grief curdled into fatalism.
They buried Brewer, McNabb, anda score of friends in two months.
(08:36):
Doc Scurlock.
Now, captain held the remnantstogether through discipline and prayer,
but every man understood the odds.
Each sunrise might be their last.
Within Murphy Dolan's house,the fear was just as thick.
Storefronts became bunkers, windowswere boarded, ammunition stockpiled.
The once prosperous business block nowlooked like a garrison waiting on the
(08:59):
siege that everyone knew was coming.
By early July, Laken was no longer a town.
It was an armed camp, Caldwellhouse, do store and McSwain's
Adobe, all bristled with gunman.
Fresh recruitments arrived fromTexas, from the Rio Grande and from
anywhere a man could earn by killingeach side had dug in certain that the
(09:22):
next exchange would decide everything.
The spring of 1878 had stripped awayevery disguised the war once war.
No lawmen, no outlaws, only survivors.
By the early summer of 1878, thewar in Lincoln County had entered
its strangest phase, a moment whenthe law itself became the weapon.
(09:44):
The regulators who fought to enforcejustice Now Justice had sworn
out warrants for their arrest.
Inside the courthouse, sheriffGeorge Pepin held the badge,
but his oath ran to the house.
He filled his posse with sevenrivers, men, dolans, and hired
killers who treated legal authoritylike another form of firepower.
(10:05):
Behind them stood the Santa Fe ring.
Men like Thomas Catone and DistrictAttorney William Ryerson, who made
sure every indictment cut only one way.
The murder dockets told the story.
Morton Baker, BradyHinman, Chapman Roberts.
Every killing tied to the regulatorsappeared before a grand jury.
While the crimes of the DO infectiondisappeared into ink and influence
(10:29):
by summer's turn warrants namednearly every regulator alive.
Billy the Kid, doc Gerlach, FredWeight, Charlie Bowry, Tom o Failure,
and even Alexander McSweeney himself,they weren't vigilantes anymore.
They were outlaws by decree.
With prices on their heads andwarrants on their back, the regulators
(10:50):
vanished into the wild country.
The Capitans, the Rio Ruso and theMescalero divide, they slept under pines,
kept fires low and rode only by night, notlong before they had carried commissions.
Signed by Justice of the Peace JohnWilson paper that made them lawman.
Then Governor Samuel Dale tore thosepapers apart with one proclamation,
(11:14):
revoking every writ and deputation.
Yesterday's posse hadbecome today's hunted men.
They moved in.
Small bands always armed,always ready for betrayal.
Each knock on a ranch door couldbe a friend food or a firing squad.
This was the moment the regulatorsstopped chasing justice and
(11:34):
started running from it.
Even in exile, AlexanderMcSwain kept fighting on paper.
He cleared his name ofthe Emil Fritz Insurance.
Embezzlement charges a victorythat proved what everyone already
knew, that the war had begun, notin the streets, but in the ledgers.
At the same time, McSwain's alliesmanaged to secure indictments against
(11:55):
James Dolan and John Riley for cattletheft and conspiracy in Tunsell's murder.
But justice in LincolnCounty had two doors.
One for the house, which was alway,which always stayed open, and one
for its enemies, which stayed barred.
Dolan and Riley walked freethrough the town while MCs Swen
hid like a thief in the brush.
(12:16):
Legal parody existed only on paper andpaper burned easily in New Mexico Wind.
It was during this exile that a new namewrote into the story, Tom O. Failure.
He was young, loyal,and fast with a horse.
The kind of man who made a fight feelless lonely, drawn to the regulators
around the time that Segovia fell, hesoon become Billy's closest friend,
(12:40):
a brother in every way that mattered.
Oh, failure's, arrivals, steadiedthe campfires, gave the fugitive
something like family again, andforged the brotherhood that would
carry them through the coming sge.
By June's end, Lincoln Countyhad no law that anyone trusted.
The courts were corrupt.
The badges compromised.
(13:00):
The oats forgotten.
What came next wasn't justice.
It was inevitability.
When the smoke finally rose above Lincolnin July, it would mark not just the
burning of a town, but the last trialthe West ever held without a jury.
By July of 1878, Lincoln Countywas a town waiting for judgment.
The regulators lost their captains, theirlegal authority, and half their friends.
(13:24):
Every rancher had chosen a side.
Every lawman had sold his souland still justice hadn't come.
The men who had sworn OST to protectthe law were now hunted by it.
The men who murdered in daylightwere now sitting behind desks,
giving orders under seal.
It was a county split clean downthe middle half fear, half Fury,
(13:45):
and Alexander McSwain was aboutto ride back into its heart.
McSwain had spent months as a fugitive,hiding from arrest warrants written
by the very men who'd ruined him.
But the lawyer turned insurgent, stillbelieved he could fight this war with
a pen, or at least die standing inhis own house with his wife Susan,
holding the line in Lincoln and everylegal remedy exhausted Nick s Swain
(14:09):
made a fateful choice to go home.
He would return to Lincoln, notas an outlaw, but as a citizen
reclaiming his name, even if it meantwalking straight into a crossfire.
On the evening of July 14th, 1878, justafter nightfall, the procession began
a caravan of conviction and desperationmoving quietly toward the town.
(14:33):
It wasn't just the ironclad regulators.
This time it was an army.
Among the rider were Billy theKid, doc Scurlock, Charlie Bowry,
Tom O Fired, and Jim French,the hardened nucleus of a cause.
Long past saving, butthere were new phases too.
Martine Chavez, a rancher from SanPatricio and two dozen Hispanic allies
(14:57):
who had watched the house choke up everyscrap of independence in the valley.
They came for loyalty, forvengeance, for survival.
And for the faint chance thatif they stood together, Lincoln
might still belong to its people.
When they rode into town thatnight, their numbers swelled
near 60 a force the regulatorshadn't seen since the war began.
(15:19):
It was an uneven company.
Veterans and volunteers, gunslingersand ranch hands each one bound to
the others by the knowledge thatthere was nowhere left to run.
Nick Swains public statement wasthat he had come home to reclaim his
property, that everyone knew better.
It wasn't about deeds or documentsanymore, it was about defiance, and
(15:40):
it was about time across the street.
James Dolan and JohnReilly wasted no time.
They fortified Montano's store, calledfor their allies, and sent word for
Sheriff George Pepin, who arrivedwith deputies and hired gunman.
Many from the Seven Riversin the Kenney gangs.
By dawn, both sides had dug in.
(16:00):
Lincoln was now two fortresses,staring each other down
across a single dusty street.
Some townsfolk fled before the first shot.
Others stayed boarding their windows,clutching rosaries, waiting for the
ward to decide who owned their town.
By the early hours of July 15th,rifles were loaded, pickets posted,
(16:21):
and both armies were watching thehorizon for the signal to begin.
For MCs, Swen, and his men, thiswas the last stand of belief that if
they could hold the town even for aday, they could prove they'd never
been the criminal's history tried tomake them, but to Dolan's house, this
wasn't a matter of politics anymore.
(16:42):
It was property, profit and pride,and they would burn Lincoln into ash
before surrendering an inch of it.
What happened next wasn'tjustice or law or even revenge.
It was inevitability.
When the Sun rose on July 15th,1878, the five Day Battle of Lincoln
began, and with it the death of theLincoln County War's last illusion
(17:04):
that anyone was still fighting for.
What was Ray?
When Alexander McSweeney andthe regulators rode back into
Lincoln, they didn't come to hide.
They came to fortify every step, everybuilding seized was part of a plan to
dig in before the house and SheriffPepins men could choke them out.
What followed was the transformation ofa frontier village into a battlefield.
(17:28):
The regulators move fast.
Billy the Kid, doc Scurlock Tom Fowler,Jim French Chavez Chevez, and nearly
60 armed men spread through the townlike a wave of intent at the East end.
They claimed the McSwain house atwo story adobe brick whose thick
walls and the elevated windows madethe made at the perfect stronghold.
(17:48):
Farther west, the T store and itscorrals were barricaded barrels
and crates stacked chest high.
Those two buildings formed a line ofoverlapping fire close enough that riders
could dash between them undercover.
The Ella's house Brinley toMcQueen's cause was occupied.
Next together with the Montano store,these posts created a fortified
(18:11):
spine down Lincoln's single street.
A defense line of adobe and nerverifleman took the upper windows sharp
shooters, perched behind loopholes inthe rooftops from Don's first light.
The straight was watched by adozen muzzles that never blinked.
Not every man loyal to thehouse made it back to safety.
Deputies Jack Long and Billy Matthewscaught in the open with several
(18:33):
others, found themselves cut off.
They sprinted for the Torreon, the oldSpanish stone tower that stood like a
sentinel opposite the Montano store.
Its walls were three feet thick.
It slits made for rifles instead of light.
When the regulators sealed the street,the men inside were trapped long, and
Matthew shouted for hell, but anyonebold enough to answer met a rain of
(18:56):
fire from the tonsil store in the Tonnowindows for the first time that morning.
The house found itselfbesieged in its own town.
With the Torreon cutoff andMcSwain's men dug in, Lincoln became
a patchwork of rival fortresses.
The regulators controlled theEastern and central blocks.
Dolan's fighters clung to thewestern end and the courthouse
(19:18):
area between them stretched agauntlet of dust, bullets, and fear.
Every corner was a potential ambush.
Every rooftop held a rifle.
Civilians dove for cellars,clutching children as gunfires.
Skip down the street.
Throughout the day, Ali's crackback and forth testing defenses.
Each side probed for weaknesses,but neither dare they full assault,
(19:40):
both waiting for reinforcements,rumored to be on the road.
Pepins Posse, the Seven Rivers,warriors and John Kinney's hired guns.
By late morning, Lincolnwas no longer a town.
It was a map of strongholdsseparated by open ground.
The line between law and outlawblurred into smoke and grit.
(20:01):
News of McSwain's Return hitSheriff George Pepin and James
Dolan, like a sparked to powderedPeppa and a house loyalist.
Freshly installed as sheriff.
Wasted no time.
He sent writers in every direction,summoning John Kinney, Marian Turner, buck
Powell, and the infamous Jesse Evans gang.
Within hours, the numbers swelled toabout 40 armed men, not ranch ends or
(20:23):
deputies, but hardened professionals.
These were men who had livedthrough the range wars on the
killings from Tularosa to Texas.
They didn't come for justice.
They came to finish the regulators.
Pepin made his headquarters inthe Wortley Hotel and the House,
the old Murphy Dolan store.
Both buildings commanded the heartof Lincoln's main street, perfect
(20:44):
ground for sniper scouts and stateand the staging of an assault.
From there, he began, the Encirclement.
Men were posted on rooftopsand behind Adobe corners.
Others took the high groundoverlooking the town.
Every alley became a firing line.
The goal was clear trap MCs swen starvedhim and crushed the regulator stand before
(21:05):
it could spread into open rebellion.
When the reinforcements arrived, gunfirefollowed, the houseman opened fire on the
MCs Swen house in the fortified stores.
Smoke rolled down the street as riflecracks echoed between the buildings.
The siege of Lincoln had officiallybegun a handful of Pepins gunmen.
(21:26):
Went down early, hit by return fire fromthe portholes inside their adobe walls.
The regulators shoutedorders and held steady.
It was an uneven fight, 40 against60, but every man knew this battle
would not be settled by numbers,but by nerve, by nightfall.
Lincoln was sealed in smoke in silence.
No side.
(21:47):
No side yet yielded ground, but the lineswere drawn, the defenses tested and the
war that would make legends had begun.
By the time the sun set onJuly 14th, 1878, Lincoln was
no longer waiting for a fight.
He was surrounded by one.
The regulators held theeast and the center of town.
Dolan and Pepins loyalists wereamassing on the Western rise and
(22:10):
riding hard into the darkness camethe killers who had liked the fuse.
John Kitty's man out of Las Cruces.
Marion Cerner's posse, buck Powell'scow hens, and the unpredictable
deadly Jesse Evans gang.
They were seasoned fighters.
Men who traded law for pay longbefore Lincoln ever heard of justice.
(22:31):
When they arrived, they didn'thesitate before the dust of
their horses had settled.
They opened fire on the MCs Swen house.
Their first volley marked the pointof no return, a sound that turned
a political feud into open war.
The opening shots left.
The regulators split across multiplestrongholds from the Montano house.
Billy, the kids saw the trap closing in.
(22:53):
He knew if McSwain's home fell.
The war ended there with them buriedinside it, so he ran with Tom f Jim
French, and several others at his side.
Billy Sprinted across open groundas bullets hissed through the dark.
A slug course splinters from ahitching post another smashed through
a shutter inches from his head.
But somehow miraculously, theyreached the McSwain house alive,
(23:17):
slamming the heavy door behindthem as the next volley struck.
The wall like hail.
The dash, no.
Lincolns Night Cement cementedthe bow lines pepins men
tightening the ring from the west.
The regulators barricaded in theeast, and between them, the town's
single street, a strip of dustthat would soon become a graveyard.
(23:38):
All through the darkness,the exchange never stopped.
Rifles cracked from doorways,pistols flaring from rooftops, and
the smell of black powder driftedlike a storm across the valley.
Both sides fortified by lantern light.
Dolan's gunman dug in behindwagons and adobe walls.
Inside McSwain's Home defenderstore up floorboards for firing ports
(24:01):
and braced the doors with barrels.
Every man knew the morningwould bring the real fight.
A siege that would only end one way.
D. Monday, July 15th, 1878,the Don came to Lincoln under
the shadow of loaded rifles.
The exchange of fire the night beforehad ended any illusion of restraint.
(24:22):
Now both sides face the new day with Grim.
Resolve the first full light of the siege.
Inside the McSwain house,men moved with quiet urgency.
Every piece of furniture became a barrier.
Mattresses feed sacks and crates werepiled waist high against the windows.
Anything that could slow a bullet founda place in the walls across the street.
(24:46):
The Tunstall store in the smaller AlliedAdobes were fortified the same way.
Ranch hands and gunmen turnedliving rooms into parapets and
kitchens into firing lines.
What had been a merchant's villageonly days before was now a barricaded
grid of dust, sweat, and gun oil.
Many of the regulators, men raised inthe saddle and familiar with adobe, took
(25:10):
to the walls with tools in hand, axes,shovels, even butcher knives, carved
narrow portholes through the clay.
Each slit offered a new angle downthe street, a safe place to rest,
a rifle, a window without exposure.
By mid-morning McSwain home and itsneighbors had became a, had become
a chain of miniature forts, eachlinked by sightline and purpose
(25:35):
from rooftops, doc Scurlock.
Billy the Kid, and Jim French surveyedthe street below the house, gunman,
pepins deputies, and hired mercenariesanswered from the Wortley Hotel,
the house store, and e, and everydarkened doorway they could claim.
With each shot, Adobe dustdrifted through the sunbeams,
(25:55):
like smoke from a dying fire.
Even amid the thunder ofrifles, Alexander McSwain still
tried to wage a legal battle.
Inside his barricaded home, clerksand loyalists scribbled out affidavits
petitions to the territorial courtsand to the army at Fort Staton,
pleading for intervention, forrecognition for anything resembling law.
(26:17):
It was a desperate act of faith in hissystem already weaponized against them.
Outside.
The only petitions being filed camefrom Winchester barrels by late
morning snip sniper fire swept LincolnSingle street men couldn't show a hat
brim without drawing a dozen shots.
One regulator fell out a window.
Another was grazed crossingfrom house to house.
(26:41):
Each impact was met with answeringfire from behind the sandbags.
Steady, disciplined, fatal.
As the sun reached its zenith, theday's gram choreography settled in.
The regulators vastly outnumbered,but anchored in the east end of town
refused every shouted offer to surrender.
(27:01):
They would hold their ground,whatever the cost across the way.
Pepins man, reinforced by Dolan'shired guns and seven rivers
fighters tightened their perimeter.
They had numbers, rifles, andtime, and they intended to bleed
the defenders into silence.
By Midday Lincoln's Main Street wasno longer a place, but a condition,
(27:22):
a strip of no man's land where theliving whispered beside the dead.
Civilians huddled in cellars, horsesbolted through crossfire, and in the
thick heat of July, the first day of thesiege settled into its rhythm, a war of
patience, bullets, and sheer endurance.
By the second morning of gunfireand Lincoln Alexander McSwain was
(27:43):
fighting on more than one front.
The bullets outside his wallswere only half the battle.
The rest came in the form of paper pinand principle, because in the chaos
of that siege, even the line betweenneighbor and enemy could shift overnight.
Across the street from the MCs SwenHouse, the Stonewall Poon still sheltered.
A handful of Golans men cutoff trapped, but not starving.
(28:06):
Somehow food, water, and messageswere slipping through the lines.
MCs Swen soon discovered the reason.
Santino Baca, a respected his landowner,whose home stood only a few doors away,
had become an unwitting supply line.
Bread, water, and whispersmoved through his doorway.
It wasn't open treason, it was survival.
(28:29):
But in the fever of that week, survivalfor one segment, death for the other.
McSwain's patients snapped.
He sat at his desk amid the stackedsand base and the muffled boom of rifles
and wrote a letter to Santino Baca.
It was not polite nor legalistic.
It was personal quote.
You have allowed your house tobecome a refuge for murders for
(28:53):
the purpose of taking my life.
You will vacate your property withinthree days, or I will consider
it a legitimate target end quote.
In that moment, MC Swen, lawyer,churchman, and husband, became a
commander issuing a military threat.
The siege had forced him to abandonthe courtroom for the code of war.
(29:14):
Inside the Bacca home, thereality was crueler than MCs.
Swen knew Mrs. Bcca had givenbirth just the day before.
The house smelled ofgunpowder and new life.
The midwife hadn't yet left whenthe next volley rattled the windows.
Leaving was not an option.
Staying meant livingbetween two firing lines.
(29:34):
Santino Bacca faced the impossible,defy the regulators and risk
annihilation or aid the house and bebranded a traitor to his own people.
Either way, someone's bulletalready had his name on it.
With his wife and newborns stillinside Baca dictated a desperate
letter to Colonel Nathan Dudley,commander at Fort Staton.
(29:57):
He begged for soldiers to intervene tosave his family, or at least bear witness
before his house became a battlefield.
But dudley's hands were tied.
The freshly passed Posse KatataAct forbade federal troops from
interfering in civil disputes.
There's a word, the Posse Katata Act.
Oh shit.
You don't know that one?
No.
(30:18):
Yeah, that's the one that's allover the news right now with the
National Guard being used in cities.
Everybody's saying that it'sviolating the Posse Kamata Act.
Angela (30:27):
I think you're just throwing darts at letters in the alphabet and
John (30:32):
Yeah.
Well, maybe so.
All Dudley could do.
That's fine.
All Dudley could do was sendLieutenant Daniel Appel to observe.
No relief, no escort, just observation.
The law meant to restrain.
Federal overreach had nowabandoned a woman in childbirth
to the mercy of Warren Gunman.
(30:53):
The Baca confrontation capturedeverything the five day battle had become.
There were no longer civilians,only victims waiting to be
claimed by one banner or another.
Property, ethnicity, allegianceall twisted together In a town
that no longer recognized the wordneutral, what began is a letter
became a microcosm of the war itself.
(31:15):
Law turned threat, neighborturned enemy, and mercy lost
beneath the roar of gunfire.
As the standoff deepened and threatsspread from house to house, Sangen Baca
made one final attempt to save his familyfrom the storm closing around them.
His letter to Colonel NathanDudley at Fort Stanton begged
for protection at Fort Stanton.
(31:37):
Colonel Dudley faced an impossible choice.
The new Posse comment act barred soldiersfrom stepping into civilian disputes.
Angela (31:46):
I'm sorry,
John (31:48):
I can't believe you have never heard.
No.
Angela (31:51):
I don't know why it's so funny, but
John (31:54):
damn not the word.
To march our men into Lincoln withoutfederal orders would risk his command
and ignite a political scandal thatwould outlast the war itself, but doing
nothing meant letting civilians diewithin writing distance of his post.
So deadly chose thenarrowest path available.
He sent Lieutenant Daniel lapel his postsurgeon to investigate A pal carried
(32:19):
no troops, no orders, and no weapons.
Only the authority of his uniform and thefaint hope that reason might still hold.
When a pale reached Lincoln, the airitself seemed alive with tension.
Then on both sides, itdug in behind Adobe walls.
Mc Sween house bristledwith rifle portholes.
The Matano store was alive withdefenders and across the street.
(32:43):
Dolan's men crouched inside the toon,firing bursts and shouting defiance.
A pale moved carefully between the lines.
A single unarmed man in theno man's land of Main Street.
He met with Santino Bacca, who describedhis family's peril, the weak mother,
the newborn, the straight bulletsthat struck the walls each hour.
(33:04):
From there, AEL went toMcSwain, who stood firm.
He would not leave again and he would nottolerate any house that aided his enemies.
Finally, AEL reached the toon speakingthrough its narrow slits to Jack Long
Billy Matthews and the others inside.
They told him they'd surrenderonly if US troops occupied
(33:26):
the tower and made it neutral.
Ground three sides, three truths,and not a single law that could,
that could reconcile them.
A pale brokered, a fragile understanding.
The Baca home and the Torreon would remainuntouched as soldiers could claim them as
neutral ground, and both fractions wouldhold fire while civilians remained inside.
(33:48):
McSwain agreed.
In principle, Dolan's men agreed indesperation, but the army could not
act and neutrality meant little to menwho'd already buried too many friends.
Pal rode back to FortStaten with his report.
His mission technically complete,his purpose entirely unfulfilled.
Behind him, Lincoln's gunfire,resumed, measured, and relentless.
(34:11):
As Sheriff Pepins reinforcementsbegan to filter in from the
west, the toon still held.
The Baca family still hid behindAdobe walls and the law once again
had arrived too late to matter.
When word rate Sheriff Pepin, theMcSwain and the regulators had
seized half of Lincoln's main Street.
The time for cautious law keepingwas over by the morning of July 15th.
(34:36):
Pepin wasn't a peace officer anymore.
He was a field commander in awar for his, for the town itself.
He.
Pepin moved fast.
He planted his flag inside the twobuildings that had anchored the house.
Since the feud began.
The Wortley Hotel and the Murphy Dolanstore known simply as the house they
set like Twin Bastions in the center ofLincoln, commanding both the crossroads
(34:58):
and the narrow artery of Main Street.
As the sun dropped behind the SacramentoMountains Lincoln Sied in the dying
Light, its main street line withbullet popped walls and the accurate
haze of spent gunpowder, the five daybattle had settled into its rhythm.
Bursts of fire shouts across thedust and the long taunt silences that
(35:20):
came when neither side dares to move.
First with the standoff dragging intothe late afternoon, sheriff George
Pepin decided to remind the worldthat his badge still meant something.
He called out Deputy Jack Long.
Handed him a stack of arrest warrantsand ordered him to march down the street
and serve them to arrest AlexanderMCs, Swen, Billy Bonney and Jim French,
(35:42):
right there in the middle of the siege.
It wasn't a mission ofjustice, it was theater.
An act meant to convince the watchingtowns, folk, and any soldiers at Fort
Staton that the law still lived inLincoln Long stepped into the open,
the warrants fluttering in one handand shouted towards the mc Sween house.
Come out by order of the lawfor one suspended heartbeat.
(36:06):
The town was silent then the regulatorsanswered gunfire, ripped through the
adobe and sent long diving for cover.
He hit the ground scrambled to hisfeet, and ran full tilt back to the
house alive only because the defendershad chosen to warn and not kill him.
The warrants he carried were stillintact, but so was the proof that no
(36:27):
one in Lincoln cared to honor them.
For the next several hours, the twosides traded fire at long range shots
cracked across main street and steadyrhythm, single rounds, answering
volleys, then silence by nightfall.
The count stood at close to ahundred shots, fired a testament.
Not to courage, but to stubborn endurance.
(36:48):
Miraculously, no men had fallen.
Only the horse in the Wortley corral.
Struck earlier when the first fightbroke loose smoke drifted over the
rooftops as lanterns winked out.
One by one, the regulators stayedtight in their barricaded homes,
listening for footsteps in the dark.
Across the way, Pepins men reloaded bycandlelight posting guards at every door.
(37:12):
Each side waited for theother to break the silence.
The first move to make the mistakethat would draw the next blood.
By the time the stars took tothe sky, Lincoln was quiet again.
No surrender, no victory.
Just two armies glaring at eachother through the darkness.
The town between them caught in thecrossfire of pride and vengeance.
(37:35):
The first day of the siege wasover, and though no bodies yet laid
cooling in the street, the smellof death was already in the air.
When the guns fell silent on thefirst night in Lincoln, the streets
lay empty, quiet, but alive withthe weight of what had begun.
For all the thunder that had rolledthrough the town that day, the
(37:56):
constant blood was strangely small.
No regulators did.
No bodies cooled in the dust.
Only the wounded moans of pepins menscattered and bandaged behind the
walls of the house broke the silence.
The regulators tucked behindsandbags and Adobe had fought
with precision in patience.
Their portholes had turnedcrude houses and fortresses.
(38:19):
They'd fired carefully, not wildly.
Each shot measured each risk weighted.
It wasn't luck that spared them.
It was discipline.
The men in McSwain's factionknew this wasn't a fight that
they could afford to lose.
They were defending not just theirhomes, but the last scraps of
justice left to them across the way.
Sheriff Pepins Alliance, 40 menstrong, hardened by range wars and
(38:43):
reputation had charged headlong intothe teeth of a well-laid defense.
At least five of them wentdown wounded before sundown.
Reminders that numbers andswagger could not always overcome
position and preparation.
When dust came, the attackersstopped firing, not because they
chose to, but because they had to.
(39:05):
By the ledger of Battle the day belongedto MCs, Swen, and his regulators.
They held the high ground, theadvantage in numbers and the
confidence that came with survival.
The towns folk watching fromdarkened Windows side truth.
The law refused to name that just asin Lincoln no longer wore a badge.
It wore a band l.
(39:25):
Even in victory, the regulatorsknew the walls were closing in.
The housemen would regroup more guns.
More guns would come riding up theroad, and the men trapped inside those
Adobe rooms would soon learn that eventhe strongest defense can crumble when
the fire spreads and mercy runs out.
That first night, Lincoln held its breath.
The battlefield was quiet, but the warhad just found its rhythm and the law, the
(39:50):
real law, the kind that protects ratherthan punishes, remain nowhere to be found.
When the sun went down on July 15th, 1878,the smoke still hung low over Lincoln.
The street was quiet now, no hoof beats,no shouting, just the sound of the wind
(40:12):
whispering through shattered glass.
The first day of the five day battle wasdone, and for all the bullets that had
torn through the town, it wasn't bloodthat defined the day it was resolved.
The regulators had heldtheir ground, 60 men strong,
surrounded, hunted, but unbroken.
They turned homes into fortressesand desperation into discipline.
(40:34):
Their courage had carried themthrough every volley, every ricochet,
every moment when the law mighthave come riding down that road.
And it didn't.
Across the way Sheriff.
Pepins man regrouped in candlelighttending wounds and counting ammunition.
They'd called themselves lawmen,but by nightfall they knew better.
They were soldiers.
(40:55):
Now fighting for a factionthat wore power like a badge.
Both sides waited in the dark, listeningfor the next shot, the next scream, the
next fire that would light up the valley.
Lincoln was no longer a town, it wasa verdict waiting to be delivered.
The law had fled.
And what remained were men withguns and grudges, barricaded
(41:17):
behind walls of adobe and pride.
And as the first stars broke over theblack sky, every man in that town knew
this wasn't going to end with an arrest.
It was going to end with a funeral.
Tomorrow we bring more blood,more smoke, and the sound of fire
consuming everything left standing.
But tonight, tonight, the victorsand the dam shared the same silence.
(41:41):
Each staring into the night wondering ifthey'd lived to see the dawn out here.
Justice never came riding.
Only men did.
Another day ends in Lincoln, onetown, two sides, and a thousand empty
promises from a law that never came.
Day one was a warning, thethunder before the storm.
(42:03):
But by the time the smoke clears justicein Lincoln County won't be measured in
verdicts or warrants only in who lives.
Lives long enough to bury the dead.
Angela (42:15):
The Battle of Lincoln isn't just a story of bullets and burned Adobes.
It's the story of what happenswhen greed, fear and politics choke
out the rule of law by nightfall.
On July 15th, both sides believed theywere fighting for what was right, and
that's what made it so deadly becausewhen everyone thinks they're the good
guy, no one ever walks away clean.
John (42:36):
The siege has only just begun.
In our next episode, we'll walk into date.
Two, the tightening noose, thefailed truces, and the first blood
drawn in earnest for Lincoln.
The night between the battles wasthe last breath before the fire.
If you're standing with us at the edgeof history, take a moment to like follow,
(42:57):
rate and review wherever you listen.
It helps keep the story alive andthe truth from fading into the dust.
Angela (43:05):
You can join our work@darkdialogue.com or reach out
with questions, case suggestions, orinsights at info at dark dialogue.
Dot com support our mission byjoining the Dark Dialogue collective.
The boots on the ground effort thathelps us search, document, and support
families still fighting for justice.
John (43:21):
Adopt a name, take a case, and keep a story alive through
our adoptive victim program.
You can also support us directlyon Patreon, coffee, or substack.
And every share, every listen,every word you spread keeps
the truth from being buried.
Angela (43:38):
History remembers the victors, but gallows and gun
fights remembers the victims andthe land that never let them rest.
John (43:46):
Until next time, keep searching, keep questioning, keep the past talking
and make the guilty face the gallows.
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