NEW MEXICO: Good Man of the Badlands

In the Southwest, famed for its tough badmen, a tough good man died last week. Elfego Baca was little known outside New Mexico, yet he left a saga rivaling Billy the Kid’s.

Elfego decided to become a Socorro County deputy sheriff one afternoon when five drunken cowboys castrated a Mexican while a peace officer stood idly nearby. Elfego believed the law should be as strong as the lawless. One day, after he was made a deputy, he arrested a cowboy who shot his hat off. Eighty enraged ranch hands galloped into the tough town of Upper Frisco to rescue their comrade and avenge the indignity of the arrest. Sheriff Baca locked himself in a mud-and-log hut, kept his six-shooters blazing for 36 hours, pausing only long enough to fix some tortillas and beef stew. When the battle ended, four cowboys were dead, many wounded. Nineteen-year-old Elfego had not even been singed.

Nine Notches. From then on, there was great respect for Elfego and his triggerfinger in New Mexico. He killed five more men at various times—all, he said, in self-defense. The threat of a gun duel with Baca was usually enough to calm any New Mexican desperado. As the country quieted, Elfego studied law, became county clerk, district attorney, school superintendent, mayor of Socorro. As a prosecutor, he sent many murderers to their deaths. As a defense attorney, he won acquittal for 19 out of 20 clients charged with murder. One story (probably apocryphal): a client wired him from Albuquerque that he was in jail charged with stealing a car in California. From El Paso, Baca reportedly wired back: “Will be there in the morning with three eyewitnesses.”

Politicians soon shared the cowboy respect for Elfego. At the state GOP convention in 1911, Republicans nominated him for Congress. (He lost by 119 votes.) His last major campaign was in 1934, when, nearing 70, he lost a fight for the governorship.

One night last week, in his home in Albuquerque, 80-year-old Elfego Baca ate his last hot-pepper supper, smoked his last black cigar. Then he died quietly in bed. On a chair within arm’s reach hung a well-cleaned, highly-polished gun, with nine notches in the handle.