November 27, 1880; Greathouse-Kuch Ranch/Way Station, near White Oaks, Lincoln County, New Mexico Territory---Before dawn, a posse led by Constable 'Pinto Tom' Longworth rides to the ranch/way station owned by 'Whisky Jim' Greathouse and Fred Kuch. Believing the Rustlers to be inside the ranchhouse, the posse surrounds the place and waits. Longworth decides to ride back to White Oaks to get reinforcements, so that the Rustlers do not escape this time. Deputies Will Hudgens and James Carlyle are left in charge of the posse.
At first light, Joseph Steck, the German cook that works for Greathouse and Kuch, exits the house to feed some horses. Two members of the posse, James Brent and J. P. Eaker, jump on Steck and bring him to the ground. From interogating Steck, the posse learns that the Rustlers inside are Billy the Kid, Dirty Dave Rudabaugh, and Billy Wilson, along with Greathouse and Kuch themselves. Carlyle writes a hasty note to the Kid, informing him that the place is surrounded and that he had better surrender, and gives it to Steck to deliver. As Steck enters the house to do this, the posse waits for the outlaws' response. A few seconds later, after the the Kid, Wilson, and Rudabaugh read the note, a loud laughter is heard from inside. The three outlaws know they have the upper hand. They may be vastly outnumbered, but by being inside the warm house, they can easily out-wait their would-be captures. Steck walks back out to the posse to convey the Kid's obvious answer. Carlyle then writes a second note for Steck to carry inside. This note is directed at Wilson and advises his surrender, since he is only wanted on the charges of counterfeiting and robbing the U. S. mail, less serious crimes than the murders the Kid and Rudabaugh are wanted for. Wilson may briefly consider doing this, but the Kid and Rudabaugh soon talk him out of it. The Kid himself then writes a note, gives it to Steck, and tells him to give it to the leader of the posse. Steck does this, giving the note to Carlyle. In the note, Billy simply invites Carlyle into the house to "discuss the terms of surrender." Carlyle at first refuses, but then Jim Greathouse steps outside and offers himself as a hostage to the rest of the posse if Carlyle will go in and talk to the Kid. Agreeing to this, Carlyle leaves his guns behind and enters the house.
Inside the house, Carlyle and Billy start talking. Sitting at the bar are Dirty Dave and Wilson, pouring themselves drinks. At first calm, Billy becomes angered when he looks at the deputy's hands and realizes he is wearing the new gloves Billy left at the outlaws' camp when they were ambushed a couple days before. Billy eventually calms down again and orders Carlyle to have a seat with the other Rustlers at the bar. Although Billy is not a drinker, both Dave and Wilson are. With the outlaws training their pistols on Carlyle, they order him to match whatever they drink. By noon or so, Dave, Wilson, and Carlyle are somewhat inebriated. Realizing that the outlaws are not going to surrender to him, Carlyle states that he wishes to return to his posse, but the outlaws won't allow him to leave and instead order him to keep drinking.
For most of the day, Steck carries notes back and forth between the two parties. At about 11:00 PM, the men inside begin getting hungry and have Steck stay inside to fix them dinner, while Fred Kuch replaces him as the go-between messenger. By midnight, the posse, freezing in the bitter cold, tire of waiting and send Kuch into the house with a note telling the outlaws that if Carlyle is not back outside within five minutes, Greathouse will be killed. Also in the note, they advise Steck to accompany Kuch back outside, as shooting will most likely begin soon. Steck and Kuch both leave the house and run for safe place, where they can watch the house and the posse. In the house, the outlaws apparently don't take the posse's threat seriously, as they still refuse to allow Carlyle to leave. A few minutes pass. Suddenly, a shot is fired by one of the posse members. Carlyle panicks, thinking that the shot killed Greathouse and the Rustlers will now kill him in response. He runs for the nearest window and jumps through the glass, just as a barrage of bullets are fired his way. Carlyle screams as three bullets tear into his torso, then he falls into the snow, dead. Kuch and Steck also begin running away from their hiding place, only to have the posse open fire on them as they go. An estimate of 60 to 75 shots are fired at the two men, but neither of them are hit. When the shooting stops, Kuch and Steck reappear before the posse, who tell them that they were shooting at them by mistake, that they thought it was the outlaws trying to flee the house.
A short time later, with their leader dead, the posse withdraws and rides back towards White Oaks. Carlyle's body is left where it fell; no one in the posse felt like risking their lives by going that close to the house to retrieve the corpse. Greathouse, who was unharmed by the posse, and Kuch and Steck mount up on their horses and ride to the neighboring Spencer ranch, where they stay for the rest of the night. When the return the next morning, the Kid, Dave, and Wilson are gone, having left before dawn to ride to their headquarters of Fort Sumner. Two days later, a mob burns every building of the Greathouse-Kuch ranch to the ground. Following this, they also burn down the Spencer ranch.
But who killed Deputy Carlyle? With him trying to make an escape, it's likely that the outlaws, two of which were drunk and also thinking their friend Greathouse was just killed, would open fire on him. At the same time, it's also possible that as he jumped through the window, the posse, nervous and cold, may have thought he was an outlaw trying to escape and shot him. Maybe both parties fired at him. Billy the Kid later wrote a letter to Gov. Lew Wallace professing his innocence in the matter, maintaining that Carlyle indeed was shot by his own men. However, Billy's word here may not be the best, since he probably would have written to Wallace saying he didn't kill Carlyle no matter what; he was, afterall, still trying to get a pardon out of the governor, and new murder hanging over his head wouldn't do much to help his cause. One big piece of evidence that it was indeed the outlaws that killed Carlyle, or at least that they fired at him, is that Dave Rudabaugh said they did. After the outlaws were eventually captured by Pat Garrett and his posse at the end of December, they were being hauled on a train from Las Vegas to Santa Fe. As a lynch mob at the Vegas depot tried to steal the outlaws, Wilson asked Deputy James Bell (a White Oaks posse member) to help him. Bell's response to Wilson was that it was a "hard thing to ask of me after you killed Carlyle in cold blood." Wilson hung his head then responded that he didn't shoot at Carlyle and tried to prevent the Kid and Rudabaugh from doing so. Angered, the nearby Rudabaugh shouted out, "You are a damned liar! We all three shot at him. You and I fired one shot apiece and the Kid twice." To that, Wilson had no response. Therefore, it seems likely that it was indeed the outlaws that killed Carlyle, or at the very least that they did shoot at him.
Rustlers involved
White Oaks posse
