That this New Mexico rancher named John Miller is really none other than Billy the Kid--that may well be a stretch. After all, he's not the only hombre in the West who made that claim after Billy died--or was supposed to have--when Sheriff Pat Garrett gunned him down in the dark at Fort Sumner. Some folks in and around the Zuni pueblo swore the rancher was really the outlaw.
And you may think it's a stretch to believe that a fire-and-brimstone Calvinist missionary way out there in New Mexico got to be buddies with a rancher who once was a gunslinger named Billy the Kid. If that's your hangup, then quit now because there's a couple more sharp turns in this story, and one of 'em needs some fill in. Stay with me.
There's a Zuni guy named Maricio, who got to liking the missionary couple whose name was--and I'm not making this up although I could have--Vander Wagon. He came to like them because once upon a time when he was really in need, they cared. It's that simple.
A Zuni woman was thought to be demon-possessed. Such things happen. Four local medicine men were there, all around her, when Maricio brought the Vander Wagons into her place to see if they couldn't do what the locals couldn't. Now Effa was a nurse, which made her something of an angel when the pueblo went to battle with an influenza bug. Think of her as a savior. Some did.
That night, with four locals looking on disgustedly, Effa administered some kind of medicine--history doesn't record what. But when she did, the woman thought to be possessed was left by whatever ill was assumed to possess her. That healing, to Maricio, a was a miracle. That the locals thought is not recorded.
So Maricio started hanging around the mission. He knew good medicine when he saw it, I suppose. Whether or not he became a Christian or even attended Vander Wagon's worship services isn't part of the story. What we know is that Maricio liked the Vander Wagons. A lot.
So one day, John Miller/Billy the Kid asked Maricio why the missionary walked around the pueblo with such a long face. Maricio said it was because fiery Brother Andrew wasn't seeing any fruits on his labors--the church was empty as a cave, day after day, night after night.
So Miller and the boys, the other ranchers, white guys, decided they'd fill a few seats in that sanctuary themselves, so they did. Sundays, ex-Billy the Kid did a forty-mile round trip to Zuni pueblo and back to attend Christian worship led by Brimstone Brother Andrew.
It is not recorded whether old Billy--or whoever he was--turned his heart over to Jesus, only that, at least for a time, he and his wife and son attended church services at the mission on Zuni pueblo--and that the two of them, Miller and missionary got to be, out there, fast friends.
And that, my friends, is the story, as much as I know, at least.
ADDENDUM: Andrew Vander Wagon was born in the Netherlands, where he lost a father. His mother got a letter from her sister in Michigan, the United States, telling her to come to America with her two boys, where life would be better. So she did, to Grand Rapids, Michigan.
That sister was my great-grandmother, which means that somewhere in some on Ancestry.com, Andrew Vander Wagon and I are family, which is why I can say today that I'd like to think, way back when, some long distant relative of mine, a pioneer missionary in Zuni, New Mexico, used to preach the gospel to Billy the Kid.
That whole thing is a stretch, I know. But me and Cousin Andrew, who's really and maybe you too, we'd say, I'm sure, that grace too is a stretch, a divine one at that.
Most all of this comes to me by way of Helen Airy, Whatever Happened to Billy the Kid? Sunstone Press, 1993. Most of Airy's material about the Vander Wagons she attributes to Elaine Thomas, a granddaughter of Andrew and Effa.
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