Lincoln County War

The Lincoln County War enters the novel not through a battle scene but through a conversation at the jail in Santa Fe. Violate Lacey recognizes the imprisoned Billy the Kid as a participant with the Regulators and praises what they did, presenting the conflict as a history whose reputation, in her view, has not received its due.

The War Recalled at the Jail

As Violate and Lizzy Enders walk past the Governor’s Palace on Central Plaza, Violate stops at a large grillwork door and greets Billy the Kid, whom she knows. She tells him she is proud of his part with the Regulators in the Lincoln County War and gives him candy. The brief encounter makes the war tangible in the present: its remembered participant is young, imprisoned, and close enough for a visitor to speak with him through the jail’s barrier.

Violate’s account is admiring rather than explanatory. She does not recount the conflict’s causes, battles, or outcome; instead, she insists that the Regulators’ actions were underappreciated. Her judgment supplies the novel’s clearest interpretation of the war while also showing how the past survives through personal loyalties and selective recollection.

Billy the Kid and Conflicting Impressions

After leaving the jail, Violate compares Billy to Jesse James and confidently predicts that he will escape. Lizzy doubts that the prisoner can really be Billy the Kid, reasoning that the girls at school would surely have heard if he were in Santa Fe. The exchange sets Violate’s familiarity and certainty against Lizzy’s youthful skepticism. The novel leaves the prediction as Violate’s belief; this encounter alone does not confirm what happens to Billy afterward.

The contrast also shapes how the war reaches the reader. Rather than supplying an authoritative history, the scene offers an eyewitness-like social encounter filtered through Violate’s opinions and Lizzy’s uncertainty. The Lincoln County War is recalled as a contested reputation: Violate sees the Regulators as deserving recognition, while Lizzy is still unsure whether the notorious prisoner before them is who Violate says he is.

Distinction from the Civil War Narrative

The novel also recounts the American Civil War through the losses and movements of the Lacey family. Robert Lacey secretly joined the army, was killed at Ball’s Bluff in Virginia in the fall of 1861, and was brought west for burial after efforts to recover his body. His body arrived by wagon on the Santa Fe Trail as Confederate forces were advancing toward Santa Fe; after the Confederate defeat at Glorieta Pass, the family remained in New Mexico. These details give the story a separate wartime chronology, but the text does not date the Lincoln County War in relation to those events or present the two conflicts as the same war.

Violate’s later reflections on war emphasize its persistence in memory: victory does not end the hold that the past has on either side. That perspective resonates with her defense of the Regulators, but the novel keeps the conflicts distinct. The Lincoln County War is encountered through Billy and Violate’s judgment of his past, while the Civil War is carried through the family’s bereavement, Robert’s grave, and the lasting burden of remembrance.