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"Billy the Kid has taken them there to that deserted spot to murder them."

It turned out as Ash Upson prophesied. Morton and Baker were murdered at Agua Negra but the details of the tragedy are still an enigma. There was a story generally believed in those days and widely believed now that when the posse reached Agua Negra, Billy the Kid marched Morton and Baker a little apart from the posse and, on the margin of the water hole, while they begged on their knees for their lives, blew out their brains. Billy the Kid and the members of the posse, however, stoutly denied this and gave their own account of the affair, which at least seems plausible and may be true.

As the posse approached Black Water Spring, according to Billy the Kid's account, the Kid and Charlie Bowdre were riding in the lead, McCloskey and Middleton were jogging beside the two prisoners, and the other possemen were strung out in the rear. Suddenly Frank McNab and Hendry Brown spurred up their horses and drew rein alongside of McCloskey and Middleton.

"So you are the brave hero," roared McNab to McCloskey, "who will die before he sees these two fellows killed. All right. We'll send you to hell along with them."

He stuck his six-shooter into McCloskey's face and pulled the trigger. The flame leaping from the muzzle burned McCloskey's eyebrows and blackened his skin with powder burns and he fell out of his saddle dead.

When he heard the shot, so the tale goes, Billy the Kid turned to see Morton and Baker spurring their ponies in a breakneck dash for liberty. He made no attempt to pursue but, sitting still on his horse, fired twice. Morton and Baker threw up their hands and, toppling over backward, plunged lifeless to the ground.