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offered a reward of one hundred dollars apiece for the scalps of McSween men, Roberts, his enemies say, went gunning for Murphy's foes with the design of feathering his nest with some of this blood money. Frank Coe, who was at Blazer's sawmill when Roberts made his last fight, still alludes to him as "one of Murphy's scalp hunters." But the fact that he never took any scalps and never shot anybody and never got any blood money might seem to discredit this story. There was, too, a rumour that Roberts was a fugitive from justice and was wanted in Texas for murder. There was another that he was a deserter from the army. So a certain mystery still clings to Roberts. But nobody cared about his past. Neither did his sympathies in the vendetta, one way or the other or neither way, arouse any special interest or comment. Bill Roberts was generally regarded as a man of no consequence.

Soon after the murder of Morton and Baker at Black Water Spring, Billy the Kid and Charlie Bowdre had a brush with Roberts in the neighbourhood of San Patricio on the Ruidoso. Roberts is said to have fired on them without warning, and in the little battle that followed a number of shots were exchanged without injury to any of the combatants. The details of this fight are vague. How or why an encounter between such desperate fighting men ended ingloriously without bloodshed, nobody to-day seems to know. It may have been this skirmish that caused the McSween faction to swear out a warrant against Roberts. On what charge the warrant was based is not known, but there was such a warrant, and it was in the hands of Special Constable Dick Brewer when he set out from Lincoln for the lower country on his second scouting expedition after McSween's enemies.

Brewer had with him on this man-hunt Billy the Kid,