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Christmas Eve in old Fort Sumner. Good cheer and happiness in the air. Latchstrings hanging out. Warm-hearted hospitality in every home. Healths pledged in cheerful bumpers in old Beaver Smith's saloon. A great amphora of egg-nog standing invitingly on José Valdez's bar. Women with happy faces slipping through the streets with furtive bundles tucked beneath rebozos. Deluvina Maxwell, the Navajo servant, roasting the family turkey in the Maxwell kitchen. Christmas trees hung with gifts and lighted with wax tapers to be seen through the windows. Happy little ones tucked in beds to dream of Santa Claus. Snow on the ground; the Pecos frozen over; a clear sky spangled with stars.

There was to be a great ball in Fort Sumner on Christmas night. All the gay young fellows and the pretty girls of the upper Pecos Valley were to attend. Paulita Maxwell had had a costly gown made for the occasion by a fashionable modiste in Las Vegas. Billy the Kid and his merry men were to ride in and give the affair its last touch of dashing gaiety. The gallant young outlaw, so the village gossip ran, had sent word that he would surely be present. And, his message added, he would come in from the north by the Texas road and arrive in Fort Sumner late on Christmas Eve.

Barney Mason, having a sly and eager ear for village gossip, spurred hard across bleak, wintry wastes to carry these tidings to Sheriff Pat Garrett at Roswell ninety miles away. To Garrett the welcome news was like a direct message from Billy the Kid inviting him to keep an appointment and setting the trysting place. Hastily gathering together fifteen men seasoned in fighting and upon whose courage he could rely, he set out for Fort Sumner and, by hard riding, reached it on Christmas Eve.