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Garrett and East cut the ropes of two of the ponies with bullets and the frightened animals galloped away. Garrett killed the third horse, which fell in such a position that its body blocked the doorway. It was a piece of strategy that rendered the two horses inside useless to the outlaws. No chance now for the Kid to ride out of the door and make a wolf-dart for freedom.

Garrett opened a parley; across the thirty feet intervening between besiegers and besieged it was possible to carry on a conversation with distinctness.

"You'd better surrender, Billy," called Garrett. "You haven't a chance to escape. You won't have any more chance to-night than you have to-day. If you fellows try to make a dash, we'll kill you as fast as you come out the door."

"Go to hell, Pat," sang out Billy cheerfully. "You haven't got me yet. I'll show you a trick or two by and bye."

Garrett heard the outlaws picking with their knives at the mortar between the stones on the far side of the house with evident design to open a hole, through which escape after nightfall might be attempted. He sent East and Emory around the house to guard against such an eventuality.

Never before had the Kid been in more desperate plight; nor in one more poignantly uncomfortable. The one chance in a million seemed lacking. The door, which offered the one avenue of escape, opened on sure death. He and his men had had nothing to eat since breakfast the day before. Hungry and numb with cold, they sat miserably in their bleak prison and debated contingencies.

"It looks bad," Billy the Kid was heard to remark. "But you never can tell. We may get a chance yet.