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gan to move. Deputy Sheriff Tom Malloy of Las Vegas had jumped into the engine cab and thrown the throttle wide open. With a rattle and click of wheels on rails, the train gathered quick headway and went skimming out of town, leaving the baffled mob cursing, yelling, shaking impotent fists.

Billy the Kid and the three other prisoners finally were landed in the jail at Santa Fé, the penitentiary now there not having yet been built. Placed on trial for the murder of the Las Vegas jailer, Rudabaugh was sentenced to be hanged. Sent back to Las Vegas, he broke jail a second time and never was heard of again in that country nor is it known to this day what became of him. Pickett and Wilson, after serving a jail sentence in Santa Fé, were set at liberty and returned to peaceful pursuits. Billy the Kid was taken to Mesilla in March for trial.

Mesilla was not unfamiliar to the young outlaw. In the little town, predominantly Mexican, on the west bank of the Rio Grande opposite Las Cruces, he had been baptized for all time in quaint cowboy nomenclature as Billy the Kid. Here, too, he had adventured pleasantly in younger days with Jesse Evans, Jim McDaniels, Billy Morton, and Frank Baker, the latter two murdered by him at Agua Negra. But only a few gamblers and saloon keepers had now any definite memories of the boy who once had hung about the town bars and picked up a precarious living at faro and monte. Everybody knew him by reputation, however, and everybody wanted to see the famous man-killer who for years had terrorized New Mexico.

The trial was a memorable event in Mesilla's history. The town was crowded as it never had been before. Country folk came in from miles around. Wagons and