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drawling speech and a dry, sly humour, and though his gray eyes looked rather tragic and the expression of his asymmetrical face was saturnine, there was usually a smile or a laugh just beneath the surface.
It is interesting to know that Garrett, who was Billy the Kid's friend for two years, who played monte with him, drank with him, and danced with the same Mexican girls at Fort Sumner, and who at last stalked him and killed him, placed a high estimate on the Kid as a man and a fighter.
"The Kid was a likable fellow," said Garrett. "He was quiet. There wasn't any fuss or bluster in him. He was not quarrelsome; he never hunted trouble. If you'd never met him before or heard of him, you'd have thought him a mild, inoffensive sort of boy. You certainly never would have taken him for a fighter or a killer. But there was something about him even when he was friendliest that made you feel that he was mighty dangerous to take any liberties with. I don't know what it was, but it was something and you could feel it. I never saw him mad in my life; I hardly remember him when he wasn't smiling; but he was the most murderous youth that ever stood in shoe leather, and he was game all the way through. He had everything that goes into the make-up of a desperado—cold nerve, the killer's instinct, and marvellous quickness and sureness with a six shooter.
"When I was elected sheriff, he and I broke friendship. When I started in to hunt him down, I hoped to capture him; I didn't want to kill him. I was happy when I took him alive at Stinking Spring. I expected he'd be put away in prison for a long term. Just when I thought my troubles were over, he made his escape at Lincoln. If there was ever any such marvellous escape as that before,