Page:Saga of Billy the Kid.djvu/322

in his back between the shoulder blades, dropping him dead. I was glad, because if the Mexican hadn't killed him, I'd have had to do it myself.

"The reward was a sizable sum of money and the Indian Nations sheriff offered to give it all to me; but I wouldn't take it nor any part of it. I didn't want any pay for doing a fellow officer a little courtesy like that. I had done only what I'd have expected him to do if I had happened to drop over into his country on a little matter of business. That sheriff, after that, always thought pretty well of me. A little politeness goes a long ways."

Billy Wilson was one man who held Garrett in an esteem little short of worship. Wilson had ridden with Billy the Kid and was captured in the fight at Stinking Spring. He was a handsome, dashing young outlaw, but of his many adventures none was more dramatic than the episode that occurred long after his days of adventure were supposed to be over and through which he learned for the first time the kindly generous human side of the sheriff who had once pursued him with deadly purpose.

After Wilson had been released from the Santa Fé jail, he settled down under a new name to peaceful pursuits near Uvalde in Texas. He was at first a cowboy, then a ranch foreman, and eventually acquired a ranch and cattle of his own. When Garrett, then sheriff of Doña Ana County in New Mexico, visited Uvalde, Wilson was married and prosperous, his outlaw past a dim memory to himself and known only to one or two intimate friends in that part of the country who guarded his secret closely.

One old Federal warrant charging mail robbery still stood against Wilson. It was like a past reaching out clutching fingers for him. As long as that old warrant