The Saga of Billy the Kid/Chapter 10

The hush of a July night lay upon Lincoln. The dark, silent town seemed asleep under the peaceful stars.

But behind the bastion-like walls of the Murphy store warlike preparations were toward. Within the deep seclusion of Murphy's old office Sheriff Peppin held council with Jimmy Dolan, Marion Turner, John Kinney, Andy Boyle, Old Man Pearce, and other leaders of the Murphy faction.

"We've got the Kid at last," declared Peppin. "There ain't no way for him to get away. We'll get him this time, dead or alive."

The Kid, with half-a-dozen other McSween partisans, fresh from the fight at Chisum's South Spring Ranch, had ridden in a few hours before and taken refuge in the McSween residence. Deputy Sheriff Turner, with twenty-five men, having trailed him all the way from the Pecos, had arrived in Lincoln a little later.

"With Turner's posse, we've got sixty men in all," said Peppin. "Nineteen Americans, the rest Mexicans. All good fighters. The Kid ain’t got no idea how many of us he's got to fight. He thinks he'll have easy picking. But he's in a trap. We'll spring it on him."

"There's enough of us to rush the McSween house," advised Dolan.

​"No use in that," cautioned Kinney. "We got the Kid dead to rights without takin' no chances."

"The Kid's a wise hombre," reflected Peppin. "If we propose that he surrender, I believe, under the circumstances, he'll listen to reason."

"That's right," cut in Old Man Pearce. "He's liable to get some of us if we shoot it out with him."

But how to open negotiations with the Kid was a problem. The man who attempted a parley might acquire a bullet.

"I think I know how," said Turner.

With Dolan and Kinney, Turner slipped into the bottom land along the Bonito River and crept up behind the McSween barn. There, standing sheltered from possible shots, he set up a lusty hailing cry. To this halloo, the Kid responded through a crack in the kitchen door.

"We've got you surrounded, Kid," shouted Turner. "If you make a fight, we'll kill you all to the last man. If you'll surrender, we'll promise you won't be hurt."

Something that sounded suspiciously like laughter came from the crack in the kitchen door.

"It's no joke, Kid. You better surrender."

"Surrender to a bunch of hounds like you? What six kinds of a fool do you think I am?"

"We'll guarantee you protection."

"I'll stay where I am and protect myself. If you want me, come and get me. Go back to your gang and tell 'em to turn on the fireworks. We're ready for you."

Out of the east end of town came a rumble of horses' hoofs, a chorus of zipping yells, scattered shots. Turner and his companions did not wait to learn the cause but, breaking short the conference, rejoined Sheriff Peppin. Faction Leader McSween had ridden into town from his ​camp on the Ruidoso with a tail of thirty-five Mexican fighting men at his back.

When Turner and his posse rode in from Roswell, Martin Chavez, deputy under Sheriff Copeland and a McSween partisan, had spurred hard for McSween's camp to carry the news of the Kid's perilous predicament. Forthwith, McSween and his henchmen had mounted in haste and come to Lincoln on the run. This strong reinforcement materially altered the situation, which thereafter did not look so dark. Under cover of the night, McSween and several of his Mexican allies slipped into the McSween home without drawing enemy fire and joined the Kid, who welcomed them with no little enthusiasm.

The Murphy forces held the Murphy store and hotel. The buildings were in the west end of town within fifty yards of the McSween house, the hotel on the same side of the street, the store on the other. High on the hillsides on the south side of the cañon, Murphy sharpshooters commanded the entire village.

The McSween men under Chavez garrisoned the Montaña and Patron houses in the east end of Lincoln. Charlie Bowdre, George Coe, and Hendry Brown were posted in the McSween store, a little to the west of the McSween house. With McSween in his home were Billy the Kid, Tom O'Folliard, Jim French, Doc Skurlock, Harvey Morris, Francisco Semora, Ignacio Gonzales, Vincente Romero, José Chavez y Chavez, and Ygenio Salazar. Three women also were in the house—Mrs. McSween, Mrs. Elizabeth Shield, her sister, and Mrs. Ealy, wife of the Presbyterian minister whom McSween had brought out to Lincoln from the East and who held services every Sunday in the McSween store.

With the long vendetta about to break in murderous ​battle climax, McSween still leaned upon the Lord for divine intervention that would avert the tragedy that was now inevitable. He spent the night in prayer. On his knees in his room, he talked with God as if face to face and pleaded for the miracle. "Touch, O Lord, the hearts of our enemies with Thy goodness and mercy. . . . Guide them in the better way. . . . Send down Thy blessing of peace."

When Billy the Kid and the others gathered for breakfast next morning they were in high spirits and ready for battle. With witty sallies and gay bantering talk they inspected their rifles and six-shooters. Mrs. McSween, Mrs. Shield, and Mrs. Ealy bustled between kitchen and dining room loading the table with steaming dishes. McSween entered with his Bible in his hand.

There was in his appearance the solemnity and austerity of an ancient prophet. His tall, spare form was erect with the serene courage of one who fancies himself panoplied by angels. His face, pale from his sleepless vigil, shone with supreme and abiding faith. In his eyes was a look of apocalyptic vision as of one who sees beyond earthly horizons the loom of "opal towers and battlements adorned of living sapphire." Taking his place at the head of the table, he bowed his head in his hand and said grace.

Came a crash of rifles from the Murphy clan shooting from the windows of the Murphy store and hotel. The balls thudded against the adobe walls of the McSween house and tore ragged holes through the window shutters, bursting the panes and scattering fragments of glass over the floor.

A look of pained surprise for an instant swept McSween's face. He had prayed for peace. Bullets were his answer.

​"Where's your gun, Mr. McSween?" queried the Kid.

"I have no gun," replied McSween. "I have never owned one. I have never fired one in my life."

"But you'll lend a hand and do some fighting now?"

"God forbid."

"But we're in for it good and plenty. We've got to fight for our lives. Every man will count."

"I would rather die than stain my soul with the blood of my fellow man," replied McSween with deep solemnity.

"I have no need to commit that great sin. God is my refuge and strength. He will protect me."

A cynical smile twisted a corner of the Kid's mouth.

"All right, governor," he returned good-naturedly. "Go ahead and trust in the Lord. The rest of us'll trust in our six-shooters."

He threw open the shutters, useless for defense. Through the open windows, he and his men replied to the volleys of the enemy.

The battle developed quickly all along the line. While the Murphy forces hidden in store and hotel concentrated their fusillades on the McSween home, their sharpshooters, ranging along the hills at the south side of the cañon, poured an incessant fire upon Chavez's men in the Montaña and Patron houses.

"Kind of a tame fight," remarked the Kid as the day of random firing drew toward a close. "Those Murphy fellows stay under cover. I can't get a good, square crack at anybody. We better sneak out of here to-night and join up with Chavez. Then we can chase the Murphy gang out of town."

"We will stay where we are," said McSween. "We must free our hearts of hatred and deadliness. 'Vengeance is mine,' saith the Lord. We must remain on the ​defensive. I still have faith that God will put a stop to this sad affair before blood has been spilled."

In view of McSween's attitude, the Kid had apprehensions that the battle might lengthen into a siege. After darkness had fallen, he brought indoors two barrels of rain-water standing in the sheltered court. These would provide the little garrison with enough water for drinking and cooking purposes for a number of days.

McSween's faith was strengthened and renewed when the fighting ceased for the night without loss of life on either side. It seemed to him a Heaven-given sign that his prayers had been heard. He returned thanks to God on his knees and went to bed beside his Bible. . . .

Among the rocks on the steep hill that rose above the Montaña and Patron houses crawled Lucio Montoya and Charlie Crawford, crack riflemen of the Murphy faction. They settled into position side by side behind two huge boulders. Below them in the early morning sunlight lay the silent town, its long, winding street blocked and striped with the shadows of houses, trees, and fence-posts.

"Not a soul in sight," observed Crawford. "Town looks like nobody lived in it."

"All the people scared to come out," replied Montoya.

A quarter of a mile away they could see the McSween house, its adobe stucco chipped and scarred by bullets. Smoke began to ascend from its chimney.

"McSween's cooking breakfast."

"Si, compadre."

"We're in a good spot. Ought to be able to pick off some of them Chavez fellers from here."

"Mira, amigo!" Montoya's voice rose scarcely above a whisper.

Martin Chavez emerged from the Patron house and ​started to walk across the short space that separated it from the Montaña dwelling.

Montoya and Crawford snapped their rifles into position. Two bullets knocked up the ground at Chavez's feet.

"Darn poor shootin', I call that," said Crawford.

"Purty far," replied Montoya philosophically.

"Well, pard, let's wake 'em up."

They began to fire steadily. For hours they kept it up. Through the windows and doors of the two houses that sheltered Chavez's men crashed the bullets of the concealed marksmen.

Fernando Herrera of Chavez's command was famed among his people for his skill with a rifle. For a long time he scrutinized the hillside through a pair of field glasses. At every shot, Crawford and Montoya for an instant showed head and shoulders at exactly the same spot from behind their boulders.

Through a crack in the back door of the Montaña house Herrera drew a bead with his long-range buffalo rifle upon the spot at which Crawford would appear. He waited for a moment with his finger on the trigger. Crawford's rifle worked into position from behind the rock. His right shoulder appeared. His head came into view as he sighted along the barrel. Whang! Herrera's bullet went singing upward across the intervening space of nine hundred yards—afterward measured. It struck the hammer of Crawford's gun, veered at a slight angle, and ploughed through his body, breaking his back. Crawford's yell echoed up and down the cañon. He catapulted into the air, tumbled off a ledge, and came rolling and plunging down to the bottom of the hill. He fetched up on a level space at the edge of a field of standing corn which shielded ​him from sight of his enemies. There, wounded to the death, he lay in the broiling sun all day. He was dead when a searching party found him at night.

Montoya was Herrera's next problem, and he solved it in the same way. Herrera trained his rifle through the crack in the door on the spot at which he calculated Montoya would appear. He had not long to wait. Possibly Montoya was a little excited over the wounding of his comrade, possibly a little eager to avenge the injury. He was a little less cautious than had been his wont. When next he made ready to fire, he exposed half his body in a half-kneeling position, an elbow resting on one knee to steady his aim. Again Herrera's rifle cracked, again his bullet buzzed like an angry bumblebee across the wide gap of air, and Montoya collapsed behind his boulder with a shattered leg. There he, too, lay for the remainder of the day, groaning in agony, the hot sun beating upon him.

Crawford's death yell sounded with piercing shrillness in the McSween home.

"One less Murphy man," commented the Kid with a note of satisfaction. "They sure got that fellow."

But the cry of agony filled McSween's soul with awe and foreboding. Had his prayers been in vain? Would God withhold the miracle?

"I do not like that," he said. "Let us hope the poor man has not been killed. A God of love will not turn a deaf ear to my supplications. Out of the darkness He will speak and bring peace."

"Here's a rifle, Mr. McSween," said the Kid, thrusting a gun toward him. "Straight shooting will do more good than prayer."

But McSween raised his hand with a gesture of abhorrence.

​"Never!" he exclaimed. "I will not be tempted into such ungodliness."

Colonel N. A. M. Dudley, commandant, sat in his office at Fort Stanton, busy with the day's routine. Through the window he saw a woman, bedraggled and plainly labouring under great excitement, hurrying toward him across the parade ground. In a moment she burst into the room like an apparition, pale, wild of eye, her clothing torn.

"For God's sake, bring your soldiers to Lincoln." Her voice was almost a scream. "The clans are fighting. This is the third day. They will fight till the last man is killed. Dead are lying in the street. The women and children will be murdered. The town will be destroyed. The people are afraid. They are cooped up in their homes. I am Mrs. Juanita Mills. I could not stand it any longer. I slipped out of town before dawn and have hurried on foot across the hills—nine miles. I have come to beg you to save us—the mothers, the babies, our homes. Only the troops can stop this madness. There is still time. But hurry. For God's sake, hurry."

The morning silence was shattered by the bugles. "Boots and Saddles" set the echoes flying among the hills. There was instant bustle of preparation. Scurrying officers shouted commands. Troopers in broken streaks began to converge toward the stables. Two squadrons of Negro cavalry, with two gatling guns and Colonel Dudley in command, were soon moving at double-quick on the road to Lincoln.

Murphy lookouts on watch at the upper windows of the Murphy store caught sight of a cloud of dust rising to the west in the direction of the Double Crossing of the ​Bonito. Puzzled as to what it might portend, they summoned Sheriff Peppin. A strong body of horsemen was approaching. But who were they? The Murphy leaders were expecting no reinforcements. If the riders under that cloud of dust were McSween partisans, the Murphy faction would better lose no time in taking to the hills. Their cause was lost.

"Fetch me my field glasses," Peppin called to one of his under-strappers.

The Murphy sheriff took a quick squint through the glasses. His weather-beaten face broke in the parchment-like wrinkles of a smile. The riddle was solved.

"Soldiers! Colonel Dudley is bringing in his old army buffalo troopers. I don't know what he aims to do. But it's all right, boys. He's our friend."

Soon the long, blue-uniformed column, rounding a bend in the road, came marching into Lincoln, sabres clanking, carbines unslung, Colonel Dudley and his officers riding ahead. Two gatling guns rolled smoothly along between the squadrons, awe-inspiring weapons in that day, mysterious in their lethal capability, efficient in slithering death. A train of four-mule wagons loaded with tenting and camp equipment brought up the rear.

As the cavalcade clattered past the Murphy store, cheers came with muffled faintness from the abysmal depths of the old building, those who lifted joyous voices not daring to show themselves at the windows for fear a random McSween volley might cut short their enthusiasm. Colonel Dudley halted his command in front of the McSween home, a few days before the smartest house in town, decrepit-looking now, grown venerable overnight from the batterings of battle. He sent an aide inside to summon McSween.

​While the black troopers lounged at ease in their saddles, Murphy men came pouring into the road from their store and hotel fortresses and crowded about the McSween home. There was no danger now. They were under the ægis of the army. No McSween partisan was so desperate as to dare to flout the majesty of Uncle Sam by a pot-shot at Murphy foes. Nor were the beleaguered guardians of the McSween stronghold backward in curiosity. They, too, swarmed into the road and stood silent in front of the building, awaiting developments, their rifles resting in the crook of their arms, their restless eyes keeping suspicious watch upon their enemies.

Obedient to Colonel Dudley's summons, McSween stepped out the door of his home, halted at the throat-latch of the colonel's charger, and stood facing the stern-visaged soldier sitting rigidly erect in his saddle.

"Mister McSween," said Colonel Dudley in stentorian tones. . . .

But Jimmy Dolan did not wait to hear the import of the message Colonel Dudley was about to deliver to "Mister McSween." In the excitement aroused by the halting of the cavalry squadrons in front of the McSween home, Jimmy Dolan recognized an opportunity. He slipped unnoticed through the crowd along the line of troops toward the Murphy hotel, picking up Old Man Pearce, Charlie Hall, and that harum-scarum old ruffian and blackguard, Andy Boyle, on his way.

"It's our chance, boys," he said in cautious undertones. "Quick now. Come with me."

For a few brief moments the four conspirators rummaged about the hotel and its purlieus. Then they plunged down an embankment behind the hostelry and, hidden from view from the road, went at a run across the ​bottoms of the Bonito. Up the embankment they scrambled in the rear of the McSween barn and so came at last into the McSween backyard. In one hand Dolan carried a can of kerosene and in the other a tin cup. Andy Boyle brought a wash basket filled with shavings and chips. Old Man Pearce and Charlie Hall bore armloads of kindling and faggots of pitch pine.

The column of troops was standing at ease in the road fifty feet away. Billy the Kid and his fighting men, Mrs. McSween, Mrs. Shield, Mrs. Ealy, every member of the McSween garrison, were at the front of the house. McSween still stood at the throat-latch of the colonel's charger. The back of the house was deserted. In the rapt silence of the moment, Colonel Dudley's every word rang clear to the four men at their secret business in McSween's backyard.

"Mr. McSween," said Colonel Dudley in stentorian tones, "this fighting must end at once."

"I am powerless to end it," replied McSween.

"You must cease firing," ordered Colonel Dudley.

"Pile on your kindling, Pearce," said Jimmy Dolan. "That's the stuff. Now your pitch pine, Hall. That's good."

"I will be glad to cease firing," responded McSween, "if the Murphy faction ceases also. The Murphy side started this battle. We are besieged—besieged in my own home. We are fighting for our lives. End the attack upon us and you will end the battle."

"Stand back a little, boys," said Jimmy Dolan. "Give me a chance to souse on the coal oil."

Over the mass of shavings, kindling, and pitch pine piled high against McSween's back door Dolan slashed the kerosene. Filling his tin cup, he dashed quantities ​over door and lintels from top to bottom. On the sills of the windows he spread shavings and saturated them with oil. Over the window shutters and every piece of woodwork he threw cupfuls of the inflammable liquid until his can was empty.

"I have given you my orders, Mr. McSween." Colonel Dudley's voice had in it the ring of finality. "See that they are obeyed. Stop your fighting or suffer the consequences."

The colonel turned to his bugler with a sharp command.

"Now, strike your matches and touch her off," said Jimmy Dolan.

The staccato notes of the bugle sounded in the street. "Forward!" sang the trumpet. There was a rattle of arms as the troopers straightened to attention and dressed their ranks. The column got slowly under way.

The oil-drenched pile exploded into a mass of fire that shot up to the roof. As Dolan and his companions sprang down the embankment into the bottom-lands, a thin veil of blue-white fire was rippling and shimmering over door and window shutters. Fiery little tongues were curling eagerly about the woodwork as if relishing appetizing food. Slender red streamers that flashed to the shingles of the roof waved and fluttered like pennons of victory.

Clatter of accoutrements, pounding of hoofs, creaking of gun carriages, grew faint in the distance, fainter still, and ceased. Whitish smoke, soft, billowy, rose from the roof of the McSween home and drifted in a lurid mist into the empty street.

No sooner had the cavalry column got in motion than McSween and his group of home-defenders hurried back inside the house.

"Old Dudley made it plain as daylight that we must ​stop shooting," sneered Billy the Kid. "But I notice he didn't tell the Murphy gang to cease firing. Why not? They were standing all around him."

Mrs. McSween sniffed the air suspiciously.

"I smell smoke," she cried. "What can be burning?"

She hurried into the next room. The acrid smell of fire was more distinct. As she passed through the door into the room beyond, a blue shadowy snake of smoke wriggled slowly toward her in midair.

"Fire!"

The men rushed after her. As they darted into the back room they stopped short, hardly able to breathe. Through the thick swirls they saw the door and the shutters of the windows crumbling in charred fragments beneath the flames. As they stood there in momentary daze a section of the roof came crashing down in blazing ruin upon the floor. In an instant the situation of the little garrison had rushed to desperate crisis. The house that had been their refuge and fortress had been transformed into a death trap.

Beleaguered by the deadly rifles of their foes, they now had a more dangerous enemy to fight. There might yet be time to save the building. They rushed to the two barrels of rain water. Pitiful supply it was with which to battle a conflagration. In pails and kettles and dishpans, they carried water to dash upon the flames. The hopelessness of their task was soon apparent. The back room was now a fiery furnace. The walls were bellying outward with the heat; the partition was tottering. Flames were leaping and crackling along the roof. Black smoke was boiling into the sky.

The McSween residence was of one story, built of adobe brick about three sides of a court that was open at the ​rear. It contained twelve rooms, four in the main portion which fronted on the street, four in the west wing, four in the east wing. Dolan and his destroying angels had kindled the fire at the rear of the west wing. A wind from the east was blowing the flames and sparks away from the other part of the house. If the wind held, the destruction of the entire building could be compassed only when the flames had passed from back to front of the west wing, across the front, and from front to back of the east wing.

After the fire had reached the interior through the collapse of portions of the roof, its progress was rapid. McSween's men ceased to fight it, seeing the futility of their efforts, and turned their attention to saving the furniture, hustling it from one room to another in advance of the flames.

Mrs. McSween's piano in the front room on the west side of the house was in the direct path of destruction. Famous instrument—the only piano in all eastern New Mexico—whose music had cheered all Lincoln; to whose melodies the boys and girls of the town had danced in the street; whose wagon-borne journey across mountains and plains had been a royal progress; and whose arrival had marked a red-letter day in Lincoln's calendar.

"Save my piano," wailed Mrs. McSween. "Let the fire rob me of everything else, but save my precious piano."

The men took hold with a will and in the crisis Billy the Kid won new laurels as a piano-mover. From room to room across the front of the building they lifted and dragged the instrument laboriously, and landed it in the front room on the east side, far from the flames.

"There!" cried Mrs. McSween joyously. "It's safe—safe, at least, for the time being."

In her passing flash of happiness, she sat at the instru​ment and let her fingers wander among the keys. Snatches of old tunes took form beneath her touch like fugitive ghosts. Before she knew it she was playing "Home, Sweet Home." She sang a bar or two softly—"There's no place like home." The music seemed the voice of her tragedy. Her home was burning. In a little while, with all its associations of love and happiness, it would be a mere heap of ashes and blackened timbers. As the last note trembled into silence, she bowed her head upon the piano and her tears dropped upon the keys.

There was a crash at the west side of the house. Portions of the red-hot adobe walls had fallen outward leaving two great gaps. Through the gaps the Murphy men rained bullets. . . . McSween read a chapter in the Bible and offered up a prayer. . . . Billy the Kid and his little band, half-blinded by whirls of smoke, pumped their Winchesters. . . . A fragment of the roof caved in, narrowly missing the Kid. He stepped to one side with a smile. A Murphy bullet knocked a cigarette from between his lips. "Now that's too bad," he said cheerfully. "I'll have to roll another."

"Colonel Dudley is our only hope, boys," said Mrs. McSween at last. "That's almost no hope at all. I have no faith in him. But he is the only one who can save us now. The cowards of the Murphy crowd are watching and waiting to murder us all. Soon there will be no walls left to hide us. Then we must die unless help comes. Colonel Dudley can rescue us if he will—if he will. I'm going to his camp and ask him—beg him on my knees—to save us."

She caught up her bonnet and put it on—adjusted it neatly on her head, saw that it was on straight.

"You must not go, my dear," said McSween. "The ​Murphy men will kill you as soon as you step out the door."

"I'm going!"

She flung open the door and walked out. A cloud of smoke swooped down around her. Out of it she passed into the sunlight. Rifles began to crack from windows in the Murphy store. Bullets struck all about her. She paid no heed. She did not turn her head. A rifle ball struck so close it scattered dust over her skirt. She paused for a moment, stooped and brushed off the dust. Then she marched on down the road.

Colonel Dudley had gone into camp on open ground in the east end of town opposite San Juan Church, and having trained his gatling guns on the Montaña and Patron houses, sent for Martin Chavez in command of the McSween force garrisoning these two buildings.

"You see those guns?" Colonel Dudley said, pointing to the two pieces whose shining barrels bore upon the houses from directly across the road.

"Si, señor, I see," responded Chavez.

"If they should accidentally go off, they might blow those two houses down and kill your men."

"But, possibly, I do not understan'. You bring your soldiers for protec' life and property, no?"

"Exactly. That's what I'm here for. If your men fire another shot, the accident I spoke of may happen at any moment."

Chavez gave a shrug.

"It is best that you withdraw from Lincoln," Colonel Dudley continued. "I will grant you safe conduct out of town. But be sure you do not return or linger in the outskirts. If you take any further part in the fighting, I will send a troop of cavalry after you."

​Chavez and his men thereupon mounted their horses which had been kept in the stables of the Ellis house and rode out of town, Colonel Dudley keeping them covered all the while with his gatling guns. The retreat of Chavez left McSween and the ten men with him to fight out the battle alone. Mrs. McSween was the only woman left in her home. Mrs. Shields and Mrs. Ealy had already taken advantage of the screen of troops halted in front of the residence to seek safety with friends in another part of town.

When, several hours after Chavez's departure Mrs. McSween made her way to Colonel Dudley's tent, she found him sitting with Sheriff Peppin and John Kinney, of the Murphy faction.

"Well," said Colonel Dudley, looking at her coldly. "What is it you want?"

"You are aware, Colonel Dudley," said Mrs. McSween, "that my home is burning down?"

"I have seen some smoke," replied Colonel Dudley indifferently.

"While you were giving your orders to my husband, Murphy men set my house on fire."

"I would require proof of that."

"There is no doubt about it. But I did not come to argue with you. It is too late now to save my home. I have come to beg you to save our lives. You hear the volleys the Murphy men are pouring into my blazing home. Unless you stop this attack upon us, my husband and the ten men with him will be killed."

"I have no authority to interfere," replied Colonel Dudley.

"Then," said Mrs. McSween, gasping in amazement, "why have you brought your troops into Lincoln?"

​"I am here," returned the colonel sharply, "to assume charge only in case the situation escapes from the control of the civil authorities."

"'Civil authorities!'" echoed Mrs. McSween. "Who, pray, are these 'civil authorities'?"

"Sheriff Peppin here and the deputies under him."

"Sheriff Peppin is a Murphy partisan," Mrs. McSween flung back. "He is directing the attack upon us."

"Your men refused to surrender when called upon."

"If they had surrendered, they would have been massacred."

"I do not think so."

"The purpose of these 'civil authorities,' as you call them, is to murder as all. If the present situation does not warrant your interference, I can conceive of no situation which would. Force these lawless and conscienceless 'civil authorities' to stop their efforts to murder us. Let my home burn to the ground, but send your troops to save the lives of Mr. McSween and his men. Arrest them if necessary and give them protection as your prisoners."

"I am in command of United States troops," Colonel Dudley answered. "This is a civil matter—"

"It is barbarous!" cried Mrs. McSween.

"—and Sheriff Peppin seems to have the situation in hand. I will not interfere. I have no authority."

"So this is what it means to appeal to a soldier in the uniform of my country," shouted Mrs. McSween, now white with passion. "If my country's flag that flies in front of your tent cannot protect us, then God help us."

She returned to her home and groped back through the smoke into the flame-bright interior. The west wing and front of the house were gutted, blackened ruins. The fire ​was sweeping back over the east wing, the last remaining portion.

"Dudley refuses to interfere," she announced hopelessly.

Silence fell upon the doomed men, broken only by the crackling of the fire and the crash of charred timbers. For a long time Mrs. McSween paced the floor, wringing her hands.

"Dudley must interfere," she said at last as if to herself. "We are lost unless he does. Only the soldiers can save us. I am going back to fight it out with him."

She picked her way through the blazing embers out into the road once more. A roar of laughter came from Colonel Dudley's tent as she entered the camp. Evidently someone had told the soldier a good joke. Colonel Dudley was still with Sheriff Peppin and John Kinney. He seemed disconcerted as Mrs. McSween stepped into his tent. A bottle and glasses were on his table.

"You here again?"

"I have come again to beg you on my knees to save my husband's life and the lives of the men with him. Have you no mercy?"

"I have told you I have no authority to interfere."

Fury boiled in Mrs. McSween's soul at these words that closed the door of hope against her. "Colonel Dudley," she screamed, "that is not true. You have the authority but you will not use it. I know, and we all know, what you are here for. You are here not to protect life and property but to help the Murphy faction. You have driven out of town Chavez and his men who might have helped us. You have left the Murphy side in control. They are not 'civil authorities' and ​you know it. They intend to murder us and you will stand by and see them do it."

Colonel Dudley grew purple with rage. “Get out of my tent,” he stormed.

"I will not go," Mrs. McSween hurled back, "until you send vour soldiers with me to save my husband's life."

"Orderly," called Colonel Dudley to a trooper on guard in front of his tent, "put this woman out of the encampment."

The orderly caught Mrs. McSween by the arm and led her into the road. There she halted. "I will not budge another step," she said stubbornly, "until I have one last word with Colonel Dudley."

The orderly argued, protested, threatened, but Mrs. McSween stood firm. He hurried back to Colonel Dudley's tent and reported. But the colonel remained inside. Mrs. McSween determined upon a ruse. She beganto shriek at the top of her lungs. The cañon echoed with her screams. Fearing some calamity had befallen her, Colonel Dudley came bounding from his tent to see what the matter was. Before he could plunge back, Mrs. McSween had her opportunity for a woman's last word.

"Colonel Dudley," she shrilled, "I am going back to see my home burned over my head and my husband murdered; but as long as I live, I will not leave a stone unturned to fasten on you the guilt of this great crime."

The day was now far spent. Shadows of evening were falling across the cañon. The McSween home was almost destroved. Of its twelve rooms, only three remained. Mrs. McSween's announcement that all hope of aid was gone threw into despondency all members of the band except Billy the Kid, who for so many weary hours in the doomed house had been fighting fire and foes. As ​desperate in his optimism as in his crimes, the Kid received the news with an indifferent shrug. The one chance in a million that remained to him kept him cheerfully hopeful. He wasted no words in bewailing his fate in being cooped in this two-by-four hell. Confident in his own resources and courage, he was willing to play the game out to the end and, if luck went against him, accept the result like a good gambler.

Mrs. McSween’s eyes rested sadly on her piano. Flame reflections were leaping and dancing in its polished depths. It was fated to destruction. A few hours more and it would be a wreck buried under flaming débris.

She threw herself upon the stool at the keyboard. She still had hope—hope in Billy the Kid and his fighting men. They were battling desperately in their last ditch. A warsong might inspire them to still more heroic courage. It might turn defeat into victory. With one last brave swan-song before the ultimate silence, the piano might yet save the day. At once she plunged into the stirring bars of "The Star Spangled Banner." Facing death, the men felt the lift and thrill of the old battle hymn. "O say, can you see…what so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming…broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight…so gallantly streaming.…" The Kid whistled the tune. Tom O'Folliard beat time with his six-shooter. Far through the noise of battle and the swish of flames, the music sounded in half the homes in Lincoln. It rang against the cañon walls like a challenge. It carried its message of courage and defiance to the enemy whose bullets thumped like an obbligato against the tottering walls and plunged with sibilant uproar among the smoking embers…“does the Star-Spangled Banner still ​wave o'er the land"…The music died in the crash of a flaming fragment of the roof.

"You'd better hunt safety now, Mrs. McSween," said Billy the Kid. "Go to the house of some friend while there's still time. We'll do the best we can. We may get out of this yet. After dark, we'll make a break for it."

"Yes," agreed McSween. "While there is still time. Escape for the others will be less difficult if there is no woman here."

"I will not go," the brave woman proclaimed stoutly.

"It is best, my dear," answered McSween.

He folded her in his arms and kissed her good-bye. "Let me stay and die with you," she pleaded.

McSween shook his head solemnly. "No, you must go."

Mrs. McSween turned away. Her husband drew her back for one last embrace.

"God watch over and protect you," he breathed.

Broken-hearted and blinded by tears, Mrs. McSween stumbled out of the blazing ruins of her home, through the dense smoke into the road flaming with the sunset to find safety and shelter at last with her sister and Ms. Ealy.

Night fell. Two rooms were left. The Kid and his men still clung to their crumbling defenses. The fire marched steadily forward. One room remained the kitchen. It was ten o'clock. With the roof blazing over their heads, the Kid and his men prepared for a dash for safety. The Kid gave his directions calmly. Certain men must go first; certain others must follow in order.

The Murphy men had closed in under cover of the darkness. They crouched behind the McSween stable and beneath the shelter of the adobe wall that shut off ​the stable lot from the backyard. They sensed the approaching crisis. Their rifles commanded the kitchen door at a distance of not more than ten yards.

"All right, boys, let's go," cried the Kid. "We've still got one chance in a million."

He threw open the back door. While the flames turned night into day, Harvey Morris and Francisco Semora rushed out to fall dead before a blaze of rifles from the adobe wall. Vincente Romero was the next to try and the next to die.

McSween was sitting in a corner, his Bible open on his lap, his lips moving in prayer. The tragedy closing in about him had left him in a state between lethargy and religious ecstasy. He realized that all hope was gone. Fear did not touch him. He felt only the despair and disappointment of a martyr whose faith had been in vain, whose prayers had not been answered. The Kid laid a hand upon his shoulder and shook him out of his reverie.

"Come on, governor," said the Kid with a flash of his gay courage, "it's your turn next. You've got to make a run for it."

McSween rose slowly to his feet.

"Take this gun." The Kid tried to shove a six-shooter into his hand. With a sweep of his long arm, McSween brushed the weapon aside. He had remained unarmed throughout the fighting. He would die as he had lived, with no stain upon his soul.

"Hit the trail, old man," shouted the Kid. "Go through that door like a streak of greased lightning. Head for the back fence. Roll over it in the dark. Keep going for the Bonito. And you'll see Mrs. McSween in the morning. Good luck."

As if unhearing, McSween drew himself to the full of ​his imposing height and, with his glazed eyes, swept the broken, flaming walls of what had been his home.

“My home, my wife!” he muttered. “God of my fathers, hast Thou forsaken me?”

Before him was the open door. He strode toward it. For an instant he paused upon the threshold, his Bible clutched to his breast as he gazed upon his ruined dooryard and the three corpses sprawled about it. Quietly, head up, he walked out into the red glare of the flames.

“Here I am,” he called in a hollow voice. “I am McSween.”

A streak of fire leaped from the blackness beyond the adobe wall. A dozen rifles blazed almost simultaneously. Tiny puffs of dust leaped out from McSween’s coat. He half-turned, stumbled forward, and fell dead upon his Bible, true to his faith to the last, his hands innocent of man’s blood.

“I got him,” shouted Bob Beckwith, waving his smoking rifle high above his head. “I got McSween.”

A demoniac chorus of yells went up to the sky. The men behind the adobe wall went wild with boisterous joy. They fired a half-dozen wanton shots at McSween’s body. Several bullets thudded into the corpse, causing it to jerk as with a spasm. Others splattered earth over the dead face. Then there was silence. The ambushed watchers waited for fresh victims.

Out of the door, one after the other, plunged Tom O’Folliard, Jim French, Doc Skurlock, José Chavez y Chavez, Ignacio Gonzalez, and Ygenio Salazar. Salazar was cut down, dangerously wounded; he lay limp and motionless, feigning death. Gonzalez’s arm was shattered by a bullet, but he continued his flight. As by a miracle, all but Salazar ran the gauntlet of bullets, tumbled over ​the back wall, and escaped. They were joined in their stampede for the hills by Charlie Bowdre, George Coe, and Hendry Brown, who ran from the McSween store at the same time.

The Kid was the last to leave. He hitched his belt a little tighter, pulled his hat down more firmly on his head. He looked with sharp scrutiny at his two six-shooters, one in either hand. He cocked them. He shot a glance through the open door into the ruddy splendour. His quick eye calculated the positions of the five men lying motionless, all dead except Salazar, shamming death. He determined his course among them; he must be careful not to trip over a corpse. Between him and the back wall of the yard was a space of thirty feet. Across it, death would be snapping at his heels at every step. But if he had to die, he would die fighting.

There was ominous silence off at the side along the adobe wall. His lurking, unseen foes were waiting for him, their rifles ready, their fingers on the trigger. All about him was the devouring sibilance of the fire. Flames were bursting through the walls and ceiling of the room, darting, twisting, crawling like brilliant serpents greedily alive. He braced himself for the start. Half the roof crashed in behind him. Smoke and a myriad fiery sparks leaped after him as he darted out the door, his guns blazing.

A yell of triumph went up from his enemies. This was the man they wanted. "Here comes the Kid!" They rose behind the wall. They threw their rifles to a level on the flying figure. "Get him, boys!" "Kill him!" A salvo of twenty guns welcomed him into that crimson square of death.

The Kid's trigger fingers worked with machine-gun ra​rapidity. Fire poured from the muzzles of his forty-fours in continuous streaks. Bob Beckwith, slayer of McSween, fell dead across the wall, his rifle clattering on the ground, head and arms dangling downward limply. John McKinney of Las Cruces was struck in the mouth, the bullet carrying away half the gallantly up-turned moustache of the handsome youth. Another ball cut a deep notch in Old Man Pearce's ear, whispering the nearness of death. One man killed, two branded for life—this was the Kid's score as he hurtled toward the sheltering darkness, never for an instant hesitating, never slackening his pellmell speed.

Pumping their Winchesters, churning shots from their double-action revolvers, his foes fired more than fifty shots at him as he rushed across the space of thirty feet. Bullets sang about his ears, ripped shreds from his blue flannel shirt, bored holes through his white steeple sombrero, enveloped him in an invisible frame of hissing lead. Every bullet was aimed at his heart and every one was winged with deadly hatred. But not a bullet touched his body. On he ran like a darting, elusive shadow as if under mystic protection. He cleared the back wall at a leap. He bounded out of the flare of the conflagration. Darkness swallowed him at a gulp. Splashing across the Bonito, he gained the safety of the hills.

The firing ceased. Five men had been killed within five minutes and lay within a space of five square feet in the McSween backyard. The Murphy men swarmed in. Old Andy Boyle, thinking he detected signs of life in Salazar, kicked him in the ribs, caught him by the cartridge-belt and shook him up and down against the ground, pressed the muzzle of a rifle at last against his heart.

​"No use wasting good lead on that greaser," said John Kinney as Boyle was about to press the trigger; "he's dead."

So Boyle did not fire.

Jimmy Dolan touched with the tip of his boot a dead man lying near the kitchen door. He turned him over.

"Here's McSween!" he shouted.

The others crowded round. They laughed, they hurrahed, they shook hands. Old Man Pearce produced a whisky flask.

"Have one on me, boys," he yelled.

The bottle went round and everybody took a swig.

"What's this?" Dolan poked with his rifle at something lying beside the corpse. He stooped over and looked more closely.

"The Bible!"

There was a roar of laughter.

"Where's his gun?"

"Don't appear to have none. Died with his Bible in his hand."

"Now ain't that a hell of a note?"

"His Bible in his hand!"

Again they roared with laughter.

So died McSween, enigma and paradox of the Lincoln County war; a man of the Christ-complex owning the allegiance of murderers and desperadoes; an apostle of peace and the leader of a fighting faction in a deadly feud; intellectual, yet a child in his understanding of men and life; filled with human kindness, yet innocently fomenting war and drawing upon himself the bitterness of lethal hatreds; a futile shadow among relentless realities; a pathetic marionette caught in a whirlwind and swept to destruction; a Sir Galahad of the vendetta, moving with ​serene, unclouded soul toward inevitable tragedy and finding at last the peace of the Holy Grail in death.

It was a famous victory, worthy of festal celebration. George Washington and Sebron Bates, ancient Negroes, who from time out of memory had made music at the fandangos of the town and countryside, were fetched from their homes. Perched like black imps on the adobe wall with violin and guitar, the old darkies struck up merry tunes while the victors danced, drinking whisky and roaring out songs. All Lincoln crowded around to watch the bacchanalian carousal. The backyard with its sprawling dead men lay red in the glare of the flames; the blackness of the night shut it in like the walls of a cave. “Swing your partners!” The tipsy revellers caught each other about the waist and whooped and yelled in a furious, farcical quadrille. “Ladies to the centre!” In and out among the corpses they careened and reeled. “Hands all round!” They cavorted in burlesque pigeon-wings with boisterous buffoonery and horse play, their uncouth antics silhouetted in weird, tremendous shadows that flickered over the ghastly field of death and plunged off into the darkness. It was a primordial orgy of blood-crazed savages commemorating a warpath triumph with a scalp dance.

It was long past midnight when the devil's saturnalia ended and the drunken rioters dispersed to their homes, filling the night with oaths and ribaldry. The fire died out; only wisps of wan smoke curled among the blackened ruins. Among the corpses, a form, that throughout the death-masque had lain stretched motionless upon the ground, stirred as if in resurrection, rose upon hands and knees, began to crawl with stealthy movement toward ​the rear wall. It was Salazar. Upon the murderous crew he had palmed off a heroic subterfuge that had saved his life. Shot through, sorely wounded, he managed to scramble over the wall. In the darkness, he staggered away to safety.