The Saga of Billy the Kid/Chapter 17

Don't you or Bell ever let the Kid see the colour of your back," said Sheriff Pat Garrett to Bob Ollinger. "Keep your faces to him and your eyes on him every minute. You never can tell what's in that boy's mind. He's got a mighty deceivin' smile. There's murder back of that smile of his."

Deputy Sheriff Bob Ollinger and Deputy Sheriff J. W. Bell of White Oaks were Billy the Kid's death watch during the days of his imprisonment in Lincoln.

"You don't have to worry about me. Pat," replied Ollinger. "I know the Kid and I'm never takin' no chances with him. I watch him like a hawk. I always got my six-shooter on and my double-barrelled shotgun loaded with buckshot in my hands. The Kid knows better than to try any monkey business with me. Just let him make one false move and I'll fill him full of lead. He knows that."

"That's the idea, Bob," said the sheriff.

"But Bell's different," went on Ollinger. "I'm more afraid of him than I am of the Kid. He's always layin' himself wide open. Plays cards with the Kid. I told him that ain't no way to do. But Bell says he feels sorry for the Kid and wants to cheer him up. The only way I'd like to cheer him up is with a load of buckshot. Bell gets to studyin' about the game. But the Kid ain't interested in cards; what he's interested in is in gettin' his hand ​on that six-shooter Bell's got shoved down in his belt. I've warned Bell but he only laughs. Says there ain't no danger."

"Bell don't unlock the Kid's handcuffs, does he?"

"No, the Kid plays with his handcuffs on."

Sheriff Garrett pondered a moment.

"Well," he said, "I don't know as I see much harm in the Kid's playin' cards with Bell now and then to pass the time, if his shackles are left on. He can't do nothin' very desperate with his hands chained together."

"I don't like it," Ollinger declared. "There is danger. All the time the Kid's talkin' about this, that, and the other, he's lookin' over the top of his cards at Bell's revolver. He'll grab that gun some day if Bell don't look out."

"Bell must watch himself, of course."

"Bell's careless in other ways, too. He likes to read the newspapers. He ain't got no business readin' newspapers on guard. With the Kid sittin' six feet from him, Bell needs all the eyes he's got. Lemme tell you somethin'. Bell was readin' a newspaper one day. The Kid sittin' on his cot. Bell held the paper so close to his face he couldn't see the Kid at all. The Kid got up without makin' no noise whatsoever and sneaked a step or two toward Bell. He was standin' within three feet o' him without Bell knowin' it when I come in the door quietlike. The Kid looked mighty sheepish when all of a sudden he seen me standin' there in the door and went on over to the window and pretended to be lookin' out."

"That sounds bad. Bell ought to be more careful."

"And Bell told me himself of one or two suspicious moves the Kid's made. He said one time the Kid started to walk up and down the floor, makin' believe he was exer​cisin'. He kept edgin' closer to Bell every turn, and keepin' up a lot of talk to throw Bell off. But Bell happened to be on to his racket that time and just quietly laid down his hand on the butt of his gun. When he did that the Kid seen Bell was on to him and quit exercisin' mighty sudden. I can see that boy's tryin' to figure out some way he can get hold of Bell's six-shooter. And if he ever does, there'll be hell a-poppin'. The Kid's got everythin' to win and nothin' to lose. He might get killed tryin' to escape. But he's got to die on the gallows anyway. So what's the difference?"

"I'm glad you told me this," said Sheriff Garrett. "I'll caution Bell. The Kid don't look dangerous. He's as innocent-lookin' as a schoolboy. But he don't care no more about killin' a man than eatin' his breakfast. He's about as murderous a little hombre as ever stood in shoe leather. Bell's got to know he can't take any chances."

Billy the Kid's smile was almost as famous as his trigger finger. He smiled in victory, he smiled in defeat. His cool, daredevil smile was a part of him. He smiled still in the shadow of the gallows. With death closing in, his smile was as light-hearted and boyish as in his days of freedom. He cracked jokes and laughed at the jokes of others. His talk was light, casual, touched with humour. He seemed less a man about to die than a youth anticipating happy years.

In the whisky glass of life that he had drained, one drop remained and that drop was hope. He retained his gambler's faith in the break of the luck. The one chance in a million that had saved him before might save him again. The cards had run against him. He had lost. But the game was not yet quite over. He still had one white chip left. This lone white chip was his courage. If the cards ​broke his way on just one hand, he would bet his white chip as if it were a million dollars. That was the way he played the game. One drop in life's whisky glass, one white chip, one chance in a million. If he lost, he would shove his chair back from the table with a smile on his face and bid the boys good-night. But if he should win.…

The shadow of the gallows is imponderable, yet it has weight to crush the bravest souls. But upon his soul it seemed to lie as lightly as the shadow of a tree in the morning sun. Whatever else he may have been, this boy was no whimpering coward. Regard him, if you will, as cold-blooded, conscienceless, merciless, but credit him with courage, that one splendid quality which, since the world began, has been the same in sinner and saint, outlaw and martyr, thief and knightly crusader. The man who can smile while death waits just outside the door with a hangman's rope to strangle him is of the mould of heroes.

Night and day the Kid was kept bound hand and foot. The steel shackles on his wrists and ankles were never removed. He ate with them on, slept with them on. The chain that held his hands together was six inches long; that which bound his feet, twelve inches. If he took a drink of water or a smoke, he must lift cup or cigarette to his lips with both hands. If he walked the floor for exercise, his steps were perforce short and mincing. Imprisonment between four walls was hard on a youth whose life under the blue sky had been as free as the wind that comes and goes; but harder still were the shackles that changed him, whole-limbed and full of restless energy, into a helpless cripple.

Deputy Sheriffs Ollinger and Bell kept him under constant surveillance. During most of the day, both were ​on duty; one always, night and day. If he raised his manacled hands thoughtlessly, they watched the gesture with meticulous suspicion. If he tossed in his sleep, a pair of cold gray eyes quickened to keen alertness in the dim light of the midnight lamp.

These two men had been selected as his death watch because they were his enemies and might be depended upon to guard him with the vigilance of hatred until his death upon the gallows worked their revenge. Ollinger hated him because he had killed Bob Beckwith; Bell hated him because he had killed Jimmy Carlyle.

But the two deputies differed in character as night from day. Ollinger was a devil; Bell a man. Ollinger kept up his nagging torture. He gloated over the Kid's unhappy fate. He longed with the eagerness of consuming hatred for the day of the Kid's death. The thought of seeing his enemy choking at a rope's end filled his soul with voluptuous thrills. With the Kid helpless in his power, he took delight in tormenting him, playing with his victim with the purring malice of a cat with a mouse. He harped upon the gallows; he dangled the hangman's noose constantly before the Kid's eyes.

"Good-morning, Kid," was his daily salutation. "One day less between you and the rope."

Though Ollinger's hatred grew more intense as the days went by, Bell's gradually diminished, until at last it merged into pity that was akin to friendship. Bell was a tall, grim-looking man with a livid knife-scar across his cheek, but at heart he was generous and kindly. The mercilessly cold-blooded murder of his friend Carlyle at the Greathouse ranch had inflamed Bell with bitterness against the Kid. But with the gallows looming to wipe out the score, Bell was filled with the sympathy of a ​magnanimous spirit. The pathos of the Kid's situation softened his heart and he felt only pity for the slim youth, pale from months of imprisonment, bound hand and foot like a mad beast, yet bearing up with cheerful fortitude and smiling bravely as death drew nearer hour by hour, day by day, with the slow momentum of inevitability.

The old Murphy store in which the Kid was held prisoner was the largest building in Lincoln. Of adobe brick, covered with smooth adobe stucco, it was two stories in height and stood on the south side of Lincoln's single street near the western limits of town. It had been Murphy's citadel as well as his place of business in the days of his prosperity, and its solidity and imposing proportions seemed to connote his importance and power. If earthly tidings could have reached the spirit land, it would doubtless have rejoiced the ghost of the old feud leader to learn that Billy the Kid, who had been his most inveterate enemy, and whose relentless hatred had done so much to bring his plots to naught, was at last captive in the old Murphy fortress and was soon to meet his doom in the shadow of its massive walls.

With Murphy's death and the passing of his power and fortune, the old building had been transformed into the courthouse and at periodical sessions of court was a scene of bustling activity, its rooms filled with lawyers and clerks and its corridors crowded with litigants from the remotest corners of Lincoln County. But in the long intervals between judicial sittings it gathered dust and cobwebs in its silent and deserted halls.

The Kid was quartered in the courtroom, a great, bare chamber sixty feet long by fifty wide that occupied the entire east side of the second story and was lighted by six windows, two in front overlooking the street, two at ​the back, and two in the east wall. At the rear of the chamber was the judge's bench on a low dais, the jury box at one side, and at the other the witness stand and a railed-off enclosure where the clerk and other court attachés had their desks. A door in the west wall gave upon a wide hall that ran through the centre of the building. At one end of this hall a door opened upon a roofed-over, second-story porch along the front of the building, reached from the street by stairways at either end. At the other end of the hall was a room known as the armoury, in which rifles, six-shooters, and munitions of war were stored for emergency use by sheriff's posses in that unsettled time. Just in front of the armoury, a stairway led down from the hall through a walled-in passage which, halfway down, turned at a sharp angle to the left toward a ground-floor door opening on a rear courtyard. Across the courtyard stood the little adobe jail, deemed too precarious for the confinement of such a desperate character as the Kid, and another small building which served as the jail kitchen and the sleeping quarters of Old Man Goss, the jail cook.

The Kid's sleeping cot was in the northeast corner of the courtroom with the cots of the two members of his death watch near by. His prison chamber was at least light and airy. The window in the east wall near the front is known to this day as Billy the Kid's window. Sitting in a chair before it he spent much of his time looking down upon the scenes of his many adventures. In plain view were the fire-blackened ruins of the old McSween home where McSween and three of his followers had gone down in death and where the Kid, fighting for his life against desperate odds, had slain Bob Beckwith, thereby gaining the undying hatred of the devilman who now ​watched with malevolent joy the Kid's last sands of life filtering away. Beyond was the old McSween store now owned by Alec La Rue; from the far end of it, the Kid and his men had lain in ambush and killed Sheriff Brady and George Hindman, the crime for which he was sentenced to die. Just behind the store he could see the grave of Tunstall, the Englishman to whom he had given the loyalty of his youthful friendship and whose death he had avenged in full measure of blood. Beyond, in its grove of trees, stood the Ellis House, where he had had his memorable interview with Governor Lew Wallace. In bitterness of spirit, he recalled the governor's promise of a pardon, which might have saved him from his present desperate predicament but which never came. So as he sat by the east window and puffed a cigarette, his mind lingered upon various experiences that had befallen him here in Lincoln, and in Lincoln's winding street of many tragedies his thronging memories jostled the ghosts of the men he had killed.

But there were other things in Lincoln street to interest him besides memories and ghosts. From his box seat by the window he watched the homespun drama of village life. It was his daily amusement. Upon the comings and going in the street, humdrum commonplaces, trifling incidents, he passed his criticism and comment to the sympathetic Bell. Mrs. Saturnino Baca, he noted, was wearing a new bonnet; purchased, doubtless, on her recent trip to Santa Fé. Well, she looked muy bonita. She was a handsome woman, anyway. …… Jimmy Dolan was in from the Fritz ranch. Dolan was a lucky dog to marry so much money. …… "Dad" Peppin's pinto pony was lame in its off hind foot; probably needed shoeing. …… There was Nicolecita Pacheco. First time he had ​seen her in a month of Sundays. She was carrying home a leg of mutton in her market basket. ...... José Otero had caught a fine string of trout down in the Bonito. He wished he was going to take dinner with José Otero. Turned in cornmeal over a slow fire, these mountain trout certainly made mighty good eating. ...... Pat Garrett seemed to be having some sort of an argument with a couple of Mexicans in front of the Wortley Hotel. What could that old he-coon be arguing about? Old Pat. If shot so as not to spoil his beauty, he'd make a fine looking corpse.

Tilted back in his chair against the wall, Bob Ollinger sat at ease. With a casual gesture, he brushed a straggling lock of his long lank hair over his shoulder and adjusted his sombrero, tilting it slightly on the side of his head.

"April twenty-eighth, ain't it, Bell?"

"If it don't rain."

Bell was reading a newspaper by a front window. The Kid sat on his couch rolling himself a cigarette. Ollinger let his cold, whitish-blue eyes rest on the pale, slender prisoner chained hand and foot.

"You're lookin' kind o' peaked, Kid."

"Four months in jail ain't good for the complexion."

"Eatin' your vittles regular?"

"Yes."

"What's the matter then?"

"I need a bucking pony under me."

"Well, buck up. We'll give you a nice long ride at the end of a rope. Only fifteen days more to wait."

"I always figured I wasn't born to die that way," the Kid remarked with slow deliberation.

"Looks like you figured wrong. Garrett bought the rope yesterday. Good stout manila. Ever see a hang​man's knot? Got seven turns to it. The rope slips through it smooth as silk."

"Better tell 'em to put eight turns in it. Might be a slip-up in my case."

"Only slip-up there'll be is when that old rope slips up tight around your throat under your jawbone. Then the old trap'll swing down—bang! That's when you'll begin to dance. Plenty of good Lincoln County air for your dancing floor. Always heard you were a mighty fine dancer."

"That's no way to talk, Bob," cut in Bell. "Leave the Kid alone. No sense in aggravatin' him like that. He'll take his medicine like a man when the time comes. I'll bet on that."

"Like a man, eh?" answered Ollinger. "He'll die like a dog."

"To throw a steer," observed the Kid philosophically, "you've first got to get a rope over his foot. There ain't any noose around my neck yet."

"Feel up around your Adam's-apple May thirteenth and you'll find one there."

"A lot can happen between now and then."

"But nothin' that can help you any." Ollinger's brow wrinkled. He bent a savage look upon the Kid. "You hintin' at escapin'? You ain't got a chance on earth."

Ollinger had a double-barrelled shotgun lying across his lap. He broke it at the breach.

"Look here, Kid," he said. "See these two shells?"

"Going quail hunting?" Billy smiled.

"Each one of them shells is loaded with nine buckshot. Try to escape. I wish you would. I'd like to see you kickin' at a rope's end but, when I come to think about it, I believe I'd rather murder you myself. Go ahead and ​make your break and you'll get eighteen buckshot between your shoulder blades."

"Eighteen?" The Kid gave a little, sneering laugh. "That's too many to waste on a slim young fellow like me. But eighteen would be just a nice fit for a man of your size. It would be a joke if you happened to stop those eighteen buckshot yourself. Eh, Bob?"

Footsteps sounded in the hall. The door for a moment framed the impressive figure of Sheriff Pat Garrett, six feet four and a half inches tall, slightly stooped in the shoulders, dark clothes accentuating his slender frame that suggested careless strength, trousers tucked in a pair of high-heeled boots of soft leather, his face under his gray sombrero a mixture of iron sternness and good humour. With a cheery salutation he strode in. How was everything? Kid getting along all right? Old Man Goss sending in enough grub? Bueno, hombres. Only a few minutes to stay. Just wanted to see how things were going.

"I'm riding to White Oaks this morning, boys," he said to the deputies. "Got to see about the gallows. Get some timbers freighted over right away. Not much time left. Going to try to find a good carpenter, too."

"Hurry up with that gallows, Pat," remarked the Kid. "Ollinger can't sleep good till it's up."

"I'll be back to-morrow or next day," the sheriff added. "You boys be on your guard. Don't go to sleep on the job. Take no chances. I'm depending on you. My reputation's at stake."

"Rest your mind easy, Pat," replied Ollinger. "We'll answer for the Kid."

"So long, Billy."

"Adios, Pat."

​A clatter of hoofs sounded in the street below the windows, passed into the distance, died out in dusty silence. Sheriff Garrett was off on the road to White Oaks.

Noon came. It was the dinner hour in Lincoln. Ollinger rose and stretched himself.

"I'll step over to the hotel and put on the feed-bag, Bell," he said. "Won't be gone over an hour. When I come back, you can go for grub."

He turned at the door and patted the shotgun held in the crook of his arm.

"Eighteen buckshot, Kid," he snarled. "Don't forget what I said. Make a break and you get 'em right between your shoulder blades."

On his way out of the building by the back stairs he stopped at the armoury and stood his shotgun against the wall just inside the door.

Standing at the east window, Billy the Kid watched him swagger down the road to La Rue's store. A cryptic, unpleasant little smile hung for a moment at the corner of the Kid's mouth.

The spring day was as warm as summer. Orchards about town and the fruit trees in the yards were in full bloom. Through the open window the Kid inhaled the faint fragrance of them. His ears were filled with the drowsy droning of bees. A robin was on her nest in a box-elder tree at the corner of the courthouse, her mate preening his wings on a neighbouring limb. These robins were the Kid's pets. He had seen them arrive from the South, had watched their courtship, their home-building, their start in domesticity. Every day he had saved bread from the meal which Old Man Goss brought in to him and had scattered crumbs along his window sill for the birds; and the robins had eaten his good will offerings, cocking ​their bright eyes at the shackled youth as if to say, "We're chums of yours." He wondered vaguely if the little couple would hatch out their nestlings before he dropped through the trapdoor of a gallows.

Across the street, his eyes noted a hen scratching fussily with a new brood of fuzzy chicks about her. A group of idlers lounged in the shady porch of the Wortley Hotel, smoking, gossiping languidly. Two Mexican boys were spinning tops down near La Rue's store. He remembered when he was spinning tops back in Silver City not so many years ago; he was only twenty-one now. Nobody else was in sight. Lincoln was taking a siesta. The sun was pouring down its heat from a cloudless, indigo sky. The dusty road was a crooked ribbon of white; at its edges the shadows of houses and trees lay as if painted in solid black. He could hear plainly the murmur of the Bonito River through the noonday stillness. It was like a lullaby.

The Kid took a luxurious drag at his cigarette, tossed the butt out the window, and turned back into the room.

"Let's have a little game of monte, Bell," he drawled, "to pass the time. What do you say?"

"Might as well kill a little time that way, Kid, if it'll amuse you," answered Bell.

"Well, not much time left to kill."

On a large round table standing at the front of the room near the door were a deck of cards and a box of matches. The table was a relic of Murphy's prime. Many a roistering poker game for big stakes the old Lord of the Mountains and his knights of the round table had enjoyed about it, with the drinks coming fast from the bar below stairs. Almost every day the Kid and Bell had been accustomed to while away monotonous hours playing cards. Now it was a game of freeze-out poker with matches for chips; ​again, seven-up or casino, and sometimes monte. When the game was poker, seven-up, or casino, the Kid occupied a chair at one side of the table and Bell a chair at the other. When it was monte and Bell dealing, the Kid balanced himself on top of the table to be above the layout in a position that made it easy for him to put down his bets with his manacled hands. Now Bell took a seat in a chair at the table and Billy, as was his habit, perched himself on the table-top, his shackled feet resting on the seat of a chair.

"You bank, Bell," said the Kid. "I'll buck the game."

The Kid shot one shrewd, furtive glance at Bell's six-shooter. Bell was wearing it to-day without a scabbard, stuck down his pants leg on his right side between his shirt and his belt. As Bell sat down its muzzle rammed into his flesh. With a casual gesture, he adjusted it, pushing the handle slightly farther back toward his hip. Then, taking up the deck, he shuffled it with the ease of old familiarity, riffling the cards like a faro dealer, giving them deft cuts that made a slapping noise.

"Help yourself to chips out of the match box, Kid," he said. "Ten matches the limit on a card."

"Bueno, muchacho."

Bell began to deal. He pulled a few cards from the deck and laid them face up on the table. His monte layout began to assume form.

"I'm out for blood this game," warned the Kid jovially.

"Coffee talks."

"Bet ten dollars on that deuce of diamonds."

The Kid piled ten matches on the card. Bell went on turning. The bet lost and he raked in the matches with a laugh.

​"I'm a system player," chortled the Kid.

"System ain't workin' right to-day."

"It's pulled me out of many a hole. May do it again. Never can tell."

The Kid edged over a few inches farther toward the centre of the table-a few inches closer to Bell.

"I'll beat this deal yet," he said. "No game's lost, Bell, till the last card's played."

Again a cryptic little smile hovered for a moment at the corner of his mouth, which Bell didn't see, being busy dealing. And again the Kid hunched over slightly nearer the centre of the table—slightly nearer Bell.

Bell pulled out the jack of hearts and laid it on the table.

"Jack of hearts, eh?" laughed Billy. "That's my lucky card."

"Luck run in hearts?"

"In bullets mostly. But in hearts sometimes. Knock off the limit, Bell. Make it the ceiling. I'll bust the bank on this play or lose my last white chip."

Bell shook his head with a good-natured laugh.

"Ten matches are the limit."

"Once over in San Patricio," remarked Billy, "when I was dealing monte——"

He reached out his manacled hands to place his wager of ten matches when, seemingly by accident, he brushed the jack of hearts off on to the floor at Bell's left side.

"Didn't mean to do that, Bell," he apologized. "Hard to play with handcuffs on like this."

"That's all right, Kid. I'll get it."

Bell bent over to pick up the card. Holding the deck in his left hand, he reached for the card with his right. ​To do so, he had to turn slightly away from the table. For a fraction of a second his head dipped below the level of the top, his eyes intent upon the card on the floor.

It was Billy the Kid's chance in a million for which he had been waiting for weeks with the deadly patience of a panther. As Bell stooped, the butt of his six-shooter projected within reach of the Kid's hand. Leaning across the table, the Kid snatched the weapon. When Bell raised his head, he was looking into the muzzle of his own gun. He rose to his feet, knocking over the chair. He staggered back a step, his face abruptly white, his eyes wide.

"What the hell, Kid!"

"Do as I tell you, Bell, and be mighty quick about it," ordered the Kid in crisp, sharp tones. "Don't make a false move. You're a dead man if you do. I don't want to kill you. I'm not going to kill you. You've been good to me. Turn and walk out the door. I'm going to lock you in the armoury."

Bell hesitated. The tables had been turned so quickly, he could not for a moment grasp the desperateness of the crisis.

"Quick," snapped the Kid. "No time to waste."

Bell faced about silently and marched out the door, the Kid hampered by his leg irons shuffling after him. He turned south in the hall. A sudden surge of anger, chagrin, hurt pride, swept through him. Why had he been such an easy dupe? Deaf to repeated warnings, he had been caught napping. He had fallen into a trap through which he should have seen with half an eye; a trap the Kid doubtless had been planning since their first card game together. This absurd situation was the upshot of his ​pity, his kindliness. He might have expected it. He had been a soft-hearted fool. What would Garrett think of him? What would that devil, Ollinger, say? Was there no way out of this? Desperate thoughts raced through his mind. Could he turn quickly and overpower the Kid? No. That seemed suicide. But if he could trick the Kid as the Kid had tricked him, he might yet save his reputation. Once out of the Kid's clutches, he would organize the citizens and recapture or kill him. He came to the head of the back stairs just beyond which was the armoury door. He shot a furtive glance over his shoulder. The Kid had fallen perhaps six feet behind him, making awkward progress, his ankle chains clattering.

There were not more than a dozen steps from the upper floor to the point where the stairway turned. Once behind the angle of the wall Bell would be safe. The stairs were his one forlorn hope. Swerving sharply, he plunged down them. In one flying leap, he made the bend. His outthrust hand struck the plastered wall; the heels of his cowboy boots cut splinters from the steps as he lunged for the shelter of the turn. One step more and the wall would shield him.… But behind him was the quickest, deadliest coördination of eye, mind, and muscle in the Southwest. At that instant, the Kid sprang to the head of the stairs. Almost before his hobbled feet struck the floor, his six-shooter coughed fire. The hall shook with a deafening report. The bullet struck Bell beneath the left shoulder blade, cut through his heart, and buried itself in the wall beyond. He pitched forward on his head, crumpled over in a somersault, rolled down the few remaining steps and lay lifeless at the bottom, his limp body half out the courtyard door.

The Kid paid no further attention to Bell. That much ​of his problem was solved, and he dismissed it from his mind. He did not go down to the bend of the stairs to learn the result of his shot. He knew. There was no time to lose. His life hung upon a split second. What he did now he had not planned; but he did it as if he had thought it out in detail and carefully rehearsed it. He translated lightning-like thoughts into lightning-like action. Every move counted. Jamming Bell's six-shooter into his belt for emergencies, he stepped to the door of the armoury, flung it open, caught up Ollinger's shotgun leaning against the wall within arm's reach. Turning he sped through the hall with strange swiftness, with strange noiselessness, gauging his quick, staccato steps to the exact reach of his ankle chains. Like a flitting shadow, he curved into the courtroom, glided across the floor, and halted against the wall by the east window. From the moment Bell fell dead on the back stairs until now, the clock of eternity had ticked perhaps ten seconds.

Back of him at the other side of the room stood the round table, the cards scattered on it, the jack of hearts on the floor, Bell's overturned chair. Within the chamber was the stillness of death; without, the stillness of the sunlit noon. The Kid cocked the hammers of his shotgun. He peeked furtively out of the window into the road. For a moment he stood there against the wall, gun poised, face set, every muscle taut, like an ambushed panther about to spring.

A little distance down the road from the courthouse on the long shady porch of La Rue's store Ollinger met Jimmy Dolan. He was glad to see Jimmy Dolan. He clapped him on the back.

"Don't know a man in Lincoln County I'd rather take ​a drink with," he growled cordially. "Come on in, Jimmy, and have three fingers of red liquor with me."

"Well, Bob, don't care if I do."

They strolled into the bar. La Rue set out the bottle and glasses.

"Garrett went over to White Oaks to-day to order the gallows," said Ollinger. "Kid's gettin' scared. Dropped some talk this mornin' about makin' some kind of break. Like to see him do it. Got my old shotgun loaded with eighteen buckshot. I'd like a chance to plaster him with both barrels right between the shoulder blades. Little devil. Killed Beckwith. But I'll get my revenge when the trap falls. I want to see him kick. Little devil. Hope he strangles."

"That's the stuff," echoed Jimmy Dolan.

They raised their glasses.

"Here's to the rope that chokes the life out of him," said Ollinger.

Ollinger strolled back to the hotel which stood just across the street from the courthouse. The liquor had warmed the cockles of his heart. Thoughts of the Kid dancing on air in a hangman's noose cheered him. It was, too, one grand spring day. The world was full of sunshine. It was good to be alive. He stepped on the hotel porch. Savoury odours of roast beef and potatoes saluted his nostrils. By jiminy! That smelled good. That was a dish to hit the spot. Roast beef and potatoes.…

A sudden crashing noise over in the courthouse startled him. Then silence. What was that? For a tense moment all his senses listened. He could hear nothing more. The world seemed suddenly soundless. There across the way stood the old courthouse, peaceful, silent, in the glare ​of the sun. But that crash sounded like a shot. What did it mean? Possibly the Kid had made his break and Bell had killed him. Or possibly. . . . He jerked out his six-shooter, and holding it cocked in his hand started across the road at a lumbering run, his long hair tossing about his shoulders.

He would pass along the east side of the courthouse and go in by the back door. That would be easier than climbing the steep steps of the second-story porch at the front. If anything were wrong, this would be safer. His eyes kept sweeping the building. Nothing stirred. Not a sound reached him. The open windows of the upper floor revealed only shadowy emptiness. Perhaps nothing had happened, after all. He slowed down to a walk. It occurred to him vaguely that the road was deep with dust. His boots would look like the devil. It was hot. Not a breath of air stirred. The box-elder tree at the corner of the courthouse was like a painted tree in a picture, its massed, dusty leaves motionless. He passed the little, irregular patch of noontide shade beneath the branches; took one step beyond into the sun again.

"Hello, Bob!"

The voice came to him out of the silence. He knew that voice. It was the Kid's. It was even, pleasant, friendly. There was a purring softness in it. For a fraction of a second he felt a sense of relief. Everything was all right. His suspicions were groundless. The Kid was probably sitting up there in his old familiar east window, taking it easy. Perhaps sprinkling crumbs along the sill for the robins. He looked up.

Almost directly above him was the Kid, leaning half out of the window, Ollinger's own shotgun loaded with eighteen buckshot pressed tightly against his shoulder. ​Over the shining length of the double barrel gleamed the Kid's hard gray eyes and the Kid's cold white face. He was smiling.

Ollinger stopped dead in his tracks. It may have been the shock of surprise that stopped him. It may have been the paralysis of fear. It may have been the helpless realization that he was at the end of his journey of life—everything. His cocked six-shooter hung useless in his hand at his side. He stared up at the Kid with a startled, foolish, hopeless look. His eyes popped half out of their sockets. His mouth fell open.… The Kid pulled the trigger. All Lincoln heard the roar of the gun. A puff of blue, acrid smoke drifted off into the street. Nine buckshot struck Ollinger in the breast. The impact spun him half round. He lunged forward and measured his length on the ground, his arms outstretched, his cocked six-shooter still grasped in his hand.

The report of the shotgun brought the townspeople to their doors up and down the street. News of some sort of tragedy at the courthouse spread quickly. Billy the Kid had done something terrible again. "I told you so," ran from mouth to mouth. The desperado was loose; he might be planning other atrocities. Panic fell upon the town. Best for Lincoln to keep indoors. So the villagers, having rushed out, rushed in again, drew the bolts, and closed the shutters. Half-a-dozen men eating dinner in the Wortley Hotel crowded pell-mell out upon the porch. That was as far as their curiosity took them. Enthusiasm for investigation evaporated when they saw Ollinger stretched dead across the street. They remained on the porch as spectators, awaiting the next act in the play.

The front door in the second story of the courthouse opened. Out upon the porch high above the street ​stepped Billy the Kid. He still wore his leg irons, but the handcuffs had disappeared from his wrists; he had slipped them off without great difficulty over his remarkably small hands. The sheer bravado of his appearance was his gesture of drama. It made him a fair target for death from a dozen places of concealment; but no hidden foe ventured a shot to avenge Ollinger and Bell. With the porch as his stage, he stood for a moment leaning upon his shotgun like an actor awaiting the applause of his audience at the close of a big scene.

He moved a few paces to the east end of the porch. Standing at the head of the steps that led down to the street, he caught sight of Ollinger's body sprawled face downward beneath him. The Kid's eyes rested on the spot between the shoulder blades. His tormentor's threat flashed back upon him.… "Eighteen buckshot between your shoulder blades." The Kid regretted he had only nine buckshot left. Beneath the shoulder blades of the limp form lying there lay the heart that had hated him, that had beat high at the thought of seeing him kick at the end of a hangman's rope, that had exulted in the prospect of his dancing a death dance on air. Here was his opportunity to add the completing detail to his revenge—the last, finishing touch of an artist in murders. He raised the shotgun to his shoulders and took deliberate aim. Again all Lincoln heard the roar. The dead man seemed to jump as the nine buckshot drove home between the shoulder blades.

The Kid raised the gun high above his head and with all the strength of his lithe arms flung it crashing down upon the corpse of the man he hated.

"Take that to hell with you, you cowardly yellow cur!" he snarled and, turning, hobbled back into the building.

​The Kid's task was only half completed. His liberty was still precarious. He had yet to escape. He had reason to believe he was in greater danger than he was; he had no inkling of the state of mind of the townspeople. For all he knew they might be arming and organizing to surround and kill him. But the grave possibilities of his situation did not weigh upon him. His plan was definite and he set about working it out patiently, systematically, without excitement and without hurry. He went first to the armoury where he armed himself with two six-shooters and a Winchester rifle. With cool indifference to the lapse of time, he loaded the chambers of the revolvers and charged the magazine of the rifle with cartridges. He selected two cartridge belts and filled the loops of one with revolver cartridges and the loops of the other with Winchester bullets. This was slow work. Then he went down the back stairs, stopping at the bend to examine for a moment critically the bloodstained hole in the wall bored by the bullet that had passed through Bell's heart. At the bottom of the stairway he stepped carefully over Bell's body, which lay in the door, and walked out into the courtyard at the rear of the building.

Old Man Goss, the cook, had locked himself in the jail kitchen. The Kid rapped at the door. Shaking with fear, the old man opened it.

"Don't be scared, Goss," said the Kid. "Any man who can cook ham and eggs like you is safe with me. Get an axe and chop the chain of these leg irons in two."

Goss brought an axe from the wood pile.

"Don't make any mis-strokes," cautioned Billy, swinging a six-shooter carelessly close to Goss's head.

With a few vigorous strokes, Goss broke the chain. The Kid tied pieces of twine to the two shattered ends ​and, pulling the chains taut up along his legs, fastened the strings to his belt. The movements of both hands and legs were now unencumbered.

Back of the courthouse was a two-acre pasture under fence. In it a black horse was cropping grass along the irrigating ditch near the foot of the south wall of the cañon.

"That Pat Garrett's pony?" asked the Kid.

"No, it's Billy Burt's, the county clerk."

"Wish it was Garrett's. It'd tickle me to ride away on old Pat's horse. But go catch him and bring him here."

Goss with a bridle in his hand went out into the pasture to catch the horse. The pony was young and mettlesome and moreover was enjoying his banquet of grass along the asequia. Goss was old and somewhat doddering, and catching a spirited horse that did not wish to be caught in a two acre pasture was no easy task. Dodging about on his ancient legs, Goss hemmed the pony in one corner and then hemmed him in another and always the horse, snorting, head and tail in air, broke away and went galloping to another part of the field. Meantime, the Kid lounged in the courtyard with unperturbed patience, rolling cigarettes and whiffing them in leisurely fashion, the body of the man he had killed within a few feet of him.

Goss's chase of the black pony wasted more than an hour. Finally the horse grew tired of the pastime and submitted to the bridle. Goss led him in and cinched a saddle on him. The old man was fearfully apologetic.

"You seen how the darn critter acted," he explained. "I done my best, but I couldn't ketch him no quicker."

"Oh, that's all right," returned the Kid easily.

Through the pasture gate at the northwest corner of the ​building, the Kid led the horse out into the street. The group of a half-dozen men was still standing curiously on the porch of the Wortley Hotel waiting for the show to continue. They perked up interest now; here was the next act. The Kid gathered up his bridle reins, gripped the pommel, and swung into the saddle. Burdened with his two six-shooters, rifle, and heavy cartridge belts, he was immediately bucked off. He struck the ground on his hands and knees, still holding to the bridle. He leaped to his feet; for a moment he stood there in the middle of the sun-drenched road, legs braced, rifle cocked and ready for instant use, a tense, thrilling figure of a fighting man at bay. The watchers on the porch made no move but on their minds this quick picture of Billy the Kid remained indelibly engraved for all their lives.

Again the Kid swung into the saddle. This time he settled himself comfortably and, waving his hand in farewell to the group of men, rode out of town at an easy gallop. At the edge of the village he passed a Mexican urchin and, at that time, according to the boy, he was whistling a merry little tune.