Adventure Magazine Cover — page 44: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

38 eyes when the rest of the party had trooped down the stairs which led on the outside of the building to the ground. Warren Ollinger said nothing, but rose and went into the next room. He came back with an old Sharps buffalo gun and a handful of cartridges. He laid them on the floor. “Now,” said he, ‘‘you just look out for yourself, Frank.”’ And with that he too went down the stairs. “Where’s the prisoner?” one of the Texans demanded. . Warren Ollinger was always slow of speech, and now he spoke even more de- liberately than usual. “Well, sir,” he drawled, “I clean forgot him, and I reckon I done forgot, too, and left a gun up there along with him.” There was some hard language, and three of the Murphy & Dolan men started up the stairs together; but Coe, who had been listening from a window, opened the door a bit and thrust the barrel of the rifle through the crack. “First man that comes another step, I'll kill him,” he announced. The three fell back and started to talk the matter over out of range. Just then George Coe, who was with the other faction in the MacSwain house, fired at a Murphy & Dolan man who was coming up the main road, and the sound of the shot broke up the conference of the Texans at the foot of the stairs. They started toward the lawyer’s home, and Coe slipped away before they were fairly out of sight. He gained the cover of the brush down by the river Bonita and managed to beat them to the house, where his friends wel- comed him and the more warmly because they had heard that morning that he had been killed the day before. There was some skirmishing in Lincoln that day, but there were no casualties; and the Murphy & Dolan warriors retreated in the evening, leaving their enemies in posses- sion of the town. | A WEEK or so later—it was the first day of April-—Billy the Kid eames did the thing which was the begin- ning of the end. He sent a man to Sheriff Brady with tidings that a band of John Chisum’s warriors were riding up the cafon to the county seat. Brady took George Hindman and Billy Adventure ~ Matthews from Murphy & Dolan’s store to gather their forces. As the three were hurrying down the street Billy the Kid who had hidden behind the adobe wall of the MacSwain corral with Charley Bowdre and others, opened fire on them. ‘The sheriff and Hindman fell dead at the first volley. Matthews fled to a blacksmith ‘shop near by, where he managed to stand off the murderers until others of his faction who had been attracted by the shooting, _ reached the place. There was no particular difference be- tween that killing and the ambush which had left Bud Saunders wounded and Mc- Nab dead down by the Spring ranch. War and reprisals—that was the rule. But Brady was the sheriff. And that changed matters. Sentiment was pretty evenly divided in the community; Murphy & Dolan had their share of enemies. But a sheriff is a sheriff; and even in those days there were men who regarded the statutes as an institution which must be respected. That deed left a different impression in many quarters from any that had preceded. And those who had ridden forth in February, armed with warrants, to avenge the murder of a friend, found themselves in April virtually outlaws. ™| IN THE month of May, George #, Pepin, who had led that posse after mw young Tunstall’s cattle, was ap- pointed sheriff. He named Marion Turner as one of his deputies and placed him in charge of forty gun-fighters in the Pecos Valley, while he himself held down Lincoln with about the same number of warriors. The Chisum faction, who had been rally- ing in the flatlands, were kept on the run in a series of skirmishes; and the twelve wanted men, who were keeping close together these days, found strong forces arrayed against them in the hills. They spent a good deal of their time over on the Ruidoso, making an occasional sortie to the county seat. In this manner the time passed until early in July. Billy the Kid and his eleven followers slipped down from the mountains to John Chisum’s home ranch on the South Spring. The Turner posse learned of their presence and laid siege to the place. But Chisum’s house had been built with the idea of standing off Indian raids, and the defenders had small difficulty in holding the Gomichbooks (C@