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241
For the information of those who are not familiar with his history, I will say that his name was William H. Bonney. He was born in New York City on July 9, 1859, and at the age of twelve he killed a boy companion with a pocket knife, after which he escaped and went to Kansas, stopping near Atchison (where the writer then lived), where he worked on a farm for a year and a half. Leaving there he went to New Mexico and went to work on a ranch. He stayed until the fall of '79, when, after a fancied slight, he fell out with a rancher, whom he killed, and from that day on he was an Ishmaelite—his hand against every man and every man's hand against him.
After killing the rancher he surrounded himself with a bunch of the toughest characters to be found on the frontier. His stronghold was the Pecos Valley, where he drank, gambled, stole cattle and murdered all that he fell out with until, at the age of twenty-two, his victims numbered the same as his years.
In the latter part of 1880, a then noted frontier officer by the name of Pat Garrett was detailed to bring "The Kid" in, dead or alive, and as he knew our boys had been bothered a great deal and had lost several cattle; he came to our camp for help. I was detailed as one of the posse to go with Garrett, and we finally located the outlaw in a ranch house about forty miles from White Oaks. After surrounding them a halt was called for a parley, during which "Billy the Kid" sent out word by a Mexican outlaw by the name of Jose Martinez, one of his leaders, that if Garrett would send the writer, who was known as " The Crooked S Kid," and Jimmy Carlyle, a young cowboy, to the house he would try and come to some kind of an agreement. Garrett readily consented to this, as he knew his men and those of "The Kid," and he knew a battle meant death to many. Leaving our guns behind, Jimmy and I went to the house, where we found as tough a bunch of outlaws, gun fighters, and