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cattle; its people were either Murphy sympathizers or active Murphy partisans.

The posse travelled down the Bonito and Hondo cañons and turned south in the Pecos Valley. At the lower crossing of the Peñasco, six miles from its confluence with the Pecos, they caught sight of five horsemen, dismounted and resting under a clump of trees near the ford, who, when they saw the posse approaching, hurriedly climbed into their saddles, drove the spurs into their ponies, and went careering away in a cloud of dust, Brewer's men tearing pellmell after them, firing at every jump. After several miles of this mad race, two of the fugitives separated from the other three and headed for the hills to the west. Billy the Kid recognized these two for his former friends of Mesilla days, Billy Morton and Frank Baker; both Morton, as leader of the Tunstall murder posse, and Baker, as a member of it, in at Tunstall's death and participants in the orgies over his dead body. These two and any others of that murderous band he might chance to meet the Kid had sworn to kill.

The Kid wheeled his horse off after Morton and Baker, and the remainder of the posse followed his lead. The pursuers gained gradually; their bullets began to sing close about the ears of the fugitives and knock up spouts of earth around them. Turning in their saddles, Morton and Baker returned the fire. A sudden change in their course brought them broadside to the posse and both their horses were killed under them. On foot, their case seemed hopeless. It chanced there was a deserted dugout not far off, with low sod walls and dirt roof, offering protection. They made this on the run and found refuge in the cavernous interior.

The dugout was in open land, and behind its bullet-proof