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Ash Upson, who a few years before had lived at the boarding house of Billy the Kid's mother in Silver City, was postmaster of Roswell at this time.

"I wish," said Morton to Postmaster Upson in turning the letter in to him, "you would write my cousin the full particulars of my death when you hear of them."

Posseman McCloskey, an old buffalo hunter, and according to all accounts a brave, decent man, was standing near by.

"If they kill you two men," he said to Morton within hearing of several others of the posse, "they will have to kill me first."

When the posse started out from Roswell, they took the main road to Lincoln which ran westward across the Pecos Valley, over Pecacho Hill and by way of Hondo and Bonito cañons. Martin Chavez of Pecacho, later merchant and politician in Santa Fé, riding toward Roswell, saw them turn from the travelled highway and head for Agua Negra by a dim, unfrequented trail.

Agua Negra is a spring at the eastern foot of Capitan Mountain in an uninhabited country through which few travellers pass. It gushes from a cliff a little way inside the wide mouth of Agua Negra Cañon. Steep hills dark with piñons rise above it and the great peak towers beyond. The spring pours through lichened boulders into a spacious basin where cattle and sheep sometimes come to drink and where the still, clear waters lie so dark in the shadows of trees that the pool has been named Agua Negra—the Black Water. A haunted, lonely spot it is, fit scene for crime. When Chavez reached Roswell, he reported this strange turning aside from the main travelled road to Ash Upson, who read sinister meaning in it.

"It's all over with those poor boys," said Upson.