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Brady's rifle and six-shooter, both new and brightly furbished. The Kid was canny even in assassination.

"I think I could use those guns," he said. "Come on, Wayte, let's get 'em."

He and Wayte vaulted over the wall and walked out into the road to where Brady lay. Wayte gathered up the rifle; Billy was stooping over the prostrate form unbuckling the cartridge belt with the six-shooter in its holster, when Billy Matthews, from the Mexican house in which he had found refuge, opened fire. His first bullet cut through the flesh of the Kid's hip and wounded Wayte in the thigh. These two hustled back to the shelter of the adobe wall, carrying with them, however, both the sheriff's rifle and his six-shooter; the Kid, taking time, it is said, to fire a bullet into Brady's head by way of grace shot to make sure of the death of his enemy.

For nearly half an hour Hindman lay in the hot sun where he had fallen, no one in the village daring to venture to his side. He was dying. He called for water. Still the panic-stricken people remained in their houses. At last, Port Stockton, saloon keeper, bad man, killed later in Durango, Colorado, bravest of all in Lincoln town, dipped up water in his hat from an asequia and took it to the dying man. Hindman, supported in Stockton's arms, took a deep drink and fell back dead.

Sheriff Brady had been riddled with eight or ten bullets, some of which had passed entirely through him. Hindman was shot only once. It is impossible to say who killed either. Hindman's death was by some attributed to Billy the Kid; by others, to Frank McNab.

Billy Matthews's shot at the Kid, it may be mentioned, had been winged with hatred. Only a few days before, Matthews, a staunch Murphy partisan, had met the Kid