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member them," added Mrs. Barber, "and I believe, if he had lived, he would have done exactly as he said and procured the Kid's indictment for this infamous murder."

The murder of Sheriff Brady left the law in Lincoln County without even a figurehead. Through Brady, the Murphy faction had controlled the county's legal machinery. This had enabled it to make legal gestures with a certain flourish of good theatre and to give its actions legal verisimilitude in the public mind. To save its face, the McSween faction meanwhile had had recourse to the accommodations of sail-trimming Justice of the Peace Wilson and the appointment of special constables. Now that the McSween faction had swept into power on Billy the Kid's rifle volley, it hastened to consolidate its position by acquiring a sheriff of its own; and staging what may be regarded as a mock election, dominated by its gunmen, it placed John Copeland of Lincoln in the sheriff's office. Copeland was an honest, complacent man of little force. As sheriff, he served his purpose as a simulacrum, lived at the McSween home, and pursued an innocuous course under McSween's mild, religious despotism. He did nothing of consequence during his brief term of office and remains a mere name in the story of the Lincoln County war.

Billy the Kid—eighteen years old, if you please—was now the dominant figure in the situation. When Special Constable Dick Brewer lost his life in the fight with "Buckshot Bill" Roberts at Blazer's sawmill, his mantle as leader of the McSween fighting forces descended upon the shoulders of Billy the Kid. The prestige of this youthful desperado as fighter and killer was by this time firmly established. His will, backed by his six-shooter, was the law of the land. He ruled by terror, balked at