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"A little while before we made a dash for our lives, the Kid rolled a cigarette. I watched him. It seemed just then as if he had about a minute and a half to live. But when he poured the tobacco from his pouch into the cigarette paper he did not spill a flake. His hand was as steady as steel. A blazing chunk of roof fell on the table beside him, barely missing his head. 'Much obliged,' he said; and he bent over and lighted his cigarette from the flame. Then he looked at me and grinned as if he thought that was a good joke. He didn't roll that cigarette because he was nervous but because he wanted a good smoke. You could tell by the way he inhaled the smoke and let it roll out of his mouth that he was getting real pleasure out of it. If you had seen Billy the Kid roll that cigarette and smoke it, señor, you would have known at once that he was a brave man."

Salazar spoke in the language of his fathers, which was Spanish, rapidly, with fire, and dramatic emphasis. He pointed his story with picturesque gestures and more than once arose to illustrate his narrative by convincing pantomime. The old man has a histrionic flair, which is one of the reasons he escaped alive out of the murderous holocaust.

"When it came my turn to dart out the door of the McSween house," he went on, "the Murphy men were firing at a distance of ten yards. Why we were not all killed, I never could understand. I had not run a dozen steps when I was struck by three rifle bullets—in the hand, the left shoulder, and the left side, the bullet in my side passing entirely through my body. I stumbled, twisted over in the air, and fell on my back among the dead bodies of McSween, Romero, Semora, and Harvey Morris.

"I lay there unconscious for a while. When I came to