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THE SAGA OF BILLY THE KID

along with us now, I'll just play a little music for you with my six-shooter."

"I'll dance for no ruffians," Chapman replied hotly.

Mrs. McSween, sitting in her parlour perhaps fifty feet away, heard two shots.

"They've killed Chapman," she cried instinctively, springing from her chair.

"Oh, no," said a woman friend who was with her. "They're only shooting off their pistols in fun."

"I know they've murdered Chapman," repeated Mrs. McSween.

She ran to the window and peered out but it was too dark for her to see into the street.

A Mexican rushed in.

"There is a man lying dead in the road," he said excitedly.

"It's Chapman," cried Mrs. McSween.

But no one dared go out to see who it was.

Early next morning, Miguel Luna, then a little boy, was sent by his mother to the MontaƱa store to buy some groceries. In the half-light of dawn he saw something lying at the side of the road and smoke was rising from it. He thought it was a bundle of rags that someone had set afire. He went a little closer. He was horrified to see a dead man, his clothes burned half off and still smouldering and emitting little curls of smoke. He ran back in fright to his mother.

That afternoon Chapman's body was lowered into a grave behind the old McSween store beside the resting place of McSween, Tunstall, and Morris. The six-shooter that killed him had been held so close that the leap of flame from its barrel had set fire to some legal papers which he carried in the breast pocket of his coat.