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Bowdre, Tom O'Folliard, Doc Skurlock, Fred Wayte, Jim French, John Middleton, and Hendry Brown remained with him. Bowdre sold out his ranch on the Ruidosa and set up housekeeping with his Mexican wife in rooms in the old hospital in Fort Sumner. O'Folliard lived with him. Others who joined the Kid's band here were Tom Cooper, Dave Rudabaugh, Billy Wilson, Tom Pickett, and Tom Webb—all cattle rustlers, Rudabaugh having recently broken jail at Las Vegas after killing the jailer.

There was no vendetta now to give to the Kid's activities even a spurious legitimacy in the minds of the people. From now on, he was an outlaw pure and simple and his Fort Sumner years marked the heyday of his career. He was not a robber of the Frank and Jesse James sort; he looted no banks, held up no travellers on the highway. He confined himself exclusively to stealing livestock, and his operations covered half New Mexico. He rounded up cattle on the Canadian River and in the Texas Panhandle and sold them in the southern part of the territory; or he stole beeves in the south and marketed them in Las Vegas and the northern settlements. He was well known everywhere, and those who bought from him were under no illusions regarding the transactions. So easy was it for him to dispose of his stolen stock that he had regularly established marketing connections. Pat Coughlin, known as the "King of Tularosa," who had grown rich on government contracts as Murphy had before him, was one of his most important customers and had an agreement with him to take at a fair price all the cattle he could rustle. The Kid did a thriving business with His Majesty of Tularosa until the arrest and conviction of Coughlin broke off the alliance.

The Kid made outlawry pay. It was a hard life but it