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With Sheriff Garrett in the saddle, the toils began to tighten about the Kid. All the forces of law were marshalled to the aid of the new sheriff. The United States Government sent Azariah F. Wild, a Secret Service operative, into Lincoln County. Frank Stewart, with a posse of man-trailers in the employ of a cattleman's association of Texas, was out on the hunt for the outlaw. John. W. Poe, in the service of cattle interests in the Panhandle and the Canadian River country, was on the trail.

The Kid was growing wary. With Billy Wilson, Dave Rudabaugh, Charlie Bowdre, and Tom O'Folliard he spent his twenty-first birthday in White Oaks; but he did not celebrate the occasion hilariously in saloons and dance halls. He kept under cover, and a few swigs out of a bottle among clandestine friends were his only commemoration of the event. As he and his band rode out of town next day, the Kid remarked Deputy Sheriff Jim Woodland standing on the main street in front of the Pioneer saloon. Riding along a hillside, the Kid dropped a bullet close to the deputy's feet by way of hail and farewell. "It was only a friendly shot," he explained to O'Folliard, who protested that Woodland had been an old friend in Texas and they had come to New Mexico together. Misinterpreting the Kid's winged message of friendliness, Woodland, with Jim Carlyle and J. N. Bell, also deputies, sent a six-shooter volley after the Kid which was not friendly but happened to be futile.

White Oaks thereupon agreed officially that the Kid's impudence merited drastic punishment and a posse was organized to pursue him. With Deputy Sheriff Will Hudgens in command, the posse consisted of Johnny Hudgens, brother of the leader, J. N. Bell, Jim Carlyle, Jim Watts, John Mosby, Jim Brent, J. P. Langston, Ed