Page:Saga of Billy the Kid.djvu/233

saddle horses stood in close ranks up and down the streets. Men and women elbowed their way along the usually empty sidewalks toward the old courthouse in the public square as if to a theatre in which the curtain was about to rise on a fascinating drama.

When the doors were thrown open, the courtroom was packed to the walls in a trice, and those who failed to gain entrance stood at the windows on boxes and barrels and peered over the heads of the more fortunate ones inside.

Judge Warren H. Bristol was on the bench. This was the magistrate whose life the Kid once had threatened and who had refused to hold court in Lincoln while the desperado in the rôle of frontier Robespierre drew up his proscription lists and directed his reign of terror.

A scuffle of feet sounded at the door. "Make way," cried a voice. A buzz of excited interest swept the courtroom. There was a craning of necks. All eyes were bent upon a slender youth who walked through the aisle to a chair in front of the tribune, guarded by Deputy Sheriffs Bob Ollinger and Dave Woods. The crowd gasped. Was it possible that this pale, smiling. neatly dressed lad was the notorious man-slayer? With his wavy brown hair and smooth, beardless face, he locked like a clean, unsophisticated, good-natured boy. If there was murder in his soul, there seemed none in his frank, friendly gray eyes. The daintiness of his feet in their half-boots of soft leather did not escape attention. His hands, as small and delicate as a woman's, seemed unequal to dealing death from heavy six-shooters. In comparison the two armed deputies looked lowering and brutal. It seemed a shame that this harmless-looking youth should be in the custody of such burly savages. Feminine eyes softened with pity.