Page:Saga of Billy the Kid.djvu/30

ally to him, and he grasped it in a hand as small as my own.

"'Howdy, Miss Chisum, I'm pleased to meet you,' he said with a deferential bow in the phrase that was de rigueur on the frontier.

"'You're Billy the Kid?' I gasped.

"'That's what they call me,” he drawled in a soft voice.

"I sank down on the sofa and laughed until the tears came. He must have thought I was crazy but he laughed, too.

"'Well,' I said when I was able to speak, 'of course I owe you an explanation and an apology. But, you see, I—I didn’t expect to find you looking like you do.'

"'Yes,' he answered good-naturedly, 'I understand.'

"And we both fell laughing again.

"Billy the Kid and I became great friends. Bad he surely was, but surely not all bad. He had many admirable qualities. When he was an enemy, he was an enemy, but when he was a friend, he was a friend. He was brimming over with light-hearted gaiety and good humour. As far as dress was concerned, he always looked as if he had just stepped out of a band-box. In broad-brimmed white hat, dark coat and vest, gray trousers worn over his boots, a gray flannel shirt and black four-in-hand tie, and sometimes—would you believe it?—a flower in his lapel, he was a dashing figure and quite the dandy. I suppose it sounds absurd to speak of such a character as a gentleman, but from beginning to end of our long friendship, in all his personal relations with me, he was the pink of politeness and as courteous a little gentleman as I ever met.

"Many a gallop across country Billy the Kid and I took together, and many a pleasant evening we sat talking for hours on the front gallery. There was a brook full of