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frontier nom-de-guerre—Frank Baker, and Billy Morton, were, it was said, leaders of the thieves and kept their pockets lined with gold by stealing Chisum's cattle. Many others of the same kidney were said to do as well. Hardly a day passed that somewhere between Bosque Redondo and the Guadalupes freebooters did not levy toll on Chisum's herds in greater or lesser measure. Chisum's rage was futile. Once back in their mountains, the rustlers were safe among friends. The sheriff of Lincoln County was James A. Brady of Lincoln town. As sheriff he represented what semblance of law there was. But he owed his office to Murphy's political favour and Murphy's wish was to Brady a command.

Chisum at times swore out warrants for the thieves. When Sheriff Brady could find no way to avoid it, he arrested the culprits and lodged them in the Lincoln jail. Having done this much, he was legally absolved from neglect of duty. But the Lincoln jail was as great a joke as Murphy's miracle herd. It was a little two-by-four adobe hut situated just back of Murphy's store. It would have been possible for a man confined in it to whittle his way out through the brittle adobe bricks with a good pocket knife. But few prisoners cared to take such trouble. They usually preferred to kick down the door.

Such escapes, becoming common, laid the sheriff open to a charge of negligence, and he finally installed a good door which was immune to pedal assaults. Then, upon the incarceration of cattle thieves on Chisum warrants, it became fashionable for their friends to ride into town at night with great show of daredeviltry and the shooting off of guns, go through the form of forcing an obliging Murphy jailer to deliver the keys, and rescue the prisoners in style.