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His answer was a shot which tumbled him dead from his saddle. Some say Billy Morton fired the shot; some say, on what seems better evidence, Tom Hill. At least, after Tunstall had fallen to the ground, Hill leaped from his horse and, sticking a rifle to the back of Tunstall's head blew out his brains. Half-drunk with whisky and mad with the taste of blood, the savages turned the murder of the defenseless man into an orgy. Pantilon Gallegos, a Bonito Cañon Mexican, hammered in his head with a jagged rock. The Britisher had thought it all a joke. Well, they would make it a good joke while they were about it. They killed Tunstall's horse, stretched Tunstall's body beside the dead animal, face to the sky, arms folded across his breast, feet together. Under the man's head they placed his hat and under the horse's head his coat carefully folded by way of pillows. So murdered man and dead horse suggested they had crawled into bed and gone to sleep together. This was their devil's mockery, their joke, ghastly, meaningless. Then they rode back to Lincoln, roaring drunken songs along the way.

The posse, taking a short cut across the hills from Lincoln, had ridden first to Tunstall's ranch and, finding it deserted, had overtaken Tunstall five miles from home. Lucky for Billy the Kid and Brewer that they had gone hunting wild turkeys, else they would have shared Tunstall's fate. From a distant hillside they witnessed the murder. It was over so quickly that no forlorn-hope effort at aid on their part would have availed. Nothing was left to do but save themselves. Unseen, they slipped over the crest of the hills.

Back once more in Lincoln, Morton and his men reported to Murphy and Sheriff Brady. Ashamed of their deed, they took refuge in mendacities. They had found