Page:Saga of Billy the Kid.djvu/94

they won, the world was theirs for at least twenty-four hours; if they lost, there were plenty of steers on the range. Of the adventures that befell them only one has survived in dubious tradition. Somewhere between the San Andreas Mountains and the Guadalupes, it is said, they broke bread one day with a party of immigrants, three men, three women, and several children. After they had taken their departure, a band of Apaches swooped out of the hills and attacked the camp. Riding back, Billy and Jesse opened fire with their rifles upon the savages, who were finally driven off, leaving eight dead on the field. During the fight, an Indian bullet shattered the stock of Billy's rifle and another knocked off the heel of one of his boots. One of the immigrants received a wound through the stomach from which he died and two others were shot, though not dangerously.

Billy and Jesse joined fortunes with Billy Morton, Frank Baker, and Jim McDaniels, cowboy friends of Evans, in the summer of 1877 around Mesilla, and remained with them for a time. In camp-fire talk, McDaniels once made passing allusion to Billy.

"Who?" asked Evans, not hearing the name.

"Billy," replied McDaniels and added by way of indubitable identification, "the Kid."

There was a certain hard staccato music in the words that appealed to McDaniels and he rolled the name he had inadvertently coined over his tongue again and again—"Billy the Kid, Billy the Kid."

So a famous name was born casually. Nothing original about it; but it had a quaint ring that caught the fancy of the other cowboys, and from that time on Billy Bonney was Billy the Kid to them and the rest of the world.