We found the citizens of White Oaks to be sociable and kind; and everything went on lovely with the exception of a shooting scrape between a School teacher and "Big foot."
About the last of February I received another three hundred dollars and I then struck out, accompanied by Tom Emory, to hunt the noted Pat Cohglin and find out if he would let us have the cattle without bloodshed or not. As he had a slaughter house in Fort Stanton I struck out for there first.
We left the "Oaks" one morning early, Emory mounted on his pet "Grey" and I on one of the fat work mules and arrived in "Stanton" about sundown.
We rode up to Cohglin's slaughter pen the first thing and found a man by the name of Peppen in charge. On examining the hides which hung on the fence we found five bearing the "L. X." brand. I laid them to one side and next morning brought two men Crawford and Hurly, down from the Post to witness the brands. I then told Mr. Peppen, or "Old Pap" as he was called, not to butcher any more of those cattle sold by "Billy the Kid." He promised he wouldn't unless he got new orders from Cohglin.
From there we pulled for Tulerosa where Cohglin lived. The first night out we stopped at the Mescalero Apache Indian Agency, which is known as South Fork. There I learned from the storekeeper of a bunch of eight hundred cattle having passed there in a terrible hurry, about three weeks before, going west. He said that they were undoubtedly stolen cattle, for they drove night and day through the deep snow. I came to the conclusion that maybe it was Tom Cooper, one of "Kid's" right-hand bowers with a stolen herd of Panhandle cattle, so made up my mind to keep on his trail.
We rode into Tulerosa the next evening about sundown. A young man from the Panhandle, by the name of Sam Coleman, who was on his way to Willcox, Arizona, was with us. We found the town to be a genuine mexican "Plaza" of about one thousand souls. We put up for the night at Cohglin's store and learned from the clerk, Morris, that the "King of Tulerosa," as Cohglin was called, was down on the Rio Grande on trail of a bunch of cattle stolen from him by Tom Cooper. I put that down as a very thin yarn, having reasons to believe that he and Cooper stood in with one another. I made up my mind that it was our cattle he was trying to get away with, after hearing of us being in the "Oaks."
The clerk had told the truth though, for he was after Cooper. The way it happened, Cohglin had only paid Cooper and the "Kid" half down on the last bunch of Panhandle cattle he bought from them and Cooper hearing of "Kid's" capture and of us being in the "Oaks" on our way after the cattle, came onto Cohglin for the rest of the money so he could leave the country. On being refused he got his crowd together and stole three hundred head of the latter's best cattle and pulled for Arizona with them.
After supper Emory and Coleman went to bed while I struck out to a mexican dance, at the outskirts of town, to keep my ears open for news connected with Panhandle cattle, etc.
There being plenty of wine, or "mescal," on the ground the "Greasers" began feeling pretty good about midnight. Of course I had to join in their sports, so as to keep on the good side of them. There was only one American in the crowd, besides myself.
I became pretty intimate with one old fellow of whom I made scores of inquiries in regard to Mr. Cohglin and the herd—the one I heard about at South Fork—that had passed there a few weeks before.