On the 5th day of August, “Billy the Kid” and gang rode up in plain view of the Mescalero Indian Agency and began rounding up a band of horses.
A Jew by the name of Bernstein, mounted a horse and said he would go out and stop them. He was warned of the danger, but persisted in his purpose of preventing the stealing of their band of gentle saddle horses.
When Mr. Bernstein rode up to the gang and told them to “vamoose,” in other words, to hit the road, the “Kid” drew his rifle and shot the poor Jew dead. This was the “Kid’s” most cowardly act. His excuse was that he “didn’t like a Jew, nohow.”
During the fall the government had given a contract to a large gang of Mexicans to put up several hundred tons of hay at $25 a ton. As they drew their pay, the “Kid” and gang were on hand to deal monte and win their money.
When the contract was finished, there was no more business for the “Kid’s” monte game, so with his own hand, as told to the author by himself, he set fire to the hay stacks one windy night.
Now the Government gave another contract for several hundred tons of hay at $50 a ton—as the work had to be rushed before frost killed the grass.
When pay day came around the “Kid’s” monte game was raking in money again.
The new stacks were allowed to stand, as it was too late in the season to cut the grass for more hay.
During the fall the “Kid” and some of his gang made trips to Fort Sumner. Bowdre and Skurlock always remained near their wives in Lincoln, but finally those two outlaws moved their families to “Sumner,” where a rendezvous was established. Here one of their gang, who always kept in the dark, and worked on the sly, lived with his Mexican wife, a sister to the wife of Pat Garrett. His name was Barney Mason, and he carried a curse of God on his brow for the killing of John Farris, a cowboy friend of the writer’s, in the early winter of 1878.
On one of his trips to Fort Sumner, “Billy the Kid” fell desperately in love with a pretty little seventeen-year-old half-breed Mexican girl, whom we will call Miss Dulcinea del Toboso. She was a daughter of a once famous man, and a sister to a man who owned sheep on a thousand hills. The falling in love with this pretty, young miss, was virtually the cause of “Billy the Kid’s” death, as up to the last he hovered around Fort Sumner like a moth around a blazing candle. He had no thought of getting his wings singed; he couldn’t resist the temptation of visiting this pretty little miss.