concerned might as well quit organized fighting, and engage in individual pillage instead. Murphy & Co. were ruined. Murphy and McSween were both dead. Chisum could be depended upon to pay some of the debts to the warriors through stolen cattle, if not through signed checks. Why, then, should good, game men go on killing each other for nothing? This was the argument used.
The "women in the case" in the Lincoln County War. Mrs. Susan E. Barber was known as the "Cattle Queen of the West"
In this conference there were, on the Murphy side, Jesse Evans, Jimmie Dolan and Bill Campbell. On the other side were Billy the Kid, Tom O'Folliard and the game Mexican, Salazar. Each of these men had a .45 Colt at his belt, and a cocked Winchester in his hand. At last, however, the six men shook hands. They agreed to end the war. Then, frontier fashion, they set off for the nearest saloon.
The Las Vegas lawyer, Chapman, happened to cross the street as these desperate fighting men, used to killing, now well drunken, came out, all armed, and all swearing friendship.
"Halt, you, there!" cried Bill Campbell to Chapman; and the latter paused. "Damn you," said Campbell to Chapman; "you are the —— —— of a —— that has come down here to stir up trouble among us fellows. We're
peaceful. It's all settled, and we're friends now. Now, damn you, just to show you're peaceable too, you dance."
"I'm a gentleman," said Chapman, "and I'll dance for no ruffian." An instant later, shot through the heart by Campbell's six-shooter, as is alleged, he lay dead in the roadway. No one dared disturb his body. He was shot at such close range that some papers in his coat pocket took fire from the powder flash, and his body was partially consumed as it lay there in the road.
For this killing, Jimmie Dolan, Billy Matthews and Bill Campbell were indicted and tried. Dolan and Matthews were acquitted. Campbell, in default of a better jail, was kept in the guard-house at Fort Stanton. One night he disappeared, in company with his guard and some United States cavalry horses. Since then nothing has been heard of him. His real name was not Campbell, but Ed Richardson.
Billy the Kid did not kill John Chisum, though all the country wondered at that fact. There was a story that he forced Chisum to sign a bill of sale for eight hundred head of cattle. He claimed that Chisum owed money to the McSween fighting men, to whom he had