his home, but
has interests in Florida. O. J. Cook is dead. Jack Lawrence is dead.
John Kelley is dead. Other actors in the drama, unconvicted, are also
dead or nameless wanderers. As the indictments were all quashed in 1898,
Sam Robinson, whose whereabouts is unknown, will never be brought to
trial for his deeds in the Hay Meadow butchery. He was not tried at
Paris, being then in the Colorado penitentiary. His friend and partner,
Bert Nobel, who was sent to the penitentiary for seven years for
participating in the postoffice robbery, was pardoned out, and later
killed a policeman at Trinidad, Colorado. He was tried there and hanged.
So far as I know, this is the only legal punishment ever inflicted upon
any of the Hugoton or Woodsdale men, who outvied each other in a
lawlessness for which anarchy would be a mild name."

Chapter XVI

Biographies of Bad Men--_Desperadoes of the Deserts_--_Billy the Kid,
Jesse Evans, Joel Fowler, and Others Skilled in the Art of Gun
Fighting_.

The desert regions of the West seemed always to breed truculence and
touchiness. Some of the most desperate outlaws have been those of
western Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona. These have sometimes been
Mexicans, sometimes half-breed Indians, very rarely full-blood or
half-blood negroes. The latter race breeds criminals, but lacks in the
initiative required in the character of the desperado. Texas and the
great arid regions west of Texas produced rather more than their full
quota of bad white men who took naturally to the gun.

By all means the most prominent figure in the general fighting along the
Southwestern border, which found climax in the Lincoln County War, was
that historic and somewhat romantic character known as Billy the Kid,
who had more than a score of killings to his credit at the time of his
death at the age of twenty-one. His character may not be chosen as an
exemplar for youth, but he affords an instance hardly to be surpassed of
the typical bad man.

The true name of Billy the Kid was William H. Bonney, and he was born in
New York City, November 23, 1859. His father removed to Coffeyville, on
the border of the Indian Nations, in 1862, where soon after he died,
leaving a widow and two sons. Mrs. Bonney again moved, this time to
Colorado, where she married again, her second husband being named
Antrim. All the time clinging to what was the wild border, these two now
moved down to Santa Fe, New Mexico, where they remaine