ng to
mention names in an incident like this.

Tom O'Folliard was another noted character. He was something of a gun
expert, in his own belief, at least. He was a man of medium height and
dark complexion, and of no very great amount of mental capacity. He came
into the lower range from somewhere east, probably from Texas, and
little is known of him except that he was in some fighting, and that he
is buried at Sumner with Bowdre and the Kid. He got away with one or two
bluffs and encounters, and came to think that he was as good as the best
of men, or rather as bad as the worst; for he was one of those who
wanted a reputation as a bad man.

Tom Pickett was another not far from the O'Folliard class, ambitious to
be thought wild and woolly and hard to curry; which he was not, when it
came to the real currying, as events proved. He was a very pretty
handler of a gun, and took pride in his skill with it. He seems to have
behaved well after the arrest of the Kid's gang near Sumner, and is not
known in connection with any further criminal acts, though he still for
a long time wore two guns in the settlements. Once a well-known sheriff
happened, by mere chance, to be in his town, not knowing Pickett was
there. The latter literally took to the woods, thinking something was on
foot in which he was concerned. Being reminded that he had lost an
opportunity to show how bad he was he explained: "I don't want anything
to do with that long-legs." Pickett, no doubt, settled down and became a
useful man. Indeed, although it seems a strange thing to say, it is the
truth that much of the old wildness of that border was a matter of
general custom, one might also say of habit. The surroundings were wild,
and men got to running wild. When times changed, some of them also
changed, and frequently showed that after all they could settle down to
work and lead decent lives. Lawlessness is sometimes less a matter of
temperament than of surroundings.

Chapter XVII

The Fight of Buckshot Roberts--_Encounter Between a Crippled Ex-Soldier
and the Band of Billy the Kid_--_One Man Against Thirteen._

Next to the fight of Wild Bill with the McCandlas gang, the fight of
Buckshot Roberts at Blazer's Mill, on the Mescalero Indian reservation,
is perhaps the most remarkable combat of one man against odds ever known
in the West. The latter affair is little known, but deserves its record.

Buckshot Roberts was one of those men who appeared on the