That was the beginning of the actual Lincoln County War. Dick Brewer, Tunstall's foreman, was now leader of the McSween fighting men. McSween, of course, supplied him with color of "legal" authority. He was appointed "special constable." Neither party had difficulty in obtaining all the legal papers required. Each party was presently to have a sheriff of its own. Meantime, there was at Lincoln an accommodating justice of the peace, John P. Wilson, who was ready to give either faction any sort of legal paper it demanded. Dick Brewer, Billy the Kid, and nearly a dozen others of the first McSween posse started to the lower country, where lived a good many of Murphy's friends, small cow men and others. On the Rio Penasco, about six miles from the Pecos, they came across a party of five men, two of whom, Billy Morton and Frank Baker, had been present at the killing of Tunstall. Baker and Morton surrendered under promise of safekeeping, and were held for a time at Roswell. On the trail from Roswell to Lincoln, at a point near the Agua Negra, both these men, while kneeling and pleading for their lives, were deliberately shot and killed by Billy the Kid. There was with the Brewer posse a buffalo-hunter by the name of McClosky, who had promised to take care of these prisoners. Joe McNab, of the posse, shot and killed McClosky in cold blood. In this McSween posse were "Doc" Skurlock, Charlie Bowdre, Billy the Kid, Hendry Brown, Jim French, John Middleton, with McNab, Wait and Smith, besides McClosky, who seems not to have been loyal enough to them to sanction cold blooded murder. These victims were killed March 7th, 1878. There had now been deliberate murder committed upon the one side and upon the other. There were many men implicated on each side. These men, in self-interest, now drew apart together. The factions, of necessity, became more firmly established. It may be seen that there was very little principle at stake on either side. The country was now simply going wild again. It meant to take the law into its own hands; and the population was divided into these two factions, to one or the other of which every resident must perforce belong. A choice, and sometimes a quick one, was an imperative necessity. The next killing was that of Buckshot Roberts, at Blazer's Mill, near the Mescalero Reservation buildings, an affair described in a later chapter. Thirteen men, later of the Kid's gang, led by Dick Brewer, attacked Roberts, who killed Dick Brewer before he himself died. The death of the latter left the Kid chief of the McSween forces. A great blood lust now possessed all the population. It wanted no law. There is no doubt about the intention to make away with Judge Warren Bristol of the circuit court. The latter, knowing of these turbulent times in Lincoln, decided not to hold court. He sent word to Sheriff William Brady to open court and then at once to adjourn it. This was on April 1, 1878.