Sheriff Brady, in walking down the street toward the dwelling-house in which court sessions were then held, was obliged to pass the McSween store and residence. Behind the corral wall, there lay ambushed Billy the Kid and at least five others of his gang. Brady was accompanied by Billy Matthews (J. B. Matthews, now dead; postmaster of Roswell, New Mexico, in 1904), by George Hindman, his deputy, and Dad Peppin, later sheriff of Lincoln county. The Kid and his men waited until the victims had gone by. Then a volley was fired. Sheriff Brady, shot in the back, slowly sank down, his knees weakening under him. "My God! My God! My God!" he exclaimed, as he gradually dropped. He had been struck in the back by five balls. As he sank down, he turned his head to see his murderers, and as he did so received a ball in the eye, and so fell dead. George Hindman, the deputy, also shot in the back, ran down the street about one hundred and fifty yards before he fell. He lay in the street and few dared to go out to him. A saloon-keeper, Ike Stockton (himself a bad man, and later killed at Durango, Colorado), offered him a drink of water, which he brought in his hat, and Hindman, accepting it, fell back dead. The murder of Sheriff Brady left the country without even the semblance of law; but each party now took steps to set up a legal machinery of its own, as cover for its own acts. The old justice of the peace, John P. Wilson, would issue a warrant on any pretext for any person; but there must be some one with authority to serve the process. In a quasi-election, the McSween faction instituted John Copeland as their sheriff. The Murphy faction held that Copeland never qualified as sheriff. He lived with McSween part of the time. It was understood that he was sheriff for the purpose of bothering nobody but the Murphy people. Meantime, the other party were not thus to be surpassed. In June, 1878, Governor Axtell appointed George W. Peppin as sheriff of Lincoln county. Peppin qualified at Mesilla, came back to Lincoln, and demanded of Copeland the warrants in his possession. He had, on his part, twelve warrants for the arrest of members of the McSween gang. Little lacked now to add confusion in this bloody coil. The country was split into two factions. Each had a sheriff as a figurehead! What and where was the law? Peppin had to get fighting men to serve his warrants, and he could not always be particular about the social standing of his posses. He had a thankless and dangerous position as the "Murphy sheriff." Most of his posses were recruited from among the small ranchers and cow boys of the lower Pecos. Peppin was sheriff only a few months, and threw up the job $2,800 in debt.