The Story of the Outlaw: A Study of the Western DesperadoHough, Emerson
History
The Story of the Outlaw: A Study of the Western Desperado
Hough, Emerson
Crime -- West (U.S.); Criminals -- West (U.S.); Outlaws; West (U.S.) -- History
The Kid now sprang into the next room and caught up Ollinger's heavy
shotgun, loaded with the very shells Ollinger had charged for him. He
saw Ollinger coming across the street, and just as he got below the
window at the corner of the building the Kid leaned over and said,
coolly and pleasantly, "Hello, old fellow!" The next instant he fired
and shot Ollinger dead. He then walked around through the room and out
upon the porch, which at that time extended the full length of the
building, and, coming again in view of Ollinger's body, took a second
deliberate shot at it. Then he broke the gun across the railing and
threw the pieces down on Ollinger's body. "Take that to hell with you,"
he said coolly. Then, seeing himself free and once more king of Lincoln
street, he warned away all who would approach, and, with a file which he
compelled Goss to bring to him, started to file off one of his leg
irons. He got one free, ordered a bystander to bring him a horse, and at
length, mounting, rode away for the Capitans, and so to a country with
which he had long been familiar. At Las Tablas he forced a Mexican
blacksmith to free him of his irons. He sent the horse, which belonged
to Billy Burt, back by some unknown friend the following night.
He was now again on his native heath, a desperado and an outlaw indeed,
and obliged to fight for his life at every turn; for now he knew the
country would turn against him, and, as he had been captured through
information furnished through supposed friends, he knew that treachery
was what he might expect. He knew also that sheriff Garrett would never
give him up now, and that one or the other of the two must die.
Yet, knowing all these things, the Kid, by means of stolen horses, broke
back once more to his old stamping grounds around Fort Sumner. Garrett
again got on his trail, and as the Kid, with incredible fatuity, still
hung around his old haunts, he was at length able to close with him once
more. With his deputies, John Poe and Thomas P. McKinney, he located the
Kid in Sumner, although no one seemed to be explicit as to his
whereabouts. He went to Pete Maxwell's house himself, and there, as his
two deputies were sitting at the edge of the gallery in the moonlight,
he killed the Kid at Maxwell's bedside.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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