ned the forces of New Mexican
volunteers, an officer known as Major L. G. Murphy. After the war, a
great many men settled near the points where they were mustered out in
the South and West. It was thus with Major Murphy, who located as
post-trader at the little frontier post known as Fort Stanton, which was
founded by Captain Frank Stanton in 1854, in the Indian days. John
Chisum located his Bosque Grande ranch about 1865, and Murphy came to
Fort Stanton about 1866. In 1875, Chisum dropped down to his South
Spring River ranch, and by that time Murphy had been thrown out of the
post-tradership by Major Clendenning, commanding officer, who did not
like his methods. He had dropped nine miles down the Bonito from Fort
Stanton, with two young associates, under the firm name of Murphy, Riley
& Dolan, sometimes spoken of as L. G. Murphy & Co.

Murphy was a hard-drinking man, yet withal something of a student. He
was intelligent, generous, bold and shrewd. He "staked" every little cow
man in Lincoln county, including a great many who hung on the flanks of
John Chisum's herds. These men in turn were in their ethics bound to
support him and his methods. Murphy was king of the Bonito country.
Chisum was king of the Pecos; not merchant but cow man, and caring for
nothing which had not grass and water on it.

Here, then, were two rival kings. Each at times had occasion for a beef
contract. The result is obvious to anyone who knows the ways of the
remoter West in earlier days. The times were ripe for trouble. Murphy
bought stolen beef, and furnished bran instead of flour on his Indian
contracts, as the government records show. His henchmen held the Chisum
herds as their legitimate prey. Thus we now have our stage set and
peopled for the grim drama of a bitter border war.

The Pecos war was mostly an indiscriminate killing among cow men and
cattle thieves, and it cost many lives, though it had no beginning and
no end. The Texas men, hard riders and cheerful shooters for the most
part, came pushing up the Pecos and into the Bonito canon. Among these,
in 1874, were four brothers known as the Harold boys, Bill, Jack, Tom
and Bob, who had come from Texas in 1872. Two of them located ranches on
the Ruidoso, being "staked" therein by Major Murphy, king for that part
of the countryside. The Harold boys once undertook to run the town of
Lincoln, and a foolish justice ordered a constable to arrest them. One
Gillam, an ex-sheriff, told the bo