ways slight and
lean, a hard rider all his life, and never old enough to begin to take
on flesh. His hair was light or light brown, and his eyes blue or
blue-gray, with curious red hazel spots in them. His face was rather
long, his chin narrow but long, and his front teeth were a trifle
prominent. He was always a pleasant mannered youth, hopeful and buoyant,
never glum or grim, and he nearly always smiled when talking.

The Southwestern border at this time offered but few opportunities for
making an honest living. There were the mines and there were the cow
ranches. It was natural that the half-wild life of the cow punchers
would sooner or later appeal to the Kid. He and Jesse Evans met
somewhere along the lower border a party of punchers, among whom were
Billy Morton and Frank Baker, as well as James McDaniels; the last named
being the man who gave Billy his name of "The Kid," which hung to him
all his life.

The Kid arrived in the Seven Rivers country on foot. In his course east
over the mountains from Mesilla to the Pecos valley he had been mixed up
with a companion, Tom O'Keefe, in a fight with some more Apaches, of
whom the Kid is reported to have killed one or more. There is no doubt
that the Guadalupe mountains, which he crossed, were at that time a
dangerous Indian country. That the Kid worked for a time for John
Chisum, on his ranch near Roswell, is well known, as is the fact that he
cherished a grudge against Chisum for years, and was more than once upon
the point of killing him for a real or fancied grievance. He left
Chisum and took service with J. H. Tunstall on his Feliz ranch late in
the winter of 1877, animated by what reason we may not know. In doing
this, he may have acted from pique or spite or hatred. There was some
quarrel between him and his late associates. Tunstall was killed by the
Murphy faction on February 18, 1878. From that time, the path of the Kid
is very plain and his acts well known and authenticated. He had by this
time killed several men, certainly at least two white men; and how many
Mexicans and Indians he had killed by fair means or foul will never be
really known. His reputation as a gun fighter was well established.

Dick Brewer, Tunstall's foreman, was now sworn in as a "special deputy"
by McSween, and a war of reprisal was now on. The Kid was soon in the
saddle with Brewer and after his former friends, all Murphy allies.
There were about a dozen in this posse. On March 6, 1878