as far east
as Atacosa, on the Canadian, before the stock was all gotten rid of.
Middleton, Wayt, and Hendry Brown there left the Kid's gang, telling him
that he would get killed before long; but the latter laughed at them
and returned to his old grounds, alternating between Lincoln and Fort
Sumner, and now and then stealing some cows from the Chisum herd.

In January, 1880, the Kid enlarged his list of victims by killing, in a
very justifiable encounter, a bad man from the Panhandle by the name of
Grant, who had been loafing around in his country, and who, no doubt,
intended to kill the Kid for the glory of it. The Kid had, a few moments
before he shot Grant, taken the precaution to set the hammer of the
latter's revolver on an "empty," as he whirled it over in examination.
They were apparently friends, but the Kid knew that Grant was drunk and
bloodthirsty. He shot Grant twice through the throat, as Grant snapped
his pistol in his face. Nothing was done with the Kid for this, of
course.

Birds of a feather now began to appear in the neighborhood of Fort
Sumner, and the Kid's gang was increased by the addition of Tom Pickett,
and later by Billy Wilson, Dave Rudabaugh, Buck Edwards, and one or two
others. These men stole cattle now from ranges as far east as the
Canadian, and sold them to obliging butcher-shops at the new mining
camp of White Oaks, just coming into prominence; or, again, they took
cattle from the lower Pecos herds and sold them north at Las Vegas; or
perhaps they stole horses at the Indian reservation and distributed them
along the Pecos valley. Their operations covered a country more than two
hundred miles across in either direction. They had accomplices and
friends in nearly every little _placita_ of the country. Sometimes they
gave a man a horse as a present. If he took it, it meant that they could
depend upon him to keep silent. Partly by friendliness and partly by
terrorizing, their influence was extended until they became a power in
all that portion of the country; and their self-confidence had now
arisen to the point that they thought none dared to molest them, while
in general they behaved in the high-handed fashion of true border
bandits. This was the heyday of the Kid's career.

It was on November 27, 1880, that the Kid next added to his list of
killings. The men of White Oaks, headed by deputy sheriff William
Hudgens, saloon-keeper of White Oaks, formed a posse, after the fashion
of the da