o United States warrant out
against him. Rudabaugh was tried later for robbing the United States
mails, later tried for killing his jailer, and was convicted and
sentenced to be hung; but once more escaped from the Las Vegas jail and
got away for good. The Kid was not so fortunate. He was tried at
Mesilla, before Judge Warren H. Bristol, the same man whose life he was
charged with attempting in 1879. Judge Bristol appointed Judge Ira E.
Leonard, of Lincoln, to defend the prisoner, and Leonard got him
acquitted of the charge of killing Bernstein on the reservation. He was
next tried, at the same term of court, for the killing of Sheriff
William Brady, and in March, 1881, he was convicted under this charge
and sentenced to be hanged at Lincoln on May 13, 1881. He was first
placed under guard of Deputies Bob Ollinger and Dave Woods, and taken
across the mountains in the custody of Sheriff Garrett, who received his
prisoner at Fort Stanton on April 21.

Lincoln county was just beginning to emerge from savagery. There was no
jail worth the name, and all the county could claim as a place for the
house of law and order was the big store building lately owned by
Murphy, Riley & Dolan. It was necessary to keep the Kid under guard for
the three weeks or so before his execution, and Sheriff Garrett chose as
the best available material Bob Ollinger and J. W. Bell, a good, quiet
man from White Oaks, to act as the death watch over this dangerous man,
who seemed now to be nearly at the end of his day.

Against Bob Ollinger the Kid cherished an undying hatred, and longed to
kill him. Ollinger hated him as much, and wanted nothing so much as to
kill the Kid. He was a friend of Bob Beckwith, whom the Kid had killed,
and the two had always been on the opposite sides of the Lincoln county
fighting. Ollinger taunted the Kid with his deeds, and showed his own
hatred in every way. There are many stories about what now took place in
this old building at the side of bloody little Lincoln street. A common
report is that in the evening of April 28, 1881, the Kid was left alone
in the room with Bell, Ollinger having gone across the street for
supper; that the Kid slipped his hands out of his irons--as he was able
to do when he liked, his hands being very small--struck Bell over the
head with his shackles while Bell was reading or was looking out of the
window, later drawing Bell's revolver from its scabbard and killing him
with it. This story is