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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.
John Chisum was a cattle king who had foreseen the coming of the farmer and adjusted from the open range to barbed wire, and who, in order to do so, had purchased every forty acres carrying water and got for nothing the use of the millions of acres of adjacent range that was worthless without the water he controlled.
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.
Now every one in the country knew that the Man from Bitter Creek was holding down the Chisum place that season, and the action was nothing more nor less than a direct challenge. It did not matter whether sublime ignorance or sublime daring prompted it; it was defiance in either case. There was only one thing for Gallagher to do get the killing over in quick time.
There were many "little fellows," small cattlemen, nested here and there on the flanks of the Chisum herds. What more natural than that they should steal from him, in case they found a market of their own? That was much easier than raising cows of their own. Now, there was a market up this winding Bonito valley, at Lincoln and Fort Stanton.
One night he disappeared, in company with his guard and some United States cavalry horses. Since then nothing has been heard of him. His real name was not Campbell, but Ed Richardson. Billy the Kid did not kill John Chisum, though all the country wondered at that fact. There was a story that he forced Chisum to sign a bill of sale for eight hundred head of cattle.
He claimed that Chisum owed money to the McSween fighting men, to whom he had promised salaries which were never paid; but no evidence exists that Chisum ever made such a promise, although he sometimes sent a wagonload of supplies to the McSween fighting men.
He carried a tin cylinder, large as a water-spout, that contained, some said, more than a thousand of these powers of attorney. At least, it is certain he had papers enough to give him a wide authority. Chisum riders combed every north-bound herd. If they found the cattle of any of his "friends," they were cut out and turned on the Chisum range.
The heritage of hatred was about all that McSween left to his widow, who presently married George L. Barber, at Lincoln, and later proved herself to be a good business woman good enough to make a fortune in the cattle business from the four hundred head of cattle John Chisum gave her to settle a debt he had owed McSween. She afterward established a fine ranch near Three Rivers, New Mexico.
He was well aware that men were soft-shelled and cracked easily on hard rocks or under pounding hoofs. And when he rejected a mount that tangled its legs in quick action and stumbled, it was not because he feared to be cracked, but because, when he took a chance on being cracked, he wanted, as he told John Chisum himself, "an even break for his money."
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