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The prisoners were kept over night at Chisum's ranch, and then the posse started with them for Lincoln, not taking the Hondo-Bonito trail, but one via the Agua Negra, on the east side of the Capitans; proof enough that something bloody was in contemplation, for that was far from any settlements.
Murphy & Co. had long ago mortgaged everything they had, and a good many things which they did not have, e. g., some of John Chisum's cattle, to Tom Catron, of Sante Fé.
Moreover he must attend to the affair by himself for just as surely as he took others to help, his prestige was going to be lowered. So he saddled up at once and rode back to Chisum's with a double-barreled shotgun across his lap and two single-action forty-five revolvers at his hips.
But those who gathered around him when he made the declaration always noticed that he had his right hand resting on his pistol-butt and the memory of what had taken place at Chisum's ranch was still fresh in every mind. So they allowed his vaqueros to ride into their herds and in silence they watched them drive out the animals which bore his brand.
At Chisum's ranch, where he and a number of his companions had enforced their presence as unbidden guests since the passing of the spring, he proclaimed his plan openly after the manner of his breed; and he even went so far as to exhibit a forged power of attorney by virtue of which he intended selling the beeves in the Northern market, after he had killed their owner and driven off the Mexicans.
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.
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