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He stepped back into the house, but only lived about twenty minutes. The Kid said to him, "Charlie, you're killed anyhow. Take your gun and go out and kill that long-legged before you die." He pulled Bowdre's pistol around in front of him and pushed him out of the door. Bowdre staggered feebly toward the spot where the sheriff was lying.
For some reason the piece failed to fire, and the Kid was saved by the narrowest escape he ever had in his life. Charlie Bowdre now appeared around the corner of the house, and Roberts fired at him next. His bullet struck Bowdre in the belt, and cut the belt off from him. Almost at the same time, Bowdre fired at him and shot him through the body.
Garrett, with Jim East and Tom Emory, crept up to the head of the ravine which made up to the ridge on which the fortress of the outlaws stood. The early morning is always the best time for a surprise of this sort. It was Charlie Bowdre who first came out in the morning, and as he stepped out of the door his career as a bad man ended. Three bullets passed through his body.
Two mornings afterward at the Arroyo Tivan, Charley Bowdre had staggered into the stone house where the outlaws were hiding, wounded unto death by the rifles of these same pursuers. "Charley, you're done for.
Charlie Bowdre is supposed to have been a Texas boy, as was Tom Hill. Bowdre had a little ranch on the Rio Ruidoso, twenty miles or so from Lincoln; but few of these restless characters did much farming. It was easier to steal cattle, and to eat beef free if one were hungry. Bowdre joined Billy the Kid's gang and turned outlaw for a trade.
"Here is the place," said he, at length. "We buried them all in a row. The first grave is the Kid's, and next to him is Bowdre, and then O'Folliard." Here was the sole remaining record of the man hunt's end. So passes the glory of the world!
In this McSween posse were "Doc" Skurlock, Charlie Bowdre, Billy the Kid, Hendry Brown, Jim French, John Middleton, with McNab, Wait and Smith, besides McClosky, who seems not to have been loyal enough to them to sanction cold blooded murder. These victims were killed March 7th, 1878. There had now been deliberate murder committed upon the one side and upon the other.
He did not drop, but staggered back against the wall; and so he stood there, crippled of old and now wounded to death, but so fierce a human tiger that his very looks struck dismay into this gang of professional fighters. They actually withdrew around the house and left him there! Each claimed the credit for having shot the victim. "No," said Charlie Bowdre, "I shot him myself.
Several figures burst out of the rear door of the burning house, among these the unfortunate McSween. Around him, and ahead of him, ran Billy the Kid, Skurlock, French, O'Folliard, Bowdre, and a few others. The flashing of six-shooters at close range ended the three days' battle. McSween, still unarmed, dropped dead. He was found, half sitting, leaning against the corral wall.
Peppin's party now numbered sixteen men from the Seven Rivers country, or twenty-eight in all. Doc Skurlock, Jack Middleton, and Charlie Bowdre were in the adjoining store building. At about noon of the third day, old Andy Boyle, ex-soldier of the British army, said, "We'll have to get a cannon and blow in the doors. I'll go up to the fort and steal a cannon."
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