Father set up a blacksmith shop, planted a garden and about twenty acres in corn. He made a good crop and when he gathered it in the fall he sent word for me to come home. I had been staying with my uncle, Pat Carrillo, who lived not very far away on the Reservation. When I got home my father said; "Son, here is my crop and my blacksmith shop, you can sell them. Take care of your mother, I am going away and you will not see me anymore." He left that day on horseback. He went by Dowlin's Mill and sold his cattle to Paul and Will Dowlin, took the money and left the country.

Soon after my father went away I went to work for the Murphy-Dolan Company, punching cows. I was about seventeen years old. The headquarter ranch house was on the Carrizozo Flats, at what is now the Bar W Ranch.

I was very small for my age and when I first went to work for the Murphy, Dolan Company. I got my clothes and board, and Mr. Murphy gave forty dollars to my mother each month. I soon made them a good cow hand, and then I got sixty dollars a month.

They sent me with a bunch of cattle to Elk Canyon, in the Indian Reservation. These cattle were to be butchered for the Indians as they needed them. A fellow by the name of Lucio Montoya and I were left to watch the cattle and keep the Indians from stealing them. One morning we got up and it was Lucio's time to go and get the horses. We kept a small black mule in the corral to ride after the saddle horses. While Lucio was saddling up the mule I was looking around to see if I could see anything of the horses.

All at once I saw an awful dust rising and I told Lucio to hurry up as I feared some one was rounding up either the cattle or the saddle horses.

He rode off in a run. I waited for some time and he did not return. I had just about decided that he had been killed, and I went back to the cabin. I was standing in the door of the cabin when about thirty men rode up to the door. The leader was a nice looking young fellow. He said "Hello kid, do you have anything to eat?"

I said, "Yes, there is coffee, beans, flour and some canned goods. You are welcome to it, but you will have to cook it yourselves. I have to go and get my horses and see what has become of Lucio."

The leader of this gang was "Billy the Kid." I did not know it at the time as this was just the beginning of the trouble leading up to the "Lincoln County War". This war was between two cattle factions. Murphy and Dolan on one side and McSween and Tunstall on the other.

Billy the Kid saw I was just a kid and was scared, and he said; "Kid, don't be afraid, for not a man in the crowd will hurt you nor bother anything around here while you are in charge of it."

They all got down from their horses and came in. I helped them make some coffee. While we were waiting for the coffee to boil, Billy the Kid asked me all about myself, how old I was, where I lived, etc. After they had eaten, they all rode off toward the head of Elk Canyon.

I started out afoot to find the horses and soon found them. The mule that Lucio had started after the horses on was with them, but I could not find Lucio. I soon saw that a horse of Lucio's was gone and I just decided that he had gotten frightened and left.

I found out later that this gang of men were with the McSween and Tunstall faction, but they never bothered me at all.

While my mother was living on the Salado, Billy the Kid came to our house for something to eat. This was after the time he had been to the camp at Elk's Canyon. He recognized me at once and I did him. My mother did not want to feed him because he was not on Murphy's side at that time. I told her how nice he had been to me that time at Elk's Canyon, so she gave him something to eat and let him stay all night.

I got up early the next morning and went out to milk the cow. While I was milking the dogs began to bark. I saw several men riding horseback, coming towards the house. I did not have time to warn Billy that someone was coming, but he and mother saw them. Mother had a big home-made packing box she used for a trunk and it had a padlock on it. She hid Billy in this box before the men reached the house. This was after Bernstein had been killed. Bernstein was the clerk at the Mesaclero Indian Agency, and Billy had been indicted for this killing, and was on the dodge.

When I reached the house, I found that the men were Sheriff Peppin and Florencio Chaves, his deputy, and two other men (I have forgotten their names). They were looking for Billy. They searched the house but did not find him. Peppin went out in the yard and asked who the black horse with the saddle on belonged to. I told him it was my horse. He wanted to know why I kept a horse saddled and staked out. I told him I kept the horse to go round up the other horses. He did not believe me. I know, for he said to one of his men that Billy the Kid should be around there somewhere. When he did not find Billy they rode away.

The Kid stayed in our house all that day and when it got dark, Mother asked me to let Billy have my black horse and saddle, as she thought that he would return them to me. I did, and sure enough, in about ten days I got up one morning and found my horse, with the saddle on, in the corral. I never did know who brought him back. I was surely glad, for I thought an awful lot of this horse and I was so afraid that Billy would not get him back to me. I had traded with the Apache Indians for this horse. I had given about ten dollars worth of red flannel, beads and powder for him.

When Billy the Kid and his gang had killed Bernstein, a clerk at the Indian Agency, Mr. L.O. Murphy, (of the Murphy-Dolan Company), sent me to Santa Fe, New Mexico, with the message to the governor. I rode this same black horse. I had to go first to Fort Stanton to see the commanding officer. I got there about three o'clock in the morning. The guard stopped me but when I told him what I wanted to see the commanding officer about, he took me to the officer's house. This officer gave me another message and a fresh horse and I started for Santa Fe.

I rode to Picacho on the north side of the Gallina Mountains that night. I knew a fellow there by the name of Mario Payne, and he let me have a fresh horse, and I made it on to Santa Fe on the third day.

When I went in to see Governor Axtell and deliver my messages to him, he was mad because they had sent such a kid. He asked me why Pat Carrillo had not sent his own son, as he was larger and older than I was. He also told me to tell Mr. Murphy to give me three hundred dollars for that trip, and if Mr. Murphy didn't do it, he would. I got my three hundred dollars from Mr. Murphy all right.

That is the only part that I took in the Lincoln County War, although I was working for the Murphy-Dolan Company all during the war. I stayed at the headquarters ranch on the Carrizozo Flats most of the time.