August 24, 2009
Well, I had at least four different versions of Looming Billy in the works this weekend, but on Sunday, Carole Glenn, Deena Bean and Patricia were over and I showed them the finalists, in progress. All three picked the same image, so I finished it this morning and Robert Ray shot it, sent it down to Dan "The Man" and Meghan and I wrote the cover heds and here it is:

Meanwhile, Ed Mell is getting the Billy bug himself. Here's a sneak peek at his first piece, called "Ygenio (Eugenio) Salazar":

Ed saw a photo of Salazar in the Lincoln County Courthouse Museum and loved it. Ygenio rode with Billy the Kid and was severely wounded in the back and shoulder in "The Big Killing" (July, 1878) when the Tunstall adherents, including Billy and Ygenio, ran out the back door of the burning McSween house straight into the guns of Buck Morton and others perched on the back fence (15 feet away!). The Kid managed to escape, but both McSween and Salazar were shot down. The victors danced over their bodies and pumped bullets into them for good measure. When one of the Brady bunch cocked a pistol and pointed it at Salazar, another Brady fighter said not to waste ammunition "on that Greaser." After everyone stumbled off to bed, Salazar started to crawl. He made it a quarter mile to a relative's house and he not only survived, but live until 1936. Pretty amazing, no?

Gee, I wonder what ol' Abe has to say about this?

"The probability that we may fall in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just; it shall not deter me."
—Abraham Lincoln