Sheriff Brady had asked for assistance from…

Sheriff Brady had asked for assistance from the Territorial Attorney General, Thomas Benton Catron, to put down this "anarchy".

Catron had turned to the Territorial Governor Samuel B. Axtell, who had decreed that John Wilson, the Justice of the Peace, had been illegally appointed by the Lincoln County Commissioners.

Wilson had deputized the Regulators and issued the warrants for Tunstall's murderers.

Axtell's decree means that the Regulators' actions, formerly considered legal, are now beyond the law.

The Regulators French, McNab, Middleton, Waite, Brown and Billy the Kid attack Brady and his deputies on the main street of Lincoln on April 1, 1878.

Brady dies of at least a dozen gunshot wounds, and Deputy George W. Hindman is also fatally wounded.

McCarty and French break cover and dash to Brady's body, possibly to get his arrest warrant for McSween or to recover McCarty's rifle, which Brady had kept from a prior arrest.

A surviving deputy, Billy Matthews, wounds both men with one bullet that passes through each of them.

French's wound is so severe that he has to be temporarily harbored by Sam Corbet in a crawlspace in Corbet's house.