As strange as any tale told of the Wild West, all of the bullets that the lawmen fired at Longley and the horse thief missed both of the swinging men. However, the misplaced bullets the law had fired at the two men had severed the hanging rope that Bill Longley dangled from, thus setting him free. Johnson was left to strangle to death.
Luck seemed to still be with Longley when, sometime later, the outlaw just happened upon one of the lawmen who had attempted to hang him. The fellow was bragging to others about how he'd hung some big fellow from an oak tree a short time back. The lawman must have surely been surprised when he found him self staring down the twin barrels of Longley's firearm. His surprise didn't last too much longer because Longley marched the fellow out to the same hanging tree that had previously been in use. There, Longley hung the lawman from the same branch that he, himself, had been strung up too.
Sometime after that, Bill was riding trail-herd towards Abilene, Kansas. The man that was the trail boss for the outfit was somewhat of a braggart that liked to expound on his own shooting and drawing talents. The man went so far, and erroneously, to inform Bill that he could outdraw him. Perhaps the trail boss was just making some fun around the campfire but evidently Longley didn't take it that way. After unwinding himself from where he rested by the campfire, Longley drew his gun, fired, and killed the trail boss.
That Bill Longley was a true-blue Texan there is little doubt. He proved it so one night in a saloon when a man bellied up to the bar and loudly announced that "all Texans were 'hoss thieves' and their women prostitutes." Well, there wasn't much else, by Longley's reckoning, for him to do but kill the man. But, before Bill drew on the loudmouth, he gave that mouth a good slapping. It would have seemed that Bill was giving the man fair warning and a chance to pull his own pistol, except that the slap was sufficient to knock the man down, and that's when Bill shot him dead.
Lucky Bill Longley continued.
