Did Billy the Kid and Jesse James meet? Include such a scene in a novel, and readers would shake their heads in suspended disbelief. Write it as nonfiction, and they would scoff. But it just might have happened.

In July 1879 Dr. Henry Franklin Hoyt was supplementing his medical practice by tending bar at the Exchange Hotel in Las Vegas, New Mexico Territory. Minnesota-born Hoyt had been drifting around the West looking for adventure. A year earlier he’d been cowboying in the Texas Panhandle, near Tascosa, where he met Billy the Kid. As the story goes, the two became close friends. One day Hoyt won a ladies’ gold watch in a poker game. The Kid admired the watch and made an offer on it. Instead, Hoyt gave it to him. In late October 1878, as Hoyt prepared to move from Tascosa to Las Vegas, the Kid presented him with his favorite horse, Dandy Dick.

Six miles northwest of Las Vegas is a cluster of hot springs. At the time Scott and Minnie Moore owned a hotel at the springs, whose waters were popular among those who believed in their curative properties. The Moores were widely known for their fine cuisine and went all out with their Sunday fare. One Sunday in late July 1879 Hoyt rode out to the springs to relax and enjoy a good meal.

Entering the hotel’s crowded dining room,: