His actual exploits did not support the reputation. Until near the end of his life, he could thank the newspapers for this standing. Of the Kid as person and the Kid as outlaw, the reality both sustains and contradicts the legend.īy the time of his death, the public had already come to look on Billy the Kid as larger than life, a peerless outlaw in a land full of outlaws. Stripping off the veneers of legendary accumulated over a century exposes neither hero nor villain, but a complex personality. Among peoples everywhere, the name prompts instant recognition and evokes vivid images. Few figures from the past have so profoundly stirred the human imagination.

He was but twenty-one years old.Īll that was mortal died on the floor of Pete Maxwell’s bedroom at old Fort Sumner, New Mexico, on that night of Jbut almost at once an immortal Billy the Kid rose from the dead, ultimately to expand into a mighty legend of global impact. Billy the Kid crumpled to the floor, dead. One slammed into the boy’s chest, the other rebounded from the adobe wall and splintered the headboard of Maxwell’s bed. He did not hesitate, but grabbed his six-shooter from its holster and fired two shots point-blank. The crouching form belonged to Pat Garrett, sheriff of Lincoln County, and those fateful words told Garrett exactly who faced him. He thought he was among friends, and his hesitation cost him his life. In the darkened bedroom, he could not make out the figure crouched at the head of Pete Maxwell’s bed. With those words-“Who is it? Who is it?”-the youth threw away a critical moment of time. Pat Garrett, John William Poe, and Deputy Frontier and pioneer life-Southwest, New. Summary: Examines the career of the young outlaw whose life and death were an expression of the violence prevalent on the American frontier. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Dataīilly the Kid: a short and violent life / Robert M.

Billy the Kid by Robert M. Utley