The Saga of Billy the Kid Historians of the title: Frontier and American West author: Burns, Walter Noble. publisher: University of New Mexico isbn10 | asin: 0826321534 print isbn13: 9780826321534 ebook isbn13: 9780585188454 language: English Billy,--the Kid, Outlaws--Southwest, New-- Biography, Frontier and pioneer life-- subject Southwest, New, Southwest, New--History- -1848---Biography. publication date: 1999 lcc: F786.B54B87 1999eb ddc: 364.15/52/092 Billy,--the Kid, Outlaws--Southwest, New-- Biography, Frontier and pioneer life-- subject: Southwest, New, Southwest, New--History- -1848---Biography. Page i The Saga of Billy the Kid Page ii HISTORIANS OF THE FRONTIER AND AMERICAN WEST RICHARD W. ETULAIN, SERIES EDITOR Page iii The Saga of Billy the Kid Walter Noble Burns Introduction by Richard W. Etulain PUBLISHED IN COOPERATION WITH THE UNIVERSITY OF NEW MEXICO CENTER FOR THE AMERICAN WEST UNIVERSITY OF NEW MEXICO PRESS ALBUQUERQUE Page iv © 1925 by Doubleday, Page & Co. Renewed 1953 by Rose Marie Burns. Introduction © 1999 by the University of New Mexico Press. All rights reserved. First University of New Mexico Press Edition, 1999. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Burns, Water Noble. The saga of Billy the Kid / Walter Noble Burns.lst University of New Mexico Press ed. p. cm.(Historians of the frontier and American West series) Originally published: Garden City, N.Y. : Doubleday, 1925. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 0-8263-2153-4 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Billy, the Kid. 2. OutlawsSouthwest, New Biography. 3. Frontier and pioneer lifeSouthwest, New. 4. Southwest, NewHistory1848Biography. I. Title. II. Series: Historians of the frontier and American West. F786.B54B87 1999 364.15'52'092dc21 [B] 99-36553 CIP Page v TO MY WIFE Page vii Contents Chapter Page Introduction ix by Richard W. Etulain I. The King of the Valley 1 II. The Lord of the Mountains 21 III. War Clouds 36 IV. First Blood 45 V. The Kid 53 VI. Child of the Dark Star 70 VII. An Eye for an Eye 84 VIII. Thirteen to One 92 IX. The Sheriff's Morning Walk 101 X. The Three-Days' Battle 114 XI. The Man Who Played Dead 144 XII. Hair-Trigger Peace 150 XIII. A Stranger from the Panhandle 167 XIV. A Belle of Old Fort Sumner 180 XV. At Bay 199 XVI. The Dangling Shadow 215 XVII. A Little Game of Monte 229 XVIII. The Lure of Black Eyes 254 XIX. The Rendezvous with Fate 264 XX. Hell's Half-Acre 290 XXI. Trail's End 301 Page ix Introduction 1 Richard W. Etulain The Old West was born again in the 1920s. Like the closing decades of the nineteenth century and the later 1950s, the decade and a half following World War I seemed aflame with interest in a Wild West. This fascination burned across nearly every facet of American cultural life. In the 1920s, Zane Grey's yearly fictional Westerns topped bestseller lists, and cinematic Westerns, by far, were the most popular movie genre. Likewise in the twenties, frontier histories by Frederick Jackson Turner and Frederic Logan Paxson won major acclaim, and hundreds of thousands of Americans flocked west to rough it easy on Dude Ranches sprouting all over the West. At the same time, a gathering remuda of journalist-historians churned out more than two dozen book-length biographies of lively western heroes and heroines. These appealingly written biographies were part and parcel of the Old West story that gradually solidified in the first decades of the twentieth century. Buffalo Bill Cody, Wyatt Earp, Wild Bill Hickok, Calamity Jane, and Billy the Kidall these Wild West demigods were subject to at least one biography in the decade stretching from the mid-twenties to the mid-thirties. Nearly all the biographies came from journalists; nearly all these writers wrote positive or, at least, sympathetic portraits of their subjects and of the closing frontier they depicted. * This essay is drawn from Richard W. Etulain, Telling Western Stories: From Buffalo Bill to Larry McMurtry (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1999).