The Saga of Billy the Kid (Historians of the Frontier and American West Series)

575 Pages·1999·1.13 MB·English

by  Walter Noble Burns

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).