The Night the Legend of Billy the Kid Was Born
On the night of July 14, 1881, Sheriff Pat Garrett tracked the 21-year-old outlaw Billy the Kid to a darkened bedroom in Fort Sumner, New Mexico.
He was 21 years old, and he was already the most famous outlaw in America. On the night of July 14, 1881, Billy the Kid walked into a dark bedroom in Fort Sumner, New Mexico — and walked straight into legend.
The Kid, born Henry McCarty and known as William H. Bonney, had been orphaned at 15 and drifted into New Mexico's violent cattle wars. He fought in the Lincoln County War of 1878, a bloody feud between rival business factions, and came out of it a wanted man. By December 1880 his exploits were being written up in newspapers as far away as New York. That month, the newly elected Lincoln County sheriff, Pat Garrett, captured him after a siege at Stinking Springs.
In April 1881 the Kid was tried in Mesilla, convicted of killing Sheriff William Brady, and sentenced to hang. He was supposed to be in a Lincoln courthouse awaiting the gallows. Instead, on April 28, he slipped his shackles, killed two deputies — James Bell and Robert Olinger — and rode out of town. Governor Lew Wallace posted a $500 reward. For more than two months the Kid hid out around Fort Sumner, where he had friends.
Garrett got a tip that the Kid was in the area and rode through the night with two deputies. He was waiting in a darkened room of Pete Maxwell's house when the Kid, unsuspecting, walked in. Garrett fired in the darkness. The shot killed the young outlaw on the spot. A coroner's jury the next day ruled it justifiable homicide, and on July 15 the Kid was buried beside two of his friends, Charlie Bowdre and Tom O'Folliard.
Garrett became instantly famous — and controversial. To answer his critics, he published his account in 1882 as The Authentic Life of Billy the Kid, which only cemented the Kid's fame. The real Billy was a small-time rustler and killer linked to fewer than ten deaths; the legend became the smiling, quick-drawn folk hero of hundreds of books and films.
Why it matters: Billy the Kid's death shows how fast a life can become a myth. The Kid was gone in a single gunshot; the story he left behind is still being retold 145 years later.
Photo: tintype of Billy the Kid playing croquet, 1881, photographer unknown, public domain via Wikimedia Commons. The photo was taken in New Mexico the year of his death.
