Book review: “Billy the Kid: The Endless Ride”

When Michael Wallis informed us that he was writing a book about Wild West outlaw Billy the Kid, we hoped that Wallis would separate the reality from the myth in Billy the Kid’s story.

It wouldn’t be an easy task. Since his death at age 21 to a bullet from Pat Garrett’s gun in 1881, Billy the Kid’s image has been distorted by yellow journalists, hack writers, half-baked Hollywood films and old-fashioned gossip. Some claim that Billy the Kid was a psychopath who killed dozens of men. Others — especially Hispanics — say he was a Robin Hood of the Southwest.

Many Billy the Kid storytellers seemed all too happy to follow the famed line from the film “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance”: “This is the West, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.”

Fortunately, Wallis labored earnestly to sift fact from fiction in “Billy the Kid: The Endless Ride” (W.W. Norton, 328 pages, $25.95). Wallis drew on his many years in journalism to flesh out the Kid’s background. The book contains more than 50 pages of footnotes and references. Unless an unexpected cache of Billy the Kid documents is unearthed, this book will likely be the definitive work on the outlaw.

Wallis leavens the book’s scholarly tone with fascinating nuggets of information. (One example: An old windmill in the future Route 66 town of Las Vegas, N.M., was used for hangings so much that boys started hanging their dogs in imitation.) Wallis’ meaty prose — which helped make “Route 66: The Mother Road” a bestseller — also turns what could have been a clinical book into a more entertaining read.

The first 40 or so pages occasionally are slow reading, mostly because little is known of Henry McCarty (aka Kid Antrim, aka William Bonney, aka Billy the Kid) until he was nearly a teenager. Wallis and other experts strongly believe McCarty was born to an Irish woman in New York City. The family kept moving west — hastened by his mother’s bout with tuberculosis — until they ended up in Silver City, N.M.

Henry McCarty’s behavior during his early teens was little more than that of a mischievous kid’s and certainly not a killer’s. But his life went off the rails when his mother died of the TB and his stepfather, William Antrim, abandoned him. With little or no supervision, McCarty roamed the streets of Silver City and became a thief. McCarty’s future as an outlaw was sealed when the skinny kid, detained for larceny, escaped the local jail by shinnying up the chimney. That’s one accurate element of the future legend — Billy the Kid was an escape artist.

McCarty became a saddle tramp, roaming the territories of New Mexico, Arizona and the Texas Panhandle. He took legitimate ranch work when he could, but also stole livestock and gambled.

Billy the Kid is held in high esteem by Hispanics is because he spoke Spanish fluently and respected the culture. He was a good dancer and a ladies’ man with the senoritas. He was a symbol of resistance against white power brokers who derided the Spanish-speaking natives. “He was their El Chivato, their little Billy, a champion of the poor and oppressed,” Wallis writes. Billy the Kid’s deep connection with Hispanic culture has been long overlooked, and Wallis gives it its due.

McCarty changed his name to Billy Bonney and was caught up in the Lincoln County War. The story of a violent New Mexico turf battle between competing business interests and corrupt power brokers is too complicated to recount here. It led to a homicide rate in Lincoln County that was more than 40 times the national average. But of 50 people indicted in the conflict, Billy the Kid was the only one convicted.

Billy the Kid has only four confirmed killings to his name. Two were arguably in self-defense, and two occurred during his famed escape from the Lincoln County Jail shortly before his death. It’s hardly the stuff of a hardened murderer.

But Wallis is reluctant to call a criminal like Billy the Kid a scapegoat. “The young man may have been used and abused by the many duplicitous people that he encountered in the final years of his life, but he himself also established a critical role in establishing his own identity,” Wallis wrote.

Still, when Sheriff Garrett’s bullet finds its mark at the end of the book, it feels like a tragedy. Billy the Kid had been kicked around by bad luck and bullies all his life. He did his best with pluck and optimism, but the forces against him were too big to overcome.

7 thoughts on “Book review: “Billy the Kid: The Endless Ride”

  1. What I don’t understand is why Billy Bonney didn’t flee for Mexico. He spoke fluent Spanish, yet elected to stay in New Mexico where he was a hunted man with a price on his head? Did Paulita Maxwell have his child? Is this why he stayed? Did he stay because his mother was buried in SIlver CIty? It is a mystery.

    I happen to believe Billy didn’t die that fateful night in July 1881, but lived to be an old man. Yes, he was shot by Pat Garrett, but when it was noticed he was not dead by those attending to his body, they snuck him away and buried someone else in his place.

    A man by the name of John Miller suddenly appeared out of nowhere in 1881 in New Mexico AFTER Billy’s “death”. His rifle and six shooter were never far from his side. He lived like a man running from something. If you compare the famous photo of the Billy the Kid as a teen with the older John Miller, the resemblence is remarkable. It was common knowledge to those who knew him that John Miller was in fact Billy the Kid.

    Only forensic evidence comparing Catherine Antrim’s (Billy’s mother) DNA with that of the body buried at Fort Sumner will put the matter to rest, and that is unlikely to happen because there is far too much tourism money at stake.

  2. I think the theory that Billy didn’t die of his wound and was spirited away to recover elsewhere is incredible, to put it charitably.

    I attended a speech and Q&A that Wallis presided over the other day, and he said the probable reason Billy the Kid didn’t flee to Mexico after his Lincoln County Jail escape is because he had a steady girlfriend in the region. Perhaps he had plans later to head south of the border. But it’s clear, from reading the book, that Billy was smitten with this woman.

    And good luck finding that DNA sample of Billy. He’s known to have been buried in that Fort Sumner cemetery. But Wallis said the graveyard suffered extensive damage during a flood in the early 1900s, and bodies also were moved during a later construction. Billy WAS buried there, but whether his body is still there is a matter of considerable uncertainty.

  3. I recently read a book by WC Jameson and he claims, that without a doubt Brushy Bill Roberts was Billy the Kid. However, just several pages into the book, the author shoots himself in the foot. He admits Brushy was illiterate. Anyone who knows anything about Billy the Kid knows he was an avid reader, at least when he was younger. There are numerous interviews with his childhood friends, most notably Chauncey Truesdell, who claimed when Billy wasn’t doing chores or working, he could be found sprawled on the floor reading a book. That’s almost a direct quote. Brushy also didn’t speak a lick of spanish, and we all know Billy was fluent in spanish, one of the reasons why he got along great with the Hispanic community. Although not the most incriminating bit of evident but still noteworthy, Brushy happened to get all of his teeth removed, thus prohibiting him to show off Billy’s trademark physical trait, his two prodtruding teeth. How convenient. Brushy was also left-handed, Billy was ambidexterous. The list goes on. You’d have to read the book for yourselves but Brushy makes significant mistakes when he tries to recount key events of Billy the Kid’s life, something the real Billy the Kid wouldn’t do. Of course, the “he’s old and so lacks a great memory” excuse comes into play. Believe me, I wish Billy hadn’t been killed and finally learned his lesson and escaped to Mexico, but there are just too many incriminating pieces of evidence disclaiming that he walked out of Pete Maxwell’s room alive.
    If anyone has more interesting information on this, I’d love to hear it.

  4. John Graham alais John Collins was a member of Billy the Kid Gang of Rustlers. He gave a eyewittness account. Graham said he help bury the corps that Garrett killed and that man was not Billy the Kid.

  5. Personally, the idea that “Brushy Bill” was Billy the Kid is preposterous. One only has to look at the existing photographs of the two men and it’s obvious there is no way they are the same person. I thought Jameson’s book wasn’t worth the paper it was written on.

    I have to disagree with Ms. Johnson in that the photos I’ve seen of Miller (3 in total) bear no resemblance to the photo of Billy the Kid. Having said that, I think it’s possible that Miller could well have been the Kid. There is evidence out there, yet to be fully analyzed, that could definitively link the two men. I don’t believe Miller was the Kid but the aforementioned evidence could change my mind.

  6. It would be interesting to see an investigation into whether Brushy Bill may have actually been Dick Brewer.Compare their photos.There seemed to be a lot of confusion when it came to the identity of the regulators.Some of them were mistakenly identified as Billy the Kid.If someone other than Brewer was killed by Buckshot Roberts at Blazers Mill,Brewer may have survived and actually considered himself to be the one recognized as Billy.

  7. I need a Photograph of John Miller of Buckeye/Liberty AZ when he was 35 to 50 years old (1894 to 1910).

    Contact me:

    Lee R. Williams Phone 760-956-5098
    7428 Jenkins Ave.
    Hesperia, CA 92345

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