Billy the Kid Shot Dead: Pat Garrett Ends the Legend

Pat Garrett crept through Pete Maxwell's darkened ranch house at midnight, and the single pistol shot he fired into the shadows ended the life of the American West's most infamous outlaw at twenty-one years old. William H. Bonney, known as Billy the Kid, was killed at Fort Sumner, New Mexico, on July 14, 1881, less than three months after escaping from the Lincoln County courthouse where he was awaiting execution. Billy the Kid's legend far outstripped his actual criminal career, which lasted roughly four years. Born Henry McCarty in New York City around 1859, he drifted west after his mother's death and fell into cattle rustling and petty theft in Arizona Territory. His involvement in New Mexico's Lincoln County War of 1878, a vicious commercial feud between rival factions of ranchers and merchants, transformed him from a minor outlaw into a folk figure. He killed at least four men personally, though dime novels would later inflate the count to twenty-one, one for each year of his life. Garrett, a former friend and gambling companion of Billy's who had been elected Lincoln County sheriff partly on the promise of capturing him, tracked the outlaw to Fort Sumner after receiving a tip. Billy had been hiding among sympathetic Hispanic ranchers in the Pecos Valley, where he was genuinely popular. On the night of July 14, Billy walked into Maxwell's bedroom, saw an unfamiliar figure sitting beside the bed, and whispered "Quién es?" Garrett fired twice. The first bullet struck Billy above the heart, killing him almost instantly. The killing made Garrett famous but not rich. He wrote a ghosted autobiography, "The Authentic Life of Billy the Kid," that sold poorly. Billy's grave at Fort Sumner became a tourist attraction almost immediately, and his legend grew with every retelling. More than 140 years later, Billy the Kid remains one of the most mythologized figures in American frontier history, the subject of over fifty films and an enduring symbol of the lawless West that never quite existed as people imagine it.