The Saga of Billy the Kid

This is the story of Billy the Kid as told by witnesses who knew him and what he did and had done to him. Walter Noble Burns' book has become the basis for movies, plays, and books since being first published in 1925. This entertaining and dramatic biography forever installed outlaw Billy the Kid in the pantheon of mythic heroes from the Old West and is still considered the single most influential portrait of the notorious outlaw whose life met its tragic end at the ripe old age of just 21. Burns paints the Kid as a boyish Robin Hood or romantic knight galvanized into a life of crime and killing by the scars of violent personal experience. Billy represented the romantic and anarchic Old West that the march of civilization was rapidly displacing. His destroyer was Pat Garrett, the courageous sheriff of Lincoln County. Garrett's shooting of Billy in 1881 hastened the closing of the American frontier. Walter Noble Burns's Saga of Billy the Kid kindled a fascination in Billy the Kid that survives to this day.