Many years after the death of Billy the Kid, Deputy John William Poe, who was just outside the door when Sheriff Pat Garrett killed Billy, wrote out the whole story, which was published in a small edition. While certain statements made in the book by Poe are controversial, his account is a valuable document for anyone interested in Billy the Kid.

One of the great folk legends of the Wild West, William H. Bonney went from cowboy and rancher's gunslinger to a pure outlaw, forever dodging justice in New Mexico before it was even a state. On the one hand, he was charming, fun-loving, often present at social events, quite appealing to the ladies. Also conversant in Spanish, "Billito" was popular with the Spanish speaking crowd. On the other hand, he had no compunction to coldly kill a man, a sheriff, a deputy—anyone who got in the way of his rustling cattle or horses for an illicit living. He also proved hard to keep in jail once he was caught. It is probably his daring escapes from jails that made him most famous, and this is the main subject of this biography, which traces his story up through his death by a gunshot in the pitch darkness, fired by lawmen obsessed with getting rid of him.

A collection of historical "facts" concerning this "Billy the Kid", or is it these "Billy the Kids"?

"Quien es?" The answer to this incautious question - "Who is it?" - was a bullet to the heart. That bullet -- fired by Lincoln County Sheriff Patrick F. Garrett from a .40-44 caliber single action Colt pistol -- ended the life of Billy the Kid, real name William Henry McCarty. But death - ordinarily so final - only fueled the public's fascination with Billy the Kid. What events led to Billy's killing? Was it inevitable? Was a woman involved? If so, who was she? Why has Billy's gravestone become the most famous - and most visited - Western death marker? Is Billy really buried in his grave? Is the grave in the right location? Is it true that Pat Garrett's first wife is buried in the same cemetery? Is Billy's girlfriend buried there also? The Fort Sumner cemetery where Billy's grave is located was once plowed for cultivation. Why? What town, seeking a profitable tourist attraction, tried to move Billy's body, using a phony relative to justify the action? These questions -- and many others - are answered in this book. Over 60 photos, including many historical photos never previously published.

Not a story about me through their eyes then. Find the beginning, the slight silver key to unlock it, to dig it out. Here then is a maze to begin, be in. (p. 20) Funny yet horrifying, improvisational yet highly distilled, unflinchingly violent yet tender and elegiac, Michael Ondaatje’s ground-breaking book The Collected Works of Billy the Kid is a highly polished and self-aware lens focused on the era of one of the most mythologized anti-heroes of the American West. This revolutionary collage of poetry and prose, layered with photos, illustrations and “clippings,” astounded Canada and the world when it was first published in 1969. It earned then-little-known Ondaatje his first of several Governor General’s Awards and brazenly challenged the world’s notions of history and literature. Ondaatje’s Billy the Kid (aka William H. Bonney / Henry McCarty / Henry Antrim) is not the clichéd dimestore comicbook gunslinger later parodied within the pages of this book. Instead, he is a beautiful and dangerous chimera with a voice: driven and kinetic, he also yearns for blankness and rest. A poet and lover, possessing intelligence and sensory discernment far beyond his life’s 21 year allotment, he is also a resolute killer. His friend and nemesis is Sheriff Pat Garrett, who will go on to his own fame (or infamy) for Billy’s execution. Himself a web of contradictions, Ondaatje’s Garrett is “a sane assassin sane assassin sane assassin sane assassin sane assassin sane” (p. 29) who has taught himself a language he’ll never use and has trained himself to be immune to intoxication. As the hero and anti-hero engage in the counterpoint that will lead to Billy’s predetermined death, they are joined by figures both real and imagined, including the homesteaders John and Sallie Chisum, Billy’s lover Angela D, and a passel of outlaws and lawmakers. The voices and images meld, joined by Ondaatje’s own, in a magnificent polyphonic dream of what it means to feel and think and freely act, knowing this breath is your last and you are about to be trapped by history. I am here with the range for everything corpuscle muscle hair hands that need the rub of metal those senses that that want to crash things with an axe that listen to deep buried veins in our palms those who move in dreams over your women night near you, every paw, the invisible hooves the mind’s invisible blackout the intricate never the body’s waiting rut. (p. 72)