The Authentic Life of Billy the Kid

Yielding to repeated solicitations from various sources, I have addressed myself to the task of compiling, for publication, a true history of the life, adventures, and tragic death of William H. Bonney, better known as "Billy the Kid," whose daring deeds and bloody crimes have excited, for some years last past, the wonder of one-half of the world, and the admiration or detestation of the other half.

I am incited to this labor, in a measure, by an impulse to correct the thousand false statements which have appeared in the public newspapers and in yellow-covered, cheap novels. Of the latter, no less than three have been foisted upon the public, any one of which might have been the history of any outlaw who ever lived, but were miles from correct as applied to "the Kid." These pretend to disclose his name, the place of his nativity, the particulars of his career, the circumstances which drove him to his desperate life, detailing a hundred impossible deeds of reckless crime of which he was never guilty, and in localities which he never visited.

I would dissever "the Kid's" memory from that of meaner villains, whose deeds have been attributed to him. I will strive to do justice to his character, give him credit for all the virtues he possessed—and he was by no means devoid of virtue—but shall not spare deserved opprobrium for his heinous offenses against humanity and the laws.

I have known "the Kid" personally since and during the continuance of what was known as "The Lincoln County War," up to the moment of his death, of which I was the unfortunate instrument, in the discharge of my official duty. I have listened, at camp-fires, on the trail, on the prairies and at many different plazas, to his disconnected relations of events of his early and more recent life. In gathering correct information, I have interviewed many persons—since "the Kid's" death—with whom he was intimate and to whom he conversed freely of his affairs, and I am in daily intercourse with one friend who was a boarder at the house of "the Kid's" mother, at Silver City, N. M., in 1873. This man has known Bonney well from that time to his death, and has traced his career carefully and not with indifference. I have communicated, by letter, with various reliable parties, in New York, Kansas, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, Texas, Chihuahua, Sonora, and other states of Mexico, in order to catch up any missing links in his life, and can safely guarantee that the reader will find in my little book a true and concise relation of the principal interesting events therein, without exaggeration or excusation.