Research Catalog

Title

The saga of Billy the Kid / Walter Noble Burns.

Author

Burns, Walter Noble.

Publication

Albuquerque : University of New Mexico Press, 1999.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

xvii, 322 p.; 22 cm.

Summary

"First published in 1926, 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 Billy in this century. Saga focuses on the Kid's life and experiences in the bloody war between the Murphy-Dolan and Tunstall-McSween gangs in and around Lincoln, New Mexico, between 1878 and 1881. Burns paints the Kid as a boyish Robin Hood or romantic knight galvanized into a life of crime and killing by the war's violence and bloodshed. 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. Richard W. Etulain's introduction discusses the singular place of Saga in the historical literature on Billy the Kid and the Lincoln County War."--BOOK JACKET.

Series Statement

Historians of the frontier and American West series

Uniform Title

Historians of the frontier and American West.

Subject

• Billy, the Kid
• Since 1848
• Outlaws > Southwest, New > Biography
• Frontier and pioneer life > Southwest, New
• Southwest, New > History > 1848- > Biography

Genre/Form

• History
• Biographies

Note

• Originally published: Garden City, N.Y. : Doubleday, 1925.

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references.

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

Contents

Introduction by richard w. etulain -- The king of the valley -- The lord of the mountains -- War clouds -- First blood -- The kid -- Child of the dark star -- An eye for an eye -- Thirteen to one -- The sheriff's morning walk -- The three-days' battle -- The man who played dead -- Hair-trigger peace -- A stranger from the panhandle -- A belle of old fort sumner -- At bay -- The dangling shadow -- A little game of monte -- The lure of black eyes -- The rendezvous with fate -- Hell's half-acre -- Trail's end

ISBN

0826321534 (pbk. : alk. paper)

LCCN

^^^99036553^

OCLC

• 41641335
• SCSB-12293984

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library