Billy the Kid:
A Short and Violent Life
By Robert M. Utley
University of Nebraska Press, 302 pages, $22.95 While Momaday`s ``The Ancient Child`` presents the umpteenth fictive portrait of Billy the Kid, readers interested in a more authentic account of the renegade`s life will not be disappointed by Robert M. Utley`s careful study. Utley demonstrates that the Kid was very much a media creation even before Pat Garrett killed him on July 14, 1881. Eastern newspaper reporters were already on hot pursuit of the colorful outlaw`s trail.
Garrett and Ash Upson`s ``The Authentic Life of Billy the Kid, the Noted Desperado of the Southwest, Whose Deeds of Daring and Blood have Made His Name a Terror in New Mexico, Arizona & Northern Mexico,`` published less than a year after the Kid`s death, assured his fame. Thereafter, myth took over.
Utley describes Billy as a ``hero and anti-hero,`` whose career did not live up to his reputation. The Kid certainly did not kill 21 men (one for each year of his life) as is generally believed. The exact number may have been as few as four. (In shoot-outs, it was often difficult to determine who shot whom.) Moreover, Utley illustrates beyond any doubt that Billy was very much concerned with going straight.
Billy`s appeal has continued largely because of the American fascination with the ``twin specters of corruption and violence.`` Reading this first-rate account of the celebrated outlaw`s life, one cannot help concluding that if Billy the Kid were alive today, he`d be very much at home.