This is a new release of the original 1946 edition.

The Authentic Life of Billy the Kid, is the biography of William H. Bonney, a.k.a. "Billy the Kid," a notorious gunman of the American Old West. Author Pat F. Garrett recounts the major events in Bonney's life, detailing his first murder at age 18 as well as his death three years later at the hands of the author. Among the many colorful details of his life, Bonney was instrumental in the Lincoln County War in New Mexico where Garrett served as the sheriff. Garrett details the Kid's story in order to align his legend and true history. PAT F. GARRETT (1850-1908) is known as the man that killed Billy the Kid. He was an American Old West customs agent, bartender, and lawman.

The Authentic Life of Billy the Kid is the biography of William H. Bonney, a.k.a. "Billy the Kid," a notorious gunman of the American Old West. Author Pat F. Garrett recounts the major events in Bonney's life, detailing his first murder at age 18 as well as his death three years later at the hands of the author. Among the many colorful details of his life, Bonney was instrumental in the Lincoln County War in New Mexico where Garrett served as the sheriff. Garrett details the Kid's story in order to align his legend and true history. PAT F. GARRETT (1850-1908) is known as the man that killed Billy the Kid. He was an American Old West customs agent, bartender, and lawman.

By Pat F. Garrett, Greatest Sheriff Of The Old Southwest.

By Pat F. Garrett, Greatest Sheriff Of The Old Southwest.

By Pat F. Garrett, Greatest Sheriff Of The Old Southwest.

By Pat F. Garrett, Greatest Sheriff Of The Old Southwest.

When Lincoln County Sheriff Pat Garrett ended Billy the Kid's life on the night of July 14, 1881 with a shot in the dark, he was catapulted at once into stardom in the annals of Western history. The killing occurred at old Fort Sumner, New Mexico on the Pecos River. Garrett by pure chance had encountered the Kid in a darkened room of the Pete Maxwell house. As the unsuspecting Billy entered, he was cut down without warning. But the Kid had his share of friends and many of them stepped forward to level some harsh criticism against the lawman. It soon became clear that while Pat Garrett was an instant celebrity, he had also come away, at least in some quarters, with a negative image. To address that problem, he began thinking about a book to give the public his side of the story. The editor of the "Santa Fe New Mexican," Charles Greene, offered to publish a Garrett volume if the sheriff could find someone to ghost write it for him. Pat enlisted his good friend Marshall Ashmun (Ash) Upson, a journalist, to do the job. Upson cranked out a manuscript and it was published in 1882 under the title "The Authentic Life of Billy the Kid." Sunstone's edition is a facsimile of the 1927 edition. Before that fateful night in 1881, there was not much in Pat Garrett's career to suggest he was headed for a place in the history books. Alabama-born in 1850, he worked as a cowboy and buffalo hunter in Texas. By 1878 he had drifted to the Pecos in eastern New Mexico. Perhaps craving excitement, Pat Garrett ran for sheriff of wild Lincoln County in the fall of 1880. He was elected. Winning the office put him on a collision course with the outlaw Billy and the incident that catapulted the Kid into literary immortality.

Twelve decades after Billy the Kid's death in 1881, books, movies, and essays about this western outlaw are still popular. And they all go back to one source: The Authentic Life of Billy, the Kid, published in 1882 by the man who killed Billy, Sheriff Pat Garrett. Frederick Nolan, an authority on the American Southwest, examines the legends introduced by The Authentic Life and shows how Garrett's book is responsible for misconceptions about the Kid's early life and his short, violent career. Many inaccuracies in The Authentic Life can be attributed to a ghostwriter, Marshall Ashmun Ash Upson, but Garrett's contributions also are flawed. As Nolan reveals, the sheriff glossed over events that made him look less than perfect. This new edition, complete with the original text, corrects Upson's errors, amplifies Garrett's narrative, and elucidates the causes and course of the Lincoln County War in New Mexico during the 1870s. Nolan provides an introduction that reappraises the last fatal meeting of Garrett and Billy the Kid, as well as a postscript about the snakebitten life of the sheriff after the moment that made him famous.

Of all firsthand accounts of lawlessness in the old Southwest, none is more fascinating than Pat F. Garrett's "The Authentic Life of Billy, the Kid." First published in 1882, a year after Sheriff Garrett killed the Kid, "the bravest and most feared' gunman of the Lincoln County, New Mexico, cattle war, it is at once the most authoritative biography of William H. Bonney and the foundation of the Billy the Kid legend.