The Endless Ride

Billy the Kid: The Endless Ride

by Michael Wallis

Michael Wallis’ book, The Endless Ride, is an interesting piece to discuss. It’s a good book and an easy read, as well being accurate, but it’s not something I would tell everyone to read. If you want to read about Billy and get a great picture of where he went and what happened to him, and you don’t want to have to get into reading multiple books to really piece together a college level survey of his life, then this is a great book. Basically, if you want to pick up a good book about Bonney, read it and be done, and feel like you have the story…this book does that.

What’s interesting about Wallis’ book is that he doesn’t have a lot of new research or discoveries to bring to the table. What he does is use a lot of other authors, such as Utley and Nolan. He also does a lot of first-hand interviewing of present day specialist to get their insight and opinions on the matters at hand. This latter element is a definite break from the norm of western history biographies, but I find it to be a welcome touch.

Regarding his common use of Utley and Nolan, this is precisely why this book isn’t for every Billy the Kid student. If you’re going to read more than Wallis, then you might as well not read Wallis. Utley and Nolan’s deeply researched books are for the enthusiast who wants to really dig in deep beyond the first level, but Wallis is a great summation if you want to put it all together and move on to the next book on your western shelf.

Wallis is an accomplished writer, and for the average reader (the non-professional-critiquer) his writing style flows smoothly and creates an appropriate atmosphere. His use of specialists, as well personal thoughts and insights, add enough to the book to make it truly thoughtful and well-intentioned. Another plus is the illustrations. Fortunately, for the kind of book he’s written, he doesn’t leave the reader wishing for more photos to peruse.

Seeing as the latest Billy bio previous to Endless Ride was Nolan’s college level West of Billy the Kid in 1998, perhaps it was time for an everyman’s biography to be released again. So decide what kind of Billy the Kid reader you’re going to be, and then either grab Wallis’ Endless Ride, or go to Amazon and snag copies of Utley, Nolan, Burns, Garrett, and probably more. Either way you’re on track to a victory.

Short and Violent

Billy the Kid: A Short and Violent Life

by Robert Utley

By the time Utley first published his comprehensive Billy the Kid biography he had already written two books about the world surrounding The Kid. As he once told it, someone gave him the bright idea to write a book actually about Billy Bonney, since that’s what people really wanted. The result was the up-to-then most informative and most accurate account we had been given.

Utley’s book is a great starting point. Technically I have it as the number two book in a small list of Billy book’s one should read when giving themselves an education on the boy. Utley’s research is impressive to say the least. He was privy, through relationships, to some great information and documents that he is faithful to share with the reader, and this is how we get such a complete final product on Billy’s life.

One of the things about Utley’s writing that I love so much is that when it comes to points where it becomes incumbent upon the author to offer speculation he does so with explanation and alternate ideas. While he makes the case for what he feels is correct, he is essentially giving the reader the chance to disagree with him. This, to me, is one of the most underperformed acts of humility in the arena of western research and writing.

I fail to see why, if you believe your case is strong, and subsequently correct, you would not include the full picture with both sides of an argument for an intelligent person to discern for themselves if they agree with you or not. For to seldom does this happen in western biographies, and an author will often say something to the tune of “Some people say so-and-so got in a gunfight in this town…but we know that can’t be.” So why can’t it? Fortunately, Utley never utilizes this lazy form of argument, and I believe it to be one of the greatest strengths of his book.

On the flip side, one of the things that left me wanting more, was that after a step-by-step walkthrough of Billy’s life from his final Silver City departure up to the end of the Lincoln County War, he just breezes through most of 1879 and ’80. It could very well be that his research hadn’t yet turned up much for that time, or it could also be that he didn’t want to put out a four-hundred plus page biography, and wanted to put the full dissection on the years that defined The Kid; or that thought could even have belonged to the publisher.

Regardless, Utley’s trusted depth of detail returns for Billy’s final days as it picks up again around the time Garrett comes on the scene. Once again we have a relatively movement-precise tracking of what Billy Bonney was up to as he and Garrett played cat and mouse.

Utley is one of the paragons of Henry McCarty research and this book has to be read if you want to be taken serious, or if you seriously want to know about him.

Mysterious Gunfighter

by Jack DeMattos

For a being such a mysterious character, Jack DeMattos does a good job of revealing to us enough to make the man feel somewhat familiar. The knowledge we have is too limited to produce the volumes that you could find on the likes of Wyatt Earp or Jesse James, but for anyone wanting to round out their knowledge of the western gunfighters, Mysterious Gunfighter suffices well.

In what I would consider to be a worthwhile trade-off, the limits of our information are off-set well enough by the excitement of what we do know. Mysterious Dave was an interesting fellow, and I don’t believe it’s just because of what we do know. I would be willing to bet that the more we know about him, the more intriguing he would become. And that’s really the value in this book, learning about the man’s exploits in many different places, with an assortment of different characters, all while filling various roles with regards to the law and legal standing. He really was a fascinating character of the west, and mysterious applies from several different ways.

DeMattos offers a fairly straight-forward telling, which allows for easy following as the reader tracks Mather’s life. Some might consider the first and last chapters to be filler, but I couldn’t agree. The first chapter gives a thorough background of the Mather family from the very early days of the colonies up to the time Dave Mather left for the frontier, and the last chapter enlightens the reader to the family line following the disappearance of Mather. Were  the first chapter to run on for four chapters, or some other significant measure of the book, then I might be inclined to side with the view of excess, but as it is, the bookend chapters work to almost make the man more mysterious. When we have such a clear understanding of where he came from and the family that surrounds him, and then we get a full picture of the surviving family line, it deepens the mystery as to where he went and just how is it that nobody knows anything?

There were probably only one or two points in the book where I felt I might disagree with the authors surmising (which, I think, a little difference of view is healthy), but I always felt that DeMattos was giving us as best a study as we could get, short of new revealing information. If you’re working to put together a complete library of the gunfighters, this is the book you should have when it comes to Dave Mather.

Saga of Billy the Kid

by Walter Noble Burns

This very well may be the most entertaining book about Billy the Kid that you’ll ever read. It is also probably the watershed moment in Billy the Kid historical research and publishing. Prior to Walter Noble Burns’ Saga, all that was known of Billy was from the greatly embellished Upson/Garrett book, and the even less accurate dime-novels that gave little-to-no concern for accuracy or truth. So while Burns account is still not a complete, nor completely accurate telling, it is a giant step forward to enlightening the general public to the idiosyncrasies of all the New Mexico tumult.

Having written and published in the early part of the century, Burns was able to speak with actual living participants in the Lincoln County feud. It, unfortunately, lacks a lot of our contemporary self-imposed morals of research. Not privy to many of the records (or the internet for that matter) that we are today, Burns form of research was more akin to the Herodotian model; meaning he went around and asked people what the heck happened. This is both a blessing and a curse. He gives us some great insights and perspectives, but he also leaves a lot of undocumented, or at least un-cited, details that historians had to either prove or disprove.

For the most part, it’s a pretty accurate account. He spends a lot of time giving helpful background, and balanced attention, to the different facets. While he doesn’t heap any praise on the Murphy-Dolan faction, he does a great job of making you wonder whose side he’s on, at times. And that’s a great compliment to someone wishing to stay, or at least appear, neutral; which he did quite well.

The writing style is a bit more inspired than a lot of modern writers. Right from the beginning when he opens with John Chisum and his move to New Mexico, and the description of his ranch and operations, it really sets a tone for the world these men stomped around in.

Ultimately, if you are an even half-serious reader of Billy the Kid, you have to read Walter Noble Burns book; you don’t have to read it first, but it is a great place to start. From there, when you dive into Utley and Nolan, you have set a wonderful foundation.

Young Guns (1988)

Young Guns will draw a lot of different reactions. It was really a pretty popular movie, yet anyone who has studied the true events of Billy the Kid and the Regulators will be quick to express their chagrin at all the inaccuracies. Lucky for me this movie came out when I was still too young and too uneducated on the west to be bothered by any of it. And since ignorance is bliss, it has remained an all time favorite of mine.

I don’t deny the movies mistakes, sure it has plenty, but even now, after having read books a plenty on Billy the Kid, I still think it does an ok job. For having to try and cram so much story in to two hours of screen time, I think they did an overall good job of condensing events and putting across broad points in concise moments.

Granted, Young Guns should probably win an award for the most occurrences of dramatic gun-cocking in a western…ever, but for a young guy like me, I thought it was pretty darn slick; the scene of taking turns cocking their guns and then posing in the barn before storming out is probably a highpoint in western cheese, but man did I think that was cool. And just as well, there are plenty of genuinely quality scenes.

Billy and the guys all camped out and deciding what they were going to do next is a generally true event. Some decided to ride away, some decided to stay, with Billy leading the contingent choosing to remain. Likewise, although the time is sped along, Frank Coe tells a story of Tunstall taking Billy to town and buying him a new suit and guns and gunbelt and how happy Billy was about it. He said it was the first time anyone had done anything like that for him, so those little touches in the movie are a real plus.

Of course the not-so-subtle moments are pretty great, too, like the scene with Morton and Baker and McCloskey. No one alive knows for sure what happened on that backtrail to Lincoln, but this scene is a great depiction of what most likely occurred.

I would really love to see Billy’s life played out over the course of a three or four part series of movies, or even TV movies, but in the meantime, Young Guns is still a pretty fun way to take in a visualized depiction, in spite of some cheese.