To Hell On A Fast Horse Billy The Kid Pat Garrett And The Epic Chase To Justice In The Old West Mark Lee Gardner by Mark Lee Gardner 9780061945694, 0061945692 instant download after payment.

From Publishers Weekly Western historian Gardner (*Wagons for the Santa Fe Trade*) delivers a dual biography documenting Sheriff Pat Garrett's hunt for the iconic outlaw William Bonney, aka Billy the Kid. As Gardner sees it, the battle between the wily Kid and the determined Garrett is perhaps the greatest of our Old West legends. Digging beneath the myths and melodrama, he begins in Las Vegas during Christmas week, 1880, when the capture and confinement of Billy the Kid made national headlines. Gardner then details the Kid's daring daylight courthouse escape on April 28, 1881, in a hail of gunfire, leaving bloodied bodies behind. I am not going to leave the country, said the Kid, and I am not going to reform, neither am I going to be taken alive again. The chase began, with Garrett finally gunning down the Kid on July 14, 1881. Gardner concludes with a survey of the Kid's robust mythic afterlife in books and films. Gardner's extensive research and authoritative approach ground this compelling historical recreation. B&w photos. *(Feb. 9)* Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. From Booklist The saga of Billy the Kid and his nemesis, Pat Garrett, has been the subject of numerous fanciful books and several very bad movies. So it is both useful and interesting to read this well-researched and, one hopes, relatively accurate account of the Lincoln County War and the two most famous participants in it. The center of the account is Garrett’s pursuit and execution of the Kid after he escaped from the Lincoln County courthouse jail. Fortunately, Gardner precedes that account with an engrossing examination of the lives of both men and the political and economic milieu of nineteenth-century New Mexico. He effectively uses primary sources, although those sources are often contradictory and reflect the views of competing Lincoln County factions. The portrait of the Kid, surprisingly, conforms to his popular image as a ruthless killer who could also be charming. Garrett is seen as ambitious, laconic, and coldly efficient. This is a fine effort to de-mystify a legendary episode in the history of the American West. --Jay Freeman