A JEEP IN THE DESERT ON THE TRAIL OF A LEGEND

摘要

It might be best to begin with a short biographical sketch, for those not fully immersed in the gentle waters of frontier mayhem: Billy the Kid, perhaps the Old West's most famous gunfighter, was born to Irish immigrants in the slums of 1850s New York and christened Henry McCarty. His mother Catherine was soon widowed, so she dragged young Henry and his brother Joe ever westward through a series of frontier towns, doing laundry to make a living, ending up in Silver City, New Mexico. She married a man named Antrim and shortly thereafter died of tuberculosis. Antrim went off prospecting and left the 15-year-old Billy (as he came to be known) to finish raising himself on the streets of Silver City. Small and slim for his age, Billy was smart, lively, and well-liked by everyone, but somewhat wild. Which is to say he did a little gambling and cattle rustling, then shot a local bully who was beating him to a pulp in a saloon. He lit out and eventually resurfaced in Lincoln, New Mexico, just in time to take part in one of the deadliest cattle/mercantile wars in Western history. Three years later, at the age of 21, he was shot dead by Sheriff Pat Garrett in Fort Sumner, New Mexico.