Billy the Kid

“ Pat is one if not THE most handsome man I've ever seen—Strange that he’s announced in a preface to his poems that his heroes, his Triumvirate, are Jean Harlow, Rimbaud and Billy the Kid because he himself is handsome enough to play Billy the Kid in the movies, that same darkhaired handsome slightly sliteyed look you expect from the myth appearance of Billy the Kid (I suppose not the actual real life William Bonnie who’s said to’ve been a pimply cretin monster) . ”

“ He'd face a tree and go into a crouch, and I'd know he was pretending the tree was Billy the Kid or somebody, and then he'd slap leather—and his clumsy hand would wallop his gunbutt, he'd yank like hell, his old Peacemaker would come staggering out of his holster like a bear in heat, and finally he'd line on his target and plug it dead center. But the whole business took about a second and a half, and by the time he'd ever finished his fumbling in a real fight, Billy the Kid or Sheriff Ben Randolph over in town or even me, Joe Doolin, could have cut him in half. ”

“ With his deputies, John Poe and Thomas P. McKinney, he located the Kid in Sumner, although no one seemed to be explicit as to his whereabouts. He went to Pete Maxwell's house himself, and there, as his two deputies were sitting at the edge of the gallery in the moonlight, he killed the Kid at Maxwell's bedside.
Billy the Kid had very many actual friends, whom he won by his pleasant and cheerful manners and his liberality, when he had anything with which to be liberal, although that was not often. He was very popular among the Mexicans of the Pecos valley. ”

“ A roar drowned Billy, but at last they saw that he had more to say and subsided into an expectant hush.
“I propose we form a Good Citizens’ Club under Mr. Streeter’s system, ask the girls to join, and help the Playground Progressives carry their campaign for a clean playground, no improper language, and a larger respect for the teachers and law.”
“Well, I’ll be lead-dog to a blind man if that isn’t a little the rawest dose yet!” Even that bit of choice English did not relieve the Kid, for he stared silently around at the boys, evidently trying to grasp the situation. ”

“ Authentic life of Billy the Kid, edited by Maurice Garland Fulton. © on Introd.; 9Nov27; A1013053. Maurice Garland Fulton (A) ; 20Apr55; R148175.
Authentic life of Billy the Kid, edited by Maurice Garland Fulton. © on pref., foreword, editorial notes & emendations & photos; 9Nov27; A76103. Maurice Garland Fulton (A) ”

“ Carn't 'it it, we carn't. But we're pals all the same, becos Bill is more 'onest than some who're more 'arty.
We kid, and we kibosh each other like fun, but when H. J. wants backing old Billy's the party,
And when Billy busts Jack is all there, you bet, although I tool a Forder and 'e a old Growler.
But pickles ain't in it for sourness with Billy, nor yet fresh-laid widders for doin' the 'owler.
"Hansom up!"—"Ah!" says old Billy. "Percisely! It's jest 'Hansom up, Growler down!' I ain't in it
With sech a smart, dashing young Jehu as you, as can put on your quarter o' mile to the minute! ”

“ Billy leaned forward and looked fearlessly into the face of the Kid. “If you’ve any remarks coming, you can make them later to me personally.”
“Gee!” Redtop whispered to Sis Jones; “I wish Hec Price was here to see that! Billy’s called the Kid’s bluff.”
“As to the last proposition,” Billy continued, “who does pay for the schools? Do we kids put up the money or the brains or the anxiety, or—the any other things it takes to put through a system? Did we build this great institution of the city schools? It is mighty easy to knock it, but I don’t see any school kids offering anything better. ”

“ But when the man slow to fight does become enraged, especially if it is in the just cause of others, he is twice an adversary; the blood of the beast joins with the spirit of man. Right then makes might.
Billy was younger, slenderer, less skilled; for the Kid valued his “good right arm” as his chief glory in life. But right arm and skill, any force that mere physical exercise had developed, met its Waterloo in such a tide of outraged spirit as enables a little woman with a carving fork, to put to flight desperadoes, or such as now nerved Billy’s arms. ”

“ Are we all sissies, to let the girls butt in, to let the high-brows whip us into knuckling to the teachers like kindergarten kids? You, Bill Bennett, what do you say to that?”
“What’s the matter with the Kid?” asked Charley Harper, called “Redtop” because of his hair. “I thought he rather liked Billy.”
“Don’t you know? Billy’s copped his girl.” Sis Jones winked knowingly.
“Gee! Not the Fish?”
“Yep. Kid wouldn’t have cared if it had been Sally or Belle, they’re both dead gone on him; but Fishie’s different.”
“So that’s—”
“Go on, Billy! Answer him!” cried several of Jim’s opponents. ”

“ I ain’t a kid!”
“Hear him!” shouted Billy, doubling over with glee. “Come on in, an’ I’ll show yer whether we’re stuffin’ or not!”
Blue was pulled towards a grocery, and in a moment he and Billy were foremost of a group facing the proprietor of the shop.
“Say, Mr. Grumley, how much’d they offer for that Flemin’ kid?”
“Three thousand dollars. But you’re too late, Bill! They’ve just found the child an’ the hull of ’em up in The Flatiron, an’ the reward’s goin’ to a boy ’t lives there.”
“A—h! wha’ do ye say to that?” shrieked Billy delightedly. Then, to the grocer, “He’s the feller! ”

“ Reginald and Sis Jones, who had stayed to discuss Billy’s plight, now came on the scene in company with Redtop in time to see Billy spring again on the prostrate Jim.
“Hold on, Billy! Do you strike a man when he’s down?”
Reginald’s cool voice checked Billy’s wild fury, that had leaped again at the Kid’s accusation. He looked up fiercely. ”

“ And the doctor said he surely wouldn’t.
Knitting progressed that day rather slowly. All Billy’s bread went into the street to the sparrows. But Billy had reached almost as far as the end of his gray muffler in the afternoon—and the boys had come in from school for a hasty, “Hello, kid, we’re glad you’re alive and gay! We can’t stop because—” Yes, of course, they couldn’t come every day but it was lonesome. Then there came a knock at the door and in came a little girl. ”

“ Standing as I do in loco parentis, the claims of the rising generation constrain me to postpone that more intimate acquaintance which your attractions demand of my desire. Come along here, you!" and he dragged the Kid, struggling and crying out, into the dark cabin.
"Ain't he great?" cried Billy, with real enthusiasm. "Ain't he just? They ain't a man in th' whole Northwest as can sling the langwidge that man can when he tries. You just ought to see him when he cuts loose, you just ought."
"Who is he?" asked Molly.
"Him? What, him? He's Moroney!" ”

“ In a moment, to Billy the balloon fish was as though he had not been.
"That's a pretty little boy," said I. And then I asked Billy one of those senseless routine questions which must make children look at us, regarding the scope of our intellects very much as we look at Bushmen.
"How would you like to play with him?"
"Him!" replied Billy scornfully, "that's his first pair of boots; see him pull up his little breeches to show the red tops to 'em! But, crackey! isn't she a smasher?" ”

“ Later the beautiful lady invited him into her garden, and Billy, his hand in hers, assented readily, almost blithely.
First they went to the summer house, at the side of which was a water-tap. With her handkerchief she washed away the tear-stains from his face, and afterward bathed her own eyes.
“For, you see, little boy,” she said, “we don't wish other people to know we have been crying.”
“No, we don't,” said Billy, deeply interested in the tap. She asked him his name.
“Billy. I'm six.” He had learned that grown-up people who ask your name always want to know your age also. ”

“ You already have some idea of my other nephew, if you have noticed that none of us, not even that habitual disrespecter of dignities, Billy, ever called him Dan. It would have seemed as incongruous as to call Billy William. He was one of those youths who never gave their parents a moment's uneasiness; who never had to have their wills broken, and never forgot to put on their rubbers or take an umbrella. ”

“ A delayed English exercise had to be copied; and at the moment—hoped for, watched for—when Erminie went down the main hall on her way back from luncheon, a teacher was explaining to Billy some stubbornly hidden point in his geometry.
Two o’clock came finally, and Billy, waiting till the last moment, hoping vainly to see Erminie, went to the assembly-room, where a crowd of noisy boys waited for Mr. Streeter’s coming.
“Who is he, anyway?” asked a boy new to the city and the school.
“He’s the best, jolliest ever,” Billy answered. “They say he’s never grown up and never will. ”

“ There never was a fire that Billy was not close behind the hose-cart, or a circus that he did not ride the kicking donkey, or a county fair where he was not present looking out for anything in the way of fun that offered. His last undertaking was going up in a balloon. Now here he was, down again, and the question was, what should he do next?
A boy in a book would have decided to become a judge, or a merchant, or an artist; but Billy had another ambition. He desired to become a negro-minstrel. He knew one, a man who wore fine clothes and had plenty of money. ”

“ When Billy heard this he began to be very sorry for having used such bold words towards the little man; and he felt himself, yet could not tell how, obliged to follow the little man the live-long night about the country, up and down, and over hedge and ditch, and through bog and brake, without any rest.
When morning began to dawn the little man turned round to him and said, "You may now go home, Billy, but on your peril don't fail to meet me in the Fort-field to-night; or if you do it may be the worse for you in the long run. If I find you a good servant, you will find me an indulgent master." ”

“ His wise old mother shook her head when he told her about these things.
"You are too little yet, Billy," she always said. "You are not yet strong enough to be out in the world alone, even if you could get away from here."
"Just wait till I get big," Billy would say, shaking his head, and then he would scamper away to slyly nip the whiskers of some sober old goat, or to romp or play fight with one of the other youngsters. ”

“ In another year I presume my sister will be forced to give her consent—Dan is only seventeen at present. My other nephew, Billy—well, I hardly know how to describe Billy, because he is like no other human being I have ever known. He is one of the most impossible and obstinate boys in the world, and one never knows from one moment to the next what he is going to do or say. At present he is the trial of all our lives at Sunrise camp; he has proclaimed himself a pacifist, and feels called upon to convert everybody he meets. ”

“ He was an only child and an orphan when mother married him. He died when I was but six months old. After that there was only mother and Aunt Ella, then Aunt Ella alone; and now—no one.”
“And you know nothing of your father's people?”
“Nothing; that is—almost nothing.”
“Then there is some one?”
Billy smiled. A deeper pink showed in her cheeks.
“Why, there's one—a man but he isn't really father's people, anyway. But I—I have been tempted to write to him.” ”

“ In they both went; and for the better viewing the company, the little man perched himself up as nimbly as a cock-sparrow upon one of the big beams which went across the house over all their heads, and Billy did the same upon another facing him; not being much accustomed to roosting in such a place, his legs hung down as untidy as may be, and it was quite clear he had not taken pattern after the way in which the little man had bundled himself up together. If the little man had been a tailor all his life, he could not have sat more contented by upon his haunches. ”

“ And I want you to remember always that I think you are the very best boy in the world.”
They laughed lightly, and Billy ran off, and that day the shovel was light.
May Nell and her mother went away, the servants were given a vacation, and the house closed. It looked rather lonely when Billy came in the early evening. He had a room in the garage, and was to be on duty practically all of the time. This was not arduous, for the entire place was enclosed in a high barbed-wire fence, as effective as if not hidden by honeysuckle, wild rose, and clematis ”

“ When the doctor said “We might have another mother and baby clinic here every week, if you have time for it,” she thought of Billy’s mother and the baby who died, and she always had time for it. When the young people’s club met on Wednesday evenings and she found some serious-eyed, embarrassed boy isolated by his shyness or falling a prey to an unscrupulous little huntress, she thought of another chapter of Billy’s career, and she spared no trouble to align his interests with a real girl. ”

“ Not a boy in the house but felt the pretty child's influence, and was improved by it without exactly knowing how or why, for babies can work miracles in the hearts that love them. Poor Billy found infinite satisfaction in staring at her, and though she did not like it she permitted without a frown, after she had been made to understand that he was not quite like the others, and on that account must be more kindly treated. ”