Billy the Kid and four of his gang were delivered to the jail in Las Vegas, New Mexico on December 26, 1880. They were locked up without much fanfare, but in the morning a crowd turned out to see the captured celebrity. “There was a big crowd gazing at me, wasn’t there?” the Kid said to a reporter, who also wrote, “He was the attraction of the show, as he stood there, lightly kicking the toes of his boots on the stone pavement to keep his feet warm, one would scarcely mistrust that he was the hero of the ‘Forty Thieves’ romance which this paper has been running in serial form for six weeks or more.” [Alas, the Las Vegas Gazette newspaper archives for this period were lost in a fire.)

True West March/April 2025
In This Issue:
Western Books & Movies
More In This Issue
- Truth Be Known
- What Has Taught Me: Deb Goodrich
- Earp, Cowboy Songs & Prairie Hygiene
- Trails of the Old West
- The Frontier Characters of South Dakota
- The Bowie Knife
- The Kindled Flame 1835
- King of the Scatterguns
- Selling the Mythic West and the Real West
- A Gut Punch Turns into a Miracle Reprieve
- The Beginnings of the Bird Cage
- Frontier Colossus