Billy the Who?

The curious case of Kid Antrim's rise to fame

It’s always interesting to me which outlaws and lawmen from the Old West became famous and which fell to the wayside. Take Frank Canton, for instance. For over four decades - from Texas to Alaska - Frank was a cowboy, outlaw, deputy marshal, sheriff, detective, and a participant in one of the most notorious range wars of all time! Yet to this day very few people are aware of his name.

Likewise with Dave Rudabaugh. He brushed shoulders with some of the most notorious killers and crooks west of the Mississippi yet had it not been for Young Guns 2 there’s a good chance none of us would know who he was.

And then you have a kid, barely old enough to shave - of whom nearly NOTHING is known - propelled to super stardom. All thanks to a curious journalist and a cold beer.

It was 1915 and a crime reporter from Chicago stepped into an El Paso beer joint to quench his thirst. The parched newspaperman, in the area covering Pancho Villa’s various exploits, happened to notice an old revolver hanging behind the bar. Being the curious sort he asked about it only to have the bartender reveal that it was the pistol used to kill Billy the Kid.

“Billy the who?” asked the journalist, completely drawing a blank. “The kid”, replied the bartender who then explained how years before one William Bonney aka Henry McCarty aka Kid Antrim was a famous bandit thereabouts.

The reporter finished his beer and then went upon his business, logging the name “Billy the Kid” somewhere in the recesses of his brain.

Skip ahead a few years and the Chicago newspaperman found himself once again in southwest, this time New Mexico, visiting family. He still hadn’t forgotten about this Billy the Kid character so he decided to make a drive and ask around. He ends up interviewing several people who knew The Kid, including Paulita Maxwell, and writes a book; a best seller titled The Saga of Billy the Kid.

Not the most historically accurate work, The Saga of Billy the Kid was nonetheless a hit and picked up by the Book of the Month Club. Four years later the first of many movies was released, Billy the Kid starring Johnny Mack Brown, and just like that the young bandit from New Mexico became a household name. As we all know, many an author and director have since taken their turn at The Kid over the years, both in print and on the silver screen and all because Walter Noble Burns decided to stop in at the Coney Island Saloon and have a cold beer.

That’s only part of the story. Equally as interesting is how that pistol ended up in that bar in the first place.

It seems that Pat Garrett had a bit of a drinking problem, which as you know can be expensive. As such, he borrowed money from the proprietor of the Coney Island, one Tom Powers, who kept the sacred revolver as collateral. Unfortunately Garrett would be assassinated in 1908 and thus never square up with ole Tom.

So I reckon had it not been for the perfect storm of Pat Garrett’s bad decisions, Pancho Villa’s invasion of the United States, and a curious crime reporter, there’s a good chance many of us would have absolutely no idea who Billy the Kid was. He’d have been relegated to the footnotes of history as opposed to one of the most famous figure to emerge from the Old West.

Of course Walter Noble Burns would soon turn his attention to another basically unknown Old West relic, feller named Wyatt Earp, we nearly equal results.

But what about that revolver?

Over two decades after Pat Garrett’s death, a cancer-riddled Tom Powers would commit suicide (not with the famous pistol) and Garrett’s widow, Apolinaria successfully sued to get her late husband’s gun back.

And then two weeks later Apolinaria Garrett died! OK, now I’m starting to think this damn pistol is haunted!

The gun would stay in the family until the 1980’s before being sold to a succession of collectors. It was sold again fairly recently, in August of 2021, for a whopping $6 million!

I wonder if it still shoots?

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