My Favorite Book, Part 30.

Certainthings from the Old West are so firmly embedded in history—both scholarly andpopular—that they are ever-present. You don’t have to look far to find a book,magazine article, movie, documentary, or debate about the gunfight at the OKCorral, Wild Bill Hickok, the battle at the Little Big Horn, Buffalo Bill Cody,the siege at the Alamo, Crazy Horse, the Mountain Meadows Massacre, GeorgeArmstrong Custer, Sitting Bull . . .

And, aspopular a subject as any of the above, Billy the Kid.

I recentlyre-read a book on that subject I had enjoyed before: To Hell on a Fast Horse – Billy theKid, Pat Garrett and the Epic Chase to Justice in the Old West by Mark Lee Gardner. The book tracesthe histories of William Bonney and Pat Garrett, both as individuals and theirshared history. While widely researched and carefully documented, the book—unlikeso many nonfiction books—is not a dense parade of names and dates and facts.

Gardnerdoes not paint Billy the Kid as a tortured, misunderstood, widely loved victimof circumstance. Neither does he portray him as totally uncaring, cold-blooded,ruthless, and imbued with evil. Garrett gets the same multi-faceted treatment,covering his heroics and relentless pursuit of justice, as well as hisgambling, drinking, and economic shenanigans. We come to know both men as fullyformed, complex human beings, driven by and responding to (as we all are) complicatedand sometimes conflicting forces.

Theviolence of their lives is chronicled in vivid detail, as are the friendshipsand romantic relationships of the Kid and the sheriff. Throughout the pages ofthis engaging account, readers are left to form their own conclusionsconcerning the mysteries surrounding the lives and deaths of two of the OldWest’s most compelling men, forever entwined in our history and imaginations.