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Billy the Kid

Interest in the outlaw has grown recently with the discovery of the first authenticated photographs of Henry McCarty, who died at the age of 21 after a short, notorious life of gambling and gunfights.

The legend of the most famous of all outlaws belongs to the whole world now. But to find the grinning teen-ager who gave rise to it, you must visit the New Mexico landscape where he lived his short life.

New Mexico is Billy the Kid country. In Santa Fe’s First Presbyterian Church, young Henry McCarty stood by in March 1873 as his mother exchanged vows with William Henry Harrison Antrim. Eight years later, alias Billy Bonney, a.k.a.

In this never-never land, the superhero is the gun slinger, the man who can draw fastest and shoot straightest.

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