Famous Before He Died

Billy was a celebrity while he was still alive — and the newspapers made him one. Frontier editors learned that his name sold papers, so every robbery and shootout got bigger in the retelling. A minor cattle dispute became a daring raid. A single killing became a spree.

Readers back East ate it up. They had never seen the desert, so a teenage gunman dodging the law felt like an adventure novel come true. By the time Garrett caught up with him, Billy the Kid was a household name built mostly out of print, not gunfire.

The man and the headline had already drifted apart.