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The dying cowboy.

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I crave an audacious music
yet easy comfortable native.

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Aaron Copland comes to mind,
and I put on Billy the Kid long

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a favorite of mine and among
the most American of American

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ballets.

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Good.

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A frontier town looms
up in the mind's eye,

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there is brawling and gunplay.

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A woman is cut down in the
crossfire, and it remains,

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alas, for her son.

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A mere lad of 12 to avenge
her death and to flee.

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In that awful moment
of pain and rage,

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his whole destiny is determined.

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The music swells upon
me and I'm carried along

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in a swift current
of his legend.

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Night on the prairie, a card
game, a gunfight, capture

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and escape, and at last
death in the desert.

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The avocation is all
but irresistible.

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And an epic notion of heroism
lies at the center of it.

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We, Americans, have always
cherished the institution

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of the dying cowboy.

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From the dime novel
to the silver screen,

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it has been one of our
most enduring sentiments

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and authentic national treasure.

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We beat the drum
slowly and played

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the fife lowly and we bitterly
wept as we bore him along.

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For we all loved our comrades
so brave young and handsome.

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We all loved our comrade
although he'd done wrong.

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But if this is not precisely
a false view of Billy the Kid,

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it is decidedly a narrow one.

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The irony is that the other
side of this particular coin

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is just as ambiguously
true and false.

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To wit the famous photograph,
the only one known to exist,

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if I am not mistaken.

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In which Billy appears to be
a mindless pear-shaped boy,

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essentially innocuous in spite
of the arsenal at his hips,

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who stands in peculiar
and pathetic relation

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to man and to God.

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The truth is not
necessarily to be

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found in either of
these directions,

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nor is it necessarily
to be found at all.

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One day, Billy and I were riding
down from the high country,

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South of the Hondo Valley.

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It was getting on
towards evening,

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and the light was failing fast.

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Far below, we could see the pale
geometry of a village, Arroyo

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Corvo, as I recall.

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And we made straight
for the cantina there.

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Night came on as we stood
without talking at the bar.

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An hour passed, and another.

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And then, move over, friend.

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A thick bearded man stepped
between us, facing Billy.

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Quite apart from the fact
that he was obviously drunk,

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there was something
repulsive in his manner.

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You could see it once that
there was no steel in him.

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And not a glimmer of the doom
that was about to fall on him.

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I caught my breath.

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Over the intruder's
shoulder, I saw

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Billy raise his eyes slowly.

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He said nothing, nor did
he give so much as an inch.

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But for a moment, his eyes lay
upon the man like a shroud.

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And he returned to his drink.

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The man withered away.

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I had never seen Billy fix
a man in his gaze before.

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For years now, I have
tried to understand

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what it was that I saw in
his eyes at that moment.

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There are times
when it seems surely

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to have been
something like sorrow.

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Faintest sadness
but at other times,

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I realized that
there was nothing.

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Nothing at all.

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That Billy was the only man I
have ever known in whose eyes,

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there was no
expression, whatever.

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But I digress.

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There is the matter of
Billy the Kid's demise.

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He was shot to death as everyone
knows in Pete Maxwell's house,

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near Fort Sumner, on or about
midnight, 13, 14 July 1881.

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And he was shot by Pat Garrett,
Sheriff of Lincoln County.

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There was one
witness, Pete Maxwell.

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Immediately after the
shooting, two other men

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came into the room and saw
Billy the Kid's body face down

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on the floor.

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They were John Poe
and Kip McKinney.

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It is generally believed,
if I'm not mistaken,

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that Garrett fired twice,
one of the shots going wild.

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But Poe and McKinney
both thought

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that they had heard
three shots, two of which

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were extremely close
together in time.

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Now, these are the important
questions as I see it.

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Was Billy the Kid armed?

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Did the four men who
stood over his body really

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see, in addition to
the butcher knife,

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a pistol in Billy's right hand?

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A pistol of a rare type?

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A Colt double action 41 caliber
with a small handle shaped

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like that of a Derringer?

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What did they only imagine
that they saw such a thing?

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Finally, did the four
men really see Billy

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the Kid there on the
floor at their feet?

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Or were they possibly dreaming?

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Could it be that they and
some extraordinary concert

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of the mind imagined
him there dead?

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Or indeed, could it be that
these men in their very souls,

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in their most intricate
mentality and absolute faith

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in what they saw and what they
were, for more or less equal

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figments of Billy the
Kid's imagination?

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