‘Newspapers across the country went wild,’ writes Joel Jacobsen in his book Such Men as Billy the Kid. ‘The impossible had happened: Billy the Kid, the outlaw king of the frontier, had lived up to his reputation.’ Utley concurs. In his Billy the Kid, Utley says that the Kid was famous before his Lincoln escape thanks to the territorial press, but that despite his deeds during the Lincoln County War, he had not done enough in his 21 years to justify his fame. ‘The sensational bolt from Lincoln, however, transformed him into the territory’s foremost outlaw in fact as well as in name,’ Utley suggests.

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At the courthouse today, two plaques mark the spots where Bell and Olinger fell. A large hole in the wall at the bottom of the stairs may have been made by one of the Kid’s bullets. Billy the Kid probably took some pleasure in killing ‘mean’ Bob Olinger, and he might have regretted killing the much more pleasant James Bell — well, maybe not too much regret. Garrett had repeatedly cautioned his guards about the ‘daring and unscrupulous’ Billy because he ‘knew the desperate character’ of a man who ‘would sacrifice the lives of a hundred men who stood between him and liberty, when the gallows stared him in the face, with as little compunction as he would kill a coyote.’

This article was written by Barbara Tucker Peterson and Louis Hart and originally appeared in the August 1998 issue of Wild West magazine. For more great articles be sure to subscribe to Wild West magazine today!

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