Billy The Kid: The Story Behind the Legend and the Myth

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Speaker 1: This is Lee Habeeb and this is Our American Stories, the show where America is the star and the American People. To search for the Our American Stories podcast, go to the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. In the eighteen seventies, the American West was a refuge for outcasts as the nation recovered from the Civil War. In fact, life was so hard that eighty percent of the population was under thirty. It was in this harsh and lawless place where legend was forged. Roger McGrath is the author of Gunfighters, Highwaymen and Vigilantes, Violence on the Frontier. A US marine and former history professor at UCLA, doctor McGrath has appeared on numerous History Channel documentaries and he’s a regular tributor to Hear for us at Our American Stories. Here’s McGrath with the story of Billy the Kid.

00:01:11
Speaker 2: Billy the Ged is an American legend. He’s been portrayed as everything from a gallant young man fighting for justice to a psychopathic killer. I think the truth lies much closer to gallant young man. Billy the Kid is born Henry McCarty in eighteen fifty nine to Irish immigrant parents Patrick and Catherine in New York City. He is an older brother named Joseph. The father dies when the boys are still young, and the mother takes them west to Indiana, then to Kansas, then to New Mexico. In Santa Fe, Katherine McCarty marries William Antrim in eighteen seventy three. Shortly after the wedding, the new Antrim family moves to Silver City, a booming mining town in southwestern New Mexico. There in Silver City, Henry McCarty gets his new nickname, Kid Antrim. He is described by a schoolmate as being full of fun and mischief, but a school teacher says he is no more of a problem than any other. Boy. Is described as a handsome boy with blue eyes, sandy blonde hair, pale skin, and rosy cheeks. He has a charming smile that is already melting girls’ hearts. Early in eighteen seventy four, the Kid’s mother dies at tuberculosis and he’s taken in by another family. He works at odd jobs, but within a year he’s in trouble for petty thefts. Deciding it’s time for him in Silver City as part company, he heads west for Arizona and finds work as a cowboy. All of fifteen years old, he’s on his own. While working on Arizona ranches, the kid makes trips with his cowboy buddies in New Mexico to russell cattle. As long as his wrestling stays south of the border, Arizona lawman pay him no mind. However, in eighteen seventy seven, he starts stealing horses from Arizona ranches and selling them at mining camps. He’s soon arrested, shackled, and jailed. Within a day, he makes a daring escape as a newspaper reports shackles and all. Six months later, he’s arrested again, but again he breaks free. The Kid is an escape artist. In August eighteen seventy seven, the kid rides into Bonita, a small settlement next to Camp Grant in southeastern Arizona, and runs into the old nemesis. Frank Cahill kl is a browny thirty two year old irishman from County Galway who pummeled the Kid in a recent fistfight. A second fight erupts. This time the Kid pulls a gun and puts a bullet in Cayhill’s belly. A day later, Cahill dies from the womb. The kid doesn’t wait around to see if his shooting of Cahill will be declared self defense and rides hard for New Mexico. By the fall of eighteen seventy seven, the kid is working as a cowboy on a ranch in Lincoln County owned by twenty four year old Englishman John Dunstall. Dunstall arrived in New Mexico in eighteen seventy six with a plan to take control of Lincoln County through land acquisitions and business operations. He’s financed by his wealthy father working with Hunstall is a lawyer, Alexander MacSween. MacSween is the son of Scottish immigrants to Canada. He starts his adult life as a Presbyterian minister, but after moving to the United States, he attends law school and later establishes a practice in the town of Lincoln, the county seat for Lincoln County. Business in Lincoln County focuses on supplying the Fort Stanton Army Post and the Mescalero Apache Reservation with beef, corn, and flour. Tunstall reckons he can make a small fortune if he monopolizes the trade. However, there is already someone in Lincoln doing just that. That someone is Lawrence Murphy. Murphy is an Irish immigrant in his middle forties with sandy blonde hair and a red beard. He is a veteran of both the U. S. Army and the New Mexico Volunteers and served in Indian Wars and in the Civil War. He is stationed at Fort Stanton at the close of the Civil War and has risen to the rank of major. When he leaves the service, he develops a mercantile business, first located at Fort Stanton and and then in the town of Lincoln. In Lincoln, he builds a store two stories high and three thousand square feet. The dwarfs every other building in town. Murphy’s business thrives. Residents of Lincoln County referred to L. G. Murphy and Company as the House of Murphy, or simply the House. Murphy has two young protegees. One is Irish born James Dolan. The other even younger protege is John Riley. John Tunstall thinks he can overthrow the House and establish his own monopoly. As he writes to his father back in England, everything in New Mexico that pays it all is worked by a ring. There is the Indian Ring, the Army Ring, the political Ring, the legal Ring, the Roman Catholic Ring, the cattle Ring, the horse thieves Ring, the land Ring, and half a dozen other rings. Make things stick. To do any good, it is necessary to either get into a ring or to make one for yourself.

00:07:10
Speaker 1: And you’re listening to Roger McGrath tell the story of Billy the Kid and who would think born in New York City of all places? When we come back more of the story of Billy the Kid with doctor Roger McGrath. Here on our American Stories. Here are our American Stories. We bring you inspiring stories of history, sports, business, faith and love. Stories from a great and beautiful country that need to be told. But we can’t do it without you. Our stories are free to listen to, but the or not free to make. If you love our stories in America like we do, please go to our Americanstories dot com and click the donate button. Give a little, give a lot, help us keep the great American stories coming. That’s our American Stories dot Com. And we continue with our American Stories. Billy the Kid is working as a cowboy on a ranch in Lincoln County, New Mexico, in eighteen seventy seven, and it’s owned by a twenty four year old Englishman named John Tunstall. Hunstall thinks he can overthrow the county’s business monopoly and its owner, Lawrence Murphy. Hunstall plans on doing this by either becoming a part of a special interest group or making one up himself. Let’s return to Roger McGrath.

00:08:40
Speaker 2: Dunstall makes one for himself, and he has the money to do it. He writes to his father. It is his goal to get the half of every dollar that is made in the county by anyone. To put this into effect, Dunstall first needs a cattle ranch. Mac Sween gets them a four thousand acre spread some thirty miles south of Lincoln. Dunstall now thinks here will open a store in Lincoln to compete with the house, but he needs a hook to lure farmers away from Murphy’s business. Dunstall decides here’ll issue what he calls green notes to customers against the future harvest of crops. In this way, farmers can buy on credit, but they will then be attached to Tunstall’s store By debt. By the fall of eighteen seventy seven, Tunstall’s store is up and running. The timing is propitious. Nearly fifty years old, in drinking heavily, Lawrence Murphy decides to retire. He sells his company to his understudies, James Dolan and John Riley, to buy the business. Dolan and Riley have to secure financing in Santa Fe, and making payments on the loan will not be easy. This plays right into Tunstall’s hands, although Tunstall news it will be some time before he starts turning a profit. Unlike Dolan and Riley, he has his father’s fortune behind him and doesn’t have to worry about paying off a loan. Everybody in Lincoln County begins to take sides. Some think Tunstall will liberate them from monopoly of the house. Others hate Alex MacSween, Tunstall’s partner and attorney. In his few years in Lincoln, MacSween has become involved in a number of controversial transactions and leo battles, and has made many an enemy. Tensions mount and each side higher A gunman. Into all this walks an eighteen year old boy who is using the alias William Bonnie. However, he’s already known popularly as the Kid, and now he’s called not Bill Bonnie but Billy the Kid. With a boyish face and only a little peach fuzz on his upper lip to occasionally shave, he still looks like a kid, but he can ride a horse with the best of them, and can shoot a revolver or a rifle with incredible speed and accuracy. He has nerves of steel and is cool and deliberate under fire. With tensions mounting in Lincoln County, a spark that ignites a war comes. On an evening in February eighteen seventy eight. Armed with a writ of attachment, a Bossi sweeps down upon Tunstall, who is out on the trail helping to drive a herd of horses. Several of Tunstall’s hired hands, including Billy the Kid, are with the herd also, but are far from Tunstall and don’t see what happens between Tunstall and the bosse. The Bossi members later say that Tunstall drew his gun first and fired before they opened up. Perhaps so, but probably not. Only two weeks earlier, Jimmy Dolan stomped up to Tunstall and challenged him to shoot it out on the spot. Three times. Dolan issued the challenge three times, Tunstall refused to go for his weapon. Dolan finally gave up in disgust. The Lincoln County War rages for two years, and Billy the Kid is not only in the thick of the fighting, but he becomes the leader of the Regulators as the Tunstall MacSween faction of gunmen as called. Some say the Kid kills as many as twenty one men, but one third that number is probably closer to the truth. Nonetheless, he is clearly the war’s most deadly fighter. Some of his exploits defy the imagination. The first target for Billy the Kid and the Regulators are members of the posse that had shot Tunstall in March eighteen seventy eight. The Regulators catch up with two of them, Frank Baker and William Morton. Both of them are shot dead, likely by the Kid. The next target for the Kid is William Brady, the Lincoln County Sheriff. Brady is a fair and honest sheriff and a longtime friend of Lawrence Murphy. The two have much in common. Brady was born in Ireland and immigrates to the United States in eighteen fifty one. Immediately enlists in the US Army and serves for ten years before being discharged in New Mexico. He then joins the New Mexico Volunteers and serves throughout the Civil War with Murphy. Like Murphy, Brady rises to the rank of major. Following the Civil War, Brady serves as a member of the Territorial Legislature and then as Shared of Lincoln County. He lives on a farm where he and his Hispanic wife were her several children. In all ways, he’s well respected because of his friendship with Murphy, he’s aligned with a house faction. On a day in April eighteen seventy eight, as Sheriff Brady and four of his deputies walk down Lincoln’s main street, the kid and several other regulators open fire from behind an adobe wall. Brady and Deputy George Henman are killed, and Deputy Billy Matthews is wounded. As Matthews and the other two deputies run for cover, the kid bolts into the street and rifles the pockets of Sheriff Brady. The kid is looking for an arrest warrant that the sheriff supposedly has for Alex Maxween from cover. The deputies now open fire and the bullet goes clean through the kid’s thigh. He limps away to his horse and gallops out of town. Another one of the regulators, Big Jim French, is also wounded. Unable to ride, he hides in town. That night, the Kid returns and rescues Big Jim. Over the next three months, the Kid is involved in a half dozen gun battles. Then, in the middle of July, occurs a five day fight in the town of Lincoln, which is known as the Five Day Battle or the Battle of Lincoln. Leading up to the battle, the regulators take positions in different locations in Lincoln. The Kid and ten others set up in mac sween’s house on Main Street in the middle of town. Another forty regulators are spread throughout the town. The Dolan Riley forces, led by the new County Sheriff George Peppin, number about forty. Most residents of the town, mostly old time Hispanic settlers, flee in terror. Others hunker down in their homes fearing for their lives. The shooting starts when the regulators open fire on some of the Peppin’s deputies several are wounded. After that initial blast, there is intermittent shooting both day and night. On the fourth day of the battle, Colonel Nathan Deadley and several dozen troops from nearby Fort Staff arrive not to stop the fighting, but to evacuate non combatant citizens. Colonel Deadley says he has no authority to intervene on one side or the other, but he is there to escort Lincoln residents to safety. Although Deadly says he is neutro The sight of the troops cause half of the regulators to bend in their positions and ride for the hills. Most of the regulators reckon that should shooting erupt, the army will naturally side with the Sheriff Peppin forces. Not only would the regulators then be facing federal forces, but those forces have not only their rifles and side arms, but also a small howitzer and a gatling gun.

00:17:08
Speaker 1: And you’re listening to Roger McGrath tell one heck of a story, and remember the key fact that let off this storytelling, eighty percent of the population was under thirty. No good comes of that anywhere in the world. And my goodness, what naturally happens is gang’s form. You can call them what you want. This was gang warfare. Long before there were bloods and crips, and long before the Five crime Families of New York. We had the great Wars of Lincoln County. And what could the federal government do? Empty Lincoln out and let these guys go at it. When we come back, McGrath tells more of the story of Billy the Kid, orphaned at the age of fifteen and in the middle of one of the great gunfights battles gang battles in American history. The story continues here on our American stories, and we continue with our American stories and the story of Billy the Kid. Businessman John Sunstall was the first to be killed in what we now know is the Lincoln County War. This battle was fought against the county’s business monopoly run by Lawrence Murphy James Dolan, and backed by Sheriff George Peppin. Hunstall’s eighteen year old employee, Billy the Kid, along with other men, vow revenge and take refuge in the home of Alexander McSween, Tonstall’s friend and business partner. Let’s return to Roger McGrath and the story of Billy the Kid.

00:18:45
Speaker 2: Sheriff Peppin takes advantage of the lull in fighting to try to serve warrants for the rest of Maxween. A deputy approaches Maxween’s house and shots for Maxween to surrender. MacSween replies he will not and says he has warrants for the arrest of the Bosse members. The deputy demands to see the warrants. Big Jim French shouts out, our warrants are in our guns, you sucking sons of the well. This will be a fight to the finish. Sheriff Peppin decides to set the MacSween house on fire, but that proves easier said than done. Gunfire drives torts wielding deputies back several times before a small blaze is started. Mac Sween’s wife, Susan, leaves the house to plead with Colonel Dudley, but Dudley says he has come only to evacuate the women and children, and that Sheriff Peppin is doing his lawful duty and trying to serve the warrants. Susan returns to the house, but leaves for a final time. In the early evening. By nightfall, the fire is roaring and has consumed all all of the Maxween House but the kitchen, where the regulators are huddled. They decide to make a break for it through the rear door. Led by Billy the Kid. Out the back door, they go headed for a gate at the rear of the property. Suddenly they’re illuminated by the flames and Pepin’s men open fire. Half of the fleeing regulators are cut down by flying lead, but the Kid and four others race through the gate and disappear into a dense stand timmer along a river. The Kid has escaped once again. The next morning, daylight reveals the carnage. Five bullet riddled bodies lie in the yard behind the smoking ruins of the Maxween House. Alex Maxween’s corpse is there, along with the bodies of three of the regulators and the body of a deputy. Chickens peck at the corpses all together, the Battle of lincol And takes eight lives and leaves that many more seriously wounded. By now, the Lincoln County War has caught the attention of officials in Washington. The territorial governor is removed from office and a new one appointed. The new governor for New Mexico Territory is Low Wallace, a lawyer from Indiana. Wallace is very active in Republican Party politics. The appointment as governor is his reward for faithful service through the party. When Wallace arrives in New Mexico, he’s a fifty one year old veteran about the Mexican War and the Civil War, having risen to the rank of Briadier General. He’s tall and thin, with a weather beaten face and dark hair that is turning gray. He’s a true renaissance man, a lawyer, politician, soldier, scholar, writer, and musician. Wallace declares Lincoln County to be in the state of insurrection and orders all factions to disband and return to their homes by the middle of October. After that, he will allow the army to assist civilian authorities against those failing to comply. By November, everything seems to be going so smoothly that Wallace issues what is called a general pardon to all those involved in the Lincoln County War who have not yet been indicted by a grand jury. Wallace draws severe criticism for the amnesty. Many people think it’s an open invitation to those who have fled New Mexico to return and renew their Outlawry Wallace thinks he’s done with the problem, and he resumes work on a novel he started some time earlier. Each night he secludes himself in the Governor’s mansion and writes a few more pages of a manuscript that is eventually published. Has been her In February eighteen seventy nine, a peace conference is proposed to be held in Lincoln between the old warring factions. Billy the Kid endorses as the proposal. He tells other regulators tired of fighting and tired of running from Sheriff Peppin and his posses. Late in February, some two dozen of the old antagonists gather in Lincoln, exactly one year since the killing of John Dunstall. The conference has an inauspicious beginning. One of Dolan’s boys, Jesse Evans, says the Kid can’t be dealt with peaceably and should be killed on the spot. The Kid says he has come to make peace. Temper is cool, and a formal treaty is drawn up. The treaty stipulates that no one on either side will kill anyone without first withdrawing from the treaty. It also says that no soldiers will be killed for any past defense, and that no one will give evidence in a civil prosecution. Finally, it says anyone who fails to live up to the agreement will be killed. After general handshaking, the boys go out and get drunk in their revelry. While shooting their guns on Main Street, they kill Houston Chapman, a lawyer who has worked with Maxween. The killing doesn’t seem to phase them in the least. They continue walking down the street to the next saloon and another round of drinks. The killing prompts Governor lou Wallace to finally make a trip to Lincoln. He’s afraid the killing might signal a new round of fighting. While in Lincoln, a messenger brings Wallace a note from a participant in the peace conference. The writer of the note explains that he came to Lincoln to make friends with old enemies so as to be able to lay aside my arms and go to work. I was present when mister Chapman was murdered and know who did it, but I have indictments against me for things that happened in the past in the Lincoln County War, and am afraid to give up because my enemies would kill me. I am called Kid Antrim, but Antrim is my stepfather’s name. Governor Wallace loses no time in sending a reply and setting up a secret meeting. On the night of Saint Patrick’s Day, March seventeenth, eighteen seventy nine, the Governor in the outlaw rendezvous in a small house. The kid, as instructed, knocked softly on the side door. At nine pm. The doors open and the kid enters wearily, a rifle in one hand and a revolver in the other. A small room is illuminated only by a flickering oil lamp. The fifty one year old governor, a scholar, general, lawyer, and author, sits facing the nineteen year old kid, a cowboy, cattle wrestler, horse thief, gunfighter, and leader of the regulators. An agreement is reached. Wallace will contrive and arrest of the kid and confine him in Lincoln until the District Court convenes. The kid will identify the killers of Chapman for the grand jury, and in return, Wallace will protect him from prosecution for the killing of Sheriff Brady and others. A few days later, the kid is arrested and confined in a private home in Lincoln. In a letter to the U S Secretary of the Interior, Governor Wallace writes, a precious specimen nicknamed the kid, whom the sheriff is holding here in the plaza, is an object of tender regard. I heard singing in music the other night. Going to the door, I found minstrels of the village actually aranating the fellow in prison. The Governor might also have mentioned the girls and young women of Lincoln who bake pies and cookies for the kid and pine for him. The teenage outlaw is a babe magnet.

00:27:15
Speaker 1: And you’ve been listening to Roger McGrath do what he does best. The story of Billy the Kid, as told by Roger McGrath continues here on our American stories. And we continue with our American stories and with the story of Billy the Kid. Let’s pick up where we last left off. Here again is Roger McGrath.

00:27:47
Speaker 2: The Grand Jury of Lincoln County meets early in April. The kid is one of those who testify the grand jury returns some two hundred indictments against fifty men. However, none of the indicted men come to trial when the district court convenes later in April, and most never do. After testifying Bey, the kid simply rides out of Lincoln. He kept his end of the bargain. Now it’s up to Governor Wallace to protect the kid from any prosecution. With the war ended, though Wallace loses interest in Lincoln County and does nothing about earlier grand jury indictments of the kid, kid writes letters to the governor but gets no response. Growing desperate, a kid returns to al lawry. Only then does the governor respond and announces a five hundred dollar reward for capture of the kid something like fifty thousand dollars today. In eighteen eighty, Pat Garrett is elected the new sheriff of Lincoln County. Garrett is a tall, lanky, thirty year old former cowboy and buffalo hunter. He arrived in New Mexico a few years earlier from Texas. Prior to becoming sheriff, Garrett knew the kid as a casual friend. The two spent some time together drinking in saloons and Garrett is familiar with the kid’s habits and his favorite haunts. Now Garrett sets out to capture it. The notorious bill at the kid and click the five hundred dollars reward. Late on a December night in eighteen eighty, after many weeks of tracking, Sheriff Garrett and his posse catch up with the kid and a few of his gang members in an old stone cabin at Stinking Springs, one hundred miles to the northeast of Lincoln. Garrett and his deputies surround the cabin and wait for sunrise. Soon, one of the Kid’s men, Charlie Bowdrey, walks out to feed the horses, which are tethered just outside the cabin door. Garrett calls out to Boudery to throw up his hands. Instead, Boudrey reaches for his guns, a dozen rifles. Instantly bark and Boudery is a with bullets. With Bowdery dead on the ground, all is suddenly quiet. From inside the cabin, the kid yells out, asking if that’s Pat Garrett out there. The following exchange occurs. Garrett, I’m here, the kid, Pat, Why don’t you come up like a man and give us a fair fight, Garrett, I don’t aim to the kid, you old long legged son of a The kid decides they should pull their horses inside the cabin, saddle them, and theyke a dash for it by bolting through the cabin door through a hail of gunfire. They get two of the horses inside, but a third one drops dead in the doorway. They are now stuck inside the cabin. Desultory shooting continues. During lulls in the action, the kid cracks, jokes, yells back and forth with Garrett, and challenges Garrett to duel. Finally, late in the afternoon, a stick with the white rag on it is way from the cabin. One of the kid’s men comes out with his hands up. He says the kid will surrender if Garrett will take him and the others not to Lincoln, but to Santa Fe. If not, they will stay in the cabin and fight to the death. Garrett agrees to take them to Santa Fe. Once in jail and Santa Fe, the kid again writes to Governor Wallace for help. Says the kid, I have done everything I promised you, and you have done nothing that you promise me. Wallace ignores the kids please. In April eighteen eighty one, the kid is transported to Messia for the spring term of the District Court and has tried for the murder of Sheriff Brady. The trial lasts for two days and the jury returns a verdict of guilty. The judge sentences the kid to be taken Lincoln and hanged. Two weeks later, Governor Wallace takes time away from writing ben her to sign the kid’s death warrant. The kid is chained and shackled and blowed into a wagon for the journey to Lincoln. Five armed guards ride alongside the wagon. Another three guards ride in the wagon with the kid, including Deputy U. S. Marshal Bob Ollinger. Ollinger is a tall, powerfully built bully who takes pleasure in tormenting the kid. By late April, the kid is lodged in a second floor room of the County Courthouse in Lincoln. The kid is wearing leg shackles in his chain to the floor. Deputies Bob Ollinger and James Bell guard him. Ollinger draws a chalk line on the floor around the kid and says if he crosses that line, he will be shot dead. Bill treats the kid decently, but Ollinger constantly taunts him about his approaching hanging and regularly invites him to try to make a break so that he Ollinger will have the pleasure of blasting him in half with the shotgun he carries. At noon on April twenty eight, Ollinger escorts some other prisoners across the street to a hotel restaurant for lunch and leaves Bell with the kid. Ollenger is armed with a revolver but has left his shotgun behind. The kid asks Bill to take him to the privy behind the courthouse. Inside the privy, the kid finds a hidden gun planted by a friend back in the courthouse. While ascending the stairs to the second floor, the kid whirls about gun in hand. Bill leaps the gun, but the kid shoots him. Bill staggers down the stairs and falls dead into the arms of the courthouse janitor. The kid churns his shackled legs up the stairs and grabs Ollinger’s double barreled shotgun. At the same time, Ollinger emerges from the hotel restaurant and steps into the street. The janitor yells to him the kid has killed Bill. The next thing the stunned Ollinger ears comes from the kid, who is leaning out of a second story window. Hello, Bob, look up and see what you get. Ollinger looks up and sees the kid leaning out the window with shotgun in hand. Ollinger says, yes, and he’s killed me too. At that moment, the kid squeezes both triggers and a double load of buckshee more than a quarter pound of lead tear into Ollinger’s chest. He drops to the ground dead. The kid then walks out onto the second floor balcony of the courthouse and greets the residence of Lincoln. The kid explains he didn’t want to kill Bell and it’s sorry about it, but Ollinger got the killing he deserved. Still with shackles on his legs, the kid then walks downstairs and into the street with his booted foot. He turns Ollinger’s body over and says, you aren’t gonna round me up again. After more than two months of chasing the kid in Vain, sure if Pat Garrett receives a tip that the kid is at Pete Maxwell’s ranch on the night of July fourteenth, eighteen eighty one, Garrett positions himself in a room used by the kid. Garrett’s deputies are hidden nearby. Where is the kid? He’s out in Maxwell’s peach orchard making love to a girlfriend. Meanwhile, Garrett waits in the dark room. After a while, the kid, unarmed in barefoot, steps onto the threshold of the doorway leading into the room, sensing someone is in the room. The kid stops suddenly and calls out ke and s thinking it might be one of Maxwell’s workers. Garrett replies by shooting twice at the kid. One bullet hits a kid in the chest, penetrating his heart. He slumps to the floor dead. He’s twenty one years old and already legendary. He becomes an even greater legend in death.

00:36:46
Speaker 1: And what a story you just heard? By none better on storytelling about the American West and so many other things. And that’s Roger McGrath. A special thanks to him for all he does. He’s the author of Gunfighters, How I’man in Vigilantes, Violence on the Frontier, a US Marine, A former history professor at UCLA, Doctor McGrath has appeared a numerous History Channel documentaries and we are grateful to have him as a regular contributor here on our American stories, and as always, all of our history stories are brought to us by the great folks at Hillsdale College, where you can go to learn all the things that are beautiful in life, all the things that matter in life, and they’re terrific and superbly crafted. Teaching series is available to all in this country for free. Go to Hillsdale dot edu. I learned more from their Constitution one oh one class than I did it three years at the University of Virginia School of Law. If you’d like to hear more of doctor McGrath’s storytelling on the West, Jedediah Smith, Kit Carson bat Masterson, the story of the King’s Ranch, and the story of how the West shaped Teddy Roosevelt, and so many more, go to our American Stories dot com and search for the word graph and you will not be disappointed. The story of Billie the Kid here on our American Stories