After finishing the book this week, I looked up Charles Siringo’s entry in the American National Biography. As it turns out, Siringo’s life was similar to Billy the Kid’s, except the author opted to ally with organizations rather than strike out on his own. He spent a lot of time in the West and later joined the Pinkerton Detective Agency, where he had an illustrious career. The ANB sheds some light on his moral inclination, mentioning his involvement in voter fraud, undercover manipulation, and even murder. This lax moral code provides one reason why he had no problem describing Billy the Kid’s killings and robberies as grand and romantic. The ANB also mentions that he is relatively reliable in his writings. However, his career indicates a infatuation with a daring and romantic lifestyle, so this leads me to think that his account of Billy the Kid puts more emphasis on the dashing aspects of the criminal’s life. Furthermore, he had a distinct financial incentives in writing his books, much like Parson Weems or Walt Disney, and it’s likely that this influenced his accuracy.
Dealing with the actual substance of the book, the final chapters were much the same as the rest. They detail a few more of his escapades before his eventual capture, escape, and then death. The Kid’s jailbreak is a particularly interesting story. He evidently ate so little that his hands were able to slip out of the cuffs (115), and then he surprised and shot one of the guards. The other guard’s earlier quip about the shells in his shotgun (“I reckon the man who gets them will feel it” 114) came back to haunt him as the Kid shot him with the same gun. The outlaw then mounts his horse in front of a crowd and gallops off, leaving one man to say, “[I] could have killed him with [my] pistol, but [I] wanted to see him escape.” (119).
This seems to be a quintessential Billy the Kid story. He helps himself out of a jam with ironic flair, then rides off into the sunset with the support of the townspeople. I haven’t looked up any corroborating sources yet, but I would guess that if these events actually happened, Siringo sensationalized them into the account he presents. People like this story because behind all the killing and stealing, the Kid has a distinctly American set of values behind him: self-reliance, resourcefulness, a little showmanship, and popularity. Especially in Siringo’s romanticized account, readers find it easy to root for the Kid and difficult to sympathize with the lawmen. His story appeals to people because it provokes to the same emotions as the American Revolution.
Billy the Kid is a character in history who did not consent. He did not consent to laws, government, or even societal standards. All his murdering and rustling comes down to one thing: he lives like he wants to, not how others tell him to. But, as Dr. McDaniel pointed out in a comment, he manages to stick with his group while doing this. This cohesive-but-independent attitude makes him an ideal representative of the American ideals.
This lifestyle could not go on forever, though. Much like there is tension between the ideas of consent and freedom, the Kid’s ruthlessness and society were at odds. As much as the public tried, they could not ignore the trail of bodies the Kid left in his wake. They reconcile this, however, by remembering the bandit’s death. There seems to be some justice in the way the Kid died, gunned down by the sheriff. This makes the whole saga palatable by letting people say, ‘Well, he got what was coming for him in the end.” The Kid became legendary because his tale embodied so many American views: freedom, loyalty, but in the end, justice.