His real name was Henry McCarty, and he was born in 1859, in New York City. His family later moved west, where his already widowed mother remarried, and then died herself, so that Billy, as he came to be called, spent most of his childhood in the raw, wide-open, outlaw air of Nevada. He was a carefree boy: blue-eyed, buck-toothed, slender, with large wrists and small hands; and no saint. Though he never drank, he loved to gamble, dance, joke and play cards. From his few letters that survive, it is plain that though not very literate, he was exceptionally intelligent.
People liked him. Girls, older women, children, and men of all ages and backgrounds, from the Governor to rough cowpunchers to humble Mexican pobres, were equally attracted to him. By the time he was seventeen, he was on his own, with store pants and a six-shooter in his belt. As a grub-line rider, he drifted down to Arizona, where he shot and killed a blacksmith who had teased him and ruffled his hair. The coroner’s jury found him guilty, but Billy had already left the state. He changed his name to William H. Bonney, and headed east, for the New Mexico territory.
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