Billy the Kid Pardon? New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson Urged to Say No

"It's 21 men that I've put bullets through, and Sheriff Pat Garrett's gonna make 22."
-- Billy the Kid, traditional.

Kids don't play cowboy much anymore, but the legend of Billy the Kid lives on. Descendants of Sheriff Pat Garrett, the man who gunned him down in 1881, met with New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson on Wednesday to urge him not go grant a posthumous pardon to the Kid, who went by the name William Bonney but was also known as Kid Antrim (and was born Henry McCarty).

Billy the Kid, chronicled in folk songs and film as a romantic Wild West figure who was goodhearted if misguided, has also been described as a psychopath whose gun-slinging exploits were grossly exaggerated. The truth lies somewhere between. He almost certainly did not kill 21 men, as the folk song maintains, but he likely was the trigger man in four or five slayings, including two guards he shot in a daring escape from a New Mexico jail where he was to be hanged. He was also involved in the "Lincoln County War," a deadly feud over cattle and mercantile trade.

Garrett pursued him after the escape and shot him down in Fort Sumner, N.M. The Kid was 21 years old and his last words were said to have been "Quien es?" -- Who is it, or what's going on?

Garrett's family told the Associated Press that Richardson said he was considering the pardon because of lingering questions as to why New Mexico Territorial Gov. Lew Wallace didn't follow through on a promised pardon after Billy testified about killings that occurred during the 1878 range war.

Three of Garrett's grandchildren and two great-grandchildren met with Richardson in Santa Fe to lobby against any pardon because it would cast doubt on the honor of their lawman ancestor. Richardson, a Democrat who served as President Clinton's secretary of Energy, reportedly told the family he had not decided whether to grant the pardon.

For years, skeptics suggested Garrett killed the wrong man, or that the Kid somehow survived the shooting and lived to a ripe old age. As a child, I visited Carlsbad Caverns in Missouri where a man, claiming to be over 100 years old, insisted he was the famous outlaw, Billy the Kid.