To Hell on a Fast Horse Updated Edition: The Untold Story of Billy the Kid and Pat Garrett

(Paperback)

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So richly detailed, you can almost smell the gunsmoke and the sweat of the saddles.Hampton Sides, New York Times bestselling author

From Spur Award-winning author Mark Lee Gardner, his classic dual biography of Billy the Kid and Sheriff Pat Garrett, detailing Garretts riveting chase of the notorious banditnow updated with a new afterword covering new developments in the Billy the Kid story.

Billy the Kida.k.a. Henry McCarty, Henry Antrim, and William Bonneywas a horse thief, cattle rustler, charismatic rogue, and cold-blooded killer. A superb shot, the Kid gunned down four men single handedly and five others with the help of cronies. Two of his victims were Lincoln County, NM, deputies, killed during the Kids brazen daylight escape from the courthouse jail on April 28, 1881. After dspensing with his guards and filing through the chain securing his leg irons, The Kid danced a macabre jig on the jails porch before riding away on a stolen horse as terrified townspeopleand many sympathizerswatched. For new sheriff, Pat Garrett, the chase was on . . .

To Hell on a Fast Horse recreates the thrilling manhunt for the Wild Wests most iconic outlaw. It is also the first dual biography of the Kid and Garrett, two larger-than-life figures who would not have become the stuff of legend without the other. Drawing on voluminous primary sources and a wealth of published scholarship, Mark L. Gardner digs beneath the myth to take a fresh look at these two men, their relationship, and what they would come to mean to a public enamored of a violent national past.

Reviews

The double-helix relationship between Billy the Kid and Pat Garrett is one of the abiding fascinations of the West. No one has come closer than Mark Lee Gardner to capturing their twin destinies and their inevitable final collision....you can almost smell the gunsmoke and the sweat of the saddles. Hampton Sides, author of the New York Times bestsellers Blood and Thunder and Ghost Soldiers A masterpiece! Mark Gardners dual biography of Billy the Kid and Pat Garrett cuts through the myth to tell the real story of two real figures in the Wild West. Gardners scholarship is superb. This work can only be called a classic. David Dary Incredibly deep research combines with the talents of a fine historian and writer to produce superb narrative history. The true character and relationship of these two iconic westerners emerge to suppress myth and correct more than a century of tomes laden with bad history. Robert M. Utley Digging beneath the myths and melodrama, [Gardner] begins in Las Vegas during Christmas week, 1880, when the capture and confinement of Billy the Kid made national headlines... Gardners extensive research and authoritative approach ground this compelling historical recreation. Publishers Weekly As gripping as any thriller. Library Journal

Author Bio

Mark Lee Gardner is the author of To Hell on a Fast Horse, the story of Billy the Kid and Sheriff Pat Garrett. An authority on the American West, Gardner has appeared on PBS's American Experience, ABC's World News, the History Channel, Encore Westerns, NPR's All Things Considered, and BBC Radio. He has written for the Los Angeles Times, American Heritage, Wild West, American Cowboy, and New Mexico magazine. Gardner lives with his family in Cascade, Colorado.