Billy the Kid A Novel [Paperback]

William H. Billy the Kid Bonney Jr. loves to take risks. But Billy's luck runs out when, during a train heist, a passenger recognizes the nineteen-year-old outlaw. Fed up with his bad ways, Sheriff Willis Monroe, Billy's own cousin, decides to track him down. The Kid's two-timing partners are hunting him, too--and a posse wants Billy (andthe sheriff) dead.
    
This gripping fictional tale imagines William Bonney's fate had his life of crime taken a very different turn. Fans of adventure will be riveted by Theodore Taylor's fresh take on a legendary character. 
    
Includes an author's note about the real Billy the Kid.

A fictional account of Billy the Kid's last days

Has definite appeal for readers interested in the era or those looking for a different kind of action book. --School Library Journal
 
A rippin' good read. --The Bulletin

THERE WAS WAVERING WHITE FIRE over Cochise County, one of those sapping early September days when the sky was light cobalt and cloudless. Since dawn any breeze that had crossed the nearby puny, snuff-colored mountains was filled with high fever.

Billy Bonney sat bootless on the boardwalk planks in sweating misery outside Little Sally's Saloon, warm, half-gone Mex beer by his side, fanning himself in the shade with a stained, dusty hat, thinking that McLean had to be the worst, poorest town of all. Sometime or another, the wind would hide it with dunes. It had died in 1876, when the tin mine quit, but hadn't decently buried itself yet, five years later.

He thought he maybe should have stayed in Douglas or gone on to Tucson. Yet one didn't offer much more than the other. They were both miserable towns. He made his swollen feet comfortable, extending them to the full angle of the shade.

For the last few minutes, he'd been picking at the ideal“Y