Fitting Death for Billy KI

From the cover (loosely): When Adams first published this book, he inaugurated a new genre in the literature of the American West: he set out to write not so much a biography as a commentary on a myth, sifting legend and tall tale and outright lie to arrive a the truth about the seemingly immortal Billy. Adams, a noted critic of western writing (see Burs Under The Saddle) and bibliographer of books on the West, succeeded so well that in the intervening years not one fact about Billy that he established has been disproved, and not one "reasonable conclusion" has been discarded - though alas the myths continue to flourish in some media. What outraged Adams was that no lawless character of the early West had had so much information passed around about him or had his posthumous reputation so dishonestly embellished as William H. Bonney (and other aliases). Adams placed the Kid squarely in the sights of his literary revolver and blasted away at the fantastic stories told about him under the guise of fact.When we know the truth about Billy's end, we tend to agree that it was, indeed, a fitting death.