On this day in 1877: Henry McCarthy, later to be known as Billy the Kid, killed his first man, an Arizona blacksmith who had been bullying the teenager.
Billy, a scrawny, fuzzy-cheeked, blue-eyed ranch hand, shot his antagonist while pinned under the larger man. He was the first of 21 men supposedly killed by Billy. Sheriff Pat Garrett ended Billy’s bloody career by killing him on July 14, 1881, but he catapulted the outlaw into American Old West legend after the lawman published a biography titled “The Authentic Life of Billy, the Kid.”
