and over.
They were not nearly as immoral as certain newspaper columnists lying
under the cloak of piety. As time goes on, they, like antique
Robin Hood and the late Pancho Villa, recede from all realistic
judgment. If the picture show finds in them models for generosity,
gallantry, and fidelity to a code of liberty, and if the public finds
them picturesque, then philosophers may well be thankful that they
lived, rode, and shot.

{illust. caption = Tom Lea: Pancho Villa, in _Southwest Review_ (1951)}

"The long-tailed heroes of the revolver," to pick a phrase from Mark
Twain's unreverential treatment of them in _Roughing It_, often
did society a service in shooting each other--aside from providing
entertainment to future generations. As "The Old Cattleman" of Alfred
Henry Lewis' _Wolfville_ stories says, "A heap of people need a heap
of killing." Nor can the bad men be logically segregated from the
long-haired killers on the side of the law like Wild Bill Hickok and
Wyatt Earp. W. H. Hudson once advanced the theory that bloodshed and
morality go together. If American civilization proceeds, the rage for
collecting books on bad men will probably subside until a copy of Miguel
Antonio Otero's _The Real Billy the Kid_ will bring no higher price
than a first edition of A. Edward Newton's _The Amenities of
Book-Collecting_.

See "Fighting Texians," "Texas Rangers," "Range Life," "Cowboy Songs and
Other Ballads."

AIKMAN, DUNCAN. _Calamity Jane and the Lady Wildcats_, 1927. OP.
Patronizing in the H. L. Mencken style.

BILLY THE KID. We ve got to take him seriously, not so much for what he
was--

There are twenty-one men I have put bullets through,
And Sheriff Pat Garrett must make twenty-two--

as for his provocations. Popular imagination, represented by writers of
all degrees, goes on playing on him with cumulative effect. As a figure
in literature the Kid has come to lead the whole field of western
bad men. The _Saturday Review_, for October 11, 1952, features a
philosophical essay entitled "Billy the Kid: Faust in America--The
Making of a Legend." The growth of this legend is minutely traced
through a period of seventy-one years (1881-1952) by J. C. Dykes in
_Billy the Kid: The Bibliography of a Legend_, University of New Mexico
Press, Albuquerque, 1952 (186 pages). It lists 437 titles, including
magazine pieces, mimeographed plays, motion pictures, verses, pamphlets,
fiction. In a blend of casualness