In the 14th of July 1881, in one of the most dramatic episodes of the American Wild West, recently escaped William H. Bonney alias Billy the Kid is staying in his friend's house at Fort Sumner when the sheriff of Lincoln County Pat Garrett arrived with a warrant of his arrest. Upon entering a darkened room that so happened to have Garrett and his posse, a confused Billy spoke Quien Es? (Who is it? in Spanish) before recognizing the man. What follows is the Shootout of Fort Sumner in which, Billy shot Garrett dead and injured the latter's deputies McKinney and Poe (the former of which would die of his wounds by dawn) before escaping. Bonney would then reemerge a few months later as the leader of the newly reformed Regulators, consisting of both survivors from the Lincoln County War as well as a number of Hispanics and Native Americans. This gang would go on to commit a number of high-profile murders, including cattle baron John Chisum, James Dolan the surviving leader of the Murphy-Dolan faction that ordered the murder of Bonney's employer John Tunstall, and most infamously, Lew Wallace, former governor of New Mexico territory and author of the American novel Ben-Hur: A Tale of Christ. Bonney himself would be captured in May 3 1884 after a member within his gang betrayed his location and would be hanged in Santa Fe in November of that year.
With that in mind what would have happened if Pat Garrett was quicker to the trigger and killed Billy the Kid in Fort Sumner, thus ending the life of New Mexico's most infamous badmen and outlaw? How would the legend of Billy the Kid, gang-leader and killer as well as an icon for Mexican-Americans in the same vein as Joaquin Murrieta develop if his life was cut short on that dark night of July?
With that in mind what would have happened if Pat Garrett was quicker to the trigger and killed Billy the Kid in Fort Sumner, thus ending the life of New Mexico's most infamous badmen and outlaw? How would the legend of Billy the Kid, gang-leader and killer as well as an icon for Mexican-Americans in the same vein as Joaquin Murrieta develop if his life was cut short on that dark night of July?