"A lively, lucid, compelling account of complex and confusing events about which scholars are still puzzling".--WASHINGTON TIMES. This story of greed, violence, and death has entered American folklore through the mythologizing of the career of Billy the Kid and also through a tendency to see the Lincoln County War as emblematic of frontier lawlessness. Illustrations.

The events of July 19, 1878, marked the beginning of what became known as the Lincoln County War and catapulted Susan McSween and a young cowboy named Henry McCarty, alias Billy the Kid, into the history books. The so-called war, a fight for control of the mercantile economy of southeastern New Mexico, is one of the most documented conflicts in the history of the American West, but it is an event that up to now has been interpreted through the eyes of men. As a woman in a man’s story, Susan McSween has been all but ignored. This is the first book to place her in a larger context. Clearly, the Lincoln County War was not her finest hour, just her best known. For decades afterward, she ran a successful cattle ranch. She watched New Mexico modernize and become a state. And she lived to tell the tales of the anarchistic territorial period many times.

As Luke and his sister Jenny resume their summer vacation their mother plans a stop at the historic town of Lincoln, New Mexico. But when a thunderstorm begins to brew, Luke and Jenny realize things aren't what they seem. Suddenly they are swept back in time and find themselves face-to-face with the notorious Billy the Kid. The ghost of Paul, a young buffalo soldier who lived over a century ago, guides them on their journey as they experience the life and times of this mysterious young outlaw. Will Billy the Kid live up to his legend?

In the annals of western history, the Lincoln County War stands out as a complex and tragic event in which lives were lost, fortunes destroyed, and peaceful citizens transformed into lonely, exiled outlaws. A classic reference work on the era of Billy the Kid, this fast-moving account brings new meaning to the war and to those individuals who became its victims.

"A lively, lucid, compelling account of complex and confusing events about which scholars are still puzzling".--WASHINGTON TIMES. This story of greed, violence, and death has entered American folklore through the mythologizing of the career of Billy the Kid and also through a tendency to see the Lincoln County War as emblematic of frontier lawlessness. Illustrations.

On March 9, 1878, three men were murdered in isolated Blackwater Canyon in New Mexico. The suspects were Billy the Kid and a number of his Regulators. This action, almost assuredly taken in retaliation for the death of the Kid’s friend, John Henry Tunstall, became the real catalyst in the Lincoln County War. In 2006, the author and a team of investigators searched for the remains of the men and related artifacts in the obscure canyon—the first to do so since the murders. The murders were reconstructed with the discovery of over thirty bullet cartridges. As part of the reconstruction of the crime, the author widens the scope of his investigation by examining the lives and paths of all three victims: William S. “Buck” Morton, a Virginian fleeing from his past; Frank Baker, a mystery man who hid his real name and shady career; and William McCloskey, an elderly cowboy who unsuccessfully attempted to play the peacemaker. The myths and accounts of the three men and their murders are analytically separated. Connective events where the paths of the participants intersected, such as the death of John Tunstall, are likewise examined. Legend and fact are separated in the case and its participants—both victims and suspects. Billy the Kid is justly portrayed as a human being wrought by conflicts. The Regulators and their opposition reveal character both good and bad. An investigative approach to this portion of the Billy the Kid saga corrects the record on some old assumptions and creates new avenues of insight and possibility.

The legend of the Lincoln County War and its most romantic figure, Billy the Kid, holds a special place in the history of the American West. Fueled by greed, propelled by religious and racial prejudice, inflamed by liquor and firearms, the war was a struggle to the death for the economic domination of a region where both sides saw enormous opportunity for acquiring wealth. In the end, neither side won and both suffered tremendous losses, human and financial. In this documentary history, for the first time, the participants and eyewitnesses tell the story of those bloody events in their own words. Frederick Nolan has drawn from many and diverse sources, some never before published, to present a detailed and comprehensive account of the whirlwind of violence that swept over Lincoln County, New Mexico, more than a century ago. John Tunstall, the McSweens, Jimmy Dolan, Billy the Kid, the Hispanic townspeople of Lincoln, the outsiders who tried to understand what was happening and restore law and order to the strife-torn territory--all speak out in The Lincoln County War. Nolan weaves their stories and opinions together with his own insightful commentary to produce a seamless, immensely readable account. As the adherents and sympathizers of the Murphy-Dolan and Tunstall-McSween factions tell their versions of events, the story develops a gripping power. Enlivened with eighty-three photographs of both people and places and three maps, the book also includes a detailed chronology of events and biographies of many of the participants.

The Lincoln County (New Mexico) War began over a dispute for the insurance money of Emil Fritz. It flared when the killing of John H. Tunstall became an international incident and started a chain reaction of murders. Long out of print, the work is available with a new Foreword by Marc Simmons and Preface by Michael L. Keleher, the author's son.