[OUTLAWS]. [“BILLY THE KID,” alias of “BONNEY, William H.,”...

[OUTLAWS]. [“BILLY THE KID,” alias of “BONNEY, William H.,” alias of MCCARTY, Henry (1859-1881), association]. The Las Vegas Daily Optic. Las Vegas, N. M. (New Mexico Territory), July 8, 1881. Vol. 2, No. 209. Four folio pages on large folding folio rag paper sheets. Mild toning, some wear, chipping to left margins indicating that this was excised from a book. On p. 4 is a rare brief mention of “Billy the Kid”: “Parties now in Las Vegas bring the information that ‘Billy the Kid,’ is on Red river, near the Texas line, at the head of twenty men, and was seen at Wallace station one day last week. This story is disbelieved, but the men who brought it in are of undoubted integrity and could have no purpose making assertions which they know to be false.” This newspaper is dated less than a week before “Billy the Kid’s” death on July 14, 1881. Lawman Pat Garrett (1850-1908) shot Bonney to death in Fort Sumner, NM, so it is possible that Bonney was in Red River, NM, when the witnesses claim he was (the distance between the two towns is just over 200 miles). On p. 1 is an interview with lawmaker and politician, Samuel J. Tilden (1814-1886), about the (eventually successful) assassination attempt on the life of President James A. Garfield (1831-1881), who was shot on July 2, 1881, but would finally die of sepsis later that same year (September 19): “... Our young American civilization and our system of elective constitutional government cannot afford frequent recurrence of attempts to change the administration of government, and possession of individual political power by the act of an assassin…” A rare mention of Garfield’s assassination between the period of the shooting and his eventual death.