Billy the Kid's legend is forged from the American fascination with guns and violence, from a revolutionary mistrust of authority, and from the lawless frontier myth that frames the nation's self-perception.
The B.C. connection is John Henry Tunstall, the New Mexico rancher who hired William H. Bonney as a ranch hand in November 1877 -and in so doing launched Billy the Kid on his epic trajectory into the firmament of myth.
Tunstall had been working as a clerk in his father's bustling Victoria dry goods store a scant two years before the fateful events that would enter history as the Lincoln County Range War.
Young, ambitious, out to prove himself to a wealthy father by making his own fortune, Tunstall left Victoria to buy a cattle spread in New Mexico in 1876. He found himself entangled in a conflict between ranchers and a Mafia-like business monopoly.
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