After dispensing with his guards and breaking the chain securing his leg irons, the Kid danced a macabre jig on the jail's porch before riding away on a stolen horse as terrified townspeople-and many sympathizers-watched. For new sheriff Pat Garrett, the chase was on. To Hell on a Fast Horse re-creates the thrilling manhunt for the Wild West's most iconic outlaw.
It is also the first dual biography of the Kid and Garrett, two larger-than-life figures who would not have become the stuff of legend without the other. Drawing on voluminous primary sources and a wealth of published scholarship, Mark Lee Gardner digs beneath the myth to take a fresh look at these two men, their relationship, and what they would come to mean to a public enamored of the violent past of the Wild West.
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Background Information
The territory of New Mexico was acquired from Mexico by the Treaty of Guadelupe-Hidalgo and the Gadsden Purchase.