SOURCE: "Anything for Billy: A Fiction Stranger than Truth," in Journal of American Culture, Vol. 14, No. 2, Summer, 1991, pp. 75-81.

In the following essay, Cox compares the historic record of Billy the Kid with McMurtry's depiction of him in Anything for Billy.

When I was a little girl, about eight or nine years old, my granddaddy, who was one of the town characters (For example, when we remodeled his home in 1932, he put three bathrooms in it and everyone who lived in Humbler, Texas, talked about his decision.), took me into the middle bathroom, reached into a cabinet, and brought out something wrapped in what appeared to be a rag made from an old sheet. He gently, and carefully, removed the frayed cloth, and lo and behold held in his hand a pistol, one like those I had seen only in the Saturday afternoon westerns at the picture show...