William H. Bonney (Billy the Kid)

Billy the Kid was a slight, boyish killer whose legend outgrew his twenty-one years almost before the body was cold. Born Henry McCarty in New York and raised on the move through Kansas and New Mexico Territory after his mother's early death, he drifted into cattle rustling and gunfighting during the brutal Lincoln County War of 1878, a range conflict between rival merchant factions that left the territory littered with bodies and the teenage Kid with a reputation for cool nerve under fire. He escaped custody at least twice, most famously shooting his way out of the Lincoln County courthouse in 1881 while awaiting hanging, killing two deputies in the process. Sheriff Pat Garrett, once a friend turned hunter, finally cornered him at Fort Sumner that July, shooting him in a darkened bedroom before the Kid could confirm who he'd stumbled upon. Popular legend inflated his killings to twenty-one men, one for each year of his life; historians count the confirmed number closer to four to nine.