Antrim moved the family to the boom town of Silver Springs, New Mexico, where he worked as a miner. With no school to attend, Billy, who was still just a boy, received little education.
Billy’s mother died when he was fifteen years old, and his reputation as a killer seems to have developed shortly thereafter. Some sources claim young Billy left Arizona to flee from a petty theft charge. Others claim he murdered a man with a pen knife. Whatever really happened, Billy left Silver Springs. In Arizona, in 1877—when Billy was just seventeen years old—he shot and killed a blacksmith named “Windy” Cahill in a saloon fight. It was the Kid’s first documented killing. The Arizona Citizen published the coroner’s verdict concerning the killing. The coroner concluded that the killing was “criminal and unjustifiable, and that Henry Antrim, alias Kid, was guilty thereof.” The legend of the Kid was off and running.
The Kid soon resurfaced in Lincoln County, in southeastern New Mexico. At the time, Lincoln County covered a great deal of territory (several times more than it does today). It was the land of cattle barons, where rival factions were waging war with one another.
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