So it’s been a while since I’ve talked about America
let’s fix this
starting with a kid named Billy

So Billy gets born in New York City, way back in the day, to an Irish mom and an invisible dad.
He’s a mischievous little bastard
and by the time he’s like 12, he gets a little too mischievous and gets thrown in jail.
But it’s okay, because in addition to being a mischievous bastard
he is also a little bastard, like I said
so he escapes from prison by crawling out of the chimney
and then he goes WEST.

Now the West is a whole mythical realm all on its own
but let it just suffice to say
that at the time this story takes place
the west was pretty much just a glistening repository of guns, guff, and gumption.
So naturally, a mischievous little bastard like Billy is gonna fit right in.
And FIT RIGHT IN HE DOES.
First he shoots a blacksmith who’s trying to push him around
then he runs off and becomes a cattle rustler/cheesemaker
and then after doing that for a while
he gets hired by this lawyer named McSween to GUARD some cattle
because apparently they didn’t do background checks in those days.

But maybe they did do background checks
because as a cattle guard
Billy’s job description is to basically murder all the dudes who work for the OTHER cattle guys
who, granted, are classic mustache-twirling villains
who do things like shoot people
and then shoot their horses
and then cut off the heads of the horses and put them on the heads of the dudes.
Messed up, I know.

So yeah, bullets fly back and forth between these two posses of bad dudes for a while
and both sides do things that are pretty messed up
but the guys Billy is fighting against are way richer and know way more important government dudes
and also Billy makes the mistake of shooting at some US Cavalry
so in the end, he gets indicted
and has to make a plea bargain to get a pardon
where he totally sells out some of the other dudes in his gang.
But when he comes in to testify
THEY TOTALLY JUST ARREST HIM
so he’s just like “Psh, you guys clearly have not heard about me and chimneys.”
Then he climbs out the chimney and rides away on a horse someone brought for him.

So now Billy the Kid is widely known as a seriously bad dude
and the governor of New Mexico starts offering a really sweet reward for his arrest:
FIVE HUNDRED BUCKS.
DUDE.
Five hundred bucks?!
That’s barely enough to buy five hours with a very classy prostitute…
Wait, okay, I see how this could work.

ENTER PAT GARETT
he’s a buffalo hunter
but that does not mean he cannot also hunt DUDES.
Dudes are basically the same as buffalo
except with less legs and more bullets.
Some people say that Pat and Billy used to be best friends
but normally you do not form a posse to go arrest/kill your best friend for a measly 500 bucks.
Usually it takes like 600 at LEAST
So I don’t know.

Anyway, Pat chases Billy around for a while
while Billy is rustling cattle HARDCORE
and also pranking dudes with his guns
like this one time
when he’s hanging out in a bar
and this drunk jerk is like “I AM TOTALLY GOING TO KILL BILLY THE KID.”
Totally unaware of the fact that Billy is RIGHT THERE IN THE BAR.
So Billy walks up to him
and he’s like “Nice gun. Mind if I take a look?”
So the guy gives him the gun
LIKE AN IDIOT
and then instead of just shooting the dude with it, like a normal badass
Billy goes ahead and rotates the barrel so that the next chamber to fire will be empty
and then gives it back to him
and then he’s like “Oh, by the way, I’m Billy the Kid.”
And the guy is like “WHAAAAAAT” and starts shooting at him
but no bullets come out of his gun, obviously
so then Billy kills him
and everyone is like “Well, that was unnecessary
and therefore TOTALLY AWESOME.”

But all awesome things must come to an end.
One morning, Pat Garett tracks Billy and his gang to a little house on the Prairie
and he barricades the door with a dead horse
and then he starts cooking BACON.
And he’s like “Hey Billy, how would you like to come out and eat some tasty bacon?”
And Billy is like “Hey Pat, how would you like to GO TO HELL.”
And Pat is like “Well I’m sorry you feel that way, buddy.
I guess you can just starve to death inside that house of yours.”
But no one can withstand the smell of bacon for long
so eventually Billy and his gang surrender so they can get some breakfast.

Then Billy gets convicted, of course
for a whole bunch of murders
some of which he probably didn’t even commit
but that’s okay, because the number of murders he’s accused of
makes him a TOTAL CELEBRITY
he gets to go to Las Vegas and do interviews!
Granted, he spends a good portion of the interview denying a lot of those very same murders
but whatever, he’s famous!
Unfortunately, it also means that he gets sentenced to death for his crimes
and the prison where he’s being kept until he gets executed
DOESN’T EVEN HAVE A CHIMNEY.
So I guess he’s just boned, huh?

WRONG.
Because this is when Billy the Kid pulls some straight up action hero shit
like, his guards are walking him over to get executed
and he KNOCKS ONE OUT WITH HIS MANACLES
then he steals that dude’s gun, and shoots the other one in the face
after addressing him with a catchy one-liner BY NAME.
He then has to put off his escape for an hour
while he somehow manages to chew through his leg-irons.

But there is a natural law in the old West.
It is called the Conservation of Gumption.
It states that one man cannot hog all of the gumption for too long
before he has to die and let other people have a turn
and that’s why
three months later
Pat Garett finally catches up with Billy in some random house one night
and Billy goes down like a clown to a bullet in the stomach while yelling “Who’s there?” in Spanish.
At the time of his death, Billy is just shy of twenty-one years old
and according to some (wildly inaccurate) estimates
he has killed TWENTY-ONE MEN.
Dude
even if he only killed like five guys
dude has some serious work ethic.
I mean, I’ve already lived longer than he did
and I have yet to kill anything more intimidating than a spider.
Oh well
to each his own.

But I guess maybe that’s the moral of the story
that if you make a career out of killing dudes
eventually you are probably going to be one of the dudes who gets killed
but also
you will be REALLY AWESOME.

The end.