The Authentic Death of Hendry Jones by Charles Neider

 

Now if you'll be patient I guarantee you'll get your money's worth but it's the truth I'm getting at and if you're not interested I suggest you run along to the stores and pick up one of the little books full of lies about the Kid’s life, written by some smartaleck easterner that never sat in a western saddle, never smelt good horse flesh or a campfire dying in the hills and yet is ready to tell the country all about the Kid. I was there and I know what happened. With a little patience you will know it too before long, what I aim to tell is exactly how he died, when there was no reason for him to have died at all.

This 1956 novel by Neider is a riff on the Billy the Kid tale, it was adapted into the 1961 film One-Eyed Jacks starring and directed by Marlon Brando.

The film is fine; no classic.

As for the Billy the Kid tale, I am no fan, thusly I came to this novel reluctantly.

I was wrong.

This novel is simply superlative.

Hendry Jones is definitely Billy the Kid in outline but there is no legend here.

There is no romance.

No studio picture gloss.

Neider gives us grit and dirt and reality and the smallness of killing.

It is a surprisingly candid novel for 1956.

When they put the hemp around his neck and jerked how long would it take for him to choke to death? What would his legs be doing? How would his face look? Would it turn purple and look like a dried prune, making the kids laugh when he pissed in his pants and be buried with it stinking on him?

With its brief page count-144—Neider accomplishes more than many at four times the length.

Easily moves into the pantheon of one of my favorite Westerns.