I learned this song from Jim Morse's "Dell Book of Great American Folksongs" around 1963.

It's probably no coincidence that Jenkins recorded the song shortly after publication of the best-selling derring-do biography, "The Saga of Billy the Kid," by Walter Noble Burns (Garden City: Doubleday, 1926).

The prolific Burns was also author of "Tombstone: An Iliad [that's what it says] of the Southwest" (1927) and "The Robin Hood of El Dorado : The Saga of Joaquin Murrieta, Famous Outlaw of California's Age of Gold" (1932).

All three were reprinted in 1999 by the University of New Mexico Press, proof of their coolness.