From a town known as Wheeling, West Virginia
Rode a boy with a six-gun in his hand
And his daring life of crime made him a legend in his time
East and west of the Rio Grande.
Well, he started with a bank in Colorado
In the pocket of his vest a Colt he hid.
And his age and his size took the teller by surprise,
And the word spread of Billy the Kid.

When, I was just a baby, My mama told me, son Always be a good boy, Don't ever play with guns. But I shot a man in Reno Just to watch him die. When I hear that whistle blowin' I hang my head and cry.

The lariat snaps; the cowboy rolls </br> His pack, and mounts and rides away. </br> Back to the land the cowboy goes.

Little Billy’s mother was always telling him exactly what he was allowed to do and what he was not allowed to do. All the things he was allowed to do were boring. All the things he was not allowed to do were exciting. One of the things he NEVER NEVER was allowed to do, the most exciting of them all, was to go out through the garden gate all by himself and explore the world beyond.

And that was the way it was in the old days before the country grew up and men put their guns away. Someday, and I hope it never comes, there may be a time when the Western hills are empty again and the land will go back to wilderness and the old, hard ways. Enemies may come into our country and times will have changed, but then the boys will come down from the old high hills and belt on their guns again. They can do it if they have to. The guns are hung up, the cows roam fat and lazy, but the old spirit is still there, just as it was when the longhorns came up the trail from Texas, and the boys washed the creeks for gold.

That man, the king of vacations... the king of vacations in his ranch said nothing but: "You have to flee." and didn't say how... that cowboy, the cowboy mentality.

I'm the oldest son of a crazy man, I'm in a cowboy band.

I think what he went through as a child was very heavy. He never got over his mother leaving his father, and following her mother to Florida, to an area that was very different, and losing his father. When he was seven years old, this was a very sensitive boy, who was wide-eyed and trusting, and not knowing how to protect himself at all.

I remember when my daddy gave me that gun. He told me that I should never point it at anything in the house; and that he'd rather I'd shoot at tin cans in the backyard. But he said that sooner or later he supposed the temptation to go after birds would be too much, and that I could shoot all the blue jays I wanted - if I could hit 'em; but to remember it was a sin to kill a mockingbird.

On December 16, 1961, the world turned upside down and inside out, and I was born, screaming, in America. It was the tail end of the American Dream, just before we lost our innocence irrevocably, when the TV eye brought the horror of our lives into our homes for all to see. I was told, when I grew up, I could be anything I wanted: a fireman, a policeman, a doctor—even the President, it seemed—and, for the first time in the history of mankind, something new called an "astronaut." But like many kids growing up on a steady diet of westerns, I always wanted to be the cowboy hero: that lone voice in the wilderness fighting corruption and evil wherever I found it, and standing for freedom, truth and justice. And in my heart of hearts, I still track the remnants of that dream wherever I go, in my never-ending ride into the setting sun.

Will's early years were much like those of other children in ranch houses or on farms. He rarely went to town because there were no towns near. Vinita, thirty miles east, was a straggling Indian village on the prairie, Old Claremore was a tiny cluster of stores on the stage route from Vinita to Albuquerque, and Tulsa was then only a switch. But Will was not interested in towns, and cared only for ranch life. There were so many fascinating things to do on his father's farm that the days were not long enough to get all of them done.

If I was a cowboy, I'd be wild and free,
Rolling around these towns like tumbleweeds.
I'd be a legend at loving and leaving,
Nipping on a whiskey and numbing up my feelings.
You thought the west was wild, but you ain't saddled up with me,
If I was a cowboy, I'd be the queen.

Much of the food he put on the table came from hunting — despite the fact that he was uncomfortable killing animals. “My dad cried every time he shot a deer,” Billie says, 'but we had to eat, so he did it.

Out here you better have a gun, and a gun in the wagon ain't good for nothin'. I believe what the old Quaker said, 'Trust in the Lord, but keep your powder dry.