Billy the Kid and Jesse James

History has always fascinated BILL MARKLEY leading to his participation in Dances with Wolves and four other films. Bill has written the novel Deadwood Dead Men, four Western nonfiction books including Old West Showdown with co-author Kellen Cutsforth, and articles for True West and Wild West magazines. A member of Western Writers of America, Bill writes WWA’s Roundup Magazine’s Wild Bill’s Wild West column. In 2015 Bill was sworn in as an honorary Dodge City Marshal. Bill and his wife, Liz, live in Pierre, South Dakota, where they have raised two grown children.

“There’s hardly any overlap in the lives of the Frontier West’s two most famous lawbreakers, who may have crossed paths only once, but by presenting the essential details of their colorful if short careers side by side, Bill Markley gives us a chance to contemplate and compare the pair and decide for ourselves which one we believe was the greatest outlaw. The author offers his own informed opinion in the afterword, but no matter how anyone stacks them up against each other or against the other badmen of the Wild West, Jesse and the Kid are the two that never ride off into the sunset of our imaginations. They stick with us forever, and they never grow old.” —Gregory Lalire, editor of Wild West magazine and author of the 2019 historical novel Our Frontier Pastime, 1804-1815