Who wrote pals on billy the kids grave?

Answer 1

When the Kid was buried, he had a plain wooden board with the name "Billy the Kid" crudely carved into it to mark his grave. Unlike the monument we see today, the Kid was not buried right next to his friends, Charlie Bowdre and Tom O'Folliard, but a few yards a way (but Bowdre and O'Folliard were indeed buried next to each other). Then in 1904 the Pecos River flood over took the cemetery and all the markers and even some remains of the dead were washed away. Another possibility is that the Kid's original grave marker was stolen or vandalized before the flood. Whatever the case, the Kid's grave was left unmarked for at least two decades, until finally in 1932 Billy the Kid's friends got some money together and purchased a headstone with the inscription of William H. Bonney alias Billy the Kid, Tom O'Folliard, and Charlie Bowdre, along with the word "Pals." Shortly after, another much smaller headstone was placed for Billy the Kid in the same spot, and that one has been stolen twice and fortunately recovered. So in order to protect the headstones from thieves, an iron cage was placed over the grave. It's very unlikely that the "Pals" headstone was placed on the exact location of the Kid's original grave, so it's more like a memorial monument then the actually last resting place of Billy the Kid, and most of all, that of Bowdre and O'Folliard. But the Kid was still buried in that tiny cemetery, so those of you who visited the grave or will someday, shouldn't be too disappointed -Billy the Kid's spirit and memory is still there and it doesn't matter if you're standing "right" over his grave or not