 The Kid spoke Spanish fluently and was well-liked by the "Hispanos" of the Pecos River Valley, who told many stories about "el Chivato", their colloquial Spanish for a young goat or kid.The modern legend of Billy the Kid as an immortal figure of the Old West first developed within a larger cultural context of social upheaval in the late 19th and early 20th century United States.Between 1897 and 1909, during the Progressive era of political activism and reform, the popular American novelist Emerson Hough wrote magazine articles, novels and informal histories that reintroduced Billy the Kid to a national audience, albeit in works that often relied more on fantasy than on actual events.