Pardon or not, it's business as usual at Billy the Kid Museum

(CNN) -- Some say he was a cold-blooded killer and a callous thief. Others dismiss his penchant for gun battling and horse stealing as merely "the way it was" in the Wild West. Some celebrate his legendary disdain for authority.

The Billy the Kid Museum in Fort Sumner, New Mexico, welcomes
about 20,000 visitors each year.

One thing that is hard to disagree on is that William H. Bonney, better known as Billy the Kid, is an enduring figure in American lore.

That's why Roy Rogers, Paul Newman and dozens of others have portrayed the 19th-century gunslinger in the more than 50 movies. That's why we are still talking about him 130 years after Sheriff Pat Garrett shot and killed him in Fort Sumner, in what was then New Mexico Territory.

The gunslinger's lasting mystique has Gov. Bill Richardson, D-New Mexico, spending some of his final hours in office deciding whether he should make good on a pardon allegedly promised to Billy in exchange for his testimony in a murder trial.

The pardon was never given (many say it was never offered), and some argue this broken promise may have kicked off a chain of events that resulted in Billy the Kid's death.