Pat Garrett

Pat Garrett

Patrick Floyd Garrett was born in Chambers County, Alabama. He grew up on a prosperous Louisiana plantation near Haynesville in northern Claiborne Parish, just below the Arkansas state line. By 1869 he had left home and found work as a cowboy in Dallas County, Texas. In 1878, Garrett shot and killed a fellow buffalo hunter who charged at Garrett with a hatchet over a disagreement over buffalo hides. Upon dying, the hunter brought Garrett to tears upon asking him to forgive him.

Garrett moved to New Mexico and briefly found work as a cowpuncher before quitting to open his own saloon. A tall man, he was referred to by locals as "Juan Largo" or "Long John." In 1879, Garrett married Juanita Gutierrez, who died within a year. In 1880, he married Gutierrez's sister, Apolonaria. The couple had nine children.

On November 7, 1880, the sheriff of Lincoln County, New Mexico, George Kimbell, resigned with two months left in his term. As Kimbell's successor, the county appointed Garrett, a member of the Republican Party who ran as a Democrat and a gunman of some reputation who had promised to restore law and order. Garrett was charged with tracking down and arresting a friend from his saloon keeping days, Henry McCarty, a jail escapee and Lincoln County War participant who often went by the aliases Henry Antrim and William Harrison Bonney, but is better known as "Billy the Kid". McCarty was an alleged murderer who had participated in the Lincoln County War. He was said to have killed twenty-one men, one for every year of his life, but the actual total was probably closer to nine. New Mexico Governor Lew Wallace had personally put a $500 reward on McCarty's capture.

During a December 19 shootout, Garrett killed Tom O'Folliard, a member of McCarty's gang. A few nights later, the sheriff's posse killed Charlie Bowdre, captured The Kid and his companions, and transported the captives to Mesilla, New Mexico, for trial. Though he was convicted, The Kid managed to escape from jail on April 18, 1881, after killing his guards J. W. Bell and Bob Olinger.

On July 14, 1881, Garrett visited Fort Sumner to question a friend of The Kid's about the whereabouts of the outlaw. He learned that The Kid was staying with a mutual friend, Pedro Maxwell. Around midnight, Garrett went to Maxwell's house. The Kid was asleep in another part of the house but woke up hungry in the middle of the night and entered the kitchen where Garrett was standing in the shadows. The Kid did not recognize the man standing in dark. "Quien es (Who is it)? Quien es?" The Kid asked repeatedly. Garrett replied by shooting at The Kid twice, the first shot hitting him in the heart, and the second one did not hit him. (Some historians have questioned Garrett's account of the shooting, alleging the incident happened differently. They claim that Garrett went into Paulita Maxwell's room and tied her up. The Kid walked into her room, and Garrett ambushed him with a single blast from his Sharps rifle.)

There has been much dispute over the details of the Kid's death that night. The way Garrett allegedly killed McCarty without warning eventually sullied the lawman's reputation. Garrett claimed that Billy the Kid had entered the room armed with a pistol, but no gun was found on his body. Other accounts claim he entered carrying a kitchen knife. There is no hard evidence to support this; however, if he did so it is likely he intended to cut some food for himself, since he had no idea anyone was waiting for him. Regardless of how he died, Billy was a wanted criminal, and so Sheriff Garrett chose not to give him a chance to surrender. The shooting solidified Garrett's fame as a lawman and gunman, and led to numerous appointments to law enforcement positions, as well as requests that he pursue outlaws in other parts of New Mexico.

His law enforcement career never achieved any great success following the Lincoln County War, and he mostly used that single era in his life as his stepping-stone to higher positions. After finishing out his term as sheriff, Garrett became a rancher and released a book ghostwritten by his friend Ash Upson in 1882 about his experiences with McCarty. However, he lost the next election for Lincoln County sheriff and was never paid the $500 reward for McCarty's capture, since he had allegedly killed him. In 1884, he lost an election for the New Mexico State Senate. Later that year, he left New Mexico and helped found and captain a company of Texas Rangers.

He returned to New Mexico briefly in 1885. In October 1889, Garrett ran for Chaves County, New Mexico, sheriff but lost. By this time, his rough disposition was beginning to wear thin with much of the populace, and rumors of his less than admirable killing of Billy The Kid were beginning to affect his popularity. Garrett left New Mexico in 1891 for Uvalde, Texas. He returned to New Mexico in 1896 to investigate the disappearance of Albert Jennings Fountain and Fountain's young son Henry.

In January 1896, Colonel Fountain served as a special prosecutor against men charged with cattle rustling in Lincoln, New Mexico. With his work finished, Fountain left Lincoln with his eight-year-old son Henry. The two did not complete their trip home. On the third day they disappeared near White Sands.

Fountain's disappearance caused outrage throughout the territory. To further complicate matters was the fact the main suspects in the disappearance were deputy sheriffs William McNew, James Gililland, and Oliver M. Lee. New Mexico's governor saw that outside help was needed, and he called in Pat Garrett. One problem Garrett encountered was the fact that Lee, McNew, and Gililland were very close with powerful ex-judge, lawyer, and politician Albert B. Fall.

Garrett, who was appointed Doña Ana County sheriff on August 10, 1896, and elected to the post on January 4, 1897, believed that he would never get a fair showing with Fall in control of the courts. Therefore, Garrett waited two full years before presenting his evidence before the court and securing indictments against the suspected men. McNew was quickly arrested, and Lee and Gililland went into hiding.

Garrett's posse caught up with Lee and Gililland on July 12, 1898. One of Garrett's deputies, Kurt Kearney, was killed in the gun battle that followed. Garrett and his posse then retreated, and Gililland and Lee escaped. Lee and Gililland later surrendered, although not to Garrett. Both stood trial and were acquitted. The location of the Fountain bodies remains a mystery.

On December 20, 1901, Theodore Roosevelt, who became a personal friend of Garrett's, appointed him customs collector in El Paso, Texas. Garrett served for five years. However, he was not reappointed, possibly because he had embarrassed Roosevelt by showing up at a San Antonio Rough Riders reunion with a notorious gambler friend named Tom Powers. Garrett had Powers pose in a group photograph with Roosevelt, resulting in bad publicity for the president.

Garrett had been warned about his close association with Powers by friends. Years earlier, Powers had been run out of his home state of Wisconsin for beating his father into a coma. Garrett did not listen, and when his reappointment was denied, he traveled to Washington, D.C., to speak personally with Roosevelt. He had the bad judgment of taking Powers with him. In that meeting, Roosevelt told Garrett plainly that there would be no reappointment.

Garrett retired to his ranch in New Mexico but was suffering financial difficulties. He owed a large amount in taxes and was found liable for an unpaid loan he had co-signed for a friend. Garrett borrowed heavily to make these payments and started drinking and gambling excessively. He crossed paths regularly with Oliver Lee and Lee's corrupt attorney Albert Fall, always finding himself on the opposite end of their illegal land deals and intimidation of local ranchers and citizens.

Garrett's main creditor, a rancher named W.W. Cox, worked out a deal to repay the debt by using Garrett's quarter horse ranch in the San Andres Mountains slopes as grazing land for one of his partners. There is no deal of record in the court house, and no deed from Garrett to Cox. Cox took the home place and razed the home. Garrett's son, Pat, Jr., kept the upper ranch with the water until his death. Garrett agreed to the deal, not realizing Jesse Wayne Brazel would be grazing goats rather than cattle on the land. Garrett objected to the goats, feeling their presence lowered the value of his land in the eyes of buyers or other renters. By this time, questions surrounding the manner in which he killed Billy the Kid and Garrett's general demeanor had led to his becoming quite unpopular. He no longer had any local political support, his support from President Roosevelt had been withdrawn, and he had few friends with power.

Garrett and a man named Adamson, who was in the process of talks with Garrett to purchase land, rode together heading from Las Cruces in Adamson's wagon. Brazel showed up on horseback along the way. Garrett and Brazel began to argue about the goats grazing on Garrett's land. Garrett is alleged to have leaned forward to pick up a shotgun on the floorboard. Brazel shot him once in the head, and then once more in the stomach as Garrett fell from the wagon. Brazel and Adamson left the body by the side of the road and returned to Las Cruces, alerting Sheriff Felipe Lucero of the killing.