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If there is any one thing imparted by these varied stories of
famous lawmen, it is that both the most laudable and least
respectable among them were naught but fellow human
beings, affected by insecurities and fears, balancing personal
needs with the requirements of others, making choices that
are sometimes honorable and at other times expedient or
even despicable. Like us, they were an amalgam of easily
recognizable qualities as well as generally less commendable
traits. Yet, they were still capable of acts of both apparent
selfishness and unqualified magnanimity; even while
responding to the most difficult of situations -situations that
they may or may not have helped create. They walked the
forked path of life not as gods, but as thoroughly mortal men,
not yet immortalized in sacred myths that generations of
people would fear to question or challenge. Unlike the mythic
and supernatural, they were gunslingers and shootists. Mere
mortals, they didn’t always hit the target, sometimes shot the
wrong person by accident or on purpose, and on occasion –
at least in the case of Wyatt Earp’s brother Morgan – entered
into a gunfight without remembering to first load their gun.
They pulled their pants on one leg at a time, the same way
we do, and sometimes made regretful sounds in public. And
just like us, they would inevitably need to stop to answer the
“call of nature.”
Proud, onetime sheriff, Pat Garrett, was answering that same
call along the side of the Mail-Scott Road, when on March
1st, 1908 near New Mexico’s Alameda Arroyo, the over six
feet tall lawman – known to most only as “the man who killed
Billy The Kid” – took a bullet through the back of his head.
Some would argue it was kismet.
While a larger-than-life legend had grown about him, the
ex-lawman had led a demonstrably human existence since
that fateful day on Pete Maxwell’s place. At 57 years of
age, Garrett was an alcoholic and deeply in debt. He was
also cohabitating with a prostitute, while his own family
did without. Most who met him characterized him as
“troublesome,” while those who knew him well were less
generous. Even his most loyal sympathizers and supporters
described as, “One mean S.O.B.”. His reputation, as the
Western
Lawmen
Sheriff Pat Garrett
- Part I
by Jesse Wolf Hardin
Patrick Floyd Garrett was a courageous and sometimes effective
lawman, while destined to be remembered as a bullying scoundrel,
a mean drunk, and the assassin of Billy the Kid. Here we see him
as he might have looked around the age when he first befriended
the Kid.
Kid’s arguably lawful executioner, had done nothing to
enrich him and won him mostly criticism from much of the
Southwest’s population. Nonetheless, even years later he
was still considered a dangerous, if near friendless, man.
It was not, however, the beginning of Pat Garrett’s disrepute.
His indisputable courage and doggedness as a manhunter can
only be fairly measured against a lifetime of questionable
value choices and unsavory acts; from his betrayal of his
friend, the Kid, to his mercenary tendencies, ornery temper
38 September - October www.nfa.ca