The main reputation gained by Garrett was through his killing the desperado, Billy the Kid. It is proper to set down here the chronicle of that undertaking, because that will best serve to show the manner in which a frontier sheriff gets a bad man.
When the Kid and his gang killed the agency clerk, Bernstein, on the Mescalero reservation, they committed a murder on United States government ground and an offense against the United States law. A United States warrant was placed in the hands of Pat Garrett,
then deputy United States marshal and sheriff-elect, and he took up the trail, locating the men near Fort Sumner, at the ranch of one Brazil, about nine miles east of the settlement. With the Kid were Charlie Bowdre, Tom O'Folliard, Tom Pickett and Dave Rudabaugh, fellows of like kidney. Rudabaugh had just broken jail at Las Vegas, and had killed his jailer. Not a man of the band had ever hesitated at murder. They were now eager to kill Garrett and kept watch, as best they could, on all his movements.
One day Garrett and some of his improvised posse were riding eastward of the town when they jumped Tom O'Folliard, who was mounted on a horse that proved too good for them in a chase of several miles. Garrett at last was left alone following O'Folliard, and fired at him twice. The latter later admitted that he fired twenty times at Garrett with his Winchester; but it was hard to do good shooting from the saddle at two or three hundred yards range, so neither man was hit. O'Folliard did not learn his lesson. A few nights later, in company with Tom Pickett, he rode into town. Warned of his approach, Garrett with another man was waiting, hidden in the
shadow of a building. As O'Folliard rode up, he was ordered to throw up his hands, but went after his gun instead, and on the instant Garrett shot him through the body. "You never heard a man scream the way he did," said Garrett. "He dropped his gun when he was hit, but we did not know that, and as we ran up to catch his horse, we ordered him again to throw up his hands. He said he couldn't, that he was killed. We helped him down then, and took him in the house. He died about forty-five minutes later. He said it was all his own fault, and that he didn't blame anybody. I'd have killed Tom Pickett right there, too," concluded Garrett, "but one of my men shot right past my face and blinded me for the moment, so Pickett got away."
The remainder of the Kid's gang were now located in the stone house above mentioned, and their whereabouts reported by the ranchman whose house they had just vacated. The man hunt therefore proceeded methodically, and Garrett and his men, of whom he had only two or three upon whom he relied as thoroughly game, surrounded the house just before dawn. Garrett, with Jim East and Tom Emory, crept up to the head of the ravine which made up
to the ridge on which the fortress of the outlaws stood. The early morning is always the best time for a surprise of this sort. It was Charlie Bowdre who first came out in the morning, and as he stepped out of the door his career as a bad man ended. Three bullets passed through his body. He stepped back into the house, but only lived about twenty minutes. The Kid said to him, "Charlie, you're killed anyhow. Take your gun and go out and kill that long-legged —— before you die." He pulled Bowdre's pistol around in front of him and pushed him out of the door. Bowdre staggered feebly toward the spot where the sheriff was lying. "I wish—I wish——" he began, and motioned toward the house; but he could not tell what it was that he wished. He died on Garrett's blankets, which were laid down on the snow.
From a painting by John W. Norton
A TYPICAL WESTERN MAN HUNT
Pat F. Garrett chasing Tom O'Folliard