To Hell on a Fast Horse: Billy the Kid, Pat Garrett, and the Epic Chase to Justice in the Old West by Mark Lee Gardner

Author:Mark Lee Gardner [Gardner, Mark Lee]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Southwest (AZ, Garrett, Outlaws, Criminals & Outlaws, New, Southwest, NM, Lincoln County (N.M.), Outlaws - Southwest, Sheriffs, Large type books, Frontier and pioneer life - Southwest, 19th Century, State & Local, Frontier and pioneer life, TX), Law Enforcement, Sheriffs - Southwest, United States, Billy, Historical, Lincoln County (N.M.) - History - 19th century, Pat F, History, OK, New - History - 1848, General, Biography & Autobiography, Biography, Autobiography.Historical Figures
ISBN: 9780061945694
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2010-01-27T09:56:41+00:00

WITHIN A WEEK OF killing the Kid, Garrett threatened to resign as sheriff of Lincoln County. The job did not pay well, he explained at the time, and he did not think the county’s citizens had given him the support he needed. He said he would have quit months before had the Kid not escaped from the Lincoln courthouse. He had stayed on the job to see the Kid business through to the end and that had kept him wearing his badge. The sheriff did not say it, but those hair-raising few seconds in Maxwell’s bedroom likely had something to do with his surprise announcement. Garrett’s threat to retire, however, came before the grateful people of the Territory had had a chance to show their appreciation. The substantial cash donations presented to Garrett appear to have given him something of an attitude adjustment, and he decided to stick it out until the end of his term.

On February 20, 1882, the Territory finally delivered on Wallace’s $500 reward offer. But money was not the only thing Garrett received as thanks for doing in Billy the Kid. He was also presented with some very impressive mementos. One of these was a handsome sterling silver pocket watch manufactured by the Elgin National Watch Company of Illinois. Inscribed inside the case were the words “From Grateful Citizens/of/Lincoln County/September 1881/To/Pat Garrett.” Much more remarkable—stunning, actually—was the solid gold sheriff’s badge from Albert J. Fountain, the Kid’s old attorney and a political ally of Garrett. The oddest memento, though, was a walking cane commissioned by several “Grant County citizens” in 1883 as a gift for Garrett. The cane was to be made from the wood of Billy’s old cabin in Silver City and fitted with a gold head bearing an “appropriate inscription”—just what the six-foot-four lawman needed.

Toward the end of his term, Garrett made it known that he would not be seeking reelection as sheriff. He supported his deputy, John W. Poe, to be his successor. Garrett had bigger things in mind. Encouraged by Albert Fountain and his loyal benefactor, Captain Joseph C. Lea, Garrett ran for a seat in the Territorial Council, and he seemed to have a good chance at victory in the fall election. But not everyone felt the former lawman was a good choice. One particularly harsh critic, who signed himself in the Rio Grande Republican as “X,” accused Garrett of being ungrateful to his former political supporters whom he was now running against. He also claimed that Garrett was illiterate and was being played by his associates. In another letter, this one signed “Texan” but possibly written by the mysterious “X,” the writer argued that Garrett, though a good sheriff, was not qualified to serve in the Council. “The trouble with Mr. Garrett is…that the praise of the newspapers, together with the toadying flattery of those surrounding him, has made him egotistical in a superlative degree.”

Garrett fired right back with a well-reasoned and, at times, witty letter of his own. But Garrett was not finished.

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