now went back to Texas, and settled near Uvalde, where he
engaged once more in an irrigation enterprise. He was here five years,
ranching and losing money. W. T. Thornton, the governor of New Mexico,
sent for him and asked him if he would take the office of sheriff of
Donna Ana county, to fill the unexpired term of Numa Raymond. He was
elected to serve two subsequent terms as sheriff of Donna Ana county,
and no frontier officer has a better record for bravery.

In the month of December, 1901, President Theodore Roosevelt, who had
heard of Garrett, met him and liked him, and without any ado or
consultation appointed him collector of customs at El Paso, Texas. Here
for the next four years Garrett made a popular collector, and an honest
and fearless one.

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