9
I sometimes wish that I had missed fire [and] that the Kid had got in his work on me.
—PAT F. GARRETT
KILLING THE KID.
Pat Garrett’s Nervy Feat.
He Catches and Shoots Billy Bonney.
A Wound Through the Heart Which
Wrought Good for New Mexico.
Quickness and Bravery Required and
Found in a Sheriff’s Arm and Eye.
THOSE WERE THE HEADLINES in the Santa Fe New Mexican. News of the Kid’s death had reached Las Vegas on Monday morning, July 18, brought there direct from Fort Sumner by the mail contractor. The Las Vegas Gazette scooped its rival, the Daily Optic, getting a brief report to the Western Union office by 8:00 A.M., which gave several newspapers across the country the chance to feature the news in their afternoon editions. In Santa Fe, the intelligence had first been communicated in a telegram sent from Las Vegas to Billy’s old antagonist, John S. Chisum, who was then in the capital and no doubt euphoric at the news. Sent by military contractor Marcus Brunswick, a friend of Chisum’s, the telegram was only one sentence: “Pat Garrett killed Billy Kid near Sumner Friday night.”
Garrett and Pete Maxwell arrived in Las Vegas later that same Monday, which allowed the Daily Optic to get the first interview with the lawman. The Optic fawned over Garrett while demonizing the Kid, a pattern repeated in newspapers throughout the Territory, and, to a lesser extent, the nation. Garrett was the “terror of all evil-doers” who deserved to be well rewarded for his “cool, brave conduct.” Billy Bonney, on the other hand, was “a bold thief, a cold-blooded murderer, having perhaps killed more men than any man of his age in the world…. All mankind rejoices and the newspapers will now have something else to talk about.” The Kid’s death was covered in the New York Times, Chicago Tribune, Boston Globe, Rocky Mountain News, Salt Lake Herald, Minneapolis Tribune, Tombstone Daily Nugget (which used as its headline, “A Corner in Hell Filled”), Indianapolis News, and scores of others, even the venerable Times of London, England.
The Albuquerque Daily Journal wanted Garrett appointed the U.S. marshal for the Territory. The Kansas City Journal opined that Garrett was just the man to solve Missouri’s outlaw problem: “He who will follow the James boys and their companions in crime to their den, and shoot them down without mercy, will be crowned with honors by the good people of this commonwealth, and be richly rewarded in money besides.” When a Colorado newspaper suggested that Garrett be sent to Washington to serve as a guard for Charles J. Guiteau, President James A. Garfield’s assassin, the Daily New Mexican commented that a better idea would be to let Guiteau loose and then offer Garrett a reward for him. Garrett had “achieved a fame which will be undying,” the Rio Grande Republican observed, which was all too true. Pat Garrett was now, and forevermore, the man who shot Billy the Kid.
Garrett arrived in Santa Fe by rail on July 19, and one of the first things he did was to defend Pete Maxwell. The buzz around the capital was that Maxwell had somehow been in cahoots with the Kid, that he had been knowingly harboring the desperado. This was fueled by rumors about Billy’s relationship with Pete’s sister. In a long interview with the Daily New Mexican, Garrett denied that Maxwell had been hiding the outlaw and said that fear alone had prevented Pete from letting anyone know where the Kid was. Maxwell had assured Garrett that if there had been a safe way of letting the sheriff know, he would have done so. Although Garrett’s explanation satisfied the reporter, it makes little sense because others at Fort Sumner found that informing on Billy was as easy as licking a postage stamp and sticking it on an envelope. Did Pete Maxwell fail to inform on the Kid because he did not want to hurt his sister? Garrett was most likely protecting Paulita’s reputation. Like Billy, Fort Sumner had been the sheriff’s home; he still had friends and relatives there.
Garrett’s main business in Santa Fe was to see about the reward money. Unfortunately, he had to deal with William G. Ritch, secretary of the Territory and acting governor (the new governor, Lionel Sheldon, had rushed to Washington, D.C., upon hearing that his friend President Garfield had been shot). Ritch had made it difficult for Garrett to collect the first reward, after Garrett’s capture of Billy at Stinking Spring. The lawman had already forwarded his report to the Palace of the Governors, where it had been received Monday evening. The next Wednesday afternoon, Garrett called on the acting governor, and he brought reinforcements: Thomas B. Catron and Marcus Brunswick. Catron was one of the most powerful men in the Territory and an extremely skilled attorney. Undoubtedly having received legal advice from Catron, Garrett presented Ritch with a bill for $500 for the “capture” of William Bonney. He also submitted as evidence for his claim an affidavit from the editor and manager of the Daily New Mexican confirming that the reward offer had been published, the Fort Sumner coroner’s jury verdict, and his own statement summing up how he killed the Kid.
Ritch put the men off. But, having been roundly criticized for delaying the first reward, Ritch made sure it did not appear that he was refusing to honor the Territory’s offer. He assured Garrett and his supporters that he was willing to pay the reward and was glad to do so. But he needed some time to go over the Territory’s records and confirm the reward offer. Garrett could not have heard this as good news. The sheriff possessed the published reward notice and proof of Bonney’s death. How much more confirmation did Ritch need? A lot more, it turns out. The attorney general advised Ritch that the reward notice appeared to be a personal offer of the former governor, as there was no record in either the governor’s office or the secretary’s office that Wallace had offered the reward as an executive act. Consequently, if the reward was to be paid with territorial funds, it would have to be approved by the legislature. On July 21, Ritch suspended any action on Garrett’s claim until it could be brought before the next Legislative Assembly.
Fortunately, Garrett would have cash to hold him over in the meantime. The day after the sheriff’s arrival in the capital, Jimmy Dolan pounded the streets of Santa Fe, asking for cash donations for Garrett to reward him for slaying “the worst man the Territory has known.” Dolan had collected $560 by the end of the day; he would eventually give Garrett $1,150. The same thing was going on in other New Mexico communities, from Las Vegas to Las Cruces. Las Vegas had a similar collection, contributing nearly $1,000 in a few hours’ time. John Chisum was reportedly prepared to hand the sheriff $1,000 of his own money, and it was expected that another $1,000 would come from the citizens of Lincoln County (the ones who were not Kid sympathizers). Even without the reward, the many donations represented a small fortune for someone of little means such as Garrett.
On Thursday, July 28, Pat Garrett purchased a horse and rode out of Santa Fe, alone, for Las Vegas. It was much quicker to go by train, of course, but lately things had been moving pretty fast for the lawman, and if he was on a train ride, he might have to talk and be sociable with the other passengers. Better to sit astride a good horse, enjoy the smell of sage, feel the warm sun from a turquoise sky, and just let the mind wander.
EVEN WITH ALL THE adulation Garrett received for ridding the Territory of young Billy, there were the whispers—and they started when the Kid was hardly in his grave. Within a matter of days, some people were saying that Garrett had not fought fair—Billy did not have a gun that night—and the way Bonney was killed was murder. These things were openly spoken, and even printed in newspapers far beyond the Territory. A good example of this line of thinking appeared in the Globe of Atchison, Kansas, which called Garrett’s act “more or less cowardly. The Kid was stopping at the house of a supposed friend, who betrayed him, and allowed Garrett to hide in the house. In the darkness of the night Garrett crawled upon him, and shot him dead.”
These stinging slanders were one thing, but Garrett was also upset by some outrageous reports that the Kid’s body had been exhumed and mutilated. In its July 25 issue, the Las Vegas Daily Optic said it had received the Kid’s “fatal finger,” the one that had “snapped many a man’s life into eternity.” The trigger finger was preserved in a jar of alcohol, and so many visitors wanted a peek at it that the paper considered purchasing a small tent so it could operate a kind of sideshow. A month and a half later, the Opticran an elaborate piece claiming that five days after the Kid’s funeral, his body had been exhumed by a local “skelologist.” The body was then taken to a Las Vegas doctor, who boiled and scraped the head to get the skull. This was when the Optic was supposedly given Billy’s trigger finger. The rest of the corpse had been buried in a corral so the flesh could decompose, leaving the bones that would be retrieved and pieced together with wires into a skeleton.
A follow-up article in the September 19 issue reported that a Miss Kate Tenney of Oakland, California, had read about the Kid’s preserved finger and had written the paper to request the appendage, as well as a photograph of the outlaw. Tenney, the Optic said, was the Kid’s sweetheart. The newspaper sent Tenney a letter of condolence that also told her that her beau’s finger had been sold and shipped east for the cash price of $150. The Atchison Globe jokingly suggested that the Tenney letter was a scheme of the Las Vegas Gazette to get the notorious finger, which had apparently led to a nice increase in subscriptions and advertising for the Optic. Several newspapers accepted the Optic’s stories at face value. After all, stranger things had happened to the bodies of dead outlaws. After “Big Nose George” Parrott was lynched in Wyoming in March 1881, a local physician took the body and had a medicine bag and a pair of shoes made from Parrott’s skin.
Then there were the cheap nickel novels (known today as dime novels) that purported to tell the story of the outlaw William Bonney. Five showed up on newsstands in 1881, three in early September, just seven weeks after Billy’s death. Two of these novels bore the title The True Life of Billy the Kid, even though they were anything but. One of the authors, a Don Jenardo (otherwise known as John Woodruff Lewis), wrote that Billy’s first devilish deed occurred in Arizona when he shot a friend in the back of the head. The friend, a young miner, was to be married the next day to a beautiful senorita Billy had feelings for. Jenardo’s version of Billy’s death is just as imaginative. He describes Garrett receiving a tip that the Kid is sleeping at Maxwell’s house and that the outlaw will arrive at midnight. Garrett gets to the house just before midnight and, finding it deserted, hides behind Maxwell’s bed with his rifle. When Billy walks in, he immediately senses that someone is there and draws his pistols (what kind of a gunslinger would he be with just one pistol?), but Garrett steadies his rifle faster. “Thus died,” wrote Jenardo, “the youngest and greatest desperado ever known in the world’s history.”
Garrett’s answer to the insinuations and lies was to produce his own book. And if he made a little money on the venture, that would be okay, too. He partnered with the boozing but fun-loving journalist, postmaster, and justice of the peace Ash Upson, who did much of the writing for the book. Upson and Garrett became friends after Garrett relocated to Roswell; Upson actually moved into the Garrett household in August 1881. And Upson had known Billy as a youth in Silver City and later as a Lincoln County Regulator, which seemed to make him the perfect choice for a ghostwriter. Upson may have proposed the idea to Garrett in the first place.
Upson wanted to try a book publisher back east, but Garrett insisted on shopping it in Santa Fe. He knew the editor and publisher of the Daily New Mexican, Charles W. Greene, who immediately drew up a contract between Garrett and his New Mexican Printing and Publishing Company for a 128-page book. They agreed the printed copies would sell for 50 cents each. When the book appeared the following March—at 137 pages—it carried a title that put the cheap novels to shame: The Authentic Life of Billy, the Kid, The Noted Desperado of the Southwest, Whose Deeds of Daring and Blood Made His Name a Terror in New Mexico, Arizona and Northern Mexico. Garrett was identified as the Lincoln County sheriff who “Finally Hunted Down and Captured” the Kid “By Killing Him.” The title page made the final claim that the book was “A Faithful and Interesting Narrative.”
Although Garrett stated in the book’s introduction that his volume was a response to the innumerable inaccuracies contained in the yellow-covered cheap novels about the Kid, the first half of his book is little different from the nickel novels he criticized. The meat of the book begins slightly past the middle, when Garrett enters the story. Significantly, this is when the narrative changes to the first person. Straightforward and matter-of-fact, Garrett’s account of the hunt for the gang and their capture at Stinking Spring, and the fatal encounter with the Kid in Pete Maxwell’s room, makes for a gripping tale, a true classic of western Americana. Not surprisingly, Garrett does not mention that the Kid had been staying with his in-laws at Fort Sumner. Nor does he bring up Paulita Maxwell, the Kid’s sweetheart. It would not do to associate the respectable young woman with an outlaw, even though some newspapers had already published stories about her affair with Billy.
Garrett saved the last few pages to answer his critics and to address the obnoxious rumors about Billy’s remains. He did not shoot the Kid from behind a bed or from underneath a bed. There was no way to get behind the bed, as it was crowded against the wall. And he had not been under the bed because he was not expecting the Kid to burst into the room; he was taken completely by surprise. If Garrett had had fair warning, then hell yes, he would have been under the bed or behind anything else that might have provided a little protection.
Was he scared? Garrett considered that a damn fool question. “I started out on that expedition with the expectation of getting scared. I went out contemplating the probability of being shot at, and the possibility of being hurt, perhaps killed; but not if any precaution on my part would prevent such a catastrophe.”
As far as fighting the Kid fairly, critics essentially suggested that Garrett should have given Billy a chance to kill him. The Kid had made it known that he would never be taken alive again, and Garrett had no intention of giving the Kid any chance whatsoever. The Kid had walked into a situation much better than Garrett had intended. “What sort of ‘square fight,’ or ‘even show,’ would I have got,” Garrett posed, “had one of the Kid’s friends in Fort Sumner chanced to see me and informed him of my presence there, and at Pete Maxwell’s room on that fatal night?”
Concerning the whereabouts of Billy’s corpse, Garrett wrote that the body had been interred in the Fort Sumner cemetery, and that is where it remained still. “Skull, fingers, toes, bones and every hair of the head that was buried with the body on the 15th day of July, doctors, newspapers editors and paragraphers [reporters] to the contrary notwithstanding. Some presuming swindlers have claimed to have the Kid’s skull on exhibition, or one of his fingers, or some other portion of his body, and one medical gentleman has persuaded credulous idiots that he has all the bones strung upon wires…. Again I say that the Kid’s body lies undisturbed in the grave—and I speak of what I know.”
Thirty-eight years after the publication of Garrett’s The Authentic Life, Charlie Siringo, who had been a member of the Texas posse, claimed that Garrett had Billy’s body dug up to make sure that the trigger finger was still attached—it was. But like Upson, Siringo could not resist improving upon a story.
Unfortunately for Garrett and Upson, their book was not a bestseller—far from it. The Territory was hardly a large market, and as Upson had feared, the publisher did not have the experience or wherewithal to market the book nationally. But Pat Garrett had had his say, and his say would profoundly influence countless authors, historians, and screenwriters. The newspapers may have given birth to the legend of the Kid, but Pat Garrett’s slim volume was the legend’s memory book.
Just five months after the publication, Garrett had an experience that could have come straight out of a nickel novel, except for its staid ending. It occurred on August 1, 1882, in the billiard room of Albuquerque’s Armijo Hotel, the city’s newest and finest. The hotel’s dining room was so nice the male guests were required to wear coats. Garrett had just arrived from Santa Fe, and as he stood in the billiard room, perhaps watching a game or about to join one, in walked Joseph Antrim, the brother of Billy the Kid. Antrim, a professional gambler, had been in Albuquerque for the last several days, and more than a few people in the room recognized him. Rumors had been circulating for months that Antrim wanted to avenge his brother’s death; or, as one newspaper reported in dramatic fashion, he “hankers for the blood of Pat Garrett, the man who killed The Kid.”
Those who recognized Antrim tensed as he headed straight for Garrett, but their anxiety soon turned to surprise and curiosity when they saw Garrett and Antrim begin a long discussion, their voices staying frustratingly low. It was not until the next morning that a newspaper reporter was able to pry from Garrett the gist of the conversation. Garrett said Antrim strongly disavowed the rumors floating around, and said he had no ill will toward the lawman. Antrim “merely intended talking over the killing of the Kid with the man who killed him.” Perhaps Joseph Antrim was trying to get straight in his own mind how the likable boy he bid good-bye to in September 1877 had become such a wanted and hated criminal and why that boy, above all others, had deserved to die in such a cold, ruthless manner. Garrett would not have had an answer to that (it is a hard thing to get straight even now), but he did tell Antrim that he did not understand why he would hate him in the first place, because he had only done his duty, which “demanded the homicide.” The two then parted, not as “the best of friends,” the happy ending reported by the newspaper, but not as enemies, either. They never met again.
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. The letters critical of Garrett had both originated in Lincoln, and when Garrett thought he had figured out who the author was, he sought the man out. That man was a twenty-seven-year-old attorney from West Virginia named William M. Roberts. Garrett had also heard that Roberts had said some unpleasant things about his wife, Polinaria. Garrett was particularly sensitive when it came to his wife because he was well aware of the racist attitudes of many Anglos in the Territory who looked down on interracial marriages.
Garrett found Roberts visiting with several other men in La Rue’s store and interrupted their conversation. He asked Roberts if he had written the letter, and Roberts denied it. Garrett then asked Roberts to step outside because he wanted to say something in private. Once outside, Garrett again accused Roberts of writing the letter. Roberts, a little haughty now, replied that anyone who said he wrote the letter was a goddamn liar. With that, Garrett yanked out his Colt and slammed it down on Roberts’s head. The poor man crumpled to the ground, blood flowing from his scalp. Garrett then paced up and down, saying he had better be respected, and if it took a shooting iron to get that respect, so be it. Roberts, who fully recovered from Garrett’s assault, did not press charges.
Garrett made a strong showing in the election that November, but not strong enough to gain the seat. Although he won Lincoln and Grant counties, he failed to carry Doña Ana County, the home of the anti-Garrett Rio Grande Republican. No matter, he had plenty to keep him busy. Garrett directed his energies to carving out a future as a successful cattleman—not on the scale of the Chisum brothers, but successful enough to make him a player in the region. The cattle business was booming in eastern New Mexico, in large part due to Garrett’s success in putting an end to the thieving of the Kid and his pals. In 1883, more than 81,000 cattle ranged over the grazing lands of Lincoln County, the highest number in the Territory (sheep in the county numbered 113,000). Some of those cattle wore Garrett’s distinctive brand: PAT. That same year, Garrett partnered with John Poe, now the sheriff of Lincoln County, to buy a herd of cattle near Lincoln; Garrett operated a ranch not far from Fort Stanton.
In the spring of 1884, troubles on the Texas Panhandle’s cattle ranges put Garrett once again on the trail of rustlers. Like John Chisum on the Pecos a few years before, the large Texas cattlemen were feuding with the small-time operators, who were stealing from their big neighbors. But the cattlemen were also having problems with their own cowhands. A year earlier, nearly two hundred Panhandle cowboys went on strike for better pay. When the strike failed, the owners refused to rehire a number of the punchers, which left some disgruntled cowboys out of work, and so destitute they were more than willing to turn to rustling to earn a living. The owners of the bigger ranches called on Garrett to put a stop to the rustling and to enforce the law in cow country. They offered Garrett $5,000 a year to organize an independent company of rangers, and to make it legal, Garrett would receive a captain’s commission from the Texas governor. The El Paso Lone Star described this arrangement as the “finest means of protection that has ever been tried.” The owners of the small ranches, however, were not nearly as exuberant. They were afraid that Garrett’s rangers would be little more than the tools of the big cattlemen.
Just before Garrett headed over to the Panhandle, he paid $5,000 to purchase a ranch in Lincoln County. Then, sometime that April, he departed for Texas, accompanied by Barney Mason and another man. Garrett’s ranger company, which numbered about nine men, operated for less than a year. During that period, Garrett made some key arrests and strictly enforced a recent proclamation of the Texas governor prohibiting civilians from wearing six-shooters (the governor was apparently unfamiliar with the Second Amendment, although for a time, New Mexico Territory had an identical law). Garrett and his rangers circulated among all the roundup camps, sometimes inspecting two hundred punchers in a day. In the opinion of Garrett’s friend, John Meadows, this gun control effort might have been Garrett’s biggest success. “They got Pat Garrett just in time to save another Lincoln County War, and Pat he understood it, and he disarmed every doggone one of them.” But Garrett became convinced that his cattlemen bosses had hired him to simply kill the worst rustlers, not bring them to justice, and he would have none of it.
In January 1885, Garrett moved his small family to Las Vegas so they could be close to his new position as the chief of the Southwest Livestock Detective Agency. In March, Garrett took the oath as cattle inspector for the Territory’s third district. That same month, he arrested two rustlers in Tascosa and a third, a man named Tom Ruby, in Las Vegas. In commenting on the arrests, the Lincoln Golden Era reminded its readers, “As we said before, Pat will get ’em.”
Despite Garrett’s continued success in corralling rustlers, he soon stumbled into a more lucrative—and safer—payday in the form of an eccentric and apparently wealthy Scotsman by the name of Brandon C. Kirby. The adopted son of James Cree, a prosperous ship owner, Kirby was said to have served in South Africa as a captain in the Royal Scots Fusiliers. He had come to America looking for a place to invest Cree’s fortune and eventually settled on Lincoln County. Kirby immediately chose Garrett to help him as his agent in acquiring lands and cattle. Within a few weeks’ time during the summer of 1885, they spent $300,000 of Cree’s money. Kirby acquired several ranches, including Garrett’s, and made his headquarters on Eagle Creek, a few miles from Fort Stanton. Of the eleven thousand head of cattle he purchased, most were “she cattle,” as Kirby was importing 140 Black Angus bulls to breed with them. The ranch was named the Angus VV (locally known as the Double V), and Garrett became the ranch’s first manager at $5,000 a year for five years. On the ranch’s printed stationery, Garrett proudly used the title he had acquired from the Texas governor: Captain Pat F. Garrett, Manager.
In a way, Kirby was an exaggerated version of John Henry Tunstall of Lincoln County War days. He wore fine suits of Scotch tweed and overcoats of Irish frieze, and it is hard to imagine a stranger pair than Garrett and Kirby. Their relationship did not last a year. Garrett reminded the Scotsman that in the American West, a deal is a deal, and he walked away with his first year’s salary. The next year old man Cree sent his natural son to the ranch, and Cree followed with his wife two years later. Kirby was out as manager of the Angus VV and disappeared from New Mexico in 1890.
Garrett left the cattle business at a good time. In 1886, a harsh drought hit the region, which was rapidly becoming overstocked. A sudden fall in the price of cattle only made matters worse. Garrett went to his home just east of Roswell and poured himself into farming, with some horse breeding and racing on the side, of course—Garrett would always be a gambler at heart. The dry climate made it impossible to grow anything without irrigation, and he set about purchasing existing irrigation ditches and building new ones. Garrett believed that with strategically placed dams, flumes, and canals, the entire Pecos Valley could be transformed into a Garden of Eden for farmers. Garrett partnered with his old publisher in Santa Fe, Charles Greene, and cattleman Charles B. Eddy, and by 1889, their Pecos Irrigation and Investment Company had become a juggernaut. They had several new investors, more than 40,000 acres of irrigated land (with a goal of 220,000), and a new town that Garrett and Eddy had laid out named, appropriately enough, Eddy (present-day Carlsbad, New Mexico).
Garrett’s farm was one of the most valuable in the valley. Four hundred acres of his twelve-hundred-acre place were being cultivated, he had started a nursery with seven hundred apple trees, and he also operated a dairy. But he was also spending a lot of money. He partnered in livery stables in Roswell and Eddy and in a blacksmith shop in Roswell, and he was a large investor in a Roswell hotel. There was also the stage line that Garrett and friend James Brent, who had succeeded John W. Poe as Lincoln County sheriff, operated between Eddy and Roswell. With everything he had going on, Garrett and his fellow investors were forced to travel in order to secure more capital for the irrigation company, and that ultimately led to Garrett’s downfall. When the big capitalists stepped in, Garrett could not match their contributions and purchases of company stock. The man who had originated the visionary idea to green the Pecos Valley was forced out.
Garrett ran for sheriff of Chaves County in 1890, one of two new counties carved out of the insanely large Lincoln County. Because of his hard work and many investments in the Pecos Valley, Garrett was a front-runner in the election. But Garrett’s fame and popularity spawned something of a backlash. Another problem—a big problem, actually—was Garrett’s onetime friend John W. Poe. Garrett and Poe had had a falling-out over some money Garrett had borrowed, and the relationship had gone south from there. Poe publicly announced his support for another candidate, and Garrett lost the election. If the loss of control of his dream to irrigate the Pecos Valley had been a bitter pill, his failure to become the first sheriff of Chaves County was absolutely intolerable. Garrett wanted nothing more to do with New Mexico and its people.
The year before, Garrett had made a trade in Uvalde, Texas (eighty miles west of San Antonio), that involved an irrigation ditch project. Ever the optimist when it came to speculating (in other words, gambling), he had sent Polinaria a letter at the time that said he would make $20,000 off the deal. Garrett now told his wife and kids to start packing; they were moving to Uvalde.
At this time, Garrett and Polinaria had four children, Ida, Elizabeth, Dudley Poe, and Annie. Dudley Poe had been named for John W. Poe, when the former deputy was still a close friend. Elizabeth, called Lizzie by family and friends, had lost her eyesight in early childhood. According to one story, her eyes had troubled her from birth, and when a supposed “eye specialist” in Roswell told Garrett he could cure Lizzie’s problem, Garrett was eager to try, regardless of the cost. So Garrett paid the money and Lizzie received the treatment, but it only accelerated her blindness, and the specialist accelerated his exit from town. Lizzie, who loved her father dearly, as did her brothers and sisters, remembered his insistence that she grow up like any normal kid, and also his extreme patience. “Think your way out, daughter,” he would tell her, “and keep your head clear, above your heart” (as an adult, Elizabeth Garrett would compose the New Mexico state song, “O, Fair New Mexico”).
Pat and Polinaria eventually had four more children—Patrick, Pauline, Oscar, and Jarvis—making a total of eight. There was a gap of several years between the first four and the second four, and Garrett jokingly referred to his offspring as his first and second crops.
On Monday, April 13, 1891, the Garrett clan, and also James Brent and family, pulled out of Roswell for their new homes in Texas. Ash Upson, known to the Garrett kids as “Uncle Ash,” stayed behind in Roswell for another year settling his and Garrett’s interests before moving to Texas. Nine-year-old Ida Garrett wrote to her uncle Ash three months after the family’s arrival and told him that she and her mama “like Roswell better than we do here. It is so hot and dry.” Ida’s letter also revealed that her papa’s time was now mostly occupied by horse racing. The fairgrounds at Uvalde included horse stables and a racetrack. Garrett favored trotters, the sleek animals being hitched to low two-wheeled carts, or sulkies, for racing. Ida told Uncle Ash that her papa had gone to Eagle Pass, Texas, on July 4, where he raced a trotter named George Selden and outran seven other horses. Her papa had set up another race in San Antonio, but his opponent abruptly backed out after Garrett arrived. Papa made the man pay his expenses to San Antonio.
Six months after Garrett relocated to Uvalde, the Uvalde Herald wrote about the increasing number of blooded horses in west Texas. Garrett had much to do with that. He raced his horses at fairgrounds in New Mexico and Texas and as far away as New Orleans. In a San Antonio newspaper, he was the “horseman from Uvalde,” with no mention of Billy the Kid. Yet Garrett’s Uvalde years were filled with growing frustration and growing losses, both personal and financial. He dropped $1,500 on a single steam engine for his Uvalde irrigation project, and that did not include transportation costs from St. Louis. On March 21, 1894, an obviously depressed and tired Garrett wrote Polinaria from an unknown race venue:
Dear Wife
I have been [a]wake for two hours. Woke at one o’clock and cant sleep so have got and lit my Pipe. What a terrible thing it is for a man to be so poor that he is compel[led] to stay away from his wife and children this way. I hope you are not bothered as I am. It seems now as if I will not be able to leave here until the races are over. I still hope to make some money so I can pay what we owe when I come…. Will be home by the 10th of April sure and hope I will never have to go anywhere again without you are with me….
P. F. Garrett