The Authentic Life of Billy the Kid

Patrick Pat Floyd Garrett (1850-1908) was an American Old West lawman, bartender, and customs agent who was best known for killing Billy the Kid (1859-1881). In 1878, Garrett moved to New Mexico and briefly found work as a cowpuncher before quitting to open his own saloon. In 1880, the county appointed him the sheriff of Lincoln County. He was charged with tracking down and arresting a friend from his saloon keeping days, Henry McCarty, a jail escapee and Lincoln County War participant who often went by the aliases Henry Antrim and William Harrison Bonney, but is better known as Billy the Kid. He was said to have killed twenty-one men, one for every year of his life, but the actual total was probably closer to nine. In 1881, Garrett pursued Billy the Kid to a mutual friends manor and shot him twice while he was unarmed. After finishing out his term as sheriff, Garrett became a rancher and released a book ghostwritten by his friend Ash Upson in 1882 about his experiences with McCarty.