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History, that records the long fight of sheriffs and and marshals and peacemakers of all kinds to tame the West and establish law and order, furnishes few finer examples of the frontier sheriff than Pat Garrett. He was brave, resourceful, tireless, and in the conscientious performance of his duty, as cold and impersonal as the law itself. His psychology was that of a sheriff. The law was explicit; it pointed out his path of duty clearly; and he carried out the law to the last letter without sentiment or malice or resentment. No personal feeling of any kind ever clouded his ideas of the law or his duty under the law. He was in a way a legal machine. He moved along his path of duty as crushingly and inexorably as a steam-roller. If he set out to arrest a man, he arrested him or killed him. When he took a trail, he followed it to the end.

Cold and relentless as he undoubtedly was, he was not instinctively a killer. He killed only three men in his life—Tom O'Folliard, Charlie Bowdre, and Billy the Kid—and in each instance the killing was justified by the circumstances. He was free of any taint of blood-thirstiness. In that time and country, it was "Hands up!" with every man he arrested, and if he had been dominated by a murderous spirit, he could have killed many men with impunity and within the law. But beneath his hard surface was a certain kindly humanity,