In the history of the Southwest, Pat Garrett stood tall, both physically and in legend. He was more than just a famous western sheriff, more than the slayer of the legendary Billy the Kid. While on occasion his gun was for hire, and while he was sometimes known to protect special interests-particularly those of the cattle barons-more often than not Pat Garrett combined in his six-foot five-inch frame the good, honest, and honorable qualities that went to make up the lawman of the Old West. Garrett is, of course, immortal for his successful efforts to end the career of the Kid, but, as the author amply demonstrates, Garrett's career by no means ended on that hot evening in July, 1881, in Fort Sumner, New Mexico. Within days Garrett had established a reputation as an implacable foe of western criminals, a reputation that was to follow (and sometimes haunt) him for the rest of his life. He was an important figure in the frontier politics of Texas and New Mexico, and he rubbed shoulders with the great and the near great of the region. Through the story of Patrick Floyd Jarvis Garrett the panorama of the Southwest unfolds: its dreams, its courage, its explorations, its mistakes, its violence, its conquests, and ultimately its emergence as a settled society. No other character in southwestern history is more closely identified with the land and the people of America's last frontier.

Pat Garrett: The Story of a Western Lawman

Biographies & Memoirs

Metz, Leon C.

Historical

University of Oklahoma Press

Leon Metz has pieced together, for the first time, all that is known of John Selman, a shadowy figure in Texas and New Mexico during the unsettled, often violent, period after the Civil War. Unlike many of his comrades—including the most notorious outlaws of his time—John Selman did not wish to become well known. Indeed, his penchant for assumed names indicates he did not wish to be known at all. Selman was an enigmatic man of many parts: he was an oldest son, responsive to the needs of his mother and siblings; a soldier with a talent for leadership—until his unexplained desertion from the Confederate Army; a husband and father; a rancher who struggled with, and murdered, would-be grangers; and a devoted friend to an evil influence named John Larn, with whom he seemed to kill for sport. As the Southwest became more settled, so did John Selman. At the end of his career, when he was a constable in El Paso, Selman lost his anonymity for all time: He was the man who killed John Wesley Hardin. Metz explores the stories surrounding Hardin's death—some said Selman shot Hardin in the back. Including rare photographs, Metz presents his conclusions about this legendary gunfighter.

John Selman Gunfighter

Before Dallas Stoudenmire accepted the position as marshal of El Paso, there existed no authority except that of the six-shooter, and very little precedent for a peace officer to follow. No one before had held the job for more than a couple of months. Yet, within two years, with the help of Jim Gillett, his young deputy, Stoudenmire had cleaned up the town, a task that earned him many enemies and, in the end, death. This is the story of Dallas Stoudenmire-auburn-haired, fiery-eyed, six-foot, two-inch gunfighter, container of laughter, liquor, and death-during the two tumultuous years in the early 1880’s when he served as almost the only law north of the Rio Grande and west of Fort Worth.

Dallas Stoudenmire: El Paso Marshal (Volume 53) (The Western Frontier Library Series)

Thus spoke one lawman about John Wesley Hardin, easily the most feared and fearless of all the gunfighters in the West. Nobody knows the exact number of his victims-perhaps as few as twenty or as many as fifty. In his way of thinking, Hardin never shot a man who did not deserve it. Seeking to gain insight into Hardin’s homicidal mind, Leon Metz describes how Hardin’s bloody career began in post-Civil War Central Texas, when lawlessness and killings were commonplace, and traces his life of violence until his capture and imprisonment in 1878. After numerous unsuccessful escape attempts, Hardin settled down and received a pardon years later in 1895. He wrote an autobiography but did not live to see it published. Within a few months of his release, John Selman gunned him down in an El Paso saloon.

John Wesley Hardin: Dark Angel of Texas

Fourteen years in the making, this is a chronicle of the nearly two-thousand-mile international line between the United States and Mexico. It is an historical account largely through the eyes and experiences of government agents, politicians, soldiers, revolutionaries, outlaws, Indians, engineers, immigrants, developers, illegal aliens, business people, and wayfarers looking for a job. It is essentially the untold story of lines drawn in water, sand, and blood, of an intrepid, durable people, of a civilization whose ebb and flow of history is as significant as any in the world. Award-winning historian Leon Metz takes the reader from America’s early westward expansion to today’s awesome border problems of water rights, pollution, immigration, illegal aliens, and the massive effort of two nations attempting to pull together for a common cause.

Border: The U.S.–Mexico Line

History

Americas

TCU Press

City at the Pass: An illustrated history of El Paso

Windsor Publications

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Metz, Leon C.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.