they finished their breakfast, they saw up the river the dust of a
cattle herd, and noted that a party were working a herd, cutting out
cattle for some purpose or other.

"Go up there and get a job," said Pat to one of the boys. The latter did
go up, but came back reporting that the boss did not want any help.

"Well, he's got to have help," said Pat. So saying, he arose and
started up stream himself.

Garrett was at that time, as has been said, of very great height, six
feet four and one-half inches, and very slender. Unable to get trousers
long enough for his legs, he had pieced down his best pair with about
three feet of buffalo leggins with the hair out. Gaunt, dusty, and
unshaven, he looked hard, and when he approached the herd owner and
asked for work, the other was as much alarmed as pleased. He declined
again, but Pat firmly told him he had come to go to work, and was sorry,
but it could not be helped. Something in the quiet voice of Garrett
seemed to arrest the attention of the cow man. "What can you do,
Lengthy?" he asked.

"Ride anything with hair, and rope better than any man you've got here,"
answered Garrett, casting a critical glance at the other men.

The cow man hesitated a moment and then said, "Get in." Pat got in. He
stayed in. Two years later he was still at Fort Sumner, and married.

Garrett moved down from Fort Sumner soon after his marriage, and settled
a mile east of what is now the flourishing city of Roswell, at a spring
on the bank of the Hondo, and in the middle of what was then the virgin
plains. Here he picked up land, until he had in all more than twelve
hundred and fifty acres. If he owned it now, he would be worth a half
million dollars.

He was not, however, to live the steady life of the frontier farmer. His
friend, Captain J. C. Lea, of Roswell, came to him and asked if he would
run as sheriff of Lincoln county. Garrett consented and was elected. He
was warned not to take this office, and word was sent to him by the
bands of hard-riding outlaws of that region that if he attempted to
serve any processes on them he would be killed. He paid no attention to
this, and, as he was still an unknown quantity in the country, which was
new and thinly settled, he seemed sure to be killed. He won the absolute
confidence of the governor, who told him to go ahead, not to stand on
technicalities, but to break up the gang that had been rendering life
and property unsafe for years and making t