Three Lawmen were injured, and three cowboys were killed.
The county's top Lawmen, Sheriff William Brewer,
was at the courthouse, which was not unusual.
He said"silence of the Lawmen can do more harm than violence of the layman".
He claimed to have shot 21 people in his lifetime and
was eventually shot by lawman Pat Garrett.
Lawmen were also involved or implicated in untold numbers of beatings,
killings, and disappearances of black Southerners who forgot their place.
Normally, Holliday would never talk to a lawman, but upon hearing about the reward over a game of Faro,
he spilled the beans that he had heard that Rudabaugh was hightailing it back to Kansas.
Although the boat itself was of relatively little value, only being worth about $30($750 today), and the weather was dangerously bad, Roosevelt felt that by not pursuing the thieves,
he would be ignoring his moral obligation as a lawman to pursue any criminal.