Juan Patron lived through one of the bloodiest chapters of the American West: the 1878 feud known as the Lincoln County War in New Mexico. Reputed for his heroics, Patron tried to tame a frontier plagued with violence, illiteracy and greed-first as a teacher, then as a desperado hunter, and eventually as speaker of the territorial house at age twenty-five, the youngest person to hold this position in New Mexico history. With keen, well-researched detail and the skill of a master storyteller, author Paul Tsompanas leads us through Patron's life and times-and his fate at the hands of a Texas cowboy named Michael Maney, who outdrew him in a dramatic showdown. Many believe that, had he lived, Patron would have become New Mexico's first congressman when it entered the Union in 1912.