In the novel True Grit by Charles Portis, the mistakes made by Rooster Cogburn eventually lead him to the path of the good. While Rooster is speaking with Labeouf it becomes known that Rooster rode “with the Quantrill gang” and that they “were not soldiers but murdering thieves”. The atrocities that Rooster committed with the Quantrill gang are the first of many morally wrong actions that lead him to becoming a marshall. As a marshall, Rooster is a shoot first ask questions later type enforcer of the law and it is revealed that he is responsible for “twenty-three dead men in four years”(50). While some of these deaths were justified, the corrupt and lawless like nature of Rooster is ultimately what makes Mattie choose Rooster as the man to