Texas Rangers: Lives, Legend, and Legacy 157441691X, 9781574416916

Table of contents :
Contents
Preface & Acknowledgments
1. “Everything to make and nothing to lose”
2. “Drove a lance through her heart”
3. “Baptized in her Precious Blood”
4. “It was Hell on the Home Front”
Photo Gallery 1
5. Frontier Battalion, Company A
6. Frontier Battalion, Company B
7. Frontier Battalion, Company C
8. Frontier Battalion, Company D
9. Frontier Battalion, Company E
10. Frontier Battalion, Company F
Photo Gallery 2
11. The Legend
12. The Legacy
13. Spiking the Legacy
Photo Gallery 3
14. Rangers Today
Photo Gallery 4
Photo Gallery 5
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

TEXAS RANGERS

TEXAS RANGERS Lives, Legend, and Legacy Bob Alexander and Donaly E. Brice

University of North Texas Press Denton, Texas

©2017 Bob Alexander and Donaly E. Brice All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Permissions: University of North Texas Press 1155 Union Circle #311336 Denton, TX 76203-5017 The paper used in this book meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, z39.48.1984. Binding materials have been chosen for durability. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Alexander, Bob, 1943– author. | Brice, Donaly E., author. Title: Texas Rangers : lives, legend, and legacy / Bob Alexander and Donaly  E. Brice. Description: Denton, Texas : University of North Texas Press, [2017] |  Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2017014068 | ISBN 9781574416916 (cloth : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Texas Rangers. Frontier Battalion--Biography. | Texas  Rangers. Frontier Battalion—History. | Peace officers—Texas—Biography.  | Law enforcement—Texas—History. | Frontier and pioneer life—Texas. |  Frontier and pioneer life—West (U.S.) | Texas—History, Military. Classification: LCC F391 .A294 2017 | DDC 363.209764—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017014068 The electronic edition of this book was made possible by the support of the Vick Family Foundation. Cover and text design by Rose Design

Contents Preface & Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii

1.

“Everything to make and nothing to lose” . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

2.

“Drove a lance through her heart” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26

3.

“Baptized in her Precious Blood” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44

4.

“It was Hell on the Home Front” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75 Photo Gallery 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101

5.

Frontier Battalion, Company A . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121

6.

Frontier Battalion, Company B . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145

7.

Frontier Battalion, Company C . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174

8.

Frontier Battalion, Company D . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195

9.

Frontier Battalion, Company E . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221

10.

Frontier Battalion, Company F. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 246 Photo Gallery 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 279

11..

The Legend . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 307

12.

The Legacy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 342

13.

Spiking the Legacy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 369 Photo Gallery 3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 393

14.

Rangers Today . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 427 Photo Gallery 4 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 449 Photo Gallery 5 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 469

Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 485 Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 599 Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 627

Preface and Acknowledgments the texas ranger saga is a never-ending story. It’s tied hard and fast to the birth of a nation. Though there may be a smidgen of room for assigning a precise birthday for the Texas Rangers, professional historians, nonfiction writers, and enjoyably disposed aficionados universally trace formative roots to a pre-Republic of Texas era. Expectedly, with such a lengthy narrative to dissect there has been no evident shortage of venerating histories and not just a few revisionist interpretations to peruse. The body of work is extensive. Therein is a not subtle message: From days long past to this, many folks are yet fascinated with Rangers. There, too, is a bottom-line. The Ranger outfit has outlived many of its earlier myth making press agents as well as agenda driven detractors. Why have the Texas Rangers institutionally endured? Are policies and protocols in place for safeguarding the organization—and the story? Owing to a deliberative and logical Resolution by the State of Texas Legislature, the Texas Ranger Hall of Fame & Museum at Waco has long been—and still is—recognized as the Official State Hall of Fame and Repository for the renowned Texas Rangers. Although tracing its lineage to 1964, much more recently, 2012, the superlative nonprofit institution opened to the public its beautifully appointed Tobin and Anne Armstrong Texas Ranger Research Center, a long overdue expansion of its remarkable library and archives. With the significant extension of floor space, thousands of criminal case-files heretofore warehoused within Ranger headquarters at Austin could be properly catalogued and were lawfully transferred to Waco’s gemstone facility. Complementing the Ranger Research Center’s comprehensive collection of paperwork and period photographs is the ever-growing vii

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assemblage of precious artifacts. Now numbering approximately 20,000 pieces, these fascinating items include highly prized badges, a most noteworthy antique and modern-era firearms collection, clothing, field gear, intricately handcrafted saddles and bridles, fancily carved cartridge belts and scabbards, rudimentary and stateof-the-art forensic investigative equipment, a delightfully nostalgic pop culture gallery, a spacious documentary movie theater, and the new innovative interactive display suitably honoring living but now retired Texas Rangers: All surrounded by an extraordinary array of historic and contemporary paintings, sculptures, and other properties unique to safekeeping the Texas Rangers’ rich—and, yes, sometimes controversial—history. Truly it’s an exceptional and historic physical-plant layout, durably buttressed by an incredible storyline now having tentacles touching three centuries. Even more recently, June 4, 2013, the Texas Department of Public Safety Commission by thoughtful process of a formally crafted Resolution designated the Texas Ranger Hall of Fame & Museum at Waco as the professional representative and officially sanctioned steward for the forthcoming Texas Ranger Bicentennial celebrations, an endorsement of foremost significance. Such genuine admiration and trust opens the doorway for innumerable licensing and trademark opportunities, all calculably blueprinted to preserve and promote the Ranger heritage—which by extrapolation helps preserve and promote Texas history. Understandably and, correctly so, with the laurels comes an attendant amplification of responsibility. Ever committed to maintaining and multiplying an awareness of the Texas Ranger contribution to the Lone Star State’s bona fide history, the Texas Ranger Hall of Fame & Museum’s staff sought outside input from a cadre of nonfiction writers and researchers. And, within that framework is genesis for the book in hand, the authors having been privileged to sit in on those informative discussions and exchange of ideas. During those days in July and October 2014, as well as a later conference during April 2015, an intriguing and particularly worthwhile rhetorical question surfaced—and kept fortuitously

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resurfacing: Were a vacationing family from Newark visiting the museum for the very first time, what messages and/or impressions about the Texas Rangers would we want them to take back to New Jersey? Resolving such a wide-ranging concern seemed—at first blush—uncomplicated. Upon sober and unhurried reflection the matter proved much more complex. Should emphasis be placed on the part Texas Rangers played with regards to interdicting—or trying to interdict—the forays conducted by Indians bent on attainting reward and/or extracting revenge? How best should the narrative voices of those terrified women and fearful youngsters kidnapped and who later luckily escaped or were rescued and/or bartered by Indian captors be heard—and treated? Should ground be given over to political correctness? Or would historic fidelity simply demand correctness? Would the tourists be engrossed in the tale of Comanche from interior Texas riding all the way to the Gulf Coast and raiding seaside storehouses while area residents sought safety in rowboats seesawing in the over-yourhead saltwater of Lavaca Bay? How far into the historic weeds along Caldwell County’s Plum Creek would be journalistically and storyboard apropos for retelling of the Texians’ breathtaking accounts about anxiously overhauling and chastising those whooping Indians overburdened by too much plunder and too many miles from home? On the other hand, should the focus lean more toward the role Texas Rangers assumed as guardians of the peace, acting as statewide law enforcers? Were the latter to be accentuated, how best should time and space be divided between telling of Texas Rangers taming towns and capturing train robbers during the Wild West era and of twenty-first century Texas Rangers? Blood and thunder episodes hardly become stale—no matter the backdrop. Assuredly the old-time Texas Rangers caught national press coverage when a psychotic misfit and murderer, John Wesley Hardin, was arrested on a train at Pensacola, Florida—And the following year when the notorious and highly-sought fugitive Sam Bass breathed his last at Round Rock subsequent to a blistering gunplay with Texas Rangers during that sweltering July of 1878. Should there not be

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room to recount Texas Ranger shootouts during those economically devastating and bloody barbed-wire wars that for awhile during the 1880s seriously threatened the Lone Star State’s stability? The ever turbulent Texas/Mexico borderland was not a place of peace and quiet for Texas Rangers during the 1890s. Several were mercilessly and mortally gunned down, one a highly regarded company captain not urging his men into battle from behind the desk, but leading from the front, Winchester in hand. Unquestionably the twentieth-century was jam-packed with high drama and dark times for the Texas Rangers. How should the scales between virtuous and vicious performance during the Mexican Revolution period, 1910–1920, be counterbalanced when weighing truths? The boom towns were rich with black gold—oil— and riffraff. How much play did Rangers warrant for that part of the Texas narrative? Did Texas Rangers chase after machinegun-toting hoodlums during the so called gangster-era? Surely they brought to bay a notorious multiple murderer and his sidekick, killing both during a ferocious 1957 shootout on the banks of Walnut Creek northwest of Fort Worth following a scary high-speed automobile chase. What was the character of work Texas Rangers assumed, commendable and/or censurable, regarding the 1960s labor unrest in South Texas? What of Texas Rangers’ 1974 dogged participation in that eleven-day siege behind tall ivy-covered brick walls in the penitentiary at Huntsville—a brutal hostage taking incident? Doesn’t a sense of fair play stipulate mention of the low-key behind-thescenes professionalism of a dutiful Texas Ranger captain furnishing a high-value clue to FBI Agents regarding the 1979 sniper’s coldblooded execution of a U.S. District Court Judge in his San Antonio driveway? Would it not be right to tell about—and memorialize— harrowing stories of kidnapped girls? Each of those 1980s episodes netted the victims’ safe return, after gunplay with Texas Rangers. Indisputably, in the latter abduction, should the highest honor not be paid to the gallant and gutsy Texas Ranger who nobly traded his life for the return of a two-year-old: And of his intrepid partner? What degree of coverage should be given Texas Rangers for being

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expressly chosen for their investigative acumen by a U.S. Attorney in regards to the 1993 murders of four federal agents? What about One Riot, One Ranger? Would our imaginary visitors be vicariously spellbound by the twenty-first-century courage of Rangers responding to the U.S. Army’s Fort Hood where a run-amok ne’er-do-well was dispensing death to fellow soldiers? Or would the Texas Ranger response to the more recent assassinations of the Kaufman County district attorney and his wife—reconstructing the gruesome crime scene—chill them to the bone? What of manhunts and more murders? What of the unhesitant jumping into investigative action at Waco on that momentarily peaceful Sunday afternoon during May 2015? The day rival outlaw motorcycle gangs opted to settle disputes with knives, brass knuckles, and bullets, leaving nine bikers dead in the Twin Peaks restaurant’s parking lot, and eighteen gang members admitted to care in the local hospital. Though significantly less hair-raising should there not be at least a mention of the confidence and trust given over to Texas Rangers when called upon—too frequently—to make complicated investigations into public corruption cases alleging official misconduct and/or misappropriation at the hands of elected and/or appointed governmental officials? What of Rangers working amid the twist and tangles of the Rio Grande’s thorny underbrush, tirelessly tracking dope traffickers and ever on the lookout for fanatics with terroristic plots a part of their misguided but explosive agendas? Would taking all this in awaken an appreciation of Texas Rangers’ real time and real life job descriptions? Old-time Texas Rangers made history then and Texas Rangers continue making history today. Longevity is certainly commendable from an organizational viewpoint, but also somewhat challenging to the nonfiction chronicler confined by word count constraints and/or the mystified museum curator corralled by square-foot limitations. Antiseptically positioning Texas Ranger stories—even as exciting as they might be—and pushing them forward like so many falling dominos, one after another, indelibly etches a factual record but contributes to an evident deficit. Rangers do not operate, nor is history

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made, in a vacuum. Context is crucial, and therein materialized another dynamic of relevance. Of course acknowledgment that Texas Rangers were just people was correct, but such simplicity seemed to beg for clarification. Asserting that Rangers were/are but a microcosm of the much larger demographic patchwork of Texas is partly true—beyond argument—though such sweeping generalization is to some extent misleading. There was/is no precast mold sculpting Texas Rangers into the identicalness of toy soldiers. Aside from forming a mental picture regarding participation in stirring events spanning three centuries of Texas history, what would those make-believe but awestruck East Coast visitors really learn about the human side of Texas Rangers? Truly the organizational model was replete with exciting stories and unique personalities. Those tales of Rangers combating marauding Indians or chasing desperate desperadoes fleeing apprehension on grain-fed horses, or hunting highly mobile career criminals traveling in the latest gasoline guzzling models from Detroit were electrifying, were they not? History is hammered from humanity’s experience—people propel the stories. And therein opened for discussion amongst panelists the much broader but unanswered question: What should the distinct personnel messages be for native and/or transplanted Texans as well as the sightseeing guests from the other forty-nine states and/or foreign countries? By everyone’s calculation, putting a human face on Rangers—as best as could be done—was just as relevant as recording the successes and failures of their dramatic exploits. Was there a typical Texas Ranger, an average Texas Ranger? It was/is an intriguing question. Particularly the authors of Texas Rangers: Lives, Legend, and Legacy were drawn to the subject. Past collaborative work over the years built the foundation for friendship and sparked the query: What methodology could be and would be best suited for generating a fair-minded and fairly accurate profile of the everyday working Texas Ranger? It was a great question. However, one wrought with puzzlement. In view of the fact that Texas Rangers are yet a vital and iconic part of the twenty-first century’s law

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enforcing landscape, and due to technological innovation racing with near unimaginable speed, and given that enlightened cultural and social evolution continues to unfold, where would—or could— profiles of personnel close? In effect, where would the Texas Ranger story end? Likewise, where would the story began? If an updated Texas Ranger venture was to be forthcoming, time for adopting a feasible research, writing, and formatting strategy was at hand. No more musing! Fortunately, there is a chronological baseline for moving the Texas Rangers from the ranks of part-time volunteers on an as-needed basis, to when enlistment correlated to a regular job. Although by any measure the transition from Indian fighters to cutting-edge lawmen would not be overnight, the era of the Frontier Battalion beginning in 1874 is when such metamorphosis emerged. Paradoxically this timeframe also marks the bridging from compulsory Reconstruction to democratic home-rule, self-governing. The Frontier Battalion’s influence on the philosophical and psychological bearings of independently minded Texans’ self-image coming out from under threadbare blankets of autocracy is real—and discernible. Not coincidently and, thankfully so, for that time period there are abundant primary source documents particularly identifying individual Texas Rangers and particularizing their lives and ranging activities. Long have the archived records been relied upon by scholars with impeccable and hard-earned credentials, but many newspaper journalists and nonfiction writers of the so-called popular press have also availed themselves of that treasure-trove of paperwork. Assuredly Texas Rangers: Lives, Legend, and Legacy will not abdicate accountability, but will deferentially advantage its self by selectively making use of previously published Ranger works. On the other hand—purposefully—this treatment adds another dimension. A portion of the hard data contained herein has heretofore been somewhat ignored or wholly overshadowed and clouded by oversimplification. Painting a worshipful or disparaging picture of the Texas Rangers with intemperate strokes of a broad brush is wrong. The duplicity, in most cases, is unbecoming and palpable.

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At inception the original idea was to take enlistment rolls, make a somewhat empirical study and present a paper highlighting findings about a “typical” Ranger to the Texas Ranger Hall of Fame & Museum’s research staff. Virtually overnight that simple brainchild was scuttled. Confidently, with a wealth of hardcore data at the fingertip, the project widened not only in purpose, but in scope. For as the endeavor blossomed with facts and figures there seemed to be something more worthwhile than robotically reeling off numbers and statistical comparisons. Those numbers, regardless of their importance standing alone, absent the aforementioned context of place and time, could be and would be devalued and unappreciated— at least from the viewpoint of casual audiences and/or spectators. Almost, then, from the outset a book rather than a sterile research paper was taking shape. “What, another book about the Texas Rangers?” Not startlingly such retort resonated with logic. The question was fair. The answer is unadorned and straightforward. The treatment in hand is not put forward to in anyway replace other Texas Ranger volumes, but is sincerely intended to serve as a supplementary work preserving the outfit’s institutional history. For the general reader a purpose will have been served if Texas Rangers: Lives, Legend, and Legacy is the springboard sparking their interest and moving them down the pathway of broadening their knowledge with other books about particular scenarios and/or specific Texas Rangers. Shattering myths was not an outright purpose, but differentiating between truth and fiction was. And, though there are not just a few principled academicians and talented nonfiction writers with thoroughgoing Ranger treatises already on the table, it’s almost a guarantee they, too, will pick up a tidbit or two heretofore unknown or unincorporated into their works. Should they find even a morsel of usefulness for some future researching or writing product, another goal of this volume will have been attained. Thirdly, but not lastly, perhaps in some small way this treatment will offer insight for those men and women currently drawing state paychecks as Texas Rangers: About their workplace antecedents and the role they legitimately played in honorably laying down a legacy worthy of upholding.

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Tradition and the maintenance thereof is laudable. There are— and always were—a constituency of critics ever on the alert and narrowly focused on accenting any anomalies of abhorrent or unbecoming behavior of Rangers. No defense is proffered for misconduct. Though some folks are hardly prone to admit a core truth, periodically a degree of negative carping manifests itself within pages of newspaper stories or magazine articles or journal pieces but quite predictably and invariably is in the end, forlornly engulfed into an abyss of myopic hollowness. Trying to sustain consequential criticism with generality is pointless. There is, however, that core truth: Meanwhile—from days long ago till today—Rangers, with a seemingly undying support of the Lone Star State’s general population base, continue to ranger. Finally, and although it may seem overly ambitious, it categorically was no afterthought: Perhaps Texas Rangers: Lives, Legend, and Legacy can—and will—serve as a helpful platform for novelists and scriptwriters and movie-making moguls in want of getting the story right, allowing for easy access to Ranger reality. Most folks—given an option—go for authenticity. Casting, wardrobe, and technological correctness do not have to be at cross-purposes with truths. Historians and Hollywood pulling together would be refreshing and constructive. Previewing the book’s format is not out of place and might prove helpful for those casually thumbing its pages and/or to one with a more direct focus in mind. The presentation is clear-cut. The opening chapters explore the need for Texas Rangers—or more succinctly Texans’ construal of that necessity. Inconclusively debating the rights and wrongs of those perceptions from ethnic enlightenment and moralistic evolutions centuries in the making was not then foundation for multicultural subgroups organizing to thwart their enemies. Such a phenomenon is as existent today as it was then. Early day Lone Star political powerbrokers genuinely thought there ought to be Texas Rangers and so, not surprisingly, there were Rangers. Truth distills as simple as that. The next section continues advancing the Texas Ranger narrative with regards to frontier protection and into the era of post Civil

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War politics when a Democrat majority regained control of the statehouse. It was then lawmakers recognized the rationale for a salaried battalion of Texas fighting men to accomplish what in their minds the impotent U.S. Army was not especially doing, safeguarding vulnerable settlers. As lawful result the Frontier Battalion was legislatively created and staffed, the actual derivation point for modern-era Texas Rangers. Ensuing chapters are the jumping-off place for trying to put a human face on Texas Rangers. For it is here—after studying the Muster Rolls and probing battalion correspondence files—that names, ages, height, color of hair, and even skin tone—dark, light, or fair—is subject to retrieval. And it is with benefit of this personal data that Texas Rangers become recognizable as mere mortals, all owning places of origin and prior occupations before swearing that 1874 oath of allegiance to the State of Texas: Voluntarily putting their names and futures on the dotted line. From this wellspring of hard data also comes the capacity to crunch numbers and highlight findings of significance—or interest—and even an occasional surprise. Included in this section, aside from statistical enumerations and noteworthy breakdowns, there will be a cursory look at everyday life at a frontier-era Texas Ranger camp. For many native and transplanted Texans, it would prove to be the seminal chapter of their lives. In aggregate there would be six widely disbursed companies crafting the Frontier Battalion. The subsequent chapters, then, will take those individual Ranger units—Companies A–F—set their geographical stages, denoting the command staff, and fashion passing overviews of their activities from inception through December of 1875—eighteen months. The cutoff date is not capricious. Each one of the Frontier Battalion’s six companies can bank a bountiful history for an ensuing quarter of a century, far too much achievement for compressing into singular chapters herein. There would be in the authors’ minds a worthwhile rationale by looking in on what the Frontier Battalion’s six companies were doing at the same time, rather than taking the more traditional approach,

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simply moving from one significant event to the next, paying little heed to parallel context. Conceivably that first eighteen months of activity would/could provide elementary baseline data for folks furthering genealogical probes and/or embarking on their own researching and writing endeavors. Following that admittedly brief eighteen-month timeframe—at the end of each designated Company chapter—there will be a roster of names taken from the initial Muster Roll, hopefully a beneficial research device for others with Texas Ranger works on the horizon. To the authors’ very best knowledge—which certainly doesn’t guarantee absoluteness—this is the first undertaking specifically designed to identify charter members of the battalion in whole between covers of a single volume: Roughly 450 Rangers. The intended purpose of Chapter Eleven is to spotlight several of the Frontier Battalion’s more illustrious accomplishments which fostered the Ranger legend. Any assertion that Texas Rangers did not rightfully earn and cleave unto themselves a legendary standing—besides being Texas blasphemy—would plainly be wrong. Detractors, and there are not just a few, would and could argue with varying degrees of merit that not all Texas Rangers were real nice guys, twenty-four and seven. History bears witness, occasionally the debunkers were/are debunking with well-grounded legitimacy. That same history, however, can prove a cruel and falsehearted mistress to indiscreet but agenda-driven naysayers. Singling out another state-paid law enforcing agency with a favorable worldwide reputation—i.e., Texas Rangers—on an equal footing with the nationwide and federally empowered super sleuths of Scotland Yard and/or the “always get your man” Mounties of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police would be an exercise in futility. Yes, though but a state-sponsored outfit the Texas Ranger mystique transcends sovereignty’s international borderlines and defining oceans. The next chapters focus on the Frontier Battalion’s legacy, a characteristic of weight carried forward by today’s modern-era Texas Rangers. Of course in the broad spectrum of time, lifespan of the fêted Frontier Battalion would be ephemeral. Institutionally the

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Texas Rangers never died. Organizational tinkering—an inherent trait of politicos and bureaucrats—incessantly adjusted and readjusted and readjusted again staffing models and geographic alignments for the Rangers. To suppose such changes are remnants of a distant past would be wrongheaded. A hallmark of Ranger survivability in the institutional sense is and has been flexibility. With deferential recognition of that adaptability and keen awareness of the iconic worldwide prominence of Texas Rangers, the Seventieth Texas Legislature assured that the outfit was no anachronism, purposefully certifying by enactment of law that Texas Rangers were here to stay, may not be abolished, and were/are in truth an integral cog in the Lone Star State’s inclusive law enforcing and peace keeping mechanisms. From the authors’ point of view it seemed but fitting in the general context of Texas Rangers: Lives, Legend, and Legacy to apprise interested readers with a brief overview of today’s Texas Rangers. That said, and before some pundit opts to jump real quick, patronizingly insinuating Texas Rangers: Lives, Legend, and Legacy is but obviously a favorably disposed Texas Ranger treatment, the authors unashamedly plead guilty. Evidence shaped the verdict. Ranger institutional longevity—well beyond any reasonable doubt—sustained the finding. The Lone Star State’s emblematic Texas Rangers are alive and well—legend and legacy the insurance underwriting viability, professional application of forensic innovation guaranteeing institutional vitality. A caveat is requisite. Following the synopsis of activity for each of the Frontier Battalion companies—as earlier cited—there is a register of initial Rangers assigned to that unit. This data was gleaned from the respective Muster Rolls. Therein is the demand for a seed of clarification. For many of those enumerations the individuals are identified only by initials rather than given name, a rather common practice, but one begging for a strengthening—if doable. For the book in hand, when possible a more specific identification was sought and substituted for the Ranger denoted only by his initials. For instance, taking three of the better known frontier-era Rangers straight from the first Company D Muster Roll would enumerate,

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C.R. Perry, D.W. Roberts, and N.O. Reynolds. When in fact the Rangers are more precisely identified and listed herein as Cicero Rufus Perry, Daniel Webster Roberts, and Nelson Orcelus Reynolds. Various sources, both primary and secondary, were utilized while targeting this attempt to make more exacting identifications. As examples, meaningful information was also garnered from personal memoirs and manuscripts, Ranger theses and dissertations, Indian War Pension Records, U.S. Census Records, cemetery records and gravesite memorial inscriptions, county courthouse ledgers, sporadic newspaper mentions, as were the individual companies’ Monthly Returns, the Texas Ranger Correspondence Files and the particularized Texas Ranger service and payroll records, as well as the voluminous collection of the Adjutant Generals’ Records. The caveat is this: Although unintentional, when dealing with old-time and often faded handwritten records and Muster Rolls sometimes penned by someone clearly shortcutting in accord with phonetic soundings, there is room for error. Mistakes contained herein—and surely there are a few—are inadvertent. Pinpointing with 100 percent accuracy personal details regarding upwards of 450 Texas Rangers is problematical. No inane excuses are or should be proffered. Understanding is all that may be solicited, excepting for being made aware of any egregious errors for subsequent correction. We own the blunders. We also owe a debt of gratitude. The following individuals graciously gave of their time and expertise: Richard K. Alford, Region I Director, Texas Department of Criminal Justice, Correctional Institutions Division, Ret., Huntsville, TX; Elvis Allen, Fruitvale, TX; John Anderson [Ret.] and staff, Texas State Library and Archives, Austin, TX; James Baird, San Francisco, CA; Melletta R. Bell, Archives of the Big Bend, Alpine, TX; Raymond “Rusty” Bloxom, Research Librarian, Texas Ranger Hall of Fame & Museum [TRHF&M], Waco, TX; Jason Bobo, Texas Ranger, Lampasas, TX; John Boessenecker, San Francisco, CA; Max E. Brown, Ringgold, TX; Clifford R. Caldwell, Kerrville, TX; Captain Barry Caver, Texas Rangers, Ret., Denton, TX; Matt Cawthon, Texas Ranger, Ret., Waco,

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TX; Shelly Crittendon, Collections Manager, TRHF&M, Waco, TX; Lisa Daniel, Visitor and Retail Services Manager, TRHF&M, Waco, TX; Lieutenant A.P. Davidson, Texas Rangers, Hurst, TX; Captain Jack Dean, Texas Rangers, Ret., San Antonio, TX; Ronald G. DeLord, Georgetown, TX; Chief Kirby W. Dendy, Texas Rangers, Ret., China Spring, TX; Jan Devereaux, Maypearl, TX; Kemp Dixon, Austin, TX; Candice DuCoin, Round Rock, TX; Doug Dukes, Liberty Hill, TX; Lieutenant Jamie Downs, Texas Rangers, Waco, TX; Casey Eichhorn, Education Coordinator, TRHF&M, Waco, TX; Suzanne Giffin-Garcia, Alameda, CA; Captain West Gilbreath, University of North Texas PD, Denton, TX; Laura Greenwood, Brady, TX; Jude Grochoske, Program Analyst, TRHF&M, Waco, TX; Charles H. Harris, III, Las Cruces, NM; Major Grover Huff, Texas Rangers, Garland, TX; L.R. Hughes, Baird, TX; Terry Humble, Bayard, NM; Byron Johnson, Executive Director, TRHF&M, Waco, TX; Harold E. Jobes, Cedar Park, TX; Dave Johnson, Zionsville, IN; Mike Konczak, Baird, TX; Josh Lehew, Waxahachie, TX; Jane Lenoir, Fort Griffin State Historic Site, Albany, TX; Robert W. Lull, Waco, TX; Nell Ann McBroom, Tales ‘N’ Trails Museum, Nocona, TX; Mary “Kate” McCarthy, Collections Assistant, TRHF&M, Waco, TX; John McWilliams, Three Rivers, CA; Assistant Chief Frank Malinak, Texas Rangers, Austin, TX; Reuben T. Mankin, Texas Ranger, McKinney, TX; Rick Miller, Harker Heights, TX; Suzanne Montgomery, Houston, TX; Bill Neal, Abilene, TX; Bill O’Neal, State Historian of Texas, Carthage, TX; Patrick Peña, Texas Ranger, Waco, TX; James Pylant, Stephenville, TX; Chief Randy Prince, Texas Rangers, Austin, TX; Julia Putnam, Albany, TX; Gary Boyce Radder and Jeri Radder, Alamo, CA; Clay Riley, Brownwood, TX; Christine Rothenbush, Marketing, Promotions, & Development Coordinator, TRHF&M, Waco, TX; Louis R. Sadler, Las Cruces, NM; Tony Sapienza, Paramus, NJ; Brianna Satterfield, Wichita Falls Museum of Art, Wichita Falls, TX; Cathy Smith, Haley Library, Midland, TX; Major Todd Snyder, Texas Rangers, Lubbock, TX; Robert W. Stephens, Atlanta, GA; Don Stoner, Texas Ranger, Cleburne, TX; Christina Stopka, Deputy Director and Head of the Armstrong Research Center, TRHF&M, Waco, TX; Peta-Anne Tenney, Willcox,

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AZ; Becky Trammel, Wichita County Historical Commission, Wichita Falls, TX; Joseph H. Troubaugh II, Carlisle, PA; David Turk, Historian, U.S. Marshals Service, Washington, DC; Lieutenant George Turner, Texas Rangers, Ret., Cleburne, TX; Lieutenant Wende O. Wakeman, Texas Rangers, Huntsville, TX; Harold J. Weiss, Jr., Leander, TX; Steve P. Wharram, Cleburne, TX; Chief H.L. “Hank” Whitman, Jr., Texas Rangers, Ret., Floresville, TX; Jim Willett, Director, Texas Prison Museum, Huntsville, TX; James Wright, Whitney, TX; Donald M. and Louise Yena, San Antonio, TX; Jeremy Youngs, Assistant Manager, Visitor and Retail Services, TRHF&M, Waco, TX. Too, and it should not—must not—go unmentioned, are the exceptional contributions of the University of North Texas Press staff. Manuscripts must be converted into books. At UNT Press this noteworthy duo is at the top of their game: Director Ron Chrisman, and Karen J. DeVinney, Assistant Director/Managing Editor. These hardworking folks are more than deserving name-specific mention and appreciation. This truly remarkable team shepherds the publication evolution from raw product to an actual first-rate book in hand. Through their stellar input nonfiction writers watch words become books, readers are handed a new volume to peruse and, most importantly, a legitimate addition to the genre of Texas history is evermore preserved.

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the word indigenous is a tricky term: in truth but a snapshot in time, in fact a moving target. Unfortunately—in certain quarters—shooting from the hip is commonplace. Sometimes the quick trigger assessments are wide of the mark. Particularly germane for the text in hand and standing as exemplar would be a signal fact: Europeans were traipsing about and settling in lands that would become the Lone Star State long before Comanche rode into history books as Lords of the South Plains.1 Within the context of the grand epochal schemas of cultural dispersion—and/or displacements—the Comanche were, actually, late comers to Texas, as would be Americans of Anglo extraction.2 However, the sociological struggles for supremacy would ultimately play in arenas understood by diverse rival interests: Martial might was crucial. Asserting dominion over vast areas of topography was easy, but actually holding the ground was not—a curdling gruel Spain and later an independent Mexico would be forced to swallow, as would in due time jittery secession-minded Texans. Sovereignty’s landlords change.3 When unwillingly and unhappily pushed from their Rocky Mountain homelands between the Yellowstone and Platte Rivers, Comanche brashly invaded the Southern Plains, territory long inhabited and claimed by Apache and a not insignificant grouping of other Amerindian subsets. 1

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The militaristic hostility between Indians was brutal and pitiless—as all wars are. In the epochal sense, nomadic warlike Comanches were on the move. Quantifiable result of the migration was fierce and real.4 “For one hundred and fifty years they [Comanches] made forays against the red and white people along the border of their territory, and resisted the approach of all intruders.”5 Absent a hint of exaggeration, it was a land grab of runaway proportion. Equally ravenous with desire to claim dominance over a vast landscape that would in due time become Texas, were settlers and land speculators chasing capitalism’s promise: Conquer the land and reap the righteous rewards. Though it might insensitively shatter grand delusions of politeness and/or political correctness in today’s marketplace of enlightened thinking—for early nineteenth-century Texas—counterfeit would be coins of the realm minted from any idealistic notions of harmonious coexistence.6 Naked aggressiveness were not exotic currencies strange to warring societies, be they Indian or European—or Texians during the pre-Republic of Texas era. Or, even as a freestanding sovereign nation and/or even later subsequent to sanctioned statehood. Wholesale intransigence was unmistakably ubiquitous, ethnically predisposed, extraordinarily dangerous, bloody, and deadly—and reciprocal!7 Collectively speaking, showing weakness was unacceptable for the Comanche, and they didn’t. Succinctly a hardcore fact has been forged and hammered across the anvil of history’s truths: “Neither the Americans or the Indians [Comanche and allies] they confronted along that raw frontier had the remotest idea of the other’s geographical size or military power. Both, as it turned out, had for the past two centuries been busily engaged in the bloody conquest and near extermination of Native American tribes. Both had succeeded in the lands under their control. The difference was that the Comanches were content with what they had won. The AngloAmericans, children of Manifest Destiny, were not.”8 Figuratively breaking the spirit and literally breaking the back of enemies was culturally vital: “But by 1750 the Comanches in fact had carved out a militarily and diplomatically unified nation with remarkably precise

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boundaries that were patrolled and ruthlessly enforced. They had done it with extreme violence, and that violence had changed their culture forever. In the decades that followed, the Comanches would never again be satisfied with hunting buffalo.”9 Adroitly, hardcore reality has been distilled: “The Southern Plains Indians raided because raiding was what they did. . . . The main purpose of a typical raid was horse gathering. The Comanches depended heavily on horses, not only for transport but also for currency. Raids were also rites of passage, the primary means which young men proved their prowess. . . . Until he had returned from a raid with some horses, a captive, or a scalp, that he’d taken himself, no one would respect or ask for his advice. . . . Murder wasn’t the objective of most raids. Still, Mexican-Americans, European-Americans, and African-Americans who were unlucky enough to encounter a raiding party along the road or in a field might be killed for sport or practice, or perhaps as a precaution.”10 “They had quickly evolved, like the ancient Spartans, into a society entirely organized around war, in which tribal status would be conveyed exclusively by prowess in battle, which in turn was invariably measured in scalps, captives, and captured horses.”11 Therein, in large part, is genesis for this treatment. Equitably portraying Texas Rangers by taking into account the context of time and place is vital. Unquestionably had there been an absence of hostility, empresario Stephen F. Austin would not have perceived any need for employing the service of ten “rangers” attached to the militia command of thirty-year-old Lieutenant Moses Morrison for a provisional, and short-lived, term of enlistment during 1823. Nevertheless, history affirms such was the case as far as Stephen F. Austin’s proposal, but less charitably disposed to cough up an actual hard document confirming these “rangers” ever took to the field—as “rangers.”12 Sometimes semantic interpretation is not so simple, not so precise as to render an incontrovertible absoluteness. There are, though, hardcore truths. At the outset of Tejas (Texas) colonization by Texians in lower reaches of the Brazos and Colorado River watersheds where Anglo settlement was budding, it would not be Comanche triggering the

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headaches, heartaches, and headstones. That would come shortly— within historic framework, ever so shortly. However, in the interim, the initial conflict between Anglo settlers and local tribesmen centered about the bleeding contests between Karankawas—by some accounts purportedly cannibals—of seashore villages, the Wacos along the Brazos River, and the Tonkawas and Tehuacanies between the Brazos and the San Antonio Rivers.13 “All these tribes greeted their new neighbors [Texas colonists] ambiguously, sometimes as friends, sometimes as thieves, and sometimes as killers.”14 Jettisoning idealism inspired by modern-era atonement, in truth, during those earliest days of Austin’s colonization the “. . . Indians saw the Anglo settlers not as neighbors but as an emerging natural resource: The white newcomers gave gifts, they had a willingness to trade, and they owned things worth stealing.”15 Assuredly, as history well records, despite maudlin romanticism the real bloodletting was not near one dimensional or singularly demonical: “. . . Tonkawas directed their malice at the Wacos, who had slaughtered some of their women and children while the warriors were away hunting.”16 In what would soon become the Republic of Texas, as elsewhere, Indians had been warring with Indians long before any palefaces were a part of the equation. The liberal colonization of Tejas by new faces from lands faraway simply added to the mix of mankind’s bizarre conflicts, material and geographical acquisitions and, in due course, the flowering of fresh and somewhat strange—but certainly expedient, alliances. Early-day colonists banding together, forming impromptu posses and reacting to this or that perceived—or very real—Indian atrocity had its shortcomings. Likewise, although Mexican Governor José Félix Trespalacios had of necessity okayed the blueprinting of military districts for Tejas in 1822, and even though able-bodied males were compelled to step to the mark and do their part, civilian militias had decided drawbacks: “it was not a quick reaction force. . . . when the militia took to the field most civilian activities ceased and the settlements were left unattended. The settlers were mostly farmers,” and many, if not most, could have hardly even been properly mounted for

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an extended search and destroy campaign straddling work-stock typically harnessed for furrowing, not fighting.17 True, during the Spring of 1823, settler Robert Kuykendall riding as headman for a dozen civilian volunteers and guided by an involuntarily drafted Tonkawas’ chief, Carita, successfully overhauled and obdurately killed as many as twenty of a band of marauding Karankawas from the Gulf Coast. The Karankawas had uncharacteristically and unguardedly camped in a thicket along the banks of Skull Creek near present-day Eagle Lake in Colorado County, seemingly unconcerned or oblivious to the fact colonists would demand retribution—in blood—for the Indians killing two fellows and with seven arrows wounding a third. The miscalculation gave Andrew Castleman chance to take the grisly scalp of “one of the slain” Karankawas and his bow as trophies of war. Kuykendall’s command had tasted victory, yes, but that was an ad hoc troupe poorly outfitted and understaffed—and damn lucky.18 On 6 July 1823 near what is now Seguin in Guadalupe County, an allied band of Karankawas and Wacos attacked settlers John Jackson Tumlinson and Joseph Newman who were traveling to San Antonio de Béxar for the purpose of securing powder and ball for militiamen. Tumlinson was killed. Riding a first-class hot-blooded horse Newman made good his getaway, woefully sounding the alarm and rallying revenge. John Jackson Tumlinson Jr. jumped to the forefront, recruiting an eleven-man squadron, with his younger brother Joseph Tumlinson, yet a teenager, acting as the maddened corps’s scout. One and all sallied forth to do damage. Quite proficiently, in due time, young Joseph located the suspected guilty Indians, numbering thirteen, camped in the shady timber overlooking the Colorado River’s east bank near fifteen miles north of present-day Columbus in Colorado County. After picketing their mounts at a reasonably safe distance and surreptitiously drawing near the opposition’s campground, the Texians concealed themselves, ostensibly to initiate an attack at sunrise. The plan went awry when an Indian at close range incautiously revealed himself to the no doubt wound-tight teenager. Young Joseph Tumlinson killed him outright. Quite expectedly the

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dying warrior’s bloodcurdling scream and the gunshot snapped the two opposing factions into action, and the final scorecard netted a dozen dead Indians, while the Texians exited the field unscathed.19 Nor were Indians the one and only irritant rubbing raw nerves of hard-working or otherwise conscientiously law-abiding settlers. There were real riffraff among them: Landlubbing pirates. Administration of justice—a perceived justice—in light of the Mexican government’s lackluster implementation and less than timely dispensation punishment for offenders was an open doorway for infuriated Texians to take matters into their own hands—rightly or wrongly. And, sometimes the no-nonsense application of righteousness was brutal. Meting out cutting lashes with a leather-plaited blacksnake whip was not uncommon for thieves, be they Anglo, Mexican, Frenchman, or Indian. And, as an old-timer remembered, one fellow, Dr. Lewis B. Dayton, was “fond of fishing in muddy waters,” a euphemism for agitation and in this particular case one presumably bordering on treason: “he was arrested by William Hall and others, on the charge of uttering false and slanderous accusations against the Empresario and endeavoring to produce grave disturbances in the Colony. . . . His head was besmeared with tar and the contents of a pillow emptied upon it. He was then released and ordered to depart the Colony forthwith. He, accordingly, did leave it immediately and never returned.” Several other hardened fellows couldn’t leave the colony, even had they wanted to. After committing several coldhearted murders and stealing horses the party of “Mexicans from the border of Louisiana” were at last overhauled on the western bank of the Brazos at the Coshattie crossing: “Two [or three] of them were killed and their [heads (?)] stuck on poles at the roadside. The horses were also retaken and restored to the owner. After these examples the ‘border ruffians’ ceased their depredations within the bounds of Austin’s colony.”20 The aforementioned 1823 plea on the part of Stephen F. Austin to establish a ten-man corps of “rangers” to provide protection underneath the umbrella of more permanence than sporadic call-ups from particularized militia districts—eventually increased to six—is

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by some proponents assigned as birth-year of the Texas Rangers, an assertion that merits no meaningful argument herein.21 Advocates of a somewhat later date of origin, too, own a data bank of relevance.22 Terminology such as “ranger” did not originate in MexicanTexas, nor did it even derive from an American usage. As early as the fourteenth century in Medieval England the term “Raungers” was in vogue to describe not the Royals’ professional soldiers but hand-picked watchmen, exactingly governed by Laws of the Forest: Specifically tasked to protect open lands around forests from wild animals; to track, identify, and capture poachers—all the animals belonging to the Crown—and to bring horror-struck prisoners to the Monarch’s court and/or remove them to dungeons/prisons.23 By the time British immigrants arrived on the eastern coast of North America, the word “Raunger” had been ever so slightly tweaked, now it was “Rainger” and as on a Virginian Island in Chesapeake Bay the “Raingers” were to furnish protection “by scouting for enemies and engaging them when found.”24 However, by the first trimester of the eighteenth-century and, for a time period thereafter, settlers in Georgia were well acquainted with the concept: “the practice migrated to the American colonies where as early as 1739 James Oglethrope raised a Georgia unit called the Troop of Highland Rangers,” who could offer a modicum of protection by patrolling the woods and lowlands of the colony.25 During the course of time, and certainly by the American Revolution, the term “Ranger” and his martial duties was used to describe a man from a specialized squadron of riflemen, capable of inflicting and extracting a horrific price from adversaries armed with distinctly inferior muskets. Traveling with a minimum of baggage, and acting as fast-moving spies and scouts, Rangers—with varying degrees of autonomy—could reconnoiter, work behind enemy lines, gather vital intelligence, and harass and/or kill their enemies sans the formalized marching and cumbersome logistical orders of regimental or brigade-level elements. Rangers brought to the strategic table their own brand of tactics, and continually honed them to razor sharpness. Perhaps crediting use of the term “Ranger” as it would

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later be applied in annals of Texas history could rightly be awarded to Major Robert Rogers, a veteran of the French and Indian War, a Loyalist and founder of the Queen’s Rangers, a unit comprised of— at first—concurring Americans.26 Although not specifically known as Rangers, Stephen F. Austin and his colonists could well have drawn on strategic ideas closer to home: the blending of an early Spanish model already in play. Well before Austin arrived on the scene, and decades before Mexico staked her claim winning independence, one enduring technique of the Spanish crown’s dealing with troublemakers on New Spain’s forlorn northern boundary, no matter ethnicity, was by tactical employment of the La Compañía Volante, the dreaded Flying Squadron. In a nutshell these quasi soldierly elements were in-the-field aggressors, taking the fight to the adversary. Armed with a lance, a single-shot carbine, and one or two pistols, while splendidly mounted with a string of as many as a dozen horses held in reserve as remounts, individuals of La Compañía Volante were not hamstrung with the nightmares of formal military logistics. Though nominally captained and trained by seasoned Spanish military officers, these hard-riding and hard-charging light cavalry troopers were actively recruited from the frontier settlements, men already familiar with the territory to be patrolled—and the enemy.27 They were a formidable force, one worthy of emulating on many fronts.28 Practically speaking, then, subsequent to shattering England’s initial hold, and following the War of 1812, eager Americans migrating to the promised richness of Brazos and Colorado River lands carried with them an unbridled optimism—and a workable understanding of the difference between full-time soldiers, part-time militiamen, and very real notions about making use of Rangers to augment the appreciable deficiencies of either. Their introduction to—at least the overall concept—of La Compañía Volante cemented those ideas of warfare. Regardless the rights and wrongs—which there is a tendency to argue today—Texas, while yet a part of Mexico, could be bloody ground to cover. Front to back the decade of the 1820s would not

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be the future Lone Star State’s most violent era, but depending on where one were standing, it could really measure a hair-raising day. Finally, after “numerous” and sometimes murderous raids by probing Indians, Stephen F. Austin authorized Captain Randal Jones to chastise a band of Karankawas. In the tit for tat raid and retaliate world unfolding on the frontier, Captain Jones near what is now Freeport adjacent to the Gulf of Mexico, and his 23 volunteers clandestinely eyeballed the camp of Karankawas. The unawares Indians had been mourning the loss of several tribesmen from an earlier clash with settlers from the vicinity of Bailey’s Store, five miles west of present day Angleton. Intermittently wailing and weeping the hysterical Karankawas had blundered by not posting an alert sentinel. The Texians’ early morning wakeup call issued with the black powder discharges of single-shot rifles quite naturally aroused the Karankawas, jumpstarting them into battle-mode. Their response was steadfast and vigorous—and deadly. While the Indians failure to post a lookout had been a serious slip-up, Captain Jones and his crew had, too, made a reckless misstep—monstrous. Their estimation as to the number of Karankawas was off, disastrously so, as was their assessment of the impenetrable positioning the Indians held behind screening veils afforded by dense canebrakes.29 Though perhaps as many as fifteen Karankawas were killed during the ensuing mêlée, the settlers could sorrowfully tally their dead as Phelps Bailey, William S. Spencer, and William H. Singer, plus not just a few gravely and/or less seriously wounded Texians.30 An old-time chronicler of early nineteenth-century Texas doings, John Henry Brown, gloomily noted: “It was claimed that fifteen Indians were killed, but of this we have no assurance when we remember the arms then in use. Be that as it may, it was a clear repulse of the whites, whose leader, Capt. Jones, was an experienced soldier of approved courage. Such a result was lamentable at that period in the colony’s infancy.”31 Without alluding to or trying to enumerate every contest between Anglo and Indian still on the 1820s calendar, or placating twenty-first century consciences with sugarcoated notions of how things might or should have been, frankly citing but a sampling

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would seem appropriate. On or about 4 April 1826 northeast of Gonzales, near what is now La Grange in Fayette County, Tawakoni warriors blistered into the area hunting their sworn enemies, Tonkawa. Purportedly they by chance found a Mexican, killed and scalped him, then opted to make nighttime camp in the concealing bed of Ross’ Creek. Militia Captain James Jefferies Ross, leading a reactive force of thirty-one dyed-in-the-wool and fuming frontiersmen, locked up with the Tawakoni, catching them completely by surprise as they morbidly danced around a fire with “fresh scalps.” The Texians’ gunfire—a volley safely unleashed—reduced the Tawakoni raiding party’s numbers by half, killing eight; lucky survivors suffered wounds but fled. Shortly, near Gonzales, Indians attacked settlers on 2 July 1826, stealing horses and punching a leaden rifle ball deep into Bazil Durbin’s shoulder, a souvenir he carried for the next thirty-two years. Then the Indians mercilessly killed John Wightman, subsequently scalping and mutilating his lifeless corpse, as if it were a calling card of impending doom for any future emigrant Texians desiring an address in what would become Gonzales County, a subsection of empresario Green DeWitt’s colony.32 Somewhat troubled—maybe incensed—with the Mexican Army’s abject failure at protecting his colonists, Stephen F. Austin took proactive measures to issue Wacos and Tawakonis a dose of comeuppance, even enlisting the services of then more-or-less friendly Cherokees, Shawnees, and Delawares. Austin’s militia captains and Indian allies were successful during one campaign as far as locating their adversary’s village, but as the saying goes, they were a day late and a dollar short—the campground was abandoned.33 The following year, 1827, depending on consequential semantic explanation (as was also true for 1823) again adds fodder for meaningful but less than conclusive deliberations on the date of organizationally birthing the Texas Rangers: “Perhaps the earliest confirmed existence of a true Texas Ranger company was in January 1827. Austin had taken his militia out to maintain order during the Fredonian Rebellion in Nacogdoches. To protect his colony from surprise Indian raids in his absence, Austin ordered Captain Abner

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Kuykendall and eight other men to ‘range the country’ between the Brazos and the Colorado along the San Antonio Road.”34 Does ranging a Ranger make? ¿Quéin sabe? Before the 1820s were history two more memorable Indian raids awakened settlers to the omnipresent peril that could sweep through their neighborhoods unannounced. During July 1829 Thomas Thompson found Indians in possession of his farm near present-day Bastrop. Slipping away undetected, Thompson “went below” on the Colorado River and succeeded in convincing ten men to accompany him back to the farm. At daylight the skirmish launched and shortly four “savages” were dead on the battlefield, several others making a clean and, for them, most fortunate getaway.35 Rather quickly Stephen F. Austin raised 100 men to chase after and kill the remaining warriors, dividing the manpower equally into two companies, one commanded by Oliver Jones, the other under the leadership of Bartlett Sims, both answering to the aforementioned Abner Kuykendall. “About this same time the depredations and murders by the Indians in the vicinity of Gonzales induced the raising of another company which was placed under the command of Harvey S. Brown.” Subsequent to scouting it was learned that the Wacos and Tehuacanas had gone to ground, camping near the mouth of the San Saba River.36 The Indians had rightly deployed rearguard scouts, and the Texians’ pursuit came as no grand surprise. Resultantly, only one Indian was killed as the raiders melted into the inviting vastness owned by Coahuila y Texas (the Mexican states of Coahuila and Texas had been fused in 1824). After being in the field for a tiring thirty-two days, the last few subsisting only on “acorns and persimmons,” the weary and no doubt hungry and humiliated Texians staggered back to the rudimentary comforts of hearth and home—and cornbread.37 What would not prove comforting for progressing settlers during the ensuing decade were upheavals linked with declaring and fighting for independence from Mexico—and an ever escalating era of suffering scalping knifes. Colonists in what would soon become the sovereign Republic of Texas would meet their most formidable and intimidating Indian antagonists, the Comanche and allied

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compatriots, the Kiowa. Arrogantly boasting—or conceding—that their ancestors had wrested away most of Mexican-Texas from other Indians through a warfare uncompromising and unforgiving, and then whining another rival was now hell-bent on wresting the land away from them would seem an anemic argument. And at the onset of Anglo colonists pushing into new western lands, such a silly claim was backburner rhetoric reserved for a later date, after the bloody tide had changed and history’s Goddess had a new landlord in mind. For the interim, Comanche had a plan, one infused by tradition: “And as Texians and Mexicans learned their [Comanches’] masterful horsemanship combined with expert use of bow and arrow, lance, and tomahawk made them mighty warriors. War was the tribe’s greatest obsession and constant pursuit. For enemies, it was made the more terrible by indiscriminately falling on everyone, from infants to old people of both sexes, by rape, pillage, torture, brutal treatment of captives, and frightful butchery of the dead.”38 That said, many frontier Texians unapologetically embraced their own indefensible paradox: slavery. The very thought of Indians by the light of the Comanche Moon slipping into the settlements stealing or attacking an isolated homesteading family, killing some and kidnapping women and children, was abhorrent. Ideas vis-à-vis Comanche abuse of captured mothers and daughters and the wholesale Indianization of children was deplorable—wretched behavior at the hand of uncivilized savages. Lifetime enslavement of black Africans and their progeny, well, it just wasn’t near equivalent. Or was it? History isn’t pretty! Ugliness playing out on the 1830s Coahuila y Texas stage—the state of affairs—also merits a cursory mention. During 1831, at Live Oak Bayou near Matagorda Bay, some seventy Karankawa Indians during a murderous raid through the area killed Charles Cavina’s (sometimes spelled Cavinagh) wife and three daughters, and Mrs. Elisha Flowers who had misfortunately been visiting at the time. After ransacking Cavina’s cabin, the Karankawa—their bloodlust up—moved to the Flowerses’ homestead and killed Elisha. His bloodlust up, Charles Cavina raised a hardened company of sixty

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men, and after electing the colorful and audacious Aylett C. “Strap” Buckner captain, set off in pursuit of the offending Indians. Trailed to an island near the mouth of the Colorado River near present-day Matagorda, the Karankawa suffered a devastating defeat. There were, in the end, as many as forty to fifty dead Indians; warriors, women, and children alike. Garishly the Colorado River ran red with blood, quite literally, at least according to one account.39 Later, on 22 November 1831, a horrific contest between Wacos and Caddos on the one side and the now famous James Bowie and his brother Rezin, along with seven other adventurous treasure hunters, plus two servants, “Charles, a negro, and Gonzales, a Mexican,” on the other. Venturing into the then wild and woolly region in what is now Menard County, the Bowie brothers and party were overtaken and warned by a “Mexican captive” in custody of a pair of wandering Comanches that the Wacos and Caddos, numbering near 160, were planning to catch them unawares and kill them, each and every one! Half a dozen miles from the old San Saba Mission, the Anglos camped, with careful attention to occupying tactically safe ground. The allied Indians struck at daybreak. What followed was a near— but not—hand-to-hand scrap between eleven pinned-down fellows fighting for their lives, with no hope of reinforcement from any quarter. Despite the Indians trying to burn them out, the Texians held their ground, some battling blazes with buffalo robes and blankets, while their comrades blasted away with bullets and unerring accuracy. Fifty-two Indians paid the permanent penalty during the thirteen-hour clash before withdrawing and allowing James Bowie his later martyrdom at San Antonio de Béxar.40 For the saga in hand, 1835 would prove both a bloody and banner year. In the first instance a band of eighty raiding Comanches had spied a heavily loaded mule-train traveling the road from San Antonio de Béxar to Gonzales. The Comanches entertained no thoughts of friendliness; their geographic course had been set. Within sight of the substantial roughhewn log residence of John Castleman near a pond, the caravan made camp. The train, belonging to a Frenchman named Geser and his two partners who were along

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on the trip, accompanied by their ten Mexican muleteers, turned out to be unsuspecting bait. At first light on that fifteenth day of April the Comanches struck. The annihilation was abrupt—and absolute. There were no survivors. The dead were “brutally mutilated and scalped.” Plundering was effortless, and the Comanche, carrying what they could, departed the ghastly killing field, riding straight by Castleman’s home, shaking their lances and shields in defiance, but not at all inclined to waste precious time and/or blood attacking or laying siege to a well fortified frontiersman’s stronghold, the actual number of well-armed occupants inside but iffy guesswork. Upon the Comanches’ exodus, John Castleman made an inspection of the battlefield: “He found no men still alive and found each to be horribly mutilated. The area was drenched in blood, littered with the strewn goods, and peppered with arrows stuck through boxes, saddles and carts and lying broken on the ground. The Indians had only thrown the bodies of their own dead into a pool of water for the fiends of nature to dispose of.”41 Sure that the Comanches were not longer in the area, Castleman—with due haste—along with his wife and four children struck out for Gonzales, fifteen miles to the east, where he at last sounded the alarm. Fervently and deliberately, thirty gutsy men took to the saddle and were gone. Easily following the Comanches’ trail up the Guadalupe River and then northwest to present day San Marcos (in Hays County) the hard-charging pursuers were for the most part confident about overhauling and punishing the murderous looters. Four days later, on the Río Blanco near what is now Wimberley, the fleeing raiders and the Texians did what Comanches and Texians were seemingly preordained to do: Try to kill one another! Having depleted the greater portion of their arrows during the attack on Geser’s heavily loaded caravan, relatively speaking the collision was a lopsided affair. After inflicting but minor damage and little injury, the Comanche scooted for Hill Country sanctuary, though several had been killed, others wounded. The Texians gathered what stolen property they could, returning to Gonzales—reasonably happy with the outcome, but physically frazzled to the nub.42

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The Texians were not happy, however, with perceived injustices at the hands of, in their hearts and minds, the outrageously despotic Antonio López de Santa Anna. The Texians’ eventual cry for a Mexican state of their own and later the clear-cut separation and unbending independence from Mexico itself is certainly genesis for one of the most thrilling narratives within the fabric of American history.43 This, though, is not the place or time to detail that story. Colonists while sowing the seeds of rebellion against Mexico were more than well aware of the threat an unprotected frontier would leave open for Indians with thoughts of marauding and murdering and misappropriating in their long-established communal repertoires. Outspoken generalizations, especially twenty-first century assessments about nineteenth-century difficulties, are truthfully less than precise. For not just a few years in what would soon become Texas, the Indians—for the most part—were masters at exploiting weakness, wherever! With potential vulnerability from Indian sorties on the homefront while Texians were away fighting Mexicans in the name of righteousness and revolution, architects of the provisional government at San Felipe de Austin turned their attention to at least a stopgap answer for a very real and high priority dilemma—frontier defense. On the seventeenth day of October 1835, Daniel Parker Sr. tendered a Resolution, one creating a Corps of Rangers.44 Resolved that Silas M. Parker [Daniel’s brother] be and is hereby authorized and required to impl[o]y and superintend the conduct and proceedings of twenty-five rangers whose business shall be to range and guard the frontiers between the Brazos and Trinity rivers, and that Garrison Greenwood be and is hereby authorized and required to imp[o]y and superintend the proceedings & conduct of ten rangers on the East side of the Trinity River—and that D.B. Fryar [sic: Friar] be and is hereby authorized and required to impl[o]y and superintend the conduct and Proceedings of twenty five Rangers Whose business shall be to range between the Brazos and Colorado Rivers and that each of those superintenders have

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a right To engage to each ranger that [is] employed one dollar & twenty five cents per day until the convention makes other arrangements and to draw on the council or the executive established by this Convention from time to time for such sums of money as is necessary to defray expenses accompanying each draft by account of expenditures.45

It may be accurately chronicled regardless where one comes down on assigning a birth-year for the Texas Rangers, be it 1823 or 1827, or now 1835, inconvertibly subsequent to the latter date, yet still under Mexican rule, and even later during Republic of Texas and/or State of Texas days, there were and would be Texas Rangers. And in the beginnings the three “superintenders” of a “line of Rangers from the Colorado the Nazish [Neches] River” were instructed where to position their forces during 1835: “the superintendants of the rangers from the Colorado to the Brazos and from the Brazos to the Trinity should make their place of rendezvous at the Ouaco [Waco] village on the Brazos River, that the superintendant of the rangers on the East side of the Trinity River make his place of rendezvous at the town of Houston. . . .” As noted, these hardy 1835 Rangers were to be remunerated rather handsomely—for the place and time—taking into account the inherent dangers they were expected to face: $1.25 per day.46 The formality of Rangers electing their individual company officers would take place subsequent to arrival at their places of rendezvous. Once installed, company commanders were instructed to prepare and transmit—by courier—status reports as to their “proceedings” every fifteen days. Then, every thirty days the three Ranger “superintenders” would make formal reports for the newborn governing council. Though perhaps sometimes purposely glossed over, the Ranger officers were admonished to “be particular not to interfere with friendly tribes of Indians on our borders that said superintendants shall watch over the conduct of the officers and report accordingly and see that full justice is done to the bounds assigned them.”47 After independence from Mexico, the Ranger enabling resolutions—and there would be several during days of

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infant government—would also contain a retroactive clause of significance: “all officers and soldiers, who have actually been engaged in the ranging service since July 1835, shall be included in this act, and shall receive pay for the time he is in the service.”48 With inclusion of the retroactive wording some historians— and it’s undoubtedly a rational judgment—assert that Robert Morris Coleman was, in terms of hardcore factuality, the very first captain of Texas Rangers.49 Rightly or wrongly, thirty-six-year-old Captain Coleman, a former Kentuckian, has been characterized as a “volatile man, courageous and impetuous. . . .”50 Though the reasoning is from afar and a time well removed, there’s little room for doubt that Canoma, a Caddo chieftain, would have— if he could have—given R.M. Coleman poor marks for fairness. Amos R. Alexander and his son, Amos, Jr., were proprietors of a Bastrop store and hotel. Returning from a wagon trip to attain necessary commodities at the Gulf Coast’s seaside warehouses, father and son were attacked and murdered by hostile Indians at Pin Oak Creek, about thirty-five miles below Bastrop on the first day of June, 1835. Quite naturally settlers rallied to the battle cry, taking to the field in pursuit of the evildoers. Unbeknownst to these Indian hunters, farther to the north, near the Falls of the Brazos the usually friendly Canoma and several of his compliant tribesmen had been willingly tasked with tracking, recovering, and returning a small band of shod saddle-horses that had wandered. The narrative, though ill-fated, is somewhat predictable. The company chasing after the Alexanders’ killers collided with Canoma and his party, taking them into custody. Although wholly innocent of any involvement with the double murders, Canoma’s account fell on the deaf ears of forty-odd disbelieving fellows; guiltless Indians would not—should not—have possession of saddle-horses wearing iron. Judicial mockery overrode the twenty-one dissenters voting for at least a temporary reprieve—until Canoma’s plausible story could be disproved or verified, not an exceptionally complicated task it would seem. Sometimes cocksureness overrides composure. Two uneasy possemen, Stephen Townsend and John Rabb, opted out of

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watching the executions, while the impassioned Robert M. Coleman and eight helpmates carried out the summary justice—injustice.51 Seldom is Fate a kind mistress. She had a plan for Robert M. Coleman. And while it might put him into history books as the very first Ranger captain, that retroactive month of July 1835 qualifying his pay as a Ranger foreshadowed hazard and humiliation. East of the Brazos, in what is now Limestone County near Tehuacana Springs, Captain Coleman and his roughly twenty men had impersonally daubed on their figurative war-paint, challenging a village of Tawakonis and a few allied Caddos and Ionies on the eleventh day of July. Overconfidently, as it turned out, Captain Coleman entertained more than he had bargained for, a hundred-plus Indians, all willing and able to engage their common enemies, no matter ethnicity. Against overwhelming odds, and suffering casualties that may have numbered as much as one fourth of his fighting force, the harried Coleman dejectedly withdrew from the battlefield, not unwisely seeking succor and safety near headwaters of the Navasota River at Fort Sterling, soon to be renamed as Fort Parker. Shortly, subsequent to safely leaving his wounded behind stockade walls, the embittered Captain Coleman had returned to Sarahville de Viesca near the Falls of the Brazos, the nominal headquarters of empresario Sterling Clack Robertson’s colony from where he penned a letter of significance, the missive perhaps being the keystone document for actually formalizing the Coahuila y Texas Anglo’s concept of Rangers. Coleman advocated that the Indians must be punished. For the common good, citizens would be expected to cough up funds through taxation, and the monies expended to put into the field at least 200 Texians, split into four companies and those combat units should be—must be— deployed “high up on the different rivers. . . .”52 Seemingly the worried movers and shakers at San Felipe de Austin, busy with ideas of revolution, had harkened to the message, organized and positioned Ranger companies during the October 1835 consultations, and as an afterthought inserted the retroactive pay. Plainly 1836 Texians sought sovereignty from Mexico—a Republic of Texas was the upshot.53 Those very same now independent

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Texans perceived the need for Rangers, and they had them, even behind walls of the Alamo.54 The nightmarish siege and fall of the Alamo, the Palm Sunday executions of approximately 400 duped and unarmed prisoners by Mexican soldiers near historic La Bahía (Goliad), and the exceptionally quick—eighteen minute—Battle of San Jacinto wherein Texans annihilated Mexican soldiers had been, unquestionably, ferocious national newsmakers. On the Republic of Texas home-front 1836 would herald more than ample copy for a number of correspondents and their fledging newspaper editions: Captured!55 Detailing all the stories herein is not obligatory, suffice to say, Texas was for 1836—and decades into the future—a blistering cauldron for Indians intent on augmenting their inventory of trouble. A partial recap—even ephemeral—is compulsory. Notwithstanding twenty-first century cultural sensitivities implying otherwise, the very first clash between Rangers and Comanches erupted owing to the latter capturing Mrs. Hibbins and her two children, an unspeakable incident that for the second time made Sarah a widow due to Indians mercilessly killing a husband. The raiding Comanches’ insensitivity for Sarah’s infant son, once he started whining for food and drink, was conclusive: A maddened Comanche warrior killed the utterly innocent blaring baby. Unbelievably and, certainly admirably, Sarah somehow managed to escape her captors in the vicinity of where the city of Austin is now staked, along a Colorado River tributary, Walnut Creek. Fortuitously she bumbled and stumbled through briars, brambles, and cedar brakes, but luckily ended up at the cabin of Ruben Hornsby who was entertaining a recently enlisted company of Rangers headed by John J. Tumlinson, Jr. Wolfing down supper the Rangers made ready to do what Rangers were supposed to do: rescue young John Hibbins Jr. and slay his captors—at least some of them. They succeeded on both fronts. On the morning of 20 January 1836 the Rangers, overtaking their quarry, recaptured the boy and killed four Comanches, though two Texas Rangers were wounded: Elijah Ingram and Hugh Martin Childress, a rough cut backwoods bear-hunting circuit-riding preacher, one handy with both bullets and bibles. Purportedly even hardened frontiersmen, these provisionally

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enrolled Rangers, clinched their jaws and fought back tears when Sarah and John Jr. were, at last, reunited. Surviving Comanches weren’t tearful; they and/or their tribesmen had more work in store for any unmindful and vulnerable Texans foolishly dropping their guard—and there would be many to choose from.56 The twenty-six-year-old Prussian-born and very pregnant Mary Theresa Hennecke Juergens and her two young sons were captured at their isolated cabin on Cummins Creek in what is now Fayette County southeast of Warrenton by Comanches and although Mary was later ransomed for $300, the bargaining did not include her boys; subsequent to killing all the wagon train’s men folk, numbering near a dozen, Sarah Ann Horn and a woeful mother, Mrs. Harris, were captured near today’s Tilden in McMullen County, along with their crying children, one of whom, a little baby, was repeatedly thrown sky-high by Comanches until sudden and sadistic collisions with Mother Earth robbed its infant confusion and consciousness, bestowing eternal relief; then there was the May 19 Comanche and allied Indian attack at Fort Parker, resulting in the murders and mutilations of five men and the skewing of Sallie “Granny” Parker with a lance, adjunct to her being “outraged,” as well as the hideous abductions of nine-year-old Cynthia Ann Parker, her brother, near seven year old John Richard Parker, sixteen year old Rachel Parker Plummer, her eighteen month old son, James Pratt Plummer, and Elizabeth Duty Kellogg; and rounding out the year during late November was the kidnapping of six year old Ann Harvey and a “black servant” from their frontier home north of present day Calvert [Robertson County], subsequent to the Indians breaking her arm, mercilessly killing her daddy John B. Harvey and ten year old brother William and, then, attackers turning their undivided attention to her mother Elizabeth, who they “killed, scalped, and mutilated. . . . then cut out her heart and left it on her breast.”57 That immigrant Texans were yet walking the 1830s’ tightrope with regards to possible death at the thrust of a steel-tipped lance or flight of an arrow is evidenced—quite emphatically—by the indissoluble fact even youngsters were expected to stand tall,

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bravely bearing arms if necessary. The pioneering William Physick Zuber echoed reality: “With every family likely at some time to be attacked by Indians or to lose property by these thefts, every man or boy able to bear arms was a guard for his family.”58 Zuber’s voice was not singularly disposed hyperventilated prattle. Z.N. Morrell cautiously traveling below the Falls of the Brazos during that timeframe recalled the nighttime camping preparations: “Guns were all put in order, and my two little sons, aged thirteen and eleven years, and young Reed, were ordered to lie down with their shot-bags around their necks and their gun-locks under their blankets to keep powder dry. At that day we used flint and steel locks exclusively.”59 Thankfully 1836 closed: Disappointingly the insensitive bloodletting was anything but kaput. The next year, aside from skirmishes and killings and scalping shared between Texans and Indians, snatching white women and children from hearth and home played one of the causative roles banking fires of racial hatred. For a less than inspiring sales pitch to prospective Republic of Texas immigrants, an 1837 voyager to the new country provided guidance: “Texas is a more suitable arena for those who have everything to make and nothing to lose than the man of capital or family.”60 Perhaps, Alabamian James Goacher should have paid heed. During February 1837 Jane Goacher Crawford (James’s married daughter), her young daughter and her two younger brothers, ages eight and twelve, were violently spirited away into captivity from their Goacher Plantation home near Bastrop after raiding Indians had killed her husband, her father, and her mother-in-law, plus three hapless and helpless children; That summer, some sixteen miles south of La Grange, near present-day Schulenburg in Fayette County, about thirty marauding Comanches struck hard at the home of ten-year-old Warren Lyons, pitilessly killing and scalping his daddy, and making a clean getaway with their preteen hostage.61 From the Texans’ viewpoint there would be no respite. Even in East Texas settlers were not immune from attack. On 5 October 1838, near Jacksonville, a large band of allied “Caddos, Coushattas, Kichais, and Mexicans” murdered or captured upwards of eighteen

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folks from the neighboring Killoughs, Woods, and Williams families. Three days later, south of what is now Corsicana, a surveying party paid the ultimate price, forfeiting seventeen souls to the pleasure of approximately 300 Tehuacanas, Ionis, Wacos, and Caddos, though the Indians’ deathly trade proved to be bloodily disproportionate by a two to one margin. Following the murder of his entire family, ten-year-old Thomas Pearce had also become a prisoner of raiding Indians during 1838. And then there was another 1838 kidnapping, though unknown at the time, one portending disastrous fallout—in the big picture—for particular undiplomatic Comanches short-term and the whole Comanche Nation long-term.62 Thirteen-year-old Matilda Lockhart, in the company of other kiddos, namely the Putmans, James, Rhoda, Elizabeth, and Juda, ranging in age from ten years to two-and-one-half years, were playfully gathering pecans along the Guadalupe River in what is now DeWitt County when much to their bewilderment they were inhospitably waylaid by a band of stealthy Comanches. Making prisoners of the defenseless children was effortless, and in a heartbeat the Comanches and petrified kids—tied to fast horses with ribbons of rawhide—were phantoms. At twilight, as the October 1838 sun was fading below the western horizon, the children had yet failed to appear: parents began to show concern. After dark they began to worry and by sunrise, in a panic, they knew the cheerless score—barbarous Indians now owned their precious babies. But surely there was a glimmer of hope—maybe the Comanches would barter the children for blankets and beads and bullets rather than sacrifice them to butchery and degradation. For distraught mothers, hope springs eternal. Fathers, brothers, uncles, and fellow scraggily bearded settlers just saddled up, the hot trail was still workably fresh—pursuit was not optional. The grueling chase, nonetheless, was futile. Upriver, past the mouth of the Comal, in the rock-strewn Texas Hill Country the flitting Comanches’ trail drew dim—then disappeared. Or did it?63 Father Time ushering in the New Year was of no consolation to Andrew Lockhart, Matilda’s father, an industrious Illinoisan rightfully claiming a decade’s worth of residency within bounds of the shaded

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and alluring Guadalupe River’s bottomlands. There was no word of his daughter, her fate a surefire mystery. Maybe Texas Rangers could give it go, saving his precious girl child before cultural assimilation played an irrevocable hand—taking her from him forever! John Henry Moore riding at the head of a fifty-five-man Texas Ranger contingent, reinforced by forty-two hearty Lipan Apache, whose hatred for the Comanches was unfeigned, and twelve Tonkawas with equivalent sentiment, left civilization behind on 26 January 1839.64 Buttoning his shirt down tight, and turning his coat collar up to protect his ears from the biting cold in the dead of winter was Mr. Lockhart, the fires of finding his adored Matilda burning red-hot in his belly. For John H. Moore the overriding mission—despite Andrew Lockhart’s hopes—was to push the Comanches well past the frontier’s perimeter, thwarting them any chance for raiding into the settlements as the weather broke, a bold preemptive strike into their very heartland for a change. After nearly starving and freezing, and subsequent to the accidental discharge of a rifle which, in the end, would sorrowfully claim the life of George Wilson, the Rangers located their target’s encampment along Spring Creek in the San Saba River Valley. There were many Comanches, numbers that far exceeded Moore’s expectations. A battle on the morning of 15 February 1839 waxed hot, but with distinctly mixed results. Captain Moore, living in real time, didn’t apologetically garble his words or shy from the truth: “I ordered a charge which was promptly obeyed and carried to near the centre of the village, the men throwing open the doors of the wigwams or pulling them down and slaughtering the enemy in their beds.”65 Though Matilda Lockhart was in the Comanches’ camp and her father was hollering for her to run to him, her rescue attempt was dismantled: “The poor child had already been lashed into a run with the retreating Indian women, although she heard her father’s pitiful cries for her.”66 Despite the overwhelming numerical advantage owned by the Comanches, their scorecard for casualties, killed and/or wounded, far exceeded those of the Rangers and Indian allies, perhaps as many as eighty to four, some of whom as prisoners, were coldly executed by Lipans before any talks of exchanging hostages could be

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realized. Rangers had penetrated past the frontier’s edge, catching Comanches asleep at home, a gutsy action heretofore absent. Even so, there was an embarrassing downside, a myth-busting mortification. Due to growing numbers of Comanches rushing to the affray, Rangers were forced to retreat. Humiliatingly, they were compelled to return home—100-plus miles—afoot; Comanches had slipped behind lines and stampeded their horses.67 With Rangers of Moore’s command stumbling and struggling their way home, elsewhere between 100 and 300 horseback Comanches struck hard. At Webberville near the Colorado River in what the next year would be surveyed as Travis County, the widow Elizabeth Coleman was making do the best she could. Her husband, the aforementioned Robert Morris Coleman, had unexpectedly perished but two years before, drowned at the mouth of the Brazos. With three sons and two daughters to care for, Elizabeth was scratching out a hardscrabble living. Just three days after Moore’s decisive clash—and backpedaling—at Spring Creek, the unwelcome visitors made their mid-morning appearance, their unfriendly calling card for Elizabeth was an arrow punching into her throat. She crumpled across the cabin’s doorjamb, just inside. Her fourteen-year-old son, Albert, barred the door and grabbed one of three nearby rifles. And while he was shooting, aiming to kill a Comanche or two or three, Elizabeth valiantly tried to dislodge the spiky arrow from her neck, vainly: “The barb only tore a gaping wound and she bled to death.” Ordering his sisters, ages nine and eleven, to hide underneath a crawl-space, and not dare make their presence known until they heard voices of white men, no matter what happened, teenage Albert made ready to go down fighting—and he did. Severely wounded, Albert crawled to the side of his mother, and according to the terrified sisters spoke his last words: “Father is dead, mother is dead, and I am dying, but something tells me God will protect you.” Young Thomas Coleman, age five, playing outside had been grabbed by Comanches from the start, while the oldest of the brothers, James, and a hired hand, who had been working in the fields, ran downriver to sound the alarm, warning the neighbors of impending tragedy. Five hundred yards later,

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at the bordering residence of Dr. J.W. Robertson, the scared fellows saw that Comanches were in the process of ransacking the physician’s cabin—already having captured seven slaves; “one negro woman and four children, one old man, and a boy.”68 Toward the end of August 1839, leaving their home at Bastrop of two years on the back trail, lawyer/surveyor John Webster and family, along with Nelson, an “indentured servant,” set out for their new homestead. They would be enthusiastically following the compass needle north to the striking San Gabriel River country two miles east of present-day Leander in Williamson County. Accompanied by eleven other men in quest of surveying nearby lands, the six wagons—slowly drawn by oxen—seemed relatively safe.69 Not surprisingly, they would be wrong—dead wrong. On the twenty-seventh day of August their train was surrounded and attacked by Comanches, numbering somewhere in the neighborhood of 150. Though the thirteen mounted Texans may have fought gallantly, all eventually went down amid the war whoops, whooshing arrows, and whizzing rifle balls. The only survivors—thus far—were Dolly Webster, 32, her eleven year-old son Booker, and his little sister Virginia, age three. After scalping and mutilating the dead—and plundering the wagons—the gleeful warriors, a white mother and her two kiddos in tow, struck the road for invisibility before any infuriated pursuers could rally.70 Later, October 1839, these Indians trailed to the headwaters of the Colorado River evading notice and converged with a large encampment of opportunistic Comanche with their own delegation of wretched white hostages. And it was here—fortuitously—the ever escape-minded Dolly Webster met the dreadfully unfortunate teen Matilda Lockhart, yet a prisoner and suffering intolerably: “Her body was a mass of scars, sores, and bruises. . . . She had been held down while a flaming stick was held against her nose, burning the entire tip off to the bone. . . . Both her nostrils were charred wide open. She was a ghastly sight to see.”71 Perhaps there could have or would have been a rewrite of Texas history, and by extrapolation Texas Ranger history, had 1839 closed seeing Miss Matilda Lockhart at home.

2 

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with logical assuredness—certainly beyond a reasonable doubt—Comanche Indians in their Hill Country sanctuaries northwest of the settlements had become privy to what had happened regarding the Cherokees in East Texas: Expulsion for the many, fatality for others less fortunate. Without doubt the intrigues and alleged conspiracies between Cherokees and other East Texas Indians and Mexican political powerbrokers, a disgruntled government not yet formally recognizing legitimacy and/or sovereignty of a Republic of Texas, gins fascinating copy about devious international plots and failed diplomacy, as well as the displacement of most Indians desirous of calling the alluring piney woods west of the Sabine River home.1 The ensuing contests between Texans and Cherokees and allied Indians on the sixteenth day of July 1839 known as the Battle of the Neches were disproportionate, somberly so: a hundred or more dead or wounded Indians, while five likewise unlucky Texans, too, merited headstones.2 And, of no little consequence, was the wounding of the Republic of Texas’s Vice-President, David G. Burnet, Texas Secretary of War Albert Sidney Johnston, and the republic’s West Point graduated adjutant general, Hugh McLeod, a charismatic and self-assured campaigner who was neither “a summer soldier or sunshine patriot.”3 Tallied among the death list for Cherokees were Chief Big Mush and 26

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Chief Bowles, the latter a leader of rather widespread distinction, one whose demise created a headship vacuum soon to be filled—for the short term. Chief Bowles’s son John stepped into the void, somewhat sharing command of a faction of fleeing Cherokees with another; an ingloriously named fighter simply known by his moniker, The Egg. Unluckily for Chief John and The Egg, Christmas Day 1839 was no holiday—just a last day.4 Hard-charging Texans under command of General Edward Burleson had at length overtaken the weary Cherokees near the mouth of the San Saba during their headlong flight to a rumored safe asylum in Old Mexico. Seven warriors, including The Egg and John Bowles, were killed during the brisk firefight, while the Texans suffered two casualties, Captain John Lynch, dead, and a Tonkawa guide wounded. Victorious Texans took custodial charge of twenty-seven Cherokee women and children, as well as a herd of gaunt beef cattle and string of saddle-broke ponies.5 Attention to the geographical and chronological settings for the Cherokees’ collective last war whoops should not be lost in an empathetic age of twenty-first century enlightenment—it most assuredly was not lost or out of mind for particular Comanches contemporary to the time and place—in that broken country northwest of San Antonio. For the near-term Texan vs. Indian installment, Rangers per se would be elsewhere, though the aftermath of unfolding bloody happenings would soon impact many of their lives and legacies, fostering for posterity rudiments for an enduring legend.6 Within three weeks of the 25 December 1839 vanquishing of Cherokees on the San Saba, a delegation of Comanche were at San Antonio nominally making overtures for peace—putting the Texans and Texas Rangers in check. Their end game was not a resetting of cultural practices, but a move toward what was—for their interests—practical: Heretofore safe havens were decidedly dwindling. Hit and run tactics, guerilla warfare deep beyond the frontier’s edge, well, those damn Texans had turned everything upside down—and they, too, asked for no quarter and gave none. Unmistakably these three Comanches and their kith and kin were somewhat shaken by the recent outcomes playing out due to the

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very hard-line military policies of President Mirabeau B. Lamar, an unsympathetic ear for Indians anywhere within the Republic of Texas. These Comanches were carrying a vital twofold message, one that was sure—by design—to play big with Texans: In no uncertain terms, so they said, they had valiantly spurned the gifts and pleas from Cherokee and Mexican emissaries soliciting their help with making war on the recently crafted Republic.7 Comanches knew who had come out on top during the latest war with Mexico, and were well aware who was wielding the big stick of military and political power—and it wasn’t Mexicans. Comanches, too, were renowned horsemen and subsequent to most Cherokees being killed and/or forced from the Republic, they, at least Penateka Comanches, hurriedly opted for saddling the right horse before they too were trampled and/or stampeded into irrelevance.8 They would make peace. Henry W. Karnes, the military post commander at San Antonio, inflexibly informed the three Comanches who were probing possibilities for a parley that consideration of their entreaty was conditional: “American Captives” must be repatriated; “restoration” of stolen property would be requisite; and future Comanche “depredators” must be delivered to Republic of Texas authorities for the appropriate administration of prescribed punishments. Then—only then— could any talks prove worthwhile. As partial token of their feigned or faithful amity, on that ninth day of January 1840 the visiting Indians handed over to the wary Commander Karnes a “Mexican captive.” The delicate game of diplomacy had begun. The calculating trio of Comanches carrying gifts of the tenuous goodwill departed San Antonio, pledging to return within twenty to thirty days along with other Comanche chiefs, as well as consenting at that time to relinquish all of their white captives so that meaningful negotiations could commence.9 Hollow was part of the promise. Disillusioned—rightly or wrongly—with the trustworthiness of the Comanche spokesmen, Albert Sidney Johnston ordered Colonel William S. Fisher, commander of the First Regiment of Texas Infantry, to proceed to San Antonio forthwith carrying orders easily understood. Should the returning Comanche delegation arrive at

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the Alamo City and surrender their white prisoners, predominately women and children, the Texas soldiery was to stand-down: If they [Comanches] come, in accordance with their agreements, bringing with them the captives and deliver them up, such voluntary release of their prisoners will be regarded as an evidence of their sincere desire for peace and they will, therefore, be treated with kindness and be permitted to depart without molestation.10

On the other hand, should they fail to honor their commitment to turn over their prized captives, the duplicitous Comanche chiefs— one and all—were to be forcefully seized and held pending an exchange—a bloodless exchange—of hostages.11 Prior to Texas soldiers marshaling forces and marching to San Antonio, other Comanches rode into town, testing the workable viability of their plot: Not liberating captives, but trading them piecemeal, one at a time. Penateka Comanche Chief Muke-war-rah (sometimes Muguara or Spirit Talker) was of strong mind that doling out the captives slowly would guarantee that the Indians would be “getting the most out of every transaction.”12 As a result, at San Antonio on or about 20 February 1840 a youthful James Putman— cruelly captured along with his young sisters and Miss Matilda Lockhart—was ransomed for powder and ball, a good bargain for outgunned Comanches hopelessly handicapped behind the eight-ball of the world’s rocketing technological innovations; they made their living raiding and trading, not building or gardening. Monetarily or as chattel worth trading, James’s little sister Rhoda was valueless. She had been sacrificed and buried alongside the mother of a Comanche chief during the “great lamentation” associated with the matriarch’s death—at least so said some.13 During the ensuing days Colonel Fisher’s troops had bivouacked at riverside San Antonio, anxiously awaiting arrival of the Comanches and their collection of unfortunate white captives. Also waiting were the two high-ranking government officials selected to oversee negotiations as official peace commissioners: Adjutant General Hugh McLeod and Colonel William G. Cooke, Quartermaster-General, and

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now Acting Secretary of War. By mid-morning of 19 March 1840 the anticipation had come to an end. Two nattily decked-out Comanches acting as reconnoitering scouts and message bearers rode into San Antonio heralding that they would shortly be followed by Chief Muke-war-rah and other chiefs, along with a troupe of their womenfolk and children.14 All seemed well. What followed would not prove to be pleasant. Ushered into what was then known as the Council House on the northeast corner of Main Plaza and now Market Street, Muke-war-rah and eleven Penateka Comanche headmen took their assigned positions before Commissioners McLeod and Cooke, and Colonel Fisher, Commander Karnes being out-of-pocket due to pending business elsewhere. A few Comanche women took their place against a back wall. Almost from the outset Texans registered wonder: Where were the promised white captives? When broached with the obvious and yet unanswered question Muke-war-rah motioned to a Comanche woman. Gestured to step to the forefront and make her disclosure, the unaffected woman “threw back the long blanket around her to reveal the tiny shape of a young white girl, weakened by starvation and abuse. Her nose had been cut and burned to the bone, and she had scars on her shoulders and legs. Fifteen-year-old Matilda Lockhart looked half her age and was in a pitiful state.”15 Aghast at what they saw, the commissioners bent forward to ascertain more, questioning the emaciated Miss Lockhart. Despite her physical and mental abuse and otherwise being “utterly degraded” to the point where she “could never hold her head up again,” Matilda maintaining her high level of intelligence, at least according to Commissioner Hugh McLeod, had plenty to say: She had “seen several of the other prisoners at the principal Comanche camp a few days before she left, and that they brought her in to see if they could get a high price for her, and, if so, they intended to bring in the rest, one at a time.”16 When verbally challenged, Muke-war-rah somewhat haughtily chirped: “We have brought in the only one [captive] we had. The others are with the other tribes,” implying they too could be purchased—for the right price. Then, ratcheting his rhetoric upward

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with a tone of what seemed unmitigated arrogance to Texans, Mukewar-rah parried, querying: “How do you like the answer?” Not surprisingly, they didn’t! “This was known to be false. . . .”17 Cutting wheat from chaff, Texans knew it as an outright lie.18 Nor were they wholly oblivious to another niggling little detail of the early Republic’s reality. The marauding Indians that had spirited away Matilda Lockhart in the first place had been Muke-warrah’s Penateka Comanche band, the very ones who had mercilessly “tortured her and raped her.”19 What Texans knew or did not know regarding any cultural sexual taboos between Comanches in their teepees, was to them, inconsequential. Conversely they were most aware the prohibition regarding rape “except upon captives” was acceptable and not ethnically outlawed.20 And, too, it had been Muke-war-rah’s group that Ranger John Henry Moore had overhauled on the upper reaches of the San Saba just the year before, the time frantic Comanches manhandled Matilda away from the heartrending cries of her distraught daddy Andrew. Muke-war-rah wasn’t necessarily a peach of a fellow, not in the eyes of many Texans. Through the voice of a totally terrified interpreter fearing to forfeit his life and a soldierly following of explicit orders, Colonel Fisher told the twelve Comanche leaders they were now his prisoners, though the rest of the Indian party, women and children, and the young warriors on standby outside were free to return to their Hill Country campgrounds. His message was clear: The stunned Comanche chiefs would be fittingly released upon his taking possession of white captives the Indians yet detained, guiltless prisoners who he expected to be forthwith delivered to San Antonio. Further negotiations were, until then, at a standstill. A sad scenario uncorked in but a heartbeat.21 A Comanche chief drew first blood, stabbing a soldier while his cohorts were reaching beneath blankets for scalping knives and/or stringing their bows. Wretched captives they would not be—ever. Texans were relentless fighters, too, and whether or not a modern armchair thinker grades what happened next as a massacre or a battle rests solely on personal perspective. Inside and outside the

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Council House the Grim Reaper sowed his seeds. Amid the screams and shots and smoke and scrapping hand to hand there would be a tally, regrettably so: The determined Comanches drew short, sadly losing thirty chiefs and warriors, in addition to three women and two children, while the resolute Texans sorrowfully measured their losses at seven dead (three soldiers) and eight wounded (four soldiers). By day’s bloodbath end, two elderly Comanche warriors, apparently noncombatants, as well as twenty-seven forlorn Indian women and children were in custody, jailed at what was then well known as the calabozo.22 There were no winners.23 Yet hopeful of recovering the white captives, an adult Comanche woman was released from custody, outfitted with adequate provisions and told to return to the Penatekas’ campgrounds, spreading the word as to what had happened at the Council House—making it perfectly clear the Comanches’ white prisoners could be exchanged for Indians being held at San Antonio. She was, as far as the Texans knew, never heard from again. But according to at least one report, that of child captive Booker Webster, who had been awarded temporary tribal status, the message was received, loud and clear: Learning of the deaths and detention of their Comanche kinsmen, those yet camped in the Hill Country “howled and cut themselves with knives, and killed horses for several days. And they took all the American captives, thirteen in number, and roasted and butchered them to death with horrible cruelties; that he and a little girl named Putman, five years old, had been spared because they had previously been adopted into the tribe.”24 Meanwhile some infuriated Texans were howling, too—at each other. During a messy verbal brouhaha, Colonel Lysander Wells, Commander of the Texas Cavalry, blatantly accused Captain William Davis Redd, Company A, First Texas Regiment, of abject “dastardly” cowardice due to his holding firm to an announced twelve-day truce so Comanches would have sufficient time—if they were so disposed—to surrender/exchange their captives. Captain Redd had refused combat with some emboldened Comanches who had reentered San Antonio. A duel of honor was called for. Captain Redd

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issued the challenge. Colonel Wells accepted. Veterans of the San Jacinto contest, both were proven hardcore fighters—and pigheaded. The duelists met on the morning of 10 May 1840 at six o’clock, in the Alamo City: Conceivably armed with new-fangled Colt’s Patent Arms repeating pistols. Wells aimed for Redd’s brain. Redd aimed for Wells’ chest. Both soldiers were, in fact, dead shots. Neither man’s heart or head had proved very difficult targets. Both men died.25 Shortly thereafter, on 20 May, though it’s generally but obviously underreported in many agenda-driven accounts, Private John Robinson, Frontier Regiment, Company C, was found guilty at Courts Marshal of improper conduct to or with one of the Comanche women being detained at San Antonio, purportedly the grieving wife of one of the slain chiefs. As result of Colonel Edward Burleson’s call for no-nonsense disciplinary action, the offending soldier had his head shaved, was gruffly tarred and feathered, suffered a number of back-stinging lashes, and was then unceremoniously cashiered out of the Texas Army.26 Private Robinson’s headgear, at least for awhile, was maybe warranted but unwanted feathers. Subsequent to the bitter Council House fighting, well past the western frontier’s edge, a variety of Comanche bands were converging and congregating, angrily donning feathered headdresses, too, colorful and elegantly crafted war-bonnets. Potesenaquaship (Buffalo Hump), a well-known Penateka chief, was busy.27 Though it would take several months to blueprint—no doubt with a conspiratorial push from scheming Mexican operatives—the great Comanche raid, the boldest Indian attack of the Texas Republic was, at last, put into motion.28 Were Texans ever to need the service of Rangers, the time was drawing near, though at first they were blindsided—totally and tragically. Wholly undetected due to the sparse scattering of settlements, determined Comanche raiders accompanied by Kiowa and a number of instigating Mexican allies, near 600 in the aggregate, showed up at the doorstep of Victoria not far above the windswept Gulf Coast during the balmy afternoon of 6 August 1840. They had already tortured by cutting off the soles of his feet, then pitilessly killed and

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scalped, Tucker Foley close to the Lavaca River settlements and wounded Dr. Joel Ponton, who thwarted being murdered by playing dead. At Victoria the marauders made short work of killing Dr. Arthur Gray, William M. Nuner, Varlan Richeson, and “two Negro men.” Several others were wounded. In addition, Indians now owned a new captive, a young black girl, and approximately 1500 horses and mules they had rustled from luxuriant prairies blanketing the outskirts of a very flabbergasted town. Twilight’s shadows slowed the tempo of death and destruction and thievery—temporarily.29 Charitably—naively—it’s been penned that such a large battle group was virtually invincible. True, taken off guard a few were outclassed by the many; there was, though, a ticklish downside. Heretofore the marauding tactics of Comanches had been stealth: sneak, hit, run, and evaporate. This time Comanches blundered. Subsequent to settlers shaking off initial surprise, the sheer size of the Comanches’ expeditionary force invited detection. Admittedly, Texans would take awhile marshalling their manpower, but this time—unlike many situations in the past—actually finding Comanches would be a snap. Hundreds of warriors and upwards of 2,000 horses and mules necessarily leave behind a wide swath of trampled grass and disturbed earth—and plops of odorous droppings. Texans, when the time was right, would be more than ready to fight, tooth and toenail, war to the bloody knife, knife to the crimson hilt. For the interim, however, dangerous Comanche held the upper hand. On the seventh day of August, they killed Pickney Coatsworth Caldwell and an unidentified Mexican/Tejano before riding a few miles further south. Near topography locally known as Nine Mile Point, “They kilt and scelped Crosby and taken Mrs. Crosby and two small children captive, and, she said, after outrageing her person, they tied her on a packmule and handed her her baby and tied her other child on behind her. . . .”30 According to several accounts, Nancy Crosby, the Comanches’ latest luckless captive, was a granddaughter of the celebrated American frontiersman Daniel Boone. That same night, after brutally killing another man, a lonesome teamster named Stephens, the overconfident swarm of raiders

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went to ground at the Benavides Ranch, along the banks of Plácido Creek.31 There was, on tap for the next day, big doings. At daybreak the whole cumbersome entourage set figurative sail for the fully-stocked seaside warehouses at Linnville in Calhoun County. Unfortunately, on the way Nancy Crosby’s infant began crying and according to an old-timer’s account (hereafter unedited) the Indian “snatched it from her arms and bursted it braines out against a tree and threw it from him. The mother saw it all but said nothing, only ejeckulated ‘its better of’. . . .” Somewhat later, Nancy’s other terrified child, tired and thirsty, began begging and crying for water. The same Indian that had earlier executed the infant now “drew his knife, cut the straps that bound him to his mother, sliped him of the mule, ran his speer through him, pining him to the ground for a second, then withdrew the reeking speer and left the little fellow for the vultures or wolves to finish.”32 Just shy of or just after eight o’clock the Comanches caught sight of Linnville and the taken aback citizens caught sight of the Indians. At the edge of town the Comanches killed four black servants caught unawares, and unashamedly killed Joseph O’Neill.33 At last, realizing their tenuous position, frightened citizens sought refuge in rowboats and sailboats casting about in the over-your-head salt waters of Lavaca Bay or aboard the steamer Mustang moored offshore. Sharing the same fate as Nancy Crosby, Juliet Watts, wife of Customs Inspector Hugh Oran Watts, along with her little son, were made horrified captives subsequent to Indians killing her husband. An unidentified “Negro woman” was also made a prisoner of the madness.34 Wholly unmindful of their strategic setting—backed against an oceanic barrier—the Comanches lost themselves in an wanton orgy of acquisition: bolts of cloth and calico, reels of ribbons, rifles, gold-buttoned coats, high-boots and tall top-hats, gewgaws and glittery trinkets, umbrellas, fancy bridles, bugles and flutes, pots and pans, hoop-iron for arrowheads, and even a collection of baby alligators.35 Well, all that new stuff was just too tempting, time-consuming tempting, and it was free for the taking, no bargaining for their captives or surplus buffalo hides. For the moment,

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north away from the coastline, hard-bitten Texans were also busily engaged with their brand of acquisition: Manpower and firepower. Perhaps not drunk due to distilled spirits, the Comanches were intoxicated with the richness of their seaside sojourn—blood and booty—but now it really was time to scoot back to supposed sanctuary in those endless screening cedar brakes and lonesome winding canyons so common to the scenic Hill Country northwest of Austin. Comanches, now fat with plunder, burned Linnville to the ground. Somewhat blissfully they started for home, prematurely celebrating “like demons in a drunken saturnalia,” all the while listening to the hubbub of vociferously “screeching squaws and little Injuns. . . . hats and umbrellas bobbing about on every side like tipsy young balloons.”36 Yes, it had been an orgy of decadent destruction and death. However, all good things must end, and by now Comanches had seemingly sated their lust for revenge—and stolen about as much as they could haul. Their movement was no secret. Miscalculating the ratio of hard miles to be covered against time allowed for citizen Texans and Texas Rangers to fully amass adequate combat units, and the unwisely overburdened Comanches all so soon found themselves grimly answering to rearguard skirmishes. Companies from Gonzales and Lavaca, near the juncture of Garcitas and Arenosa Creeks, with paralleling detachments from Victoria and Cuero, locked up with the fast flitting Comanche horde, many of whom were splendidly but somewhat “hideously bedaubed after their own savage taste. . . . sporting huge helmets of buffalo or elk-horns—armed with glistening shields, with bows and quivers, with guns and lances, and mounted on their chargers, dashing about with streamers” festooned to bridles and plaited into their—or someone else’s—horses’ tails and manes.37 Decisively dismounted so as to steady sights and make sure every rifle’s discharge duly registered the unhorsing of an enemy, Captain John J. Tumlinson, Jr. and his Rangers repelled the Comanches’ shrinking circle onslaught but unfortunately Benjamin Mordecai of Victoria was killed, as were several daring warriors. Perceptibly, though somewhat peculiar, it soon became apparent

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that “The Indians, who greatly outnumbered the Texans, seemed to be more concerned with the safety of their booty than with killing the Texans. . . . After losing several warriors the Indians began a hasty retreat, with Tumlinson’s men in close pursuit.”38 Separating themselves from the command, Ben McCulloch, Alsey S. Miller, Barney Randall, and Archibald Gipson, riding fast, flanked the Comanche to the west undetected carrying word to the upper settlements.39 To be sure it was updated news, but certainly not brand new news. Ahead of the unwieldy Comanche caravan Texans were scrambling, couriers racing hither and yon. Powder horns were recharged, shot-bags refilled, Bowie knives whetted on strops of eagerness to scrap. Exultant Comanche—atypically and somewhat imprudently— had unwittingly telegraphed their future course of travel: Plum Creek. Doughty pre-positioned Texans’ reception would be welcoming, marked warfare unforgiving. In what is now Caldwell County the Comanche and Texans, accompanied by thirteen pedestrian Tonkawa partners wearing armbands to distinguish them from the enemy, clashed on 12 August. Overall—at least at the very first— Texans were led by Major General Felix Huston, Commander of the Texas Militia, a tenderfoot Indian campaigner. Thankfully, for the Texans, some rather prominent voices were there to pitch in their two-cents’ worth: Stalwarts such as the proven Edward Burleson, Matthew “Old Paint” Caldwell, the McCulloch brothers, Ben and Henry, Alexander “Buck” Roberts, William Alexander Anderson “Big Foot” Wallace, Christopher “Kit” Acklin, a soon to be illustrious Ranger, John Coffee “Jack” Hays, and headman for the Tonkawas, Chief Plácido, as well as a raring-to-go conglomeration of others, distinguished and nondescript.40 What ensued is historically remembered as the Battle of Plum Creek. Breaking down the individual stories of derring-do would—and has—coughed up dramatic episodes justly crediting both Comanches and Texans with exhibitions of pluck and guts, tales etched lastingly in the lore of two warring societies. Wholly aware of their untenable strategic chances at overwhelming and overcoming Texans in a face-to-face charge, the Comanches

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opted for flight. They did, however, have horrendous handiwork ahead of them. Already encumbered with too much plunder, cajoling the female captives ahead of them would retard their retreat: As seen by a yet teenaged John Henry Brown, Nancy Crosby was killed outright when “a fleeing warrior drove a lance through her heart.”41 James Wilson Nichols had a differing take during the fog of war, asserting that he had personally seen “an old Indian squaw,” a “mother of the forest” put an arrow into poor Mrs. Crosby as the “rought commenced.”42 Texans, too, could claim drawing females’ blood. During the confusion any Indian armed with a bow or nocking an arrow may have been tagged a combatant regardless the niceties of idealism or supposed gentleness of gender. Jim Nichols, probably not inaccurately noted “as the Texians and Indians ware conciderable mixtup and a great many of the Indians dressed in citizens cloths, it was hard to distingush them apart. . . . I raised my pistol and fired and the Indian fell from the horse, rolled over displaying a pair of large flabby breasts that accounted for her being in the rear of som of the Texians as they had discovered her to be a squaw and passed on. It is difficult to distingush the sexes of a flying enemy when both sexes dressed the same for she carried a bow and quiver but did not attempt to use it.”43 There was no confusion regarding captive Juliet Watts being left for stone-cold dead. But, luckily, in the end she survived—her whalebone corset having diminished the arrow’s penetrating velocity, though not embargoing all of its potency for drawing blood and dispensing dire injury.44 Particularly one case merits mention, and it’s not nice either—for Texans—but it’s egregiously sickening and there was not an iota of ambiguity. Jim Nichols, wounded and leaking blood, but still in the saddle and at a standstill, noted: Now I am going to relate a circumstance that makes [me] shiver now, and I am going to show that the American race is not wholy exemp from acts of cruelty and barberisem, for these two men comeing full speede was old Ezkel Smith and French Smith, his son, they came near and discovered the wounded squaw and they halted. The old man gets down. . . . He drew his long hack knife

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as he strode towards her, taken her by the long hair, pulled her head back and she gave him one imploreing look and jabbered something in her own language and raised both hands as though she would consign her soul to the great sperit, and received the knife to her throat which cut from ear to ear, and she fell back and expired. He then plunged the knife to the hilt in her breast and twisted it round and round like he was grinding coffee, then drew it from the reathing boddy and returned the dripping instrement to its scabard without saying a word. . . . but I still sit thare on my horse a few seconds longer wondering if thare was another man in America that claimed to be civilized that would act so cruel. Smith claimed to be a Christian and had belonged to the Methodist church for 27 years. . . .45

On the bloodstained ground—in real time—Plum Creek seemed much nearer Hell than Heaven. From a straight-line military perspective Felix Huston was no longer in command. Subsequent to a Texas rifleman dethroning a Comanche chief from his saddle, Old Paint Caldwell hollered, “Now, General, is your time to charge them! they are whipped.” After those words the battle morphed to conclusiveness: “The charge was ordered, and gallantly made. Very soon the Indians broke into parties and ran, but ran fighting all the time. At the boggy branch quite a number were killed, and they were killed in clusters for ten or twelve miles, our men scattering as did the Indians, every man acting as he pleased. There was no pretense of command after the boggy branch was passed. A few of our men pursued small bodies for twelve or more miles.”46 For a final tally there is room for argument as to exactly how many Comanches were killed. On the other hand, somehow asserting that the fact a majority of fleeing Comanche slyly administered a clean getaway with much of the plunder means it was a stellar triumph is nonsensical sentimentalism. True it may be, some Comanches might have—somewhat naively—called their seaside raid a success—killing civilians, stealing horses, and emptying warehouses of bolts of calico and reels of pretty ribbon—but history’s

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judgment is harsher regarding the asymmetrical casualty calculus at Plum Creek. Unmistakably one of the pioneering founders of Linnville, John Joseph Linn, was unhesitant with his grade for Caldwell County’s signature battle, declaring the fleeing Indians were “defeated” and that since the Comanches were scampering for safety, armed only with “bows and arrows, they should have been entirely destroyed.”47 The body count was lopsided, and radically so. Comanches left as many as eighty dead contestants on the Plum Creek battlefield or as aftermath of the various skirmishes during the extended chases and clashes. Though they suffered several wounded, the Texans would be forced to respectfully inter but one fighter, Gotlip DeWolf, in addition to the slain captive Nancy Crosby.48 Another key element for awarding martial accomplishment is calculating ground conquered and controlled by the foe; the galloping Comanches gave ground, not occupying a solitary acre of Plum Creek real-estate. Setting ethnocentric sentimentality aside, Texans could legitimately—this time— lay undisputed claim to victory.49 Comanches prowling and killing in the startled settlements of Victoria and Linnville, even if somewhat hoodwinked by slippery Mexican agitators, would in large part play to their eventual undoing. Texans owned the collective resolve to follow up and follow through, perhaps somewhat of the same mindset as William Turner Sadler, a distinguished veteran of the Battle of San Jacinto and an early-day Texas Ranger. Lamentably, Captain Sadler had lost his wife and infant daughter due to an Indian atrocity during October 1838. Kickapoos had attacked the cabin of John Edens wherein Sadler and other frontiersmen had temporarily left their families for mutual protection. Unluckily the uninterrupted Kickapoos had cunningly reached Edens’s unprotected homestead at the Mustang Prairie settlement in Houston County first, before the soon to be horrified men-folk had returned: “Ten women and children were shot, tomahawked, scalped, and burned before the cabin was torched.”50 No doubt an element of down-to-earth revenge had been indelibly imprinted in Captain Sadler’s psyche, but his letter of counsel for

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President Lamar was well intended and practical, even though he was markedly disturbed at what was for him, a hard truth. In part W.T. Sadler knew and recommended but, too, regretted: We cannot check the Indians unless we follow them to their place of rendezvous or where they have their families and visit them with the same kind of warfare that they give us. . . . We should spare neither age, sect nor condition, for they do not. I know it will be said this is barbarous and too much like the savage. And it certainly is harsh, but it is the only means in my view that will put them down.51

Subsequent to Comanches pilliaging and plundering Linnville and following their catastrophe at Plum Creek, the earlier mentioned John H. Moore again headed well past the Republic’s frontier with an unsympathetic plan of action: Carry the battle to Comanchería and kill temporarily inactive Indians at their homes—where they were sure to be, huddling close with expectancy of a thermometer’s mercury plummeting.52 Commanding a company of impromptu Texas Rangers from Bastrop and Fayette Counties, numbering near 100, and this time also accompanied by seventeen Indian allies, Lipan Apaches captained by Chief Castro, backed by his second-in-command Flaco, the impatient troops departed fledgling Austin on the fifth day of October 1840, destination headwaters of the snaking Colorado River if need be, or chastising Comanche anywhere if an encounter sooner presented itself. Some eighteen days and 250 plus miles later, miserably suffering through an exceptionally brutal and bitingly cold Blue Norther, the Lipan auxiliaries at last reported success. They had cut meaningful sign along the Red Fork of the Colorado, not too terribly far south of present-day Colorado City in Mitchell County. Following up on their initial discovery it was learned there was a large Comanche camp snugly butted against a waterfront embankment on the Colorado. Placement of the campground in the river’s horseshoe bend had been a great tactic for thwarting Old Man Winter—but not the absolutely embittered Texans. The crescent of sixty tepees—a guesstimated 125

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warriors—cozily aligned against the tall bluff was a deathtrap. Plainly clustered Comanches had supposed themselves secure from discovery and/or payback.53 The miscalculation proved chilling.54 Primed for action, the Texans—ad hoc Rangers—were mentally geared and physically ready to issue the Comanches another dose of comeuppance for their foray to the Gulf Coast and the killing thereabouts, as well as the sacking and burning of Linnville. At first light on October 24, after suitably sending a squadron of mounted Texans to outflank and cut off an escape route on the opposite bank of the Colorado, John Moore effectively maneuvered his fighting force—also horseback—to within two hundred yards of the Indians’ hideaway. Closing that distance from the saddle may easily be accomplished—at a gallop—in but seconds, not laborious timewarped minutes. And, so it was. In but a smattering of heartbeats pandemonium swept across the Comanche village. Implying there was any sense of fair play or restrictive rules of engagement would be fractures of the truth. Wholly overrun, Comanches could do little but flee, fast, no storybook stand and fight nonsense. And, so they did. Those not killed in or around their lodges tried to make a break across the river, but unlike the panicked folks at Linnville, there were not any boats of sanctuary floating on the Colorado: “After passing through the village the Texans dismounted and continued to pour a deadly fire upon the enemy as they attempted to cross the river. Some of the Indians were killed before they reached the river, while others were shot or drowned in the stream. A portion of them succeeded in crossing and reaching the prairie on the opposite bank, but Lieutenant Clark L. Owen, who had been ordered with fifteen men to cross over and cut off their retreat, succeeded admirably in this business. As this was a war of extermination the bodies of men, women and children were seen on every hand dead, wounded and dying.”55 At least a piece of that work may be attributed to Micha Andrews, who was armed with a Colt’s Paterson revolving rifle, was effectively issuing a five-to-one rate of fire ahead of his Ranger colleagues carrying single-shot muzzle loaders.56 Somewhat ironically, during another 1840 incident, Mr. Colt’s patented innovation was

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put into play. Major George Thomas Howard of the Republic of Texas’s First Regiment, accompanied by Salvadore Flores, who had previously captained a Tejano company of volunteers, i.e. Rangers, the Béxar Volunteers, locked up with a band of Comanches west of San Antonio. Subsequent to taking an arrow in his midsection and being thrown from his wounded horse, Major Howard saved himself from guaranteed death at the hands of an approaching warrior by calmly cocking the weapon’s hammer and discharging another barrel (cylinder) while “his foe fell dead.”57 Little could warring Comanches have known it at the time, but that earlier workshop tinkering by Samuel Colt at Paterson, New Jersey, would in the very near term alter their lives forevermore and—in large part—spark an enduring legend with tentacles now touching three centuries. Returning to West Texas along the Colorado, once again, disheartening as always, counting lifeless and injured bodies is somewhat germane—historical obligation: The tally for Comanches either shot or drowned was 128, according to John Moore’s published calculation.58 Luckily, the Texans suffered no mortal battleground causalities, but did lose Private Garrett Harrell due to weather-induced illness. Taken as prisoners were some thirty-four survivors, including a “few old men and one or two younger men, who surrendered and thus were spared,” but mostly the jinxed prisoners were wailing women and crying children.59 Of particular note, and perhaps mitigating any unwanted tinges of remorsefulness for such a wholly uneven scorecard of dead or dying or detained, was recovery of “goods that were recognized as those stolen by the Indians in the Linnville raid.”60 Additionally 500 head of horses were seized and two youthful and no doubt very frightened Mexican captives were liberated before the Comanches’ camp was put to the torch, saving one tepee housing a few critically wounded and their attending womenfolk. By any man’s measurement this tragic installment—whether graded a fair fight or not—put with the Indians’ wholesale misfortune at Plum Creek, was a backbreaker for Comanches yet entertaining notions of raiding interior Texas settlements en masse.61

3 

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suggesting high drama in the Texan vs. Indian contest altogether ended with a Comanche drubbing at that horseshoe bend of the Colorado River would be folly. The Grim Reaper’s hunger had not been sated: Death’s doings were yet on the menu. Following a period of recuperating, rethinking, and regrouping, a small but wily band of Comanche, advantaging themselves of turmoil and excitement attendant to Mexican soldiers haphazardly operating north of the Rio Grande, struck hard at the Refugio County coastal area home of Johnstone and Mary Gilliland. The fading light of an April 1842 evening revealed lurking horror. Mercy, there was none. Johnstone Gilliland lay dead on the bloody ground. Dreadfully shaken, understandably so, Mary Gilliland momentarily clutched eleven-year-old Rebecca Jane and nine-year-old William McCalla Gilliland to her breast. The terrified children’s safe asylum was but temporary. Tearfully, Rebecca Jane remembered and lamented: “As she pressed us to her heart, we were baptized in her precious blood.” Then, as a horrified daughter and her little brother were ripped from their mother’s arms, Mary Gilliland died. Unsurprisingly, Comanche marauders, accompanied by “a white man with all the cruel instincts of the savage,” kidnapped the kiddos.1 44

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That would not stand! Setting aside any notions of irony— slaveholders wholly outraged at others’ involuntary detentions— the tough pursuit of fleeing Comanche was obligatory and quick. Already in the area due to delusional dreams of Mexican military commanders desirous of retaking ground now claimed by the fledgling Republic of Texas (admittedly, there were a few short-lived geographical coup d’états) was Albert Sidney Johnston with several regular army units and a provisional Texas Ranger element, one comprised “principally of frontiersmen.” Not too far from where Colonel James W. Fannin’s near 400 troops had been summarily executed six years earlier near La Bahía (Goliad), the pursuers overhauled the running-away Comanche. Subsequent to losing a warrior or two, realizing that this time they had—once again—drawn the short-stick, disenchanted Indians chose to abandon anything slowing them down and bolt for safety. Two white children would hinder their headlong flight. Rebecca Jane was knocked in the head and “dumped off her horse,” left for dead, while Comanches supposed the same fate for young William after running the sharpened point of a lance through his side.2 Though bruised, battered, and bleeding, Johnstone and Mary Gilliland’s children—now orphans—were rescued. Frustrated Comanche generally showed no pity and little mercy. Within broad context of that social realm, maddened Texans were, too, commensurately bankrupt. Already a proven veteran of the Battle of Plum Creek and other lesser written about combat engagements with Indian adversaries, surveyor John Coffee “Jack” Hays was making a name for himself within Republic of Texas martial circles—as well as the general population.3 Even before the Gilliland children had been snatched and saved, Hays commanded a Ranger unit based out of San Antonio, one chalking up action with Mexican soldiers and Mexican bandits alike. Whether or not Jack Hays’s reputed desperate standoff with overwhelming numbers of war-painted Comanche atop Enchanted Rock in Llano County is fact or folklore may be up for grabs but his reputation as a thoroughly competent and courageous fighting man is not. Purportedly, Hays’s unbridled bravery was of such

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notoriety—even among allied and/or hostile Indians—that to them he was known—with unreserved respect—as “Devil Jack.” A plucky warrior confirmed: “No afraid go to hell by himself.”4 Nor was Captain Jack Hays hesitant about sending Mexican bandits straight to hell, having on at least one occasion ordered that his Rangers, with blessing and ad hoc legal authority from the Republic of Texas’s political powerbrokers, promptly execute three prisoners after they naively confessed to foully committing murders and stealing horses “along the Colorado, the Guadalupe, and other western streams. . . . ”5 Captain Jack Hays was action-orientated, never dithering or self-doubting. That utter absence of indecisiveness coupled with smart employment of evolving technology would fortify Jack Hays’s hard-won reputation in the eyes of most everyday Texans and indelibly sear misgivings into minds of many Comanches. The noteworthy 1844 Battle of Walker’s Creek, as it came to be dubbed, was and would be a consequential game changer not only for Rangers and Indians, but for the U.S. Army, as well: mounted warfare had been revolutionized.6 The gist of the story is simple. During the summer of 1844 Captain Hays, riding at the head of a fifteen-man detachment of Rangers, scouted northwest of San Antonio. That, in and of itself, was not necessarily newsworthy. The fact these particular Texas Rangers were each armed with a pair of Sam Colt’s newfangled Paterson five-shot revolvers—with a couple of pre-loaded and capped extra cylinders—would prove momentous. Once inventoried property of the now defunct Republic of Texas Navy, the revolvers were then in the hands of horseback warriors enumerated on Ranger Muster & Payrolls.7 Though there is always room for the anomaly, at this time for Texans, horses were the means of transporting them to the ghastly scene of combat. Most of the actual fighting with Indians was, however, accomplished afoot, in large part because of their single-shot muzzle loading rifles and one-shot pistols: neither weapon could be deftly reloaded and/or recharged while atop spirited ponies crazily dancing between their legs in the heat of battle.8 On the

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other hand, well-mounted plains Indians—especially Kiowa and Comanche—were quite capable of unleashing a near unimaginable succession of arrows without any obligation of dismounting. An infantryman—regular or Ranger—was also near dead meat while reloading as a mounted warrior sought to impale him between the ribs with a wicked-looking steel-tipped lance.9 On 8 June 1844 the Lords of the South Plains were dethroned. What follows is the unedited remembrance of Cicero Rufus Perry, one of the fighters present when Captain Hays and Rangers had a collision with an overwhelming number of Indians: wee Saw 5 Indions near a thicket remrkt to Hays that thair was moar near by wee then went a round to the other Side of the brush and come in on them and aboute Sixty of the read devels come oute of the brush in to the prairie whee opend fior on them it was fight for 10 miles at times thay woold Stop and form in line and charg through our lines that was the first fight that Coalts pistols was used thay woold charg three in a line the first expecting to bee Shot while the other too used thair lances but when wee cept on Shooting thay commenced running but thay faught so close that wee did not get airey one tho wee got 21 horces and Sadles Some horces had Shealds quvor containing thair bows and arroes also lances paint wee had but too men hurt that was Sam Walker Ad Gilaspy thay war both Speard the next day wee found five and kild them all got one man kild peton Foar10

Certainly Rufe Perry’s fascinating recount is insightful, though somewhat incomplete. Captain Hays, rather than dismounting his command, kept them in the saddle. Upon Rangers discharging their single-shot muzzle loaders, the Indians owning vastly superior numbers (four to one), from long-established tradition wrongly presumed Texas Rangers would face vulnerable downtime reloading— sitting ducks wholly unable to withstand an expeditious earsplitting and blood-spattering horseback attack. In this instance the miscalculation was markedly horrendous. Indians charged and Rangers

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countercharged, never dismounting and carrying death at their very fingertips.11 Allegedly, later, an overawed Indian remarked it seemed that the Texas Rangers were again and again hurling butcher knives from their clinched fists.12 The Rangers’ newfound firepower, a patent improvement, turned warfare with Indians upside down, at least for the short-term, until Comanche themselves could acquire repeating firearms by trafficking terrified hostages and/or horses and/or conducting murderous forays bent on acquisition of products they couldn’t manufacture.13 With but fourteen Rangers, Captain Hays had shellacked approximately sixty Indians who in the final tally left twenty-three warriors dead on the battlefield and, according to the Ranger commander, an additional thirty Indians with serious or superficial gunshot wounds. Supposedly, somewhat fewer than twenty Comanches escaped unscathed.14 Aside from the heartfelt adulation Captain Hays and his company received upon returning to San Antonio, his triumph foreshadowed what would soon propel Texas Rangers into a symbol of personification: Mounted Anglo and Tejano Texas Ranger combatants, armed with a pair of repeating Colt’s pistols, could now realistically match the Indians’ flights of arrows. Tit for tat, the unnerving twang of bowstrings was harmonized with thunderous discharges of black powder. The U.S. Army, too, took note. And as well they should have. On the United States Senate’s floor, the assiduous Texas Senator, Sam Houston, later would extol the intrinsic worth of Sam Colt’s innovative revolvers: “There is no arm of comparable utility to Colts Revolvers. They are certain, simple of construction and the great number of discharges render them terrible to an enemy. . . . the use of Colts Pistols on the frontier,” would be of benefit to and should be adopted by the U.S. Army’s Quartermaster Corps.15 Sam was prophetic. History bears witness, Comanches may have suffered defeat and been somewhat demoralized at Walker’s Creek, but they and other Indians were yet a threat to unsuspecting folks. Even at Austin a wary

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eye was called for. A prime example of why befell the widow Nancy Simpson and two of her children, fourteen-year-old Jane and twelveyear-old William on the third day of November 1844. Sending the brother and sister from their Austin residence on West Pecan Street to gather the milk cows grazing some 400 yards from the house had not been a very prudent decision for Mrs. Simpson. In but a heartbeat the inoffensive children were wretched prisoners, the forecast of their fate gloomy at best, unspeakable and unprintable at worst. Continually the teenage Jane struggled and fought and screamed, never willingly submitting to cruel custody or indignity: The captors’ solution for Jane’s belligerence was predictable. She was killed outright and scalped, her bloodily dripping topknot later seen by young William “dangling from” a gleeful warrior’s belt. Months later, the beleaguered William was gainfully ransomed from eager Indians for a quantity of “tobacco, salt, clothing, blankets, coffee, sugar, powder, and lead,” $137 worth.16 While a very real threat from a band of hostile Indians raiding and rampaging settlements and isolated homesteads was yet a matter of genuine concern, for the moment most denizens of Texas, now a state (as of December 29, 1845), focused their attention on political doings at the nation’s capital and the not unnoticeable buildup of American military muscle on Gulf Coast beaches near Corpus Christi in Nueces County. Ownership of desolate real-estate between the Nueces River and Rio Grande was a bone of contention: War with Mexico was brewing. Debating the spotless morality or sullied immorality of the Mexican War is nourishing fodder for a theoretical classroom or beer-table exercise.17 Partisan arguments typically defy resolution. In truth, such abstract deliberations are of little real consequence— at least technically—with regards to the Texas Rangers’ out-and-out organizational structure. Though somewhat shattering misconceptions, many men credited as Rangers during the Mexican War were by definition not legally endorsed Rangers, but were in fact United States soldiers: “One example is the body of men from Texas who were called Texas Rangers by the press during the Mexican War of

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1846–1848. Many had served as Rangers prior to the war, but in 1845 and 1846 they enlisted in the United States Army as volunteers. At the time of their enlistment they ceased being Texas Rangers in the service of the State of Texas and became soldiers in the service of the U.S. Army. They were paid by the U.S. Army, scouted and engaged in guerilla warfare as units of the U.S. Army, and reported (arguably) to U.S. Army officers.”18 As pointed out there were exceptions—more or less—for Texans not crossing into Mexico. Indeed, “there were men who, when mustered into the army, remained on the Texas frontier and continued their ranging duties,” functioning as traditionally defined Rangers. And, factually not all U.S. Army units generically referred to as “Rangers” blossomed from Texas roots.19 For the treatment at hand, such finite distinctions defining and/or separating Texans from the ranks of Texas Rangers and/or units of volunteers from regular U.S. Army personnel during the Mexican War will be laid aside. By nearly every account, and there are many, the Texas enlistees wore no common uniform and independently prided themselves on answering only to their leaders, paying little or no heed to any persnickety chain-of-command structure formalized by America’s military.20 They were hard-riding spies and scouts, by and large undisciplined and answerable only to leaders they individually respected. Hardly ever did they bow to anyone awarded unearned gold-buttoned leadership status simply due an army’s internal politics and/or infighting and/or plain seniority. U.S. Senators and Congressmen, the whole of military hierarchy, and the aforementioned national press corps knew them as Rangers—as would subsequent history books.21 They were an unruly bunch and could be bullying, meaner than any proverbial junkyard-dogs. As frontier-era fighters they had incorporated what may be euphemistically moved into the modern-era wartime strategy of Shock and Awe. Mexicans were, in truth and fact, awed by the viciousness and cruelty and malevolence of hardnosed Texans (i.e. Rangers) crossing an up-in-the-air borderline, the meandering Río Bravo, assailing them on their native soil. On the other

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hand, though impressed with the Texas units’ penchant for living off the land, acting as couriers, proficiently reconnoitering behind enemy lines, acquiring hard to come by but vital tactical intelligence, seldom showing the white feather of surrender, asking for no quarter and giving none, as well as exhibiting extraction of coldhearted vengeance, the U.S. Army’s high-command was, however, not shocked enough to relinquish the Rio Grande as part of America’s permanent southern boundary with Mexico.22 Not because of any uncompromising Texans settling of—in their minds—long overdue scores for atrocities at Goliad and the Alamo and the seventeen systematic Black Bean executions at the dismal Castle Perote or other real or imagined affronts.23 At this place in time, whether officially volunteer United States soldiers or real Rangers, these Texans were hardcore and pitiless, products of living life at the frontier’s edge.24 They were, too, products of generational prejudice as were the folks facing them from south of the river.25 Pathways of bigotry are seldom one-way streets. The Americans, especially many of the Texas volunteers, were also much better armed than many—if not most—of their Mexican adversaries. Much of that martial advantage may again be laid at the doorstep of inventor Sam Colt. Upon consultation with former Ranger Samuel Walker, a new handgun had been born: The Walker Colt.26 In comparison to the Paterson five-shooters, the Walker Colt was a warhorse, a .44 caliber hand-cannon of heft with six chambers. And, too, when a Walker’s cylinder was fully charged with black powder those half dozen rounds delivered much more punch at a much longer distance than the diminutive Paterson, but a pair of these revolvers was much too heavy for everyday belt wear. Normally they were outfitted in ungainly leather scabbards forking the pommels of Rangers’ saddles.27 Texans, by virtue of attitude, were tough customers. Now armed with a brace of Colt’s .44 six-shooters, a deadly accurate long-barreled rifle, and a razor-sharp Bowie knife, they were fierce fighting machines, not necessarily nice warriors or advocates of fair play. Supposedly, it was during this particular timeframe that many awestruck Mexican Nationals began referring to these quasi Rangers

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as Los Diablo Tejanos, The Texan Devils. Certainly if such colloquial designation was, indeed, a legit nineteenth-century truism, conferment of the moniker begs fairly valid questions: Was its origin really coined by a Mexican voice, or could it have been lifted from pages of Samuel Chamberlain’s My Confession: Recollection of a Rogue, wherein someone in a thoroughly infuriated mob subsequent to a Catholic priest being trampled beneath a Ranger’s horse, perhaps cried, “Que mueren los Tejano Diablo? [How should we kill the Texas Devil?].” Was the quotation indeed verbatim or an example of witty journalism on the part of an American soldier and artist, an axiom time and time again repeated until it’s accepted as authentic? Whether the aphorism was first drawn from a voice speaking native Spanish or the ink-pen of an English language raconteur is—by and large—irrelevant. Indeed, it’s been a catchy saw deemed worthy of repeating, and now, serves as the book title or chapter headings for a near innumerable string of fiction and nonfiction volumes alike.28 Was the degrading insult hurled at Texas Anglos and/or Texas Hispanics? Had not components of the American military marshaling the invading forces and warring with Mexico come from the ranks of Lone Star State troops and had not factions of Tejanos living north of the hotly disputed Rio Grande impassively looked on, perhaps with varying degrees of unspoken ambivalence, while foreign-born soldiers invaded homelands of their ethnic antecedents?29 Too, and it did not and should not go unnoticed, whopping expenditures of wartime U.S. dollars were alluring, not only for the assiduous Anglo financiers and entrepreneurs but for some resident borderland speakers of Spanish as well.30 Excoriating Texans for the parts they played during the MexicanAmerican War is now—for days of enlightened thinking—commonplace, but even those men of the Lone Star flag may have been in truth outrageously outclassed by the notorious Rackensackers, Arkansas frontiersmen. These volunteers, as particularly noted, were actually among the “wildest of Taylor’s troops.”31 In one orgy of revenge for Mexicans killing one of their own, crazily enraged Rackensackers, “yelling like fiends” left over twenty civilians on the floor of a cave, “dead and dying in pools of blood.” It would ingloriously be marked

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in history books as the “Rackensacker Massacre.32 Assuredly no modern-era defense is being proffered for any abhorrent behavior on the part of feisty volunteer Texans. And there was plenty.33 Assuredly the commander of American forces, General Zachary “Old Rough and Ready” Taylor, zeroed on reality, noting that on the whole the Texas Rangers were “ ‘brave and gallant’ in war. . . . but some could be savage in peace.”34 Nonetheless, subsequent to enumerating—and correctly so—several instances of outrageous and unquestionably iniquitous conduct on the part of some Texas volunteers, a hard fact rings true: “the Rangers proved indispensable to Taylor’s success.”35 Clearly Ulysses S. Grant was not mush-mouthed with his unflattering assessment: Some of the volunteers and about all the Texans seem to think it perfectly right to impose on the people of a conquered city. . . . and even to murder them where the act can be covered by dark. And how much they seem to enjoy acts of violence too!36

Nor should Mexicans be given a free pass for acts of gratuitous assassinations and devious backstabbing or sneaky sleight-of-hand poisonings.37 Purportedly, before allowing his men to partake of a “blanket-load” of purchased Mexican baked bread, a Ranger lieutenant forced the vendor to consume several loaves—washed down with a little water—and stand observation for a sufficient period of time to prove the product had not been slyly laced with any lethal poison.38 With emphasis herein added, the U.S. Army’s Samuel Chamberlain seemed compelled to publicize his viewpoint that the Mexican “guerrillas, if possible, were guilty of worse acts than the Rangers, and there were ‘many revolting acts committed by volunteers and Rangers.’”39 Neutrally it may be reported many Mexicans were caught betwixt and between, atrociousness not being an entirely lopsided affair. “Many of the people living in small towns, ranches, haciendas, and farms suffered attack by the Mexican guerrilla fighters because they thought the people were aiding the North American army. And, at times, the North Americans attacked them, burned and razed their buildings, because they thought the people were helping the guerrilla forces.”40

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Early on, at the outset of the conflict, Mexican auxiliary cavalry, on the road to El Frontón de Santa Isabel (Port Isabel), had attacked one of General Taylor’s supply trains contracted by Patterson Rogers and his two adult sons, Anderson and William: “The twelve men, three women, and four children in the wagon train were ordered to strip off their clothing. The men pleaded with the bandits to spare the women and children. The bandits refused and bound the captives’ hands, raped the women, slit their throats, and threw them into the arroyo [Arroyo Colorado].”41 Later, identities and location of the ruthless perpetrators scuttled into the general knowledge of Rangers working below the border at Reynosa, a spot one of the volunteer Texans characterized as “the most rascally place in all Mexico.” To him and many other Rangers the “town itself is [was] well enough, but the inhabitants are [were] a set of the most irreclaimable scoundrels that are to be found anywhere in the valley of the Rio Grande—a race of brigands, whose avowed occupation is rapine and murder. . . . It was this place, too, that many of the robbing parties which ravaged the Texian frontier acknowledged as their head-quarters. And some of the scoundrels who were engaged in the ‘Rogers’ massacre,’ live here in peace and security. Yes! Some of the incarnate fiends, who had committed the most horrible outrages and atrocities upon members of that most unfortunate family, boldly walked the streets of Reynoso [sic], and with the most consummate impudence, seemed fond of parading themselves directly before our eyes.”42 Texas Rangers, ostensibly operating—albeit loosely—within a framework of military regulations promulgated by the U.S. Army’s command staff were “not allowed to apprehend and punish these villains as they deserved, or visit upon them the speedy and terrible vengeance they so richly merited from Texian hands.”43 The more than transparent follow-up observations by Samuel C. Reid, Jr., an on-the-ground player, may plainly be taken and interpreted at face value. Or not! Our orders were most strict not to molest any unarmed Mexican, and if some of the most notorious of these villains were found shot, or hung up in the chaparral, during our visit to Reynoso, the

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government was charitably bound to suppose, that during some fit of remorse and desperation, tortured by conscience for the many evil deeds they had committed, they had recklessly laid violent hands upon their own lives! [Emphasis not added] “Quien sabe?”44

Following the aforesaid occasion when a Ranger trampled the priest to death, a run-amok mob of Mexicans “stripped and tied the Texan to a post, then literally skinned him alive with rawhide whips before hanging his limp frame on a huge cross that rose above the town plaza.”45 Predictably, the turnaround was quick and certain, the revenge coldblooded: Texas volunteers waded into the crowd of onlookers, smoking Colt’s and Bowie knives in hand. All too soon, dead and dying littered the town square. War is never—ever—pretty or nice or benign.46 Later, and correctly so, much will be written about how neophyte Texans had adopted and incorporated their renowned cattle working expertise from hardworking Mexican vaqueros. Perhaps, throughout this Mexican War learning curve was when Texans realized the all around utility and handiness of the lariat. Rather conveniently, at least a few Mexicans were not unreceptive to using their catch-ropes during 1847, “lassoing the bodies of the dead Lipans [Indians] and dragging them together into a heap.”47 Even then, prior to the American ranching culture launching into stuff of legend, the indomitable John Salmon “Rip” Ford noted the wicked utility of a hand-crafted leather plaited reata deftly tossed by skilled hands, claiming that Mexicans along the troublesome Rio Grande borderlands were a constant source of dread with their “butcher knife and lasso.”48 Soldier Sam Chamberlain, too, made note of the Mexicans’ dexterity with a rope, declaring their lazos, “coiled at their Saddle bow” was in fact their “national weapon.”49 Perhaps Chamberlain was both shocked and scared: Little or no resistance was offered to our advance. The Guerillars contented themselves in hanging around our flanks and rear and they served to keep our column well closed up. Woe to the unfortunate soldier who straggled behind. He was lassoed, stripped naked, and dragged through clumps of cactus until his body was full of

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needle-like thorns; then, his privates cut off and crammed into his mouth, he was left to die in the solitude of the chapperal [sic] or to be eaten alive by vultures and coyotes. Such were the daily acts of the Guerillars.50

Quite accurately it’s been penned that a perceived or real insult, some “hasty offense or perhaps merely recognition of an earlier offender, glint of blade or flash of pistol, and burial or a body left to nature where it fell,” was but par business.51 Gratuitous violence and/or blind revenge was an equal opportunity phenomenon during the ferociously fought Mexican War, at least so thought the U. S. Army’s Philip Norbourne Barbour, who nonchalantly recorded in his journal: “Three Texans are reported to have been taken in a cornfield a mile from Camp, by Rancheros who have been hovering about us during the entire march from Seralvo, and carried off. This is ‘tit for tat,’ the Texans having taken at San Francisco yesterday three lancers whom they have been choking a little this afternoon to get the news out of them.” 52 Of course, some Mexicans were “regular assassins.”53 Late in the conflict Texas Ranger Adam Allsens wandered into a Mexican neighborhood at Mexico City known as “Cutthroat.” Knife-wielding Mexicans cut him to pieces, and witnesses noted the agonizing man’s “heart was visible and its pulsations plainly perceptible” for eight hours before the ill-fated Ranger died.54 Los Diablo Mexicanos? Cross-cultural conflicts are, regrettably and unfortunately, many times more than vile and gruesome and sometimes wholly indefensible. Mexicans, if listening to the voice of someone that was actually on scene at the time merits any weight, not only disdained Los Diablo Tejanos, but all occupying foreign forces, regular army and/ or state volunteers and/or quasi-Rangers. Understandably so, too! The conquered rarely exalt the conquerors. Losing a war is not fun.55 West Point graduate U.S. Army Lieutenant Theodore Laidley, writing from Puebla, Mexico, on the 19 May 1847, elaborated: We hear that General Santa Anna is in advance preparing to check our advance any further into the interior but if he makes no more

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than he did at Cerro Gordo, he might as well give up. There is no hope for peace as yet, and the foreigners here think that we will have to call in such force as to overrun the country entirely before they will think of coming to terms. Strange stubbornness on their part! . . . The higher classes receive us as kindly as they dare, the lower classes, those whom we are doing great service are our bitterest foes, through ignorance with which their generals keep them slaves and with regard to us—They think us little better than devils and are ready to cut our throats the first opportunity that offers.56

At war’s eventual end Mexico had formally ceded half its geographical sovereignty and the United States had doubled hers, having picked up territory that would in course of due time become the American states of California, Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah, along with parts of Wyoming, Colorado, and Oklahoma, as well as by the treaty an undisputed—at least militarily and diplomatically—zigzagging Rio Grande/Río Bravo as a southern international boundary. Politically and psychologically such was a big and bitter pill for many Mexican Nationals and not just a few Tejanos to swallow. Resentment connected to the invasion would, not surprisingly, linger and loiter in their psyches. And what of the Lone Star volunteers, i.e. the Texas Rangers? U.S. Army Lieutenant Napoleon Dana may or may not have liked every personal and collective characteristic of the Lone Star State’s volunteers, but during the storming of the Bishop’s Palace, halfway up Independence Hill on the outskirts of Monterey, it seems his respect seeped to the vanguard of awareness: “Up the hill we went with a rush, the Texans ahead like devils.”57 Another nineteenth-century penman, though not there, remarked: “At Monterey, they stormed a battery on foot leaving their horses and rifles, and fighting with only bowie-knife and Colt.”58 America’s national news coverage of the war had abruptly propelled them to the forefront of the burgeoning nation’s consciousness, dubiously or worthily, depending on personal perspective. By any measure Rangers’ reputation as uncompromising fighters had been cemented.59

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All so soon Texans learned—maybe not at all unexpectedly— though the United States had inherited responsibility for protecting the state’s citizens from all enemies, foreign and domestic, the federal government, at this time, was ill-suited for such challenging work. In a practical sense, the U.S. Army’s experience at warring with horseback Indian raiders was nil. Of course, over time that would change drastically, but the niggling hurdles of a practical know-how had to be overcome.60 For the interim, Texas and Texans still needed their Rangers.61 Although at first politely spurning Texans’ petition to reconstitute Ranger companies due to Indians’ seemingly incessant sorties into the settlements, U.S. Army Colonel George Mercer Brooke, Commander of the Department of Texas, was finally awakened to the truth: Texas was too big. Real numbers for on hand regular army troops were too small. Marauding Indians were too many. He capitulated. Three companies of Rangers were recruited and pressed into service—federalized—primarily tasked with interdicting activities of prowling Indians and border-jumping Mexican bandits and blueeyed brigands haunting the Nueces Strip, an inhospitable stretch of real-estate between the Nueces River and the Rio Grande, colloquially known to area folks as the Wild Horse Desert.62 Characterizing this region as simply lawless would be understatement supreme. Bad to the bone buccaneers navigated this seemingly endless sea of grass and marshland and chaparral and thorn. Earlier, when soldiers had been bivouacked on Corpus Christi’s beaches waiting to go to war, an American military man said the jumping off spot was “the most murderous, thieving, gambling, cut-throat, God-forsaken hole in the Lone Star State or out of it.”63 Absent any exaggeration, safe passage across The Wild Horse Desert really necessitated dodging a few worst of the worse. Pirates—even horseback pirates—can spring from multiple-culture roots. Texas Rangers for this era and area, like those before, with regards to commissioned officers “were on terms of perfect equality, calling each other by their Christian or nick-names.” Plainly their

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“principal occupation” would be as Indian fighters, and when thus engaged they would typically fight “independently” but their “time when not in actual service was spent in hunting riding, and playing cards.”64 These Rangers—as would be par business for years to come—were required to furnish their own wearing apparel, saddles, and horses, but the State of Texas (through arrangement with the federal government) would furnish enlistees with arms and ammunition, commissary and camp kettles. It was an outside job, no bellyaching. Dawn of the new decade had barely been exposed when tragedy struck. Acting as major and mustering officer for the newly recruited Ranger companies was Charles Grandison Bryant. His tenure would be short-lived. On 12 January 1850 he was making the horseback sojourn from Corpus Christi to Austin. After comfortably crossing Chocolate Creek some ten miles from the Nuestra Señora del Refugio Mission, Lipan Apache emerged from concealment and killed him.65 Not long thereafter, March 1850, near two miles from Mission de Refugio, Comanches abducted the twelve-year-old son of Timothy Hart. The luckless lad was never seen again, despite the posting of a $200 reward, a sizeable premium for the place and time.66 The following month, soldiers of Companies G and I of the U.S. Army’s 1st Infantry unfortunately—as it turned out—overhauled a band of raiding Indians near Laredo in Webb County with a string of stolen horses, numbering near thirty. During an ensuing and no doubt scorching duel in the desert, the commanding officer, Lieutenant Walter W. Hudson, and one of his subordinates, forfeited their lives, as four seriously wounded comrades looked on with horror while a quartet of injured Indians carrying gunshot wounds and trailing blood made good their getaway.67 During May 1850 Captain Rip Ford and his federalized Rangers engaged Comanches twice, once near Arroyo San Roque in Dimmit County, “a tributary west of the Nueces” on the thirteenth and again on the twenty-ninth of the month at thirst-quenching Agua Dulce Creek near present day Midway in Jim Wells County. In the first instance a Ranger was wounded, but Texans managed to kill four

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Comanches and wound four more, capturing eleven horses during the exciting mêlée. In the second engagement Ford’s Rangers weren’t near as fortunate. William Gillespie caught an arrow puncturing his lung and, ultimately, died. Two additional Texas Rangers were wounded, not counting Captain Ford’s superficial arrow scratch to his right hand, an injury continuing to bother him half a dozen years later, causing bona fide but transient paralysis of his hand and arm, leading to a somewhat logical—but purely speculative—proposition that the arrowhead had been dipped in poison, “probably rattlesnake venom.”68 These Texas Rangers were not hurling poison projectiles, but during this clash their bullets accounted for eleven Comanche casualties, seven wounded and four dead, including the Indians’ war chieftain, Otto Cuero, who had first been wounded by a pistol ball fired by Ranger Sergeant David M. Level, and later killed by a wellplaced long-range rifle shot let loose by Private David Steele.69 Summer of 1850 was yet at the halfway mark, but dustups with Comanches were continually being scored in the tally-book of dogmatic unfriendliness and dead bodies. Two more companies of temporarily federalized Texas Rangers were pressed into service.70 On or about the fifteenth day of July, Captain William Alexander Anderson “Big Foot” Wallace and some twenty Rangers played for keeps in the prickly pear and mesquite dotted South Texas brasada southwest of Corpus Christi. Quite courageously and purposefully some 100 Comanche rode pell-mell in repeated charges aimed at tactically scattering Texas Rangers, isolating vulnerable folks for a skewering with the pointed tip of a lance or unwanted receipt of a barbed arrow or spiraling rifle ball. Captain Wallace says more: There were about one hundred Indians in the main body, and the moment the chief sounded his whistle again, they charged upon us in double file, but when they reached a certain point within about one hundred yards, the files turned to right and left, circled around us, firing as they ran—but those who carried rifles dismounted, and taking their positions behind trees, began to pour hot shot upon us in a way that was anything but pleasant. We were not idle ourselves, and returned their fire so effectually that we killed

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several warriors, wounded a number, and killed and wounded many horses. Such a warm reception compelled them to draw off for a time, but they returned to their camp, mounted fresh horses, and charged upon us again more vigorously than before. My men, however, were all experienced frontiersmen and good shots, and we dropped them from saddles so rapidly, and wounded so many others, that they hastily came back being joined by the reserve, which as yet had taken no part in the fight, they charged us for the third time in the most determined manner. But it was the same old thing—we pitched the rifle bullets into them so rapidly they couldn’t stand the racket, and once more retreated toward their camp. . . . The next moment they charged upon us in a body, not dividing their force, as they had previously done. The chief was ahead, and I and several of the boys nearest to me leveled our guns upon him. “Shoot at his legs,” said I, “and kill his horse, and I will kill him.” He came straight for us, and when within about thirty yards three men fired at him. His horse turned a somersault, and the chief, who was some distance in advance of his men, jumped up and started back to them, when I fired and shot him in the right hip. He fell, yelling like a catamount. . . .71

Though overwhelmingly outnumbered, Captain Big Foot Wallace and his determined Rangers suffered no mortal causalities (three were wounded), but in the aggregate managed to kill twenty-two Indians and inflict gunshot wounds on another fifteen—the lucky ones—at least so reported Captain Wallace.72 Shortly thereafter, three Rangers under Captain Ford’s command, Daniel C. “Doc” Sullivan, Alpheus D. Neill (sometimes spelled Neal), and John Wilbarger were not so lucky. The unwary men were returning from San Antonio to their South Texas campgrounds at Camp San Antonio Viejo, “a ruined hacienda forty-five miles north of Rio Grande City.”73 The three Rangers learned the camp had been strategically relocated to “Los Ojuelos—Little Springs” some forty miles from Laredo, “in an easterly direction, and was on the main road from Laredo to Corpus Christi.”74 Traveling what was mistakenly deemed the safest route to camp via Sinton in San Patricio County

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and Santa Gertrudis, later King Ranch headquarters, was most unfortunate. On 20 August 1850 they encountered a band of about thirty Comanches some twenty miles southwest of Santa Gertrudis. Choosing to fight rather than flee was, in this instance, not wise. An Indian’s excellent marksmanship knocked Doc Sullivan out of the saddle. His wound was mortal. Ever so soon Ranger Wilbarger went down, dead, though “he killed two or three Indians before he fell.”75 Amazingly, suffering eight arrow wounds, and somehow atypically overlooked while victorious Comanches attached a plaited leather rope to the lifeless form of Doc Sullivan and “dragged it over the prairie,” Private Alpheus Neill maintained his charade of lifelessness.76 Suffering terribly—wounded and bleeding—sunburned and dehydrated—naked but not actually disorientated—Ranger Neill, stumbling and crawling finally managed the sixty-five-mile trek, finding sanctuary at San Patricio.77 Before year’s end, on the twenty-third day of December (a January 1851 date in other accounts), Texas Rangers scouting the roadway between Laredo and San Antonio grabbed a tiger by the tail: fourteen formidable Comanche warriors, not a light-weight in the crowd. Much to his downright dismay, Lieutenant Edward Burleson, Jr. all too quickly learned that the three horseback Comanches he spied and was chasing with his flying squadron of nine Rangers, were, in fact, screening the movements of eleven pedestrian Indians hotfooting in front of their mounted companions. Tactically the Comanche had little choice. Already with the majority afoot, they would have to stand and fight. Oddly, through misinterpretation of Burleson’s barked command, the Texas Rangers dismounted for the perilous contest, rather than sweeping through Indian ranks as real hard-charging cavalrymen fast triggering Colt’s pistols spitting irreversible siestas. “In a moment the combatants were mixed, the lance, the six shooter, and the arrow doing their deadly work.”78 At times the furious confrontation was real close and real personal; pistol balls, released arrowheads, and chilling lance thrusts all “delivered at the distance of a foot or two.”79 The hand-to-hand face-to-face scrapping was in the damn open, no damn cover, no concealment:

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Consequently each party, Comanche and Ranger, was well attuned to the reality. The extremely dire nature of the struggle, aside from a causality count, may be drawn from facts that the whole episode, from start to finish, burned but three minutes and essentially covered less than a half acre of ground—ground afterwards perfectly littered with approximately 200 arrows.80 With four Comanche dead on the windswept ground, and most of the others suffering gunshot wounds, the Indians at last opted to retreat—hightail it, running for dear life. At first glance their choice to flee rather than fight anymore may seem the product of panic; it wasn’t. Their sudden decision was not harebrained. Chasing the Comanches was truly unfeasible and hopeless. Lieutenant Burleson, plus every other Ranger in this fight, was wounded. Baker Barton and William Lackey would be eternally silent—dead!81 Presupposing that as pages of 1850s calendars turned Texans chronicled a welcome respite from Indian forays would be wrongheaded. On 15 September 1851 Private Henry J. Willis, a member of Henry E. McCulloch’s company of Texas Mounted Volunteers (Rangers) came up deathly short as end result of the unfriendly rendezvous with Indians along the San Saba River in San Saba County.82 The U.S. Army and Texas Rangers would be busy. During February 1852 Army Corporal Stanger and his ten troopers engaged ten Comanche warriors, killing three near the Rio Grande at Zapata in Zapata County. Along part of San Roque Creek near South Texas’s present day Cotulla in La Salle County, on 17 September 1852 Rangers led by Captain Owen Shaw killed nine Indians and wounded eleven, only one escaping unscathed. Towards year’s end, near Austwell a quickly improvised posse surprised and killed about forty-five Karankawas who had presumably slipped back for a spate of mischief near their old haunts along Hynes Bay. Although—for a puzzling reason—they were armed with but Colt’s revolvers, Lieutenant George B. Cosby and eleven troopers of Companies F and I, Mounted Rifles, and a band of forty Lipan Apache fatally locked up west of the Texas Gulf Coast not too far from Ben Bolt (in Jim Wells County). There they fought

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to a miserable draw on 9 May 1854: Three dead Lipans and three dead troopers. On the eleventh day of July, Captain Michael E. Van Buren was killed near San Diego in Jim Wells County, though five Comanches were also mortal casualties that day. During the fall of 1854 actions with Comanche and Lipan Apache were reported near Eagle Pass (in Maverick County), on Live Oak Creek near Batesville (Zavala County), and in the lonesome Trans-Pecos region in proximity to Fort Davis in Jeff Davis County.83 A real newsmaker, though, would come the following year. Closer in, amongst some of the more populated settlements, chiefly the Texas Hill Country, northwest of San Antonio along the Guadalupe and Blanco Rivers “Indian depredations fell with mounting frequency” that murderously scorching summer of 1855.84 Judge William Early Jones of Curry Creek, then in Comal County but now Kendall County, writing for the Seguin Mercury of July 21, 1855, noted that a group of “naked Indians with guns” who were accompanied by a “white man dressed in dark clothes with a fur hat” had ferociously attacked the overseer of his ranch, twenty-five-year-old Jesse Lawhon, and a young black slave riding with him for that day’s cow hunt. Luckily the “negro boy” executed a clean getaway, unluckily Jesse Lawhon did not. A headstone marks his grave.85 A grieving widow, Lavonia, and two small children etched his legacy. Area folks had already buried Doc McKee the previous month. He had been riding a slow-moving mule when opportunistic Indians jumped him: Unceremoniously, Doc had been “roped, dragged to the ground, lanced, and scalped.”86 Comal County folks called for a public meeting on 12 September 1855 at New Braunfels. Defensive measures were at top of the program. Despite the fact that they were physically situated almost a hundred miles behind the theoretical frontier line, they or their families or their wandering livestock were not exempt from war-whoops and furtive war-painted depredators.87 Governor Elisha Marshall Pease was being bombarded with pleas and petitions and prayers for relief. The Chief Executive would answer their entreaties with enraged and energetic potency: Rangers!

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Captain James Hughes Callahan, already in and out of shortterm appointments as chief of Ranger units, was especially drafted for a touchy mission. On paper Callahan’s duty was explicit: It is expected that you will be actively engaged in ranging in their vicinity unless it may become necessary to pursue any marauding parties of Indians that may be found in the neighborhood, in which case you are authorized to follow them up and chastise them wherever they may be found [emphasis added].”88

Retelling the long and the short of the story is relatively easy. Dissecting underlying conspiracy theories and/or untangling knots of conjecture does prove more complex and, perhaps, rightly so. Then and now an ambiguous hubbub swirls around Callahan’s genuine motives for crossing his Rangers into Mexico during the fall of 1855. Factually, however, there are a number of graveyard-deep bottom-lines. A faction of Lipan Apache had been raiding north of the river and finding safe haven south of the border. Ostensibly, so it was generally believed, they had found safety and succor with Chief Wild Cat and his incorrigible and unapologetic band of Seminole Indian transplants and some Kickapoo, along with a few Mescalero Apache, all living below the international line. Too, Wild Cat was trying to expand his borderland sphere of influence by promoting the idea that runaway slaves would find veritable asylum south of the Río Bravo. Historically, many “fugitive” slaves had already intermixed with Seminoles, they and their progeny were commonly known as Seminole-Negroes. Incredulously, at least for some extraordinarily infuriated Texans and Tejanos, Wild Cat would be commissioned a colonel in the Mexican Army. Purportedly, and it does seem more than sustainable, Wild Cat’s loathing for Comanche and white Texans was of equal depth—at bottom of the cesspool: Wild Cat thoroughly despised both.89 Although maybe not out-and-out protected by the complicit Mexican civil officialdom, the supposed pillaging Indians were not being heartily prosecuted militarily, either. Texans reckoned the Mexicans and suspect Indians were in cahoots. Right or

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wrong, Texans’ strong sense of independence cried for action. Texas Rangers were on the prowl; any sensitivities of sovereignty could be damned. Subsequent to his Texas Ranger command crossing a somewhat swollen and raging Rio Grande near Eagle Pass on the American side and her sister city on the opposite bank, Piedras Negras, State of Coahuila, the march south kept on—severely punishing aberrant Indians on the agenda. Though possibly forewarned by an itinerant Mexican that he was riding into an ambuscade, Captain Callahan and his 100 plus raring to go Rangers found themselves twenty-odd miles below the border, at Escondido Creek. They had been, among themselves, hankering and spoiling for a real fight. Their yearnings came to pass on the third day of October 1855.90 Preoccupied and lulled into a false sense of security by observing a herd of cattle grazing in the distance, apparently undisturbed, the sidetracked Rangers were taken completely off guard by a mixed and mean contingent of dour Mexican cavalry and their grim-faced Indian auxiliaries. The collision was quick, the fight was sharp. Not surprisingly, maintaining Ranger tradition, it may be coolly suggested that the Mexicans and Indians took a whipping—a veritable lopsided scorecard of dead and wounded combatants—at least so said Captain James Hughes Callahan. Regardless the accuracy or inaccuracy of the claim, there would be sad news for the families and friends of four Rangers. Private Willis H. Jones, the eldest son of the Judge W.E. Jones who had been haranguing loudly that the Indians must be roundly chastised, was dead on the battlefield. Likewise, lifeless on the ground after giving their all were Rangers Augustus Smith, Hal K. Holland, and William H. Clopton.91 Awarding a blue-ribbon for this clash—in truth—is tricky, complicated by the fact that there was an abrupt about-face, Mexicans and Indians, “set fire to the field to obscure their escape” then dashed for the interior, Rangers running in the opposite direction, raced headlong for the border.92 Scampering into Piedras Negras, Captain Callahan sought to fortify his position, temporarily. Crossing the roiling Rio Grande and returning to Texas could not be done quickly, not in safety. Any

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delay, though, could prove dicey. Mexican soldiers, now healthily reinforced, were making fast tracks for the border town. As Texas Rangers were organizing and preparing to cross the river, Mexican soldiers and Indians began shooting at the fleeing interlopers. “To protect their retreat, the Texans fired the village, although they may have had help. There is a tradition among the Seminole Negroes even today that their ancestors chased the invaders from Piedras Negras by shooting fire arrows into the houses. Callahan and his men quickly left the burning town. . . .”93 Whether by the hand of Rangers or Indians or interracial amalgamation integrating runaway slaves, one way or the other or some combination thereof, Piedras Negras burned. Lighting the torch to cover an exodus was not a novel contrivance for covering a fast retreat or denying resources to an enemy. Mexicans and Indians, too, had been known to employ the primitive tactic.94 While injudicious arsons may have shielded Rangers’ splashing back onto the Lone Star’s floor, raging wildfires of controversy would not be so easily extinguished. Although years later a U.S. Government cash settlement would find its way into the hands of some impoverished citizens of Piedras Negras as partial indemnity for the destructiveness of Captain Callahan’s incursion, other questions loomed large.95 Though falling short of certainty, an assertion that Callahan’s entry into Mexico was not for the pursuit of culpable Indian raiders but was only a smokescreen for nefarious Texans recovering runaway slaves is not outlandish. Assuredly there were clues and circumstances and clandestine conferences tending to prop up such an allegation, but adherence to actual evidence prompts that vexing hardcore standard: Proof beyond a reasonable doubt. And some doubt, in this case, is reasonable. Little question would there be, if these Rangers had encountered runaway slaves residing and hiding in Mexico that the escapees would have been taken into custody, chained, and returned to their so-called legal owners.96 The unadulterated truth, whatever it is, “shall probably remain buried. . . .”97 What couldn’t be buried was Texas history’s inconvenient but naked shame, The Cart War. Shiploads of cargo arriving at Indianola

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required overland transshipment to interior Texas at San Antonio or south into the Rio Grande Valley. Capitalistic-minded Tejanos and/or Mexican carteros with ox-drawn carts jumped at a chance to take on the role as freighters. Understandably they were tempting targets for banditti haunting the Wild Horse Desert and/or the roadways leading northwest into Bexar County. Heartless hooligans of pure and mixed ancestry—brown skinned and light skinned—were wickedly harassing the vulnerable caravans. Problematically, as if that wasn’t enough, the carteros could, would, and were undercutting the prices charged by their Anglo counterparts. Greed for greenbacks and gold was uncontrollable. Gratuitous violence fueled by “a volatile mixture of racism and economics” spilled forth as the big-wheeled carts were disabled and gunshots punctuated the gravity of a genuine pricing war.98 Though most often overlooked—especially in agenda-driven accounts—a Ranger company was commissioned by the governor to put the kibosh on the entrepreneurial insanity and irrational killing. Perhaps, for analytical yet down-to-earth practical purposes, it was one of the first times Texas Rangers were “formed for a purely police role. . . .”99 Captain G.H. Nelson’s Rangers, provisionally tenured for sixty-days, “did some good work and the trains they guarded were not attacked.”100 Shortly, the Cart War story was dead and buried, but the underlying racial and ethnic and cultural tensions were alive and well. Not reverentially interred were what came to be known— in today’s lingo—as the captivity narratives, a bending to the modern-era strictures of political correctness.101 In Texas during those late 1850s there was no mystification or mush-mouthing: Kidnapping was kidnapping, hostage taking was hostage taking, and ransom demands were ransom demands. The last day of 1857, during a wanton killing spree (already dead were an Anglo settler and an unnamed black slave), Comanches near Meridian Peak in Bosque County added a name to their death count, murdering Peter Cartwright Johnson and capturing his beloved son, ten-year-old Peter Johnson Jr. who was later abandoned on the prairie in the dead of winter to fend for himself, freezing and starving. After six dismal days, Peter was found by roaming cowboys.102

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On 21 October 1858, twelve-year-old Tobe Jackson and his nineyear-old sister, Rebecca, were spirited away by marauding Indians while on an outing with their family in Brown County, a section that would later become Mills County (county seat Goldthwaite). That’s but part of the story: Less than two miles from home, twenty-six Indians dashed up from the timber along Pecan Bayou and shot Mr. Jackson dead. . . . An arrow hit the oldest daughter, pinning her arm against her side. The Indians reached the wagon and pulled her out. Mrs. Jackson got down and fell to her knees, crying, and praying, while Rebecca sat beside her. Tobe stood nearby, not knowing what to do, while the youngest boy peered out from the wagon bed. They watched in horror as the Indians dragged the eldest daughter about forty paces away, stripped her clothes, and raped her. When they finished, they cut off one of her breasts, scalped her alive, cut her throat, and carried the long auburn hair to Mrs. Jackson and threw it in her face. Another Indian noticed the youngest son peering out from the wagon. He shot an arrow into his eye, pulled his head over the edge of the end gate and cut his throat.103

For his Indian Depredations In Texas, J.W. Wilbarger adds that the Indians “pulled the little seven year old boy and four year old girl to the side of the wagon and cut their throats and left their heads hanging outside with their bodies inside the wagon.”104 Fleeing the scene, Indians split into smaller bands, one taking Mrs. Jackson, another holding onto Tobe and Rebecca. Doubtless the story was a tragedy. The group restraining the mother, eventually killed the hapless lady by slicing her jugular and leaving her dead on the trail. A party of Rangers/San Saba County Mounted Volunteers, scouting under the nominal leadership of Lieutenant John Williams eventually overhauled the band of Indians possessing the children, causing the raiding warriors to abandon their horror-struck charges.105 Also horror-stricken were an Indian warrior and his female raiding partner. The 1859 installment was quick, sharp—and irrevocable. With others, John William Sansom had run the pair to

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ground after they had stolen horses in Kendall County (county seat Boerne). During a furious charge Sansom and pals were intermixed with stolen horses and the horse thieves and the choking dust. The Indians were in a tight spot, unable to make a clean getaway. Rather than become a prisoner of his enemies the warrior whipped out a wicked-looking butcher knife and administered death to his “squaw” before stringing his bow and manfully charging into the posse in a defiant act of go down fighting suicide.106 Although a new decade was peeking on the nearing horizon of time, Indians were willing and capable of ruining tranquility for unsuspecting and/or incautious Texans during 1859. They struck hard and fast in the western part of Bell County, between North Nolan and Cowhouse Creeks on the sixteenth day of March. Comanches (probably), unceremoniously killed a settler named Pierce, and then proceeded to murder and scalp William C. Riggs and his wife, leaving their infant boy “lying in his parents’ blood.” The two older daughters, Rhoda, twelve, and Margaret, eight, were made powerless captives. Continuing with their foray, besides stealing livestock, the raiding Indians shot down a fellow named O’Neil, rounding up forty-five horses grazing near the Franklin Ranch. When surprised by a party of “cow hunters” the Indians skedaddled in such helter-skelter fashion that it allowed Rhoda and Margaret to get away. In nearby Mason County on 19 July 1859, Kiowas wounded and captured nine-year-old William Hoerster. According to newsprint in the well-read San Antonio Herald, Mr. Hoerster was “almost insane” due to the tragic kidnapping of his boy.107 Later the Kiowa traded young Hoerster to Comancheros for a loaf of bread. Ultimately the thoroughly befuddled German-speaking Hoerster lad was luckily trafficked into the hands of the redoubtable Christopher “Kit” Carson, then serving as an Indian Agent in New Mexico Territory, who orchestrated his return to Texas. And, during scorching September, along the Rio Grande near Eagle Pass, raiding Indians killed Mr. Worman, his toddling daughter, mother-in-law, and two ill-fated sisters-in-law. Piteously, Mrs. Worman, struggling and scared, was carried into

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oblivion. Texans were not any too happy with the U.S. Army’s veil of protection.108 Passionately, a distraught and disgruntled G.W. Todd of Mason County penned a letter to the editor of the San Antonio Herald more or less lambasting the lackluster interest of the American Army’s hierarchy: The citizens are leaving the frontier for the interior, and if there are not some protection given to us we shall all have to quit and that soon. Will not General Twiggs send us some protection.109

Little does it need mentioning at this point, but America’s brewing storm of social and political unrest was at the forefront of most folk’s minds as the new decade was approaching. There was, though, unfinished business—big business—before the 1850s were at length put to bed and relegated to scholarly armchair study. Texans, ardently adept at hurling vociferous zingers at the inadequacies and incapability’s of the United States Army, were in jam. The burr under Texans’ saddles—really an oversized barb—was Juan Nepomuceno Cortina, thirty-five years of age and well-schooled in ways of the border, from both banks of the Río Bravo. Experienced as a hardcharging cavalryman with a unit of Mexican irregulars during the late war, Juan Cortina was a veteran combatant, a warrior. He was, too, subject to judgment, a bona fide brigand or fervent firebrand or, maybe, a righter of wrongs. Whatever tag is correct—or all of them—during the 1850s closing year Juan Cortina was a piercing and throbbing and festering thorn Texas Rangers couldn’t remove on their own, even though he was, in point of fact, suffering felony Grand Jury indictments for cow theft and murder.110 Brownsville in Cameron County, at the southernmost tip of Texas, is where Juan Cortina’s legend took foothold. It was there, on 13 July that City Marshal Robert “Bob” Shears stopped and detained an inebriated and seemingly quarrelsome fellow named (Tomás ?) Cabrera, a man of Mexican ancestry, but one who, purportedly, “had mistreated the owner of a local coffee shop,” and was subject to lawful arrest, a warrant having been issued.111 Depending on the version

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cited, Cabrera did or did not pull a knife on Bob Shears. There is no mystery, however, about gendarme Shears’s next play. He thumped Cabrera on the head with the cold steel barrel of an old borrowed sixshooter. Whether his martial move was an act of self-preservation or stupid overreaction is—truthfully—fuzzy. Juan Cortina’s reaction is crystal-clear. Backed up by a “dozen desperate fellows” covering his play, Juan Cortina shot Bob Shears in the left shoulder, liberating the lawman’s prisoner, and spiriting him out of town atop a fast galloping horse.112 Cortina, thoroughly emboldened, now pocketing a folkloric status with many disenfranchised Tejanos on the north side of the Rio Grand/Río Bravo and Mexicans on the opposite bank, recruited insurrectionary affiliates to his figurative banner.113 What followed would be marked down in histories as the Cortina War, the first one. On the whole, in the big picture, Cortina overestimated his military strength, though a claim of short-term triumphs is indisputable.114 Unarguably, exercising no shortage of military maneuverability, Juan Cortina bested not only a few local militia units, i.e. the Brownsville Tigers, but also, a hastily formed 100-man Ranger Company from Bexar County commanded by William Gerard Tobin, twenty-six, a former city marshal and son-in-law to the Alamo City’s mayor. There’s little doubt that Tobin’s provisional complement of Texas Rangers arriving at Brownsville subsequent to Cortina’s 28 September 1859 assault on the city, tacitly stood down or overtly shared the lynch mob’s mentality.115 In any event, one of Juan Cortina’s subalterns was hustled from the jailhouse and summarily hanged. And, just as surely, as the result of fanatical ensuing engagements Rangers John Fox, Thomas Grier, David Herman, William McKay, Nicholas R. Milett (or Mallet), and Fountain B. Woodruff, met eternal peace—albeit with leaden bullet wounds hastening their unsolicited departures.116 Unarguably, too, at least for sound and impartial reasoning, would be the authentic downside for Juan Cortina’s storming into Brownsville with murderous thoughts and acts and undisputed acquisition of plunder on his program. The explicit criminality—despite

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any political correctness spin—was damn sure valid. With untainted conviction the sorrowfully crying widows or mothers or kiddos of William Peter Neale, George Morris, Robert L. Johnson, Viviano Garcia, and Clemente Reyes would categorize the murders of their loved ones as criminal—homicides.117 Inexplicably assuming that checking names off Juan Cortina’s retributive “hit list” would satisfy his yearnings for revenge and/or fixing right the alleged or legit social injustices would fall short of the mark. Somewhat eccentrically it does seem, the borderland bandit colloquially known as “The Red Robber of the Rio Grande,” had imbued in his raging bloodstream an insatiable weakness: Livestock larceny. For now, the first installment in this noteworthy Rio Grande Valley melodrama, the hard “toll exacted by the Cortinistas was amazing as Cortina’s avowed enemies lost hundred of thousands of dollars in property and livestock.”118 Deflating as it might be, leaking facts from balloons of Lone Star folklore, in this instance, for battling the likes of Juan Cortina and his murderous minions—and a smattering of his more innocently duped and disillusioned followers—Rangers were, rather sadly, in want of real help. And, John T. Eldridge alerted Governor Runnels to that effect: “Capt. Tobin has left with his company & which ‘per say’ is inadequate to the task.”119 Governor Runnels was not comatose. Uncle Sam responded with manpower and munitions. Major Samuel P. Heintzelman, United States Army, was tasked with cleansing the border of Juan Cortina’s murderous misappropriations of Texans’ and Tejanos’ personal belongings and four-legged assets. Within the boundaries of Texas and, in reality throughout the nation, hard facts and specious rumors about Cortina’s doings were running rampant: Corpus Christi had fallen, burned to the ground, now but a cold heap of ashes! Whatever good or bad may be said of Texans, piddling indifference was not in their collective psyches or repertoires. Again fretful Texans needed their Rangers. This time, as before, the indomitable Rip Ford got the call. Governor Runnels, a lame duck, ordered Ford and a body of Texas Rangers to rescue Corpus Christi.120 Leaning that the torching of Corpus Christi was but journalists’ fanned hokum, Captain Ford and his Rangers

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refocused on the Rio Grande Valley, making contact with Major Heintzelman and his pre-positioned federal troops. Truthfully but regrettably, the consequent actions between Juan Cortina’s sometimes well-oiled battle machine and sometimes loosely organized and poorly equipped partisan believers and the American military commands ultimately answering to Washington, D.C. or Austin, in the case of Captain Ford’s provisionally recruited Texas Rangers, warrants a much larger page count than allowed for within this treatment. From inception Mexico, characteristic of most all fledgling governments, was quite ill-suited for providing protection and political solidity for its populace. If a female appellation is not taken as coarse chauvinism, as a country she was nakedly exposed and defenseless from vulgarity and brashly rude advances from outside—and/or within! Her northern borderlands had been rife with turmoil: “Mexico had writhed in revolutionary ferment ever since winning independence from Spain in 1821. Mexico could not pay its debts, could not maintain order in the nation, and could not police its boundary against Indians and bandits who plagued Texas from foreign sanctuary.”121 Suffice to say, subsequent to asymmetrical defeats and the deaths of numerous bandits/loyalists at Rio Grande City, and below at Rancho La Mesa and La Bolsa, an ever cunning and calculating borderlander like slippery Juan Cortina sought sanctuary south of the river in Mexico, staying there for awhile—a little while.122

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little could they have known it at the time, but the 1860s decade would ultimately prove exceptionally bloody for Texans. Clairvoyant talents were really not a requisite for precisely reading signs of the impending near-term future—it was, really, quite ominous! All Americans, one way or the other—including Texans—were standing at the brink of another horrifying war, one between themselves. The senseless struggle over slavery, state’s rights, and sovereignty would appreciably impact everyone staking their claim for a prosperous future within the now finite boundaries of the Lone Star State. Choosing sides was not necessarily easy or painless. Recounting subchapters of that saga would not only reveal details of Texans’ premature deaths on distant battlefields but, too, it moves ahead an indulgent insight of the Texas Ranger narrative. Not all Texans fighting for the Confederacy set foot on Union soil or Deep South dirt. For scared settlers and soldiers not venturing into what was then partly a foreign land, it was and, would be, “hell on the home front.”1 Anyone presupposing the 1858 trouncing John Ford and his 102 Rangers, accompanied by former Indian Agent Shapley P. Ross and 113 Indian allies “wearing white cloth badges,” had issued to Comanches inside and outside their tepees put an end to the bloodbaths, horse 75

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stealing, and abductions would be wrong. Regardless ethnicity Texas campaigners were tough customers. Caught unawares not too terribly far past the state line—in the Canadian River country of Indian Territory—the flabbergasted and fearful Comanche could do little: Run or die—or—run and die! Known as the battle of Antelope Hills or the encounter at Little Robe Creek, the engagement was hardly worthy of classification as a real down and dirty battle, even if one named Texas Ranger, Robert Nickel, and an unidentified Waco Indian ally did forfeit their lives. Though owning the whopping superior ratio of potential combatants the Comanche, at this place and time, besides being taken by total surprise, were outmatched and outgunned. The fully accurate accounting of Indian casualties is inexact due to many wounded warriors evading enumeration: Seventy-six Comanche were left dead on the ground, and many Indian women and children were made prisoners of war, ultimately to be turned over and divvied by the conglomerate of tribal allies, Caddos, Wacos, Tawakonis, Anadarkos, and Tonkawas. Although this one-sided mêlée was a Comanche tragedy playing-out off Texas’s center-stage, it could not be, nor would it be, critiqued as an ostentatious showstopper in the continuing theatrical tragedy pitting besieged Texans against beleaguered Indians— and/or vice versa.2 On the other hand, Captain Ford’s thrashing of the Comanches in their supposed safe haven, while not an absolute game changer, magnified hardcore reality for many Texans: If need be, Rangers, working in conjunction with Indian scouts and allies, could well carry a sharp fight to hostiles, wherever, irrespective of what the dithering—in their minds—U.S. Army could or could not, would or would not, really do.3 And that was discounting the follow-up conquest of Brevet Major Earl Van Dorn, 2nd United States Calvary, ably assisted by a complement of sharp-edged and impatient Indian allies commanded by Lawrence Sullivan “Sul” Ross at the Rush Springs fight of 1 October 1858. Again, caught off-guard in the fastness of their homeland north of the Red River near the Wichita Mountains, the Comanches suffered an annihilating rout: The victory was spectacular were one an American military man; a wholesale massacre were one a

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surviving and lucky free-roaming Comanche. At any rate, some seventy Indians were killed and many were wounded, severely and/ or slightly. Triumphant bluecoats—under orders—burned to the ground 120 lodges and rounded up 300 loose horses, besides soundly confiscating or destroying the overwhelmed Comanches’ priceless subsistence provisions and camp equipage.4 Attacking unsuspecting folks in their homes was far different than suffering an unforgiving attack at one’s own home—it was not benign, but malignant and hurtful—devastating.5 More importantly, perhaps in the big picture, it was and would prove to be culturally consequential. Espousing that a permanent corps of Rangers be recruited and fielded was echoing from the western counties—the frontier—but somewhat muffled and muted by residents of eastern Texas, the more settled section. Aside from partisan political posturing, one side championing the real need for a full-time outfit of Rangers, the other downplaying such a pointless idea, there was an unyielding common denominator: Texas was land rich, cash poor! Parsimonious state legislators and perpetually grumbling taxpayers—always financially strapped—could seldom really sustain a Ranger company or companies for any reasonable length of time. That habitual deficit between real dollars and expectation—at least for awhile—played directly into leathery hands holding bows, lances, war-clubs, and scalping knives. Probing exactly how much of America’s brewing political firestorm Comanche and Kiowa comprehended would be, in point of truth, but speculative. Shutting down the two experimental reservations in Texas the previous year and insensitively removing the tenants to Indian Territory had not cleared the Lone Star’s 1860 stage of misfortune.6 Hardly had the New Year begun. On the seventh day of February, a unified band of Comanche and Kiowa blistered into Erath County and with no immediate resistance managed to make captives of four unfortunate women, Lucinda Wood, sixteen, and Hulda Lemley, nineteen, and her two younger sisters, Liddie and Nancy. Since the prisoners were the dwelling’s sole occupants at the time, Indians owned a head start and the luxury of a timeout from any hounding. It was

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an opportunity too good to resist. Near present-day Lingleville, but a few miles west of the county seat, the obviously self-assured captors halted. Then, “with reasonable assurance that they would not be interrupted, the warriors beat and raped the women.”7 Shortly thereafter, though it may have seemed an eternity, Lucinda Wood and Liddie Lemley were filled with arrows and stabbed with the robust punctures of war-lances. Both died. Somewhat later the terrified Nancy and Hulda were stripped and set free, the raiders tired of their entertainment and wishing not to be slowed by incessantly watching after two “white women.” Why they were not murdered is a mystery. What is not mysterious was the next day’s death of the two Monroe brothers in Bosque County northwest of Meridian and the followings day’s murders of ill-fated Baptist ministers Griffin and White, a dozen miles north of Gatesville (in Coryell County). Still not finished with their lightning-strike raid, on 11 February 1860, the prowling Indians mortally waylaid Benjamin Vanhook and M.S. Skaggs along banks of the North Fork of the San Gabriel in Burnet County, killing both men. The marauders, after stealing saddle-horses from Newt Jackson’s ranch in San Saba County, vanished, ostensibly swallowed up in vastness of the Llano Estacado or broken plains and cedar breaks of Indian Territory.8 Where was the Army? Where were the Texas Rangers? Nearing year’s end there would be a memorable and murderous raid by Comanches, one in many instances overshadowed by its sensational aftermath. Northeast of Jacksboro (in Jack County) on 26 November 1860 Indians murdered the wife of James Landman, kidnapping twelve-year-old Jane Landman albeit at the end of a taut catch-rope, dragging her from the scene, screaming and bleeding and terrified. Katherine Masterson, fifteen, a visitor to the Landmans’ cabin was captured but placed atop a war-pony and ushered into her very own nightmare. At Calvin Gage’s cabin the jovial Comanche cut the horribly mutilated Jane from the rope—“and shot her dead.” Afterward, rather quickly, they killed Katy Sanders and several times wounded Anna Gage, then abducted near two-year-old Polly Gage for awhile, as they “laughingly threw her high into the air several times, letting her smash onto the ground.” Turning guns on Mary

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Ann Fowler, mama Landman’s daughter by a previous marriage, and young Jonathan Gage, the Indians presented them with lead balls—dropping them in their tracks, presuming they were dead. Subsequent to looting the cabin the raiders speedily departed, taking Matilda Gage, fourteen, and Katherine Masterson, along with Matilda’s half-brother Hiram Fowler as prisoners. Assured they were not being followed, after traveling but a short distance the furtive Comanches suddenly stopped, stripped Matilda and Katherine and “savagely abused them.” Then they released the girls to wander the countryside on their own, confused, embarrassed—and naked, after executing the troublesome and defiant Hiram.9 The next day—the twenty-seventh—the Indians caught John Brown unawares but near a half-mile from his home in Parker County. It was good sport fatally skewing Brown with a lance before scalping him and hacking off his nose. Near Mineral Wells in adjoining Palo Pinto County, the yet-unfinished Comanches—one of which was a red-headed renegade—made a prisoner of Martha Johnson Sherman. To her horror she was disrobed and tortured and “raped by at least seventeen warriors,” including the remorseless white man. Their lustful itch temporarily sated, a warrior pushed the pointed tip of an arrow under Martha’s shoulder blade, while another scalped her. Even after being scalped and trampled by the Comanches’ horses, Martha lived long enough to tell of her horror and deliver a stillborn baby, before she too passed to the other side. By the next day, and pushing 300 stolen horses ahead of them, the raiding Indians turned north—once more seeking sanctuary outside the line of frontier settlements.10 Though often omitted in modern writings—purposely or not— the foregoing Indian sortie during late November 1860 would earn horrendous repercussions for Comanches. In response to the aforementioned rapes and murders, Sul Ross captained a company of Rangers, soon joined by a twenty-one-man detachment of Company H, 2nd U.S. Cavalry, under command of Sergeant J. W. Spangler. Supplementing this strike force were seventy or eighty thoroughly mad Texas possemen—cowmen and cowboys—recruited by Jack

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Cureton, mostly fellows from Palo Pinto County. The soon to be celebrated cowman and plainsman Charles Goodnight scouted ahead with several others. And, as sheer good luck would have it, Goodnight found on the inattentive Indians’ distinct and easily readable trail, the tortured and gang-raped and now sadly dead Martha Sherman’s “pillowslip.” Tucked inside was Martha’s family Bible, reasonably ample proof to pursuers that they were on the right track. Despite the competing versions as to what did or did not actually happen— and there are not just a few—the debris of twisted and/or distorted data may be cleared with at least a couple of undisputed facts. On or about the nineteenth day of December 1860 Texans and soldiers killed Comanches, men and women, near Mule Creek, a tributary of the Pease River in what is now Foard County, purportedly “the great supply depot and clearing house for the frontier raids.”11 Grading the encounter a hard fight or massacre may be arguable, but the retaking of Cynthia Ann Parker—now an assimilated Indian and the loving mother of three half-blood Comanche children—is not. That Cynthia Ann, also known by her Comanche name as Nautdah, had well integrated into the tribal lifestyle may somewhat be drawn from her mindful solution for putting the necessary quietuses on one of her crying brood, at least so a young Texas Ranger aspirant observed and, later, asserted. Joseph Alansing “Joe” Browning, who was at the bottom of the pecking order for Sul Ross’s company of Texas Rangers and therefore assigned to the less than glamorous task of wrangling spare horses and pack mules, professed: On the blustery and bone chilling return trip to Camp Cooper with the “recaptured” Parker lady in tow, he personally—and surprisingly—witnessed Cynthia Ann unsympathetically dunk one of her “papooses” in a cold stream they were crossing to shush the relentlessly whining child. The crying stopped.12 Though underlying tones of the overall narrative are splendid and poignant and a part of the great—and sometimes greatly enhanced—Texas legend, for nomadic and recalcitrant Comanche the story—once again—was ringing real true and gunpowder loud. Nowhere was safe ground. The frontier was shrinking.

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What were not dwindling were shrill cries for secession. Texas was a slave state, to the core. And, though there would be scattered pockets of resistance and politically active naysayers, when brought to the lick log—time to perform, not pontificate—majority Texans went for the Confederacy. With Union troops gladly withdrawn or grudgingly nudged with tough talk and threat of Colt’s coercions, Texas was free of federal forces.13 That said, and though it was true, Texas was not exempt from some very turbulent times and the blame would be—could be—laid at multicultural doorsteps. There were hotspots of Union sentiment alive and well within Texas, branded as disgraceful traitors by most everyday Texans. Adding to the discomfort—and embarrassment— were wild and woolly geographical lairs both north and south of the twisting Rio Grande, home turf to gangs of Confederate draft dodgers and/or deserters and/or downright pirates opting to rake profit while their white brethren died on distant fronts.14 Sympathy and tolerance were in short supply. Lynch mob mentality plentiful. Two episodes stand out and warrant mention. Certain portions of North Texas, Gainesville (in Cooke County), in particular, were fermenting beds of Unionism and cradles for conspirators rumored to propound armed insurrection. Fellows bent on destroying Texas’ Confederate government. They, too, were scrupulously committed to “kill their leaders, and bring in Federal troops. . . .” Spies were put into ranks of the Peace Party, identifying members and detecting plans. The long and the short of Gainesville’s Great Hanging story is simplistic and deathly final. Arrests were made, trials were hurried, foreseeable guilty verdicts rendered, and thirty-nine suspected traitors were publicly hanged one day, while five others were shortly either dancing at the end of a rope or gunned down.15 Further south, in the picturesque Hill Country at the German community of Fredericksburg (in Gillespie County) an open pacifist sentiment was predominately ingrained—strong as dynamite! Not surprisingly Anglo Texans—no longer Americans—were bitterly intolerant of the disloyalty. If that was what it was? An argument has been proffered that the German speaking settlers had little or no real

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understanding, and truly owned an “ignorance about the war” more so than any real barefaced treachery. ¿Quién sabe? Then, though, on the ground and in real time, rumors were flourishing—proliferating. Gossip was raging that some folks with German lineage were going to take up arms against the Confederacy, defiantly marching in unison with Unionists.16 “The thing that made the deserter problem so hard to handle was the fact that in some localities a majority of the people were in sympathy with them. This was especially true in Blanco, Gillespie, and Jack Counties. The number of citizens disloyal to the Confederacy along the entire frontier was astonishingly high. Partizan [sic] feeling was strong. In some places deadly feuds broke out. Because of this state of affairs many good men voluntarily asked to be transferred from the frontier organization to the Confederate service for safety. They preferred to face Union guns to taking their chance on the bushwhacker’s rifle.”17 A sad day there would be. Texas forces overtook one group making tracks for the border intent on either dodging Confederate conscription or for a purpose much more nefarious—or maybe just laying low in Mexico for the cheerless war’s duration. The nighttime attack was not pretty. A number of Germans speaking fellows were killed while they slept or were trampled to death by hard-charging cavalrymen’s horses. The battleless battle would—in due time—become known as the Nueces River Massacre. Nine prisoners, after their surrender, were executed, at least so goes one version from afar.18 Another voice, one of an actual participant and eyewitness, remembers the encounter somewhat differently— but even he doesn’t dispute the regrettable and coldhearted issuance of summary judgment, the murder of unarmed prisoners.19 Standing hard by facts, though in some camps it skews political correctness sideways, there is a correlating bottom-line. For the Civil War there were good men and bad men on either side. And, too, perhaps surprising to some students, even the struggling Confederate States forces could enumerate positive contributions by saddle-hardened Anglo Texans, Tejano brothers in gray uniforms, and Indian stalwarts volunteering their services manning flat-bottom supply boats on East Texas’s rivers or in the spottily

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timbered and undulating grasslands of North Texas.20 There was, however, that other side, the downside. Threats of Indian raids had not been simply swept away with stroke of a Texas secessionist’s ink-pen. The peril was and would be real. Now, though, maybe just as humorless was the criminality of “deserters, draft dodgers, bushwhackers, and Jayhawkers,” which after unashamedly and violently gaining individual footholds tended to even “overshadow” terrorization by wayward warriors.21 Make no mistake though, not just a few frightened citizens along the Lone Star’s frontier’s far-flung edge “forted up.” Joining together, they were welcoming—hoping for— safe and comforting civilian havens at Fort Davis (not the U.S. Army post Jeff Davis County) on the Clear Fork of the Brazos in northwest Stephens County, as were other settlers’ enclaves at Picketville, Owl’s Head, and Mugginsville, also in Stephens County. And there were also rudimentary forts Bragg and Murray (or Murrah) in Young County as well as safety at the Lynch and Greer ranches in Shackelford County.22 With regards to Comanche and Kiowas, many of whom were using the Indian Territory as a city of refuge, most Texans knew the U.S Army’s post and reservation would be “where warriors received government supplies and protection while resting between raids.”23 Quite interestingly but, perhaps, flawed is the credulous contention that raiding Indians during an 1860–1865 timeframe more or less took a delightful holiday from dashing into Texas for stealing horses and cattle.24 The Elm Creek Raid would for the near-term, yet again, sear into the minds of Texans the ferociousness linked with any unchecked Comanche and Kiowa sorties. Not surprisingly the October full moon of 1864 lighted the way. This particular raid, according to one contemporaneous to the time and place (or the editor), would prove to be “one of the most destructive in all Texas border history.”25 Subsequent to storming across the Red River on 12 October 1864, the raiding Indians, Comanche and Kiowa, numbering in the hundreds, dissolved into several warfare elements intent on delivering death and destruction and acquiring booty the next day from the scattered settlers of Young County, principally along Elm Creek northwest of Fort

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Belknap.26 At the Fitzpatrick Ranch, formerly known as Carson’s Trading Post, twenty-one-year-old Susanna Carter Durkin “futilely tried to defend the others with a shotgun, but she was tomahawked, dragged outside, tortured, gang-raped, scalped, and killed.”27 Then, the Indians during the course of the raid found a newborn babe hidden in a box under a bed, and forthwith smashed his head against a wall, eternally assuring his silence. With other frightened prisoners in tow, raiders stuck hard for the Llano Estacado, but paused long enough to effectively deal with a sick captive, thirteen-year-old Elijah Carter, who was too ill to travel any farther. The warriors’ home remedy was simple: “The Indians built a fire in a brush heap and threw the boy in it. They forced Elizabeth Fitzpatrick to watch her grandson burn to death.”28 Though written about extensively, for this treatment there is a reasonably fixed bottom-line for the thirteenth day of October strike, a tally enumerated herein, not counting the eleven homes burned to the ground: “The number of Indians participating in the raid of 1864 is uncertain. The estimate runs from 400 to 600. From the top of his house in Fort Murray, Franz Peveler with his spyglass counted 250 Indians passing near the fort. The Indians themselves [later] stated 1,000 warriors participated. A heavy toll had been taken of life and property. Five Confederate troops and seven civilians were killed. Two women and five children were stolen.”29 The Texas frontier was aflame with revulsion and hatred— revenge uppermost in many minds. That said, there is backdrop for another sad story—one from a diametric perspective—and one wholly indefensible. The other incident—during January 1865—leaves its indelible stain on Texas’s martial forces. Negligence was hideous, infamy for Texans dreadful. Texans attacked the wrong group of Indians—and in doing so bit from the hard plug, more than they could chew. Instead of their intended targets being Comanche or Kiowa or Apache the real scourge of Texans’ thinking, the Indians were Kickapoos making their way to Mexico hunting for a hoped for respite from wartorn and bleeding Kansas. Southwest of what is now Mertzon along meandering Dove Creek, this band of inoffensive Kickapoos were

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attacked. The indiscreet miscalculation as to Indian numbers would prove mind-numbing and dangerous. When an adversaries’ numbers start peaking somewhere in the range of 600 to 700 there is due cause for caution. This was, unfortunately for Texans, one of those times. Once more there’s not too much as to the long and short of the story. The multiunit Texas contingent, and one who was not admirably later characterized as the “flop-eared militia” because they were “armed with all kinds of firearms, shot-guns, squirrel rifles, some muskets and pistols,” would report heavy casualties with little to show for— much less justify—the nighttime and next morning attack. Clearly the Kickapoos, at least according to Buck Barry who wasn’t actually there, but by those that were, it was more than “easily seen that these Indians had come into Texas with better guns and ammunition than the troops had.”30 Taken aback Texans were put to abrupt and fast flight. One participant—a Texan—noted the wretched reality: “We had traveled three hundred miles to catch the Indians, and had just let them loose, leaving twenty-two [actually 26] dead on the field and about forty wounded, and a loss of sixty-three horses killed.”31 Quite ruefully but insightfully that same fellow, I.D. Ferguson, admitted: “I had by this time learned that the boys had not killed all the Indians, that there were plenty of them left for me to kill, and I had all day in which to do it. . . . I had all the killing I could attend to, and would have been glad to have turned the job over to someone else, but every man I saw had a like business of his own, so I had to try and hold my job down the very best I could.”32 Though there’s little doubt individual participants, Indians and Texans, fought courageously, in this instance the decision goes to the Kickapoo, they had kicked ass and taken names—for twenty-six Texas Rangers’ tombstones.33 Wrongheaded would be any naiveté suggesting the Confederacy’s capitulation at Appomattox had now blanketed war-weary Texans with tranquility and gestures of goodwill toward all men. For decades into the future Texas was—and would be—that wild and woolly cut of real-estate:34 Tough ground to cover. Quite interestingly, the turbulent 1860s would mark Texas calendars as the bloodiest decade in the Indian Wars west of the

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Mississippi. For this timeframe, it has been adroitly and, logically, penned: “Most of the blood, however, came from those who should have been allowed to remain on the sidelines while the main adversaries battled to a conclusion. It wasn’t to be. Soldiers and Rangers were largely ineffective. The war on the Texas frontier was fought by the settlers.”35 Troublesome times in Texas were on tap. Taken as a whole, the futile—and sometimes wasted—efforts of Texas’s Reconstruction Government effectively curtailing the ruthless Indian attacks, interdicting cross-border incursions by mean-spirited Mexican bandits, clipping the wings of iniquitous Tejano brigands, thwarting feloniously minded freedmen and, yes, thoroughly cleansing the filthy nests of lawless white deserters and cold-blooded desperadoes with pureblood Anglo pedigrees had, absent a hint of overstatement, almost rendered governmental authority helpless. “Jayhawkers, guerrillas, and highwaymen appeared. An attempt was made to capture and rob the penitentiary at Huntsville. The State Treasury at Austin, left without adequate protection, was looted. Predatory bands of robbers and jayhawkers infested all the roads between San Antonio and the Rio Grande. One stage was said to have been held up on an average of once every five miles on the road from Rio Grande City to San Antonio. Affairs were not much better in other sections.”36 One on-scene observer, D.S. Howell, in speaking of the Red River Country’s Lamar County particularly noted: “There were some hard customers in that country at the time. In North Texas there had been much opposition to the war, and bushwhackers and various renegades got thicker and thicker and bolder and bolder as the war drew to a close.”37 Such turmoil and tragedy would, in the end, breathe enduring life for the Texas Rangers—institutionally. First, though, there would be not just a few hiccups and heartaches, fights and funerals. For this book there will not be effort expended at particularizing or analyzing the overall effect Reconstruction and the abolition of slavery had vis-à-vis postwar Texas, other than to say it was profound. Others have quite confidently and correctly proffered meaningful insight and well-drawn conclusions regarding matters

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of pure economics, intra- and inter- state commerce, agriculture transitions within farming and ranching communities, political wrangled upheavals, technological transportation and communications advances, and the sociologically inspired treatises highlighting attempts at acculturations whilst doggedly quashing overt vestiges of racial discrimination—or trying to!38 Though slavery had been laid by the wayside, and freedmen were free, for certain facets of the economy there was a suffering, a shortage of cheap labor heretofore taken for granted, but the quasiRepublican imposed Texas government had an answer, at least in part: Leasing hapless prisoners to privileged but not public entities. “In 1867, 150 state prisoners were contracted to the Brazos Branch Railroad at $12.50 per month per man. This contract lasted only a few months because too many of the prisoners escaped or were killed or wounded in attempted escapes. After the Civil War, the large sugar and cotton plantations could not operate successfully without slave labor. When the State of Texas began leasing inmates, they were taken to Brazoria County. . . .”39 Though the practice would eventually sour, leasing prisoners to tend the privately owned cotton and sugar plantations was a cost-cutting and “moneymaking enterprise” for the nascent Texas Prison at Huntsville in Walker County, even if the overwhelming “majority of leased convicts were African American.”40 Later, “the state leased the Huntsville State Prison and all of the prisoners to Ward, Dewy & Company of Galveston for a fifteen-year period. . . .”41 Markedly, outside the significant number of convicts tormented by a somewhat gauche approach to penology, unreformed Texas yet owned her full share of killers and thieves and ne’er-do-wells, of all figurative stripes. And, some of those subsets yet inclined to hostility were literally sporting stripes—war paint. On 20 March 1867, Ole T. Nystel, a fourteen-year-old with Norwegian heritage, was injured and captured by Comanches raiding in the vicinity of Bosque County. The teenager really thought “doom’s-day had come.” In speaking of his abduction Ole remembered: “I started to run and, and had got about forty yards when an arrow pierced my right leg, passing entirely through the flesh

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part, just above the knee, which still bears marks of the wound. At this I fell, and one of them leveled a pistol at me and motioned me to come to him which I was not long in obeying. . . . The Indians took me in charge. . . .”42 Fortunately Ole would be traded for $250 worth of “brown paper, blankets, tobacco, flour and sugar and perhaps some money, but as to the latter I am not certain. I was perfectly naked at the time and very much embarrassed.”43 Sadly other sufferers though naked, were powerless to jot down nineteenth-century memoirs. Settlers of Legion Valley and surrounding Texas Hill County neighborhoods could attest to that. Comanche struck hard and quick and unmercifully that fifth day of February 1868. Roughly fifteen miles south of what is now Llano in Llano County farmer and rancher John S. Friend had staked his claim and his future on farming and ranching. Though John and the other men were elsewhere on business at the time, the Indians were lurking, readying themselves for business. The cabin was plumb full of people, mostly women and children, “something akin to a slumber party or a girls’ night out,” if you will.44 Carnage came fast. Matilda Jane Friend, suffered three arrowheads planted in her body, was partly scalped—and left for dead by playing opossum. Soon, Indians choked to death one-year-old Fielty Johnson. Shortly the raiders murdered three-year-old Nancy Elizabeth Johnson, cutting her throat and holding her upside down in front of her mother Rebecca, laughing, while allowing blood to puddle and coagulate at the distraught lady’s feet. Not too far from Cedar Mountain the Comanche “built a fire, roasted some meat and gang raped the women.”45 Next, they put a lance into the pregnant Samantha Johnson, before cutting her throat and scalping her. Shortly, during their retreat toward sanctuary, the Indians stopped and raped and then murdered Rebecca Johnson.46 Near Cut Off Gap the warriors took another break. The terrified eighteen-year-old, Amanda Townsend, would not manage an escape: She had been tied down upon the cold ground, which was covered with snow, and from all appearances, had been outraged in the most brutal manner. She was then killed, and her body mutilated

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almost beyond recognition. [She had been] tied in a position so that the fiends could satisfy their brutal lusts. 47

Captive kiddos, Lee Temple Friend and Malinda “Minnie” Caudle, would later be bargained for, “ransomed and repatriated.” No doubt largely due—at least in part—to John Friend’s pleadings to any Indian Agents and/or traders in pages of the San Antonio Express, faithfully promising that they would be “liberally remunerated.”48 Whether at the hand holding a bloody scalping knife or the fingers wrapped around handles of a smokin’ Colt’s revolver— regardless race—many Texans were anxious about the unrestrained lack of social control—a real free-for-all of gratuitous violence. Reconstruction-era Governor Edmund J. Davis had a big—real big— blueprint for curbing the state’s pervasive lawlessness: The Texas State Police. There can be little legitimate doubt Governor Davis, although a Radical Republican, was most likely well-intended, but Texans would shortly render their skewed verdicts about the 1870 birth of the politically imposed statewide policing outfit. It would not prove polite.49 Although dyed-in-the-wool Democrat Texans could— and did—find much to chagrin within the Republican dominated enabling legislation, particularly were they irked with translucent usurpations of local government control. In part, Section 5 decreed: All sheriffs and their deputies, constables, marshals of cities and towns, and their deputies, police of cities and towns shall be considered as part of the State Police and be subject to the supervisory control of the Governor and Chief of State Police, and under the direction of the Governor or Chief of State Police may, at any time be called upon to act in concert with the State Police. . . . The Chief of State Police, subject to the approval of the Governor, may make all needful rules and regulations for the government and direction of these officers in matters looking to the maintenance of public peace, preventing or suppressing crime and bringing to justice offenders, and any of these officers failing or refusing prompt obedience to such rules and regulations, or to the orders of

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the Governor or Chief of State Police, shall be removed from office, and suffer other punishment as may be prescribed by law.50

There, too, were other niggling downsides to residents regarding the unpopular outfit that had been “created and thrust upon the people of Texas.”51 One of which was the enlistment and ubiquitous arming of freedmen, former slaves but now badge-wearing and Colt’s six-shooter toting gendarmes with the legal power to arrest white folks, search houses and barns and seize property.52 Reconstruction had not rendered many Texans reconstructed or racially tolerant. Attuned to hardcore reality, State Police Sergeant J.M. Redmon released five of his black officers from duty for fear that they could and probably would be—bushwhacked “any night.”53 Most often overlooked or ignored in cursory examinations of the Texas State Police is a signal and revealing fact: There were white policemen, black policemen, and not just a few policemen tracing bloodline ancestry to native speakers of the Spanish language. A review of the Texas State Police rosters—which fortunately are extant—reveals a reasonably healthy sampling of Mexican heritage surnames.54 Too, even casually probing performance statistics reveals—at least for awhile—personnel of the Texas State Police were caught up in a genuine whirlwind of enforcement activity. Just in its initial six-months the outfit tallied arrests for 109 alleged murderers, 130 fellows bent on trying to kill somebody (Assault to Murder) and another 394 with across-the-board violations of the state’s Penal Code.55 Still, as an institution the Texas State Police—perhaps in large part due to partisan press coverage—was not popular. Employing freedmen as policemen was not the half of it. Lone Star residents—many of them—owned other gripes about the detested Texas State Police. In a nutshell some of their complaints were legally justified: Some were not—not by a long shot. Assuredly and, provably, many individual Texas policemen, black, brown, and white performed dutifully and worthily, others though were themselves offenders, registering a lengthy and legendary dirty laundry list of high crimes and lowdown misdemeanors. Some prisoners

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were mercilessly gunned down while trying to escape; so said the triggermen. Circumstantial evidence and eyewitness testimony told a different and sad story. Several neighborhoods suffered—maybe rightly, maybe wrongly—the stinging indignity of Martial Law.56 Detractors’ cake was liberally—profusely—iced when it was revealed that the state’s Adjutant General/Chief of Police, James Davidson, had evaporated, as had $37,434.67 of the state’s money.57 What had not vanished were the incessant—seemingly incessant— sorties by Broncos, Indians that had jumped the reservations north of the Red River and entrenched tribesmen ingeniously hiding in the Llano Estacado’s unpopulated vastness. As the new decade broke American blue-coated sentinels engaged so-called hostiles throughout Texas; 20 January 1870 at Pine Springs in Culberson County; 19–20 May 1870 at Kickapoo Creek near today’s Eden in Concho County; 12 July 1870 along the North Fork of the Little Wichita in Archer County; and on 5 October 1870 along Cameron Creek near Spy Knob in western Jack County.58 Travel and delivery of mail could prove hazardous as evinced by an attack the previous month. Thirty plucky Kiowa warriors, on the last day of September 1870, captained by Tsen-tainte, aka White Horse, attacked the mail-coach northwest of Fort Concho in what is now Coke County. Fortunately, the stage driver and several soldiers riding as escort escaped critical injury or death, scooting ahead of a thunderstorm of showering arrows. Unfortunately—though bravely—Private Martin Wurmser, 4th U.S. Cavalry, remained hard and fast by the overturned coach. Later, cavalrymen scouting for news about the overdue stage found their comrade’s lifeless body, scalped and mutilated, and the depository for sixty-eight arrows.59 During that same year not just a few citizens remained agog at how Indians warriors could yet manage to raid isolated ranches and spirit away their children. On the first day of the year Adolph Korn, ten, was made a captive, taken from his Texas Hill Country home near Castell (in Llano County). In the spring, on 16 May 1870, Herman Lehmann, ten, and his eight-year-old brother Willie were glumly grabbed. By mid-summer Kiowa during a Clay County raid between the Dry Fork and East Fork of the Little Wichita made

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prisoners of the Kooziers, mother Elizabeth, Daniel, twelve, tenyear-old Charles, and little sister Ida, age eight. They also captured seventeen-year-old Mina Cullen and her brother George, five years her junior, and adolescent Martin B. Kilgore, twelve. By September, John Valentine “Volly” Maxey, six, and his sister Rhoda, three, were in enemy hands, after Indians had murdered an infant sister and their grandfather. A few back and forth Indians were haughtily indignant, but their excuses didn’t sell. At Fort Sill and, ludicrously so, when demanded to answer questions about their possession of young Bud Davis from Wise County (county seat Decatur) his kidnappers sloughed off the inquiry with, “We were in Texas, and this pale faced boy followed us off.” From his home in the Texas Hill Country near Llano four-year-old William Whitlock was abducted subsequent to Indians killing his parents and an infant sibling.60 There’s no tally herein for grownups giving up the ghost. Folks living at the edge weren’t picnicking despite some revisionists’ ruminations. The Texas world—the frontier world—was astir. Governor Davis, notwithstanding activities—good and/or bad—of the Texas State Police, deemed it necessary to provisionally enlist numerous Ranger companies part-time, arming them with “breech-loading carbines,” courtesy the near penniless state. Company E was enlisted under leadership of Captain Henrich Joseph Richarz, a former Prussian soldier, but now a ranchman with holdings west of San Antonio. Both raiding Indians and Captain Richarz were in the field that fading month of December, not snuggly ensconced in Reservation tepees or warm dog-run cabins. While Captain Richarz was scouting in one direction, his company physician, Dr. Woodbridge and Sergeant Eckford, leading a group of fourteen Rangers locked up with a band of seventy Comanche and Kiowa marauders after their raid had netted them three dead men, a kidnapped Mexican boy, and a herd of stolen cattle. During a super-hot firefight near Carrizo Springs (in Dimmit County), nine warriors were killed, as was Ranger Lorenzo Biediger.61 On that very same day, 6 December 1870, closer in near Uvalde, prowling Indians killed two other Texas Rangers from Medina County,

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the twenty-four-year-old and unmarried son of Captain Richarz, Walter, and a married twenty-three-year-old, Joseph Riff. Both had been Rangers for a grand total of “two months and twenty-seven days.”62 Truthfully it has been penned that Captains Richarz and John W. Sansom from the Texas Hill Country—both ever active—were two of several Ranger commanders of the time-period doing stellar work with regards to capping the moonlight activities of warriors raiding “from the mouth of the Pecos to Laredo” and in “the Nueces and Frio ranges”63 Sometimes overlooked and, seemingly a bit undervalued in various venerating Texas Ranger histories, were two additional Ranger company commanders carving laudable niches, Captain Cesario G. Falcón diligently scouting out of Rancho Nuevo and El Olmito, in Starr County in the tropical Lower Rio Grande Valley and Captain Gregorio Garcia at San Elizario in El Paso County, working the far western reaches of the state.64 North Texas, however, was much closer and much more convenient territory for recalcitrant Indians with thoughts of skipping an agency headcount and sallying forth on sorties of death and destruction, ransacking and revenge. Though it would take time, soon America’s career military men would take note about a number of gloomy Texans’ puffed whining and bona fide wailing. Hardly had the a new year begun when on 24 January 1871 the noted black cowboy and frontier scout Britt Johnson and two cohorts, Dennis Cureton and Paint Crawford, were attacked while freighting supplies to their homes in Shackelford County near Fort Griffin. The fellows made a desperate but futile fight with the superior number of Kiowa, even after killing their own horses for breastworks and subsequent to the expenditure of more than 170 rounds of ammunition. After dying the three dead men were brutally and systematically chopped to pieces—and scalped.65 The lifeless remains of Britt Johnson were singled out for a special touch: The Indians took particular revenge on Britt’s body, departing from usual custom in the case of Negro victims to scalp him. In addition the Indians emasculated him, stuffed his genitals in his mouth, cut open his stomach and stuffed his slain dog inside.66

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One Kiowa raid in particular harkened the innermost demons lurking in many Texans’ minds. Medal of Honor recipient Captain Robert Goldthwaite Carter, U. S. Army, on 18 May 1871, observed the upshot of a real day of Frontier Texas horror; the attack historians know as the Warren Wagon Train Massacre. In that alluring but lonesome stretch of Young County country between Forts Belknap and Richardson, a thoroughly aghast Carter noted: There could be nothing more appalling, heart rending or sickening to the human senses than the spectacle which was witnessed when our command reached the scene of the Salt Creek Prairie massacre. The poor victims were stripped, scalped and horribly mutilated; several [teamsters] were beheaded and their brains scooped out. Their fingers, toes, and private parts had been cut off and stuck in their mouths, and their bodies now lying in several inches of water and swollen, bloated beyond recognition, were filled full of arrows which made them resemble porcupines. Their bowels had been gashed with knives, and carefully heaped on each exposed abdomen had been placed a mass of live coals, now of course, extinguished by the deluge of water which was still coming down with a torrential power almost indescribable. . . . One wretched man, Samuel Elliott, who, fighting hard to the last, had evidently been wounded, was found chained between two wagon wheels and, a fire having been made from the wagon pole, he had been slowly roasted to death—“burnt to a crisp.” That he was still alive when the fiendish torture was begun was shown by his limbs being drawn up and contracted. . . . There were seven men killed. . . .67

Though it’s troublesome for today’s worshipful chronicles of idealism and political correctness, embittered Texans were, too, capable of—and had shown—a propensity for settling scores with their own outrageous acts of barbarity; such as scalping or otherwise mutilating corpses of their fallen enemies. After one 1860s deadly raid by Indians and the called-for pursuit, the posse overtook their adversaries and killed nine warriors. “As attestations of their achievement they scalped their victims and carried the evidence thereof

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into the settlements, along with sundry trophies won on the occasion.”68 Pity was in short supply, giving way to rationalization in the name of practicality, at least so justified one Texan when he coldly executed a wounded warrior on the battlefield, justifying to a comrade who had pled “Bill, don’t shoot him.” “ ‘Yes,’ said Davenport, ‘so he can get well, come back and kill me and maybe take my children captives, I’ll settle it with him here and now,’ so he took deliberate aim and shot him dead.”69 Later, when it was not necessarily censurable to acknowledge contaminated reality, an old-time Texas Ranger unapologetically declared: “We rangers, as well as Indians, fought under the black flag. We asked no quarter and gave none. Whenever we met it was simply a case of outfight or outrun ’em, whichever could be done the best. When we fell into their hands they scalped us and frightfully mutilated our bodies, frequently cutting and hacking us to pieces. We didn’t do as bad as that but scalped them just the same. . . .”70 Inhumanity was not one-sided, not on the Texas frontier, but it was real! Also real was the fact raiding Indians—primarily from the Llano Estacado—had renovated and refined their plundering patterns to include the theft of Texas cattle in near undreamed of numbers. Trading stolen livestock through middlemen, the Comancheros, was rapidly depleting Texas cattlemen’s wandering assets but shifting profit to eager eastern New Mexican Territory ranchers not ashamed of slyly winking at cattle to be had at bargain basement prices. The illicit traffic was—as history duly records—mindboggling.71 Certainly the Texas State Police weren’t putting a damper on the drainage of Texas cattle, nor were the sometimes on and off-again part-time bunches of Texas Rangers. John Nathan “Cattle Jack” Hittson was hot, madder ’en a hornet. He stung! Assembling a troop of hardened of cow-country fighters—as many as ninety—Hittson and crew simply invaded eastern New Mexico Territory during the summer of 1872, rounding up cattle with Texas brands, as well as providing employment for a few morticians.72 There would not be room for any bogus politically correct argument. Cattle Jack’s sojourn into the Territory was

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heavy-handed and hardcore and more than humiliating for not just a few overwhelmed and outgunned New Mexicans, but Texas cattlemen rejoiced as apparently did the Eastern press. Declaring that John Nathan Hittson was “A Modern Hercules to the Rescue” was effortless for newspapermen. After all, due to his single-minded and pitiless operation, the “border thieves” had been soundly trounced and brought to Jesus by the “bold and honest and wealthy stockman has [who had] gained national reputation by the effectiveness of his method, and its entire want of red-tape,” so said the New York Evening Post.73 Though the unwinding saga of the Texas State Police’s red-tape bureaucracy at Austin may have been an unimaginably tangled paperwork mess, at Lampasas in Lampasas County inside Jeremiah D. Scott’s Saloon it would be the hardwood floor painted red— blood red! Were Texas State Police Captain Thomas G. Williams to have had a crystal ball he would have, no doubt, stayed home rather than ride into Lampasas intending to arrest the somewhat notorious—at least locally—Horrell boys (Sam, Martin “Mart,” Tom, Ben, and Merritt) and their tough pals, all hardened stockmen who had been “raised to horses, cattle, whiskey and guns.”74 The afternoon of 14 March 1873 would prove a horrifying day for individual state policemen and harbinger of imminent doom for the ostracized Texas State Police. When the captain attempted to make an arrest inside Jerry Scott’s Saloon, the crescendo of gunfire was deafening and deadly. When the smoke cleared Williams lay stone-cold dead on the barroom’s spit-stained floor, along with fellow officers J.M. Daniels and Wesley Cherry, while Private Andrew Melville would linger an agonizing thirty days at Lampasas’ Huling Hotel before he, too, would become a cut on some yahoo’s notch-stick.75 The other state policemen, stationed outside, had hotfooted for Austin carrying the ghastly news. And, sounding the death-knell for their outfit. There was sympathy for the slain officers, but compassion for the Texas State Police was nil. The outfit was on its deathbed. The metaphoric funeral came when Democrats gained control of the

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state government. Not two full weeks since Officer Melville’s demise on 10 April 1873, the State Police was defunded and gone. Most Texans rejoiced: The People of the State of Texas are to-day delivered of as infernal an engine of oppression as ever crushed any people beneath God’s sunlight. The damnable Police Bill is ground beneath the heel of an indignant Legislature.76

The next election cycle, as well, changed the governorship. Edmund J. Davis, though it would take some doing, was out.77 Democrat Richard Coke was now at the helm. The ship of state, however, was not sailing smoothly. Desperadoes and depredating Indians were ubiquitous, or so it seemed to some folks. Early on, subsequent to the Mexican War, it was deemed prudent that even the somewhat logistically cumbersome U.S. Army command of Colonel William S. Harney could, if he really wanted to, “take the dragoons along with him, but for the light work he must have Texas Rangers—without them even he . . . can effect but little.”78 Governor Coke was bound and determined to have Texas Rangers, too. He could not, and would not, solely depend on the capricious energy of local authorities.79 And neither could one of the leading statehouse politicos, Senator David B. Culberson from Jefferson (in Marion County). Often the county sheriffs were products of their constituents’ and sometimes were noticeably bent more toward pacifying an electorate—or powerful special interest groups—than they were with keeping the peace and checking lawlessness, never mind their inadequacies in dealing with what seemed to many citizens the perpetual and poisonous Indian problem. Lobbying and cajoling and glad-handing the State House’s often reluctant congressmen and senators during the Fourteenth Legislative Session, Governor Coke, Senator Culberson, and Representative Robert Bean of Grayson County, succeeded in shepherding the 1874 enabling legislation to fruition. Though there are fine points of precise nomenclature regarding county by county militia units, in a practical sense creation of the Frontier

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Battalion was dramatic. Though not officially referred to by name in the enacted legislation, the “Rangers” were at length given the civil birth of permanency, as an institution. No longer would the working ranks be filled by part-timers, those working fulltime but only for short durations as needed, be it a few days or a few months. Now it was—or could be—a real job, a career, one with a plainspoken purpose: “An Act to provide for the protection of the Frontier of the State of Texas against the invasion of hostile Indians, Mexicans, or other marauding or thieving parties.”80 On paper the Frontier Battalion was to be composed of six seventyfive-man companies,81 each headed by a hand-picked captain, who in turn would supervise two unit lieutenants, as well as the noncommissioned officers and rank and file enlistees. Serving in the direct management position of all would be a battalion major, answering to the adjutant general—who of course, served at the Chief Executive’s pleasure. The outfit’s statutory legitimacy, its legal authority was that: Each officer of the battalion and of the companies of minute men herein provided for, shall have all the powers of a peace officer, and it shall be his duty to execute all criminal process directed to him, and make arrests under capias properly issued, of any and all parties charged with offense against the laws of this State.82

The latter sentence, in the near term, caused many with fresh memories of the Texas State Police philosophical heartburn. “The increase of authority to this semi-military body was an experiment thought by some to be of doubtful if not dangerous character, as it made the Rangers a mounted, armed, and movable constabulary, and yet one not immediately under control of nor responsible to the county peace officers anywhere. . . .”83 In the overall picture, a quarter century later, such particular legalese would cause Rangers and lawmakers undue but legally rooted headaches. Adjutant General William H. Steele, an ex-Confederate general, had a challenge: recruiting. Employing 450 men to fight Indians and jail mal hombres, while supplying their own horses and living

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outside twenty-four and seven, might not prove a pushover. There would be no room on the Muster and Payrolls for snivelers and shirkers—or the spineless. For the place and time, which is relevant, the everyday working standards were reasonably high. More especially with the hierarchy’s stricture in place: “Persons under indictment or of Known bad character or habitual drunkards will [would] be rejected.”84 Could anyone be found wanting to voluntarily sign on? Well, one old-time Indian-fighting Ranger of an earlier day had this to say, prior to anyone enlisting in the Frontier Battalion, making his thoughts known to the Waco Daily Examiner’s editor: “The intermission of eight or nine years since the [Civil] war has made plenty anxious for adventures on the plains. To kill buffalo and other game, men who might make much more at home would be easily found to go in an expedition of six months for very little pay, and well satisfied. With the expense of an outfit, balanced with what they get for wages, one or two thousand men would take to the field for amusement to join in privations and dangers for the sake of romance, and to have the enjoyment in future days to tell their friends and strangers, who never got the same chance of being heroes . . . that they have seen the same extraordinary sights depicted in such glowing manner as they will be, by the writers in subsequent generations.”85 Civil War veteran John B. Jones, a South Carolinian by birth, but now an upstanding resident of Navarro County (county seat Corsicana) was selected as the battalion’s major, officially commissioned on the second day of May 1874. There was much to do.86 He had organizational matters to attend to, and new faces to meet, chiefly the newly named company captains posted in a fluid North/ South line from the Red River to the Nueces River: Company A: Company B: Company C: Company D:

Captain John R. Waller Captain George W. Stevens Captain Elisha Floyd Ikard Captain Cicero Rufus Perry

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Company E: Captain William Jeff Maltby Company F: Captain Neal Coldwell Here it’s not inappropriate to mention the humongous size of Texas demanded a law enforcing and Indian fighting presence outside territory the Frontier Battalion was tasked to patrol, at its far western and southern points. There were, then, temporarily formed companies to deal with those faraway places. In El Paso County a company was commanded by Lieutenant Telesforo Montes, and for the country below the Nueces to the Rio Grande the task fell to Warren Wallace. Near Laredo in Webb County, Refugio Benevides mustered a company into service to interdict the incursions of Mexican bandits and chase after border jumping Indians. Relatively speaking these companies would be short-lived, and in due time the Frontier Battalion would ride herd over the owlhoots and outlaws haunting the Wild Horse Desert and the Lower Rio Grande Valley, that is after the Special Troops, officially named Company A (the only company), Volunteer Militia of Washington County commanded by Leander Harvey McNelly, was relegated to history books and thrilling campfire tales.87 Certainly recruitment and deployment and logistical issues of the emerging Frontier Battalion weren’t solely taking place in a vacuum, one company after another. The dominos of institution building weren’t falling alternately. Organizational, equipment procurement, contracting with commissary vendors and manpower matters were swirling, simultaneously. Rudimentary communications networks were but another hurdle to overcome. Often one Frontier Battalion company had not an inkling about the activities and nightmares facing sister units. Horseback couriers were slow; communicating via the mail was slower yet. Technological advancements there would be, but at the time Texas Rangers—like everyday folk—had to play the cards life dealt. Perhaps peeking in on the broadly stationed companies, meeting the personnel and checking their enforcement and scouting activities, as did Major John B. Jones during those initial eighteen months, will be somewhat interesting and, hopefully—informative.

Photo Gallery

1 

From the outset of colonizing what would be Texas settlers and Indians battled for supremacy. From James T. DeShields, Border Wars of Texas.

Just as early day pioneers and Texas Rangers transitioned with regards to clothing and weaponry, these three Comanche Indians were also on the ever persistent march toward modernization. From, John Henry Brown, Indian Wars and Pioneers of Texas.

During 1823 Stephen F. Austin officially advocated for the formation of a corps of ten Rangers. From DeShields, Border Wars of Texas.

During the earliest days of Lone Star settlement, pioneers were armed with either flintlock or percussion-cap muzzle loading rifles and/or pistols— single-shot weapons slow to recharge. Courtesy Texas Ranger firearms authority Doug Dukes.

A Texas Historical Marker marks the site of an Indian attack on an unprotected family south of Waco near present day Calvert, Robertson County. Courtesy Texas Ranger Hall of Fame & Museum Board Member Steve P. Wharram.

Though a sit-down studio portrait, this image of “Hattie” is striking. The intriguing bilingual Kiowa beauty sometimes served as an interpreter. Courtesy Tales ‘N’ Trails Museum from the Benton Collection.

Cicero Rufus “Rufe” Perry, a well-known Texas frontiersman. He could, with legitimacy, claim a history of battles with Indians and Mexicans during the fledgling Lone Star State’s early years. Later, he would command a Texas Ranger company as the organization transitioned into law-enforcing duties. Courtesy Texas Ranger Hall of Fame & Museum.

Playing a major role in the Lone Star State’s dramatic history were the kidnappings of Matilda Lockhart and Rachel Plummer by Indians. From, J.W. Wilbarger, Indian Depredations in Texas.

With a masterful touch artist Lee Herring captures real-life drama with his Oil on Panel, Delaying Action: The Battle of Plum Creek. ©1978 William Adams: Image courtesy of William Adams and the Texas Ranger Hall of Fame & Museum.

Recognizing the importance of frontier-era surveyors and the interrelated activities of early-day Texas Rangers a special and striking exhibit was crafted for display in the Texas Ranger Hall of Fame & Museum at Waco, Texas. Photo courtesy Steve Wharram.

On display at TRHF&M is a priceless painting of Texas icon Sam Houston by the renowned 19th-Century painter Charles Edward Schnabel. Speaking of the oil on canvas portrait during 1849 Sam Houston declared: “I think more of it than all my likenesses.” From the floor of the U.S. Senate, Sam Houston also extolled the inherent advantages of Sam Colt’s revolving pistols, an advance in weaponry that materially changed the course of Lone Star and Ranger history. Courtesy Texas Ranger Hall of Fame & Museum.

Legendary frontier-era surveyor and fighter Texas Ranger John Coffee “Jack” Hays dramatically changed the face of the Texas way of war with the latest mechanical technology, inventor Sam Colt’s revolving Paterson Model pistol pictured below his portrait. Hays’s photograph courtesy Suzanne Giffin-Garcia, and Colt Paterson on loan to TRHF&M from the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum/Catalog L... Pistol image courtesy Doug Dukes.

Famed Texas Ranger Samuel Walker, a mortal casualty of the Mexican War, and the renowned revolver named after him. Courtesy the Library of Congress and the Texas Ranger Hall of Fame & Museum. Photo of Walker Colt courtesy Doug Dukes.

Although folklore is a part of William Alexander Anderson “Big Foot” Wallace’s journalistic legacy, his participation in not just a few epochal events of Texas History is well documented. He was, by any standard, the Real McCoy. From A.J. Sowell, Early Settlers and Indian Fighters of Southwest Texas.

Cynthia Ann Parker. Courtesy Texas Ranger Hall of Fame & Museum.

As a young man Joseph Alansing Browning accompanied the re-captured Cynthia Ann Parker to Fort Cooper, particularly noting how she had been assimilated into the Comanche culture and how she disciplined a crying child. Courtesy Peta-Anne Tenney.

One of Cynthia Ann’s sons, the well known Quanah Parker. Courtesy Tales ‘N’ Trails Museum from the Benton Collection.

John Salmon “Rip” Ford, celebrated borderland campaigner and frontier-era Indian fighter. Copy of photograph on display at the Texas Ranger Hall of Fame & Museum courtesy the prominent authority and collector of Texas Ranger ephemera, artifacts, and photographs John N. Williams.

Truthfully, whether or not these fellows were Rangers has yet to be definitively confirmed. Nonetheless this armed trio seems to be cut from rough stock and appear to be tough customers. A caption on the reverse side indicates they were from Menardville (now Menard) a frequent headquarters’ campground for frontier-era Texas Ranger companies. This intriguing period photograph is courtesy renowned collector of Western memorabilia, photographs, and firearms, Dr. Anthony S. “Tony” Sapienza.

On the other hand, this dour trio of big-hat fighting fellows are identified as part of the Medina County Rangers, a period preceding the institutionalizing of Texas Rangers as career lawmen. Standing is Joseph Beck. Seated at (L) is Jacob Haby and seated at (R) is Joseph Burrell. Courtesy renowned Western artist and collector Donald M. Yena and his wife Louise.

5 

Company A, Frontier Battalion Muster Roll Oldest Youngest Native Texan Other States Foreign Born

77 enlistees 51 years 18 years 15 percent 79 percent 06 percent

Initial geographical posting for Company A as dictated by the Frontier Battalion’s front office at Austin was specific: “Capt. Waller—near the eastern corner of Erath Co. and patrol North to Stephens County and South west into Brown County—P.O. at stephenville [sic].”1

captain john r. waller and the company a Texas Rangers would cleave unto themselves a Frontier Battalion distinction first-rattle-out-of-the-box. They would be the first Texas Ranger Company of the Frontier Battalion focusing the majority of their time and attention on home-grown desperadoes rather than raiding Indians. Perhaps, in some way, that was apt since the fifty-oneyear-old Alabama-born Captain Waller was already a seasoned Lone Star lawman, having a term as the sheriff of Erath County under his belt.2 Too, he had seen challenging service during the Civil War, riding with the 31st Texas Cavalry, as well as racking up a hard and unsympathetic—some said brutal—standing as a seasoned no-nonsense and wholly remorseless Indian fighter.3 Undoubtedly Captain John Waller’s inspirational message was well grounded and effectual: Company A was partially staffed and 121

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operational, mustered into Frontier Battalion service on 25 May 1874, thus the company’s documentable birthday, although another contingent would undergo the formality of enlistment three days later. The hopeful recruits, aside from providing their own horse, a gelding, and, if doable, a six-shooter (Army size), were to commit themselves for the public good by holding up their right hands and pledging: I do solemnly swear that I will bear true allegiance to the State of Texas, and that I will Serve her honestly and faithfully for the period of twelve months, and observe and obey the orders of the Governor of the State, and the orders of the officers appointed over me according to an Act of the Legislature for the protection of the frontier approved April 10, 1874.4

Then, and only then, was the spanking new Texas Ranger entitled to earn his legislatively agreed salary, $40 per month—paid quarterly. In return for his time and energy and promise, the Ranger was to be furnished a ration of “bread, beef, coffee, and sugar & salt,” as well as being domiciled in a canvas house—when and if tents were available. Rank and file Rangers—not commissioned officers—had little to worry about a home life, tent or no tent. There was an administrative stricture in place for the Frontier Battalion, one foreign to the earlier temporary Texas Ranger companies raised from time to time, as exigent circumstances had warranted: As it is expected that this force will be Kept actively employed during their term of Service only young men without families and with good horses will be recruited. . . .5

Although surely well-intended, restricting that the enlisted men be single, unencumbered by the responsibilities attendant to having wives and children, would prove shortsighted. Until it was amended, it served to hinder professionalism of the Texas Rangers. Professional competency is earned by gaining practical knowledge and everyday work experience, not by the merry-go-round comings and goings of amateurs.6 Cupid’s figurative arrows, for the

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short-term, pierced the battalion’s institutional framework just as surely as raiding Comanche and Kiowa arrows took their literal toll on individual Rangers’ red meat and—white pride. Major John B. Jones, assuredly not an ill-tempered martinet, was dead set in his commitment to honestly earn his $125 per month salary. He expected the rank and file, right down the line, to honestly earn theirs too. To his way of rational thinking there would be no toleration of his Texas Rangers idling around campsites sleeping late, playing cards, racing horses, or generally goofing off until some citizen rushed in hollering that his neighbors had been scalped or their horses had been stolen. His proactive orders were clear: At any given time at least one half of the company would be in the field hunting for Indians. Those in camp, recruiting their jaded horses and restocking cross-buck packsaddles for the unit’s mules had best catch a nap between chores, for when the other half of the company came in, they would go out. Locking up in precarious firefights with wily bands of raiding Indians would be graded as triumphs, killing Indians would be meritorious victories. Otherwise, so Major Jones surmised, the Rangers’ mere presence scouting in the field would have at the very minimum, a modicum of preventive success.7 Leadership skill and steadfastness to duty are easily discernible by but a cursory look at Major Jones’s administrative style. He would not confine himself behind a polished maple desk at Austin, but anchor his resolved command by visiting the battalion’s six companies in the field. For the most part the commander would work out of a rolling headquarters. As one esteemed academician penned, Major John B. Jones “was no parlour paladin.”8 At the outset, Major Jones had foregone any self-aggrandizing assembly of the Frontier Battalion en masse. His Texas Rangers were at the frontier’s edge, a likely theater of warfare, and so too would be he. Purposefully visiting the individual companies as they were geographically stationed was how Major John B. Jones chose to personally oversee meticulous details, such as demanding timely written reports, perfecting policy, okaying contracts with local merchants, instilling discipline,

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and in an overall sense, making sure the interests of the men—and the Lone Star State—were best served.9 Understandably the nature of such travel along the line would be perilous absent precautions. Therefore, at first, the Frontier Battalion’s energetic commander drew a small number of men from each company to act as his personal escort. Traveling in a buggy with a good saddle-horse tied behind and accompanied by the battalion’s surgeon, Dr. E.G. Nicholson, “a quaint old bachelor who loves his toddy,” and George, the major’s “negro cook,” Major Jones was near constantly on the move, traveling to Austin sporadically. The commander’s initiative of moving up and down the battalion’s north/south line, frequently altering routes, and utilizing a moderately sizable escort registered a twofold purpose: Anyone anticipating ambushing the escort had best think twice, and should a desperado’s trail or report of Indians be learned, the escort was yet healthy and maneuverable enough to “reinforce troubled areas, and sweep the unsettled and lawless regions that were the domain of Texas’s Frontier Battalion.”10 Major Jones was and, provably so, determined to evaluate his Rangers and “their operations in the field” and he did “not stick to the roads” so his movements would not be telegraphed to Indian or outlaw.11 Unmistakably, Major Jones was a thinker, and unarguably he was a doer, too. And just as surely, the fellows identified on the battalion’s Muster & Payroll of Company A, well, the orders were clear: Hostile Indians weren’t inclined to hang around Ranger campgrounds. Beating the bushes and scouting grasslands and mountain lairs was called for. Though it may somewhat shatter myths, not every newly enlisted Ranger reported for duty with a pair of fancy six-shooters buckled around his hips and hand-tooled cartridge belts stuffed plumb full. Ensuring uniformity of weaponry—crucial for combat units—the decision had been made to supply Rangers with specific arms. The issue would not be complimentary, however. The prescribed firearms were to be furnished at cost, the price deducted from his quarterly pay. The long-gun of the administrators’ choice

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was the single-shot Sharps carbine, although on occasion earlier provisional Ranger units had been issued Winchester 1866 model lever action carbines. One overawed Texas Ranger noted that the .50 caliber weapon chambered a cartridge as “big as your thumb,” and had a bore diameter “large enough for a gopher to crawl through.”12 In speaking of the horrific recoil of some of the early day big bore guns, a later book writin’ Texas Ranger announced that the old-time muskets and rifles would “get meat at both ends.”13 Another observer, with rich hyperbole common to newspapermen, noted while the Sharps breech-loader could deliver a punch, on the backend the carbine had a “kick worse than a little Spanish jack.”14 Although a single-shot, the Sharps big fifty had the capability of keeping a maddened enemy checked at reasonably safe distances; even then, at long range, the fired missile carried enough umph to knock down an enemy’s horse, setting the rider afoot. In parlance of lawmen, it was a gun that could “keep the wolf off of you.”15 For closer-in work, the handgun of issue would be the renowned New Model Army Metallic Cartridge Revolving Pistol, .45 caliber, more often referred to as a thumb-buster or six-shooter or sometimes the Colt’s Peacemaker.16 Contemporaneous for the time and place, it’s not unfair to mention that nineteenth-century folks referred to carbines and rifles and shotguns as their “guns” and their handguns as “six-shooters” or “revolvers” or simply as “Colt’s.” Were one told to grab his “gun” and saddle up, the message was clearly understood that the work might necessitate the need for a long-gun.17 Though many of the fellows claiming Texas birth places may have since adolescence been personally acquainted with the everyday carrying and use of firearms, it’s not at all outlandish to suggest some Company A enlistees were not: How familiar with routinely handling firearms were Texas Ranger recruits Josiah Boice, a New York bred twenty-two-year-old or Private Samuel Hawbaken, a brown-headed twenty-seven-year-old registering Switzerland as his country of origin? On the other hand, assuredly an auburn-headed Dallas Stoudemier, a twenty-six-year-old formerly from Alabama, was well versed in the intricate fine-points of putting firearms into

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play; in reasonably short-order he would earn, even if not enviably, a documentable standing as an Old West gunfighter.18 A psychopath not worthy of emulation would put Company A boys to the law enforcing test. Though more often than not glossed over, the infamous Wild West shootist John Wesley Hardin was accomplished at tucking tail if and when someone else was holding a handful of aces or a six-shooter.19 Cleverly it’s been penned the son of a preacher was named after John Wesley who had reverently “prayed for the souls of men,” but yahoo Hardin’s “religion took a different form. He preyed off the countryside.”20 Purportedly and, there’s not reason to doubt it—especially in light of hardcore truths—during one madcap spree at Williams Ranch (then in Brown County, now Mills County), Wes Hardin and his crowd launched their canoes on the Whiskey River, feeling ten feet tall, tough and near unconquerable—but not bullet proof: Hardin picked a quarrel with a young fellow named Eugene De Lartiegue. But De Lartiegue was too quick for the outlaw, he whipped out a sixshooter [sic], and threatened to kill Hardin. Hardin, who was pretty much of a bully, and had a jaundiced spine like all characters who continually seek fights when they think they have the drop on a man, backed down. He assured De Lartiegue that he had been jesting, and the matter ended there.21

John Wesley Hardin’s next move was no joke: He was on the lam after gunning down a Brown County (county seat Brownwood) deputy sheriff, Charles M. Webb, at Comanche in Comanche County.22 Two ironies ring loud. The senseless killing had taken place on Wes Hardin’s twenty-first birthday and as an official Frontier Battalion troop, Company A was but one day old. Certainly in the marketplace of misplaced idolization one can find naive idealists championing the misfit’s man-killing notches as marks of a premier Frontier Era gunfighter.23 Blood and thunder sells. Conceivably a more clearheaded query would be, should be: Does a gunfight genuinely count as a gunfight, if only one person does the shooting—or would that simply catalog as a homicide? Of course he admired pluck and push,

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and Hardin’s donation to morticians’ coffers was real. Some of his wanton doings, though, were one-sided. Fair play and gunplay are not synonymous. John Wesley Hardin was rattlesnake mean and dangerous. He, too, could pull hard from the whiskey bottle, allowing the amber current to bolster his raw courage and erase rational thinking, sometimes letting the swilling liquid going down to bring forth incoherent blubbering, opening a floodgate of tears, as the day the deputy was put down.24 Hardin’s trail of dead bodies in the dirt is blood bright; traces of real standup gunfights are dim. Nevertheless, Deputy Charley Webb was sledgehammer dead. Wes Hardin was a wanted man. And Company A Rangers were on the hunt. Citizens had petitioned the governor; if the Rangers were to be crime fighters, well, there was plenty of it in Comanche County.25 Clearly the message was not lost on the Frontier Battalion’s bigwigs at Austin. Hardly had the men of Company A been sworn in and sufficiently equipped when explicit Special Order No. 6 blistered out of headquarters over the signature of Major John B. Jones: Capt. Jno. B. Waller Co “A” with a sufficient detachment of his company, say fifteen or twenty men, will proceed without delay to Comanche County, procure from the civil authorities the necessary process and if possible arrest and turn over to the proper civil officer and all parties charged with violations of the criminal laws of the State and will take such other steps as in his judgment may be necessary to protect the lives and property of the peaceable and law abiding citizens of said county against any and all marauding and thieving parties. . . .26

While there was no shortage of desperadoes in Comanche and surrounding counties—at the time more of a threat than raiding Indians—there was at this early stage a scarcity of firepower for the Rangers of Company A. It was a hard fact that Captain Waller made sure Major Jones was updated about: “We have not received our arms yet and I must urge on you the necessity of forwarding them at once.”27 Major Jones jumped to, sending seventy-five Sharps

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carbines and 5,000 rounds of ammunition to Captain Waller, along with the necessary accoutrements, i.e., “slings and swivels, cartridge boxes and belts. . . .”28 Taking 1st Lieutenant James W. Millican and Sergeants C. L. Pool and Zachary Taylor Bundy, along with three fourths of Company A with him, Captain Waller personally led the sixteen day scout after “John Wesley Hardins gang of out laws. . . .”29 Time spent in the saddle was relentless. The enforcement tactic of staying in “Constant Service” had paid its dividend—of sorts. There had surely been plenty of excitement. There would be a scorecard of dead, wounded, and those yet on the dodge. Though his actual written reports are skimpy, Captain Waller did note: “I exchanged several Shots with John Wesley Hardin & Jim Taylor wounding Hardin in the Shoulder but he made good his escape being well mounted on the 12th of June.”30 History will bear witness, some of Wes Hardin’s family and friends were much less fortunate than the devious fugitive, a fellow with a governor’s price on his head.31 Joseph Gibson Hardin, a brother of Wes and a snaky lawyer with a slippery and slimy reputation for fraudulent legal doings, was in the eyes of many Comanche County folk due for a dose of comeuppance. Beyond doubt Joe was a crook, through and through. It was a fact and apparent to many of the area residents that numerous “deeds signed by Joe Hardin are [were] forgeries and came to be known in Comanche as ‘Hardin titles’ . . . The legality of Hardin-signed land titles were suspect then and are questionable to this day. . . . Twice in May of 1872, Joe Hardin forged Power of Attorney for himself and sold land without compensating the original owners.” There were, then, not just a few burning questions regarding Joe Hardin’s “integrity and ethics.”32 Ensuring that the distrustful lawyer would not and could not give aid and succor to his outlawed brother, spying on the activities of area lawmen, Joe Hardin, along with cousins William A. “Bud” and Tomas K. “Tom” Dixon were without fanfare ensconced inside a makeshift jailhouse at Comanche. Articulately penned Probable Cause, if there actually was any, could be double damned. It was

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by definition an unarguable “technical arrest,” one also ostensibly made for their protective good, due to the “strong public resentment over the Webb killing. . . .”33 Not at all unsurprisingly Brown County folks were more than a little agitated about the murderous death of their deputy. Lynch mob mentality washed over any veneer of legality. On the night of 5 June 1874 a crowd from Brown and adjoining Coleman County descended on Comanche. Shotguns were shoved into the faces of nighttime guards and three prisoners were liberated from jail, but not from a settling of scores. With gags stuffed into their mouths, the barefooted prisoners, ropes around their necks, were quietly spirited out of town. The two-and-a-half-mile jaunt southwest of Comanche came to an end below the stout limbs of a towering oak. Placed atop spookless horses, Joe Hardin and the Dixons, Bud and Tom, were Jerked to Jesus, unapologetically and, perhaps, ineptly. Purportedly, when the lifeless corpses were cut down the following day by Martin V. Fleming, he noticed that there was grass between their toes, leading to but one clear-cut conclusion: The ropes had been artlessly measured. They were too long, and the fellows died by choking to death—strangulation—clawing madly at the ground below them with their bare feet, rather than having their necks snapped at the drop.34 Two others would also drop dead—with a little help from maddened citizens and a few Company A Rangers. Alexander H. “Alec” Barekman and Alexander H. “Ham” Anderson were caught unawares, sleeping outside on their pallets, ten or twelve miles east of Comanche.35 Thanks to the covert and cooperative conversation with an informant, possemen and Rangers surrounded the fellows, and when a horse snorted waking them up, both snoozing fellows came up shooting. Penning his remembrances for a State of Texas archivist when he was eighty years old, the red-headed J.H. Taylor, an eighteen year old Company A private at the time, recalled: “a horse snorted & those two Outlaws jumped up from their Pallets & shot –They were asleep & the horse woke them . . . they shot two shots at the Rangers but they was shot to death immediately by the

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Boys. . . . They made their words good. . . . They would not be taken alive.”36 Captain John Waller’s account, typical of so very many Texas Ranger reports, was unambiguous and short: “Berkman [sic] & Anderson two of Hardins gang fired on Some of my Men and Several Citizens. My men returned fire killing both Berkman & Anderson.”37 Seemingly the tables had turned for Hardin and his conglomeration of criminally intentioned misfits, but local attorney J.D. Stephens of the Fleming & Stephens law firm at Comanche was somewhat concerned that “Hardin’s gang of murderers or robbers” would at some point try to liberate prisoners being held by Company A Sergeant J.V. Atkinson, a dark complicated twenty-four year old South Carolinian. So, lawyer Stephens promptly notified Governor Richard Coke that he altogether did “expect Hardin to try for revenge.”38 Sober reflection was not necessarily one of John Wesley Hardin’s strong suits, but this time he knew his fat was in the fire and the flames were nipping at his backside. Maybe it would be smart to skedaddle. Captain Waller was playing for keeps, no nonsense. Within the first month of Company A’s existence he and his Rangers had made over twenty-two custodial arrests: “Seven of the Parties arrested I sent to Dewitt [DeWitt] County. Supposed to belong to John Wesley Hardins gang of outlaws, the other Parties arrested I turned over to Sheriffs of different Counties.”39 Seemingly, at least in the mind of Major Jones, the fledgling Frontier Battalion was off to a good start. Especially did he comment about Company A, praising Captain Waller and his men for doing first-rate service “in breaking up the bands of outlaws that have been scourging the frontier for several years past, having arrested quite a number of them and driven others to parts unknown.”40 Naturally the most infamously celebrated of the Comanche County outlaws, John Wesley Hardin, maintaining his knack for running and hiding, was one of those fellows opting to cagily decamp for those “parts unknown.” In due course Wes Hardin and Lone Star State lawmen would again cross paths in an intended but one-sided get-together, one somewhat downgrading the fugitive’s mythical status and one upgrading the Texas Ranger legend.

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Although having been reasonably successful with regards to putting the kibosh on some of Hardin’s “gang” there was no time allotted for Captain Waller and the Company A boys taking any holidays. Major Jones through Special Order No. 10 repositioned Company A, ordering that Captain Waller would at once “take post on Sandy Creek North West corner of Eastland county near Carters ranch and Scout South to Caddo Peak and North to mouth of Hubbards creek on Colorado river,” but he would still receive the official Ranger correspondence at Stephenville. Captain Waller complied and, without undue delay, ordered Lieutenant Millican to take thirty-two men and scout the vicinities of Eastland, Stephens, and Callahan Counties, searching for any sign of Indians. In the meantime, Captain Waller scouted relentlessly with the remainder of Company A, often working in conjunction with several area sheriffs, such as John Carnes, Comanche County, James Harvey Gideon, Brown County, and John M. Elkins, Sr., at Coleman, the latter having seen service as a hard-riding lieutenant in one of the 1872–1874 Minute Men companies, Coleman County’s Company L.41 The following month, July 1874, found Lieutenant Millican and fourteen Rangers cutting for Indian sign during a 120-plus-mile scout, while Captain Waller and ten men hunted for a meaningful trail during their tortuous eighty-mile crisscrossing but unsuccessful hunt. One of the several non-commissioned bosses, G.M. Doolittle, and his squad of eleven were more fortunate in actually picking up a readable trail, but all too soon learned that the Indians had at least a four-day head start and were functionally way too far in front to overhaul. He and his men returned to the headquarters camp weary and disheartened, luckless during their grueling 125-mile trek. Likewise, Sergeant Samuel T. Halstead and his squadron of fourteen Rangers actually trailed some Indians who had stampeded horses, but, in the end, were forced to return to camp sans any battle or booty. On the twenty-third Captain Waller personally scouted with an undisclosed number of Texas Rangers and was lucky to find Indian sign, following it to near the Red Fork of the Brazos. Then, adopting a proven and well-accepted wartime tactic, the crafty Indians “set the Prairie

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on fire and it was impossible to trail it any farther. . . .” Yes, hunting Comanche and/or Kiowa Indians was easy, catching them, well, that was another matter—another story altogether.42 Aside from initiating their own scouts after war-minded Indians and wayward outlaws, all the Frontier Battalion company commanders were saddled with another task: providing an escort and protection to S.B. Buckley, the State of Texas Geologist and his crew, as they traveled about doing what geologists do. And all Rangers had best comply, the diktat coming straight out of Richard Coke’s office, characterized in these orders as “the Governor Commander in Chief.”43 The crossroads of traditional law enforcing and soldierly Indian campaigning was causing Major Jones heartburn and headache. His philosophy was geared, at this time, more toward a military countenance. Safeguarding settlers on the Texas frontier from Comanche and Kiowa sorties, in his estimation, was job number one, a military-type job that would all too soon surround him with whizzing arrows, dead horses, and dying Rangers, but not just yet. Major Jones, however, was cut in on a secret—perhaps a not very secret secret, but one a few intractable Comanche wandering the vast Llano Estacado were somewhat blind to. At any rate, the Frontier Battalion’s commander was posted that the U.S. Army’s Ranald McKenzie was “preparing to make a campaign against the Indians with fifteen or more companies. In view of this movement I [AG Steele] have consulted with the Governor and he is of opinion that in event of such an expedition the Rangers had better business on our frontier to protect the settlements rather than take part in a raid upon the Indians.”44 For the short-go the mischief and madness and murder typified by the idiocy of Wes Hardin and his ilk, well, that should be left to sheriffs. So, while the major unflinchingly and sincerely praised Captain Waller and the Rangers of Company A, he pondered and reported to Adjutant General Steele: “There is a disposition on some portions of the frontier to make use of this command for police purposes which I do not like and which I give the officers special instructions not to do except in cases when the authorities are openly

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defied by organized bands of outlaws and the civil officers unable to enforce the law or to arrest such parties for whose arrest they have legal process as may be found in the vicinity.”45 And he was, at least a little, miffed at Sheriff Carnes of Comanche County: “I understand that the Sheriff of this county demands the reward for the killing of Anderson and Barekman, and respectfully suggest to the Governor that the reward be paid to no one until it is ascertained with certainty who, if any one, is entitled to it. I am informed that the Sheriff was not in sight at the killing and that it was not done by his order.”46 Another killing accomplished sans any formalized orders would wreak havoc for Company A. While paperwork is too scant for historians’ delight, those documents that are extant do outline a lean tale. Private Andrew L. Taylor, an auburn-headed twenty-year-old native Texan, had not missed the mark when he fired a round, but he had misfired in the mind of Captain Waller. For whatever the reason— good or bad—Private Taylor was involuntarily discharged from the Frontier Battalion “for Killing a yearling while out on a scout.” The young Ranger was standing tall in accepting responsibility: “I May have done wrong in Killing the yearling but I think I ought to have a fair trial under the Regulations of the United States Army which I believe were adopted by the Legislature to control the Frontier Battalion. . . . If I have done wrong I am willing to be punished but I do not think that Captain Waller had any right to discharge me without first giving me a fair trial. . . . and if I did wrong it was not intentional. . . .”47 For Private Andrew Taylor a Dishonorable Discharge on his otherwise unblemished but skimpy record would not do. He hired lawyers, the aforementioned J.D. Stephens and his partner, J.R. Fleming. Exactly how much politics played into the equation is likewise indefinite, but the legal beagles argued their side to the Ranger front office with logical reasoning, stating: “We do not think that Capt Waller could do an intentional wrong, but really do think that he has acted arbitrarily in this matter.”48 In this instance, though in most cases the adjutant general dutifully backed his field supervisors, Steele sided with Taylor and his attorneys: “The disposition shown by Capt Waller to prevent diffractions by his men is

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commendable but in this case he has exceeded his power in discharging a man once mustered into service.”49 The essence is plainspoken: Company A’s Captain Waller should have kicked the unclear matter upstairs for an administrative decision, not tackling complicated nonemergency disciplinary difficulties in the field, when time was not a factor. Bureaucracy! What happened to Texas Ranger Taylor? Major Jones penned: “he is hereby restored to duty and to all the rights and privileges of a member of said company.”50 Some other ranging fellows of Company A were not near so fortunate, Captain Waller had had a bellyful, and was sustained in his relieving of duty Ranger Private James A. White, a twenty-year-old native Texan, for “disobedience of orders.” A blonde-headed blueeyed Private William G. Oxford, twenty-one, caught a sanctioned boot out of Company A after he “deserted.” The Volunteer State-bred Beverly Mays, apparently was damn mad about something, and was formally scratched off of the Company A Muster & Payroll for undisclosed acts of “mutinous and insubordinate conduct.” Apparently another Texas Ranger riding for the Lone Star wasn’t necessarily angry, maybe just worn to a super frazzle: a Yankee from the State of New York, C.B. Norton, reprehensively earned his Dishonorable Discharge for “sleeping while on post as a sentinel.” Lady Luck, too, played her hand—no bluff, no sympathy. The aforementioned Sam Hawbaken, and Ranger Private William W. Abrams, an American from Indiana, were granted disabilities and discharges upon presentation of the battalion surgeon’s certificate.51 Certainly Captain John R. Waller was in no need of any doctor’s permit, but he may have very well been sick—sick of bureaucratic meddling as was the case with his alleged mishandling of Private Andy Taylor’s disciplinary situation. Regardless the real reason—and the hard truth may never be fully known—Captain Waller tendered his resignation from the Frontier Battalion. Major Jones duly noted and made sure Adjutant General Steele knew: “I regret this resignation, particularly at this time when there is so much disaffection in the command on account of getting no pay, but he has reasons sufficient for himself and which induce me to approve it. . . . I am

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at a loss how to replace him.”52 Picking up the command slack in the interim was now the job of 1st Lieutenant James W. Millican, a thirty-nine-year-old native Texan. None knew it at the time, but his tenure as commander of Company A would be short-lived. Though not necessarily a rare occurrence in Frontier Battalion history, supervisory personnel were on occasion mandated to make mention of the discharge of firearms aside from skirmishing with genuinely bad men and/or raiding Indians. Such was the case on 18 October 1874. During a scout, Company A noncom Ellis R. Griffith, a twenty-eight-year-old Mississippian, spied a free roaming buffalo— there were yet plenty of the woolly and toothsome creatures at this point in Texas time—and Sergeant Griffith was hungering to supplement his pals’ monotonous larder. Assuredly his intentions were good; however, his plans went terribly awry. Notation in the obligatory Monthly Return was maybe not detailed enough for latter day historians, but explicit enough for the good Major Jones: “We left camp in the Mountains and marched N. West 12 miles when one of our Sergts. E.R. Griffith met with a sad accident by shooting himself in the leg while trying to Kill a Buffalo.”53 Whether or not Sergeant Griffith’s mishandling of firearms sparked Company A’s reemphasis on militarism is nebulous but, clearly, that very same month the twenty-four-year-old red-headed 1st Sergeant, George M. Doolittle, noted, “Lieut. J.T. Wilson is in Camp and is drilling us every day.”54 Who was not drilling everyday was Private James H. Hollis, a lanky nineteen-year-old Texan by birthright: He was dishonorably discharged due to indeterminate acts of “mutinous and insubordinate conduct.”55 Certainly former Sergeant S.T. Halsted, a thirty-six-year-old from Ontario West, was marching to a different drillmaster: he had taken a wife and requested that he be discharged, which was approved along with other personnel actions in Special Order No. 27, dated 7 November 1874.56 The very next day twenty-one-year-old J.L. Rainey, a native Texan, received a compassionate discharge so he could provide for and protect his widowed mother and sisters: Lieutenant Jim Millican noted for the battalion headquarters’ staff “and notwithstanding we

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regret to have a good man discharged from our ranks, I must under these circumstance advise his discharge.” 57 Even with the comings and goings, Major Jones was ever attentive to making sure the Frontier Battalion fellows were outfitted for battle. For Company A he added to their arsenal by requesting shipment of ten shotguns “with cartridges for same,” twenty Colt’s six-shooters, as well as a case of pistol ammo and three cases of carbine cartridges.58 Taking note about a touch of gross mismanagement or acknowledging adverse circumstances wholly inescapable and beyond their control is reflected in the Company A Monthly Return for November 1874: “Were detained from Scouting the first part of the month on account of Rations not coming to hand & had to borrow Flour from Citizens.”59 There was, as the metaphoric saying goes: Handwriting on the wall. Rumors within ranks had been swirling.60 The immense State of Texas was running extraordinarily short of ready cash and the original legislative appropriation of $300,000 for frontier defense was drying up at an alarming tempo. Plummeting over the fiscal cliff and into the abyss of nothingness was near. For that cadre of folks relatively familiar with in-house governmental doings and/ or mortifying corporate machinations, the fix was plain and predictable, simplistic in the extreme, a Reduction in Force, (i.e., a RIF).61 There would be no hints of modern age workplace compassion and/ or tolerance such as “last hired, first fired.” Unsympathetic reductions would sweep across the Frontier Battalion’s companies, brushing aside officers and noncoms and enlisted men with ease, by the stroke of a pen. For the immediate future a Frontier Battalion company would be commanded by a lieutenant. Company captains, with but one exception, would be positions of the past, as would be the need for any 2nd Lieutenants. Coldly chopping salaries and cutting back on manpower would trim cost. Aside from the commanding lieutenant, a company could be staffed with but two sergeants, three corporals, and twenty-five privates.62 And for whatever the reason or the logic, sound or sorry, General Order No. 7, as it related to Company A, booted Lieutenant James W. Millican straight out of

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the service, leaving Lieutenant Wilson in command.63 Learning of Lieutenant Wilson’s retention, a number of citizens from Palo Pinto and Parker Counties petitioned Governor Coke that their favorite son be awarded permanent command of Company A.64 Presupposing that as the Christmas season drew near the Company A boys were full of peacefulness and harmonious good cheer might register as but foolish Ranger romanticism. Assuredly Privates F.H. Alexander, twenty-three, and W.H. Curry, twenty, were on some sort of undisclosed tear in town or in camp. Both received dishonorable discharges based on their mutual “mutinous and insubordinate Conduct.”65 Some better behaved Company A Rangers would celebrate their holiday, in the field trying to find plundering Indians. First Lieutenant James W. Millican, prior to his head being placed on the administrative chopping block, had drawn rations for a fifteen-day scout with near thirty-five Rangers, while 2nd Lieutenant J. Tom Wilson, yet to receive command of Company A, likewise packed his mules with two weeks’ worth of supplies and headed out with fifteen men. Both units were planning on being away from their base camp “until after the Moon fulls.” 66 Although it might seem blasphemous to a few hardcore devotees of the legendary side of the Frontier Battalion’s narrative, for 1875’s first quarter the Rangers of Company A were not finding a wily Indian hidden behind every tree or a lurking badman behind every bush. However, one miscreant had until recently been breaking bread with Company A campmates. Lieutenant Wilson was in a quandary and reported same to Major Jones. “I have heard that two wagon Sheets belonging to the Company that are missing were Stolen by one of the Ex-Rangers. I have Sent him word to return them, if he fails to do it you will please instruct me what to do about it.”67 The missing wagon sheets may have been well fluttering in the breeze, as is the conclusiveness of Major Jones’ reply. That unpleasantness aside, the Company A Rangers did, however, try mightily to earn their state-sponsored keep hunting for wayward warriors and/or paleface lawbreakers. Lieutenant Wilson,

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now commanding the company, noted for his January 1875 Monthly Return: “There has been Scouts out regular on the line designated by the Battalion commander except in extreme cold weather. No Indians trails old or new have been discovered this month.”68 The following month, even though a number of the Company A horses were severely afflicted with “a cough prevailing in this section,” these Texas Rangers still managed to ride hither and yon hunting for better luck. During March 1875 they came close. Lieutenant Wilson and three Rangers rushed to the aid of the sheriff of Palo Pinto County, S.R. Edmondson. It was anticipated the local lawman would need a little help with the custodial arrests of “two men of bad character.” Providentially, in the end, the Texas Ranger back-up was not necessary. The fact that Frontier Battalion personnel were with each passing day becoming more accustomed to assuming the role of traditional peace officers was not going unnoticed by area gendarmes or private citizens. Too, during that month of March it was also noticed that though significantly diminished, Reservation bolting Indians could yet issue misfortune. Riding at the head of an eight-man scout, thirty-two-year-old Sergeant Daniel Whelin, a Tennessean, learned Texans were yet at risk if caught unawares and unguarded. He had learned that a party of Indians had been traveling about ten days before him and, unfortunately, they had “killed and scalped a young man and carried off eight head of horses and mules.” With the warriors’ substantial head-start toward the Red River and beyond, pursuit was a waste of time. The last entry for the month of March, after Company A Texas Rangers scouted halfa-hundred miles was increasingly all too repetitive: “In all 50 miles failed to learn any thing of Indians.”69 While he didn’t cut any sign of hoof prints or moccasin tracks of intruders Lieutenant Wilson did learn of what he perceived as shenanigans taking place within Company A’s enlisted ranks, a discovery that would net him unpopularity and, perhaps, somewhat doomed the unit’s short-term viability. Upon learning that some men were swapping horses, Lieutenant Wilson ordered that all such transactions required pre-approval by him. Though individual Texas

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Rangers owned their horses, the State of Texas government would replace them at no expense should they be killed or irreversibly disabled during the course of sanctioned Frontier Battalion service. Therein lay an automatic invitation for abuse, one particularly noted by an old-time Ranger: “I never heard of the state paying less than $100 for a dead horse, and I never knew a Ranger to pay more than $40 for a live one.”70 Rather astutely it seems, Lieutenant Wilson had noted that an ingenious Texas Ranger could trade a darn good horse for “one that was unfit for service” and pocket the boot. Why? Then, at battalion expense the poor horse could be fattened, or as the lieutenant explained, he didn’t “think it right for the State of Texas to feed & fatten thin horses just to trade.” He put a stop to the practice, but at high cost: “a bad feeling has been gotten up in camp: they think I have no authority to issue such orders and that I have no power to discharge them for violating them.”71 The lieutenant was standing on solid ground—legally and otherwise—so said Major Jones.72 Lieutenant Wilson had other ideas, too. From his point of view it wouldn’t be detrimental for protection of the frontier if Company A was “disbanded at once” and another company recruited in its stead. If that were the case, the mandate should be to enlist only “men from the interior,” as “they are better soldiers invariably than those men from the frontier.”73 Regardless of their individual soldierly fitness or geographical staking of their home place, Major Jones was— and it somewhat shatters Texas Ranger mythology—concerned that Company A troops might choose to opt out of the Frontier Battalion when their term of enlistment expired at the end of May 1875, and so notified Lieutenant Wilson that he wanted a headcount of those willing to reenlist.74 Reading Major Jones’s mind—or trying to—is pointless and unnecessary. His chosen course of action concerning Company A is crystal clear and in writing. He disbanded the company and discharged Lieutenant Wilson. The principle of the major’s reasoning was straightforward. Company A was no more due to finances, or more particularly the scarcity of finances. Major Jones was genuinely

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worried “that if the entire force is kept in the field until the first of June, the balance of the appropriation unexpended at that time, will be insufficient to maintain the force that will be required during the months of June, July and August for which we have no appropriation. By disbanding one Company now, I can save sixteen hundred dollars which with the balance that will be unexpended on the first of June will be sufficient to subsist four Companies of forty men each for three months.”75 Due to the relative quietness on the Indian front in the territory normally scouted by Company A, Major Jones formally disbanded the unit.76 He did, however, have a blueprint for later reconstituting Company A as his personal escort rather than draining the individual companies of manpower for such duty. The appeal to civilian Ira Long, a former Company B lieutenant, was solid but unambiguous. Major Jones wanted him to recruit men for a reconstituted Company A, having them ready for service by the fourteenth day of September 1875, pursuant to Special Order No. 43. This was, at least in the major’s ever spinning and ginning mind, to be somewhat of an elite and special company. Specifically, the recruits would not all come from the same section, but rather “from different parts of the country for this company.” They, too, could have—and it would be a real plus—if they had already banked prior service with the Frontier Battalion. Major Jones was emphatic: “We want none but good men and first rate horses.”77 Moreover, the battalion commander was positively focused on arming the company—his way. Major Jones was predisposed to favor the U.S. Military’s single-shot long gun, the .45-70 caliber Springfield. His opinion was explicit, believing the “Springfield Carbines were better adapted to our Service as being less liable to get out of order and having longer range and greater accuracy than Sharps.”78 Though the merit of his technological logic might stand debate, the choice of weaponry for the newly recruited Company A was not up for grabs: “Your men need not bring any guns. I have Springfield Carbines, the best Cavalry gun made, with which I wish to arm your whole company. Will take them out with me [when I

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meet you]. The men will not have to pay for them. Those who have pistols can bring them and I will carry some out with me also as each man must have a pistol.”79 Long, a proven fighter and thoroughly independently minded fellow knew what brand handgun would best suit his needs, and it was not a Colt’s .45 six-shooter; the standard issue for Rangers. In an unambiguous Post Script to correspondence with the Frontier Battalion’s commander, Ira proffered his fancy: “I want a pistol for myself of Smith & Wesson patn [pattern or patent] Russian Model, which you will please ship with the other arms.”80 Particularly solicitous of pleasing Long, Major Jones obeyed: “Will bring a Smith and Wesson for you, as you request.”81 Commander Jones was, too, handpicking the Company A noncoms. “I have selected good second and third Sergeants for you. Sergt. Mather of Co. E is one of them. Bring your first Sergeant with you if you can get a competent man for the place. Dr. Nicholson thinks Henry Corse who was a member of Co. C and now lives in Montague County would make the best orderly Sergt. on the line. He writes a fine hand and is a good businessman.”82 Not unexpectedly Ira Long accepted appointment as commander of the new Company A, drawing lieutenant’s pay: “I have to-day made up a company of good men for frontier service and am now ready for organization. . . . I have a select body of men and horses and am anxiously waiting to hear from you.”83 Though not necessarily a shocker to Frontier Battalion fellows on the ground, once again the legislative pockets were near turned inside-out. Major Jones ordered Lieutenant Long to reduce the manpower staffing model for Company A: There should be two sergeants, one corporal, and but seventeen privates.84 Bureaucracy! Bureaucracy! Adjutant General Steele, perhaps after lengthy consultation with Major Jones—maybe not—countermanded Special Order No. 52 and allowed Lieutenant Long the courtesy of maintaining Company A at a more logical level, thirty men in the aggregate.85 Somewhat unluckily, that news was late in coming, short-circuiting any buy back of “ten Colts pistols [were] carried off by Discharged men that were paid for.”86

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On the last day of December 1875, Lieutenant Long told Major Jones of a noteworthy arrest, significant on a twofold front. The Company A Rangers had taken C.C. Rush into custody, a fugitive from Wise County, and regrettably a deputy sheriff who had “Stoled a horse and several hundred dollars of Public money. . . .” Lieutenant Long ordered the fugitive forthwith returned to Decatur in the company of three Texas Rangers; to be turned over to Sheriff Robert G. Cates. The extraordinarily cold weather horseback roundtrip ate up twenty-two frosty days.87 The days of fighting Indians—though not over—were waning. Men of Company A, and a few beardless boys were, in truth and fact, now lawmen. What of those Frontier Battalion fellows in the other five companies? Did those Texas Rangers have worthwhile stories to share? Initial Roster Frontier Battalion Company A Name:

Age:

Nativity:

Trade/Occupation:

Abell, Zadok Abrams, William W. Alexander, F.H. Atkinson, J.V. Aycock, Kossuth Barber, Alford C. Barber, S. H. Boice, Josiah Boykin, Frank M. Bunch, David F. Bundy, Zachary Taylor Chinn, Hal W. Culwell, Joshua Asbury Curry, W.A. Damon, H.F.

23 26 23 24 25 18 19 22 26 23 25 19 19 20 24

KY IN IN SC GA TX TX NY MS AL TN LA AR WI ??

Not Listed on the Company A Muster Roll

Continued

Frontier Battalion, Company A

Name:

Age:

Nativity:

DeJarnette, N.B. Doolittle, G.M. Doran, Robert B. Dutton, J.B. Ford, E.J. Ford, W.F. Gossett, Thomas Jefferson Green, William Marion Griffin, J.H. Griffith, Ellis Ringold Gross, John C. Halsted, Samuel T. Hamilton, Samuel Virgil Harrell, E.W. Harris, John H. Harris, Richard H. Hawbaken, Samuel Hensely, J. H. Hix, Nathaniel B. Hollis, James H. Hollowell, John C. Hood, N.F. Hudson, D. Jones, Hulbert M. Kincade, Drury R. Lewis, P.G. Mapel, John Mays, Beverly McCollum, James Washington McIver, Fountain A. McLearen, W.T. Merrill, H. M. Millican, James W.

23 24 18 21 21 23 27 20 28 26 20 36 23 26 21 22 27 24 19 19 22 22 33 31 23 25 26 30 20 24 23 20 39

AL OH IL AR GA GA GA TX TN MS GA Ontario West GA IN GA IL Switzerland IN IL TX MS TN Ireland OH GA KY IL TN GA AL TN GA TX

143

Continued

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Name:

Age:

Nativity:

Morphis, G.B. Morris, W.H. Murrell, James H. Newman, Fred Norton, C.B. Odell, S.W. Owens. Samuel Oxford, W.G. Patterson, B.M.C. Pool, Carter Y. Rainey, J.L. Randles, D.H. Ravenscraft, S.A. Scott, Elihu Winfield “Ail” Sherman, A.B. Stoudemier, Dallas Taylor, Andrew L. Taylor, John Henry Tebo, Amaziah E. Utter, S.A. Waller, John R. Watson, James Anders Wattles, Zachary Taylor Whelan, Daniel M. White, James L. Wilson, J, Thomas Wood, Joseph Woods, W.E. Young, Charley H.

23 34 29 ?? 30 25 20 21 24 30 21 18 21 27 28 26 20 18 25 30 51 32 22 27 20 34 26 19 30

TN MS MO ?? NY GA KY TX ?? SC TX MO MO TN Ontario West AL TX TX IL NY AL TN AL KY TX TN GA TX Ontario East

6 

Company B, Frontier Battalion Muster Roll Oldest Youngest Native Texan Other States Foreign Born

75 enlistees 44 years 18 years 11 percent 85 percent 04 percent

Initial geographical posting for Company B as dictated by the Frontier Battalion’s front office at Austin was specific: “Capt. Stevens—at Hambys Ranch on Elm Creek 8 miles North West of Belknap and patrol North East half way to Buffalo Springs and South to the center of Stephens County. P.O. at Jacksboro.”1

like company a’s captain waller, company b would be commanded by a man with proven law enforcing know-how. When commissioned as captain, the gray-eyed George W. Stevens was but forty-four years of age. Though a native of Alabama southwest of Montgomery, Stevens had migrated to North Texas during 1855, settling in Wise County (county seat Decatur), and ultimately served multiple terms as the county’s sheriff. Aside from serving as sheriff George Stevens farmed, but more importantly for the story at hand, the energetic frontiersman was a seasoned Indian campaigner. He, too, was somewhat familiar with leadership chores linked to ranging type undertakings, having steadfastly served two stints as a lieutenant in Company B of the Wise County Minute Men and, later, as a captain.2 The very same month Frontier Battalion enlistees were recruited for service, raiding Indians substantiated Texas legislators’ beliefs, 145

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the western settlements were unprotected and vulnerable. Wellknown and well-respected ranchman J. C. Loving enumerated numerous Indian sorties into his neck of the woods during the previous year, but was particularly aggrieved by the attack on 20 May 1874, herein repeated with but a minimal edit: a party of four Indians Killed and Scalped a man in my Employ in Lost Valley about four miles from my Ranch named James K.P. Wright. They taken from him a horse, saddle and Bridle all so a Winchester Gun and a Smith & Wesson Six shooter. The Horse belonged to me the other property of the man Killed. . . .3

Operating out of the old civilian citadel, Fort Murray in Young County, Captain Stevens wasted no time putting his scouts in the field. Lieutenant Ira Long, riding the most dollar-valued horse in the company, $150, and fifteen Texas Rangers scouted north and west, covering ninety-eight miles but not finding any sign of Indians. Lieutenant Seborn Graham Sneed McGarrah, a thirty-seven-year-old with Arkansas roots, led his twelve-man scout for fifty-five miles, checking for tracks at crossings along the Little Wichita and Brazos Rivers. No luck. Company B Sergeant Fredrich A. Lichlyter, now a transplanted Texan from Tennessee, and his detail of ten raring to go Rangers scouted south to Fish Creek and, likewise, came up short with regards to locking up with any border-jumping Comanche or Kiowa raiders.4 The Rangers of Company B—or any state-sponsored unit—had not been scouting far north into the high Texas Panhandle country during that month of June 1874, the geographical territory where the hostile Indians actually were. A joint task force of Comanche, Cheyenne, and Kiowa warriors and misguided mystics were campaigning in what is now Hutchinson County (county seat Stinnett), particularly eyeballing an encampment north of the Canadian River: Slaughtering and scalping whites was on their near-term agenda. On the morning of 27 June 1874 the Indians attacked buffalo hunters congregating at their hide-trading and supply-center, Adobe Walls. “The superb marksmanship and high-powered rifles of the buffalo

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hunters ultimately drove them off,” and though Texas Rangers were elsewhere at the time, the fervent skirmish would soon impact their institutional history and awaken a sleeping Uncle Sam.5 A dozen days later, however, some of Captain Stevens’s ranging boys would get a taste. Company B’s Tennessee-bred Corporal J. W. Newman, twentyfour, and his detachment of eight tenderfoot Rangers would have much better luck than a few of their comrades—of sorts. On the morning of 9 July 1874, some twenty-odd miles north of Fort Murray, these Rangers, allied with some Company C troops, were attacked by a party of Indians numbering close to fifty warriors, so reported Corporal Newman.6 During the ensuing engagement the Rangers were productively protected in a grove of trees—a thicket— and thus suffered not any casualties save for a wounded horse.7 While lucky to be alive, it would also seem that the Rangers failed to inflict any real damage either—the scary skirmish tallying a draw. All too soon, the men—and boys—of the fabled Frontier Battalion, “some as green as spring grass,” would learn in the down-to-earth litigation euphemistically known as Texas Rangers vs. Indians, Comanche and Kiowa played for keeps.8 Though the Frontier Battalion had been birthed shy of two months before, nearing mid-July 1874 Major John B. Jones and his escort detachment, as a part of the preplanned inspection tour, found themselves visiting with Captain George Stevens and Rangers of Company B at their campsite near the deactivated Fort Belknap. At this stage of structuring and properly outfitting the battalion with necessary arms and ammunition, bacon and beans, and contracting with local suppliers of forage and grain, Commander Jones was unaware of events unfolding around him. This inopportune deficit of knowledge, however, would be short-lived. While Major Jones had been riding north, Comanche raiders had skipped the Indian Agency headcount and blistered forth across the Red River. They were not peacefully inclined. At the Loving family’s ranch they killed cowboy John Heath and stole a string of saddle-horses.9 There was, as it turned out, a fortuitous paralleling

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foray by Indian Reservation neighbors. Kiowa had bolted too, chiefly seeking blood not booty. Lone Wolf (Gui-päh-go), a Kiowa headman, leader of a conservative faction, and member in good standing with the Tsetanma warrior society, was intent on extracting red blood from white men in retribution for the woeful deaths of his son Sitting-in-the-Saddle (Tau-ankia) and his fifteen-year-old nephew Heart-of-a Young-Wolf (Gui-tain). The Kiowa had been killed in South Texas by U.S. Army soldiers the previous year: The war party having murdered fourteen peons south of the Rio Grande, stolen 150 horses, and made prisoners of two Mexican boys, then unceremoniously executed two innocent and ill-prepared American travelers navigating the San Antonio/Laredo Road. During the ensuing battle Lieutenant Charles L. Hudson, 4th U.S. Cavalry, had without the loss of a man, killed nine Kiowa raiders and recovered most of the stolen horses.10 Quite naturally, for Kiowa, cultural diktats required retribution. Though Lone Wolf was unaware at the time and the irony is rich, Lieutenant Hudson had been accidently killed at Fort Clark when a fellow officer discharged his weapon by mistake.11 Bluecoats killing each other didn’t count. Not surprisingly but frankly, Lone Wolf “vowed revenge on all whites.”12 Quite luckily as it turned out to be, four of those whites, cowboys W.C. Hunt, J.G. Newcomb, Shad Dameron, and ranchman James C. Loving, outfoxed and outran the Kiowa marauders by maneuvering their escape route through a jagged outcropping of rocks. The strategy was not a hitch for their iron-shod cow-ponies but proved ruinous for the Kiowa’s barefooted war-ponies. Reluctantly, but not unwisely, Lone Wolf shut down the chase.13 There was no thought of returning to the Reservation, especially with not any blood atonement for the loss of his kinfolk. A couple of days of neutral activity, rest, would do wonders in rejuvenating sore-hoofed horses. The Kiowa warriors owned a good supply of jerked-meat, but more importantly Lone Wolf’s patience was plentiful. He and they could kill time waiting to kill someone. Certainly Major John B. Jones and his Texas Rangers couldn’t dawdle, not after learning of John Heath’s demise and the

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thieving of horses by remorseless Comanche assailants. Company A’s hard-riding black-headed and black-eyed 2nd Lieutenant, J. Thomas “Tom” Wilson, who was then a part of the major’s escort detail and would later become the sheriff of Palo Pinto County, was busy scouting with six Rangers for Indian sign in light of recent events. News broke quick. Cutting what seemed a promising trail, Lieutenant Wilson dispatched a courier to Major Jones, updating the commander as to the latest intelligence. He and the remaining Texas Rangers would standby until reinforced, not daring to tackle a band of overtly hostile Indians with insufficient manpower and/ or firepower. Thankfully, and relatively shortly, Major Jones with part of his escort and Captain Stevens and some Company B troops rendezvoused with Lieutenant Wilson. With the expeditionary force somewhat beefed up, the hunt for Comanche or Kiowa or any other Indians in the neighborhood was pressed—at a gallop. The trail was easy to read, easy to follow. And it led straight to the doorway of Lost Valley, “about halfway between old Fort Belknap and the town of Jacksboro, in northwestern Jack County.”14 Company B Sergeant James J. Boyd had just days before followed a distinct Indian trace into Lost Valley “where the trail was lost,” though diligently searching his thirty-seven men had done.15 And it was right here, though none knew it at the time, at the gateway into Lost Valley, “a hardscrabble habitat of dry washes and ravines below the rocky hills, the slopes which were dotted with post oak and scrub” where what seemed converging Indian trails crisscrossed and dimmed and then altogether disappeared. The Comanche raiders who killed John Heath were in the dark about Kiowa revenge seekers being in the region. Likewise, the Kiowa with blood vengeance at the top of their agenda were oblivious about any Comanche presence. And in this regard, Major Jones was utterly clueless. True, he knew some Indians were about— that was a no-brainer—and he was well aware bronco raiders had been wreaking havoc on unguarded horses and unprotected herders, but aside from those scraps of data Major Jones knew naught—not owning a lick of Indian fighting know-how or practical experience to guide his thought processes.16

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Wholly unaware that Comanche had departed, heading north of the Red River seeking safety in their “City of Refuge,” Major Jones was somewhat naïve with regards to Indian philosophy, that distinction between raiding for reward and raiding for revenge. The Comanche had hopped across mud-spattered banks of the river to acquire loot, while the Kiowa were craving blood. Lone Wolf couldn’t honorably return to the Reservation just yet—his bloodlust not yet sated. 17 And into the breach were riding the gaggle of palefaces, now casting about in Lost Valley, themselves lost as the proverbial goose, so it seemed to Lone Wolf as he peered down to the valley’s floor from his well-hidden perch high atop a prominent hill. Though it’s not known for sure, perhaps the cunning old war-chief smiled or smirked or snickered: These observably tenderfoot squirts were, determined it seemed, to make his forthcoming bloody work short-work. The innocent lambs were coming to the cagy and waiting lions.18 Tactically slipping away from the main body of Kiowa, Maman-ti (Sky-Walker) and Ad-la-te (Loud Talker) volunteered to serve as decoys, luring the greenhorns into an orchestrated ambush. Dismounted and feigning fatigue, leading their horses, the two thespian Kiowa acted as bait, an irresistible temptation for any would-be Indian hunters—so they surmised. Fortunately for the Rangers that plan went awry, not because the Frontier Battalion fellows figured it out, but more troubling—somewhat shattering a legend—the Texas Rangers didn’t even see them, though they were trying their best to be seen—and chased.19 Ill-advisedly Major John B. Jones had splintered his command, not into one or two combat tactical units, but allowing individual Texas Rangers to fish about, hither and yon, trying to snag any semblance of meaningful and fresh Indian sign. Such was not a prudent decision: “He [Major Jones] directed them to remain in touch with each other and be ready to reunite in the event of an attack, although the fact that the men were so scattered spoke loudly to a lack of discipline.”20 In this particular instance and a paucity of Indian fighting familiarity may have been the mitigating factor, a deficit of discipline

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in military models—and the Frontier Battalion was so legislatively built—normally rests with the commander. On this occasion and definitely uncharacteristically, Major Jones blundered.21 Edward B. “Ed” Carnal, a twenty-five-year-old Louisianan and a farmer by vocation, was at the time serving as a private in Company D, temporarily assigned to the detachment escorting Major Jones. At Lost Valley he was, in his very own words, scouting on his “own hook.”22 With his eyes fixed on the ground, hunting hard for hoof marks and/or steamy droppings, Ed Carnal was jumpstarted into panic when he looked up. Lo and behold! There they were. Indians, the first ones he had ever seen, and a big horde too, right in front of him. Instinctively he unlimbered his state-issued .45 Colt’s sixshooter and sent a round their way, as a warning to comrades he would later report, but in any event Ranger Ed then put cold iron to his jittery horse and skedaddled. Private Carnal’s immediate objective was gut-wrenchingly straightforward: outrace the Kiowa or be de-horsed, killed, gutted, and/or scalped. The incentive for a firstplace finish was fanatical. Luckily, his shirttail blowing in the breeze, Private Carnal finally reunited with Major Jones, sounding the alarm: Indians were on the warpath and they were right behind him. Acting quickly the Frontier Battalion’s commander rallied some nearby Rangers and formed a defensive line across a subsection of Lost Valley’s floor. Though exhibiting coolness under intense pressure, Major John B. Jones had his hands full, frantically issuing commands to his inexperienced Indian campaigners, encouraging them to stubbornly hold their position, tenuous as their situation might be occupying that pancake flat and treeless ground. The initial fire from Ranger carbines emitted a noise that was akin to the popping and cracking of “a canebrake afire.”23 Thankfully, Captain George Stevens, well seasoned in such difficulties, had been quickly awakened to dire reality, grimly but robustly shouting: “Major we will have to get to cover somewhere or all be killed.”24 Captain Stevens’s wisdom was spot-on, the choices for Major Jones were but two: maintain their posture on starkly open ground and be slaughtered like sheep, or cut through enemy lines and

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make a mad dash for a ravine, advantaging themselves with at least a small degree of tactical cover. Option two was chosen and the anxious Texas Rangers mounted their horses for the race of their lives. Utilizing their Colt’s six-shooters rather than single-shot carbines, the uneasy Rangers cut through Kiowa lines and effectively jumped into the ditch, availing themselves of what little defensive cover it afforded. The maneuver—while successful for the most part—did not come without casualties. After all, it was war.25 Unerringly, the marksmanship of Tsen-asu-sain, a cool Kiowa customer, plowed a spiraling bullet straight into the shoulder of twenty-two-year-old Private Lee B. Corn, a Company F Ranger assigned to the escort detail. The damage was serious, his arm helplessly dangling at his side, seemingly held in place by but sinew and muscle, not by bone. Bravely acting with little regard for himself, another member of the escort team, Company D’s John Valentine Wheeler, a twenty-three-year-old Alabamian, rushed to assist Lee Corn, the two finally taking scrub-brush cover near a small pool formed by drainage from Cameron Creek.26 Company E Ranger George K. Moore, another Alabamian and a druggist by trade, but then assigned to the major’s escort detachment, caught a Kiowa projectile in the lower leg, an injury permanently crippling him but not preventing him from taking cover behind brushy camouflage at the rear, but not in the ditch with his comrades, that geographical fissure but four or five feet deep, and a good 300 feet from end to end.27 Another Ranger, Company B’s William A. “Billy” Glass, one of Captain Stevens’s boys from North Carolina, now owned Kiowa bullets with his name on them: Five to be exact. He lay lifeless in plain view of his hunkered down pals for awhile—a little while. Desirous of counting coup (touching an enemy) Red Otter and Hunting Horse (Tsain-tonkee) began moving toward the prostrate and ostensibly dead Texas Ranger.28 Astonishingly Private Billy Glass began to move, laboriously and painfully crawling toward the arroyo shielding his companions, screaming in agony and pleading, pitiably pleading, not to be abandoned, coldly left exposed to the Kiowa’s tomahawks

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and butcher knives. The wounded fellow’s unnerving entreaty did not fall on deaf ears. Ranger Zack Wattles could take it no more, no matter the risks. The diminutive and slightly built (130 lbs.) Texas Ranger from Navarro County pitched his Sharps carbine to the ground and rushed to the side of Glass, straddling his immobile form and with great difficulty but Herculean strength and resolve, then, underneath a fierce covering fire, arduously dragged Billy over rocky ground and into the protective ditch. Purportedly, the twentytwo-year-old Wattles received several wounds, though not serious, but did have the heel of his boot blown to smithereens causing him to wobble and hobble rather comically—discounting grave danger of the day. Though the daring rescue might have earned a Medal of Honor had Zack Wattles been in another outfit, the heartfelt esteem garnered from fellow Texas Rangers in this heroic and horrific incident was reward enough. But then, in real time, little did those pinned-down Texas Rangers realize that Billy Glass going under would mark the first time a Frontier Battalion-era Ranger would sacrifice his life in the line of duty.29 The situation, despite any fanciful hokum about Texas Rangers, was desperate. Fortunately, drawing from leadership skills honed during the Civil War, Major Jones was able to step to the mark— and commendably so. Major Jones remained topside, not seeking concealment in the ditch. From his upright positioning he could and did gauge where best to direct his men’s field of fire, encouragingly admonishing them to husband scarce ammunition, remain calm and collected, and to strictly tend to business. He assured them that those damn Kiowa “can’t pull us out of this ravine.” Major Jones, when it came to downright bravery and gritty willpower was the real deal, a fact subordinate Texas Rangers recognized that day and came to revere.30 Unassumingly Mother Nature was not playing favorites on that sizzling twelfth day of July 1874. The sun beat down with ferocity, baking Kiowa and Rangers alike. The Indians, however, held the high ground and the advantage. They could move about, seeking shade and water, not using their entire force to confront the enemy. On

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the other hand, the Texas Rangers were stalemated, unable to move, running low on ammunition, and beginning to dehydrate as precious wetness in canteens went dry. The future seemed bleak. Besides the dust and heat, there was the vile stench. The ditch was too shallow to provide protection for their horses. Nakedly exposed, their horses were steadily going down, an arrow to the lungs here, a bullet to the gut there.31 Truthfully the Rangers and their horses were unmercifully tied to Lost Valley’s scorching floor, hopelessly wedged between disaster and dehydration. D.W.H. “Dave” Bailey, a Company B Ranger, and his twentythree-year old comrade in arms, Mel W. Porter, measuring but five foot, three inches, opted to take a real chance. They would collect drained canteens and race for Cameron Creek, fill the vessels, and dash back to the ditch. Such was, of course, risky business. Taking the major’s field glasses, and screwing down tight in the saddle, Rangers Bailey and Porter made a fast run for Cameron Creek and its lifesaving tonic. Lone Wolf smiled, once again. Knowing that someone, sooner or later, would make for the creek, he had tactically pre-positioned several warriors to interdict that mission, and strip them of their topknots. While Mel Porter was knee-deep in the creek filling canteens, Dave Bailey set his horse, ever on the lookout for Indians. Unhappily he saw some, and they were riding hell-bent to skew him at the sharpened steel tip of a lance, or otherwise dethrone him from his $80 mount. The Kiowa were screaming earsplitting war-whoops, all wrangling for the lead in a pell-mell run to see which of them could draw first blood. Shouting a shrill warning to Mel Porter, Dave Bailey spurred his horse into high-gear, firing his six-shooter over his shoulder as he fled. His bullets went wide, no scorecard of dead or wounded Kiowa. Adding to his perdictiment, unexplainably his spooked horse sulked, squatting back on its haunches “sulling like a possum,” failing to move one step, or an inch! Despite the frantic efforts of Dave, he was at a standstill. Alas, Ranger Bailey realized his time was near, his hard luck inescapable.32 The Kiowa lance thrust deep into his chest confirmed that last thought.

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There was, however a show to be had, one for those tenderfoot Texas Rangers who had dared knot up with true and tested Kiowa warriors. Their incursion into North Texas, it must be kept in mind, was to draw white man’s blood—nothing less. In plain sight of the aghast Rangers yet powerlessly ensconced in the stinking ditch, now ripe with nauseating aromas of death and dying, the Kiowa went to work, doing what Kiowa were ethnically preordained to do: After killing Ed [sic] Bailey they scalped him, carving him up like a beef steak and then taking the butt end of their guns and stamping his skull and brains in the ground in sight of the Major and the boys in the creek. After they had satisfied themselves with Bailey’s dead body, they then took his horse, a fine one, gun and pistols, all the canteens of water and also the Major’s spy glass.33

Lest one presupposes that the brutally honest description of Texas Ranger Dave Bailey’s demise is the written byproduct of insensitive nineteenth-century Anglo ethnocentrism, a Kiowa warrior, too, furnished an account: When I go to the place where they had killed the other ranger, I learned that Dohausen had thrust him off his horse with a spear, but that Mama-day-te had made first coup by touching him with his hand. Lone Wolf and Maman-ti and everybody was there. Lone Wolf got off his horse and chopped the man’s head to pieces with his brass hatchet-pipe. Then he took out his butcher knife and cut open the man’s bowels. Everyone who wanted to shot arrows into it or poked it with their lances.34

In the meantime, Mel Porter, after remounting his horse but then again put afoot while dodging the unpleasant thrust of a Kiowa lance, haphazardly but luckily not a casualty of some not very friendly friendly-fire, dived into the deepest pool Cameron Creek afforded, escaping the Indians. Rather quickly he was in the good company of Privates Lee Corn, yet in agony due to his gunshot wound, and John Valentine Wheeler: Both had been lying low, cut off from those Texas Rangers suffering miserably in a waterless gully.

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There was no way for Lone Wolf to know of the death of Billy Glass, but having witnessed the fate of Ranger Dave Bailey, and taking a hand in mutilating the corpse, the thirst for revenge was waning; culturally he could return to the Reservation saving face. In reasonably high spirits, but ever watchfully, the Kiowa began slipping away. Major Jones’s reality check was imminent: He and his Rangers were not going to stagnantly die in a damn ditch while meat withered from their bleaching bones and buzzards tore at the scraps. Under the cover of darkness Major Jones opted to skip, too, straight to Loving’s Ranch. He did, however, hedge his bet, dispatching Company D’s twenty-one-year-old former store-clerk Private John P. Holmes, a native of Yazoo, Mississippi, with a handwritten note for the military authorities at Fort Richardson: I was attacked today four miles South of Lovings ranch by about one hundred well armed Indians. Had only thirty-five men. . . . Fought them three hours and drove them off, but have not force enough to attack them. Can you send me assistance to Lovings. The Indians are still in the valley. Lost twelve horses.35

The hurried message Major Jones sent was crystal clear. Blasphemous in the overall context of Ranger lore as it may seem to be, but when it came to the business of fighting Indians the grown men and beardless boys of the Frontier Battalion found it a real tough row to hoe, way too tough, for the Texas Rangers to handle by themselves. Galloping through the gloomy night with but a pistol and a prayer, Private Holmes reached Fort Richardson before sunrise. There, after telling his story, the post became a moonlit flurry of activity as Captain T.A. Baldwin, 10th U.S. Calvary, prepared to ride to the rescue.36 Drawing manpower from Companies I and L, Captain Baldwin riding at the head of his black troops, the noteworthy Buffalo Soldiers, in but short order made contact with Major Jones and the frazzled Rangers of the Frontier Battalion. The irony is quite remarkable: There were no black enlistees in the Frontier Battalion—and would not be—but “colored troops” had raced to save the scalps and

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lives of outnumbered and outgunned and arguably outfoxed Texas Rangers. It would then seem, practically speaking, sharpened scalping knives and steel-tipped arrows and long pointed war-lances have an evident way of somewhat blunting intolerance, even if but for the short-term.37 Unluckily for the Buffalo Soldiers and Texas Rangers there were not Indians to be found, they having scooted back across the Red securing safety and sanctuary. Company B’s 1st Lieutenant McGarrah, scouted from Lost Valley and confirmed that he had “followed the trail of the Indians that “had the fight with Major J.B. Jones” and that he was “satisfied” that the Kiowa had “left the country on the night of the 12th [July 1874].”38 The battalion commander also reported to the adjutant general that he had succeeded in moving his wounded Rangers to Jacksboro, checking them into the Post Hospital at Fort Richardson.39 Although the record is silent at this point, the hushed lull will not last long regarding the lure Jacksboro town held for particular Texas Rangers. Adjacent to Fort Richardson and its active military, Jacksboro was also the supply center and jumping-off place for buffalo hunters and cattle herders moving Longhorns to railway shipping centers in Kansas. With an overabundance of hormonally charged soldiers, grizzled hide-hunters, and festive cowboys there’s no bombshell news: Jacksboro was a “red hot town,” a turbulent little burg “where the sound of the fiddle and the crack of the six-shooter was heard the livelong night.”40 There was but a scant half mile between the military post and town, though that was room enough for approximately twenty-seven saloons and other enticing fun-filled establishments, places such as the Gem, the Emerald, Union Headquarters, the Little Shamrock, the Sunflower, the Island Home, the First National, the Last Chance, the Wichita, and Mollie McCabe’s Palace of Beautiful Sin. And plying their trade and promoting charm and champagne were such beauties as Polly Turnover, Maggie Truelove, Molly Hipp, Louisa Welch, Rosa Lee, Jane Blackwell, Long Kate, Mollie Bowman, Catharine Lemely, Belle Little, Nettie McGuire, Sally Watson, Mollie McCabe, and perhaps the best known of all, Carlotta Thompkins, aka Lottie Deno.41 Sinful

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Jacksboro and the men and boys of the Frontier Battalion—a few of the Rangers—would own an affinity for each other. Historically, a trademark of successful Texas Rangers is marked by their ability to adapt, to improvise and overcome in spite of bureaucracy. Major Jones was in a quandary, his escort and Captain Stevens’s men were, due to the skirmish in Lost Valley, woefully short of ammunition and official requisitions were oftentimes untimely made and/or fulfilled. On the sly he solved his problem. In collusion with a U.S. Army helpmate at Fort Richardson, Major Jones “borrowed some ammunition.” As Major Jones advised Adjutant General Steele, he was really very nervous and wanted the battalion quartermaster without delay to ship him “three cases Sharps Carbine and three cases Colt’s improved revolver cartridges” to replace the ammunition he had been surreptitiously loaned. Furthermore, as he advised the front office: “Am particularly solicitous that it shall be sent at once as the transaction is a personal one between a subordinate officer and myself without the knowledge of the Comdg. [Commanding] Officer.”42 Major Jones, too, was trying to put to bed the grumbling of several disconcerted Rangers. And, their displeasure does seem to have merit: Have to ask for information as to the price of arms (guns and pistols). It is reported that the price of the Carbines is thirty-dollars, which is thought to be exorbitant as these guns can be bought for much less in the county and the men think it hard to be compelled to pay the government more than they can be bought for from private parties.43

Trifling as it may seem, Major Jones also formally requested that his field glasses—those lost during the Lost Valley fight—be replaced, particularly specifying he wanted optics of “good” quality, preferably better than the ones previously issued.44 The adjutant general granted Major Jones’s request, ordering a pair of premium binoculars from the firm of W.W. Shaw & Bros of Galveston, Texas.45 Administrative duties now on a backburner, there was time for a

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massaging touch of public relations. Understandably there would be a favorable political spin regarding an unmistakably desperate and deadly encounter at Lost Valley, stories picked up statewide by eager correspondents reporting and editorializing; newspapers such as the Corpus Christi Weekly Gazette, the Galveston Daily News, and the Dallas Weekly Herald.46 The Frontier Battalion Commander’s initial after-action report to the Austin-based headquarters, though assuredly interlaced with a few fog of war inaccuracies, is for the most part straightforward, though he does declare: “We then charged upon them, repulsed them and drove them about two miles, partly through prairies and partly through timber, where they took refuge among the rocks and caves of a mountain ridge. Several of our men being dismounted in the charge and having only twenty eight present in all, we were unable to dislodge them from their position but found a ravine and continued firing at them until they ceased firing and abandoned their position.”47 Adjutant General William Steele spiked the good publicity ball right into the governor’s office: Noting that Major Jones and Captain Stevens “encountered a war party of Indians numbering from 125 to 150 and, after an engagement of several hours duration forced them to take shelter amongst the rocks from whence they made their escape under cover of the night and immediately took the backtrack out of the settlements. The loss of life and property prevented by this timely and gallant action can only be imagined. . . .”48 Undoubtedly a favorable drumbeat for Rangers was banging away. Major Jones added to the din and, indeed, his later partisan spin registers as unbelievably preposterous. In his written report to Adjutant General Steele underscoring some of the Frontier Battalion’s actions the commander declared—and maybe believed— that after “an engagement of several hours duration, defeated them [Lone Wolf’s Kiowa] and forced them to take their back track in the direction of the reservation.”49 More accurately, the tale spins the other way—historically.50 Regardless the “heavy engagement” at Lost Valley, as Captain Stevens characterized it, he was notably busy—chasing Indians and forced into dealing with niggling personnel problems. Private Aaron

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McCollum, a Canadian by birth, was “discharged from the service” for an undisclosed reason; Private Thomas J. Cartwright, thirty-one, suffered a “disability caused by an old wound” and was discharged; Private George W. Perkins, twenty-five and a Wise County farmer, was cut loose because “he had a family” demanding his urgent attention; and auburn-headed Private Dempsey Jones Collins got his walking papers due to his “being a married man and having been enlisted by mistake.” Private T.H. Layman, twenty-two and topping six feet, had a bur in his blankets, one causing his dishonorable discharge for “mutinous and insubordinate conduct.”51 Private S.M. Munday, though the details are scant, had been arrested either by fellow Rangers or local lawmen, charged with Theft from House: He was a Ranger no more. And neither was Private F.M. Butler, a thirtyyear-old from Missouri, the grass being greener somewhere else, so he simply walked away—Deserted! Captain Stevens had no trouble filling blank lines on the Muster & Pay Roll with fresh recruits. On another front Captain Stevens came up short. During a grueling scout after Indians, he had learned “of the Murder of the Huff Family, the old Lady and Her two daughters.”52 At Austin’s Frontier Battalion headquarters, Adjutant General Steele learned of it too, a letter on his desk from G.B. Pickett read in part: “returned though Wise—passing out in two miles of my house with 250 head horses, there were 35 Indians. When about eight miles from this place [Decatur] they attacked a Mr. Huff at his house. Killed his wife & two grown daughters. Scalped & cut them up to pieces. Mr. Huff is missing supposed to be Killed.”53 In line with Captain G.W. Stevens’s very best hearsay, “the Indians was still in the settlements,” but despite that tidbit, he and his Rangers couldn’t find them.54 And that, in and of itself, was sardonic shame. Twenty-year-old C.W. Huff was, at the time, a Company B Texas Ranger, and it was his mother and two sisters, Palestine and Molly, who had been viciously scalped and mutilated. Reverently the deceased ladies were then all positioned in a wagon-box in place of individual coffins, and interred in a single grave.55 Notwithstanding maudlin excuse-making in an enlightened age, life at the frontier’s edge was brutally tough and

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uncompromising for Texas farmers and ranchers—as well as for Comanche and Kiowa. That said, Major Jones somewhat downplayed the Huff ladies’ slayings, something that may certainly not have endeared him to several families of frightened homesteaders: “I find that the depredations committed by the Indians in Wise County were greatly exagerated [sic]. Capt. Stevens who pursued the Indians and followed their trail out of the settlements, reports that there were only thirty Indians, that they took about two hundred horses, but he thinks they were all re-captured, as none were carried out except what were ridden by the Indians. That they murdered three women in Wise County but did not murder any one on Beans Creek, as reported. That there was much excitement and alarm among the settlers, but only three families left the neighborhood where the parties were murdered and not more than twelve or fifteen families left the entire county, so far as he was able to learn.”56 At this point in time, the line of frontier settlements was ever malleable, expanding and contracting in deference to the very real or very puffed news about the latest Indian sortie. One can only speculate as to how young Ranger Huff would have construed Major Jones’s written assessment had he been privy to it. Major Jones’s thoughts about dangers from Indians stealing and murdering in Wise County were subjective. On another front, regarding Private T.L. Vandagriff, twenty-one, the Frontier Battalion major’s reasoning was objective: “having lost his horse & being unable to purchase another deserved to be discharged from the Service.”57 And, so it was! Another separation from Company B Texas Ranger service was a forty-year-old Kentuckian, Private S. M. Munday. It seems Private Munday during the enlistment process failed to disclose that he was suffering an “indictment and having been arrested for [a] felony.”58 And yet another was the dishonorable discharge of J.H. Moore, an eighteen-year-old with a feisty attitude, who for some reason yet disclosed caught the Company Commander’s attention for “mutinous and insubordinate conduct.”59

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Clearly, if one actually adheres to the practice of peeking at evidence, sidestepping pre-weighted denouncements and modern-era motivated politically correct judgments, Major Jones was pigheaded in hammering professionalism into the fledgling Frontier Battalion. Subsection III of General Order No. 5 was precise: Both officers and men should bear in mind that we are in the employment of the Government, being paid for our time and services, and therefore should be constantly engaged in some sort of service. To this end, company commanders will require of the men all the service that can be performed with justice to their horses, in scouting up and down the line, or on such longer scouts or expeditions against the Indians as may be expedient for them to make.60

Captain Stevens’s personnel problems with enlisted men were piddling compared to the fuss with one of his officers, the aforementioned Seborn G. S. McGarrah. Captain Stevens, according to his strongly worded missive to Major Jones, deemed it was nothing short of “his duty” to prosecute a litany of administrative charges against Company B’s 1st Lieutenant. Allegations ranging from seizing an Indian pony, “and gambled said pony off with Men who were with him on the Scout at cards.” With regards to another pony, he simply sold it to the “highest bidder with the understanding that proceeds from said sale were to be equally divided among themselves, he with the rest.” On another occasion he abandoned a chase after Indians and ambled into the town of Jacksboro, where “he became so much intoxicated as to renter [render] himself wholy [sic] unfit for his duties as an officer.” Yet again, at Jacksboro, Lieutenant McGarrah “became so intoxicated that he could not return to Camp with the Men, and that while under positive orders to allow no drinking while on the Scout.” Furthermore, during Captain Stevens’s twenty-day absence from the Company B headquarters, McGarrah failed to send out a single Scout—though he had been ordered to keep men in the field. Too, “on various other occasions he had visited Jacksboro and acted in a very unbecoming manner and in his visits to that place, he had invariably overstaid [sic] his time.” And in summary, Captain

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G.W. Stevens was clearheaded and not mush-mouthed: “In consideration of the facts above set forth I consider him an injury to the service and think it my duty to ask that he be relieved from duty.”61 Rather suffer any further humiliation—at this point—McGarrah submitted his resignation and was immediately replaced by the promotion of Ira Long, the company’s 2nd Lieutenant.62 One might have supposed internal squabbling had ended— not so. Ex-Lieutenant McGarrah filed his counter charges against Captain Stevens, allegations which were in direct violation of General Order No. 2, Adjutant General’s Office, to wit: He had received into the company a number of married men “encumbered” with families; and at the time Company B was mustered into service a number of recruits were suffering physical disabilities, rendering them unfit for active service but Captain Stevens had accepted them anyway.63 Captain Stevens more or less pled guilty to enlisting some married fellows, but these men were “good and tried men,” and he knew them to be “brave men and would make good rangers. . . . It was that I might have tried and true men in my company that I enlisted them.”64 In regards to specification No. 2 about men with physical disabilities, Captain Stevens submitted sworn statements of Company B Rangers that the named individuals were capable of arduous and active service, and these statements were backed up by the physical examinations by Dr. John F. Robinson. The medical practitioner then serving as Company B Physician determined: I find that he [A.B. Cartwright] has been wearing a truss for four years. Has never had a return of the Hernia since. I find that he [James David Manning] is ruptured & has been from childhood. He has never worn a truss nor has never been unable for duty since he has been a member of said Company. As Cartwright & Manning have both performed every duty required as Rangers I do not consider Either of them Physically disabled for duty.65

Disciplinary headache for the Company B headman—even after all the foregoing—was yet front and center in Captain Stevens’s edgy psyche. He unsmilingly discharged Ranger Charles Heard, “in

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account of general worthlessness, he being no account in the army nor elsewhere.”66 Another Texas Ranger from Company B caught a near boot out of the service: 4th Sergeant Moses Maier, thirty-nine and a native of Germany. It seems he stopped by Jacksboro on his way back to camp from an extended furlough and tanked up on tarantula juice, becoming drunk for several days. Finally Captain Stevens sent for him, had him “brought to camp and I reduced him to ranks and ordered him on extra duty and he promptly refused to obey orders and for these reasons I ask you to give him a dishonorable Discharge.”67 Sergeant Moses Maier made sure Major Jones had his two cents’ worth: “I am guilty of remaining four days over The time I should have been back to camp. Stopping off at Jacksboro on a little Spree, during that four days I done nothing that Maybe accounted against a Ranger or a Gentleman, only a little drinking but not drunk. . . . and on the morning of Nov. 16th the Capt at Roll Call told Me to consider myself reduced to Ranks and 10 days extra duty such as cutting Poles, which I think He had no right to do. . . . This morning [November 24] I was called upon to stand guard and do extra duty as a Private, which I at once refused to do telling Captain Stevens that I regarded him as a Gentleman and as My Captain but was sorry to say that I would have to disobey His order. . . . I have done wrong, that I am aware of but I beg of You to be as Lenient as you can and not give Me a dishonorable discharge as I am a citizen of Wise co. hoping in good standing have also a Wife and two Children as which would be a disgrace to Me and Them forever. . . .”68 The plea for compassion apparently turned out well, by half. Sergeant Maier was reduced to enlisted ranks, in that the captain had been sustained. Archived paperwork also reflects that Private Moses Maier, Company B, Frontier Battalions was honorably discharged.69 The unquestionably unwelcome and inopportune November 1874 RIF, as with the other battalion units, appreciably and drastically impacted Company B. General Order No. 7 smooth knocked Captain George W. Stevens off of the Muster & Pay Roll, command of the company reverting to the ever assiduous and audacious Lieutenant Ira Long.70

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According to those who personally knew him, and chaste history will also bear corroborating witness, Ira Long was undeniably the real deal. Rawboned and perhaps leaning to the heavy-set, Lieutenant Ira Long owned two venerable personality traits for a Frontier Battalion commander: In several ways he could be categorized as functionally illiterate (so says one story) with regards to readin’ and writin’ but on the other hand, Ira Long “could figure [numbers] in his head faster than any man in the country.” And, perhaps more importantly for the hard place and time and his ever-challenging leadership role, Lieutenant Long was “absolutely conscientious and fearless,” and if one summation is sufficient, “He wasn’t afraid of anybody.”71 Although he may not have feared him, Old Man Winter was unmercifully whipping the Rangers of Company B during that last month of 1874 and the first half of January 1875. It was, according to Lieutenant Long, colder than it had “been for several years,” and the bad weather had prevented his sending any scouts into the field.72 Toward the end of January the weather broke enough for young Sergeant Daniel M. Gibson to lead an eight-man patrol covering a chilly sixty-two miles, but uncovering no sign of Indians.73 The following month, Lieutenant Long’s scout picked up an Indian trail heading northeast toward the Red River, but he was too far behind and had to abandon the chase. Sergeant Gibson and Corporal Joseph C. Hames, a twenty-three-year old from Illinois, heading scouts into their assigned spheres netted naught.74 Likewise, Company B tours supervised by three different noncommissioned officers failed to unearth any sign of Indians during March 1875.75 Though they prospected mightily throughout April, the downtrodden Rangers of Company B had been skunked.76 No luck. No Indians. No outlaws. Such disappointment would be short-lived. Lieutenant Long’s reservoir of true grit would soon spill forth in front of the big boss’s eyes. During the first days of May 1875, Isa-toho (“Black Coyote”) at the head of a small band of Comanches bolted the Indian Territory line for a raid into the general vicinity of Lost Valley, the earlier scene of battle and butchery. And, once again, Major John B. Jones would manage the forthcoming fight. The

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battalion commander was in the area conducting one of his relentless inspection tours when word of the incursion emerged. From a reconnoitering post atop the appropriately named Spy Knob in the neighborhood north of present-day Jermyn in Jack County, on 8 May, Major Jones and his gutsy Texas Rangers, including Lieutenant Ira Long, spotted the Indians, armed with “breach loading shot guns and six-shooters” and riding horses they had just stolen. The chase was on! During the running mêlée the twenty-odd Texas Rangers captured the blue ribbon, killing five Comanches. This band of Indians behaved not as cowards. Three of them fought fearlessly even after being dethroned from their saddles. And, too it was noted that one of the feisty combatants “had the scalp of a white woman fastened to his shield.” Even during the fog of war, Major Jones stood by and personally witnessed the genuine heroics of Company B’s headman: “The courage and coolness of Lieutenant Ira Long was admirable during the whole day. When his horse was killed he fell very near to an Indian who had just been dismounted and instantly attacked him with his gun clubbed, and would have finished him on the spot, if the savage had not been an ‘expert at dodging.’ As soon as he could procure another horse, he joined in the pursuit again.”77 Holding fast to historic honesty, it’s pertinent to point out one of the warriors was a woman, the wife of Black Coyote; she was “young, good looking, and evidently part white. . . .” Besides her apparent attractiveness she, too, proved to be a hellcat. Somewhat in awe it seems, Major Jones remarked that the woman discharged all of the loads in a Colt’s revolver, skillfully handling “her six-shooter quite as dexterously as did the bucks.” When her weapon ran dry, she at first tried to use it as a war-club, but quickly recognized reality. Abruptly throwing open her blouse and exposing her upturned breasts she confirmed the obvious: “Me squaw, me squaw!” Her desperate excuse—after she had already exhausted her share of .45 caliber cartridges—went for naught. A Ranger’s bullet eternally quieted her petition for mercy.78 Another of the Rangers’ now-dead antagonists for this engagement was Ay-cufty (“Reddish”), a curly-headed raider with a shock

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of auburn hair, no doubt a warrior of mixed-ancestry or a boy captive now grown and assimilated into the tribe. Aside from the killing of Lieutenant Long’s horse and the injury of two others, the only other Ranger casualty—slightly wounded—was a former Kentuckian, Private Leroy Clayton Garvey, twenty-two, and likewise a fighter sporting a head of auburn hair. An assertion that these raiders had bolted the Fort Sill Reservation was in the minds of the Rangers and U.S. Military somewhat bolstered by the fact that blankets recovered at the scene were marked with an imprint of the United States Interior Department.79 Upon learning of the collision, the post surgeon at nearby Fort Richardson ordered soldiers to decapitate the thoroughly dead Indians, evidently hoping that postmortem examination would reveal something of medical significance.80 What was of medical significance for the Company B Texas Rangers, while not a mystery, was yet important—an epidemic of measles had overrun the camp, and Major Jones duly noted: “Eight men just recovered but not able for duty, six men down and new cases breaking out every day. Consequently the Company is, and has been for several weeks, entirely unfit for service and will not be able to do any scouting before the expiration of their term of service. . . . I have eleven men with me, some of whom have not had the measles and have established a quarantine between my camp and [Lieutenant] Long’s.”81 Who were not quarantined were the raiding Indians. Ranchman James C. Loving offers insight into another near hair-raising episode: In April 1875 a party of Indians Stole from the Ranch of George B. Loving & Mrs, Sixteen miles West of this place two fine Mules and Three Horses and on the following night a party Supposed to be the Same Stole Two Horses from this Ranch and attacked two men who was Guarding Some Horses near the Ranch firing Several Shots with Guns at the men who returned the fire and drove the Indians off. I heard the firing and seen the Indians by Moonlight as they run off. . . .82

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The following June, for whatever reason, the dauntless Lieutenant Ira Long tendered his resignation as commander of Company B, voluntarily joining the ranks of civilian North Texans. Leadership skills and a knack for staying hitched during a hot fight were attributes always earning the scrutiny of Major Jones. Lamentably he opined about the loss of his Company B lieutenant: “I regret to lose the service of so good an officer. Circumstances which he cannot control compel him to resign.”83 Ira Long’s hiatus from the Frontier Battalion would be of short duration, though his solid reputation as a forthright and fearless man would endure.84 Speaking very well of G.W. Stevens is unmistakably revealed in the fact that now, after Lieutenant Long’s honorable discharge, Major Jones recommend that the former captain be once again placed in command of Company B, this time holding the rank of 1st Lieutenant.85 George W. Stevens accepted the challenge.86 The challenge was daunting, trying to hold on to good Rangers, while recruiting others to serve through the 1875 summer months with empty pockets and the promise of a someday payday. Lieutenant Stevens, speedily following up on an earlier request by his predecessor, Lieutenant Long, urged the Frontier Battalion headquarters staff to at once procure and send to Company B a dozen Colt’s six-shooters, along with cartridge belts and scabbards for the recent enlistees.87 Regrettably, at that moment in time, Major Jones had to ruefully inform Lieutenant Stevens: “There are no pistols or pistol ammunition in the State Armory now, but I have ordered some and twelve of them will be forward to you as soon as they arrive, also ammunition.”88 Sergeant Dan Gibson, a twenty-one-year-old auburn-headed Tennessean and lawyer to be, wasn’t short of a six-shooter or ammo. Carrying intra-battalion dispatches the Company B noncom stopped over in then wild and woolly Decatur, maybe for a real good reason— maybe for a drink of tarantula juice—or sarsaparilla—or the alluring sent of a painted princess’ perfume. Regardless, he was wearing his cartridge belt and holstered Colt’s revolver. The city marshal, Napoleon Cargill, a sometimes overbearing and bossy fellow, told Sergeant

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Gibson that he must give up his pistol, wearing it inside town limits was prohibited. Naturally, that would not do! Purportedly, Cargill drew first; pointing his six-shooter straight at Ranger Gibson’s flabbergasted face. Explicably, the young Texas Ranger unlimbered his Colt’s .45, warning the municipal gendarme to back off, stand down, cease and desist. Marshal Cargill’s dander was up, insanely so, and he tried to trigger a round square between Gibson’s running-lights. For whatever reason his pistol snapped once, then twice: It was a most inconvenient malfunction to be sure. Sergeant Gibson’s handgun was in perfect working order and his snap-shot true—straight into the right side of Cargill’s chest, the bullet furrowing through meat and lodging under the left shoulder-blade. It was, for awhile touch and go, but Napoleon Cargill pulled through.89 Lieutenant Stevens all too soon learned, due to the formality of Company A being disbanded, Company B would have to take up the geographical slack, scouting a much broader area.90 Though there’s little doubt that had there been much blood and thunder adventure the Rangers of Company B would have performed well—admirably it may be surmised. The real theater of action during those scorching months giving way to September, however, would revolve around paperwork—not smoking revolvers and dead bodies. Procurement of provisions and foodstuffs was no little undertaking, a fact driven home by but a cursory review of Company B requisitions and vouchers.91 One contractor, Mr. Gray, was asked to furnish ten tons of “good hay” at $6 for Company B’s horses and mules, to be delivered at the place designated by Lieutenant Stevens.92 Specifically, Lieutenant Stevens was ordered to “see Mr. Gray, without delay, and if he will not furnish the hay at the price he proposed to me [Major Jones], $6.00, then you may offer him seven or even eight if he will not do it for less.”93 For Lieutenant Stevens, hard bargaining with a wheeling and dealing Mr. Gray, “the hay-maker at Jacksboro,” might have proven much more distressing than chasing after a bronco warrior or arresting the badman from Bitter Creek. While Major Jones was marshaling forces for a far-reaching Frontier Battalion scout to the Rio Grande, Devils and Pecos Rivers—a

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multi-company campaign—Lieutenant Stevens was under direct orders to keep his Company B Texas Rangers in the field, constantly moving in that sparsely settled country between Hubbard’s Creek on the Clear Fork of the Brazos and the mouth of the Big Wichita on the Red River. Of course, hunting for fresh sign of any Indian incursions, protecting the lives of folks at the frontier’s edge and stopping thefts of their livestock was the primary and publicly acknowledged objective. Secondarily, Major John B. Jones espoused a very practical figurative and literal goal in his written correspondence to Lieutenant Stevens: “We must if possible have some scalps to show for our work this Fall or the next Legislature may stop our pay.”94 Lieutenant George W. Stevens either felt a personal slight at Major Jones’s micromanagement or really did own business requiring his “presence at home” during the upcoming winter months. Either way, he tendered his resignation from Company B effective 1 December 1875.95 Major Jones’s next move in regards to Stevens’s departure is telling—and favorably so in understanding his continual fine-tuning of the Frontier Battalion. Since inception, the Frontier Battalion’s company commanders had somewhat been befuddled: Should the allocated manpower staffing models include the company’s officers’ corps? Were the captains and lieutenants a part of the original seventy-five-man companies, or were their commissions atop that allotment? The reality check is revealing. Though the discrepancies are relatively small, actual numbers on the various Muster & Pay Rolls varied. The comings and goings of Texas Rangers, the recruiting and enlisting and discharges—voluntarily or involuntarily—only added to the misunderstandings and misinterpretations of front office guidelines. Aside from matters of logistical importance, the battalion commander’s headaches often revolved around just how many men each company had or could have, and just who was best suited to be in charge. Major Jones advised Adjutant General Steele of his choice to fill in behind Stevens—and why: “Will assign Sergt C.H. Hamilton to the Command of the Company. . . . As the Company will be

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so small I do not deem it essential to have a commissioned officer with it before next Spring and in the meantime wish to test the fitness of Sergt Hamilton for the position.”96 Sergeant C.H. Hamilton apparently stood tall, passing the test of command staff suitability.97 Likewise in Major John B. Jones’s eyes and in the eyes of settlers between Pecan Bayou and the Red River, the Frontier Battalion was responsible for people “enjoying a feeling of safety which they have never experienced before on the frontier, and give the rangers credit for keeping the Indians away.”98 Initial Roster Frontier Battalion Company B Name:

Age:

Nativity:

Trade/Occupation:

Adams, John W. Applewhite, John H. Avery, W.M. Bailey, D.W.H. Ball, Moses L. Bly, George W. Bly, Ira Bowyer, George W. Boyd, James J. Butler, F.M. Cartwright, A.B. Cartwright, Thomas J. Collins, Dempsey Jones Conrad, Samuel L. Craig, J.B. Crews, J.F. Day, E.H. Farrington, Charles B. Faulkner, Daniel Boone Fimely or Finnely, S.A.

24 21 22 ?? 22 25 29 28 33 30 19 31 27 25 25 30 33 18 23 32

MS MS MO ?? KY OH OH TN AR MO TX TX AL MO IN TN LA WI KY IL

Not Listed on the Company B Muster Rol

Continued

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Name:

Age:

Fogleman, H. 33 Garvey, Leroy Clayton 22 Gibson, Daniel M. 21 Gilbert, C. 23 Glass, J.K. 24 Glass, John W. 23 Glass, William A. ?? Grant, William G. 23 Hames, Joseph C. 23 Hargus, Peter Burrow 23 Hartman, Joseph S. 23 Howell, George D. 27 Huff, C.W. 20 Johnson, John 23 Johnson, V. 27 Jones, A.J. 23 Layman, Thomas H. 22 Leahy, John 26 Lichlyter, Fredrich A. 34 Long, Ira 33 Maier, Moses 39 Manning, James David 23 Manning, William Elton 19 Marshal, Thomas Elwood 19 McCollum, Aaron Neal 25 McGarrah, Seborn Graham Sneed 37 McGrarrah, James A. 19 Moore, A.C. 21 Moore, J.H. 18 Morgan, James G. 22 Munday, S.M. 40 Munday, S.W. 21 Newman, John W. 24

Nativity: IN KY TN IL NC NC ?? TN IL MO IA VA MO AR TN AR TN Ireland TN IN Germany MS MS IN Canada AR TX MS TX MO KY KY TN Continued

Frontier Battalion, Company B

Name:

Age:

Nativity:

Nichols, James W. Norris, Robert Perkins, Absolom Tidwell Perkins, George W. Perrin, William F. Piper, John M. Porter, M.W. Ray, Charles Lemuel Ray, Joseph Warren Reiger, James H. Rich, J.T. Roberts, Blinford C. Roberts, Francis S. Roberts, Moses Brown Stevens, Enoch N. Stevens, George W. Stone, Redman D. Tinker, W.C. Vandgriff, T.L. Walker, George W. Willhoyt, A.J. Woods, Joseph

24 24 20 25 23 23 23 29 23 19 23 24 22 19 32 44 18 27 21 21 22 19

MO TN AR AR TX TN AL KY KY IL MO TX TX TX GA AL IL AL AR IL VA MO

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7 

Company C, Frontier Battalion Muster Roll Oldest Youngest Native Texan Other States Foreign Born

79 enlistees 45 years 18 years 14 percent 82 percent 04 percent

Initial geographical posting for Company C as dictated by the Frontier Battalion’s front office at Austin was specific: “Capt. Ikard—at Buffalo Springs Clay Co. & patrol North to Red River & South West half way to Belknap. P.O. Henrietta.”1

elisha floyd ikard, commander of company c, at twentyeight years was the youngest of the six Frontier Battalion company captains. Absent diving deep into the pool of genealogical minutia, it may also be reported Elisha Ikard could claim 1/8th Indian blood. Subsequent to a birthright link to Mississippi and an ultimate migration to North Texas, Ikard and his brother, William “Sud,” took up residence in Clay County, a lonesome topographical subdivision bounded on the north by the Red River and erratically scored throughout by the Big Wichita and Little Wichita Rivers, and the East Fork of the Little Wichita. Mr. E.F. Ikard made his living as a cutting-edge stockman. From time to time he gained experience as an Indian fighter, such as the time on 25 June 1873 when he “had a skirmish with Indians & recaptured from them” part of his pilfered livestock. And though it really rings somewhat comical, cowman Ikard could also boast of a police record. On Christmas Day of 1873, 174

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whether drunk or sober, Elisha Ikard acted out at Clay County’s shiretown, “in a public place on the public square and streets of the town of Henrietta, by loud and vociferous talking and swearing did disturb the inhabitants of the said town of Henrietta in the prosecution of their lawful business.” There was, in fact, a hard-fought trial by a jury of his peers, and the guilty defendant’s fine was assessed as one-hundredth of a dollar—a penny.2 Just prior to holding up his right hand and swearing an obligatory oath of allegiance for the newly created Frontier Battalion, reservation Indians stampeded a dozen head from his herd on 20 April 1874 and “crossed Red River toward Ft. Sill.”3 Captain E.F. Ikard, by any man’s standard it could be said, had skin in the game. The following month, at the inception of the lately founded Frontier Battalion, Captain Ikard, riding with six recently recruited Texas Rangers, “attacked a party of 10 Indians, driving toward Indian nation a herd of some 150 head of cattle. Drove the Indians (fighting) about 15 miles. . . .”4 Presupposing—as sometimes is popularly written—that during the 1870s Indians raided into frontier Texas just for the purpose of stealing horses should be tempered with truths. As often as not for these south of the Red River incursions, cattle on the hoof were the prize, when the Comanche and Kiowa were not seeking culturally demanded revenge and/or helpless hostages to be ransomed. Beefsteak was scrumptious when compared to a hindquarter cut from boney and jaded horses. The Frontier Battalion had hardly been birthed, but Adjutant General Steele was looking to the future as far as exasperating budgetary matters were concerned and, too, particularly was he passionate about publicly identifying—from his perspective—the starting point of Comanche and Kiowa raiders bent toward slipping into the Lone Star State, politely directing Major Jones to march to his drumbeat: You will please instruct the Officers under your command to report with care every Scout that may be made after depredators of every class and in case of Indians who may succeed in escaping out of the jurisdiction of the State of Texas by taking refuge in the

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reservation north of Red River the report will state as far as practicable the amount and kind of Stock so taken into the reservation with any evidences that may have been found as to what Tribe of Indians committed the theft. These reports will be required in order that the Services of the Rangers and necessity for them may be laid before the next legislature at its meeting.5

As mentioned Captain Ikard had figurative skin in the Ranging game, and also literally had skin at the Company C headquarters camp— cow hides. There then, at the time, was not any hint of wrongdoings, nor thoughts of any conflicts of interests. As the most prominent cowmen in the area, Ikard and his brother Sud owned many head of cattle on their 100,000-acre V-Bar Ranch; the State of Texas had promised the men and boys of Company C a healthy ration of beef. Captain Elisha Floyd Ikard filled the contract: Strictly business, nothing more, nothing less.6 And, Captain E. F. Ikard had been attending—as already cited— to business from the get-go: “I started on scout the 1st of June, Went North to Little Wichita near Henrietta, followed the stream up above the three forks in Archer County [Archer City county seat as of July 1880]—a distance of about 40 miles west from Henrietta discovered an Indian camping place on the Middle prong made about ten days before my discovery being to old to trail, crossed the north Little Wichita and passing near the head of Holidays Creek then back to camp on 7th.” Captain Ikard also noted that he had sent a detachment to Weatherford in Parker County to pick up carbines shipped there, and while the detail did cautiously observe “a party of Indians” the small unit of Company C Rangers “without any guns did not molest the Indians.”7 Captain Ikard, too, mentioned that he had received a report that a settler had been killed and scalped by a band of Indians numbering about fourteen in Jack County. But, having now received his arms and equipment, he was ready to “follow any party of Indians that may be discovered,” although he did hope to receive more cartridges, as he only had twenty-seven rounds per man.8

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Though they certainly would have had no idea as to what would transpire with Major Jones’s escort and the Rangers of Captain Stevens’s Company B at Lost Valley, communications being what they were, there is a distinct possibility that preceding that action by mere days, some of the Company C boys locked up with those same raiding Indians or some of their brethren making their way south. Lieutenant George Washington Campbell, thirty-five and a future multi-term sheriff of Montague County (county seat Montague), at the head of a twenty-man scout, made contact with roughly seventy-five to eighty Indians. Suffering no Ranger casualties and apparently not inflicting any either, after what was described as a “light skirmish” Lieutenant G.W. Campbell and his Rangers managed to capture “43 head of horses and mules.” Ironically they returned to the Company C headquarters camp on 12 July 1874, the very same day the battalion commander and the unfortunate Texas Rangers were pinned to Lost Valley’s floor.9 Off-reservation Indians, it seemed, were everywhere. Company C’s 3rd Sergeant, thirty-two-year-old William T. Foushee, a Missourian from Polk County, led an eight-man scout leaving camp on the eighth day of July. And it was he and his men who had joined Company B’s Corporal J.W. Newman for the indecisive and very unfriendly tête-à-tête on the morning of 9 July 1874, the clash were an estimated fifty warriors attacked, trading shots with Texas Rangers lying low in the protective thicket. Though unknown at the time, this little imbroglio would portend serious repercussions for Sergeant Bill Foushee. Subsequent to Major Jones winding up battalion business in and around Fort Richardson and Jacksboro, after the Lost Valley entanglement, he continued with his planned inspection tour, arriving at Captain Ikard’s Company C camp on the twenty-second day of July 1874.10 There was big news swirling about, and it didn’t involve Comanche or Kiowa slaughtering somebody or blue-eyed desperadoes executing anyone during a spree-killing crime wave. Yet there was a killing, alligators eating alligators, a Texas Ranger offing a Texas Ranger.

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Twenty-six-year-old Ranger Henry D. Davies, from Carroll County, Georgia, during some type brouhaha had jerked out his Colt’s Navy .36 caliber cap and ball revolver and wounded Company C’s 1st Corporal, Texas Ranger William B. Addington, twenty-eight, a farmer hailing from Randolph County, Indiana.11 Major Jones, on 23 July, not knowing at the time Corporal Addington would die as result of his injury, issued Special Order No. 11, which read in part: “Private H. Davies of Co. ‘C’ having been involved in a difficulty that renders it necessary for him to be absent from his company to attend Court is hereby honorably discharged from the service of this Battalion.”12 William T. Foushee, the aforementioned 3rd Sergeant, had personally witnessed the affair and would coolly testify that Corporal Addington had also been stabbed, for whatever reason, perhaps due to an empty or malfunctioning piece of six-shooting hardware.13 Actually characterizing Texas Ranger Addington’s death a murder may be a stretch— or not. Killings, sometimes, are legally condoned and lawfully justified, self-defense being an example. One might rightly ponder, knowing the character and intellect of Major Jones, that had Ranger Henry Davies’s act been calculating and coldblooded criminality, the battalion commander would have made separation from Company C a Dishonorable Discharge. On the other hand, the Clay County Grand Jury did return an Indictment charging Ranger H.D. Davies with Murder. The ill-fated defendant—according to the best obtainable information, there being the ubiquitous courthouse fire—was officially arrested, “posted bond and then disappeared.”14 Who had not disappeared were wandering warriors and their families, those yet intent on making a living raiding from their haunts on the Texas High Plains or deceptively slipping away from Indian Territory. During the month of August 1874, in what became known to journalists and historians as the Red River War, the U.S. Army engaged hostiles three times, neither side doing too much damage—excepting for the wounded soldier and two Delaware scouts—and the one altogether dead Indian.15 The following month would ratchet combat engagement numbers upwards—significantly. During a planned multiple pronged strategy, U.S. Army fighting units

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battled Indians eight separate times prior to the big Comanche backbreaker at September’s end. On the twenty-eighth Colonel Ranald S. Mackenzie and a several company column, along with their indefatigable Seminole-Negro, Tonkawa, and Lipan Apache scouts, caught their adversaries, Comanche, Kiowa, and Southern Cheyenne, off guard in a deep and dazzling Palo Duro Canyon. The bluecoats suffered one wounded; the Indians mournfully tallied their dead at four warriors (higher in other accounts). Tactically speaking, however, despite the rather flat bottom end casualty count, if it be true, Colonel Mackenzie’s victory was decisive: “All Indian provision and lodges were destroyed. . . .”16 Put to the torch were the Indians’ stockpiled larder for the coming winter: “bows and arrows, all sorts of robes, new reservation-issue blankets, stone china, kettles, tools and implements, including even a pair of tinner’s snips, modern breech-loading rifles with ammunition, bales of calico, sacks of flour, and several other kinds of groceries. Huge bonfires roared as the soldiers heaped vast quantities of dried buffalo meat and Indian Department flour and sugar on the flames.”17 Additionally the U.S. Army vanquishers rounded up the Indians’ grazing herd, amounting to 1,424 seized animals: 1,274 horses and 150 mules. After allowing for the Indian scouts attached to the army to divvy up among themselves 376 of the finest mounts as a reward for laudable service, Colonel Mackenzie as expected ordered the disbursement of other animals within military ranks as replacements for worn-down wagon-stock and jaded cavalry mounts. The remaining 1,048 horses and mules were destroyed by Army sharpshooters.18 Put afoot, without means of subsistence, these Comanche, Kiowa, and Southern Cheyenne were, at least temporarily, vagabonds of the Plains—destitute and utterly demoralized. Succor, if it were to be found, was at the end of the road leading to tribal Reservations in the Indian Territory, of that they knew and would be forced to acknowledge. Meanwhile, across the board, the undeveloped road to professionalism is not smoothly paved, but congested and clogged, strewn with pitfalls and potholes. The Frontier Battalion’s headquarters command staff and most company captains were ably dealing

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with—or trying to—some vexing personnel problems. With any large assemblage drawn from general populations, winnowing the field was absolutely imperative. Captain Elisha Ikard would not brook inefficiency or insubordination or gutlessness, a work ethic philosophy made perfectly clear to Major Jones. Ikard recommended involuntary discharges for a number of Company C Texas Rangers. Major Jones had Captain Ikard’s back. Cashiered were: Eighteenyear-old Jacob L. Wisdom for willfully destroying another fellow’s saddle “without any cause or provocation whatever” and because the young Ranger was “dangerous & treacherous & malicious.” Private Warren Lindsey was just “too lazy & slow” for wholehearted service in the Frontier Battalion. Texas Ranger George W. Reed was graded “a drunkard & Blackguard and acting in a shameless and disgraceful manner in the presence of ladies.” W. Thomas Matthews was altogether “too Lazy & Worthless to make a ranger in this Service & is unreliable on guard.” A twenty-three-year old Pennsylvanian, Jacob Kelverer, was issued his walking papers due to the fact of his perceptible “lazyness [sic] and general worthlessness and [was] too trifling for a Ranger.” Canadian A. Wing, forty-five, was simply discharged due to the fact he was “old & inactive & in fact, unfit for Service.” And, quite incredibly in light of ingrained mythos regarding Rangers, Sergeant W.F. Foushee was dumped “for this reason, since he was rounded up in July by the Indians he is [was] completely demoralized. . . . Says he has seen enough of Indian fighting and won’t do any more if he can avoid it.”19 Unquestionably Major Jones was not in the frame of mind to worry about Texas Rangers shying away from doing what they had been hired to do—hunt and kill raiding Indians. Along with his regular escort and reinforcements from Companies B and C, numbering, according to his report, a total of one hundred Rangers, Major Jones kicked off an exceptionally ambitious and noteworthy expedition.20 He and his hard-riding Texas Rangers would—and did— search for Indian sign in what was generally referred to as the Pease River Country and the Upper Waters of the Wichitas. Major Jones elaborates:

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My object in going so far was if any Indians were coming in to depredate during this moon, to strike them, en route, or find their trail and follow it in to where they might make their camp on the Beavers or Wichitas, from which they operate, as they have done heretofore. I found no Indians and no recent trace of any and believe that there are none on our frontier, between the Brazos and Red river, during this moon, as the weather and ground were most favorable for finding Indians or Indian sign and I kept out three scouting parties besides my main force during the whole march.21

All in all, for this particular expedition, Major Jones and his command had “marched over three hundred and fifty miles.” Especially was he pleased that in spite of grass being “very scarce and short after leaving the Red river” and though his men’s worn mounts were “much jaded and reduced,” the Rangers, by the time they had reined in near civilization, had not suffered the loss of a single horse—or a solitary man.22 That no Indians were to be found would not—should not—be a too much of a revelation, the U.S. Army having just the month before, for the most part, depopulated the region of any Indians with hostile intention. At the same time Major Jones was more or less drawing a blank in the northern reaches of his territory, Governor Coke was being bombarded with bad news from another quarter, that section known as the Wild Horse Desert—real estate south of the Laredo/Corpus Christi road. Somewhat earlier on the saltwater banks of Baffin Bay at El Peñascal Ranch (now Kenedy County), an isolated general store had been attacked and ransacked by a band of mean-spirited robbers: Hypolita Tapia, Andres Davila, Teodoro Aguillar, Pancho Luna, Antonio Martinez, Amador Lerma, a bandit called Octaviano, another referred to as Chimito, and a shamelessly hardhearted Anglo desperado simply known as Joe. Purportedly, Tomas Basquez (Tomás Vasquez ?), a Corpus Christi city policeman and, possibly a sometimes hired “gunslinger for Richard King,” after learning of a ship set to offload goods and monies at the bayside dock, conspired and instigated the murderous mischief. During the course

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of ferocity and plundering four hapless fellows were callously executed: Michael and John Morton, Herman Tilgner, and F.M. Coakley. Though anchored in Baffin Bay, the vessel had not yet docked and unloaded its supposed plentiful treasure. There, then, was only a paltry tally of hard cash in the till, $10 or $12, but: “After completing their hellish work, the murderers got beastly drunk and remained in the house until nearly daylight. Then they loaded their horses with all the goods they could carry and left.” Somewhat later, two of the suspected killers, Andres Davila and Hypolita Tapia, were roughly rounded up and delivered into the eager hands of the Nueces County sheriff. Dissimilar to some Wild Horse Desert deviltry, the murder defendants actually stood trial in a courtroom, but then, after the return of the guilty verdict, met their Maker outside vestido de muerto (dressed for death) wearing ties—hangman’s knots.23 There was no Frontier Battalion presence in South Texas or the Lower Rio Grande Valley at the time. Rumors were waxing especially hot that the perpetually incorrigible Juan Cortina, acting as a behindthe-scenes chieftain, was coordinating a campaign to have his henchmen raid into Texas en masse.24 Cortina’s contract for shipments of live cattle and tanned hides delivered to wheeling and dealing powerbrokers in Cuba could best be fulfilled by raiding ranches on the Texas side of the international line.25 Governor Richard Coke was getting an earful of horrifying and politically sensitive news, particularly after hearing of the Cameron County jailbreak by José María Olguín aka El Aguja (The Needle), a gangster and cow thief supreme. Subsequent to skipping custody, The Needle brazenly rounded up near a hundred head of Sheriff James G. Browne’s cattle and splashed them across the river into Mexico. And not to be outdone, Ricardo Flores, subsequent to “murdering a Frenchman” and escaping custody, turned to stealing Texas cattle wholesale, generally pushing them across the capricious Río Bravo some two miles below Brownsville.26 Somewhat earlier, Joseph Alexander, a Brownsville dry-goods merchant, had been mercilessly and mortally gunned down—without even the slightest hint of provocation—while traveling the treacherous roadway to Rio Grande City with a companion, Mr. Henry Simeon. The

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merciless killer, a bandito well known to Simeon, was the ostensibly irredeemable Francisco “Chicon” Pérez, who Alexander’s bueno compadre descriptively tagged as “a noted criminal and the little finger of General Cortina.”27 At another time, Mexican bandits, purportedly numbering seven and predisposed to violence, had crossed the Rio Grande near Reynosa in Hidalgo County, and near the San Juan Sugar Plantation licentiously murdered George W. Fulton and his Spanish-speaking clerk, Mauricio Leal, inside the former’s mercantile. By at least one account the storeowner put up one helluva fight, killing three of the miscreants before he went down.28 Answering to the perceived need for a state law enforcing presence in South Texas and tapping into the Texas Legislature’s original $300,000 appropriation for frontier defense, a short-term militia unit was activated. Captain Warren Wallace’s company of Frontier Men was handed the responsibility of keeping the peace and thwarting cross-border forays by Mexican miscreants. On paper headquartered at Concepcion (in Duval County) these ad hoc Texas Rangers were to cover ground throughout the troublesome Nueces Strip, territory generically referred to as the Rio Grande Frontier.29 Unfortunately the outfit was—at least classed by some— as not much more than an “armed mob” and the loose leadership of Captain Wallace all too soon gave way, allowing for “blood thirsty instincts of many of his company,” to hold sway. 30 At least one of the Frontier Men subordinate to Captain Wallace left a memoir—in book form—for subsequent generations. Red Dunn wasn’t hesitant or mush-mouthed or ashamed: “Every time we captured a Mexican we listened to his confession and placed the names he gave us in our plug hats for future reference. But instead of giving them absolution for their sins, we transferred that part of the matter to the Deity and left them to settle it with Him, as we claimed no jurisdiction over such matters. It is sometimes amusing to hear people say that the murderers of so-and-so in those days were never caught. Well, ignorance is bliss.”31 In short order, the Texas Ranger high command at Austin would not find themselves in the dark about Captain Wallace’s methods and, assuredly, they were not in a blissful mood.

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Before long, relatively speaking, another ghastly and gruesome outrage swamped apathy: “Billy McMahan, a very popular inoffensive American school teacher whose school was several miles North of Brownsville, was waylaid” by bandits led by The Needle. The vicious villains, not satisfied with monetary spoils, if there were any, “tortured McMahan by cutting off his fingers, toes, wrists, and ears. They finally severed his legs from his body and left him lifeless.”32 One of the culpable perpetrators present at the La Jarra Ranch death site was Librado Méndez, aka La Lisa. Allegedly, repulsed by the murderous mutilation, La Lisa quit the gang of cutthroats ruefully asserting that he had been hired by Juan Cortina “only to steal cattle from the Americanos,” not to kill them and cut them into little pieces.33 Tension along the Texas/Mexico border was building—war of some sort near a foregone conclusion.34 Though not recklessly going off halfcocked, the state’s Chief Executive began mulling over his options. Confidently it might be theorized, Major Jones during his absence to the Pease River Country, would have thought certain administrative details had been attended to, efficiently worked out. Such was not the case. Upon his return to Jacksboro, Major Jones was requesting of the adjutant general the imperative shipment of eleven six-shooters and seven shotguns for Captain Ikard’s Company C and four Colt’s revolvers and four twin-barreled scatterguns for Captain Stevens’ Company B. The major’s ire shows through when he duly noted: “Capt. Perry [Company D] has not yet received the shot-guns and pistols which I ordered from him when in Austin. Will you please look into the matter and have them sent to him.”35 The nightmarish reams of paperwork inked by Major Jones perhaps—in the long run—troubled him more than any wayward warriors or desperate desperadoes. He, too, was clearly concerned with a few others folks, enterprising fellows hanging around Texas Ranger camps sponging off the Frontier Battalion’s figurative storehouses. How much such constituted a weighty problem might stand debate, but the major was downright convinced. So much so, that General Oder No. 5, Subsection I, contained the following admonishment:

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The attention of company commanders is called to the fact that the rations both of subsistence and forage are furnished by the Government for the consumption of the officers and men of the command and their horses, and not to be consumed by such camp-followers and loafers as many choose to congregate at and lie around the camps of the several companies under pretense of wanting to join the Rangers or waiting for a place to get in.36

Captain Ikard’s tenure as the commander of Company C came to a close with implementation of the Frontier Battalion’s shot at fiscal austerity, General Order No. 7, the blanket action dissolving the position of company captains. General Order No. 6 had taken care of one of the junior officer’s spots, that of 1st Lieutenant G.W. Campbell, 2nd Lieutenant Larkin P. Beavert backfilling behind him.37 Outwardly the reduction bothered Elisha Floyd Ikard not an iota. Three days later he took pen in hand and wrote Major John B. Jones: “& proceeded at once to discharge dating certificates of discharge Dec. 10th.” Then, almost matter-of-factly it would seem, the now former commander of Company C updated Major Jones with the very latest info: “There is no Indian news in this part of the country.”38 Lieutenant Beavert’s first Monthly Return of 1875 speaks loudly to Frontier Battalion reality. The Texas Rangers were themselves subject to Mother Nature’s whims. The January report to battalion headquarters was but a single sentence: “Owing to inclemency of weather and scarcity of Forage no scouts of importance to record, up to date.”39 The following month, Sergeant Daniel D. Laycock, twenty-six, superintended a detachment of fifteen Texas Rangers scouting along various prongs and forks of the Wichitas, and he, too, downheartedly reported: “No Indians or Indian sign discovered.”40 An utterly upset Texas female was, too, looking for sign, the whereabouts of her missing man. Illustrated herein, the little anecdote is proof that lawmen often run against strange situations and peculiar people—all in a hard day’s work. The unidentified lady—if that was what she be—had contacted Frontier Battalion

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headquarters, and the little unpleasantness fell into the lap of a thoroughly befuddled Duval Beall, the Adjutant General’s Chief Clerk. Writing Major Jones, Clerk Beall obliquely queried: “A woman has written several letters to the office to know if her unfaithful consort had joined ‘your crowd’; but don’t find his name on the list.”41 There’s not reason to even suggest the absconding fellow had become a Ranger, but had he, it’s unlikely the major would have snitched him back into the perceived world of wretchedness he was evading. Warriors are scary, desperadoes are dangerous, but Hell hath no fury . . . ! An irate woman causing a headache for battalion management was—in the big picture—a little crisis. Keeping companies in the field fed was a reoccurring and full-sized administrative problem. Tirelessly procuring provisions does not register as gallant and glamorous duty, but it’s more than necessary, a behind-the-scenes spectacle. The logistical nightmare may simply be drawn by pedantically probing Company C’s monthly demand for foodstuffs and other stuff: Bacon Flour Beans Coffee Sugar Rice Potatoes Onions Pepper Candles Soap Soda Vinegar

700 lbs. 2400 lbs. 260 lbs. 370 lbs. 375 lbs. 100 lbs. 500 lbs. 100 lbs. 5 lbs. 20 lbs. 40 lbs. 16 lbs. 20 gal.42

Frustrated might be a word too placid, but even after informing the battalion’s commander they had been shorted 400 pounds of flour,

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and that “the Hardtack is [was] molded & the potatoes spoiled” and that both items were “unfit for use” the Company C lieutenant post scripted his report with: “All well, weather very cold.”43 Later in the month, January 1875, the Company C commander would humbly update Ranger headquarters: “Owing to inclemency of weather and scarcity of Forage no scouts of importance to record, up to date.”44 As the weather broke during February, Lieutenant Beavert with fifteen Rangers scouted the West and South Forks of the Wichita, but calculable results were absent: “No Indians or Indian sign discovered.”45 Aside from disappointment about not closing with the enemy, Company C’s headman was yet mired in reality: the nightmarish matter of keeping his men and mounts suitably nourished. Lieutenant Beavert, aside from the above-cited inventory, was apparently growing impatient with the slow-paying state government. He not childishly was seeking wise counsel from Major Jones: “I am getting Beef for use of Company from different hands through the county & the owners are demanding pay for same. Please let me know what to do in regards to the matter & oblige.”46 Compounding Lieutenant Beavert’s agony was the want of indispensable forage, due in large part to “the late burn and exceedingly heavy rain together with the Buffalo have destroyed all the grass. . . .”47 His headache elevated to migraine scale when the private contractor aborted the scheduled delivery of corn for the Texas Rangers’ horses. The horses were literally “falling off so fast” that they had plainly become “unfit for Service” and the Company C boys “cannot use them to any advantage.” Though humiliating it might have been, the good lieutenant stepped to the forefront and out of his own pocket or with his own credit had “concluded to buy 50 Bushels at my [his] own risk” and standby, hoping for reimbursement.48 Thoroughly aggravated with the lackluster performance of some pirating vendors and their perpetually unwinding string of anemic excuses, Major Jones swiftly made the decision and so notified Adjutant General Steele: “I shall purchase corn in Dallas and have it hauled out as I find that I cannot rely on the contractors on the frontier.”49 In the meantime, hustling

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to shortstop Lieutenant Beavert’s pecuniary problems, Major Jones sent him “a draft for one hundred dollars to purchase beef and for any other emergency that may arise. . . . There is no money in the treasury to pay the men and I fear that there will not be for several months.” The Frontier Battalion’s commander, in spite of all the monetary problems, continued to demand devotion to duty: “I hope you will keep your men moving and require them to do all the scouting that their horses can stand.”50 Nor could Major Jones, after spending several weeks lobbying at Austin, place much faith in the Texas Congress, a knot he would contemptuously refer to as “our weak kneed” legislators.51 His disdain skyrocketed after noting that the governmental body had provided a funding level for Frontier Battalion expenses at but half of the previous appropriation. Furthermore he was utterly dismayed: “and by an awkward blunder or rather an unpardonable oversight it [the money] is not available and cannot be drawn until the first of Sept.” Untenably, then, was the very dark and looming possibility that the battalion at its present level would be underfunded and unsustainable for three months, June, July, and August 1875. Major Jones’s ire again shines through with his unequivocal and unflattering characterization of those cigar-smoking smooth-talking lawmakers as the “abominable Legislature.”52 Dr. E.G. Nicholson, himself somewhat miffed, cynically echoed the commander’s words and depiction: “I am glad you [Major Jones] have had a good time as an offset to the bad one you must have encountered in wrestling with the state brains during the winter.”53 Time spent straightening out financial and logistical messes was time not spent tracking Indians or hounding after outlaws. The very next day—after choosing to dip into personal funds for sustaining Company C’s horses—Lieutenant Larkin P. Beavert learned just how appreciative those penny-pinching politicos in the State House, safely ensconced in their plush-carpet offices, were at mismanaging Frontier Battalion business. Special Order No. 34, straight out of Austin, was unadorned with any maudlin sentiment: “Company C—front Bat—Lt. L.P. Beavert,

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Commdg, will be mustered out of Service of this State on the 31st of March 1875.” The dethroned lieutenant was to without delay turn “all public property including Subsistence & forage & Ordinance Stores. . . . over to Lt. Ira Long, Commdg Co. B front Bat who will receipt to Lt. Beavert for all property. . . .”54 The disbanding of one of the Frontier Battalion’s companies quite paradoxically paralleled with another unfolding event—one written in bright red blood, punctuated with black vengeance. Technically the counter-playing drama, for the most part, would fall—should fall—outside treatments bent towards highlighting the Frontier Battalion’s rich and, yes, sometimes controversial narrative. Nonetheless, a barebones retelling is herein appropriate and, truthfully, is a legitimate component of the Texas Rangers’ overall history.55 The context of place and time is, without doubt, pertinent. On the twenty-sixth day of March 1875, Good Friday, a bevy of Mexican bandits weren’t kneeling in worship and/or putting dinero in the padre’s collection plate. They bowed before the Devil’s altar, piracy in their hearts, six-shooters in their hands. By the time they hit the general store and U.S. Post Office operated by Thomas J. Noakes at Nuecestown, a few miles inland and east of Corpus Christi, they had already committed murders and captured prisoners. The criminal incursion 150 miles north of the Rio Grande was a penetration theretofore unknown—at least by most South Texas folks. Though having ready access to “a needle gun with five hundred rounds of cartridges,” supplemented by the handiness of “sixteen improved pistols and about fifty boxes of cartridges distributed about the house,” Mr. T.J. Noakes found himself handicapped by too many bandits and too few intrepid helpmates: He was, simply, outmanned and outgunned, though he did manage to gut-shoot one taken-aback Mexican brigand before escaping through a nearby trapdoor. After plundering and burning to the ground Mr. Noakes’s establishment, the bandits scooted back towards cross-border sanctuary on the opposite bank of the Río Bravo. Their flight, for the most part was successful, though they did leave a seriously wounded comrade behind, Felix Godinez, who was later hanged.56

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Not surprisingly the Nueces Strip was aflame—literally and figuratively. Anglos and Tejanos and peacefully disposed Mexican immigrants were thoroughly frightened and insanely furious, their future it seemed hung in the balance between pacifist inactivity and reckless aggression. Lawfully sanctioned and impromptu civilian posses took to the field. Uncompromising and coldhearted vengeance was their common denominator, not lawfully settling lopsided scores in the Blind Mistress of Justice’s courtroom. Shamefully a number of Hispanic heritage folks suspected of aiding and abetting the fleeing bandits—innocent or guilty—were summarily shot, while their homes were put to the torch. Once again the irrepressible Red Dunn opts for sick humor, but his tale—while truthful—is chilling: We kept galloping until we reached Bovido Creek to which Jesús [Seguira] thought the Mexicans might beat us and hide in the big gullies on each side of the road at the crossing. Our prisoner is still somewhere in that creek, as he fell off his horse and Jesús shot him thinking he was an alligator. At this place we rested for a day or so and then went back again. We scouted all over the same ground and could not find a soul. Everyone of the ranches was deserted. Some pyromaniac must have been following us, for every time we passed through a ranch it mysteriously caught fire.57

Governor Coke and Adjutant General Steele were—in their minds— at wits’ end. The state’s Chief Executive appealed to the President of the United States “for protection to people in Texas against organized bands of robbers from Mexico. . . .” Officialdom at the highest levels thought Texans could and should handle their own internal business as reflected in the unsympathetic words of the General of the Army, even subsequent to acknowledging that the territory between Corpus Christi and the Rio Grande was “full of armed bands of Mexicans, burning ranches and killing people.” Rather chidingly, it seems, the Army’s top-dog laid the blame of ineffectiveness at the governor’s doorstep: “If State troops do their duty, United States troops in Texas will be sufficient for the emergency.”58 Shortly, troops from Texas would “do their duty” and carve a niche not of

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niceness but ruthlessness. Major Jones and the Frontier Battalion— though culpable for their own brand of mistakes and/or misbehaviors would, in this instance, get a free pass for the unfolding mess in South Texas and the Lower Rio Grande Valley. Pinpointing that Frontier Battalion personnel—whether they liked it or not—were incessantly jumping back and forth between soldierly duties and law-enforcing responsibility is easily doable. In effect, Major John B. Jones was indemnifying by example a proactive approach. Subsequent to personally scouting the country between the heads of the Guadalupe and Llano Rivers for ten days hunting for a band of “white robbers who have been depredating on the settlements for the last three months,” the major and his escort came up short. He woefully acknowledged that they “found no organized bands of robbers as had been reported,” and was thoroughly satisfied that these particular thugs had already “left the country.” However, the vigorous commander did note that living in the area were some “very suspicious people” who he surmised were confederates of the crooks, underhandedly aiding and abetting them. Major Jones was not shy or scared: “I called on three suspected persons and informed them that they would be visited occasionally by detachments of this command and that they would be dealt with if found harboring thieves or with stolen property in their possession. I think several of them will move very soon and that the good people of those sections will not be molested by white robbers again soon.”59 Initial Roster Frontier Battalion Company C Name:

Age:

Nativity:

Trade/Occupation:

Addington, Thomas Addington, William B. Anderson, Benjamin H. Anderson, Rufus Bagwell, William H.

20 28 22 18 22

IN IN IL IL MO

Farmer Farmer Cowboy Cowboy Druggist Continued

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Name:

Age:

Nativity:

Trade/Occupation:

Bartlett, Edwin J. Bartlow, James H. Beavert, Larkin P. Boreing, James Wesley Bradley, J.E. Buckner, William Bunch, George T. Burke, J.J. Campbell, George Washington Campbell, J.T. Carpenter, T.H. Carr, John T. Clinton, Paul Colburn, Edwin Corse, H.N. Crow, Edward Lothry Cummings, L.S. Davies, Henry D. Duffey, Marcus M. Ellis, Clark D. Ewan, Israel S. Fletcher, James Ned “Jim Ned” Foushee, William T. Garrison, James Gore, Henry C. Harper, J.P. Hensley, James H. Hines, J.E. Hoover, Henry Hulin, William H. Ikard, Elisha Floyd Jenkins, N.L. Johnson, T.

24 30 34 22 22 20 27 21 35 24 27 29 34 31 30 22 30 26 24 28 40 20 32 18 28 24 18 27 26 22 28 28 20

MI IN GA KY MO MO AR MO IL IL GA PA KY CN Canada IL NY GA AL TN NJ TX MO TX KY VA TX MO IL OH MS TN MS

Farmer Butcher Merchant Farmer Farmer Cowboy Cowboy Cowboy Farmer Farmer Painter Railroad Cowboy Surveyor Farmer Farmer Shingle Maker Farmer Farmer Farmer Clerk Merchant Merchant Cowboy Cowboy Ranger Ranger Ranger Ranger Cowboy Stockman Ranger Farmer Continued

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193

Name:

Age:

Nativity:

Trade/Occupation:

Jones, T.W. Keating, M.M. Kelverer, Jacob Knight, Louis C. Kyle, David C. Lardner, William N. Laycock, Daniel D. Lemons, James Lemons, Thomas Lindsay, Warren Loudon, A.S. Loveless, William M. Massegee, Jonathan R. Mathews, W.T. McPherson, W.S. Pemberton, J.W. Pierson, E. Porter, Emil Reasoner, Thomas J. Reed, George W. Rogers, John

21 23 23 28 26 29 26 24 26 23 25 26 24 20 20 27 22 26 18 24 25

Cowboy Farmer Teamster Ranger Farmer Farmer Farmer Farmer Ranger Farmer Farmer Farmer Cowboy Farmer Shingle Maker Carpenter Farmer Surveying Farmer Farmer

Samples, Robert S. Savils, W.H. Schrock, John W. Sheffield, D. N. Sherman, Frank N. Smith, J.B. Smith, Jackson Elmore Terrell, John William Townson, G.L. Wagner, Albert Wails, William

30 20 23 24 27 34 22 22 23 26 26

TX PA PA TX AL NY TN WI WI TN England AL TN TX TN MO PA TX TX TN Cherokee Nation TN KY MO KY WI OH NC MO KY WI KY

Farmer Rail Splitter Ranger Cowboy Cowboy Carpenter Ranger Farmer Ranger Farmer Farmer Ranger Continued

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Name:

Age:

Nativity:

Trade/Occupation:

Waits, Leroy Waits, William Wayborn, William David Wayborn, Wilson Leroy White, Thomas J. Wilson, Charles Wing, A. Wisdom, J.L. Worthington, N.

24 26 18 19 22 26 45 18 31

KY KY TX TX TX MD Canada MO MD

Ranger Ranger Farmer Farmer Farmer Farmer Carpenter Farmer Farmer

8 

Company D, Frontier Battalion Muster Roll Oldest Youngest Native Texan Other States Foreign Born

79 enlistees 53 years 19 years 22 percent 64 percent 14 percent

Initial geographical posting for Company D as dictated by the Frontier Battalion’s front office at Austin was specific: “Capt. Perry—near Mason and patrol North to Brady’s Creek & South to South line of Kimble Co. P.O. Mason.”1

as elisha floyd ikard was the youngest of the originally chosen Frontier Battalion commanders, Captain Cicero Rufus “Rufe” Perry, Company D, was the oldest. At fifty-three Rufe Perry had seen it all, an iconic fixture in Texas history dating to days of the Alamo’s siege and fall, and Antonio López de Santa Anna’s defeat in the bayou country subsequent to the Runaway Scrape. As a mere adolescent he had carried crucial dispatches for General Sam Houston relevant to the ultimate Battle of San Jacinto and during that rout served as a guard for the Texas Army’s baggage train. Later, Rufe Perry “honed his skill as an Indian fighter under the tutelage of Edward Burleson, riding with the famed frontier leader whenever Indian trouble loomed in the region.”2 A veteran of the Mexican War and numerous skirmishes with Indians, Rufe Perry wore his battle wounds with pride—not arrogance—a fact recognized by contemporaries and “such other premier Texas Rangers as John H. Moore, Jack Hays, 195

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Ben McCulloch, Henry McCulloch, Sam Walker, Jesse Billingsley, Addison Gillespie,” as well as many others who would later become quite well known during the Frontier Battalion era. The “roughhewed frontiersman” was by any man’s measure the Real McCoy when it boiled down to suffering and privation, and no quarter asked for or awarded during desperate days of notching Texas’s future. On the other hand, the Frontier Battalion Rangers were marching the road to professionalism as tricky and problematic as it might prove to be, and in this framework Rufe was handicapped by a “poverty of literary education.”3 The absolute—almost innocence in a way—of Rufe Perry’s matter-of-fact memoir reveals not only his unique shortfall with the finer points of readin’ and writin’ but, too, is illustrative of his personal disdain for wannabe courage, herein set forth with but minimal clarification: wee found a parte of the town [Bastrop] burnd by Indions wee did not find eney Indions until to the Yaugewam [Yegua Creek] wee saw thair trail on the Sangabral [San Gabriel] and found them in the Yaugewam bottom wee did not kill but 3 owing to one ould buc beeing between us an thair Camp wee had a desperrado with us by the [name] of Colvin the first dead Indian that hee come to hee jumpt on him and commence Stabing him I think if hee had of bin a live hee woold have went the other way.4

And, too, herein it’s unquestionably more than just a little germane, not all of the Company D fellows swearing their oath of loyalty to the State of Texas that twenty-fifth day of May 1874 at Blanco in Blanco County were illiterate and/or uneducated. Twenty-threeyear-old Mat Murphy from Captain Perry’s home state, Alabama, was a lawyer, as was Lamartine Pemberton “Lam” Sieker, a former resident of Baltimore, Maryland, and the son of a prominent doctor.5 Also with legal credentials in his personal portfolio was Company D’s 1st Lieutenant, a thirty-one-year-old Tennessean, William Henry Ledbetter.6 Admittedly, the majority of Company D’s charter members listed occupations as farmers, stock raisers, cow drivers, and/

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or stock dealers, but there was a rather fair sampling of store clerks and tradesmen, such as miners, a blacksmith, a baker, a hack driver, a carpenter, two stone masons, common laborers—and even an artist.7 Racially the company was not diverse, all white; occupationally Company D was a wide-ranging mix, an indisputable actuality as already illustrated with Companies A, B, and C, and will be further buttressed as Companies E and F are scrutinized. Undoubtedly, after the application of commonsense and examination of Muster & Pay Rolls wherein nativity and previous career choices and particularized work histories are enumerated, acrossthe-board oversimplifications crumble. Offering sweeping suggestions that Texas Rangers “were mostly adventurers,” were “rather aimless,” and were “often called to duty in a saloon” seems an anemic and agenda-driven warping of truth, as do any blanket armchair indictments that Texas Rangers “killed indiscriminately, they robbed, and they raped.” And, maybe, equally as nonsensical is the indiscriminately posited declaration that “fiery Texas Ranger companies that pillaged for a living. . . .”8 No defense is proffered—nor should it be—for gratuitous acts of viciousness and/or criminality committed by anyone, including Texas Rangers. Acknowledging Texas Rangers reflected a microcosmic subset of humankind is fair: Some folks are real good and some folks are real bad. Clearheaded circumspection reveals, over time, the Texas Ranger management team was trying its damndest to weed undesirable and objectionable hard characters from their evolving ranks. The bosses were making steady progress—though individual Rangers, on occasion, did cause disruption while competent leaders were busy sculpting an institutional structure of worthiness. With proof being in the pudding, as they say, the Texas Ranger outfit is nearing its bicentennial birthday—despite an ineffectual cadre of modern-era detractors dealing in widespread distortions and dull-pointed obfuscations.9 Assuredly, from many quarters at the outset of fashioning the Frontier Battalion’s leadership model, Rufe Perry had overwhelming support—and hardly any antagonists or rivals. Committed citizens of Blanco County, where Rufe had been living since 1860,

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submitted their petition to Adjutant General Steele recommending their choice for Company D’s captaincy.10 Texas legislators, at least two of them, had jumped at the chance to endorse Rufe Perry as headman of the spanking new company: Congressman L.M. Rogers of the 24th District and A.J. Nicholson, Representative for the 11th Congressional District of Texas.11 There certainly was no shortage of willing recruits anxious to find their names enrolled on the company’s Muster & Pay Roll, that is, if one of those lucky aspirants, James B. “Jim” Hawkins, a twenty-six-year-old from Cook County (home county of Chicago), Illinois, remembrance is taken at face value. The transplanted Lone Star resident who had been herding livestock for the previous three years had decided to “quit working the festive Cow” and become a Texas Ranger. At the swearing-in ceremony at Blanco, he recalled that a number of hopeful fellows were out and out rejected by Captain Perry due to being mounted on substandard geldings, or in the words of newly enlisted Hawkins, their horses “didnent Pass.”12 Those that did “pass” and manage a coveted spot on the roster were for the most part young men, the majority in their twenties.13 By the end of June, Company D had been fully staffed and headquartered at Celery Springs, about six miles northwest of Menardville (now Menard, Menard County) not too terribly far from the aforementioned San Saba Mission and Presidio of an earlier era.14 Frontier Battalion Special Order No. 9 made seamlessly clear the focal points for Company D’s Indian scouting activities: “North to the Colorado and South to the Llano river.”15 Knowing that he was stationed in an active corridor for Indian raiders, Captain Rufe Perry specifically asked that his company be furnished with “Twelve brich [sic, breech] loading Shot guns for the use of the Camp guards at night.”16 Bureaucratic paperwork for company captains (and thankfully for today’s historians) required each company’s timely submission of a pre-printed Monthly Return to battalion headquarters. Therein were a host of vital fill-in-the-blank spaces and room for narrative synopsizes of scouts and enforcement activities. As a part of this

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report an inventory of and condition of state-owned property was prepared for the Austin-based Quartermaster/Paymaster, Captain Martin M. Kenney.17 In this regard, examining but one company’s initial Monthly Return, Company D’s, is instructive, for it not only reveals items readily available, but is also perceptibly illustrative that these Texas Rangers were, indeed, then living an outside camp-life, not one in a posh hotel at government expense. The Company D Rangers had on hand: 13 1 24 2 1 400 12 1 14 14 11 11 10 61 57 4000 900 1

head of mules wagon, with wagon sheet & bows blankets [for pack mules] buckets set of harness ft. of rope pack saddles pair of saddle pockets Skillets Brd [Tin Bread] Pans Coffee Pots Frying Pans Camp Kettles Sharps Carbines Colt’s revolvers Needle cartridges [for Sharps Carbines] Winchester cartridges [for personally owned 1873 Winchesters] set of Platform Scales18

At the time of this report, Captain Perry certified that he had already issued all of his allotted Colt’s revolver cartridges, 2000 Needle Gun cartridges, and 150 Winchester cartridges, further declaring that all but two of the Rangers’ seventy-five horses were

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serviceable and all of the thirteen head of mules were fit for packing or pulling the Company D wagon.19 Characteristically the captain was a doer, and he immediately put scouts in the field, one headed by Lieutenant Ledbetter. The second deployment was supervised by his other junior officer, Lieutenant Daniel Webster Roberts, thirty-two, a veteran Indian fighter and one—along with others—awarded an engraved Improved Winchester by an act of the Thirteenth Texas State Legislature for their heroic performance at what had become known as the Deer Creek Fight.20 Captain Perry also commanded a scout hunting hard for any trails put down by Indians while slipping into the frontier settlements. Try as they might, all three hard-riding scouts eventually returned to the Company D headquarters camp empty-handed, no sign of any Indians detected.21 Not just yet, anyway. However, there was trouble brewing, big trouble. On 25 June 1874, Wilson Hey, the Presiding Justice of Mason County (county seat Mason), penned a letter to Governor Coke setting out grievances of his constituents, primarily somewhat agitated residents of German heritage. The Mason County denizens were alleging that cattlemen and cowboys in adjoining Llano County were recklessly crossing boundary lines and rounding up cows and calves not theirs in Mason County. Specifically, Justice Hey named Allan G. Roberts as the lead perpetrator, though he offered no creditable evidence of any wrongdoing. It’s crystal clear though, not just a few Mason County folks thought they were right—dead right.22 Unfortunately, the forthcoming brouhaha—which would reflect negatively and positively on the Rangers—has its genesis divided into equivalent parts. First were patent ethnic overtones. Germans of Texas’s Hill Country clung to ways of the Old Country. The vast majority of German immigrants who settled fairly close to their ports of entry such as Galveston and Indianola and Matagorda rather handily assimilated, more-or-less adopting an Anglo-American culture and, perhaps, most importantly, learned and employed English as their primary and soon to be only language. Conversely, those hale and hearty German immigrants advancing further inland, ultimately

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staking claims in the picturesque and bluebonnet-dotted Hill Country, held strongly to ancestral ways. Generally pacifists through the late Civil War, the Mason County colonizers ate German food, consumed German ale, and merrily danced to German tunes. They continued to speak German, to think German, and refused to even sit through a Sunday sermon unless it was preached in German. The Good Lord spoke to them in German, and they prayed their prayers to him in German. In their tight and right world—and Mason County was part of that world—it was expected that non-Germans should learn the German language, not vice-versa.23 That wouldn’t sell to dyed-in-the-wool Texans. Secondly, the handling of free-ranging livestock was a tinderbox. In days prior the stringing of miles and miles of barbed-wire, cattle went where they went. Mama-cows wandered searching for good grass and fresh water, dropping claves irrespective of county lines. Therein lay the rub. There were plenty of motherless mavericks— weaned yearlings—unbranded and up for grabs and everyone was grabbing. Earlier, Captain Henry Carroll, U.S. Army, stationed at Fort Mason, had warned his Adjutant General that the competition for unbranded mavericks was so great and the jealousy between settlers was so keen that each man “was afraid his neighbor will brand and drive more cattle than himself.”24 Another voice, speaking directly of Mason County, a former Mason County Clerk, Ben F. Gooch, railed that even the most respected area ranchers were actively trying to acquire their fair share of the spoils before the bellowing walking-assets were “appropriated by the most active adventurers from wheresoever.”25 Although cow country ethics called for rounding up cattle and properly sorting to the rightful owner, few played by those idyllic principles. An incisive and no doubt shrewd cowman of those earliest days noted the bona fide reality of the time and place: “There are men in the country who never bought a cow in their lives who now have large stocks, and they get them branding other peoples stock entirely, and if you will show me a man who cow hunts or lives in the country away from a butcher shop who does not brand calves or eat meat not his own and contrary to law, I will

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show you nine men to one that does do it.”26 More comically, tongue in cheek—maybe—a noted cowman of the time offered his observation: “I say that any cowman of open range days who claimed never to have put his brand on somebody else’s animal was either a liar or a poor roper.”27 Not benevolently, an old-timer hammered home truth: “if we should send every man to the penitentiary that ever stole a cow, there wouldn’t be any citizens in Mason.”28 Apparently there weren’t too many marauding Indians in Mason County either—temporarily. And, if there were, the Texas Rangers of Company D after numerous scouts throughout the region had failed to find them that month of July 1874.29 They unluckily had been prospecting dry holes in that regards. They would, however, that same month, add a first to their repertoire: Arrests. Leading a ten-man squadron, Captain Perry assisted the civil authorities at Menardville, supervising the arrests of Felix Mann and his accomplices who had been metaphorically treeing the town, indiscriminately firing their six-shooters and “plain raising hell throughout the settlement.”30 One of the hard-charging Company D Rangers, the twenty-three-year-old artist, Samuel P. Elkins, later and somewhat indifferently penned just how dangerous the apprehension had been: “We had no trouble whatever in capturing them, for we found them all asleep under a big tree, and took them in.”31 And the very next day Company D’s 1st Sergeant, twenty-four-year-old Newton Harris “Plunk” Murray, a Missourian by birth and past associate of the notorious guerrilla raider, William Clarke Quantrill, was called on to and did physically arrest Thomas Hopper, “a noted character.”32 Realizing the multipronged duties of Frontier Battalion enlistees, though he may have not necessarily liked it at the time, Major Jones updated the company commanders with a listing of wanted fugitives from various counties within the state—some eighty-odd guys were to be arrested should by chance the Rangers of his command run across them or learn of where they might be hanging their hat.33 Never far removed from unpleasant duty, Major Jones was forced to tackle a few Company D personnel issues, some wholly

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unavoidable—some foolishly self-inflicted. Though the reason is yet elusive, Sergeant Paul Durham voluntarily sought a reduction in rank, though he remained on the Company D rolls. Others were honorably discharged for medical reasons. The physician’s certification guaranteeing whiners and malingers weren’t allowed to slip though: Private James W. Patterson, twenty-nine, a former clerk from northeast Texas; 3rd Sergeant Cookman Lawson “C.L.” Deggs, a Virginian; Private Michael Hill, a twenty-year-old cowboy from Gonzales County southeast of San Antonio; and twentyfour-year-old Private John O. Allen, a Kaufman County cowboy. Two other personnel actions were of a disciplinary nature. Private John Columbia, a twenty-five-year-old hard-rock miner from St. Louis, Missouri, somehow earned his dishonorable discharge for “harboring a deserter [Ranger or soldier?]” and a mindless rash of “insubordinate conduct.” And though he would later find reinstatement upon petition from his Ranger pals and Captain Rufe Perry, Major Jones initially removed Private Morton Sublett, another Missourian, a “Stock Driver,” from the roster for getting rip-roaring drunk, resulting with his “being found asleep while on post as a sentinel.”34 Though the boys of Company D would soon be dealing with other desperate characters of English- and German-speaking extraction, fellows wearing war-paint and emitting war-whoops would be on their near-term agenda. Captain Perry had dispatched two young Texas Rangers, William Scott Cooley and William Burleson Traweek, both former “cow drivers,” to procure someone’s wandering beef—presumably unbranded—for the camp mess. Near the headwaters of Elm Creek it was the Rangers that came near being butchered, ineffectively fired on by a raiding party of secreted Comanches. Not imprudently Cooley and Traweek put iron to their horses and raced back to the headquarters camp sounding the alarm. In his clearly color ful and herein unedited recap, Captain Perry launches the story: while I was Incampt on elm Creeak I Sent Scott Cooley Wm Trayweak to get a beeaf and they found 9 Indions came to Camp

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and reported I was at major Jones Camp whitch was a boute one mile from mine Jones had gwn to Mason his escort was all Sadeled up I Started them in pursute with Cooley as gide Sent Punk murey to my Camp af too Dan Roberts with orders to come as Soon as possible whitch hee did and wee got to the Indions first starting last35

Once overhauled—this time—the warring Comanche rather than flee managed a nifty horseback turnabout, bravely readying to repel the fast approaching Rangers, a slick maneuver Lieutenant Dan Roberts approvingly characterized: “It was as pretty a military movement as I ever saw.”36 From the Comanches’ perspective the attack may have demonstrated undaunted courage, but the final outcome wasn’t very pretty. During the close-quarter combat the Texas Rangers killed five Indians, suffering no casualties themselves. And despite sometimes romanticized tripe that a Comanche would always go down fighting rather than become a prisoner, the anomaly was now at hand, as were the securely bound hands of twenty-threeyear-old So-no-ya-na (Little Bull).37 In this instance, Lieutenant Roberts stepped to the benevolent mark and prohibited the boys from forthrightly executing the Indian captive.38 Uncertain as to exactly what to do with the puzzled Comanche prisoner, a five-man Ranger detachment escorted their undoubtedly uneasy captive to burgeoning Austin, where the Indian could be “disposed of as the Governor may direct.”39 Subsequent to Adjutant General Steele fast putting the kibosh on enterprising Rangers charging a 25¢ fee to take a peek at their detainee, Little Bull—in truth being a Comanche in a no Comanche Zone—was imprisoned in the state penitentiary at Huntsville where he would later die of natural causes.40 Sympathy for Indians was in short supply, and raw acts of brutality on the part of skirmishing combatants were commonplace. Of this foregoing Ranger vs. Indian engagement a coherent newspaperman for the Austin Daily Statesman unabashedly authenticated real time reality: The boys brought some fresh scalps with them and they report that Scott Cooley, who was fired at and run into camp, not only cut

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a wounded Indian’s throat, but stripped a large piece of skin from his back, saying that he would make a quirt out of it.41

The trophies of war, gruesome as they might have been, especially in a latter-day age of enlightened and compassionate thinking, were but customary souvenirs for nineteenth-century warriors working edges of the bloody Texas Frontier, be they pitiless raider or merciless Ranger, a fact highlighted by the battalion’s Edward Carnal: Indian scalps in ranger camps were as common as pony tracks, whole scalps hanging from trees with hair sometimes three feet long. Some of our boys would have their bridle reins and brow bands plumed with them, the long hair on the reins, standing erect when being held high by the rider, and making what the rangers considered a pleasing sight. My own horse wore a browband trimmed in Indian hair cut straight across like a girl’s bangs.42

With regards to the forced manpower cuts due to the Frontier Battalion’s budgetary shortfall, the upshot was double-barreled for Company D. General Order No. 6 of 25 November 1874 put the damper on William N. Ledbetter’s career as a battalion lieutenant, while General Order No. 7 capped off the law-enforcing work of Captain Rufe Perry.43 Apparently Captain Perry was not overly awed by owning command status. Major Jones learned, and later wrote Adjutant General Steele that Captain Perry had “met the courier, received the orders from him, and then went on home.” Major Jones idly waited at the Company D headquarters camp but then was forced to communicate: “I would not have waited for him but for the fact of his having money for which he has not accounted to the Quartermaster. I shall not wait for him any longer, however, as I have no idea when he will return. . . .”44 Placed in charge of Company D was the genuine neophyte lawman but proven Indian fighter, Dan Roberts.45 The wait for Lieutenant Roberts and his Company D Texas Rangers to once again lock up with Indians was short-lived. Trailing the raiders “going up the divide between [the] Little and Big Saline, the Texas Rangers finally overhauled the fleeing Comanche. During

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the hot chase and even hotter fight, Corporal Jim Hawkins” killed and scalped one determined but outgunned warrior. William H. “Bill” Springer, a twenty-nine-year-old Louisianan, likewise, earned credit for putting a mark on his notch-stick for killing one Indian and severely wounding another. Private John D. Cupp could not be attributed a confirmed kill, but the blood-trail left by his target was evidence of pretty good marksmanship. During the running fight that covered near ten miles, the gutsy Texas Rangers managed to also recover sixteen stolen horses. The remaining Indians, numbering approximately nine, managed to make good their gasping getaway and were “destitute of Blankets & every Thing except Their Arms. Their Arms Consisted of two or 3 needle Guns, Bows & Arrows & Lances.”46 The clash was a newsmaker, picked up by the Statesman at Austin, but more effusively by Houston’s Daily Telegraph, which reported in part: “Two Indians were killed and two wounded, and fifteen horses captured. Major Jones’ command ‘gets away’ with the red butchers every time an engagement takes place.”47 In Mason County some other butchery was taking place. On the outskirts of Mason, the lifeless body of seventeen-year-old Allen Bolt was discovered in the middle of the roadway between Mason and Menardville, a note pinned to his blood-soaked shirt accusing him of being a stealer of cows. Lucia Holmes, the keeper of a day by day account, noted: “A man was found killed on the road with a card on his breast saying he wouldn’t stop killing cattle so they killed him.”48 John Clark, the sheriff of Mason County, was no real friend of, or trustworthy steward of the constitutionally—state or federal—enacted laws. Neutrality was not his strong suit. Sheriff Clark was every inch a partisan, from the toe of his boot to the top of his hat. What would soon become known to history as the Mason County War aka Hoo Doo War had ignited into a full-blown blood feud! The “Americans” and “Germans” were at odds, and their sixshooter senselessness would—in the short run—scar the reputation of Company D Texas Rangers.49 Sheriff Clark saw no reason to investigate the coldblooded murder of Allen Bolt, and neither did Lieutenant Dan Roberts. His

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obligatory Monthly Returns and recoverable correspondence to the battalion commander are noticed—by their absence.50 Though it may not rise above the level of presumption, it’s but realistic to think that Lieutenant Roberts knew of the vigilantes’ execution, but why it was deemed Major Jones should be kept in the dark is yet a mystery? Seemingly, as far as the Texas Rangers of Company D were concerned, Mr. Allen Bolt—living or dead—was simply a nonentity—no investigation necessary. The night of 18 February 1875 found Lieutenant Roberts at Mason, a registered guest at Hunter’s Hotel. The lieutenant was in town negotiating and arranging for the procurement of grain for Company D’s horses and mules. The overnight stay, sleeping between real sheets in a real bed would no doubt be a welcome treat for a Texas Ranger normally accustomed to snoozing in a bedroll on the ground—inside or outside a tent. He was aroused from his slumber by the trumpeting voice of Sheriff Clark, telling him to get up and get dressed; a big crowd of men were mobbing the jailhouse. Whether or not Sheriff Clark was cleverly feigning concern since a state paid lawman was in town will never be known, conclusively. There would be, however, a hard bottom-line. A fanatical mob numbering near forty were intent on storming the calaboose and lynching five prisoners, the two Baccus cousins, Elijah and Pete, twenty-year-old Tom Turley, cowboy Abe Wiggins, and Charles Walker “Charlie” Johnson. If ever there was an early case of One Riot, One Ranger, this was the time. It’s been penned when push really came to shove a solitary Texas Ranger would charge Hell with a bucket of water. A real gutcheck, though, as one witty criminal justice scholar noted, is that there are those awful times when watertight logic and true-blue professionalism spawns “a call for more Rangers and more buckets.”51 Lieutenant Roberts was figuratively backed into a corner on the courthouse lawn. Dan Roberts could jerk his Colt’s six-shooter and gallantly die a hero in a hail of lynch mob madness, or step aside. Lieutenant Roberts was a practical man, unquestionably courageous, but not pigheaded and mindlessly foolish. Perhaps his bending to commonsense is somewhat understandable and defensible. On

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the other hand, his abject failure to make a written report to Texas Ranger headquarters about the subsequent lynching of three of the five ill-fated prisoners, Elijah and Pete Baccus, and Abe Wiggins, as well as the near-death experience of Tom Turley (he survived strangulation) and the desperate but successful fence-jumping escape of Charlie Johnson is inexcusable. “Strangely Lieutenant Roberts made no report to Major Jones or Adjutant General William Steele of his involvement in resisting the mob’s action that night in Mason. Possibly he chose not to due to his obvious ineffectiveness.”52 Quite naturally the narrative of a jailhouse liberation and lynching was an eye-catching story. Why Dan Roberts thought the Texas Rangers front office staff would have their heads buried beneath piles of bureaucratic paperwork is beyond, well past, mindboggling, especially when a big city newspaper was spotlighting and spoofing: We see it stated in an exchange that five men were recently hung at Fort Mason. . . . Some unknown parties seized upon the five men who were suspected of being horse thieves, and succeeded in elevating three of the five. . . . [but] with drew hastily, after wounding one of the accused, who was waiting for his turn to be an angel. The gentlemen in the tree were cut down, and one of them revived, but the other two were. . . . dead. . . . So instead of five men being hung, only two were hung, and one was shot. For the sake of the reputation of Mason as a law abiding community we hope this correction will be made.53

Shortly another killing would rock the community in an adjoining county, the February 1875 murder of William Wages. Strangely, in this particular instance Lieutenant Roberts did file a report but his legacy would have been better served if he hadn’t. Or, conceivably, he might have reworded and/or tweaked his memorandum. He curiously advised Texas Ranger headquarters: The mob has been operating some in Llano County lately. Killed one man named [William] Wages, ordered several more to leave the county. As yet they’v [sic] harmed no good man.54

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The action—or inaction—of the Company D commander has not necessarily withstood favorable theoretical review: “What criteria Roberts used for determining who was a ‘good man’ is unknown, but from existing correspondence Roberts appears to have given tacit support to the mob during his involvement in the feud. An eyewitness to the lynching, Roberts made no move to investigate the incident or arrest any of the mob. There is also an ominous silence in the official reports filed by Lieutenant Roberts during this time regarding both the Baccus lynching and the killing of Allen Bolt. Nor was any attempt made to learn the identity of Wages’ killers other than the passing reference to the mob. It was a severe error in judgment bordering on dereliction of duty. Had Roberts acted decisively at that time much of the violence that followed might have been avoided. He did not.”55 Regardless what might or might not have taken place, bloodshed was on Mason’s horizon. Cowman Tim Williamson, an “American,” had been arrested and was being transported to town on the thirteenth day of May 1875. Out of nowhere it seemed prisoner Williamson found himself surrounded by a gang of masked men, Hoo Doos, the creative euphuism for Mason County’s “German” vigilantes. Ensuring that the disarmed Williamson could not escape Sheriff Clark’s deputy John Wohrle simply pulled out his six-shooter and killed his prisoner’s horse, putting the hapless man afoot. Tim Williamson’s fate had been sealed. As Wohrle stood as a witness, the murderers introduced Mr. Williamson to his Maker. Though little did he know it at the time, it would prove to be the biggest and saddest mistake Deputy Wohrle ever made. During July 1875, Heinrich “Henry” Doell was assassinated in his sleep at a cow-camp he was sharing with August Keller, who luckily escaped death but suffered a nasty bullet wound or two. “When [Lieutenant] Roberts heard the report of Doell’s shooting, he was still of the opinion that the shooters were Indians, and led a scout of ten men. The Rangers found a trail that indicated a party of fifteen, but rain obliterated the tracks and after three days, the Rangers returned to camp. It was never fully determined who or what left the trail.”56

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That July the Company D Rangers had their hands full with the likes of marauding Indians and mindless “American” and “German” feudists. One Ranger was just full—full of whiskey. Private Dunn’s bender was not a headlining newsmaker in the journalistic realm. However, the Ranger’s misbehaving ways were wholly unacceptable to the polite tea-sipping housewives and teenage debutantes of Mason—and rightly so! If professionalizing the Frontier Battalion was of any importance for Major John B. Jones, once again, he had to act and sign off on Special Order No. 41 regarding disciplinary action preferred by Lieutenant Roberts. The compulsory discharge from Company D was of course irrevocable, the core charges explicit: “For being drunk, attempting to discharge a pistol in a private residence and for using obscene and insulting language in the presence of ladies.”57 The following month would be rather newsy for the Rangers of Company D, on more than one front. First and foremost, one of their comrades, ex-Texas Ranger Scott Cooley, had been exceptionally close to the aforementioned Tim Williamson. Trifling with Cooley’s emotions was poor business, dangerously poor. On the tenth day of August 1875, Scott Cooley was on the hunt. He found John Wohrle and another man, Charles “Doc” Harcourt, cleaning out a well on the outskirts of Mason. After engaging Wohrle in conversation to make sure he had the right man, Scott Cooley whipped out his six-shooter and made the accomplice in his pal’s execution a dead man falling. His lust for revenge not yet sated—if a newspaper report be true— Cooley then jumped down from his horse and mutilating Wohrle’s lifeless form, “stabbed it in four places with his knife, and finally took his scalp. . . .”58 This murder was no whodunit! Area citizens and Rangers were all in agreement: Scott Cooley, acting alone, was the coldblooded culprit. Scott Cooley was now a fugitive, a $300 price on his head, the Proclamation of Reward originating from the office of a more than disturbed governor, Richard Coke.59 Somewhat unbelievably it now seems ex-Ranger Scott Cooley, as far as Company D Rangers were concerned, was invisible—a phantom, six-shooting ghost haunting Mason County. Shortly, Carl Bader

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would be murdered working his fields near Castell in nearby Llano County, possibly a case of mistaken identity. The wheels had come off in Mason and its sister counties. Where were the Texas Rangers? Well, for Lieutenant Roberts and a scout of eight Rangers, they were hunting for a band of raiding Indians, this time Apaches. Though his saddle-horse had been tagged by a rattlesnake’s fangs, Lieutenant Roberts continued his pursuit atop one of Company D’s mules. Between the Pecos and Devils Rivers, more than 150 miles northwest of Menardville, the Rangers sighted the Indians and their cavvy of stolen horses. With but 200 yards separating the pursuers from the pursed, the Texas Rangers characteristically charged. During the running engagement, a Mexican boy, a captive, was recovered, as were twenty-three horses. At some point in the helter-skelter mêlée, one Indian paid the supreme price and another was wounded. The Rangers, man for man, came though the encounter unscathed. While away on this scout chasing Apache raiders, relatively exciting news broke at Austin, at least for veterans of the aforementioned Deer Creek Fight, of which Lieutenant Roberts was one. The Austin Daily Democratic Statesman was proudly swanking that the improved and specially crafted Winchesters authorized by previous act of the Thirteenth Legislature had been delivered: The guns “were beauties, and will no doubt be preserved through generations as heirlooms.”60 Assuredly, later, upon receipt of his premium Winchester, and yet still later, Dan Roberts would remark about ownership of the weapon: “I have my gun yet, and I hardly need to add that it is among the most treasured of all my possessions.”61 Subsequent to introduction of the famed 1873 Winchester lever-action, other Texas Rangers were anxious to advantage themselves with a repeating rifle or carbine. The State of Texas, through its payroll deduction plan, was issuing single-shot Sharps carbines and, afterward, single-shot Springfield carbines. Though not on the initial Muster & Pay Roll, having become a Company D Ranger later, 1 June 1875, Private James Buchanan Gillett underscores the fact that rank and file Texas Rangers desired first-class weaponry,

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in this instance trading long-range viability for the utility of fast firepower contained in tubular magazines. Such multi-shot capability was especially handy while engaging in precarious combat from slick-forked stock saddles. Rangers were granted permission to purchase Winchesters out of pocket, at a price that equated to a month’s salary, $40.62 In relatively short order—historically speaking—as Frontier Battalion purchase orders and invoices and old-time photographs make clear, over time the repeating Winchesters officially replaced the one-shooters. Meanwhile at Mason, the bullets were yet flying. On September 9, feudists did what feudists do—kill each other, or try to. Near the Mason County community of Hedwig’s Hill west of Willow Creek and southeast of the county seat, Sheriff Clark and his “German” minions calculatingly ambushed and murdered Moses Baird and seriously wounded George Gladden.63 Regional newspapers were not quiet about such messiness, the San Antonio Daily Herald noting that Hell had broken loose.64 What seemed not to be breaking loose and trying to put a cap on the madness and mayhem were the Company D Rangers. It was a bothersome detail not missed by the Frontier Battalion’s command staff at Austin—or by Governor Coke. Major Jones, who had been preparing for a multi-company campaign designed to once and for all put the kibosh on Indians from the Pecos and Devils River country raiding and robbing and murdering in the Texas Hill Country settlements, had the blueprint on his drawing board altered. Adjutant General Steele’s message was plainspoken: The Gov. thinks it of more importance to preserve the peace than anything else. He says whilst you may find Indians on Devils River you will be sure to find Devils in Mason. . . . It is said that threats have been made to wipe out the Willow Creek settlers.65

Fortuitous timing of Adjutant General Steele’s missive had been somewhat ironic. Within but a day or two, but before Major Jones would have time to marshal manpower and manage the trip to Mason, violent hands were at work, again. Supposing that James “Jim” Cheyney had served as the bell-mare treacherously leading

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Moses Baird to his death, revenge-minded feudists moved his name to the top of their “hit list.” If, indeed, there was an actual drawing of short straws, it is not now knowable, but, factually, the murdering job fell to a fellow known only as Williams and the even then notorious John Peters Ringo, who already owned a tough reputation, one he would further cultivate and fertilize several years later at Tombstone, Arizona Territory. Thoroughly in the dark with regards to his premeditated visit with an undertaker, the unsuspecting Jim Cheyney welcomed Williams and Ringo into his home on Comanche Creek. With his face buried in a washcloth and soapsuds in eyes—preparing to sit down to breakfast with his houseguests— it would not be bacon Cheyney would taste—but bullets from his assassins’ Colt’s six-shooters. They had, in fact, and in their own words, “made fresh meat.” That they were proud of their handiness with offing an enemy, and not standing in any fear of the law, later, in Mason, the two killers conferred with coconspirators at Lace Bridge’s hotel and restaurant, rudely declaring that somebody had best hurry to Comanche Creek and bury Cheyney “else he would stink.”66 While Major Jones was yet in the county, but prior to his entrance into town, another outrage knocked any semblance of peace sideways. During the crisp morning of 29 September 1875, Scott Cooley, John Baird, and George Gladden, who had recovered from his gunshot wounds, secreted themselves behind the local barber shop. Murder was on their program. Leisurely riding into Mason were Daniel Hoerster, the Mason County Brand & Hide Inspector, Peter Jordon, and Heinrich “Henry” Pluenneke. Somehow when the bombardment began Pluenneke and Jordon for the most part untouched scooted for safety. Dan Hoerster’s luck failed, four pellets of buckshot tearing into his throat, knocking him out of the saddle, dead in the dirt. Newlywed Luvenia “Lou” Conway Roberts, wife of Company D’s commander, was at the time staying in Mason. Shortly she had been rudely introduced to the sounds of gunfire and harrowing reports of dead bodies littering the town’s thoroughfares. Finding a quick fix

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for the young bride’s anxiousness was uncomplicated. By her own choice she would live in a tent, joining her husband at the Company D campgrounds in “Indian country.” Lou Roberts’s logic, in light of the mess unfolding at Mason, was unassailable: “We were going into a country where Indians raided, but I was leaving a country where white men raided.”67 Major Jones, uniting with a few Company D Rangers and Rangers from the reconstituted Company A commanded by Lieutenant Ira Long, rode into Mason as the sun was going down on 29 September, the same day of the bushwhacking. The next morning Major Jones posted AG Steele: “I arrived at this place last night and found the town in a State of terrible excitement and alarm caused by the killing of Dan Hoester, a German, yesterday morning by John Beard of Burnett and Geo. Gladden and Scott Cooley of this County. He was shot from behind a house while riding down the street in the middle of the town. The perpetrators of this deed also fired several shots into the hotel on the opposite side of the street in which were several men and some women and children, then mounted their horses and made their escape. . . . I have three parties out after them now and will have the country thoroughly searched for them but have very little hope of catching them at present as they are well mounted, know the country well and have many friends in this and adjoining counties.”68 Though he could not have had an inkling at the time he penned those words, Major Jones had been prophetically dead on about ex-Ranger Cooley having friends—several yet in Company D. Rather than sending a subordinate to check on the Mason County madness, which would have been a misreading or misinterpretation of the Chief Executive’s not subtle suggestion, the actual physical presence of Major Jones was reassuring to the front office at Austin, a hard fact brought to the Frontier Battalion’s commander’s attention by correspondence from the adjutant general’s chief clerk, Duval Beall: “Your letter about affairs in Mason Co. has been read and the Governor & General Steele, gratified that you have gone there instead of sending a Lieut.”69

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Professionally speaking Major Jones was sickened by what he shortly came to learn at Mason. Aside from the incessant feuding between the cultural factions and their inexcusable extralegal criminality, as the commander soon realized, was that many Rangers of Company D were themselves partisans, siding with the “Americans.” Such dereliction of duty would not do—not for a second. Becoming aware that more than one Company D Ranger was demurring from arresting their buddy Scott Cooley, Major Jones made it unequivocally clear: one must honor their sworn oath to the State of Texas or suffer the penalty, separation from the Frontier Battalion. There’s hardly doubt that Major Jones stood by in stark disbelief when three Rangers openly acknowledged that they positively would not and “could not conscientiously discharge the duty to which they have been assigned.” Undaunted and forthrightly the three ethically and/or morally distressed dissenters, Sergeant Nelson Orcelus “Mage” Reynolds, and Privates James P. Day, thirty-one, a former stockman from Hays County, and Paul Durham, twenty-six, had their names scratched from the company’s Muster & Pay Roll, in accordance with Special Orders Nos. 47 (7 October 1875) and 48 (11 October 1875). Right quick, the three were no longer Texas Rangers.70 Perceptibly, in this instance, the trio of cashiered Rangers had put personal loyalty above devotion to duty. And just as obviously, such reasoning didn’t sell with Major Jones or the high-command at Austin. Professional lawmen, then or now, are not handed the luxury of choosing to ignore lawful orders. Major Jones was trying mightily during the Frontier Battalion’s infancy to sculpt a superlative outfit—despite frailties of human nature. The challenge at Mason was taxing. Taking the bull by the horns, Major Jones personally directed the activities of Ranger scouts throughout Mason County and the nearby neighborhood. Though prosecutorial matters lay not with the lawman but with the district attorneys and courts, the battalion commander’s efforts in regards to trying to squelch the carnage bubbling forth from the Hoo Doo War are calculable. Major Jones could and did report that his Texas Rangers had made near

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two-dozen custodial arrests, turning alleged offenders over to local authorities.71 There had been, as Major Jones observed, “no blood shed since I came here.”72 Too, as Major Jones would come to soon learn, the lackluster enthusiasm exhibited by Mason County’s civil officialdom for bringing any alleged perpetrators to trial was but as fleeting as a lofty pipedream. Although blood was no longer washing across Mason County’s back-roads or cascading through the town’s streets, hot words of partiality were being hurled at the Texas Rangers in general and Major Jones in particular. Governor Coke and Adjutant Steele were getting an earful it seems, and it was a deeply personal affront to the major, obliging a polite yet sharp response: “In reply to your comment of the 14th inst. I have to say that I am not surprised that reports have gone to the Governor that I had taken sides with one or the other party to the terrible feud in this county, but am surprised that he should have taken any notice of it. . . . I knew the difficulty of steering clear of interpretations of partiality when I came here and consequently was as careful as possible from the first to act in such manner as to give no cause for such suspicion ever. With this object in view I avoided any particular personal or social intercourse with either party, fearing that if I was known to be often with one party the other would think I was taking sides. Notwithstanding this I had not been here more than ten days before each party accused me of taking sides with the other and for that reason I am at a loss to form an opinion as to which party, if either, has made the complaint to the Governor. . . .”73 Analytically handing out blue ribbons to Lieutenant Dan Roberts and his Company D Rangers for their stellar policing performance during the Mason County War would be a real miscarriage. The record was dismal. It is, though, fairly understandable—not defensible—but understandable. Frontier Battalion enlistees for the most part had signed on to hunt for and kill raiding Indians. They had the law enforcing business dumped into their lap. At first there was a learning curve and they were outside the arc. Experience is a good but unsympathetic teacher. A hallmark of Texas Ranger viability had been—and

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is—adaptability. The Frontier Battalion’s fellows were learning to be crime fighters, but it was not and would not be an overnight phenomenon. The demonstrable record is perfectly clear: Lieutenant Dan Roberts was one helluva Indian fighter, but testing the murky waters as a lawman he would have to do. Straight history and John B. Jones will bear witness he succeeded and survived—worthily. For the short go, however, the well-respected Frontier Battalion’s commander didn’t mince words or shy away from taking what he deemed an appropriate personnel action: I brought with me Lt. Long’s Co. [the reconstituted Company A] and eight men of Lt. Roberts Co., the latter for the reason that they had been here before and were well acquainted with the country, intending to remain here only a few days however and then station Lt. Roberts company here and leave it here for some time to come. Within a few days however I became convinced that it would only aggravate the trouble to leave Lt. Roberts company here for the reason that the sympathies of his men were entirely with one of the parties of the feud. That the notorious Scott Colley having at one time been a member of the company had many friends among the men who were in sympathy with him and his party and entertained a violent prejudice against Sheriff Clark and the German population.74

While no doubt somewhat perturbed with the law-enforcing performance of Lieutenant Roberts and the Rangers of Company D, Major Jones was effusive with his praise of and confidence in Company A’s Lieutenant Ira Long, characterizing him as “a very discreet officer [and] will be able to keep things quiet.”75 George W. Todd, one of Mason County’s movers and shakers seconded the major’s razorsharp pronouncement, saying in part that Lieutenant Ira Long was “the right man in the right place. . . .” The Mason County “Hood Doo” War had, perhaps grudgingly, pushed the Frontier Battalion enlistees to the law-enforcing forefront. Like it not, and some 1870s Texas Rangers didn’t, there would be no going back.

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Initial Roster Frontier Battalion Company D Name:

Age:

Nativity:

Trade/Occupation:

Allen, John Oliver Barber, J.W. Bartholomew, Charles Bates, William Wells Bird, George Howard Bird, James Thomas Bird, Joseph Dorris Blackwell, James W. Bomar, James Lee Brown, J.B. Bryan, J.A. Bryant, George Washington Burt, C.W. Campbell, Eugene Carnal, Edward B. Colbaith, Ambrose Henry Columbia, J.L. Conn, Hugh E. Cooley, William Scott Cowan, J.D. Creel, John A. Cupp, John D. Davis, J.G. Davis, James Lovelace Day, James P. Deggs, Cookman Lawson Donnaly, N. Dunn, Thomas H. Durham, Paul Elkins, Samuel P.

24 29 25 24 25 26 22 21 22 20 25 25 29 21 25 22 25 21 22 21 22 25 22 20 31 32 26 22 26 23

TX KY TX KY AR AR AR TX TN MS TN TN TN IN LA TX MO TX TX GA IL KY England TX IL VA Ireland IL TX MO

Cow Driver Miner Hack Driver Farmer Farmer Farmer Farmer Farmer Ranger Farmer Farmer Carpenter Stock Dealer Farmer Farmer Stock Dealer Miner Farmer Cow Driver Laborer Farmer Farmer Tinker Farmer Stock Driver Clerk Baker Farmer Stock Raiser Artist Continued

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219

Name:

Age:

Nativity:

Trade/Occupation:

Gillespie, Thomas Griffin, Thomas Hamilton, Orange Harkley, Joseph Hawkins, James Hill, Michael Holmes, John P. Holt, Edmond P. Hotchkis, Finlay Montgomery James, A.F. James, D.R. Johnson, George Kelso, L.R. Kemp, J.H. Ledbetter, William Henry Lee, Horatio Grooms Lewis, William Winslow Long, Sam Lynch, Michael Mason, Charles A. McGrew, F.G. McKnight, Henry Moore, John B. Murphy, Mat H. Murray, Newton Harris Nevill, Charles L. Paterson, James W. Perry, Cicero Rufus Reynolds, Nelson Orcelus Reynolds, William Rishworth, H. Ritchie, Andrew Travis Roberts, Daniel Webster

20 23 25 24 26 20 21 22 30 33 25 22 25 21 31 26 19 26 49 21 19 21 19 23 24 19 29 53 25 37 22 25 32

AL MS IL AR IL TX MS TN Scotland IN TX Sweden TX England TN TX KY WI Ireland IA Canada TX TX AL MO AL TX AL PA LA England AL MS

Blacksmith Clerk Farmer Farmer Farmer Stock Driver Clerk Stock Driver Ranger Cow Driver Farmer Stock Driver Farmer Stone Mason Farmer Loafer Farmer Stock Driver Farmer Farmer Farmer Stock Driver Herder Lawyer Ranger Clerk Clerk Farmer Farmer Cow Driver Farmer Stock Driver Farmer Continued

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Name:

Age:

Nativity:

Trade/Occupation:

Robertson, Walter Robinson, Robert E. Schmidt, William Scott, James Sieker, Edward Arman Sieker, Lamartine Pembeton Springer, William Sublette, Martin Traweek, William Burleson Vanhoosen, William B. Ware, Nick Weed, Thurlow A. Wheeler, John V. Wilson, Andrew Withers, W.T. Wynn, John P.

21 25 24 25 24 26 29 22 21 20 24 29 23 28 26 25

TX PA Germany Scotland MD MD LA MO TX TX MS TX AL Sweden VA GA

Farmer Clerk Farmer Farmer Clerk Lawyer Farmer Stock Driver Cow Driver Cow Driver Farmer ?? Farmer Laborer Clerk Farmer

9 

Company E, Frontier Battalion Muster Roll Oldest Youngest Native Texan Other States Foreign Born

78 enlistees 46 years 17 years 22 percent 71 percent 07 percent

Initial geographical posting for Company E as dictated by the Frontier Battalion’s front office at Austin was specific: “Capt. Maltby—in the vicinity of Santa Anna Peak in Coleman Co. and patrol North East into Brown Co. and South to Brady Creek. P.O. Brownwood.”1

preliminary command of the Frontier Battalion’s Company E went to William Jeff Maltby, forty-six, originally from Sangamon County, Illinois, just south of Springfield. Early on, Maltby had migrated to the Lone Star State, making it his permanent place of residence during the wild and woolly frontier era. Unquestionably Captain Maltby was truly a salty fellow, having commanded Company E of the 17th Texas Volunteer Infantry during the Civil War. Returning to his home in Burnet County (county seat Burnet) subsequent to playing his part in the Great War, Jeff Maltby engaged in the livestock business and was known throughout Texas as one of the leading “cattle traders.” Too, since Burnet County was at the time on the leading edge of the frontier, Jeff Maltby often “led the citizens of his community in many forays against the Indians prior to the granting of his commission as a captain in the Frontier 221

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Battalion.”2 Quite interestingly in light of the fact that he was the only one to have a face-to-face meeting with the Chief Executive, Jeff Maltby had campaigned and his friends had vigorously petitioned Governor Coke that the well-known and well-respected fellow from Burnet County be named the Frontier Battalion’s major, its overall commander. In general, such political doings and handshaking were efforts exhausted but wasted. The state’s governor, having personally known John B. Jones during days of Civil War combat actions, stuck with his favored choice but did offer Maltby command of Company E—which he shortly accepted.3 That Captain Jeff Maltby would soon be taking his law-enforcing tasks as well as his Indian chasing duties seriously may somewhat be extrapolated—even if loosely—by the fact when obtaining arms for Company E that he especially requested to be personally furnished with a pair of nickel-plated Colt’s .45 six-shooters.4 Interestingly the New York firm of Schuyler, Hurley & Graham invoiced the State of Texas for 700 blued Colt’s six-shooters at a cost of $17.50 per unit, and at the same time likewise shipped ten nickel-plated revolvers costing $20.00 apiece.5 Understandably such special issue would not be freebees, but the cost would be deducted through Texas’s unwieldy payroll deduction plan. Too, and it’s but germane to make note, Major Jones was continually evaluating the serviceability of products procured for the battalion. As but one example—of many—he advised Ranger headquarters at Austin: “I have the honor to report that having tested the new pistols thoroughly I find them unreliable with the Smith & Wesson Cartridges. I therefore send a courier for the Colts ammunition. . . .”6 What Captain Maltby was not seeming to take too seriously was the timely submission of his preliminary Muster & Pay Roll— an administrative negligence—a disrespect catching the notice and the unfeigned ire of Adjutant General Steele. On 23 June 1874, the adjutant general penned a reproachful communication making his not-tender thoughts known, pointedly counseling the Frontier Battalion’s Major Jones that he considered Maltby’s unit to be a rather “slow company” and, furthermore, he predicted that the major

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would find that the hardheaded Company E captain “Shares a disposition to make excuses that is not creditable in a Commander.”7 In light of later events, whether or not these remarks somewhat set the tone for a subliminal message in the mind of Major John B. Jones makes for an intriguing abstract question—though one unanswerable with conclusiveness. ¿Quién sabe? Even before he had recruited and staffed Company E to its full strength, Captain Maltby and his 1st Lieutenant, James G. Connell, a twenty-eight-year-old farmer from Washington County, traveling from Austin to Brownwood with arms and ammunition for his company and Captain Waller’s Company A, managed to apprehend horse thieves and return the pilfered livestock to its rightful owners.8 From the get-go it seems, Company E Rangers were lawmen. On the seventh day of June 1874, 2nd Lieutenant B.F. Best, twenty-seven, led a three-man scout into San Saba County focused on serving capias warrants issued by the courts and placed in the hands of Navarro County Sheriff James H. Brent at Corsicana. Sheriff Brent had forthwith forwarded the papers to Captain Maltby for service. Meanwhile, Lieutenant Connell and squadron scouted through Brown, San Saba, and Lampasas Counties looking for any sign of hostile Indians and/or sneaky fugitives from justice. Luckily, they found and apprehended Andrew Crockett, wanted on an after-indictment warrant in Brown County for Theft of Cattle. And, less than a week later, the actively scouting Maltby captained a Texas Ranger detachment and scooped up another alleged cow thief, one ostensibly wanted in Palo Pinto County, just west of burgeoning Mineral Wells.9 Although it mandates a touch of conjecture, there appears to be a hint of philosophical disparity between what Major John Jones and Captain Jeff Maltby thought the primary responsibilities of the Frontier Battalion, at that time, were. Clearly Major Jones deemed it appropriate that law enforcing duties should take a backseat to protecting the frontier from raiding Indians. His instructions—as previously noted—were clear-cut: “There is a disposition on some portions of the frontier to make use of this command for police

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purposes which I do not like and which I give the officers special instructions not to do except in cases when the authorities are openly defied by organized bands of outlaws and the civil officers unable to enforce the law, or to arrest such parties, for whom arrest they have legal process as may be found in their vicinity.”10 On the other hand, Captain Jeff Maltby, who had also personally met with the Lone Star State’s Chief Executive, seems to have internalized to some extent a different take, writing: “Gen. orders no. 1 Says in addition to the forgoing instructions [stopping Indian raids] that Capts Shall use their own discretion for the better protection of the section assigned to them until farther [sic] orders from these Headquarters. And Gov. Coke said to me in conversation that Lawlessness & Crime should be put down.”11 Answering to charges that he had wholeheartedly jumped into the law enforcing game, sometimes overstepping jurisdictional boundaries reserved for locally elected and/ or appointed lawmen. A seemingly agitated Captain Jeff Maltby updated Adjutant General Steele—in no uncertain terms: “There is no member of my Company that has done any act of violence in any way whatever. I have acted with the Sheriff and with Papers properly issued. The arrests that has been made by my Company has been properly turned over to the Sheriff of Brown County.”12 Shortly—relatively speaking—the Frontier Battalion’s overall mission statement would undergo drastic and telling changes, hurling them into the law enforcing arena, a transitional adjustment that Major John B. Jones would undertake and embrace with his characteristic professionalism and finely honed sense of duty. For the interim, Company E Rangers had their hands full, not only with wandering and larcenous Texas outlaws but with bronco Indians from Indian Territory, that ever troublesome City of Refuge north of the murky but well defined Red River. Captain Maltby’s 27 July 1874 written report to Major Jones and his Monthly Return to battalion headquarters for July 1874 is explicit, herein recaptured with but the slightest touches of clarification: I have the honor to report to you that a detachment of ten men of Company “E” Sergeant Iserael [sic Israel] in charge struck a party

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of six Indians near the head of Clear Fork Brazos on July 25th and after a closely contested running fight over the distance of eight miles succeeded in Killing two Indians & wounding & capturing one warrior that died the next day July 26th from his wounds. The prisoner stated in substance that he & party had left Fort Sill four days previous to the fight and was going down into the settlements after Horses & scalps. The loss of the Enemy: two Indians Killed, Captured one Indian, one Horse [and] some Arms Bows, Quivers, and other accoutrements. Casualties of the scout, one man slightly wounded in hand, one horse, the property of Corporal Sacket [sic Sackett], shot & Lost on Battle field, two Horses slightly wounded.13

Rather quickly and astutely, realizing the value of positioning the battalion’s companies so that they could either act independently or in concert with one another, Major John B. Jones issued Special Order No. 10, moving headquarters of the unit: “Company ‘E’ Capt Maltby comdg. is hereby assigned to duty at Post Oak Spring head of Home creek Coleman County and will Scout South to mouth of Elm creek on Colorado and North to Caddo Peak. Post office at Camp Colorado.”14 Though most Company E enlistees had an occupational base tied to agriculture it’s not unfair to note that the new unit could boast of an attorney, a druggist, a civil engineer, a physician, a nurse, a miner, a surveyor, and several skilled tradesmen. And one, George Henry Gerrish, twenty-seven, held a distinction likely owned by no other enlistee of the Frontier Battalion era. Private G.H. Gerrish could rightfully maintain that he had been a swashbuckling sailor in the United States Navy during the Civil War and a horseback Ranger for the Indian War epoch.15 Any assertion that they—the Company E Rangers—were career loafers and slothful vagabonds somehow dredged from a population of riff raff haunting area saloons and barrooms, fellows just looking for an opportunity to pirate and pillage falls flat—despite what myopic Texas Ranger detractors now and again insinuate.16 On the other hand, Major Jones, after arriving at the Company E headquarters camp as a part of “riding the line” on his customary

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inspection tours, was not at all pleased with what he found. He was miffed and made sure that Adjutant General Steele was clued in on his displeasure, after not finding a single commissioned officer in camp: “I have the honor to report that I have just reached this camp. I find this company well stationed for effective service, a good camp with good water and grass, the men in good health, and the horses in good order, but doing nothing at this time; the men are all in Camp idle, the officers all absent. I am informed by the First Sergeant who is in command of the company that Captain Maltby has been gone some ten days and will be absent ten or fifteen days longer, partly on a visit to his home and partly to Austin after pistols for his company.” Furthermore, neither of Company E’s two junior officers were at the Ranger’s camp. Lieutenant Connell, being at home sick—without proper certification from a doctor—and Lieutenant Best was busy at Brownwood trying to work out problems with one of the company’s local subsistence contractors.17 Major John B. Jones’s missive to Texas Ranger headquarters had been written with some sense of formality and reasoned tone. His follow-up letter to Captain Maltby was more direct: I reached your Camp on the 9th inst. Found all the men in Camp, idle and all the officers absent. You gone to Austin and on a visit to your family, to be absent twenty-five or thirty days. Lt. Connel [sic] at home and Lt. Best at Brownwood. The Company was camped in a manner altogether irregular and unmilitary and there was no system or order in the Command. The men seemed to be camped at will, scattered over ten or twelve acres of ground. The horses were scattered promiscuously in and around camp, foot loose with only one man guarding them during the day and only two on guard at night and it would have been an easy matter for a few Indians to have surprised the camp, killed many of the men and driven off the horses. An anomalous condition, truly, for a military organization to be in, for a company without officers and without some sort of system is about equivalent to no company at all. Though I will do the men of the company their justice to say that it was remarkably quiet and peaceable, which is greatly to their credit considering the

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fact that they were left so entirely to themselves. . . . This is no holiday service in which we are engaged but real and earnest work, for the proper, faithful, and constant performance of which we will be held to a strict accountability by the Governor and the people of the State. . . .18

Major Jones—not necessarily on a tirade—continued admonishing Captain Maltby, not shielding his innermost thoughts concerning a workable notion of command: “And now I must impress upon you the necessity for more discipline in your company than was apparent to me, or than has been exercised in your company since its organization according to reports which have been made to me in regard to it [AG Steele’s comments?]. You have a company of splendid men, as good as any in the Battalion, indeed I doubt if any better could be gotten in the State, but even the best men in a military organization will become demoralized and insubordinate, unless judicious and positive control is exercised over them. . . .”19 Not at all surprisingly, Lieutenant Connell responded regarding his absence from the Company E headquarters camp, noting that he had been under a physician’s care at Lampasas, and that Captain Maltby had been and was well aware of his unscheduled nonattendance at his designated Post of Duty.20 Full well taking into consideration the growing pains and organizational features associated with recruiting and suitably equipping seventy-five enlistees from a three-county region, latter-day historians are slightly more benevolent than Major Jones about Captain Jeff Maltby’s reasoning, shortfalls, and so-called “excuse making.”21 Nevertheless, Major Jones immediately countermanded Captain Maltby’s promised granting of furloughs to Rangers from Brown and Coleman Counties in the future, “except in special and extraordinary cases.” Major Jones was clearly exasperated, of that there’s no doubt, as he outspokenly posted Adjutant General Steele: “I find it the most difficult to make the men of the command, and some of the officers, understand that they are not at liberty to go home whenever they please, or get substitutes or have their brothers or friends take their place for a while. I have established the rule however and am determined to maintain it hoping that I will be sustained by the Governor

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and yourself. Otherwise I can have no system or discipline over this command.”22 The state’s chief executive and the adjutant general stood tall. Actually, if truth be told, Adjutant General Steele was backing Major Jones to the hilt, an implication that was distinctly plainspoken: “I will say that if you wish any officer discharged for not attending to his duties a statement to that effect will cause his immediate removal.”23 Though the next Company E installment may or may not have really been avoidable, it most assuredly magnified Major John B. Jones’s not subtle discontent with the operational finesse of Captain Maltby’s command. The real-life narrative is short, but not sweet. After assisting with escorting the major south to Captain Perry’s Company D camp near Menardville, the dozen returning Company E Texas Rangers led by Corporal Samuel A. Henry, twenty-eight, from the Piney Woods of East Texas, Rusk County (county seat Henderson), suffered a hammering embarrassment. On the seventeenth day of August 1874, close by the ranch of Rich Coffee, a noted West Texas frontiersman, near the mouth of the Concho River, Indians introduced themselves to the Rangers short of any politeness. “They [the Rangers] were charged by a party of Indians Supposed to be twenty or twenty-five in number and Eleven head of Horses taken by the Indians. . . . Sergt Iserael [sic: Israel] & 15 men Started August 18 on trail of the Indians that charged & took Corpl Henry & Scout horses from them.”24 Private George Washington Ellington, a twenty-year-old from Bath County, Kentucky, northeast of Lexington, an actual member of the scout, added his two cents’ worth: “An Indian attack is an unforgettable experience. Ten or twelve us had accompanied Major Jones to Menard, and on our way back we camped one night near the Concho, put a guard around our horses, and went to sleep. Just before the moon went down we were awakened by an appalling noise. A band of about thirty Indians were yelling and shooting and trying to stampede our horses. They lay on the sides of their horses and shot from under the animals’ necks. They managed to get most of our horses, but only one man

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was injured in the attack.”25 At that place and in that point in time a Texas Ranger sans a horse was a valueless protector of the frontier’s line. Until appropriately remounted these dazed Company E Texas Rangers were pedestrians “forty miles from their headquarters. . . .”26 Humiliation? Yes! Raiding warriors may have swept away Texas Ranger horses, but that pales in comparison to the following month’s tragedy for Company E. Captain Maltby with a three-man detail was away from the company’s headquarters camp on Home Creek negotiating for a shipment of corn for the unit’s horses and mules. The weather had turned sour, dreadfully so—buckets of rain fell during the atypical torrential downpour. Working his way back to camp Captain Maltby all so soon discovered the Company E wagon and harness battered and washed and wedged against a Mesquite tree. He, too, heard two Texas Rangers hallooing him from atop a nearby hill. The men had been dispatched to Brownwood for supplies when a wall of water out-of-the-blue swiftly washed them downstream. They had smartly abandoned the wagon for higher ground, swimming for their very lives. Shortly two Rangers, Hiram “Curley” Hatcher, a twenty-eightyear-old Pennsylvanian, and an Ohioan, Josephs Rush, age thirty, pulled in with the saddest of bad news for the company captain. The Company E headquarters camp had been completely swept away by the roiling current during wee hours of the wettest of wet mornings.27 Captain Maltby penned his special report for Major Jones, repeated herein in part and unedited: Sir: I have the honor as well as the painful duty to perform to report to you that on the night of the 23rd of this month at 3 o’clock in the morning the guard gave the alarm of water every man sprang promptly to his feet grabbed his arms and made for the picket line and cut their horses loose and each one was compelled to take the first tree that presented itself to view the darkness was extreme and the men could only take advantage of the circumstances as the lightning flashes enabled time to see the objects around them the situation was truly appalling suffice it to

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say the entire camp was swept away in five minutes after the alarm was given. . . . Casualties of the disaster as follows One man W.H. Cliff and seven head of horses drowned also one pack mule together with the entire camp equipage. . . . four horses badly disabled. . . . some articles of Camp equipage clothing having been recovered and by an untiring energy and willingness of officers and men we are properly and militarily encamped capable and ready to do the State good service. . . .28

More particularly the drowned Ranger may be identified as twentythree-year-old W.H. Cliff, the son of Joseph and Miranda Cliff of Hanson, due north of Madisonville, Hopkins County, Kentucky. The dark complected and gray-eyed young man with a horse valued at $75, was thoughtfully interred in a thus far unmarked and/or yet undisclosed gravesite in Coleman County, “buried with honours of war.”29 Admittedly hyperbole, but perhaps some Texas Rangers at the Company E headquarters camp were pondering what wording to inscribe on their headstones. They were sick, as were some of the Frontier Battalion boys assigned to Company B. Rampant cases of scurvy were wracking unhealthy havoc. Jumping to, once the medical diagnosis had been made, Dr. Nicholson notified Quartermaster Martin Kenny that when obtainable fruits and vegetables be added to the men’s rations. He had already, on his own hook, made sure Rangers of the aforementioned companies had been immediately issued “extra rations of Potatoes, onions, & fruit.”30 Disease and unhygienic living conditions—though it somewhat depreciates legend—could pose as much danger to Frontier Battalion personnel as any war-whooping raiders from Indian Territory or any big badman from Bitter Creek. Although hired to be fighters in every sense of the word, Rangers were not immune to hygienic misery and/or catastrophic accidents. And despite the opulent draperies of twenty-first-century political correctness, during those tumultuous mid-1870s the Frontier Battalion fellows and folks staking their future all along the western border of Texas settlements theoretically knew they were at

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war. Fortunetellers were not indispensable naysayers for forecasting real-time reality. Whether it was the very same raiders from Indian Territory or not is unclear, but once again warriors struck a Company E Ranger camp. During the night of 19 October 1874, Sergeant Israel and his sixteen-man scout were camped reasonably close to the Wiggins Ranch and not too far from Table Mountain. Conceivably emboldened by previously making a mad dash into an unsuspecting Texas Ranger camp, five Indians “ran in and tryed [sic] to Stampede the horses.” Unfortunately for Private Albert Trotter, a nineteen-yearold from Washington County, Arkansas, his $75 horse was both sidelined and hobbled—for the most part at a standstill. Noting the screeching of the charging warriors, the Rangers assigned to guard the horses were “ready to receive” the enemy. The Indians killed Trotter’s horse using a “Remington Pistol” and managed to pick up “a few needle cartridges” but in the end were forced to “retire rather in a hurry, not wishing Horses at that time.” Saddling up the next morning—though he kept out “Spies”—Sergeant Israel was unable to locate a viable trail worth following and returned to Company E’s headquarters camp with a dispirited Private Albert Trotter presumably riding double behind one of his pals.31 Although admittedly Captain Maltby’s command had somewhat gotten off to a dubious start, “after four months of service, Company E was shaking down into a smoothly working unit.”32 Lieutenant Connell had tendered his resignation during October 1874 and 2nd Lieutenant Best was moved up a notch. Corporal Birch S. Foster, twenty-three, who had clearly and favorably caught the eye of the Texas Rangers’ upper-management team, was at once promoted to backfill behind Officer Best and he figuratively—not literally—pinned on the 2nd Lieutenant’s bars.33 Clearheaded and impartial historical analysis reveals that administrative voices were stringently and conscientiously endeavoring to mold the Ranger outfit—institutionally—into something they and everyday Texans could be proud of, despite the predictable hiccups and ubiquitous potholes on the challenging road to professionalizing.

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The following month found Company E dealing with personnel matters big and small. Privates A.W. Crauson, nineteen, and John W. Parsons, twenty-five, were each discharged by a certificate of disability issued by the battalion’s surgeon. Private Charles H. Dickinson, a twenty-eight-year-old from Iberville Parrish, between Lafayette and Baton Rouge, was cut loose due to the fact he had a widowed mother and a deprived wife with children to care for in Louisiana. Private James Clark Tuggle, a twenty-eight-year-old from Scott County, Illinois, likewise was needed at home to care for his widowed mother and penniless sisters. And, unluckily or not, Private Hiram “Curley” Hatcher would own his dishonorable separation from acts characterized in Special Order No. 28 as “mutinous and insubordinate conduct reported by the Lieutenant commanding the company and approved by the Captain.”34 November would also find Company E Rangers, once again, engaging their targeted enemy. Succinctness of the scarcely edited after-action report preserved in the unit’s Monthly Return is typical, but incisive: On 18 [November] trail of 20 Indians discovered at 3 o’clock A M between camp & Santa ana Mount—going down the Country Lieutenant Best & 16 men Start in pursuit the trail was followed at a brisk gallop for 20 miles the Indians overtaken on the waters of Clear creek in Brown County five miles from Brownwood as it was growing dusk the Indians was charged & 2 of their no. Killed & Scalped others wounded but lost in the darkness & Brush Some 20 Blankets 1 Six Shooting Colts cartridge Pistol 2 Bows & quivers 2 Scalping Knives 1 Mule 1 horse captured Casualties two Men slightly wounded one horse wounded one horse Killed belonging to John Slelean [John Alonzo Shannon] the Scout going into Brownwood for Supplies were met by Capt Maltby who took command of the Scout numbering 23 men & 2 officers. . . .35

Regretfully absoluteness is on vacation, but this may have been the fiery little Indian fight when a twenty-six-year-old farmer from Tennessee, Private Joseph Henry Carter, received his nasty arrow

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wound to the “right hip.” Regardless, Carter was riding as a Company E Texas Ranger at the time, and he did, indeed, suffer such an injury.36 Although Captain Maltby tried—and mightily it seems—to “hotly” trail these Indians for “over 60 miles” he came up short. The fleeing Indians jettisoned their saddles and blankets to lighten their horses’ loads, and in due course the Indians “gained the high country about Post Oak Springs where they Scattered and were lost. . . .”37 For his subsequent written report to battalion headquarters the Company E commander, himself a genuine fighting man, was not shy with heaping praise on his adversaries: Captain Jeff Maltby especially noting that “some of the Indians fought with a courage worthy of a better cause. . . .” and during the ensuing pursuit—seven hours—accredited the warriors with “almost super human exertion” in making their getaway.38 Though decidedly unsuccessful for the above-cited chase, Captain Jeff Maltby would soon see hotly contested action again— up close and personal. That is, if Maltby’s account is credited. Other old-time Company E Rangers, namely Curley Hatcher (subsequent to his boot out of Company E) and William J. Lowrance, each offer readers alternative versions in their later published writings.39 Regardless, the hard bottom-line changes not a whit. Purportedly, and there’s not too much reason for serious doubt—though fog of war stories are often varied and inconsistent—Captain Maltby met his old nemesis from an earlier time: Big Foot, a tenacious Kiowa warrior of no little repute. Captain Maltby and eight Rangers had picked up the circuitous warriors’ trail and followed it westward into the Valley Creek area of the formally surveyed but yet to be officially organized Runnels County. Nearing dark, the unsuspecting Indians were caught off guard and the Rangers did what Rangers characteristically did: Charge! At the sound of the horses’ feet Big Foot and his lieutenant [Jape ?] sprang to their horses, but before Big Foot could mount, Captain Jeff’s six shooter spoke its voice of death and Big Foot’s horse fell dead. Big Foot then turned and aimed his Spencer rifle, but before

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he could pull the trigger Captain Jeff’s pistol spoke again and its leaden messenger of death went to the mark, knocking the hammer off of the Indian’s gun and driving it into his cheek, then glanced down striking him in the jugular vein and breaking his neck. The blood spurted high and Big Foot fell to rise no more.40

Admittedly but hearsay, another Company E Texas Ranger, Caleb W. Grady, picking up his information from Rangers onsite, pushes the story forward. Accordingly, another Texas Ranger, a nineteen-yearold sharpshooter from Burnet County, James Henry Thomas, slides out of his saddle with a hard purpose. At a distance nearing 600 yards, an escaping warrior presented but a small target “silhouetted by the setting sun” yet a bulls-eye sizeable enough for Thomas’s unerring marksmanship. Carefully squinting though his dominant dark eye, the teenaged Ranger touched the trigger and his “bullet struck the Indian on the nose, taking it off as clean as a knife could have cut it, also shattering his rifle, and knocking him over. The Rangers then rushed up [and] captured him.”41 Again, depending on the storyteller, the captured Indian was either killed outright or made a Company E prisoner for a several days, wherein he admitted in the past of slaughtering settlers. In fact, by one account, the openly defiant warrior was wearing an ornate breastplate featuring “eighty-two joints from human fingers and his headdress had eagle feathers interwoven with long strands of human hair.”42 What fate befell the fierce Indian? Simply said, he was murdered. The gruesome tales did not end there, it seems: “They [Rangers] skinned him (as they had some of the other Indians killed at Valley Creek), and one of the men in the company made some beautiful quirts out of the hide, trimmed with ornaments from Indian hair.”43 “My best wishes for you in your laudible [sic] effort to assist the suffering Frontier and when I can be of service to you please let me know,” wrote Coleman County Sheriff John M. Elkins, himself a former Texas Ranger, responding to Major John B. Jones’s request that he enumerate relatively recent Indian depredations in the region.44

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Quite interestingly and mostly unreported is the fact that the rank and file Texas Rangers of Company E were nervous about their overall physical well-being, outside the realm of themselves being skewered with a warrior’s lance or punctured by an arrow or wounded by a wayward desperado. The trained physician among them, thirty-eight-year-old W.H. King, a North Carolinian, gladly enlisted at the entry-level position of Frontier Battalion personnel, drawing pay of a private—$40 per month, paid quarterly. Taking in the handy value of having a professional medical practitioner among them, and zealously wishing to keep him, the Rangers of Company E each voluntarily committed to kick in 80¢ per month to supplement Dr. King’s quarterly pay warrant.45 That said, King was a M.D.—not a tooth-doctor. George Washington Ellington, that strapping six-foot, twentyfour-year-old Company E stalwart was hobnail tough, if due credit is given to his seemingly nonchalant remembrance: About the moment a Ranger vaulted to the forefront, assuming the role of a backcountry dentist. Ellington, a former trail-driving cowboy, remembered and recorded: Due to the outdoor life we followed, we were seldom ill. Remedies resorted to by the men themselves were sometimes extremely crude but effective. I recall the manner in which one of the boys cured the toothache for me. I had been riding all day against a stiff wind and with an aching tooth that had reached a state of intense pain. When I reached camp I was in a mood to try anything for relief. There was nothing with which to pull the tooth, but one of the boys had an awl in his saddle pocket. He said he could heat the awl red hot and kill the nerve. If I hesitated, it was not long. He heat [sic] the awl to the proper degree and thrust it into the cavity of my tooth. It sizzled and burned, but cured the ache.46

Though the medical malady is not diagnostically specific, a Company E Ranger from Tennessee, Corporal Leander Jackson Griffith, thirty-eight, evidently owned more than a curable toothache. Upon certification by the Frontier Battalion’s Surgeon, Griffith

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was officially and honorably discharged from service.47 Perhaps, and there’s no way of knowing for sure, twenty-seven-year-old Private Joshua Polk Onstott didn’t want to have his tooth pulled or didn’t want to fight any screaming Comanche or Kiowa raiders or was simply sick—sick and tired of being a Ranger. Whether the distraught guy was homesick and struck out for his original stomping grounds southeast of Pittsburgh, Washington County, Pennsylvania, or quietly decamped for Wild West parts unknown is elusive, but Captain Maltby marked him a deserter.48 One of the rawhide tough and seasoned Company E noncommissioned officers, twenty-three-year-old Sergeant Andrew Mather, a genuine buckaroo from Williamson County, was no quitter. He was, in fact, perhaps “the greatest rider” many of his fellow Texas Rangers had ever seen, and “a great hand with a rope as well.” Sergeant Mather was tasked with bringing home the bacon—so to speak—but was ordered not to discharge any firearms signaling his or the Rangers’ campground location. Dangerous marauding Indians were in the area. Taking eighteen-year-old William H. “Bill” Dunman, a Llano County lad, and George W. Ellington with him, Sergeant Mather set out for the undulating plains country of what is now Nolan County (county seat Sweetwater), at the time an unpopulated spot utterly teeming with hoofed wild game: buffalo, deer, and antelope. It was, however, an indifferently wandering bear that caught their attention—and perked their real interest—and sparked the real test. Bear meat would be a treat. Quickly catch-ropes were unlimbered. The wild and iffy harebrained chase was on. Mather’s wide-loop tattooed the bruin’s neck, while Dunman’s toss lassoed one of the snarling bear’s hind legs. The bear was stretched fore and aft—breathing but immobilized. Ranger Ellington, thus far missing out on the fun, excepting as an excited voyeur, was fast ordered by Sergeant Mather to step down and step up! He was to close the deal. Private Ellington cut the bear’s throat.49 Andy Mather may have been a whiz with a lariat, but there’s little doubt Captain Jeff Maltby thought he’d been roped and duped by the parsimonious legislative boys at the State House, those tightfisted

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politicos that had woefully underfunded the Frontier Battalion. Now, if he was reading General Order No. 7 correctly, he and not just a few Company E Rangers were—or shortly would be—jobless. Clearly his name was on the list of fellows to be “disbanded.”50 There was hardly any reason to stay on the job and, apparently, he didn’t. Major Jones noted: “The Captain had made the principal reduction on the 12th and left camp for home without orders. I am informed by the Quartermaster Capt. Kenney that he had some five hundred dollars of public funds in his hands for which he has rendered no account.”51 Notwithstanding creditable service to the Texas Rangers, General Order No. 6 had been explicit, not any room for misinterpretation; Lieutenant B.F. Best was to forfeit his job, too! Command of Company E was awarded to Lieutenant Birch S. Foster.52 Although sometimes sidestepped in melodramatic retellings of the Texas Ranger narrative, bad weather was as much of a foe as were any war-whooping Indians or miscreants with a European pedigree. To be effective, man and beast required good health. Unfortunately, as the New Year of 1875 began, many of the Company E horses were incapacitated with common equine afflictions and/or “Bad Colds,” placing the mounts on the “Sick list.”53 Alas, the infirmity was not confined just to Company E. The transient disabilities were running rampant through other Frontier Battalion units as well.54 Texas Rangers were horseman, not infantrymen. Pedestrians had—at this point in time—little hope of closing with an enemy. Major Jones’s recap is enlightening on two fronts. The raiding Indians were in good health and active, and the Frontier Battalion’s horses were not: I have the honor to report that between the 20th of last month [January] and the 6th of this [February] there was five thieving bands of Indians on our frontier. I have official information of this number and rumor of one other. Their depredations extend along the whole line. . . . Three of these parties were pursued and stock which they had stolen recaptured from two of them. Those depredating on Kerr and San Saba counties were not followed but made

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their escape with the horses they had stolen, as there are no troops [Texas Rangers] in or near either of those counties. . . . The Indians have not ceased depredations during this winter, as they have generally done heretofore, several bodies of them having been on our border once or twice each month. . . . On account of the appropriation for frontier defense being almost exhausted and the high price of corn on the frontier we have been compelled to keep our horses on short rations during the winter and near no corn at all during the summer. Consequently they have not been able to do constant Scouting or to give rigorous or long continued pursuit to the Indians committing the late depredations.55

He may or may not have been able to intellectually forecast the manpower shakeup, but the aforementioned Ranger W.H. King, the thirty-eight-year-old physician from North Carolina, had “lately discharged from Company E.” That was not newsy, however. Though details are scant the good doctor King was foully murdered and, according to attorney J.S. Wheeler, the Ranger’s “final Statements & Acts [accounts] were stolen.” On behalf of the executor of the deceased man’s estate, John McMimm, the lawyer was informing and asking Adjutant General Steele to “stop payment” on any monies owed.56 With tongue in cheek it might be mentioned that the battalion hierarchy quite likely didn’t have any “monies” to stop payment on. The Frontier Battalion’s budgetary shortfall was critical. So anemic had the bank account become, Adjutant General Steele messaged the individual company lieutenants with somber news: “By the time this reaches you or Soon after there will be due to your company Six months pay which I have been in hopes that I could get the money to pay with, but it appears now to depend upon the Sale of Bonds in New York which makes it uncertain.” The unpleasant gist of AG Steele’s missive was outspoken. Would Texas Rangers take state issued warrants in lieu of cash, pieces of paper that would be atrociously discounted when redeemed by merchants and/or peddlers and/or hawkers of good times and better whiskey? Keeping

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everything on a purely legal keel, should they so desire, any Ranger could forward a Power of Attorney “to any person in Austin to receive and dispose of the warrants as per their instructions.”57 Laconically admitting there was in fact, “no money in the Treasury to pay the men,” Major Jones feared it was a situation that could not be resolved for “several months” and was advising the rank and file that warrants would fetch but 90¢ on the dollar. If the men were really in need of hard cash there was no other option, or else they might have to wait 60 or 90 or 120 days to pocket their rightful pay.58 The battalion wide proposal was not necessarily well received by many rank and file Rangers. A unit commander dutifully shared his men’s mindset: “in regards to paying the Company with State Warrants, which does not Seem to Suit them on account of loss they would Sustain by exchange.”59 Not just a few Texas Rangers, it may safely be avowed, were entertaining second thoughts. Maybe this adventuresome life wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. Even Texas Rangers make and made mistakes. Two hardcharging Company E privates, the previously mentioned George Henry Gerrish, and J.R. Daniels, bent to a boneheaded stunt that cost them dearly and was, to say the least, cause for intra-company ridicule. On the eighth night of May 1875 the two self-reliant spirits forewent normal protocol and “staked their horses outside the herd and slept by them.” Soundly did they sleep, too soundly it seems. “When next morning their horses were gone, Supposed to be stolen by Indians from sign discovered.”60 Two weeks later, Company E Privates Charles Rush and James Albert Cheatham were on the alert while pulling their turn at guard. Whether it was a “white man” or an “Indian” yet remains a mystery, but someone “endeavored to get a horse out of the herd.” Lieutenant Foster was, it seems, quite proud of his men’s actions; the would-be thief “was fired on. . . . which caused him to Speedily Retire.”61 Someone else was going to have to retire: the Rangers of Company E. There were insufficient funds in the state coffers to sustain Company E through the summer. As of the thirty-first of May the Rangers of Company E would find themselves without

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a job—unless? Lieutenant Foster, if he could pull it off, would be allowed to recruit a company of Rangers conditionally, if they would agree to serve from the first day of June until the last day of August on a promise. They probably would draw pay with the legislative appropriation in September.62 Quite productively Lieutenant Foster made a good sales pitch and by the mustering-in date of 1 June 1875 he could register a fully staffed company: three sergeants, three corporals, and thirty-four privates. Interestingly, although not enumerated on the initial Muster & Pay Roll, one of those Texas Ranger privates, riding a $100 horse, was the dark-eyed and dark-haired twenty-four-year-old John C. Orrick, Jr., a fearless Alabaman with a six-shooter dustup on his back trail and, at the time, carrying the name and history that courthouse clerks would come to best know him by, George Washington “Cap” Arrington. Though none could fathom it then, before all was said and done Arrington would captain a Frontier Battalion era company and bank the title of elected sheriff for two Texas Panhandle counties, Hemphill and Wheeler, southeast of rip-roaring Mobeetie.63 During June and July, the various scouts of the provisional Company E relentlessly scoured the countryside, racking up hard-ridden miles: 1,820 and 1,096 respectively.64 Unfortunately for dyed-in-the-wool fans of blood and thunder there were no battles with Indians or cow stealing villains. Presumably the presence of the Company E Texas Rangers—at least for now—was producing results. As much as the Frontier Battalion’s top-tier command staff wanted to focus on the problems caused by raiding Indians and pale-skinned desperadoes haunting Company E’s assigned territory, Adjutant General Steele was—by real time circumstances—forced to look at the ever-unfolding turmoil in South Texas and the Lower Rio Grande Valley. So much so, in fact, that accompanied by the Honorable Joseph E. Dwyer, the adjutant general made a personal inspection tour of that county generically referred to as the Wild Horse Desert and the Lower Rio Grande Valley communities along the international line. By and large the tourists were not happy with

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their findings. In fact, Adjutant General Steele was highly critical of the lack of protection provided by the U.S. Military’s units stationed in the area. Pointedly his back was up so much, that his report to the state’s Chief Executive was tweaked, a fact mentioned to Major Jones in official correspondence from Adjutant General Steele’s Chief Clerk, Duval Beall: “His comments on affairs along the lower Rio Grande were a severe reflection on the U.S. Army; but the Gov. thought a more polite report advisable, as it has been toned down accordingly.”65 Too many cooks may spoil the broth, and idle hands may be the Devil’s playmates, but for the rank and file boys of Company E a burning rush of adrenalin was—now and then—critical for maintaining their ideas of masculinity and sense of self-worth. Sergeant Jacob Hand, an old salt at fifty-two, pegged his words not politically correct, but the reading of his young subordinates’ recent interlude of inactivity was spot on. He bluntly apprised Major Jones of his psychological assessment: “The horses are in fine fix; the men are hostile and say they must have hair [scalps] this month.”66 At this time there were no Indians about, at least not for the Texas Rangers of Company E to chase, capture, or kill. 67 Conjecturally it may be reasonably supposed that many if not most Indians were on holiday at the Fort Sill Reservation, with varying degrees of relish taking in the busyness of the government sponsored horse sale. Certainly Mr. Loving was there. Horses taken from the Indians were subject to inspection, identification, and return to rightful owners if such could be satisfactorily determined. If not, the highest bidder prevailed. According to Major Jones, Mr. Loving, indeed, “recovered several of his horses and heard of several more which the Indians stole from him in February, March and April.” Additionally, throughout the government sale, Mr. Loving made note of “many horses sold which he recognized as having been stolen” from his section of the country that very same year, 1875.68 With the 1 September 1875 budgetary crisis averted, Lieutenant Foster’s command was up and running again, drawing their $120 quarterly pay warrants—even if they be at up and down fluctuating but always discounted rates.

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Whatever the reason or reasons, Company E’s top-sergeant caught the notice of Major Jones. And, curiously, it was less than favorable. For the recurrent and ongoing reorganizations of the various Ranger companies the battalion commander interjected himself into the complexities of effectual personnel management. The proposal—not an order—to Lieutenant Foster was frank: “I now write to suggest that it would be better for you not to retain your present first Sergeant. I am satisfied that you cannot get a more attentive or zealous man for the place, but for some reason, which I cannot understand, he is exceedingly unpopular not only with the men of the company but with many of the citizens of both Brown and Coleman Counties and I believe it would be better for the company and for the Service to put some less objectionable man in the position.”69 Lieutenant Foster, apparently differentiated between being handed a specific order and taking under advisement a suggestion. First Sergeant Jacob Hand remained on the Muster & Pay Roll of Company E.70 As he had written to Lieutenant Stevens of Company B, Major Jones’s to some extent nervous message to Company E’s Lieutenant Foster was analogous in tone and meaning: “We must, if possible, have something to show for our Fall work or the next Legislature will think there is no longer any necessity for us on the frontier and Stop our pay.”71 Markedly, and maybe somewhat embarrassingly, the Rangers of Company E were coming up short—in the big picture—with finding any Indians—or maybe there were no Indians riding and raiding within their assigned jurisdictional territory. In any event, several diligent scouts led by Lieutenant Foster, Sergeant Israel, and Sergeant Bundy were futile with regards to getting any “scalps.” There was, however, some other work. Four Company E Rangers on detached service escorted a dispirited prisoner to the jail at Stephenville. And another Texas Ranger was sent into Coleman County to assist Sheriff John Barefoot “in making arrests.”72 The following month, October 1875, likewise netted no results with locating or pursuing any wayward Reservation jumping Indians. The Monthly Return

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was repetitively uninspiring: “No Indian sign.”73 Tally-wise the scorecard for Company E Texas Rangers vs. Indians did not change during November but there was a measurable outcome. Due to the dearth of Comanche and/or Kiowa depredations on the upper western frontier, twenty Rangers were “discharged from the Company.”74 Equally depressing for the remaining raring to go Rangers of Company E was December’s tabulation: “No Indian sign.”75 Major John B. Jones was not shy about singing the praises of Lieutenant Foster’s Company E: “This Company ‘E’ is in good condition and doing good service. The people here attribute their escape from Indian depredations for so long a time to the presence and vigilance of the ‘Rangers’ and say that under their protection some families who were driven off by the Indians several years ago are returning while at the same time many more are coming in and this part of the frontier is being settled very rapidly.”76 Initial Roster Frontier Battalion Company E Name:

Age:

Nativity:

Trade/Occupation:

Ainsley, S.M. Allison, William L. Arnett, Albert Henry Arnett, Lon Best, B.F. Blackwell, W.C. Brannan, Vince I. Brennen, James Brown, William Henry Bumgardner, William Mitchell Burr, B.F. Carter, Joseph Henry Cheatham, James Albert Cheatham, Manoh Richard

21 23 18 36 27 20 22 40 20 18 26 26 25 22

GA NC TX TX VA TN TX Canada TX AR MI TN KY KY

Farmer Farmer Farmer Farmer Farmer Farmer Farmer Carpenter Farmer Farmer Farmer Farmer Farmer Farmer Continued

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Name:

Age:

Nativity:

Trade/Occupation:

Clark, Thomas W. Clift, W.H. Cole, W.F. Combs, L. Connell, James G. Cooper, Charles H. Crawson, A.W. Davis, L. R. Davis, W.A. Dickenson, Charles H. Dunman, William H. Earle, John H. Ellington, George Washington Elliott, Memphis W. Foster, Birch S. Gerrish, George Henry Griffith, Leander Jackson Hampton, W.B. Hand, Jacob Hatcher, Hiram Heath, Joseph J. Henderson, Joseph Henry, Samuel A. Hudson, J.C. Hunt, Joseph Israel, M.T. Johnson, Beverly F Jones, William Bales Joy, A. King, Joe King, W.H. Lacasse, Frank Lowrance, William J.

19 23 27 24 28 24 19 20 23 28 18 28 24 21 23 27 38 29 52 28 21 33 28 39 19 25 22 37 22 27 38 28 23

TX KY NY IL TX NY MI WV TX LA TX SC KY TX KY Canada TN GA Canada PA TX NY TX IL TN IN MO NC TX AZ NC Canada IL

Farmer Farmer Mason Farmer Farmer Farmer Farmer Painter Farmer Civil Engineer Farmer Farmer Farmer Farmer Farmer Engineer Farmer Farmer Farmer Farmer Farmer Farmer Farmer Surveyor Farmer Farmer Farmer Farmer Farmer Nurse (?) M.D. Farmer Farmer Continued

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245

Name:

Age:

Nativity:

Trade/Occupation:

Maltby, William Jeff Mather, Andrew McKinney, Alex McWhorter, John Sutton Moore, George K. Moore, J.J. Moreland, Julius Constantine Moreland, M.S. Nelson, Frank W. Onstott, Joshua Polk Parsons, John W. Paulk, J.K. Perry, William Rivers, John Rush, C. Sackett, Henry Scott, Samuel Seay, Edward Sanders Shannon, John Alonzo St. Clear, John Thomas, James H. Thompson, Mike W. Thorpe, John W. Trotter, Albert Tuggle, James Clark Wheeler, Joel S. White, Perry Alexander Williams, W.S. Williamson, Lorenzo Elmor Willmore, Thaddeus N. Young, R.R.

46 23 23 29 27 24 23 17 27 27 25 24 25 19 30 23 26 25 25 30 19 19 24 19 27 24 19 41 24 24 24

IL TX SC IL AL NC TN TN VA PA SC AL Canada New York Ohio England IN AL MS AR TX TX TX AR IL GA AL NC KY TX VA

Farmer Farmer Farmer Farmer Druggist Farmer Farmer Farmer Farmer Miner Farmer Farmer Farmer Farmer Farmer Farmer Farmer Farmer Farmer Farmer Farmer Farmer Farmer Farmer Farmer Attorney Farmer Farmer Farmer Farmer Farmer

10 

Company F, Frontier Battalion Muster Roll Oldest Youngest Native Texan Other States Foreign Born

80 enlistees 50 years 17 years 34 percent 51 percent 15 percent

Initial geographical posting for Company F as dictated by the Frontier Battalion’s front office at Austin was specific: “Capt. Coldwell—in Bandera Co. and patrol North to Kimble Co. and South West to Nueces River. P.O. Bandera.”1

the first appointed commander of company f would be Captain Cornelius Vernon “Neal” Coldwell, thirty years of age, a proven soldier with Civil War service in the 32nd Texas Cavalry and battle tested. The medium-framed Captain Neal Coldwell had been born in Dade County, Missouri, northwest of Springfield, on the second day of May 1844. Some twenty-nine years later, subsequent to the war and just prior to his being named to command the Frontier Battalion’s Company F, he married Miss Emily Caroline Martin, a twenty-three-year-old beauty; the nuptials taking place during a November ceremony at San Marcos in Hays County, just northeast of the Alamo City. The light complected, brown-eyed Captain Coldwell began recruiting for the company, ostensibly working from his home base near Center Point, (Kerr County), a setting delightfully located in the picturesque Texas Hill Country where he farmed and ranched.2 246

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Captain Coldwell’s second-in-command would be Pat Dolan, a rather short-statured black-eyed and black-haired Irishman, but a fellow with demonstrated law enforcing experience in his résumé, having pulled time as the elected sheriff of Uvalde County.3 The Company F officer corps was rounded out with the selection of the 2nd Lieutenant, Franklin H. Nelson, a physician from Mississippi— Yazoo County to be precise.4 Of the two Company F junior officers, with regards to leading men and staying hitched when things turned bad, it would be Lieutenant Dolan who could and would earn high praise from hard-edged and hard-riding law enforcing associates: He was legit!5 As with Company D, the percentage of foreign-born Texas Rangers in Company F was rather striking. There were, aside from the aforementioned Lieutenant Dolan, others from Ireland, and Texas Rangers with birthplaces in England, Mexico, Canada, Scotland, France, and Switzerland. Too, like the other five companies of the Frontier Battalion, occupationally Company F was reasonably diverse, notwithstanding the unit’s upper-tier command staff: William Kenner Jones was an attorney; the brothers C.P and J.M Clarke, twenty-one and twenty-six, were Printers; C.H. Colton was a Carpenter, as were Charles McCrey and John B. Michan; Daniel Lucid was a Stonemason; Francis J. “Ed” McCarthy owned journeyman skill as a Plasterer; Charles Mitchell was a Machinist; Charles Nebo was a Knight of the Ribbons, a Stagecoach Driver; Mathes Offer was a Saddler; William Joy made his living as a Trapper; Richard J. Jones and W.W. King, a Bugler, each asserting prior service as Soldiers; William Gadsby Costen and John W. Brown were former Texas Rangers; and Louis Sanchez identified himself as a Shepherd. Naturally, there was the predominate mix of agriculturists—farmers and stockmen.6 And ensuring that those fellows were properly equipped for battle, Major Jones placed an order of delivery for an additional “twenty-five improved Colt’s revolvers and twenty-five hundred cartridges, for the same” to be shipped to Captain Coldwell for Company F issue.7 That Captain Neal Coldwell aggressively—that first month— put scouts in the field hunting for sign of prowling Indians is

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extant. Lieutenant Pat Dolan, leading twenty-two Texas Rangers and appropriate rations and gear, departed the Company F headquarters camp for a proposed twenty-day scout to the West Nueces. Sergeant Francis M. “Frank” Moore, thirty-eight and later a Frontier Battalion company commander, headed a dozen-man detail scouting the Llano River and Paint Rock Creek areas. Lieutenant Franklin Nelson and a small complement of Rangers scouted the Lower Llano, while Sergeant Stephen Goldsby McElroy, a twenty-eight-year-old Kerr County farmer, led his twelve-man detachment into the field searching for any targets of opportunity.8 Their efforts were a bust, no Indians to be found. Perhaps somewhat thoroughly disturbed at Company F’s failure to put a score on the board, Captain Coldwell personally took to the field leading scouts, but unfortunately was only able to report that he had “recaptured one Brown mare dropped on the trail by the Indians.”9 Unfazed by the company’s lack of bringing any Indians to bay, Major Jones, nevertheless, was overall content with the Company F commander, telling the adjutant general that Captain Coldwell was “zealous and active in the discharge of his duties and manifest a commendable disposition and determination to control and discipline his company.”10 However, not everyone in Company F owned such praiseworthy temperament it seems. During the scorching days of August 1874 tempers flared within the Company F headquarters camp situated along the Frio River. In the absence of Captain Coldwell who was leading a scout, as was 1st Lieutenant Pat Dolan, supervision of those Rangers yet in camp fell to 2nd Lieutenant Franklin Nelson, thirty-five, evidently a naive guy somewhat shy of good interpersonal skill sets. And, admittedly, then as now, supervising a workforce where all employees carry pistols is not necessarily an easy job. Nevertheless, Nelson was a lieutenant: A leader of men it was presumed. At any rate, either nicely or nastily, he ordered nineteen-year-old Jasper N. Corn, a native Texas boy and an independently minded cowboy type on top of that, to fetch a bucket of water for the men on duty tending the campfire. For whatever reason—good or bad—Private Corn demurred, and he

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hot-peppered his verbal response to the stunned lieutenant, saying that he sure-enough did not have to obey “such dam officers giving such dam shitten orders.” Furthermore, as if that wasn’t sufficient defiance, he mounted his horse, following the rattled Lieutenant Nelson to his quarters, and “with his pistol and carbine threatening and defying me [him] or any other officer than the Capt. to arrest and make [him] remain within the bounds of his own Camp or tent.” Neither man was a happy camper. Nelson sought Corn’s discharge.11 The personnel hubbub was cut and dried—or was it? Upon his return to the Company F headquarters campground Captain Coldwell learned of Corn’s insubordination and rightfully felt duty bound to update Major Jones, but not necessarily as Lieutenant Nelson would have guessed: “I regret to Say, that Lieut. Nelson does not get-along very well with the Company. He Knows nothing of Frontier Service, or ‘wood craft.’ He has trouble on every Scout that he goes or whenever he falls to Command of the Company with Some man or other. Corn has made a good Soldier and I am very Sorry that circumstance force me to ford [forward] an application for his discharge. I was absent on a Scout. If he [Corn] had been with me, I would have had no trouble with him.”12 Lieutenant Nelson’s mindset and, maybe narcissism, figuratively bleeds onto the pages of his request to Major Jones: He was pretentiously hustling for a staff position with the Frontier Battalion’s upper echelons.13 For a real hardcore lawman his reasoning would fall flat: “not wishing to remain longer in a company where we do not have strict Military discipline as the law affords. . . . I do not think my life is safe with a faction of our company. I deem it best to remain here at Boerne till I hear from you.”14 Needless to say Major Jones was not a happy camper either, nor a dithering administrator. Adjutant General Steele was, of course, entitled a posting about the odds of another six-shooting settlement in a Frontier Battalion camp. Major Jones reported: I did not investigate Lt. Nelson carefully as he was not present and has not been with his company for more than a month. I received a letter from him asking to be transferred to another company

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on the grounds that he feared to remain with that company as he believed his life would be taken by some of the men. Of course I could not recommend this and wrote to him that he must either return to duty with his company or resign. I am constrained to the belief, from what I could learn, that he is not a suitable man for the position. It seems that he has never had command of any of the men but that he has some personal quarrel or difficulty with them, and yet the Captain and first Lieut have no trouble in controlling them, and to me they seemed to be as quiet and orderly a set of men as I have found in any company.15

There was then little choice for two men. With the purpose of shaping the Frontier Battalion into a well-oiled apparatus of state government—or trying to—Major Jones could ill-afford to have subordinate Texas Rangers blatantly defy their supervisors—the battalion was, after all, based on a military model with a clear chainof-command. In Major Jones’s mind, although it pained him, he discharged Private Jasper Corn. The difficult decision for Lieutenant Nelson, likewise, was distressing: He could voluntarily quit or gamble gunshots might end his tenure as a paid Ranger. Lieutenant Nelson tendered his resignation.16 On that same day, 8 September 1874, two other Company F Texas Rangers were dropped from the payroll and both could rightly blame spider-minded equines for their misfortunes. While on a scout, thirty-five year old Louis Sanchez, a Mexico-born Texas Ranger, lost his horse during a stampede and had been “unable to find him since and he cannot remount himself without great loss of time to the State.”17 Private Charles McCrey, a thirty-five-year-old carpenter from Scotland, who was making a “good soldier,” suffered a spill when his horse fell with him. Subsequent to a physical examination the doctor determined that Ranger McCrey was “badly ruptured” and not surprisingly was “unable to do frontier duty.”18 Though capable of frontier duty, the extremes and excesses of Captain Warren Wallace’s company of Frontier Men operating in and around Nueces County and along the Rio Grande frontier was hardly

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acceptable to bureaucratic bigwigs at Austin, despite what detractors aver. Relatively speaking, the shortness of their usefulness—aside from political embarrassment—may be drawn from the quickness of their mustering out of service date, 29 September 1874.19 Yes, their three-month deployment had come to an end, yet two salient outcomes remain crystal clear: The Texas/Mexico borderlands—South Texas borderlands—were without state sponsored troops and that deficit would soon impact the Texas Rangers of Company F. The Frontier Battalion, during those initial days as previously mentioned, was based on a military model, not the emblematic platform of civil bureaucracy. Aside from legalese actually put forth by lawmakers in the enabling legislation, such disclosures are effortlessly typified by examining how Ranger management at the time dealt with an infrequent, yet reoccurring snag: Desertion. Shortly after the administrative tumult with Lieutenant Franklin Nelson, Major Jones was forced to deal with the intolerable absconding of a twenty-year-old Texas Ranger from West Virginia, L.R. Davis.20 Aside from formally marking the fellow a deserter in official correspondence, Major Jones had to place advertisements in area newspapers warning theretofore uninformed folks to be wary of the possibility of being financially hoodwinked. An extract is illustrative: “They have certificates of pay due them for the quarter. . . . The public is hereby warned against buying said certificate or vouchers, as by law a deserter’s pay is forfeited to the State and the Department at Austin has been notified of their desertion.”21 Subsequent to “one insertion” in more than one newspaper, the particular publishers were authoritatively apprised where to send their respective invoices for prompt payment.22 And, though it somewhat depreciates a mythical stereotyping, other Rangers would find the grass greener, the pasture over the hill more inviting, such as Company F’s twenty-one year old C.P. Clarke of San Antonio.23 Too, the assorted Frontier Battalion’s company captains were receiving their marching orders, a clear-cut signal that this generation of Rangers were morphing into the role of traditional Texas peace officers and ever so gradually were shedding duties associated

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with search and destroy missions tactically aimed at hostile Indians. Little by little they were becoming soldiers no more. Major John B. Jones, bending to reality, wrote: “Having in my possession Capiases for the arrest of the following named parties, the officers of this command will act in regard to said parties, as directed by Gen. Orders No. 2 from these Headquarters, concerning certain parties named therein, viz:” David Glenn

Hill Co.

Theft of a Steer

John Hardin

Hill Co.

Murder

Ben Davis

Hill Co.

Assault With Intent to Murder

Houston Stone

HillCo.

Unlawful Marking & Branding

Joe McKinney

Hill Co.

Theft of Gelding

S.W. McKer

Hill Co.

Murder

Wesley Harris

Caldwell Co.

Theft of a Steer

John Whittington

Caldwell Co.

Theft of a Horse

Coley Moore

Caldwell Co.

Theft From a House

John Biggs

Caldwell Co.

Theft of a Cow

John Hensley

Titus Co.

Assault With Intent to Kill

R.C. Reed

Titus Co.

Murder

Jim Simmons

Anderson Co.

Murder

Irvin Lacy

Anderson Co.

Murder

Press Bailey

Tarrant Co.

Murder

Burton Ordell

Kerr Co.

Murder

M.H. Galbreth

Bosque Co.

Rape24

Carefully handling one’s firearms is a critical element in discharging duties of a lawman. Unfortunately, an unnamed Company F Texas Ranger messed up. While on a scout to the head of the Devils River the inattentive fellow “accidently shot himself through the hand,” cutting short his participation in the outing and forcing his embarrassing return to camp.25 Negligence aside, the law enforcing business for most of the 1874 Rangers was new and perplexing.

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Alfred Warren Pendergrass, eighteen, one of Company F’s noncoms, would be stumped. Lieutenant Dolan had detailed him and five Rangers to locate and apprehend the two Welch boys, alleged horse thieves. Corporal Pendergrass, not surprisingly, was a novice with the ins and outs of serving arrest warrants. Quite proficiently the Rangers found their men, inside the home of E.S. Gillcrease at the upper settlements “on the main prong of [the] Nueces.” It turned sour. Mr. Gillcrease was bad-tempered that day and “threatened to Shoot the first man that entered his yard.” Dispelling any silly notion that Texas Rangers were for ever and a day trigger-happy is revealed by the next move of A.W. Pendergrass, as clarified by the Company F commander: “The Corporal had no instructions from Lt. Dolan in regard to making the arrest by force and did not feel authorized to fire into the house and withdrew without arresting any of the parties. Upon his return to camp he reported to me that the Welch boys (the thieves) had resisted, and that Gillcrease had aided them in resisting the arrest by force of arms.” Interpreting it as nothing less than his sworn duty Captain Neal Coldwell filed a Complaint and received an arrest warrant for Gillcrease, forthrightly handing the work off to Lieutenant Pat Dolan who did, in fact, make a prisoner out of a thoroughly implacable and damn mad fellow. Perhaps somewhat surprisingly to Captain Coldwell, at the defendant’s Preliminary Hearing the judge determined that there was insufficient Probable Cause to further prosecute the criminal case. Mr. Gillcrease was free to go! And he went: Straightaway to a red-mouthed lawyer, who in turned filed a civil suit claiming $5000 in monetary damages against Captain Coldwell for False Imprisonment. The civil action would spew and sputter until it was eventually withdrawn, but by then the inconvenience and worry caused Captain Coldwell may have well been worth it to Mr. Gillcrease.26 Though it took a few days—sixty or so—to work out the finer points, twenty-five-year-old William Kenner Jones, an attorney and son of the prominent Judge William E. Jones, was elevated from his position as one of the Company F Sergeants (his brother Pinckney

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“Pink” Jones was also a Company F noncom) to the rank of 2nd lieutenant, replacing the now ex-Company F Texas Ranger, the running scared—or at least worried—Franklin Nelson.27 And in a certain sense, if reading between the lines is permissible, someone else was running scared: Governor Coke. Knowing that Major Jones was visiting with Captain Coldwell at the Company F headquarters camp, Adjutant General Steele made double sure his message was not ignored or misunderstood: “Commissioners have gone to Mexico with a deputation of Kickapoo from Kansas to try to get the Kickapoo of Mexico to return with them. If they succeed orders must be give to prevent any interference on the part of the Rangers.”28 By this stage, toptier management of the Frontier Battalion had learned, while the Rangers were only successful part of the time, they were—when push came to shove—fulltime fighters. Highlighting the fact that institutionally the Rangers—despite a few stumbles—were on the right path in the eyes of many Texans is extractable. The Austin Daily Democratic Statesman extolled the positive impact the Lone Star State’s citizens were finding with Frontier Battalion warriors: “The privates have shown a chivalric bravery worthy of all praise. Whenever the enemy was announced, they were in the saddle ready for the fray; and when the word to move ‘forward’ was heard, those brave riders proved, by their deeds, that they realized the situation and the responsibilities which rested upon them.”29 For the next several months of 1874, though they would try admirably, with many grueling days in the saddle and many nights under a canopy of stars, the Rangers of Company F were locked out of interdicting any Indian forays into settlements within their jurisdictional sphere. Interesting indeed, regarding the time Texas Rangers spent forking a saddle during the Frontier Battalion’s first six months, is Major Jones’s company-by-company tabulation of miles actually traveled horseback. Here are the battalion’s 1874 month-by-month aggregate, not the individual company breakdowns the major was enumerating:

Frontier Battalion, Company F

June July August September October November Total

255

3,328 miles 4,658 miles 3,947 miles 2,795 miles 4,191 miles 3,485 miles 22,384 miles30

In posting the Frontier Battalion front office about the first six months’ activities, Major Jones further reported the Rangers had engaged Indians on fourteen separate occasions, killing fifteen, wounding ten, and capturing one. Furthermore, he noted, his men had, besides killing two outlaws (Alec Barekman and Ham Anderson), recovered 200 head of stolen cattle and 73 filched horses. And that wasn’t all. Though hardly realizing it at the time, Major Jones’s declaration that his Rangers had arrested forty-four “desperadoes and fugitives,” making sure they had been turned over to the proper civil authorities according to law and preserved the peace on fourteen separate occasions, were—and would be—precursors to the outfit’s enduring legend and legacy.31 Company F’s achievement at riding down and destroying marauding Indians, for the most part measuring nil, had to do more with a temporary lull in the hostile warriors’ sorties, than any lackluster performance of the Company F Texas Rangers. Such did not go unnoticed at Austin. Trouble was brewing elsewhere, and if the Company F boys weren’t garnering too much success in the picturesque Texas Hill Country, perhaps a change of scenery would lift their spirits and better serve the taxpaying citizens of the Lone Star State. At any rate, Adjutant General Steele thought so. The high command at Austin had something in store for Captain Coldwell and the Rangers of Company F when General Order No. 8 issued calling for a wholesale revamping of the battalion. Unlike the other elements, Neal Coldwell held on to the Company F’s captaincy, and was afforded one lieutenant, three sergeants, three corporals, and thirty-seven privates, a dozen more privates than the other

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five companies of the Frontier Battalion were permitted.32 Though he was an experienced Texas lawman, Company F’s 1st Lieutenant Pat Dolan was temporarily axed and that vacancy was filled by 2nd Lieutenant William K. Jones, now acting as the outfit’s second in command.33 At busy Austin, legislative hallways and executive offices were abuzz. Big doings were astir! The written orders to Captain Neal Coldwell were concise: You will proceed with the least possible delay to Concepcion, Duval County to which point instructions will be sent you.34

Though in 1874 the county had not been organized and technically was not a border county defined by a boundary-line adjacent to the Rio Grande, Duval County was at the crossroads of international commerce.35 Human traffic and merchandise on the Corpus Christi/ Laredo Road, as rudimentary as it might have been, traversed Duval County. Freight wagons and horseback travelers on a North/ South course toward the Lower Rio Grande Valley moving inland from the costal marshes left civilization behind at Banquete, a tiny Hispanic settlement about twenty miles due east of Corpus Christi. Purportedly—and it’s believable—Banquete was the “jumping-off place into the lower Nueces country. . . . it was pretty well known as the sheriff’s deadline. Men on the dodge figured if they made Banquette [sic] they could make the Rio Grande without too much trouble from the law.”36 And, that said, from a law-enforcing outlook it was indisputably “a wild and lawless land.”37 Though usually downplayed or wholly ignored in many Old West treatments, it’s germane to mention here that from time to time in Texas history trafficking in stolen hides was a humdinger of a business for criminally disposed folks.38 For the location and time it has been penetratingly and truthfully penned: “The killing and skinning of cattle was called hide-peeling, and in the 1870s this was one of the quickest means of converting cows into cash.”39 With hides desperately needed for both American and European shoe markets, Brownsville in Cameron County and Matamoros,

Frontier Battalion, Company F

257

State of Tamaulipas, Mexico, became clearinghouses for thousands of “wet and dry hides” destined for shipment to New York or across the Atlantic Ocean.40 According to at least one report clandestine hide-peelers resorted to near “unspeakable cruelty,” making use of the media luna, “a scythe-like knife in the shape of a half-moon mounted on a long shaft and handled from horseback to hamstring cattle. The knocked-down animals were sometimes skinned while still alive.”41 And, not at all surprisingly for a veritable entrepreneurial spirit, Juan Nepomucino Cortina “became centrally involved in shipping the rustled cattle or their hides” from the breezy northeastern Mexican seaport of Bagdad across the Gulf of Mexico to Havana.42 Quite graphically—and correctly or not—an editor for the San Antonio Daily Express estimated that for one year, 800,000 cow hides had been exported from Texas, and of that number “at least 500,000 of those were the product of hide rustling.” An estimate in a competing newssheet, San Antonio’s Daily Herald, opted for a lesser total, but even their math was a showstopper.43 In the vicinity of Laredo and north of the Rio Grande, Lieutenant Refugio Benavides, one of nearly 400 Texas Rangers with “Spanish surnames,” capably commanded the Webb County Frontier Men.44 Lieutenant Benavides reported that he had discovered “plain fresh trails of large droves of cattle having recently been stolen and carried off into Mexico. . . . I found several lots of dry and fresh hides in possession of irresponsible men or without the authority of the legitimate owners of the same.”45 Just the year before, Captain Neal Coldwell had received orders to redeploy Company F Texas Rangers to Concepcion, where a super rogue and well-known Mexican bandit, Alberto Garza, aka Caballo Blanco (“White Horse”), “had set up shop in Duval County.”46 There he unapologetically and unafraid expanded the reach of his heinous business, trading in stolen livestock and cow hides—big time! Though readily acknowledging that many South Texas cattle were growing thin due to a severe drought and were purposefully shot for their hides, any mawkish softening of Garza’s nasty characterization would be flawed. He was, in fact, one of the “outlaw flayers.”

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TEXAS RANGERS

Purportedly he had publicly decried and defended man-killings north of the Rio Grande: “Texans are worth nothing as far as I’m concerned. . . .”47 Even prior to his company of the Nueces and Rio Grande Frontier Men being disbanded, Captain Warren Wallace frustratingly noted his lack of success with hauling in the borderland brigand—or planting him deep below the cactus: “I have been trying my utmost to capture Alberta Garza. I have succeeded in getting three of his party. One I sent to Corpus Christi to be confined in the Jail. The other two were killed in endeavoring to escape the guard.”48 Consistently then, at least according to one account, Alberto Garza “was known to have left three hundred carcasses at one location, skinned two hundred cattle in another spot, and taken seventy-five hides from yet another herd they shot.”49 At any rate, by any man’s measure, illicitly slaughtering another person’s four-legged assets, be the cow creatures but skin and bones or rolling in fat is criminal conduct. Purportedly, the ever scheming Alberto Garza had messaged the citizens of San Diego (the future county seat) that should they really want a piece of him, well, they had just better “bring enough money to buy the stolen hides or enough men to skin the hide peelers.”50 Another threatening and braggadocios Mexican hide-peeler, one based south of the Río Bravo at Matamoros, spitefully chimed in: “Shoot the first gringo who comes over here and tries to look at a hide.”51 Tough talk is sweet music to a bona fide lawman’s ear, an alluring symphony to a whole company of frontier-era Rangers. The Company F headquarters camp was forthwith established along the banks of Macho Creek, east of Realitos and on the outskirts of Concepcion, a hardly populated hamlet of quietly disposed citizens, mostly of Mexican ancestry.52 Despite the intermittent noise of deceptiveness on the part of some twenty and twenty-first-century Texas Ranger armchair critics, exceptionally enlightening, indeed, are Adjutant General William Steele’s thoughtful and explicit no-nonsense orders to Captain Neal Coldwell regarding Company F’s deployment to brushy and sultry South Texas:

Frontier Battalion, Company F

259

You have been sent to your present Station for the purpose of protecting the Citizens of Duval and the adjoining Counties, from the ravages of bands of desperadoes which are reported coming from the other side of the Rio Grande to plunder and [harm ?] the people of this State. Also to aid the civil authorities in making arrests when more force is required than is at the disposal of those officers, whose duty it is to execute process. You will immediately put yourself in communication with those Civil Officers within the range of your operations for that purpose. The duties that will dissolve upon your Company will require much discretion & patience for whilst there is reported large numbers of robbers from Mexico there is a large population Speaking the Mexican language, and others following legitimate business who must not be confounded with the bandits from Mexico but who are to have the shield of lawful protection held over them. You will carefully avoid any infringement of law in making arrests, and leave all punishment to the Courts: bearing in mind that the present administration proposes to support lawfulness only by lawful means. These instructions will not apply to armed bands which may come from Mexico. Such bands when the fact is well ascertained that they have that character will be treated as Indians or outlaws making war upon the State and attacked and destroyed or made prisoners. I send you a Copy of the Governor’s proclamation on the subject of Crime and the duties of officers which will be a valuable aid in understanding your duties. Without special instructions you will confine your operations to the limits of the State.53

Two days before striking out, unfinished business was on Company F’s agenda, the discharges of a Kentucky-bred stockman, Corporal James Sellers, twenty-two, and an old-timer, fifty-year-old Corporal Bosman Clifton Kent. The former was let go for seemingly compassionate reasons, “important business,” at home. The latter discharge was for a blurry act or acts of “mutinous and insubordinate conduct.”54 The merry-go-round of Frontier Battalion personnel was unending; the winnowing unflagging and often unpleasant.

260

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Professionalizing the Texas Ranger service was inching forward: Slowly at times, but on the Grand Scale, forward nevertheless. Captain Neal Coldwell began his southbound trip on the third day of December 1874, clearly aware he wouldn’t be home with his family during the upcoming holiday season. Departing with twenty days’ rations and “funds to subsist and forage his command until the middle of February,” Company F began their time-consuming redeployment journey, via San Antonio, Oakville (in Live Oak County) and San Diego (in Duval County), with problematical Concepcion at the end of the line.55 Temporarily! Subsequent to scouting for trouble during the opening month of 1875 it became patently clear that, candidly, Company F was at the time stationed too far from its “proper field of operations.” Though a horse thief had been delivered to authorities at Corpus Christi such work hardly seemed to warrant the positioning of a full strength Texas Ranger company. The bona fide scene of action—was there to be any—would be in the Lower Rio Grande Valley. In fact, according to at least one report, Hidalgo County (county seat Edinburg) was a hotbed of cross-border mischief. Lieutenant Jones, picking up on rumors and hearsay or hard fact, informed battalion headquarters that the citizens of that county had “organized for protection against the Mexican cattle thieves.” And, if his criminal intelligence was valid and not speciously puffed, the vigilantes had already hanged four of the bandits—or alleged bandits.56 The Company F lieutenant, too, had been in receipt of information that “a party of armed Mexicans numbering fifteen or twenty had crossed the Rio Grande in Zapata County and were riding north intent on robbing a general store at Carrizo (now Zapata), an establishment owned and operated by one Dr. Lovell. Somehow, according to Lieutenant Jones’s findings, the Mexican yahoos became convinced that “successful resistance” might be made, and they altered their plan of criminality and although “followed by a party of citizens” they had made good their escape and re-crossed the Río Bravo.57 And not surprisingly at this point in the ongoing saga of contractual muddle, the South Texas vendors, too, were negligent in regards

Frontier Battalion, Company F

261

to timely honoring their obligation to supply corn for the Company F riding stock and pack mules. The upshot was not unpredictable, causing the animals “to fall off in flesh perceptibly.”58 Not unwisely, once again, Company F would be on the move, relocating further south and nearer the troublesome international line. Captain Coldwell, as result of several horseback scouts throughout the area and subsequent to interviewing citizens and trying to cultivate informants, determined that by and large the “Mexican thieves” were confining their activities to Mexico’s northern border region and on the Texas side to “a belt of timbered country running parallel with the Rio Grande. . . . the outer edge of which ranges from fifty to Sixty miles from the River,” notably between Escobares in Starr County on the west, and the head of Arroyo Colorado in Cameron County on the east. Captain Coldwell’s plan of action was to station his headquarters in the vicinity of Santa Anita, picking up Company F mail at Rio Grande City in Starr County. He would then be tactically and centrally located “on the line of operation of the thieves.”59 Correspondingly, he was then compelled to address that ever niggling nightmare of Frontier Battalion commanders, providing the basics for men and animals. In this instance Captain Coldwell made a deal with a contractor at Concepcion and had “employed two teams besides our own.”60 While the men of Company F were working their way toward the Lower Rio Grande Valley, Major Jones was industriously trying to keep up with news about “thieving bands of Indians” raiding along the western frontier’s line and how best he could make a silk purse out of sow’s ear regarding the legislature’s abysmal funding measures; one action, due to the high price of corn, was to put the Frontier Battalion’s horses on “short rations.” Particularly for the Company F Rangers, real-time edification was a fact; in their absence Indians had raided into Kerr County, their home territory and late theater of operations.61 Regrettably, during Company F’s southbound trip, nineteenyear-old G.W. Champion came down horribly sick, and Captain Coldwell determined to lay the native Texan, a Fannin County boy,

262

TEXAS RANGERS

over at San Diego for bed rest and recuperation. Undeniably, there was not then anything in the makeup of Texas Rangers’ psyche allowing for sick call to repress momentum. Company F took up its new station on 22 February 1875.62 Captain Coldwell was not awestruck with his new base of operations. Romanticized notions of Texas Ranger camp life are fine from afar. One of the very first dilemmas facing the captain was the want of potable water for man and beast. Not whining and, in fact, tackling the problem, the Company F captain acquainted the Ranger front office with the fun—the bliss he was enduring: “The water in this part of the Country is very bad—we are using pond water at present. I have Sent after Some tools with which I expect to Sink a well.” Too, his predicament of misfortune was exacerbated by the less than timely delivery of rations and forage, a problem he laid off to the “exceeding Slowness of these Mexican freighters.”63 The checked timelessness of paying the men of Company F could not be laid off to anyone’s slowness, excepting bureaucracy’s ineptitude. Regrettably, but commendably it seems, Captain Coldwell was forced to dip into his personal funds: “The men of the company are in good Spirits, but are much in need of a little money to buy tobacco and a little clothing. I bought a box of Tobacco at Concepcion and issued it and charged it to them.”64 And who was not moving slow during this narrowly focused timeframe were other Mexicans. Ostensibly—at least according to most contemporary intelligence—encouraged and underwritten by Juan Cortina, Mexican bandits were racing to attack the aforementioned Nuecestown and wreak multicultural and murderous havoc throughout the wild and windswept neighborhood of South Texas. Though sometimes overlooked in the retellings, Captain Coldwell, subsequent to General Hatch’s discontinuing of one routine U.S. Army patrol, had put the Texas Rangers front office on notice, prior to the bloody Nueces County happenings: For the past week there has been considerable excitement though this part of the country on account of an organization of an armed

Frontier Battalion, Company F

263

force of between Two or Three Hundred men on the Mexican Side of the river. With what intention no one Knows—I have had Small parties in on the River with the object of learning of any movement that they might make to this Side. As yet nothing has been developed in regards to their intention.65

Had Captain Coldwell and/or the U.S. Military and/or the Texas Ranger hierarchy misread and underestimated the buildup of Mexicans raiders south of the Río Bravo and their nefarious intentions to plunder Corpus Christi and its hinterlands? The degree of actual credibility Major Jones was attaching to reports of “mischief done on the Rio Grande” was, in his own mind, perhaps, fairly negligible and overblown. Much of that jangle he traced to subsurface motives: “Have been satisfied that many of these reports were made by designing demagogues with a view to courting patronage for political purposes.”66 Unquestionably, had he known on the very same day he penned those opinionated words that Mexican raiders had killed and robbed and burned Thomas J. Noakes’s store and Post Office to the ground he might have rethought and reworded. The senseless murders and mayhem were real. Unintended consequences of the South Texas raid at Nuecestown—and below—would play well into the hands of Austin’s officialdom and soon into Company F’s demonstrable and fascinating narrative. From the get-go law enforcing was the game on Company F’s calendar, not chasing Indians. Barely arriving at their new campsite, Lieutenant Jones and a small squadron of Rangers pursued an alleged thief, one who had stolen a “gun and Pistol.” The owlhoot was fast making tracks for crossing the Rio Grande and securing sanctuary—if he could but win the race with pursuing Rangers. He didn’t! Lieutenant Jones turned the suspect over to the sheriff at Hidalgo County, Alexander J. Lea.67 Shortly thereafter, working with a deputy from Hidalgo County, Company F Texas Rangers led by Corporal Charles Nebo, the twenty-five-year-old Canadian, hunted hard in an effort to seize “some hides” but came up short in locating the contraband.68

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Captain Coldwell heretofore had been living and serving an Anglo community, but now the face of ethnicity had changed—he and his Company F Rangers were minority players in the broad sweep of the Lower Rio Grande Valley. Whether it irked him or not might stand argument, but clearly he was attuned to a signal fact: “I have found this a difficult place to operate in. It Seems that the greater part of the Rancheros know nothing or will not tell it if they do.”69 Too, in spite of any cultural bias he might have owned, Captain Neal Coldwell especially noted and reported to headquarters that, especially in the upper reaches of the Wild Horse Desert, according to his informant, a local Justice of the Peace, “American Stockmen from the Nueces Country do more Stealing here than any one else.”70 With the Company F relocation further south and no Texas Ranger presence at Concepcion, those unprotected citizens were howling. Perhaps they, like U.S. Army Captain Lewis Johnson, 24th Infantry and Brevet Lieutenant Colonel, logically figured that the men of Texas Ranger units were “generally good shots and are [were] daring fellows.” Furthermore he theorized that as an “irregular cavalry” those hard-riding fellows could and did do “very well.”71 In answer to their real or imagined danger, Captain Coldwell dispatched Sergeant Tillman S. Spencer, twenty-one, along with nine Rangers to “act as a safeguard for that place.” Evidently they did a good job. There were not reports to the contrary.72 Certainly the Company F Rangers, though they likely— definitely—carried their own brand of prejudice, were clearly intent on making custodial arrests, or trying to, regardless of ethnicity. Lieutenant Jones, whose personal integrity, historically speaking, seems above reproach, and subsequent to the formerly mentioned Nuecestown attack and murders, set out with a dozen Rangers focused on investigating “the reported burning of some ranches by Americans.”73 Unquestionably the acts of arson were real, the criminality not iffy or a false rumor. And herein a causal distinction begins raising its head: Captain Neal Coldwell’s key law enforcing philosophy.

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Though it would be ever evolving, the Company F captain was firmly ingrained with the notion that in the role of peace officers Rangers were duty bound to respect the Rule of Law and adhere to tenets of criminal procedure insuring guilty pleas and/or guilty verdicts in a courtroom. If the perpetrators be mean Texans, committing criminal acts on the Lone Star State’s ground, the choice would be clear—haul them before the appropriate judicial officer. On the other hand, if suspects were revealed to be foreign nationals terrorizing Texas, where would legal venue lie? Little did he know it then but, later in the twenty-first century, debate would yet be raging as to whether or not foreign nationals committing acts of terrorism fell within the jurisdictional purview of America’s civil criminal law or the U.S. Military’s formalized rules of engagement. The men of Company F serving under Captain Coldwell’s leadership were lawmen not soldiers: And what of Texas Ranger Lieutenant William Kenner Jones’s findings? Measuring the actual depth of his investigation from this distance is elusive, but there seems to have been no question in the mind of Lieutenant Jones that the burning of “some ranches” and the vigilante’s killing of “Mexicans” was, indeed, instigated by “Americans.” The Company F 1st Lieutenant clearly understood that the acts were reprisals for the Nuecestown episode, even if they be illegal. He even, if the assertion be true, owned hearsay noise that one of Richard King’s corporals (Luis Robelos ?) had somehow been “concerned” in the payback. There was, though, that troubling downside: Admissible Evidence! Absent the testimony of an eyewitness or the cunning cooperation of a co-conspiratorial turncoat— which would have been suicidal—Lieutenant Jones dejectedly returned to the Company F headquarters camp, informing Captain Coldwell that the “burning party” had left the country.74 There, too, was other work to do. Answering to a special request as an escort north into Frio County (county seat Pearsall) twenty-sixyear-old Lance Corporal Tarlton Lane, a farm boy from Jefferson County and two enlisted men accompanied Judge Daughtery on his trip.75

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Another judicial officer, Judge McFarland of Kerrville, was hollering too. In light of the relatively recent Indian raids into Kerr County, he was respectfully clamoring that the Texas Rangers of Company F “might be stationed to this section at an early day.” Regarding Austin’s parsimonious powerbrokers, the Honorable McFarland decried the opposite poles 1875 Texans were defending: Folks on the western frontier demanded a Ranger presence, the interior populace, now safely removed from Comanche and Kiowa and Apache depredations depreciated much of a need for the Frontier Battalion.76 Captain Neal Coldwell and his Texas Rangers were somewhat stymied and, perhaps with good, well, intelligible reasoning: They had ridden into a different world, far removed from their cultural comfort zone. Their hitch was rich. “While Scouting if we meet a Mexican, we do not Know if he be a thief or a citizen. In the vicinity of our camp there are a few who will do all in their power to aid or give us information.”77 Seemingly, and there’s no truth-stretching, Brownsville banker and businessman Julius G. Tucker was on the same page with Neal Coldwell regarding Lower Rio Grande Valley residents’ reluctance to lend a helping hand in solving their and the State of Texas’s very real crisis, noting that many local Hispanics were “afraid to give information for fear of being killed.” They were, and understandably so, “very chary about it.”78 And worry there should have been. Despite a sampling of maudlin modern-era demands crying for a sense of artificial atonement, the hard truths are unadorned: Gangs of criminally disposed Mexicans, Tejanos, and Anglos, were murdering and stealing and bamboozling other Mexicans, Tejanos, and Anglos. Criminals of any stripe are nonpartisan. Governmental bigwigs at Austin were suffering no dilemma with regards to their next course of action dealing with Mexican bandits and/or run-amok Texas vigilantes operating outside the color of law. On the eve of being disbanded due to a lack of funding and, perhaps, because of but mixed results in settling the Sutton/Taylor feud raging in DeWitt County and elsewhere, state forces under command of

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Captain Leander Harvey McNelly, the Washington County Volunteer Militia, Company A (i.e., Rangers) were shortly rescued from obliteration but not controversy. Neither Captain McNelly nor the politicos liable for assigning him to clean up the mess in South Texas were under any compassionate illusions. He was not sent into the Wild Horse Desert as a dutiful peace officer to make arrests and bring the guilty to trial. He was for all practical purposes a warrior sent into a warzone, so went the plausible thinking of the state’s exasperated top-brass. Straight out of headquarters Captain McNelly was tasked with hunting down the robbers and cattle thieves and rendering them “harmless.” Reading between the lines then or now is not taxing: “Killing the enemy was clearly an understood part of the equation on the border. . . .”79 Destiny would not find Captain Leander McNelly riding into the history books as a part of the Frontier Battalion, but make a name for himself he would. Though in time the rewarding of spies and informants would become commonplace law-enforcing tactics, torture would not. Career military officers were, according to their official testimony appalled—maybe—with Captain L.H. McNelly’s methodology. Captain J.W. Clous, U.S. Army, 24th Infantry, testified: “The State troops, on the occasion referred to, had means to purchase information, and I am told also resorted to means of extorting information, which, if adopted by the United States troops, would have led them into serious troubles, probably a trial before the courts.”80 Correspondingly, Captain H.C. Corbin, U.S. Army, 24th Infantry, said: “Captain McNally [sic] applied treatment which officers of the regular Army are not allowed to do. He found some suspicious characters, and under torture he made them confess that they were engaged with this party of people from Mexico in stealing cattle for Cortina to load the vessel to take to Havana. The two fellows whom he caught were citizens of Matamoras, who were on this side of the river, or I think he used a decoy to get them over. He caught them in the chaparral, and under torture got their confession and acted upon it. . . .”81 Feasibly, and it sounds spot on, Brigadier-General Edward Otho Cresap “E.O.” Ord was—at least vicariously—envious, when he

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testified to borderland reality and Captain McNelly’s extralegal measures: “The officer of the State troops in command had learned the whereabouts of this raiding party by means which I could not legally resort to, but which were the only means of getting at the actual facts. He had caught one of their number and had hung him up until he was made to confess where the rest of the raiders were.”82 On the ground, seemingly all was well with the Texas Rangers of Company F—that is until the sad news broke. At San Diego on the fifteenth day of April 1875, powerless to beat back the medical malady haunting his recovery, young G.W. Champion—a Texas Ranger for less than a full year—surrendered his last breath.83 Captain Coldwell was alive and well and busy. During the late spring, 20 May 1875, leading a platoon of sixteen Texas Rangers, he made for the brambly and brushy country thirty miles east of the Company F camp. Their objective was single-purposed: They were tenaciously bent on “arresting some hide-peelers.” Luckily they found the skinned cow carcasses; unluckily the “guilty parties” had already vamoosed—no doubt after learning Rangers were nearby.84 Although the theory of preventive enforcement is sound, from a practical standpoint what doesn’t happen doesn’t get tallied. In short, Company F was making few arrests. Though it rings of overzealous bravado and an unmistakably misplaced acquiescence, one of Captain McNelly’s volunteers, George P. Durham, seemingly swanked about his particular company’s resorting to employment of a transparently brutal Mexican borderland convention. Mexicans had long mastered the art of using the rawhide braided reata as an efficient killing tool and, too, they were demonstrably not hostile to practicing ley de fuga (law of flight, killing prisoners alleged to be escaping).85 Durham particularly scrutinized Company F’s commander: Coldwell and his men made a great record against the Indians on the northwest frontier of Texas, but Coldwell just wasn’t the man to handle those Nueces outlaws. No more than the military. Coldwell tried to fight according to the books as written in Austin. The military had to fight by the books as written in Washington. But those Nueces outlaws didn’t fight by any books. Neither did

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Captain McNelly. They made their own rules and Captain made his. They didn’t mind killing. Neither did Captain McNelly. They didn’t take prisoners. Neither did Captain McNelly.86

Even though written for a marketplace during an era romanticizing the Wild and Woolly West, George Durham’s follow-up remarks about the overall effectiveness of Captain Neal Coldwell and Company F Rangers are telling—maybe unintentionally so—herein quoted with emphasis added: “I repeat that Neal Coldwell was a good Ranger and had a good outfit, but those bandits raided above him and below him. Lots of them surrendered to him, though, and he fooled away his time taking them to jail, only to see them make bond and get out before his hands got their horses watered and fed.”87 Fancy that! Though the exploits and imbroglios of Captain Leander Harvey McNelly and his company of the Washington County Volunteer Militia, Company A, are legion, dissecting that story falls outside the scope of Texas Rangers: Lives, Legend, and Legacy. More than a few others have, for the most part, adroitly penned that warrior’s biography or incorporated examples of his derring-do into more generalized Texas Ranger works. In a nutshell, since this chapter registers the initial eighteen months’ history of the Frontier Battalion’s Company F, it is but worthwhile to note that Captain Neal Coldwell never breached the Rio Grande/Río Bravo and initiated an attack on the wrong ranch, haphazardly killing as many as a dozen innocent or guilty of something Mexicans. Even Captain McNelly’s most recent and thorough biographers, with a perceptible rationalized justification, somewhat grudgingly it seems, admit: “His techniques brought results and earned the Texas Rangers the reputation of being diablos Tejanos in the Nueces Strip area and south of the river. His tactics would not be tolerated today, but McNelly did recover stolen property and reduce the amount of lawlessness on the border.”88 Such dearth of data was explainable. Captain Neal Coldwell duly noted not only his own belief but that of area folks: “Everything Seems to be quiet in this part of the Country at present. The people think that the Robbers will Keep clear of the Country as long as we are here.” Furthermore, along that section of the lower border, there

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were federal troops stationed at Brownsville, Edinburg, Rio Grande City, as well as above Roma, and there were normally “two patrols of Cavalry each way during every week. With these patrols on this Side of the River, and the vigilance of the authorities on the other Side, it Seems that there is little left for this Company to do. But I Shall continue to do all the Scouting that our horses will bear.”89 Unlike McNelly’s militarily shaped strike-force, Captain Neal Coldwell, though tuned into reality but adhering to law enforcing protocols, “did not favor crossing into Mexico.”90 Capping off his opinion, Captain Coldwell thought that the honorable Governor Coke had been innocently hoodwinked, and some reports of the Lower Rio Grande Valley’s turmoil and trouble had in “this part of the frontier have been greatly exaggerated.”91 Captain Coldwell’s hard assessment, like that of Major Jones, would prove wrongheaded in the final analysis, but neither of them during real time in the real world had mastered the art of reading Tarot Cards. Ever a realist, Captain Coldwell was exasperated by the section’s demographic makeup, not necessarily a bigoted outlook, but rather hard and cold analytical truths. In his mind the handicap was near insurmountable, though he did see a solution of sorts: “So far as can be Seen thieves have been reported as being in the county two or three times during the month but when investigated turned out to be false. Which is generally the Case in this part of the Country as far as my understanding goes. But there is no doubt but what there has been Stealing going on here as in the other parts of the State within the past year. Fifteen men organized in this part of the Country, who are acquainted with it and the people would be more effective than this whole company who are Strangers. It is impossible for a Stranger to distinguish the thieves from the Citizens as nearly all of them are Mexicans. I have done everything in my power to find these raiders as they are called but So for it has amounted to nothing.”92 Regardless what the men of McNelly’s unit thought, most of the men of Company F had apprised Captain Coldwell that when their term of enlistment was over—if they were to remain stationed in the Lower Rio Grande Valley—Rangers no more would they be.

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All except two or three of the Company F Texas Rangers were thoroughly “worn out with the Service here.” Furthermore, as Captain Coldwell reported to Major Jones: It is very discouraging to hear that the thieves are at work at Such or Such a place and after hard riding reach the point named and making inquiries of Some “Caballeros” in breach clouts and Sandals to be informed they you have had your trip for nothing, that every thing is “Muy Silencio.” But such has been our luck ever Since we have been in this part of the country.93

There are—if clearheaded analysis is used—two workable interpretations of Captain Coldwell’s clearly riled follow-up remark: “If we find thieves we have to go to the news papers for them.”94 In the first instance, was there a factual dearth of thievery—contrary to generalized perceptions? Or, were there plenty of misappropriations, mischief, and murders, and area Hispanics were for whatever reasoning loath to furnish critical criminal intelligence to the Company F Rangers? Were they truly afraid of retaliation or were they in cahoots with the banditos? ¿Quién sabe? Based on the disheartening findings of Captain Coldwell, many of the regional residents were revealing nothing. What also had amounted to nothing was the funding for the Frontier Battalion for the summer months of 1875. Company F was to be disbanded and Neal Coldwell, after turning over a stateowned wagon and four mules to Captain McNelly, was under direct orders to report to San Antonio. Thoughtfully, until he reached the Alamo City, Captain Coldwell would keep the unit intact until the formal discharge on the fourth day of June 1875. Captain Coldwell was, however, adamant that if there was any possible alternative he could quickly recruit, reorganize, and put into the field a new company95 Coldwell’s proposal didn’t fall on deaf ears at Austin’s Ranger headquarters. He was to “at once” initiate the process of raising a new company, staffed with “two Sergeants, three Corporals, and thirty privates.” There were, though, two caveats. First, the newly recruited or reenlisting Texas Rangers must agree to only serve until

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31 August 1875, and secondly “with the understanding that they would receive no pay until an appropriation to pay them is made by the Legislature.”96 From his home at Center Point in Kerr County, Neal Coldwell notified Major Jones that he could recruit to the proper staffing level within a week’s time, and he would earnestly endeavor to enlist “as many men of my old company as possible.” Furthermore, he advised the major: “The thieves and Indians have been depredating on this part of the County Considerably of late. I followed the trail of a party last week but on account of not having many of the horses shod we had to abandon the trail.”97 By 28 June 1875, Company F was back up to snuff, strategically camped at the head of Fall Branch, a tributary of Johnson’s Fork of the Guadalupe River, approximately twenty miles northwest of Kerrville. Captain Neal Coldwell noting that the new positioning would be in a reasonable proximity to the “Settlements in Gillespie & Kerr Cos. and can be reached from Bandera County more easily. . . .”98 Men of the reconstituted Company F anxiously awaited their promised shipment of “rations for two months, ten carbines, six cases of Carbine and one of pistol Ammunition, and two tents.”99 Ever present during the Frontier Battalion’s lifespan would be the logistical nightmares associated with keeping men in the field properly fed and supplied: The old adage that an army travels on its stomach applied to Texas Rangers too! There’s little doubt this section of the Texas Hill Country could benefit from the presence of Rangers, that is, if the findings of Judge McFarland and the Frontier Battalion’s commander are taken at or near face value. Major Jones, in part, advised Adjutant General Steele: There has been great necessity for an organized force in this section of country during the last two months. Some five or six raids have been made on the settlement here by Indians and white thieves since the 7th of May. About forty citizens have lost horses or mules by them and there is great excitement and alarm among the people in consequence. Two of these raiding parties were

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Indians, the others were beyond a doubt white men. One party of each have been overtaken and one Indian and one white man killed and all the stock stolen by both parties recaptured. I found two companies of citizens under arms in this [Kerr County] and Kendall County [Boerne] when I arrived and the town of Kerrville guarded and patrolled every night. The raising of Capt. Coldwell’s Co. has quieted the fears of the people to some extent and gives them a feeling of security which they have not experienced for several months.100

Transitioning away from the purely military model and into the more traditional law enforcing configuration, one with due emphasis placed—even if reluctantly—on rights guaranteed by the United States Constitution’s Bill of Rights is clearly evinced by Captain Coldwell’s thoughtful but unsuccessful hunt for Probable Cause: “Although many Suspicious looking men have been passing through the country lately . . . Four men claiming to come from Palo Pinto Co. who gave their names as Wangle, Doc Wilson & brother, and McFarlane passed through here about 15 days Since whom I firmly believe from their manner are Wanted in Some other county. But—I could not arrest them on Suspicion—and they passed on.”101 The incessant tinkering with Frontier Battalion staffing comes into play, and it directly deals with Captain Coldwell—once again. He was ordered, as of 31 August 1875, to disband his company. Then, he was to turn right back around and reenlist Texas Rangers for the new Company F as of 1 September 1875. And, as usual there would be another of those prickly little caveats. This time around, if Neal Coldwell chose to remain in service he would do so as a lieutenant—a cost cutting move, one placing him on par with other company commanders.102 Lieutenant Neal Coldwell accepted command of Company F.103 Aside from making darn sure his men were sufficiently armed with carbines and six-shooters, another item doled out from Company F’s property inventory clearly marked changing times for the Frontier Battalion. Not just a few of Lieutenant Coldwell’s Rangers were issued handcuffs.104 Hunting for Indian raiders was still high on the agenda,

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but those sorties were becoming more infrequent, while outlaws of another stripe seemed to be multiplying like flies in a stinky cow lot. As an example, Lieutenant Coldwell personally captained one scout of 21 days, covering 428 miles between the Nueces and Pecos Rivers, but managed to find but three abandoned and jaded horses at “a deserted Indian camp.”105 On the other hand, under orders from headquarters, the Rangers of Company F were specifically tasked with searching for “a party of outlaws supposed to be on the head of [the] Llano.” In the meantime, another determined Company F detachment was dispatched to the vicinity of Paint Creek to “arrest a man.”106 Ever increasing were the demands for Texas Rangers. Straight out of the governor’s office, due to “representations” made by a “deputation of citizens of Live Oak County” Lieutenant Coldwell was forthwith ordered to Oakville to assist the “civil authorities.”107 Writing from his home at Center Point on Christmas Day 1875, Lieutenant Coldwell was proud to be of service but plainly perplexed. His inquiry was, maybe, unanswerable but his course of action was preset. He could in relatively short order gather the necessary rations for a fifteen-day scout, though he would have to “hire a team,” buying needed forage “on the road as opportunity may present.” More concerning to Coldwell, however, was duration of the move to Oakville, a little community due north of the county seat, George West. Lieutenant Neal Coldwell didn’t jumble his words: “If we are to remain there until Spring I will be forced to tender my resignation as I do not feel Justified in leaving my family for a lengthened period with out a protector as they will be left and I am not able to take them with me. I have always been willing to go to any Section where we would be of the most Service, and if we are needed more at Oakville than here, I think it perfectly right that we Should go there. But I regret that I will not be justified in remaining in the Service in that locality.”108 By mere chance the forthcoming year, 1876, “was to be one of the quietest periods in the Frontier Battalion’s history.”109 Perhaps institutionally a momentary lull was in order. There would be a window of time to rethink and revamp. The comparative calmness would be short. After all, there was a legend to build—and stand on!

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Initial Roster Frontier Battalion Company F Name:

Age:

Nativity:

Trade/Occupation:

Baker, Henry H. Brown, John W. Burney, Robert Henry Champion, G.W. Chipman, Herber Clarke, C.P. Clarke, J.M. Coldwell, Neal Cook, Thalis Tucker Corn, Jasper N. Corn, Lee B. Costen, William Gadsby Cotton, C.H. Dolan, Pat Dollahite, James B. Fanning, Martin W. Faulkner, Edward W. Frayne, Thomas J. Gaye, Peter Giles, Benjamin F. Gobble, Charles J. Gray, Henry C. Guajardo, Santiago J. Hert, Thomas L. Insall, Cade Jefferson, William D. Johnson, Gilbert Jones, John Lafayette Jones, Pinckney Jones, Richard J.

22 19 19 19 19 21 26 30 17 19 22 27 22 ?? 27 19 23 26 29 21 49 25 24 23 20 19 27 18 20 30

AR TX TN TX TX AR AR MO TX TX TX TN TX Ireland TN IL AL England France TN VA TX Mexico KY TX TX IL TX TX IL

Farmer Ranger Farmer Farmer Farmer Printer Printer Farmer Stockman Farmer Stockman Ranger Carpenter Sheriff Farmer Stockman Farmer Ranger Farmer Farmer Farmer Farmer Farmer Farmer Farmer Farmer Farmer Stockman Farmer Soldier Continued

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Name: Jones, William Kenner Joy, W. Kenney, John J. Kent, Bosman Clifton King, W.W. Lane, Tarlton Lawhon, John Thomas Lawhon, John W. Layton, Andrew Ledman, Thomas Lewis, James P. Lewis, W.R. Lucid, Daniel Martin, Thomas Pooley McCann, G.T. McCarthy, Francis J. McCrey, Charles McElroy, Stephen Goldsby Merritt, Andrew Jackson Michan, John B. Minder, Emil Mitchell, Charles Moore, Frank M. Moss, Joe Nebo, Charles Nelson, Franklin H. Nelson, John D. North, John Hunter Offer, Mathes Patton, Thomas Franklin Pendergrass, Alfred Warren Porter, John W. Potter, John E.

Age: 25 50 17 50 25 26 20 18 29 29 21 29 28 18 19 28 28 28 27 28 25 50 38 28 25 35 33 21 20 24 18 21 19T

Nativity: TX NC TX MO PA TX MS TX KY Canada LA PA Ireland TX TN Ireland Scotland TN ?? France Switzerland VA TN MS Canada MS TX MS TX TX MI AL X

Trade/Occupation: Lawyer Trapper Stockman Farmer Soldier Farmer Farmer Farmer Farmer Laborer Farmer Farmer Stone Mason Stockman Farmer Plasterer Carpenter Farmer Farmer Carpenter Machinist Stage Driver Farmer Farmer Stockman Physician Farmer Farmer Saddler Farmer Farmer Farmer Stockman Continued

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Name:

Age:

Nativity:

Trade/Occupation:

Rhodes, Ike H. Ryne, George W. Sanchez, Louis Sanders, J.W. Sansom, George L. Sansom, T.J. Sellers, James Sharp, George W. Spencer, Tillman S. Stevens, George Washington Tatum, Sam H. Watson, Jacob W. Weaver, Matthew Z. Weymiller, Thomas White, Hardy Wilson, James P.H. Witt, William Henry

30 23 35 18 19 22 26 21 21 18 18 18 20 19 19 47 20

KY TX Mexico TX TX TX KY OH MO TX TX TX LA TX TX TN TN

Farmer Farmer Shepherd Farmer Farmer Stockman Stockman Farmer Stockman Stockman Farmer Farmer Stockman Stockman Farmer Farmer Farmer

Photo Gallery

2 

Major John B. Jones and his wife, Ann Holliday Jones. The Frontier Battalion’s officer’s corps was allowed marriage. Major Jones transitioned Texas Rangers from Indian fighters to lawmen. Courtesy Rick Miller.

William Jeff Maltby, the first commander of the Frontier Battalion’s Company E. Though an image taken later in life, Captain Maltby is seated at the top of the stairs. Courtesy avid collector and local historian L.R. Hughes.

When handed command of Company E, Captain Jeff Maltby requested of Major Jones a pair of nickel-plated .45 Colt’s six-shooters. Herein pictured is an image of a nickel-plated Colt’s .45 revolver owned by Maltby, his distinctive deerskin money belt, and his unique tobacco pipe. The insert at top left is an image of the engraved bowl-cover for the pipe. Courtesy L. R. Hughes.

Ill-fated Charles Webb would not be the only Brown County fellow giving up the ghost during a Wild West-era shootout. Although he was at one time a deputy at Brownwood, James D. Burns was not gunned down by John Wesley Hardin. While serving as a Grant County lawman Burns would meet his end at Silver City, New Mexico Territory during a drunken taproom gunplay with three other officers. Courtesy Clay Riley.

During early days of the Frontier Battalion, enlistees were furnished through a payroll deduction plan either a Springfield (top) or a Sharps carbine (bottom), both single shots, but fixed cartridge weapons and decided improvement over muzzle-loading firearms. The issued handgun was the famed Colt Single Action Army, sometimes simply referred to as a Colt’s six-shooter or a Peacemaker. Courtesy Doug Dukes.

Texas Ranger John Valentine Wheeler. Luckily, he narrowly survived the 1874 fight with Kiowa Indians at Lost Valley. Courtesy Max E. Brown.

Running Bird—if first glance appearances are not deceiving—would seem an Indian worthy of characterization as a no nonsense warrior. Courtesy Texas Ranger Hall of Fame & Museum.

Though not a Frontier Battalion fellow, Leander Harvey McNelly, as commander of the Special Force (the Washington County Volunteers, Company A) would ensure his mark in the history books due to his uncompromising and uncompassionate methods employed in the South Texas border country. For practical purposes he and his hard-charging men were Texas Rangers. Courtesy Texas Ranger Hall of Fame & Museum.

From little acorns mighty oaks grow. This contrast is clearly shown in these two photographs of Ira Long. As an early-day Texas Ranger he would bank a creditable name as a standup fighter in bleeding contests with Indians, as well as earn credentials as a worthy Frontier Battalion lawman. Courtesy Texas Ranger Hall of Fame & Museum.

Though the State of Texas issued the Colt’s six-shooter, renowned Texas Ranger Ira Long preferred a Smith & Wesson Russian Model pictured above. Subsequent to its introduction, many Rangers opted to arm themselves with the lever-action repeating Winchester Model 1873, at first paying the cost of the carbines out of their own pockets. Courtesy Doug Dukes.

Then as now America’s fascination with criminality is the reliable recipe on journalistic menus: Clearly illustrated with this October 26, 1878 edition of The National Police Gazette.

Though somewhat illiterate in the ways of readin’ and writin’ Texas Ranger George Herold was described as a fluent speaker of Spanish and an absolute “terror to thieves.” He is the lawman credited with firing the rifle shot that put desperado Sam Bass on the road to meet a mortician. Though depicted here later in life, for whatever reason (Improved Order of Redmen ??) the ever plucky George Herold has donned the clothing of an Indian. Courtesy Rick Miller.

Legitimately wearing traditional Kiowa clothing, Kiowa Chief Ahpeahtone courteously poses with an unidentified but noticeably attractive lady. Courtesy Tales ‘N’ Trails Museum from the Benton Collection.

Illustrative of the fact Texas Rangers could suit up well for the camera is herein made clear. Company E Sergeant L.F. Cartwright and wife Mollie, after marriage prohibitions had been scuttled, are indeed a handsome couple. Make no mistake though: the good sergeant could morph into a man-eating tiger for a gunfight. Courtesy Texas Ranger Hall of Fame & Museum.

Joseph Walter Durbin stands as example of a more or less typically outfitted Frontier Battalion era Texas Ranger, belt knife, Colt’s six-shooter at the hip and Winchester in the saddle scabbard. Courtesy Tony Sapienza.

Although his birth name was John C. Orrick, Texas Ranger history would know him by his assumed—and later legally changed—name, George Washington “Cap” Arrington. By some folks’ estimation Ranger Captain Arrington was known as the “Iron Man of the Panhandle.” Evidently the characterization was not inappropriate as the electorate in two counties, Hemphill and Wheeler, put him into office as sheriff. Courtesy Texas Ranger Hall of Fame & Museum.

A striking image of a Texas Ranger, Philip Cuney “P.C.” Baird, a fire-breathing man-hunter when need be, a compassionate public servant when the situation called for pleasantness. Corporal Baird led Texas Rangers during the Green Lake shootout with fence cutters and later became the multi-term elected sheriff of Mason County. Courtesy James Baird.

Company D Rangers, an exceptionally often reproduced and legendary image. Standing L to R: Jim King*, Bazzell Lamar “Baz” Outlaw*, Riley Boston, Charles Henry Vanvalkenburg “Charlie” Fusselman*, Tink Durbin, Ernest Rogers, Charles Barton, and Walter Jones. Sitting L to R: Robert “Bob” Bell, Calvin Grant “Cal” Aten, Captain Frank Jones*, J. Walter Durbin, James “Jim” Robinson and Frank Louis Schmidt*. Texas Rangers marked with an * would die as result of gunshot wounds. Courtesy Texas Ranger Hall of Fame & Museum.

The old adage about not judging a book by its cover is applicable. Ranger Sergeant Austin Ira Aten would stay “hitched” during more than one gunfight. Subsequent to time spent as a Texas Ranger he would serve as the sheriff in both Fort Bend County (county seat Richmond) and in the Texas Panhandle at Dimmitt, Castro County. Courtesy Tony Sapienza.

Elijah Robert “E. R.” Ashcraft, with beard and seated with his family, was an active member of Brown County’s Farmers Alliance. He was also a nighttime nipper of barbed-wire, a fact not disputed by several of his descendants. Courtesy Jan Devereaux.

There is no evidence the tactic was ever put to use but Texas Ranger Sergeant Ira Aten, working undercover in Navarro County (county seat Corsicana) devised a sinister plan for dealing with fence-cutters. In penciled letters to his Austin headquarters he outlined a proposal to secretly place “dynamite booms” along fence lines. He was quickly ordered to cease and desist before an innocent someone was haplessly blown to smithereens. Courtesy Texas Ranger Hall of Fame & Museum.

At the Thomas K. Hamilton Photographic Studio at Laredo these three spiffily decked out Texas Rangers strike a handsome pose for mama and daddy—or a sweetheart. From left to right are Joseph Walter Durbin (future sheriff of Frio County), William Treadwell, and George W. Clark. Courtesy Suzanne Giffin-Garcia.

In the late nineteenth-century some Texas Rangers owned well-recognizable names as illustrated in this June 15, 1892 edition of The Texas Volunteer.

A truly unique and exceptionally rare nineteenth-century photographic image is this public relations card prepared after Texas Rangers and other lawmen tracked and in a shootout killed Joseph P. “Joe” Beckham, the former sheriff of Motley County who had turned into a genuine outlaw. Note the fine print caption at bottom of the card: “Mail this to your Congressman with the request to use his influence and vote for the settlement of that country by civilized people.” Courtesy Wichita Falls Museum of Art at Midwestern State University.

Texas Rangers en masse were ordered to El Paso to prevent a prizefight. It might have been somewhat of “overkill” as penned by a prominent scholar; nonetheless the image is iconic. Standing in the front row from L to R: Adjutant General Woodford Mabry and the four ostensible Great Captains; John Reynolds Hughes, James Abijah Brooks, William Jesse “Bill” McDonald, and John Harris Rogers. Courtesy Texas Ranger Hall of Fame & Museum.

Seated in the chair with hands folded is Captain John Harris Rogers, participant in not just a few notable Texas Ranger episodes, including the deadly Conner Fight and Laredo’s Smallpox War. The Company E Rangers from L to R are: Seated on floor, [?] McMurry, H.G. Dubose, and Frank McMahon. Middle row, John Nix (armed with double-barreled shotgun). Captain Rogers, Tupper Harris, and unidentified Texas Ranger. Standing, W.A. “Augie” Old, C.L. “Kid” Rogers, [?] Kingsberry, and [?] Townsend. Courtesy prominent Texas based collector of Old West artifacts and artwork Pete Rainone, Arlington, Texas.

Well-known Texas Ranger Frank Augustus Hamer owned a thrilling and well-publicized career: Here pictured with his hand haphazardly resting on the Winchester’s muzzle, standing by his law enforcing pal Robert M. “Duke” Hudson. Courtesy Texas Ranger Hall of Fame & Museum.

Standing at left is Captain James Abijah “J.A.” Brooks, Company F, and a complement of his Texas Rangers then stationed at San Diego, Jim Wells County. Courtesy Suzanne Montgomery.

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though  might register as one of the Frontier Battalion’s “quietest years,” such falsehearted tranquility would, in the big picture, prove to be an anomaly. Astutely it’s been theorized: “Frontier heroes sprang up as soon as America had a frontier.”1 Members of the Frontier Battalion were riding the Lone Star’s frontier line and undoubtedly some of those Texas Rangers performed heroically. One may reason that a definition of the word “legend” could be derailed by its generally accepted application regarding Texas Rangers. Adhering to Webster’s dissection that legends are—perhaps in part—“a story handed down for generations among a people and popularly believed to have a historical basis, although not verifiable,” is in the actual case of the Frontier Battalion a hipshot wide of the mark. Crediting Texas Rangers with a birthday dating to 1823 is not too much of a stretch, and moving their documentable history forward a half century to 1874 with legislative blueprinting of the Frontier Battalion is verifiable. Rightly it may be proffered that there were “Rangers” elsewhere during America’s colonization predating the primitive settling of what would later become Texas, but those Revolutionary-era and Indian fighting “Rangers” were not and would not be tasked as traditionally defined crime fighters or peace keepers. From 1874 to 2017, nearly a century and a half (143 years), yet finds Rangers an integral sociological component of the Lone Star State’s law-enforcing landscape. Such an attestable and sustainable record of longevity is 307

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legendary in and of itself. And the corollary truth rings clear: “The Texas Rangers formed the oldest state police agency in America and clearly influenced developments throughout the country.”2 Sidetracking mythology—of which there is no shortage—and looking in on Texas Ranger reality is revealing: “Tales of Ranger fearlessness require no further retelling. They are endemic throughout the Southwest and most are based upon fact.”3 In this, a single volume treatment, enumerating but a few of the many nineteenth-century newsmakers focusing a national spotlight on the Texas Rangers and their mushrooming reputation is constructive. Word count limitations, while allowing inclusion, also demand exclusion. Hopefully this selection will do the trick. ¿Quién sabe? Even allowing for a sometimes liberal sprinkling of mythos atop the Texas Ranger narrative, the end result was/is more than profound: On the whole, despite traumatic shootouts and trying circumstances and administrative nightmares and political adversaries and underfunding and agenda-driven agitators, Frontier Battalion enlistees were gradually morphing into good lawmen. Texans wanted their Rangers. And still do! And, perhaps just at the right time, April 1877, Texas Rangers headlined a newsmaker: The Kimble County Roundup, a carefully coordinated enforcement action of bona fide significance, one gaining national prominence. Inundated with alarming allegations and gossip and believable intelligence that outlawry was openly operating in Kimble County with impunity, Major Jones opted for a get-together, formally introducing his Rangers to the lawless riffraff and corrupted local politicos of Kimble County. Earlier, Texas Ranger Private H.D. Waddill, a recent hire for Company C, had clandestinely infiltrated the criminal element haunting the region. Private Waddill’s written (and unedited) report to the battalion commander was succinct and simple: Kimble County was “a thiafs stronghold, the two Llanos and all tributaries are lined with them. . . . Every one that is not known is looked on as the enemy. . . . the County is unsafe to travil through.”4 Truly, Kimble County’s reputation for lawlessness was earned, not a sham.5

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The gist of Major Jones’s plan was plain. He and his men would “round up” Kimble County, paying especial attention to locating and arresting near-forty hardened characters specifically identified by the earlier mentioned Lieutenant Frank Moore, who by now had met with a conversant but confidential informant, Ben Anderson.6 Others not on the list of known desperadoes and fugitives from justice, if they could not show good cause for being in Kimble County, were also to be “rounded up.” There was no jail and prisoners would be and were unceremoniously chained to a tree like so many pet bears.7 At the time, whether or not a trial court or an appellate court’s review would ultimately sustain or overrule any arrests or the filing of criminal charges made not a whit of difference to Major Jones. God and the courts could sort that persnickety little matter out— later.8 Besides the Frontier Battalion taking into custody the county’s sheriff, J.M. Reynolds, and the county judge, William Potter, the Rangers also arrested “a total of forty-one folks, thirty-one of them in Kimble County.”9 The law and order populace took notice, as did an effusive newspaperman writing for the Galveston Daily News: “A Methodist revival is progressing up there, and the late evil-doers are doffing the six-shooter and getting themselves checked for a blessed immortality.”10 That Major Jones’s no-nonsense, no-excuses “round up” had struck a national chord is evinced by an excerpt from the San Antonio Express being included in the Committee of Military Affairs’s 300-plus-page report, Texas Border Troubles, a thoughtful editorial crediting the Rangers: If there is any one thing more than another the people of Western Texas have to congratulate themselves upon in connection with the progress of the year 1877, it is the breaking up and almost entire eradication of the bands of cut-throat desperadoes that infested our section a year ago. Strong in numbers and the self-interest that banded them together, they had defied the officers of the law, and laughed at the idea of arrest and punishment for the serious crimes almost daily committed. But the rangers entered in among them, and their presence gave encouragement to the officers of the

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law and now the penitentiary and jails are almost crowded with the scoundrels; most of the ringleaders have been arrested, and the others have become demoralized; they are being hunted down and driven from the country. . . .11

Another phenomenon thunders true. The enforcement action in Kimble County would be a watershed moment for the Texas Rangers. Major Jones in his report to AG Steele was notably proud of the battalion’s performance: “Each man seems to take a personal interest and pride in catching every one he is ordered to arrest. . . . I must commend the men of my command for their conduct in this arduous and unpleasant work.” And all that, without firing a shot!12 The Rangers had moved—maybe grudgingly in some instances—from Indian hunters to lawmen. Police work is prideful work. The reading public made note, and for the most part were well pleased. Hardly had Major Jones and Frontier Battalion Rangers completed Kimble County’s roundup, when their institutional role as lawmen and keepers of the peace was once again put to the test. History would soon know the imbroglio as the Horrell/Higgins Feud bristling forth at Lampasas. The bloodletting between John Calhoun Pinkney “Pink” Higgins and his cronies on the one side and the Horrell brothers who had cabbaged onto six-shooter notoriety that day four officers of the Texas State Police had been fatally gunned down in 1873, and their communal pals on the other, had a genial resident community astir and had cash-paying tourists seeking mineral bath rejuvenations elsewhere. Whether the feud had its bottom-line genesis with the adulterous conduct of a stay-at-home wife or the theft of a cow, for the Texas Rangers it was/is immaterial. Economically the violent brouhaha was draining precious dollars, simultaneously siphoning off Lampasas County’s mostly flattering reputation. The long litany of body-count tallies and ambuscade volatilities had been scored well before Captain John C. Sparks, now in charge of Company C, and his men, ably assisted by a Lampasas County deputy sheriff and ex-Texas Ranger, George M. Doolittle, arrested partisans allied with

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one side or the other. Specifics of the blood and thunder narrative have heretofore been captured in biographies and local histories; however, for the treatment in hand and in the overview assessment of Texas Rangers the problem resolution stands out. Taking lessons well-learned during the crazy Hoo Doo War, Major Jones personally traveled to Lampasas and negotiated a written truce between warring parties, each side signing truce documents which appeared in Texas newspapers.13 Aside from those facts and favorable publicity, two identifiable dynamics resonate. First, the peace held.14 Secondly, once again the Texas Ranger name—and legendary standing— caught the attention of a national readership when the awe-inspiring story was “heralded across the nation,” in the 12 August edition of the New York Times.15 Another high-profile episode further cemented the general public’s perceptions and further burnished Texas Rangers’ legendary status: the capture of an ever rascally John Wesley Hardin. As will be recalled, Hardin, subsequent to the senseless murder of Brown County Deputy Sheriff Charles Webb, had slithered into nowhere living the life of a fugitive with a $4,000 price tag on his head. For mystified Texas lawmen his whereabouts for the previous three years had been unknown. John Riley “Jack” Duncan of Dallas, a noted man hunter, had been sworn in as a private under Lieutenant Jesse Leigh “Red” Hall, who had assumed tactical command of what had become the Special State Troops (i.e., Rangers) previously designated as the Washington County Volunteer Militia, Company A, then commanded by the tubercular Leander H. McNelly. Duncan’s job was to run Wes Hardin to ground, one way or the other. Through some rather slick undercover work the secret operative had developed intelligence that Hardin and his wife, Jane, were lying low with her kinfolk along the Florida/Alabama line that balmy August of 1877.16 Accompanied by Lieutenant John B. Armstrong, who was then and would continue to be a very well-known Texas Ranger and South Texas ranchman, Jack Duncan decamped for Florida hoping that legally drawn warrants and requisition papers would overhaul them by telegraph before they detrained at bayside Pensacola.

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Admittedly there are competing versions as to what did or did not actually happen, and where who was standing or not standing at the time, but there is a long and short for the story, that immovable hard bottom-line. At the depot inside a parked coach, Wes Hardin didn’t buy the farm, but he did earn a head thumping under the hard steel of Lieutenant Armstrong’s long-barreled Colt’s six-shooter.17 Handcuffed and humiliated Hardin was returned to the Lone Star State and ultimately imprisoned behind tall, ivy covered red-brick walls at Huntsville.18 Again, and coming reasonably close on the heels of Major Jones’s newsworthy triumphs in Kimble and Lampasas Counties, the national press corps picked up on the arrest of slippery Wes Hardin, laudatory articles mentioning the Texas Rangers’ success appearing in the “Atlanta Daily Constitution, the Chicago Tribune, and New York Times,” as well as countless big city dailies and small town weeklies throughout Texas.19 Seemingly in the eyes of many Texans the colloquial message was breaking through: You can run but you can’t hide from Rangers. More pointedly, statewide jurisdictional authority and the inclination to cross state and/or territorial lines in performance of institutional protocols and statutory duties was registering an A+ on the challenging march to professionalism. The reputation of Texas Rangers was soaring. However, by the end of the year, at least in selected eyes, the reputation of the Texas Rangers was not flying high, but barely topping the horizon of looming troubles in El Paso County, an abhorrent and bloody episode somewhat wrongly characterized as the Salt War. True, a wrangle over free access to salt lakes some ninety-odd miles east of Ysleta was one catalyst, but the ensuing riot and unbridled looting and murders and mutilations coursed through a much deeper channel: the seemingly bottomless swell of racial intolerance—from two sides—and pure greed on the part of several scheming folks, one a corruptible Catholic priest. The Guadalupe Salt Lakes were discovered during the early 1860s by United States troops, which skews sideways any assertions that Mexicans and/or Tejanos had been advantaging themselves of the salt for generation after generation, as it was now but 1877.20 Another downside to certain partisan

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accounts also cannot—should not—stand snubbing: Lawfully, land titles to the officially surveyed salt lakes were in Anglo hands because they filed first, in accordance with an inbuilt American philosophy of private property rights and legalities of Texas sovereignty regarding disposition of public land. Reality checks also undeniably add other causative components to the brewing cauldron of discontent: religious misunderstandings, compliance and/or noncompliance to the rule of Texas state statutes (especially the compulsory school law), cultural dissimilarities, language barriers, criminal conspiracies, super inflated egos, partisan politics, tactless patronage appointments, economic prelacies, ethnicity’s finger-pointing and, in the end, governmental scapegoating.21 Geographically El Paso County was a part of Texas and demographically county residents as of the war with Mexico and the late Civil War were now officially enumerated as Texans. Many, though they had not budged an inch from where they had been born, were now Americans only because someone, somewhere, had signed a piece of paper. The nearby Río Bravo, like their ancestors, had been there since time immemorial. As a manmade cultural dividing line the river, well, it was meaningless. Metaphorically the ground at the Lone Star State’s far western tip was comparable to “an island in a sea of sand. . . . hundreds of miles and decades in time from most ports of civilization.”22 More realistically, “El Paso County was beyond reach of state protection and it lay on the border of a nation whose authority was weak and uncertain. . . .”23 Population numbers are revealing and germane. The Mexicanos, persons of Mexican decent and citizens of either nation, living along both banks of the Rio Grande/Río Bravo numbered roughly 12,000. “Only about eighty non-Mexicans lived in the valley. Although of varied national origin, they were usually lumped together as ‘Americans.’ Some five thousand Mexicans farmed the valley, and another seven thousand made up the Mexican city of Paso del Norte, at the mouth of the pass. Opposite Paso del Norte, north of the river, lay American El Paso, or Franklin, a rundown assortment of adobe buildings lining dusty streets. . . .”24

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Whittling to the sharp point of Texas Ranger involvement is uncomplicated. Two pigheaded fellows were at odds over salt—and everything else! On a pleasant afternoon, double barreled shotgun in hand, the bombastic and ham-fisted son-in-law of a powerhouse Texas politician and banker and former sheriff of Travis County George B. Zimpelman, Judge Charles Henry Howard walked into Solomon Schutz’s mercantile. Almost instantly he cut loose with loads of buckshot, killing Louis “Don Luis” Cardis, an Italian but strident Spanish-speaking political front man for the Mexicano masses.25 Whether or not it was coldblooded murder, justifiable self-defense, or simply a preemptive strike to prevent his own premeditated assassination is moot.26 Provably it may be stated that “Don Luis” was armed with at least one six-shooter and a rather tetchy personality.27 He, too, owned a confirmed criminal history, three charges of assault with intent to murder, and “was prone to violence, usually with a gun rather than his fists.”28 Regardless the finer points, the lid had blown off in El Paso County. With the potential for rioting and mob action madness, Major Jones had been sent to El Paso County to make an assessment for Texas Governor Richard Bennett Hubbard and quell any uneasiness. Traveling by train and stagecoach to the western tip of Texas via a circuitous route, Major Jones’s on-site unearthing was no bombshell. There were no Texas Rangers then stationed in El Paso County and the locale could sure use a few. So, to plug that deficit Major Jones finagled manpower and appointed a wholly inexperienced lawman and reasonably experienced livestock smuggler, John Barnard Tays, to serve as lieutenant for an impromptu twenty-man Ranger detachment, on paper technically a part of Company C.29 Recruiting was to be handled locally. Then Major Jones hurriedly departed El Paso for interior Texas, unfalteringly focusing on additional administrative business of the battalion’s increasingly crowded agenda. Perhaps, in hindsight he should have stayed in town and tended to staffing matters himself. Admittedly the recruiting pool was shallow, but neophyte Lieutenant Tays should have thrown back a few of the bottom-feeders that became Texas Rangers.30

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The next chapter is not pretty. Texas Rangers ostensibly tasked with protecting the life and limb of Charles Howard were surrounded and hopelessly pinned down in an adobe store by an angry mob of Mexicanos at San Elizario, roughly twenty-five miles downriver from Paso del Norte. Subsequent to murdering and mutilating storeowner Charles Ellis and fatally ambushing Texas Ranger Conrad E. Mortimer, the situation turned untenable for the Rangers and their protectee. As with most blood and thunder tales of the wild and woolly frontier era, competing versions as to what actually happened sooner or later give way to that demonstrable immovable bottom-line. In this instance Charles Howard, John Atkinson, and thirty-two-year-old Texas Ranger Sergeant John E. McBride were executed by a firing squad and their bodies coldly dumped into a well.31 The rest of the Texas Rangers were sent packing, allowed to keep their saddle-horses but not their Colt’s six-shooters and Winchesters.32 Then, the run amok crowd lost themselves in an orgy of looting stores and homes, stealing into the night and across the Río Bravo.33 Though inconvenient for agenda-driven raconteurs, objective primary source data is at odds with pushing their partisan narrative. Even on the high end, the so-called El Paso Salt War mob measured but 600 fanatical looters and rioters—and a few murderers and mutilators. Even the non-mathematician can easily determine that of the 12,000 folks living in Texas’s and Mexico’s Upper Rio Grande Valley, 95 percent of the whole Mexicano population thoughtfully and voluntarily chose to sit out any unlawful and depraved participation whatsoever: No disruptive demonstrating, extorting, rioting, kidnapping, looting, murder, and/or coldblooded extralegal executions or hacking dead body parts with machetes. Commonsense, then, is telling: If the evident bad behavior was really some type of groundswell people’s movement, as is sometimes claimed, it was—in the Grand Scheme—woefully short of people. Perhaps crediting the majority Mexicano population for purposefully setting good examples for their children and not only obeying, but actually respecting the spirit of statutory law and principles of morality is more worthy

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than inanely championing or anemically excusing criminality of a minority subset.34 Likewise, offering an absurd defense for the story’s next phase would be inappropriate. The El Paso County Sheriff, Charles Kerber (real name Fredrick Sperfechter) had telegraphed Governor Hubbard for authority to raise a posse of men from New Mexico Territory. He was allowed to do so, but as one scholar noted: “Sheriff Kerber had been promised the aid of 50 men from Silver City. On December 21 [1877], 30 men from Silver City arrived; judging by their performance it is well that 50 did not come. . . . Many of them were men of evil reputation, and hard character.”35 Another credentialed academician’s description of the untamed New Mexico volunteers was short but not sweet: They were, man for man, “hard faced and battle scarred.”36 Working together, combat units took to the field, not necessarily intent on restoring order and bringing alleged criminals to justice, but to extract revenge and settle scores, an undisputed fact noted in pages of the widely circulated Galveston Daily News: The blood shed by the Mexican butchers at San Elizario will hardly be suffered to go unavenged for the flimsy technical reason that it was purely a local squabble over a salt pond.37

With Lieutenant Tays and his Texas Rangers rode the poisonous man-killer Dan Tucker and his conscienceless contingent of adventurers known as the Silver City Rangers. Both of the perfidious groups were under the nominal command of El Paso County Sheriff Charles Kerber. Tucker, Tays, and Kerber may not have actually pulled triggers, but collectively, just like the riotous swarm of Mexicancos, the so-called righters or wrongs had run amok too! The borderland convention of ley de fuga was dealt into the playingfor-keeps game of payback: At least four funerals were called for. Deplorably other atrocious acts of criminality may be attributed to the mean-spirited posse. Pedro Cauelario, a local Justice of the Peace, testified under oath that he and his son had been accosted and were disarmed by Rangers at gunpoint but that, in the end, Lieutenant Tays insisted that their weapons be returned. Cauelario also believed

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Rangers F. Johnson and J. Williams committed an unspeakable and unpardonable “outrage” on his sister-in-law, Salome Telles. His testimony was backed up with the victim’s own words that Rangers shot her dog, pot shot at her chickens, stole money and then one, “pointed the pistol at my breast and forced me to give up my person to him.” Antonio Cadena swore Rangers ransacked his house, pointed a revolver at him, and stole his six-shooter, cartridge belt, saddle, bridles, spurs, and two horses. Noverto Pais declared that Rangers “hit me with their pistols twice, and I have the marks yet.” An Anglo, J.P. Miller, testified he was kidnapped with guns shoved in his face and threatened with his life if he failed to specifically point out the abode of “two women.”38 For this treatment there will be no impotent excuse-making. “Rangers” were responsible for the aftermath brutality and criminality of the conflict and, then and now, it was generally understood that “the word applied both to Tays’ men and to the Silver City volunteers.”39 Taken as a whole the remorseless and bloody business in El Paso County registered a dismal showing for the Texas Rangers: “No Ranger unit had ever surrendered so completely or ever would again. . . . The salt war was not a proud moment in the career of Major Jones,” and the Frontier Battalion’s workaholic commander must, it has been analytical said, “bear some responsibility for the character of Tays’s detachment.”40 Closing remarks about the so-called Salt War chapter of Texas and Ranger history may be correctly and succinctly recorded. “Both sides had plenty for which to be ashamed. . . .”41 Another penman, likewise, posited: “The Salt War, like all wars, was wasteful and unnecessary, unless to prove to a pessimist that men can die bravely in a bad cause.”42 Another fellow died bravely in a bad cause, and his 1878 demise skyrocketed Ranger legend back to the forefront of Americans’ psyche. Sam Bass was a train robber. Quantifiably Sam and his gang never exceeded the number of trains robbed by the diligently dishonest Rube Burrow, but then again, never did the notorious James-Younger Gang, the Dalton Gang, or even the melodramatically popularized Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid of the Wild

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Bunch. Desperado Rube Burrow, nationwide, was at the top of the list; nevertheless Sam Bass was targeted for hunting and was making headlines for editors inside and outside the Lone Star.43 Suffice to say, setting aside exact details, though they be thrilling, of outof-state stagecoach robberies and a Big Spring, Nebraska, train heist netting the thieves $60,000 worth of “newly minted twenty-dollar gold pieces,” is okay for advancing Sam’s story. On the lam in Texas the incorrigible Bass was hanging his hat south of the Red River, in and around Denton County, skipping church and/or contrition. He was now not carefree, but was certainly a career criminal. Near Fort Worth, coachmen were forced to relinquish a few strongboxes, but the lure of black smoke billowing from locomotives and express cars filled with greenbacks was simply irresistible. Foregoing highlighting the nitty-gritty specifics of railway highjackings at Allen (in Collin County), Hutchins and Mesquite (in Dallas County), and Eagle Ford six miles west of Dallas on the West Fork of the Trinity River, it boiled down to this: Sam Bass and pals were high-priority fugitives with a hefty reward posted for their undoing.44 Frontier Battalion Texas Rangers were tirelessly dogging their tracks, but not with nosey bloodhounds. The bad boys were roaming hard horseback, looking for prospects of again stuffing their sacks with somebody else’s money. Stagecoach and train schedules were effortless to acquire—and, of course, every burg had a bank. The flighty outlaws were oblivious to reality: Major Jones had something in the bag too—a snitch.45 The Texas Rangers had moved institutionally into the realm of topnotch investigators, not just state-paid triggermen or head thumpers. The unfolding drama, and it would prove dramatic, is illustrative of Rangers availing themselves of improved transportation and communication technologies, as well as on the sly—and ethically—coordinated deal makings with United States Marshals and district attorneys, state and/or federal. Jim Murphy, in receipt of prosecutorial promises, would worm himself into the confidence of Sam Bass, and Major Jones would wait to hear from the informant as to where and when the next caper would take place.

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Subsequent to false starts and low-level intrigue and Jim Murphy’s near departure from the land of the living, Major Jones was secretly apprised, the decision had been reached: Very soon cash would be withdrawn from the Williamson County Bank, the old Miller’s Exchange Bank, on Georgetown Avenue at Round Rock, Texas. The transaction would be at gunpoint, no refusal! Major Jones’s quandary was real understandable. Could he marshal manpower and pre-position Rangers at Round Rock before bank robbers did what bank robbers do? From Austin, Major Jones hurriedly dispatched three Rangers to Round Rock: twenty-six year old Richard Clayton “Dick” Ware, originally from Georgia; Christian Reyzor “Chris” Connor, twenty-eight with roots tracing to Alabama; and an old salt, the absolute “terror to thieves” thirty-eight-year-old George Herold, illiterate in the ways of readin’ and writin’ but a fluent speaker of Spanish and the former city marshal of Laredo. They were to take secreted positions at Round Rock, having their weapons fully charged and their eyes open for the slightest hint bank robbers were about. In the meantime Major Jones would hustle additional Rangers to the town and, shortly, personally join them.46 With messages flurrying and Ranger Vernon Coke Wilson literally riding his horse to death en route to update Rangers camped at Lampasas to make haste for Round Rock, Major Jones, accompanied by a former Louisiana-born Texas Ranger but then Travis County deputy sheriff, twenty-eight-year-old Maurice B. Moore, detrained at Round Rock the eighteenth day of July 1878. With Rangers in town and Rangers on the way, jaws of the trap had been set. The very next day, Friday, Sam Bass, Frank Jackson, and Seaborn Barnes made bustling Round Rock their destination, purposefully to buy tobacco and clandestinely to case the bank for the next day’s robbery. Wisely Jim Murphy had begged off with an excuse, a plausible excuse. Modern-era lawmen when reliving an electrifying event or characterizing another’s breathtaking episode, often preface the tale with an alert: “Then it turned Western.”

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In serene downtown Round Rock, at four o’clock in the sunny afternoon, it turned Western. Perhaps prematurely approached by Deputy Moore and Williamson County Deputy Sheriff Ahijah W. “Hi” Grimes, a former Texas Ranger, it was the bad guys who had fired first inside Henry Koppel’s store. Though the wounded deputy sheriff managed to stagger outside before collapsing, Hi Grimes died in the street. Grittily, although suffering a nasty gunshot to a lung, Maurice Moore, propping himself against a post, reaching deep within exhibited true grit. He emptied his Colt’s six-shooter at the fleeing bandits. Already having the middle and ring fingers of his right hand shot off, Sam Bass and the others managed to make it to where their horses were tied in an alleyway. Naturally the noisy gunfire had jumped-started the Rangers into action, and even Major Jones began popping caps, firing at the hotfooting outlaws with his revolver, a “newfangled Colt’s self-cocker.” However, it was in the alley where fatality spit forth from the scorching Winchesters of Rangers. Seaborn Barnes died in the saddle, a dead man falling, carrying Dick Ware’s spent bullet behind his left ear, “channeling toward exposure through his right eye” as he fell. Ranger Herold put one through the back of Sam Bass, “just left of his spine, exiting three inches left of his bellybutton.” Amid the wafting smoke of burnt black powder and earsplitting booms and horrified screams, somehow, Frank Jackson came though unscathed. In an act of indisputable heroics he managed to help Bass stay in the saddle long enough to leave flabbergasted Rangers in town scrambling for horses to initiate pursuit, all of them having made their breakneck Round Rock debut by riding the rails. Though eventually acquiring mounts and giving chase, Major Jones and Texas Rangers Herold, Connor, and Ware were forced to return to Round Rock as fading daylight sparked good judgment. Chasing after these dangerous fellows in total darkness would be downright foolish.47 The logic was unassailable. Seriously wounded deer, if not pressed, eventually lie down and die. These Frontier Battalion Texas Rangers, besides now being capable lawmen, were for the most part genuine outdoorsmen. At daybreak, now supplemented by other Texas Rangers making their show

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at Round Rock, and guessing that Sam Bass would somewhere be dead on the trail or panicky seeking service of a backcountry physician, the manhunt continued. The chase was short. Though Frank Jackson was nowhere to be found, Sam Bass, hopelessly wounded but yet alive, though not smiling, was sitting under the inviting shade of a giant live oak, awaiting his date with destiny and Rangers. Twentythree-year-old Sergeant Charles L. Nevill, who wanted to be a Ranger so bad he had enlisted as a teenager armed with but a butcher knife, and his detachment of Rangers and local lawmen, with eared-back Colt’s .45s congenially obliged.48 Even Texas Ranger Nevill, at this point in the adventure, granted the take down was less than dramatic: “We rode within Sixty yards of the man under the tree and dismounted. He said don’t shoot I surrender. I went up to him and he said I am the man you boys have hunted so long. I am Sam Bass.”49 Knowing Adjutant General Steele needed to be in the loop before newshounds began sniffing for details and scratching out their stories Major Jones telegraphed his boss, twice: “Caught Bass this morning. Badly wounded.”50 And: Have just seen Bass. Am having him brought in. Shot through bowels. Doctor says he will die. He confesses his identity in presence of twenty witnesses and acknowledges the robbing trains and intending to rob bank here. Is identified also by witnesses who know him well. Will bring him to Austin tonight if Doctor thinks he can be moved without danger.51

At Round Rock, suffering on a borrowed cot and borrowed liens, the sometimes coherent and sometimes babbling Sam Bass lingered at death’s doorway. He crossed the threshold on Sunday, 21 July 1878, his twenty-seventh birthday. Sam Bass going under was more than a local news story about another hoodlum passing to the other side. It was headline copy, once again front page news for the New York Times, and once more it propelled complimentary publicity for the Texas Rangers to the forefront of America’s consciousness.52 Though it may not have been picked up for a national news audience, everyday Texans were well aware gunplay and Ranger business

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had intertwined earlier in the year, before Sam Bass had his ticket punched. New Year’s Day, 1878, for Texas Rangers started off with a bang—literally: And, ended horribly. A black teamster and cook, Ben Johnson and George Stevenson, working for the Texas Rangers, had attended a party at Scabtown, the raucous civilian settlement nearest Fort McKavett. Once inside the house the pair was disarmed by drunken ex-Buffalo Soldiers of the 10th U.S. Cavalry; Steve Saunders, Charley Miller, and Henry Clay. Purportedly the ripped-off Colt’s revolvers were yet inventoried property of the state. Johnson and Stevenson returned to camp downtrodden, embarrassed, and sans their six-shooters. Lieutenant N.O. Reynolds, upon hearing the intolerable news, gathered up Sergeant Henry McGhee, along with Texas Rangers Tom Gillespie, Dick Harrison, and twenty-seven-yearold Tim McCarty. Returning to town for the purpose of recovering the state’s pistols seemed wholly reasonable, to the Texas Rangers. The alleged thieves would have none of it. At Charley Miller’s house, where the robbery at gunpoint had occurred, Miller sourly punctuated their bad attitude, insolently declaring he would kill the first “white-livered son of a bitch,” who dared try to gain entry. Poking a bear—or a group of Rangers—is not smart. They couldn’t tuck tail. Charley Miller, by all accounts, opened the ball. When the fire-belching muzzle blasts quieted and the smoke cleared, Ranger McCarty lay on the ground suffering a mortal wound, one just “below his left nipple.” Absent ballistic matching, just who shot who is questionable, but Sergeant McGhee had unleashed hell, his Winchester barking ten times. He would later guesstimate, “and I would not be surprised if it did some damage.” Well, he may have been right. Inside there were survivors but definitely not Messer’s Saunders, Miller, and Clay, or the unfortunately dead black girl killed by accident. Legally, subsequent to the formality of an Inquest, the judge ruled the Rangers justified and the dead men had met their demise while resisting arrest. Some fallout from inter-racial police shootings, then or now, is not novel, and for the most part in this case was limited to the understandable grief and letter writing campaign of the widow Ida Miller.53 There is, though, a clear-cut flip side. Stevenson, if the

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accounts be but at least half true, stood tall: “Negro George fought like a tiger and won the boys’ [Texas Rangers] praise.”54 Someone not earning any praise from the Rangers or citizens had been owlhoot Dick Dublin, a slick fugitive hunted high and low by Lone Star lawmen. He and his brothers, Roll and Dell, had slipped through the Kimble County dragnet and were actively submerged in meanness. Perhaps—there’s really no doubt—Dick Dublin would have been better served by decamping for parts unknown. He didn’t! Ranger James B. Gillett made him an everlasting Texas inhabitant. Pine box dead.55 Although there would be more than several electrifying Texas Ranger episodes to report as the Frontier Battalion entered a new decade, the 1880s, two particular events now merit mention. First, in far West Texas the last—for practical purposes—battle between Rangers and Indians uncorked. Comanche were no longer posing an everyday threat; their figurative backs had been broken due to the earlier Red River War. That was the upside. There was a downside: Apaches. Citizens in neighboring New Mexico Territory were more than exasperated. At Silver City the Grant County Grand Jury returned multi-count Indictments. The Grant County Herald updated its readership about the latest courthouse proceedings: Victorio (an Indian) murder. Victorio (an Indian) murder (two cases). Victorio (an Indian) stealing Horses.56

Subsequent to learning of the criminal indictments, Victorio, the well-known and much feared Warm Springs Apache, who had been camped at the Mescalero Apache Reservation, bolted. Terror and torture flashed through New Mexico Territory, West Texas, and northern Mexico. Although there would be wearisome Texas Ranger days spent in the saddle under command of Lieutenant (later Captain) George Wythe Baylor hunting for an elusive Victorio and his warriors, inside and outside of Mexico, disappointedly they would not be in attendance at the showdown. Colonel Joaquín Terrazas, in the rocky Tres Castillos Mountains northeast of Cuídad Chihuahua, accomplished what the Texas Rangers and the U.S. Army had

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not done: Run Victorio to ground and kill him. The Texas Ranger and Apache history book would close on 29 January 1881 when Captain Baylor and his command surprised Indians in the rugged Sierra Diablo Mountains northeast of Sierra Blanca in what is now Hudspeth County. Tactically advantaged by terrain and surprise the Texas Rangers “rose from hiding and raked them [Apaches] with volley after volley from Winchester repeaters.”57 All wrapped in woolen blankets to shut out the bitter cold, four warriors, two women, and two children were killed, while several wounded Apaches scattered to the four winds. Although it might not register as a full-scale battle, this get-together was the last “Indian fight” in Texas by most accounts.58 And, Texas Rangers were there! Too, and it should not pass unmentioned, this band of Apaches, subsequent to inventory of property Rangers found in the Indians’ camp, were also prime suspects for an earlier attack on a stagecoach traveling though Quitman Canyon, killing the coachman and a passenger; the fight wherein six Buffalo Soldiers had been ambushed at Indian Hot Springs on the Rio Grande below Red Light Draw; and, likely, it was presumed (because of women’s and children’s clothing), the 12 May 1880 murders of Margaret Graham and James Grant whose wagon train had been assaulted in Bass Canyon. At any rate, of the several firearms found in the camp, one, a “very pretty double action 41-Colt revolver” was particularly set aside for shipment to the now Texas Adjutant General John B. Jones, who had succeeded William Steele.59 While there’s no doubt AG Jones was pleased to accept a souvenir from the last Indian fight in his beloved Texas, there were other issues at hand—his fading health. A teetotaler throughout life, nevertheless, John Jones’s liver was failing. A team of physicians could not change the tide. On the nineteenth day of July 1881, at age forty-six, John B. Jones died.60 His now lost heartbeats had not been in vain: His leadership and administrative style and displays of personal courage when necessary had breathed enduring life into the Texas Rangers. Not just a few Texans were vocalizing—figuratively, of course— wishing that someone else had died: The fellows who invented

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barbed-wire. Throughout the state, barbed-wire salesmen were hawking their wares with catchy sales pitches, declaring the newfangled fencing material was, “Light as air, Stronger than whiskey, and Cheap as dirt,” or that the wire’s utility was terrific due to the fact it was, “Pig tight, Horse high, and Bull strong.”61 What made its inventors millionaires was a thorn in the side of many stock raisers and row-crop tillers of the dirt and dust. Some folks with the financial wherewithal were enclosing public roadways, precious waterholes, and even obstructing the U.S. Postman’s ability to deliver the mail. The severe drought of 1883 worsened the spiraling out-of-control mess.62 Many neighborhoods were theoretically split.63 Fences went up. Fences came down. Texas’s rural residents were at war with each other, literally. Half of those surveyed and organized 171 Texas counties reported instances of fence cutting during 1883, and the economic loss alone was estimated at nearing the $20,000,000 mark. Scores of county sheriffs walked the tightrope of inactivity due to constituents’ equally divided notions. Governor John Ireland called a Special Session of the Texas Legislature.64 The Chief Executive’s demand that elected politicos get off their duffs and fix the problem would significantly impact the Texas Rangers in day-by-day crime fighting and stair-step their legendary standing up a notch in the eyes of most everyday folks, including not just a few newsprint journalists and a cadre of profit-motivated novelists. The short version of the legislators’ doings is this: Fence cutting and/or pasture burnings were now felonies with prison sentences, public property and roadways were not to be unlawfully enclosed, and there would be a wire-gap (gate) every third mile of fence with hitching posts on each side, allowing travelers ingress and/or egress as they went about the business of life—no excuse for not closing a gate. And, Rangers would be handed the endorsed muscle to enforce the law with statewide reach.65 Almost at once the Frontier Battalion’s front office was bombarded with requests for Rangers to come into particular neighborhoods— secretly or overtly—and put the kibosh on the midnight handiwork of Knights of Knippers. It was dangerous work: During an investigation

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in Edwards County at Green Lake, Corporal Phillip Cuney “P.C.” Baird and his three-man scout engaged fence cutters in a horrific gunfight wherein one yahoo, an escaped convict, was killed and a Texas Ranger was seriously wounded.66 Similarly in Brown County, subsequent to a Ranger’s undercover work and the vital tip from a spy, state lawmen waited to waylay a section of fence. That night two cutters paid the toll for their folly with blood. Next day an undertaker was busy.67 In West Texas at Sweetwater in Nolan County, Texas Ranger Ben Warren was assassinated by fence cutters shooting through a window as he sat talking with friends in a hotel lobby.68 And in Navarro County an undercover Ranger proposed planting secreted dynamite bombs along fence lines so that any nighttime nippers would be blown to smithereens. There is no evidence that any explosive charges were set, but leaking of the likely strategy served as a deterrent to would-be fence cutters—as intended. Unquestionably the legendary side of Ranger lore was stoked during those bloody Wire War years. Supposing all of the exciting Texas Ranger episodes were based in and around areas now circled by barbed-wire would be amiss. During part of the taxing 1880s in faraway and windswept West Texas, the Frontier Battalion’s commanders were under the proverbial gun, and their Rangers were literally under the gun. Companies commanded by Captain George Baylor, and later by Captain James T. Gillespie, were trying mightily to ride herd over the wild cowboys and railroad rowdies, particularly at Toyah and Pecos City, Reeves County. Two telegrams, first from Captain Baylor, the second from Captain Gillespie, confirm: “Cow boys tried to take town at Toyah one killed three wounded & five prisoners none of rangers hurt am on my way down.”69 And, with the slightest edit for clarity: “Morris, sheriff of Reeves Co. Came here drunk abusing rangers. Sergeant Cartwright with three men went to arrest him. A fight ensued. Private Nigh and Sheriff Killed. Full particulars by mail.”70 While boisterous cowboys and six-shootin’ bad boys were dispensing stupidity and meanness west of the Pecos, the by and large unsettled Texas Panhandle was not to be neglected. Though leaving the

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dead body of a black man, Alex Webb, and his real name behind in his Old South birth-state, the previously mentioned George Washington “Cap” Arrington filled the bill as a no-nonsense Texas Ranger disciplinarian and a hard fellow impervious to bulldozing—by anyone. His morning gruel it seemed was but grit, guts, and gumption—stirred with a Colt’s gun barrel. Working himself up through the ranks from a Texas Ranger private to captain of Company C, Arrington had in large part explored much of the unexplored Panhandle. The “Iron Man of the Panhandle,” is credited with putting the damper on Indians jumping the Fort Sill Reservation and vacationing in Texas hiding behind one excuse or another, and staunching hooliganism of cowboys gone wild. Admittedly, never too far from rich arguments and six-gun controversy, proof is in the pudding: Besides a leadership role in the Rangers, he staked out the sheriff’s job in two counties and his renowned Rocking Chair Ranch is yet registering brands at Canadian.71 Keeping the peace then or now is ever problematic for lawmen, walking the tightrope between what the law demands and the public winks at. On the other hand, not all law enforcing work straight away calls for cracking a cranium or pulling a pistol. Police work is fascinating, forensic doings ever-evolving. Rangers—in the big picture—were fast learners. Along the Rio Grande near Eagle Pass four weighted bodies, victims of murderous hands, were fished from the river. The decomposing deceased were, at the time, nameless. Any suspect or suspects were but phantoms of everybody’s and anybody’s idle speculation. In lawman’s lingo it was a genuine, whodunit? Ensuring that the Blind Mistress of Justice would not be lonesome, Sergeant Austin Ira Aten, Company D, assisted by his protégé Private John Reynolds Hughes (future captain), was tasked with investigating the gruesome crime. Ingeniously, certainly for the first time in Texas—maybe the whole country—Sergeant Aten struck on the notion of identifying the corpses through dental work, forensically comparing their individual oral orifice layouts with the real records, knowledge, and expert testimony of a particular dentist. It was a stellar triumph, leading

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to positive identification of the deceased. And, from that point, Rangers identified the prime suspect, Richard H. “Dick” Duncan, “a red-headed, dancing, idling, singing cowboy, who would as soon go to a fight as a frolic.”72 All in all the Texas Ranger’s work withstood appellate court review and Dick Duncan was dropped through the gallows’ trapdoor at Maverick County’s jailhouse.73 The national and local press corps took note. These Rangers fellows—for the most part—would do to tie to during a gunplay or hound someone to justice with legally admissible physical and/or circumstantial evidence. Herein it’s also imperative to make note. Wilburn Hill King, who had replaced John B. Jones as Adjutant General, applied that characteristic Ranger ingenuity to the recurring ebb and flow of tightfisted lawmakers’ purse-strings. Aware enabling legislation had authored a 450-man ceiling for the Frontier Battalion, he too knew funds for that employment scale never were available. AG King authorized appointments for “Special Rangers,” many for private enterprises such as railroad police and stock association detectives, who would pay salaries at no cost to the state. The policy was sound when it worked, but rife for abuse when it didn’t.74 As the decade of the 1880s was closing, Texas Ranger fireworks garnered statewide attention. Rangers Calvin Grant Aten, Bazzell Lamar Outlaw, and John Reynolds Hughes had celebratory plans for 1889’s Christmas night, that is if the outlaw Odle brothers, fugitives Will and Alvin, kept to schedule. The boys had heretofore been the whirlwind behind the recent Hill Country crime wave—and their taking in or taking off was crucial business for Company D Rangers. After good dark at the eastern foot of Bullhead Mountain in Edwards County the desperadoes and the Rangers, plus a few area civilians, commemorated the holiday with hot lead. The Odle boys toppled from their horses, one dead and one dying.75 With regards to Rangers having sand, one gunfight stands above most, and the dicey episode also made good copy in reporters’ handy notebooks. The bullets flew, not in West Texas or the Wild Horse Desert or along the snaking Rio Grand/Río Bravo but nearer another watercourse, the Sabine River in East Texas, not too far

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from the Sabine County seat, Hemphill, just west of the Louisiana line. History knows the confrontation as the Conner Fight. Captain William “Billy” Scott, now commanding Company F, Sergeant James Abijah Brooks (a future captain), along with Texas Ranger Privates John Harris Rogers (another future captain), Jim Carmichael, Billy Treadwell, and James H. “Jim” Moore would know it as unmitigated hell with a capital H. The Conner clan had long been a persistent nightmare for honest folks living in the swampy bottomlands east of town. Their portfolio of real madness was stuffed with murders, jailbreaks, thefts, and other acts of hooliganism that were, in fact, terrorizing the whole county. “The Conners had forced the last sheriff to resign by sheer intimidation, and the new peace officer adamantly refused to hunt for them down in the bayous.”76 Sometimes Texas Rangers would tread where others would dare not go, despite the sweltering discomfort, ticks, and danger. In the swampland at a little stand of pine trees the Rangers found the Conners—and vice versa. In double quick time Captain Scott took a bullet through the left lung; Private Rogers suffered bullet wounds to the “left side and arm.” Sergeant Brooks took a horrifying hit to his left hand, the bullet tearing off three of his fingers. Private Treadwell’s Winchester jammed, rendering it and him totally useless for the moment. Private Carmichael, acting alone, maintained a gutsy and withering fire with his Winchester, keeping the Conner wolves at bay. What of Ranger Moore? He lay sledgehammer dead in the muck, misquotes and gnats harmoniously buzzing his dirge. Bill Conner, too, was lifeless, taking a solid hit from Sergeant Brooks’s Winchester, but for the moment, Uncle Willis and his boys Frederick “Fed” (though wounded), and Charlie slipped into the darkness.77 What had not slipped into the shadows was, once again, the reading public’s notice that in most instances when tranquility suddenly evaporated and a happening truly turned Western, Texas Rangers would stay “hitched.” Oversimplification is a recurrent underpinning for venerating Ranger mythology as well as for Ranger debunkers aimed at crippling the law-enforcing outfit’s legendary standing in the eyes of many, if not most, Texans—and the rest of the world. Sweeping

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statements from either camp can be right—or wrong! More often than not blind generalizations may be cut to the nub and discarded. Legends are legendary and Texas Rangers are yet on the job. Much of the myth making and demystifying wheedle taproots to the Texas/ Mexico borderlands, a hot spot then—and now. Before daylight on the second day of September 1891 near Samuels Siding just north of Del Rio, Val Verde County, the westbound Galveston, Harrisburg & San Antonio No. 20 was robbed by four fellows gone bad: Jim Lansford, John M. Flynt, John “Three-Fingered Jack” Wellington, and a guy of the “rough cowboy element,” Tom Strouts, aka Tom Fields. Thankfully no innocent passengers or train employees were injured or killed, although J. Ernest Smith, Wells, Fargo & Co. Express Messenger, “had his anatomy pretty well shaken up by the dynamite bombs. . . .”78 Probably not having an inkling at the time, the inconsiderate robbers had cleaved unto themselves a first: never before had train robbers employed explosives to “open an express safe by blasting it with dynamite.”79 Setting aside such technicality, for the Texas Rangers this train robbery was another humdinger of a newsmaker with correspondents for the San Antonio Daily Express, the San Antonio Daily Light, and the El Paso Daily Times near-choking the pipeline to editors’ desks. Though the chase after robbers would not be an overnight operation, the Rangers were committed and in the end successful, after a running gunfight that netted the capture of three robbers. The fourth, John Flynt, opted for suicide rather than surrender. His self-destruction was lauded by a reporter: “Flint [sic] the suiciding express robber, was the right kind of a thief. If a man is going in for that kind of thing and proposes to defy law let him have the courage of his actions and not squeal when it comes to taking his gruel.”80 Tracking and chasing the robbers through several borderland counties and into and out of Mexico was not a job well suited for sheriffs, a fact not lost on legislators, local lawmen, and the public.81 There was a real need for Texas Rangers! For a time one fellow in particular was responsible for more than a fair share of havoc along the Rio Grande/Río Bravo: Catarino Erasmo

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Garza Rodriguez. Articulate and highly educated with earned college credentials, Catarino Garza was consumed with political affairs across the border in Mexico. On the Texas side gunfire and a bullet wound had punctuated his vitriolic displeasure with a former Texas Ranger but at the time a U.S. Customs Inspector, Victor Sebree. For the short version suffice to say firebrand Catarino Garza had a raging purpose burning deep in his very soul and quite ambitiously he “had enjoined a small but tempestuous revolutionary cell that stood— twenty years ahead of their time—in open opposition to the dictatorial Porfirio Diaz regime in Mexico.”82 Unfortunately for Catarino, as was so often the case with borderland schemers and dreamers, he characteristically overestimated his own power, inflated the strength of his expeditionary forces, and his several stabs at militarily invading Mexico were but dismal. Not all of Catarino’s compadres were gentlemen patriots clamoring for chaste democracy and were selflessly disposed to be good guys. The Garzistas, as they were commonly known, with an inadequate and mismanaged command structure, fueled by weakening supply lines, a woeful shortage of dinero, and eventually eroding public support, had forfeited the high-road of virtuous principle, assuming the role of Bravos. They “preyed on rancheros and behaved like stereotypical Mexican bandits.”83 There were then, not too surprisingly, somewhere north of half a thousand criminal indictments/case files formally documenting the criminal offenses of Garza’s underlings.84 Catarino’s mischief and violations of federal neutrality laws prompted the U.S. military to flex its muscle with a multi-unit and inter-agency manpower buildup in South Texas. Correspondingly, reporters flocked to the region ink-pens in hand and, when handy, telegraph and telephone messages burnt the wires of competition for an exclusive story. Journalists from the Dallas Morning News, The Knoxville Journal, Dallas Times Herald, and Omaha World Herald, were but a few onsite to personally witness the hunt for bandit Garzistas. Relevance for the treatment in hand is accentuated with a simple but sad fact. In the brasada among the cacti and scrub, Garzistas murdered Ranger Bob Doaty of the Frontier Battalion’s Company E. Headlines blared in bold print.85

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Another nineteenth-century story would break involving Rangers, and their institutional involvement “attracted more state and national attention” than anything before.86 The Frontier Battalion’s deployment to El Paso was to prevent a heavily promoted prizefight between Peter Maher and Bob Fitzsimmons from taking place on any piece of Texas real-estate. The unfolding drama made for a good story then—or now. Whether or not sending the entire battalion to the far western tip of Texas was sound judgment on the part of Governor Charles A. Culberson is arguable. As aficionados of Old West happenings well know, the boxing match did take place not in Texas but on a sandbar in the Rio Grande below Judge Roy Bean’s iniquitous Jersey Lilly Saloon at Langtry in Val Verde County.87 Rhetorically it might be asked: Did the presence of Rangers deter promoter Dan Stuart’s “Fistic Carnival” from actually taking place in Texas or had the state lawmen simply been outfoxed from the get-go? Seemingly the hurried deployment of so many Rangers to the neighborhood was, as a prominent scholar noted, “an overkill that should have been avoided.”88 From the purely practical standpoint, though not necessarily needed, the assemblage of so many Texas Rangers, widely dispersed as they were, all companies coming together at the same time and place for a like purpose, was a tactical message not lost on civilians or would-be mal hombres.89 Certainly the photographers and national press corps were not in the dark. Those dapper-looking Texas Rangers decked out in coats and ties, all carrying Winchesters, well, they were surely impressive. Though the twentieth century was fast approaching, the 1890s had been and would prove to be anything but an angelic picnic social for Frontier Battalion fellows. Just in counties adjacent to the sometimes roiling and sometimes lazy Rio Grande/ Río Bravo, seven Texas Rangers would die wearing on-duty boots: Company D’s Sergeant Charles Henry Vanvalkenburg Fusselman; Private John R. Gravis; the above mentioned Private Robert E. “Bob” Doaty; a Ranger’s Ranger, Captain Frank Jones; Private Joseph “Buckskin Joe” McKidrick (foully murdered by Deputy U.S. Marshal/Special Texas Ranger B.L. “Baz” Outlaw); an impromptu

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deputized Texas Ranger from New Orleans, Doctor Oscar J. Breaux; and the last nineteenth-century Ranger to give up the ghost, Ernest “Diamond Dick” St. Leon. Others in the name of memorializing fallen Rangers should not be ignored: Closer in, away from the perilous border at unreconstructed Richmond in Fort Bend County, Private Frank Louis Schmid, Jr., during a riotous shootout between hotheaded Anglo feudists, the Jaybirds and Woodpeckers, took a bullet that would take his life. While working undercover trying to ferret out mean cow thieves in Menard County, Ranger Private J.W. Woods simply vanished, presumed murdered but never heard from again. And on 28 August 1894, Company F’s Ranger Private Walker Lee Hooker went under; beneath raging currents of the Nueces, his waterlogged remains later washing up against swollen river banks in La Salle County (county seat Cotulla). Not all 1890s Rangers suffering gunshot wounds while working along the Texas/Mexico border died. A case in point would be a time the devoutly religious and aforementioned John H. Rogers again took bullets. Now the captain of Company E, John Rogers was ordered to Laredo to do some good work. Smallpox, knowing no boundaries, had remorselessly invaded Webb County. The city’s mayor, Louis T. Christen, seeking life-saving help turned to the Texas State Health Office’s Director, Doctor W.T. Blunt. These two worried public servants then hurriedly consulted with Laredo’s city marshal, Joe Bartlow, and Webb County’s sheriff, L.R. Ortiz. Talk of placing smoking camphor pots in homes already exposed, a large-scale fumigation program, centralizing and isolating those already infected within the city’s one and only hospital, the administration of mandatory immunizations, and rigidly enforcing a quarantine line were but sensible sounding steps if citizens were to be saved from la viruela and the dreadful malady be held in check.90 The majority Mexicano population was not quite so sure and, in fact, “did not believe in these measures, and made a great uproar about the matter.”91 Anticipating resistance—for sure vocal, maybe physical—Texas Rangers had been asked for and were sent to Laredo. Tensions escalated appreciably after it was rumored and then confirmed that a certain party had

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tried to requisition 2,000 shotgun shells, buckshot, from the Deutz Brothers Hardware Store.92 Once again, the clouds of a looming borderland disturbance were overhead. After executing a sworn affidavit setting forth Probable Cause and securing search warrants, Sheriff Ortiz was steadfast and focused on searching several residences for stockpiled arms and/or ammunition, one of which was the home of a huffy Agapito Herrera. With friends and/or relatives milling about in his front yard, their rifles stashed out of sight, Herrera demurred; no person could, legally or otherwise, step past the manmade threshold of his closeknit family’s structure and infringe on the sovereignty of his castle: He was a homeowner! The crux of the nearing drama was/is foreseeable. Machismo and pride prevented Herrera from bending. Duty prevented lawmen from turning tail. Arguing or sarcastically bantering is one thing; pulling a gun on lawmen is quite another. Once the smoke had cleared, the tally was effortless. Herrera lay dead in the street outside his yard-gate, Captain Rogers’s and Ranger Private A.Y. “Augie” Old’s bullets having pummeled him into eternity. A rooftop sniper’s hot projectile had cut through Captain Rogers’s right arm, scarcely below the shoulder, plowing him to agony just as a new piece of searing lead nicked and bloodied his thumb. During the initial dustup Herrera’s sister Refugia, a combatant, caught a bullet in her arm. Santiago Granaldo, a neighbor and fighting participant, doubled over with a bullet in his midsection.93 Not unexpectedly, a crowd of Mexicano spectators numbering between fifty and one hundred, many armed with long-guns or handguns, began milling around the lifeless form of Mr. Herrera, as Captain Rogers was being spirited away for medical attention. Once their seriously wounded captain had been safely removed from the crime scene and under professionals’ care, other Company E Rangers who had arrived at Laredo gutted up; their law-enforcing duty was clear. Latter day producers and directors of celluloid classics, naturally, weren’t there. But there would be a real show. As Ranger Sergeant Harry G. DuBose, accompanied by Privates W.L. “Will” Wright (a future captain), Creed Taylor, Will Old (Augie’s brother),

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and Special Ranger O.N. Wright marched toward trouble, they were pluckily joined by Special Ranger Tom Ragland and the abovementioned Augie Old, who had earlier been in the gunfight with Herrera. Approaching the scene Frontier Battalion fellows noticed that some of the “armed men turned and drew their guns” threateningly pointing muzzles at the Rangers: Unwise? An understatement! “The Rangers drew pistols and lifted rifles to their shoulders, firing as they walked. Creed Taylor shot practically from the hip, hitting every target at which he aimed. . . . The Ranger bullets found their targets as at least eight men went down wounded. The firing became general as the mob scattered and ran for cover. The Rangers stood in the middle of the street and returned fire, finally moving purposefully for cover. A bullet whistled through DuBose’s pants leg but missed flesh. A spent bullet ricocheted against O.N. Wright’s groin, doubling him over and leaving a serious bruise. One Mexican rifle continued to fire as the others quieted. Taylor stepped from his cover and dispatched the sniper with a single shot.”94 Quantifying the results of Laredo’s Smallpox War is relatively simple, once a touch of rich hyperbole is set aside: “Many a Mexican was vaccinated while a Ranger stood at the physician’s side with a six-shooter in hand. It was harsh treatment, but it finally stopped the epidemics of smallpox on the Border.”95 Truthfully, two real dynamics emerge: The scourge of the dreaded disease was somewhat whipped along the Texas/Mexico borderlands, and due to devotion to duty and standup deportment when it went Western, once again, the prominence of Rangers was whipped to the forefront of a nation’s awareness. That awareness was also applicable to individual Rangers. Amid a myriad of legacy issues crafted for Rangers during the days of AG Steele and Major Jones had been publication and distribution of the Fugitive List, sometimes colloquially called the Book of Knaves or simply The Book. County sheriffs and other lawmen had forwarded names of guys wanted in their jurisdictions, including the criminal charges, the posting of rewards, physical descriptions, and any other unique identifying data. Properly organized and printed, then

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passed to Rangers in the field, this early day mode of Information Technology was a handy enforcement tool leading to the apprehension of wanted characters statewide. Deploying Rangers to trouble spots by train while effectively utilizing telegraphic and telephonic communications were clear demonstrations that personnel of the Frontier Battalion were executing their sworn duties at the cutting edge: The age of transitioning Texas law enforcement into the modern era was at hand and Texas Rangers were upholding their end.96 Also indicating the Frontier Battalion was ever inching toward professionalism is revealed by the late 1890s effort at matching individual Texas Rangers with the jobs best suited for them, an early day Performance Appraisal. Extracting but two examples, though arguably politically incorrect for today’s marketplace, nonetheless is illuminating: Texas Ranger Ed Bryant was characterized as a “1st class detective among Mexicans but not with Americans. . . . He is half Mexican and is educated in Spanish and english [sic] and is a 1st class interpreter. I [Captain John R. Hughes] consider him a first class Mexican worker but he is not so good among Americans.” Astutely the Company D commander recognized that George H. Tucker had other talents, aside from those normally credited to hard-edged pistol-packin’ Texas Rangers: “Tucker is well educated, is a stenographer and uses typewriter well, also knows how to ride & shoot. [He] was partly raised on a horse ranch in Haskell Co., Tex. Is a good bookkeeper and would be a good hand to examine a set of books to see if there was anything rong [sic] with them.”97 Indeed, there was something “rong” with the enabling legislation responsible for birthing the Frontier Battalion a quarter-century earlier. A legal challenge was up in the air. According to the devious mindset of sharp-witted lawyers it was formally asserted that the legal language awarding Frontier Battalion personnel the powers of a peace officer was precise for a reason. Resultantly, the only Rangers empowered to make arrests were the commissioned officers, captains and lieutenants, not the noncoms and/or enlisted privates. If a Texas Ranger other than a commissioned officer deprived a defendant of his liberty it would be, in point of lawful fact, a culpable violation of

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the Texas State Penal Code, the punishable felony offense of False Imprisonment, so brainy attorneys argued. Governor Joseph D. Sayers had not one helluva an idea as to the legally binding merit or the foolishness of the challenging lawyers’ assertion. The Chief Executive turned to the then-sitting Adjutant General, Thomas Scurry, who in turn bounced the ball of inquiry into the inter-office of Thomas S. Smith, Attorney General of Texas. This was not to be taken lightly, it was no laughing matter. The Dallas Morning News carried Attorney General Smith’s lengthy and obviously labored May 1900 ruling in its entirety, but the reading public and criminals and Texas Rangers focused on that ever-niggling and, in this particular instance, very important bottom-line: “My conclusion is that the non-commissioned officers and privates of the frontier battalion, being the present military force referred to in the Adjutant General’s inquiry, was ‘rangers’ and have no authority as such to execute criminal process or make arrests, and that only commissioned officers of that organization have that power.”98 Application of sound theoretical reasoning, coupled now with a binding legal opinion was hard for the public to accept and was near unfathomable: “For twenty-five years the Texas Rangers had been making illegal arrests.”99 A hallmark of Ranger viability was/is an ability to adapt, not whining about inequity. There was, indeed, more than one way to skin the cat. The adjutant general and Texas Rangers wielded razor-sharp knives. Until state lawmakers could kick off their January 1901 session and either reword the legislation or kick the Frontier Battalion to the ash heap of history, a stopgap measure was required. The remedy was less than mindboggling and perhaps intentionally galling for some hair-splitting lawyers. Certain Rangers were asked to volunteer; would they take on the role and title of lieutenants on paper but not ask for a customarily commensurate increase in pay? Easily the requisite quota of Rangers stepped to the mark. Problem solved! Now with a sufficient cadre of legitimized officers, the remaining rank and file Texas Rangers could and would “assist” the officers when making arrests or

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executing the court’s process. “The institutional continuity of the Texas Rangers remained unbroken.”100 What had also remained unbroken was the nation’s unbridled fascination with Texas Rangers. Journalists saddled the paying pony of popularity. Dime novelist Prentiss Ingraham, the publicity guru for Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Shows, spurred forward cranking out Buck Taylor, King of the Cowboys or the Raiders and the Rangers, as well as Texas Charlie, the Boy Ranger, and Revolver Billy, the Boy Ranger of Texas.101 Admittedly these were titles aimed at the juvenile marketplace but, nonetheless, Rangers were the heroes to be admired and emulated in daydreams or at play. But before the century clock gave way to the twentieth century, other titles, aimed at an adult readership, marketed the Texas Ranger mystique. One case would be the work of Richard Harding Davis, managing editor of Harper’s Weekly. Following an awe-inspiring trip to the Lone Star State and actually visiting with Texas Rangers, during 1892 Mr. Davis published The West from a Car-Window, a volume illustrated by the artist accompanying him on the tour, Frederic Remington, shortly to become one of the most celebrated Western painters and sculptors of all time. At the Frontier Battalion camps the writer and artist were enthralled with tales of adventure and privy to exhibitions of the Texas Rangers’ seemingly unfailing marksmanship. It had been a grand excursion, rich with copy for a national readership. Also not unnoticed had been the laudatory piece with pen and ink drawings for a June 1892 edition of the The Texas Volunteer as well as the exclusive chapter devoted to Texas Rangers in editor Dudley G. Wooten’s 1898 whopping two-volume treatment, A Comprehensive History of Texas, 1685–1897.102 Again referencing a partial definition relating to the word “legendary” according to Webster is “all such stories belonging to a particular group of people [or] a notable person whose deeds or exploits are much talked about in his or her own time.”103 The Texas Rangers, then, according to hardcore technicalities of scholarly wordsmiths, were legendary, even during the first century of their birthing. The Frontier Battalion per se could not claim such longevity, but unarguably its legendary status and personnel, in the end, would

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prevail. Though one Texas Ranger would not see any lawmakers restructuring or continuing the pathway leading to institutional immortality. For life’s short passage he was many things but, unfortunately, Texas Ranger T. Lawrence Fuller would be the last Ranger of the Frontier Battalion era to make the ultimate line-of-duty sacrifice. On the fifteenth day of October 1900, he was standing, towel in hand, before a Texas barber’s washbasin at Orange in Orange County just southwest of Vinton, Louisiana. In all likelihood the unsuspecting Ranger consciously heard nothing and felt naught, as the Winchester’s lead bullet tore into his temple. Texas Ranger Fuller died on the polished tile floor, clipped hair and excess talcum mixed with fast-pooling blood beneath his horrific head-wound. Triggerman Thomas Poole, son of County Judge George F. Poole who was no friend of state-sponsored lawmen, sneered and then submitted to arrest by local authorities. His shot through the barbershop’s glass window had been faultless. The death of his brother Oscar by the six-shooter action of Ranger Fuller as result of an earlier aborted escape attempt had now been avenged.104 Not surprisingly, a trial jury of his peers found Tom Poole not guilty, which in the parlance of everyday working lawmen meant that the defendant “walked.” Through application of the course of law the Frontier Battalion wouldn’t walk; its fate had been capped by state lawmakers. The abolition was all due to that persnickety interpretation of legalese which had been a subpart of that knotty enabling legislation. The battalion was formally disbanded as of 8 July 1901. The practical upshot for Texas Rangers and citizens of the Lone Star State had been meaningless. Five days earlier, 3 July 1901, a new law was on the books and into effect, one creating the spanking new Ranger Force. Thoughtfully, elected politicos had fixed the damnable glitch. Now each and every Ranger Force employee had authority to make arrests and execute criminal process anywhere in the state; they were all legally empowered Texas peace officers. The new Ranger Force, a four-company outfit, was deployed thusly: Company A commanded by Captain James Abijah Brooks was stationed at Alice (now in Jim Wells County); at Amarillo, Captain William Jesse “Bill” McDonald

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headed up Company B; at Laredo, Webb County’s shiretown, Captain John Harris Rogers supervised Company C; and west of the Pecos River at Fort Hancock (now Hudspeth County) Captain John R. Hughes was in charge of Company D, having subsequently replaced Captain Frank Jones during 1893 after his murder by Mexicano bandits. At the Austin headquarters, serving as the Ranger Force’s quartermaster and overseeing day-to-day operations, was Captain “Lam” Sieker, a Texas Ranger stalwart tracing his seniority to the very first Muster & Payroll of Company D at Blanco during May 1874.105 Texas Rangers, like their fellow brothers and sisters of the badge, mark a good day as a day they survive. Unfortunately, these Frontier Battalion-era Texas Rangers had a bad day, and at a minimum for the narrative in hand, it’s but fitting to memorialize them by name: Addington, William B. Anglin, William B. Bailey, David W. H. Beauman, Melvin E. Bingham, George R. “Red” Bohanon, William Breaux, Oscar J. [deputized Ranger] Cliff, W.H. Crist, Henry Doaty, Robert E. Frazier, Samuel Fuller, T. Lawrence Fusselman, Charles H.V. Glass, William A. Gravis, John E. Hooker, Walker Lee Jones, Frank May, George B. McBride, John E.

29 June 1874 29 June 1879 12 July 1874 31 August 1878 04 July 1880 22 June 1885 29 August 1898

Killed by Fellow Texas Ranger Killed by Indians Killed by Indians Accidental Gunshot Killed by Anglo Desperadoes Typhoid Fever Killed by Anglo Desperadoes

23 September 1874 17 October 1878 22 March 1892 31 January 1878 15 October 1900 17 April 1890 12 July 1874 04 August 1890 28 August 1894 30 June 1893 24 September 1886 13 December 1877

Drowned Accidental Gunshot Mexicano Revolutionists Killed by Fellow Texas Ranger Killed by Anglo Feudist Killed by Mexicano Bandits Killed by Indians Killed by Mexicano Revelers Drowned Killed by Mexicano Bandits Killed by Fellow Texas Ranger Killed by Mexicano Rioters

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McCarty, Timothy J. McKidrcit, Joseph W.

01 January 1878 05 April 1894

Moore, James H. Mortimer, Conrad E. Nigh, Thomas P.

31 March 1887 13 December 1877 18 August 1885

Parker, A.J. “Jack” Ruzin, A.A. Schmid, Jr., Frank Louis Sieker, Frank E.

15 March 1882 10 August 1878 16 August 1889 31 May 1885

St. Leon, Ernest “Diamond Dick” Tardy, R.L. Ware, W.L. Warren, Benjamin Goodin Wood, J.G. Woods, J.W.

29 August 1898 15 February 1883 08 March 1882 10 February 1885 13 May 1885 30 November 1893

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Killed by ex-Buffalo Soldier Killed by Dep. Marshal /Spc. Ranger Killed by Anglo Desperadoes Killed by Mexicano Rioters Killed by Drunken Texas Sheriff Pneumonia Killed by Indians Killed by Anglo Rioters Killed by Mexicanos [Mistakenly ?] Killed by Anglo Desperadoes Pneumonia Pneumonia Killed by Anglo Fence Cutters Pneumonia Disappeared Working Undercover

Though the list could be dramatically lengthened were inclusions for all Texas peace officers a part of the equation, such as Special Rangers, sheriffs and their deputies, town marshals, and city policemen, etc., but hat-in-hand clemency is solicited; this is the Texas Rangers’ story. Rather sadly it seems gunshots and gravesites mark history. Seldom is history a kind mistress. Nonetheless, especially during the Frontier Battalion’s lifespan, Texas Rangers had in many a mind achieved stardom, a legendary standing. It was and would be left to future generations of Texas Rangers to ensure such a legacy would endure.

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was one supposing that while riding into the twentieth century all Texas Rangers were wearing white hats and issuing impartial justice, such a blanket notion would be better served by recalibration and renunciation? Likewise, irresponsibly and generously handing out free tickets of absolution for others with demonstrated meanness in their dossiers is also one-dimensional and dishonest. Unarguably the Texas/Mexico borderlands was the bloody backdrop for some Texas Ranger wrongdoings, as well as the transgressions of not just a few Mexicanos laying claim to residency either side of the Rio Grande/Río Bravo. The dark days of borderland history own their fair share of shame—traceable to multi-cultural doorsteps. Then as now the sometimes languid and sometimes roiling river is a magnet for bad men and mal hombres. Kicking off the new century’s second year with a bang—several bangs—Gregorio Cortez, who “had been reared in a family of horse thieves and became one of the most accomplished,” while resisting arrest murdered Karnes County Sheriff W.T. “Brack” Morris. On the lam, south of Austin, near the tiny community of Ottine in north-central Gonzales County, Gregorio again scored a direct hit, killing the county’s very popular and five-times-elected sheriff, R. M. Glover. For a grueling ten days and covering several hundred roundabout miles Gregorio Cortez eluded haggard lawmen and civilian posses atop jaded horses, but quite naturally and understandably 342

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journalists were stalking his every move, if there is any credit due for gossip, rumor, and hearsay. Nonetheless it was a big story, a real good story, quite naturally depending on one’s perspective. For not just a few Mexicanos the hounded fugitive morphed into a folk hero due to the time he “outwitted, outran, and humiliated the host of posses tracking him on horseback and by rail.” Inside the tiny confines of a shack at a Webb County goat ranch, Ranger Captain John H. Rogers in a decidedly less than dramatic enforcement action nudged Gregorio from his slumber at the point of an eared-back Colt’s sixshooter. Shortly, along with others, the company commander posed for an iconic photo with the cheerless prisoner at San Antonio in Bexar County’s jail-yard. The upshot of the arrest is threefold: For Rangers another rung in the legacy ladder was pegged; subsequent to trials and hung juries and felony convictions, while serving hard time in the penitentiary Gregorio Cortez may very well have taken solace mouthing stanzas of corridos (narrative folk songs) extolling his exploits; and following his Governor’s Pardon thirteen years later, there’s little doubt he chirped like the proverbial canary while snitching to the American government’s Bureau of Investigation, forerunner to the FBI.1 Hardly had the new Ranger Force celebrated its first birthday before the Grim Reaper called a Ranger’s name. The precursor story is simple. Sergeant Anderson Yancey Baker, commonly referred to simply as “A.Y.,” was carrying the Texas Ranger flag stationed at Brownsville, while the headquarters of Company A was positioned a hundred miles north at Alice, commanded by Captain James Abijah Brooks. On the balmy morning of 16 May 1902, at nine o’clock, it turned Western in South Texas. Sergeant Baker and Texas Ranger Privates Harry J. Wallis (not to be confused with Hayes Moore Wallis) and William Emmett Robuck, a twenty-three-year-old from Caldwell County (county seat Lockhart), along with King Ranch cowboy Jesse Miller, were scouting after reported cow thieves. Sergeant Baker unexpectedly rode up on Ramón de la Cerda, who was standing over a hog-tied calf on the ground, branding iron nearby. Armed with two Colt’s six-shooters, a .41 and a .45, Ramón jerked fast,

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hammering a bullet’s flight. At the same instant Ranger Baker launched a Winchester’s missile in Ramón’s direction. Neither man had dawdled: Second place in a gunfight is last place. How did the contest end? An old-time Ranger quipped with dry wit: “Cerda killed Baker’s horse by shooting him in the left eye. A.Y. killed Ramon by shooting him in the right eye.” Skipping past latter-day hyperbole there was, at the time, a legal matter to address, an Inquest. Officially the local Justice of the Peace, Estevan Garcia Ozuña, accompanied by Edward B. Raymond, found that Ramón de la Cerda “had been hit over the right eye by a 30 cal. soft nose bullet. The hole over his eye was small and the wound in the back of his head was large where the bullet came out. There was but one wound which was fatal. The body was thoroughly examined by the Justice and my self and there was no other wound from a firing arm or any other character of weapon.” Routinely the three Rangers and civilian stockman posted a bond, waiting for the official wheels of justice to grind toward some sort of legal finale. Not unexpectedly there was a backlash, some Mexicanos asserting that Ramón had been coldly murdered, and as a matter of Texas Ranger course his lifeless remains had been purposefully brutalized. Purportedly, looking—maybe hoping—for such evidence of savagery the dead man’s remains were exhumed for a novice postmortem type examination by order of local Brownsville Magistrate Herncion Garcia. Impartial researchers and historians await the chance to evaluate Justice Garcia’s findings and/or official report—if there is one—but such has not survived or surfaced as of yet, a signal fact often omitted in partisan retellings of the unfortunate episode. Subsequent to their investigation of the matter in whole, the Grand Jury rendered its decision not to return any criminal indictments.2 Not unexpectedly as the approaching summer waxed hot, the tempest for revenge raged hotter for Ramón’s teenage brother Alfredo, other blood-kin, and their amigos. Cutting to the bone, in Cameron County whether one supported the Texas Rangers or condemned them to the core was “sharply divided, largely along ethnic lines.”3 What was not divided was the resolve of five fellows piling into a skiff and crossing the river under the cover of darkness, then

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disembarking on Texas soil, shotguns in hand. Assassins had targeted Sergeant A.Y. Baker for elimination. For a split-second on 10 September 1902 muzzle blasts from shotguns illuminated the nighttime sky—long enough to capture the images of Private Emmett Robuck catapulted out of his saddle, buckshot delivering finality to the young Texas Ranger’s law-enforcing career—and life. Ranger Sergeant Baker lurched in his saddle and screamed in pain as lead balls tore into his back but, in the long run, not even slightly interdicting his upcoming multi-term—and sometimes controversial—service as the formally elected sheriff and de facto political boss of Hidalgo County (county seat Edinburg). The murderers scooted for safety, furiously paddling back across the nearby river and into Mexico’s presumed safe-city sanctuary. Learning of the tragedy befalling his Texas Rangers, Captain Brooks immediately telegrammed the adjutant general: “Baker and Robuck waylaid on the road to camp last night. Baker wounded. Robuck killed.”4 Then, Captain Brooks rushed to the Lower Rio Grande Valley taking along Ranger Privates Winfred Finis Bates, nineteen, and A.W. Livingston, the latter being one of the Company A commander’s favorites: “I ask for no better man to be with me when serious trouble comes up.”5 And serious trouble there would be. Underpinnings of ensuing events underwrite a levelheaded assertion that at given times, Rangers were capable of commendable service in the ever turbulent Rio Grande/Río Bravo borderlands, despite the erratically myopic theories of a few agenda-driven detractors. Advantaging themselves of criminal intelligence furnished by a scared-to-death informant and cooperation of Mexican authorities, Captain Brooks and his Texas Rangers arrested half a dozen coconspirators, securely lodging them in the Cameron County Jail at the corner of East Madison and Twelfth Street: Encarnicion Garza, Nicolas Hernandez, Jesus Villeral, Timetao Villeral, A. Sauceda, and Ramon de la Cerda’s little brother Alfredo, were charged with the Murder of Robuck and the Attempted Murder of Baker. Captain Brooks’s investigative spirits were uplifted: “Two of the men in jail are weakening and we hope to get a confession from one of them tonight [12 September 1902].”6 Though frequently overlooked and/

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or intentionally laid aside is the next but short chapter in the uncorking borderland drama. Individuals with lynch mob mentality were dead set on making dead meat out of the alleged and gutless dead-ofnight perpetrators. Captain Brooks’s remarks are telling, maintaining unequivocally that he and his Texas Rangers “felt it our duty to give them [the prisoners] protection and would of give our lives in their defense although we were fully satisfied that we had the right parties who were responsible for the assassination of our Comrade. . . .” Perhaps Captain Brooks had heard of and taken heart in the 1878 admonition of a Ranger lieutenant in a similar fix with regards to a potential troublemaker: If the situation spiked his men were to shoot the angry actor “into doll rags at his first move.”7 Captain Brooks was not a man to mess with, and he wasn’t—cooler heads having prevailed, none having enough sand to storm the calaboose. Though recurrent mention of that bottom-line in this treatment may seem trite, there was one. The state’s star witness, the confidential informant, Herculana Berbier, was found sleeping with the fishes. Evidentiary-wise the criminal case crumbled with Berbier’s last gulp for fresh air, and legally the six defendants “walked.”8 However, Alfredo de la Cerda who had been threatening to kill A.Y. Baker on sight from the get-go didn’t walk far. Sergeant Baker gunned him down in downtown Brownsville during a dubious shooting on Elizabeth Street, but one absent lasting legal consequences even though the deceased had been unarmed. Though politically incorrect it may be, nevertheless speaking to reality there are hard truths. In a geographical place and during a time wherein most men were/are carrying firearms—good men or bad men—it measures as sheer folly to think threats to shoot someone will be lightly brushed aside as idle boasting. Altogether ignoring the man who promises he will kill you, guilelessly thinking he won’t, is madness. In the vernacular of policing lingo, which may sound inhospitable and coldhearted, Alfredo de la Cerda had been “bought and paid for,” which plainly conveys a straightforward translation: Chaps spitting out wicked death threats had best follow through—or the someone else will get there first.

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Though perhaps unnecessary, a gentle reminder is herewith proffered. As with the previous chapter highlighting selected Texas Ranger episodes catching nationwide notice, this subsection vis-à-vis an institutional legacy is also corralled by space and scenario limitation. Capturing the essence of legacy-building is the goal, not narrating each and every newsworthy happening involving twentieth-century Texas Rangers. Thankfully the mine is deep, the gemstones plentiful. Tendering that Rangers were laying the foundation for a laudable legacy is easy. Following President William McKinley’s springtime 1901 excursion to El Paso wherein Captain John Hughes and Texas Rangers of Company D provided security, another president made a similar request. Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt during his April 1905 jaunt through Texas and a much publicized outing and hunt in the wilds of Oklahoma, accompanied by the high-profile wolf hunter John R. “Jack” Abernathy, also had a celebrity of sorts acting as his personal bodyguard, Texas Ranger Captain Bill McDonald. Purportedly the president was so impressed with the Texas Ranger captain that when making a stopover at Frederick, Oklahoma, he sent his four-man Secret Service detail back to Fort Worth to await his return.9 Within but a few months in that same year, September 1905, Captain Bill McDonald had to put pleasant memories of hunting with a president on the backburner. There was a homicide to investigate, a gruesome multiple murder. In a racially mixed community a white family had met tragedy. During the morning hours while her husband, Joseph, was working miles away from their Jackson County farmland near Edna, northeast of Victoria, Lora Conditt and four of her five children were brutally slaughtered by having their heads bludgeoned and/or their throats cut. The oldest of the children, Mildred, had also been sexually assaulted. Though the unfolding story would have made worthy copy for True Detective type magazines, it is mainly significant within this overview of Texas Rangers moving into the emerging world of forensic investigations. Certainly the time-proven practices of adeptly interviewing

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witnesses, skillfully interrogating suspects, and utilization of confidential sources had been employed, but it would be another technique that, in the end, seemed to be the black defendants’ backbreaker. And, here as but a quick sidebar, Captain McDonald stood tall in assuring lynch-minded fellows stayed put. Aside from the introduction of crime scene photographs, a bloody board with a distinct handprint was of extraordinary evidentiary value. The long and the short is simple: the handprint and the hand of Felix Powell was a “fit.” Subsequent to some more diligent detective work, and the passing of time through the rigorous appellate process, Felix Powell would suffer the death penalty at Victoria due to a change of venue on 2 April 1907 before a crowd of three thousand folks and Monk Gibson would be hanged at Cuero (in DeWitt County) due to his lawful change of venue on 27 June 1908.10 The deplorable murders had been genuine whodunits, and just as certainly the Rangers had had a hand in handing district attorneys feasibly prosecutable cases, as well as protecting the defendants’ right to a courtroom trial. Returning to chronology, another case merits mention. Pandemonium swept through Brownsville about midnight 13 August 1906. And, love him or hate him, Captain Bill McDonald would make an onstage appearance. Two characterizations emerge. Those idolizing Captain Bill asserted he would bravely charge hell with but a bucket of water, while another would claim: “In the history of the Texas Rangers no one had ever moved more swiftly to capture a horse thief or a headline than Captain McDonald.” And headlines there would be. Assigning culpability to which group indiscriminately peppered downtown with spiraling bullets is yet “muddled.” Barkeep Frank Natus was dead and M. Ygnacio “Joe” Dominguez, a police lieutenant, was so severely wounded in the right arm an amputation would follow. Dominguez’s saddle horse lay lifeless in the street leaking blood and drawing flies. Townsmen thought black soldiers from nearby Fort Brown had run amok. Those “colored” troops of the U.S. Army’s 25th Infantry supposed Mexicanos were getting even—for something. Area Anglos were blaming first one group, then another—not hesitatingly pointing the finger of responsibility

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at those “nigger soldiers,” and with the other hand accusingly shaking a fist at those “bad Meskins.” Racial and ethnic sensitivity was on holiday, as was levelheadedness and commonsense. For this story the salient dynamic is that, bigotry and prejudice and discrimination had not been and would not be narrowly defined, not in the Lower Rio Grande Valley. And perhaps just as ugly was the intrinsic social inequity rooted in economic wherewithal—a caste system—not foreign to Americans, Texans or the Lone Star State’s elite Mexicanos. Some land owners, big land owners, owed their ascendency to top of the pecking order by Spain’s colonization and liberal land grant polices of the 1700’s, long before there was a Texas. Class stratification knows no boundaries. Illustratively for the place and times social bias was evident, even in the hereafter: “Tejano social life reflected theses stratifications. Ranch cemeteries, for example, were segregated by class.”11 Purportedly, at Fort Brown’s front-gate checkpoint the Company B commander unflinchingly faced down a congregation of armed and annoyed black infantrymen, vociferously declaring: “I’m Captain McDonald, of the State Rangers, and I’m down here to investigate a foul murder you scoundrels have committed. I’ll show you niggers something you’ve never been use’ to. Put up them guns!” According to McDonald’s scholarly modern-era biographer, this tale rings more apocryphal than factual.12 Though there is rightly a good story to be told—and it has been in books and articles—cutting to the nub as far as Texas Rangers are concerned is but quick work. Subsequent to the issuance of and withdrawal of legally drawn state arrest warrants, and heated verbal exchanges between the captain and military hierarchy at Fort Brown, as well as politically powerful voices at Austin, Captain Bill McDonald was ordered in no uncertain terms by telegram from Governor Samuel Willis Tucker Lanham to cease and desist, to stand down: “Consult District Judge and Sheriff and act under and through them.” Technically speaking, in the big law-enforcing picture, Ranger participation in the “Brownsville Affair” would measure as but minimal. On the other hand, the national press corps picking up on the exciting story

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further fostered an image and the reading public’s fascination with Rangers was once again piqued. For this timeframe, unquestionably, much of the captivating Texas Ranger narrative would be written due to fast-paced drama and booming six-gun fireworks in the incessantly hazardous Texas/Mexico borderlands. Ranger Thomas Jefferson “Tom” Goff, thirty-four, was foully murdered at the community of Big Bend not too terribly far from Terlingua. His killer was Augustine Garcia, a fellow “very fond of liquor and frequently gets big drunk.”13 The inebriated Mexicano, a fellow already owning a certifiable criminal history, balked at going to jail and killed Texas Ranger Goff when the golden opportunity presented itself, a sad story but making first-rate copy for the Alpine Times, Austin Daily Statesman, Houston Chronicle and the Dallas Morning News. But elsewhere within the Lone Star, trouble also brewed and boiled over. At the depot at Weatherford, a domestic dispute turned violent and Ranger Private Homer White took a fatal bullet while trying to defuse the spat between a jilted husband and Mamie Ledford’s new lover, E.S. “Stoke” Clark. And in the Texas Panhandle at Amarillo on the fifth day of January 1909 Texas Ranger Nathanial Pendergrass “Doc” Thomas was standing firm in his battle against bootleggers and the sporting element, but it cost him dearly. Deputy Sheriff James W. “Jim” Keeton, during a quarrel at the county attorney’s office, got there first and planted a bullet in Doc Thomas’s head, “just above the right eye.” Following his lawful conviction for second-degree murder, ex-deputy Keeton “caught the chain,” a euphemism meaning he was delivered to the state penitentiary at Huntsville.14 As previously noted, adaptability was and still is a hallmark Texas Ranger viability, that quantifiable success moving them across parts of three centuries. Interestingly an early case in point might be somewhat surprising. Traveling by train was by now routine for Rangers, yet still much of their work was in the saddle horseback. Horseless carriages, however, were a rather new part of the emerging technological landscape that blistering July of 1910. Although the county seat of Grimes County was Anderson, the real action was

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taking place at hustling and bustling Navasota. Captain John Rogers and Ranger Hall Avriett were at Navasota on other business, but speeding—literally—events pushed Avriett into a race and marked his spot in the Texas Ranger history book. Though it matters little that two fellows were Italian immigrants, they unhitched someone else’s horse, jumped into the buggy and sped out of town at a high-trot. Upon notification of the theft, Ranger Avriett realized he was handicapped by the thieves’ head-start. Resourcefully the lone Ranger “commandeered” an automobile and gave chase. Twelve miles later and south of town it turned Western. During the gunfight, one of the thieves was killed by Ranger Avriett and the other was handcuffed and delivered to Navasota’s city jail. Unless new data comes to light, it was the Texas Rangers’ very first car chase.15 Shortly Captain John Rogers and Texas Rangers would toe the mark of professionalism. Senseless and shamelessly, racially motivated murders had claimed the lives of ten “Negroes,” the inexcusable crimes having taken place in Anderson County at Slocum, several miles below the county seat, Palestine. Taking a decided personal interest in the situation and committed to seeing that a fullscale riot was thwarted, Governor Thomas M. Campbell had turned to Rangers. Arriving on scene quickly and proficiently gathering evidence the Rangers soon arrested the alleged guilty parties and prevented any further hubbub or heartache. Rather remarkably from start to finish the investigation and apprehension had burned but three days during that blistering July of 1910. Thumpin’ his chest with pride, Assistant Adjutant General Edwin M. Phelps praised the Rangers’ outstanding accomplishment, declaring to Texans and the rest of the world, “the law will be enforced without fear or favor.”16 And during that same month and year, July 1910, mal hombres riding Lucifer’s Line in the Lower Rio Grande Valley would during a ferocious nighttime borderland shootout, lay claim to snuffing out the lives of Texas Ranger Quirl Bailey Carnes, twenty-six from Wilson County, and Cameron County Deputy Sheriff Henry Benjamin “Benny” Lawrence, thirty-seven. And, as far as Rangers were concerned, such malice would not be confined to the tropical

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southern subsection of the state. Later, at faraway El Paso, Marina Guaderrama slipped behind Texas Ranger Grover Scott Russell and Deputy Sherriff William Henry Garlick and while they were momentarily distracted talking with her son, nastily knocked them senseless with a hard-swung ax-handle. Juan Guaderrama jerked out a pistol, executing both lawmen as they lay on the tavern/grocery’s floor. The utter wildness of Juan’s madness was punctuated with calamity: During the murderous mêlée, subsequent to Juan’s reloading and resumption of pumping lead, one of his stray bullets pummeled his mother to the floor—killing her.17 From career lawmen’s perspectives—then or now—badness is gender neutral. Although seldom reported within the historical context, but assuredly germane to the chapter in hand, even at dawning of the darkest days of their institutional history the then employed Texas Rangers and/or ex-Rangers yet living, had they conveniently resided at the right place and had the coin to buy a ticket, well, they could have sat back vicariously reliving adventures on the silent silver screen. Historically they may be considered film classics due to their early release dates. Popularly, though, it would be a stretch to grade them exemplars of movie-making brilliance, nonetheless Texas Rangers were subject material for The Ranger’s Bride (1910), The Border Ranger (1911), The Ranger and His Horse (1912) and Tom Mix starring in The Ranger’s Romance (1914). Movie moguls put their money where the return is, and even mildly suggesting that during the second decade of the twentieth-century folks weren’t enthralled with Texas Rangers would be mistaken. Even the Governor of Texas, Oscar Branch Colquitt, jumped on the journalistic bandwagon, penning a positive article, “The Texas Ranger as He Is,” for an April 1914 edition of the nationally distributed Leslie’s Illustrated Weekly. Too, not to be outdone by Hollywood script writers and movie directors in canvas-backed chairs, novelists turned to Rangers as protagonists for their finalized work-products. As but one sterling example, the prolific Zane Grey, after a trip to Texas and actually interviewing Rangers, penned what became a literary masterpiece of sorts, The Lone Star Ranger, a 1915 best-seller.18

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What would not sell well would be the misadventures, meanness, and murders issued by the hand of a few hardhearted Texas Rangers and a few coldblooded Mexicanos during tumultuous times known as the Mexican Revolution era, a timeframe generally bracketed between 1910 and 1920. The governmental upheavals and assassination of political rivals in Mexico for this period has spawned what seem to be countless books and articles. Herein it would be foolish to delve deeply into the root causes of south of the border despotism and argue on behalf of one factional leader or another, justifying or assailing their rationale for revolution. Others have and continue to tackle those chores with varying degrees of thoughtfulness and/ or professional truthfulness. However, for matter-of-factly transitioning Rangers into the story one borderland proclamation is paramount: The Plan de San Diego. Haphazardly exposed at the mid-point of the Mexican Revolution, 1915, the insurrectionally inspired scheme was ridiculously ambitious on the front end—and harebrained on the back end! In a nutshell, adherents (sediciosos) to the madness, were on 20 February at “two o’clock in the morning. . . . will arise in arms against the Government and Country of the United States of North America, ONE AS ALL AND ALL AS ONE, proclaiming the liberty of the individuals of the black race and its independence of Yankee tyranny which has held us in iniquitous slavery since remote times. . . .” The Mexicano manifesto’s idyllic long-term goal was by force of arms to retake geographical American real-estate lost to them during the detrimental 1840s Mexican War, specifically Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, and Upper California, “of which States the Republic of Mexico was robbed in a most perfidious manner by North American imperialism.” The re-conquered ground would then stand as the platform for and the blueprinting of a new Independent Republic. To accomplish those ends the would-be followers were to bear in mind that this outspoken realization was, therefore, to be “a war without quarter.” As a consequence, then, “Every North American over sixteen years of age shall be put to death; and only the aged men, the women, and the children shall be respected; and

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on no account shall the traitors to our race be spared or respected.” Plotting architects of The Plan de San Diego had not killed the borderland tenant of ley de fuga rendering it a dead letter, but were fanatically hell-bent on engendering dead bodies: “It is strictly forbidden to hold prisoners. . . . they shall be shot immediately, without any pretext.” During such ethnic cleansing the Apache and other Indians, as well as persons fortunate to be of “the Latin, the Negro, or the Japanese race,” would be exempted from the merciless executions. Of The Plan de San Diego one brainy and quick-witted penman posited: “It had a pipedream weirdness that bulged old border men’s eyes.”19 Admittedly the violent deaths of two borderland Texas Rangers were not interconnected with The Plan de San Diego, but their murders had taken place after the genocidal designs had come to light and Mexicanos were the credited—and undisputed—culprits. In the faraway Big Bend Country on the twenty-fourth day of May 1915, Texas Ranger Eugene B. Hulen, thirty-six, and a fifty-one-year-old U.S. Mounted Customs Inspector and former Ranger, Joseph Russell Sitter, were fatally ambushed and their bodies horribly mutilated. Perhaps the ambuscade had been touched off somewhat prematurely, as accompanying Texas Rangers survived the attack by Chico Cano’s gang of bandits. Upriver at Fabens the following month, Texas Ranger Robert Lee Burdett was mortally gunned down in an alley by Mexicanos two days after his thirty-fourth birthday. Bandits crossing the Río Bravo into Texas were equal opportunity thugs, not restricting themselves to murdering just lawmen. Splashing into the Lone Star State they had also cold-bloodedly killed Pablo Jiménez “by shooting and beating him.” And the very same month The Plan de San Diego activists set in motion their lethal forays in the lush Lower Rio Grande Valley, a noted Mexican Revolutionary player and fugitive from American justice, Pascual Orozco Jr., and his cohorts opened fire on West Texas ranchmen just west of the Eagle Mountains south of Sierra Blanca (in then El Paso County, now Hudspeth County), and were soon after run to ground in a box canyon below HighLonesome Peak in the Van Horn Mountains (in Culberson County)

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and killed by a posse of local lawmen and ranchmen captained by William Davis Allison and a U.S. Mounted Customs Inspector, Herff Alexander Carnes, both former Texas Rangers.20 For Texas lawmen it seemed, metaphorically, that the Rio Grande/Río Bravo was running red—with their blood. Absent any proverbial crystal balls, perhaps it’s not wholly unfair to ponder whether or not those borderland lawmen living in real time thought execution of The Plan de San Diego was at hand? Such a question—in their minds—would not have been outlandish! What is outlandish is the proffering of defenses for abhorrent behavior. Recognizing reality is not tricky; in the hard Lower Rio Grande Valley murderous hands claimed no ethnic exclusivity. Mexicanos murdered and robbed. Texas Rangers murdered and misappropriated. The dark stains of the Rangers’ bloody and indefensible annals for this milieu is certifiably real and indelible. Regrettably, the atrocious and transparent unpunished criminality of Captain Henry L. Ransom serves as ineradicable testimony to the darkest period of the Texas Rangers’ institutional history. Summary executions of prisoners and/or alleged suspects are crimes malum in se, appalling acts wrong in themselves, no explanation or apologies worth hearing. And in that legalized standard of proof beyond a Reasonable Doubt, there’s no doubt that Captain Ransom and a few Rangers committed homicides, walking away unscathed physically or legally and, apparently, morally and/or ethically untroubled.21 Too, truth reveals a few Mexicanos raided and robbed, destroyed infrastructure, wrecked trains, killing innocents, kidnapping and cutting off the ears and head of a U.S. Army solider deployed to the border. The National Guard was called up en masse and sent to man military posts scattered along the borderline. For an uneasy place, during tough times, wickedness was unarguably ubiquitous. On the other hand, something is arguable: the loosely bantered about death tally of Mexicanos murdered by Lower Rio Grande Valley vigilantes, local lawmen, and/or remorseless Rangers. The hyperbolic scamming is rich. Suggesting that real-estate investors rode along side Rangers into borderland villages and at the business end of Colt’s

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six-shooters seized land and murdered numerically unspecified hundreds of innocent and unarmed and otherwise selfless Mexicanos is, apparently, effortless to write, but falls woefully short of judicious standards. Acknowledging the criminality of anyone, Rangers included, is de rigueur but whipsawing specifics is not. Apparently vying for some semblance of political correctness, competing chroniclers of the Mexican Revolution and its traumatic impact north of the river, lop off unsubstantiated figures ranging between 300 and 5,000 wanton homicides. Glaring disparity is troubling. A conscientious historian or judicious nonfiction writer might justifiably find a whopping difference of 4,700 deaths quite a stretch—absent any quantifiable evidence—for building radical indictments. Particularly for this era overstatement is common.22 Sine qua non of The Plan de San Diego, however, is reckonable. Aside from the fact conspirators championed a “war without quarter” and were near flabbergasted that their dream had come true: The war without quarter they now owned! Quantifiably the schemers suffered more defeats than victories, and despite grand assertions to the contrary, the Lower Rio Grande Valley was not depopulated, but census enumerations for two of the three southernmost counties, Cameron and Hidalgo, indicate population increases between 1910 and 1920. And, in this context it merits mention, the specious aver made by a partisan will not stand valid: “If it weren’t for the American soldiers, the Rangers wouldn’t dare come to the Border. The Ranger always hides behind the soldiers when real trouble starts.” Bona fide history leaves an altogether different story to chew on: “This would appear to be a case of self-delusion. There was a great deal of bombast as concerning what the revoltosos were going to do to the hated Rangers, but not only did the general Hispanic population fear the Rangers, but the sediciosos also declined to take them on—they never attacked a Ranger company, or even an individual Ranger. The fact is that the Rangers killed more Rangers (two) than the sediciosos and their carrancista allies (none).” Obviously, as has been rightly theorized: “The sediciosos were a lot better at writing than at fighting.”23 From an evident baseline of partiality it’s been openly suggested

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that the Texas Rangers were “similar” to the Mexican Rurales, a paramilitary troupe of horseback policing cavaliers. Were such to be the case, perhaps hearing the voice of the Rurales’ scholarly historian seems but proper: “The men in both their strength and weaknesses mirrored their times.”24 Chaste history is an alluring but sometimes spiteful mistress. Admitting that Rangers were not a part of these on-the-ground stories, it is still germane to appoint the borderland stage within the context of 1916 happenings. In January, south of the border near Santa Ysabel, Chihuahua, eighteen American mining engineers were taken off a train and executed; seventeen soldiers and civilians were killed in the nighttime raid of 16 March 1916 at Columbus, New Mexico; and on the fifth day of May, in southern Brewster County along Texas’s side of the Rio Grande, raiders attacked Glenn Spring and Boquillas, killing American soldiers William Cohen, Steven Coloe, and Hudson Rogers, and wounding four of their comrades. During the bloodbath, four-year-old Garnett Compton had also been killed, not long consciously suffering wounds to his chest, abdomen, and leg.25 Laying any blame games on the shelf, the Texas/Mexico borderlands were tough ground to cover. And that borderland history in real time churned matters of practicality for Texas Rangers: they were uninsurable. J.C. Cameron, Executive Secretary for the Great Southern Life Insurance Company of Houston, Texas, apologetically notified same to Adjutant General James A. Harley: “We trust you will pardon for again inquiring as to his duties. We are not sure if all the Rangers are on the same footing as to duties. If this man [Texas Ranger W.C. Weir, Company D] is subject to call for service on the Border for instance, we would not be able to offer him insurance. However if his duties were only local, the case might be different.”26 Interestingly, and somewhat prophetically, fifteen days subsequent to the above cited letter from an insurance executive, Mexicano bandits struck Lucas Charles “Luke” Brite’s isolated ranch thirty-odd miles west of Marfa and just fifteen miles east of the Rio Grande/Río Bravo. The Christmas Day raid of 1917 was unforeseen

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and horribly homicidal. Rural route postman Micky Welch was making the regular run between riverside Candelaria in Presidio County and Valentine in Jeff Davis County and was waylaid at the Brite Ranch Store, strung by his heels to an overhead beam and suffered slicing of his jugular and gutting of his torso, pooling blood ebbing away any sign of life. Two of the passengers in the mailman’s buckboard, Demetrio Holguin and Ernesto Juarez had suffered a similar fate, but had mercifully been shot, rather than savagely cut from ear to ear or disemboweled. Subsequent to chaotically plundering the ranch store, stealing everything they could carry, clothing, ammunition, air-tights (canned goods), bolts of calico and gabardine, and after outfitting themselves with not just a few pairs of Hamilton Brown-brand shoes, the raiders departed, heading for sanctuary on the far side of the Sierra Vieja Rim, that tall and tough mountainous rock outcropping suitable only for pedestrian or horseback journeys, certainly not rubber-tired, sputtering, and gas guzzling Fords. The forty-odd bandits, though not knowing it at the time, had signed death warrants for fellow Mexicanos and opened wide the doorway to one of the darkest and most despicable days in Texas Ranger history. Company B Rangers under the command of Captain James Monroe Fox were ordered to do something about the Brite Ranch raid, and they did—something wrong. Along the meandering river below the Sierra Vieja Rim was the tiny Texas hamlet of Porvenir, upriver from Pilares, Chihuahua, Mexico. Arguing whether or not the Mexicano villages were actually bandit “nests” or communes of bandit “sympathizers” or altogether patriotic good citizens of their respective countries is pointless. Texas Rangers and West Texas ranchmen owned no doubt. According to their mindset, the impoverished borderland residents were thieves and if not troublemakers, aiders and abettors of the ones that were. Subsequent to the previous ambushes and deaths of U.S. Mounted Customs Inspectors Jack Howard (killed 10 February 1913) and Joe Sitter, Texas Ranger Eugene Hulen, government mailman Mickey Welch, Demetrio Holguin, and Ernesto Juarez, Porvenir’s populace were if not trigger-pulling murderers, they were liable collaborators! Someone would pay. Although

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Captain Fox was not physically present on the catastrophic night of 28 January 1918, the diabolic intrigues and partisan politics and cover-ups and alleged collusions between a few U.S. Army fellows and the do-something posse, makes for a discerning book-length treatment within itself—a tragedy. The long and short of the story is not pretty. During an earlier nighttime raid on tiny Porvenir a few villagers were purportedly in possession of Hamilton Brown shoes, brand-new shoes. Proof enough? Gun barrel justice was on tap. Fifteen male Mexicanos, age sixteen to seventy-two, were roused from their beds, marched through darkness until behind a nearby bluff, out of view from their distraught wives and crying kids. Then they were, one and all, summarily shot.27 Murder, it seems, knows no ethnic purity! An old-time borderlander was short with words, long on hard truth: “I met some bad and dangerous men along the border, some white, some Mexican, but I learned that race, color, nationality, or education, after all be said and done, have little to do with the essential qualities of human beings.”28 He was right. That very same timeframe, 1918, not the Old West era, would be the banner year for Rangers giving up the ghost along the border and elsewhere—madness is not geographically corralled. For counties bordering the Rio Grande/Río Bravo that very year Mexicanos murdered Texas Rangers William P. “Will” Stillwell, Joseph Robert “Joe” Shaw, Delbert “Tim” Timberlake, and T.E. Paul “Ellzey” Perkins. And that’s not counting Lenard Tillman “Lenn” Sadler dying at the hand of another Ranger: Purposefully or accidently? Borderland postings were not necessarily healthy assignments, Spanish Influenza and/ or Amoebic Dysentery claiming the lives of Texas Rangers Thomas Carlyle “Charlie” Hyde (and his little daughter), Benjamin L. “Ben” Pennington, Robert Ernest Hunt, and John August Moran that year. Elsewhere, in East Texas at the southern reach of San Augustine County near White City, Ranger John Dudley White, Sr. made the ultimate sacrifice in front of the rifle sights of a back-shooting U.S. Army deserter. Nineteen-eighteen would be a bad year, too, for the aforementioned Captain Henry Lee Ransom: During a disturbance in the hallway of a Sweetwater (Nolan County) hotel he caught a bullet

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with his name on it, when one feudist wildly missed the guy he was really trying to put under.29 Enumerating the fallen Texas Rangers of 1918 is not absolution for the wrongdoings of others. Some Lower Rio Grande Valley and far West Texas criminality was identifiable and name specific, such as executing suspects following the train wrecking and murders by sediciosos near Olmito and Tandy Station (Cameron County) or the unpardonable massacre at Porvenir. Clearly the Rangers, institutionally, were in need of some scrubbing. José Tomás Canales, Representative for the 77th State Congressional District at Brownsville, thought he was the man for the job. Whether or not the bill he introduced at the 36th Legislative Session was purposefully designed to “gut” or “fix” the Rangers is open-ended. For public consumption Canales’s altruism is, inexplicably, somewhat at odds with some of his personal correspondence. His critical assertions and supposed remedies were inarguably the catalyst that sparked accommodating Ranger lawmakers to authoritatively call for and impanel a joint committee of the State Senate and House of Representatives to formally investigate, take sworn testimony, and “clear the organization’s name.” There were, truthfully, alleged—and not-so-alleged—instances of misconduct and mayhem with Ranger fingerprints and/or footprints and/or breaths reeking of sour mash. Rangers weren’t little angels. But painting with too broad a brush is messy, obscuring objective pictures be they right, partly right—or damn wrong. Page numbers of the testimony for the 1919 hearings top 1,600 and provide ample fodder for latter-day chroniclers to cherry pick testimony in conformance with their theories and/or perspectives: There was plenty for everyone, supporter or skeptic. Though now frequently quoted for his testimony during the 1919 hearings, the former sheriff of Leon County (county seat Centerville) and the then-sheriff of Cameron County, W.T. Vann, told it like it was. He was highly critical of Rangers when they were wrong—sometimes dead wrong—but levelheaded when they weren’t. Interesting, though they’re often conveniently omitted in writings of folks with a predisposition to spin their story, are but

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three of Sheriff Vann’s under-oath responses to Texas lawmaker’s pointed inquires. “Q: How many Mexicans did you see dead during 1915 and 1916? A: I don’t know. Q: Can you estimate it? A: No; I saw a good many. I expect I saw fifteen or twenty. I didn’t see so very many.” Admittedly, there were “dead Mexicans” that Sheriff Vann didn’t see, no doubt quite a few, but his sworn testimony is a matter of record, and such cockamamie generalizations that during that same time period Texas Rangers and their mean civilian henchmen murdered hundreds if not thousands of innocent borderland Mexicanos, is not. “Q: Have the Rangers stopped all that banditry there? A: I don’t think they had any more to do with stopping it than the rest of us. They were there and helped us on it. They stopped some of them.” And in the final analysis, perhaps Sheriff W.T. Vann’s professional thoughts vis-à-vis Texas Rangers—after culling any bad apples—is unmistakably illuminating. “Q: Do you need Rangers in your county now? A: I would like to have them. Q: How many do you think ought to be there? A: I think a dozen men in that county will be all right.” Cherry-picking sworn testimony and/or incontestable particulars can cut both ways. Too, José Tomás Canales, if end results are meaningful, was in way over his head—legally and politically. Relying too heavily on innuendo and hearsay and wishful notions undercut the viability of converting those musing into admissible evidence for any courtroom prosecutions. The net result of all the subpoenas, testimony, and Texas Ranger Frank Hamer’s verbal threats of the potential for someone doing Canales bodily harm, and despite wishes of a few zealous critics to the contrary, there was in truth and fact that hard bottom-line for José Tomás Canales’s anguish and machinations: There would be a fine-tuning of the Ranger Force command structure and staffing levels, with a solemn pledge to fill the roster with the right kind of men in the future and—give them an expense account and pay raise.30 Folks not in need of a raise in pay were the riffraff, robbers, pickpockets, pimps, prostitutes, gamblers, moonshiners, and bootleggers haunting boom towns created by the gushing discovery of

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black gold—oil. That was the traditional transitory crowd. All too often, the boomtowns’ local lawmen and elected county officeholders were greedily stuffing their pockets simply by looking the other way—allowing a free hand for the purveyors of illicit pleasure to satisfy the hedonistic desires of roughnecks and roustabouts and thirsty Johnny come-to-town customers. All too frequently murders were handmaidens to such madness. Though there would be many hotspots throughout the state as Texas gained her foothold and reputation for exploiting underground richness, peeking in on just one spot will suffice for the Texas Ranger treatment in hand: Mexia in Limestone County, approximately ninety miles due south of Dallas. Seemingly overnight, the town’s population had jumped from a peaceable 2,500 honest and hardworking denizens to a near unmanageable pirating throng of 30,000, all trying to “live in a hurry.” Adjutant General Thomas D. Barton, subsequent to consultation with Governor Pat Morris Neff, opted to do what local authorities were either loathe to do or incapable of doing: put boot heels on the open disregard for law and overt criminality and idiotic public corruption that early part of 1922. Texas Ranger boot heels would stomp hard on the crooks’ “purchased immunity” while the good folks—and there were not just a few—of Limestone County were paying for honest protection. Quantifying the work of Texas Rangers and U.S. Prohibition Agents working in tandem is, in this particular case, effortless. A forty-seven-day operation complemented with troops of the Texas National Guard’s 56th Cavalry Brigade and the 141st Infantry and the sweeping declaration of Martial Law for parts of two counties would net meaningful results. In a series of raids, most notably at the den of iniquity known as the Chicken Farm, an enforcement action led by a machine-gun toting Captain Tom Rufus Hickman, Ranger Company B, and at the other hotspot known as the Winter Garden, a raid supervised by Captain Frank A. Hamer of the Headquarters Company at Austin, the figurative backs of free-wheeling wrongdoers were broken.31 The tally impressively comes in at: 602 custodial arrests, while nearly 5,000 others fled the county and nearby countryside ahead

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of being swooped up; the demolition of 27 illicit whiskey stills and the seizure and destruction of 2,270 gallons of moonshine; 215 barrels of fermenting mash; thirteen automobiles subject to forfeiture for transporting non-tax paid liquor, as well as the recovery and return to rightful owners of 53 previously stolen cars; the confiscation of $5,000 worth of gambling paraphernalia and illegal narcotics valued at $4,000; and all of the identifiable “vice centers” had effectively been shut down. Though often innocently overlooked in recounts of this raid and a sister enforcement action in adjoining Freestone County, there are two salient progressive policing dynamics. Though it was not a state-owned airplane, Texas Rangers advantaged themselves for the very first time with farseeing eyes in the sky, productively using the Mexia Daily Telegram’s flying-machine for “reconnaissance missions,” spotting from above numerous whiskey stills secreted along the brushy and brambly Trinity River’s bottomlands. And, too, astutely adapting to the times, specialized policemen from Houston were on hand to photograph and fingerprint the Texas Rangers’ prisoners—another first. A former Texas Ranger and Texas sheriff, Albert R. Mace, was installed as the new police chief at Mexia and most everybody graded the raids in Limestone and Freestone Counties as the “most spectacular and successful” as ever conducted in the Lone Star State.32 Though there would be no parade of prisoners or awesome tallying of seized property to boast about, Texas Rangers tapped into national publicity on another front: The Red River Bridge War. Whether one scores the 1931 brouhaha between Oklahoma’s Governor William H. “Alfalfa Bill” Murray and Texas Governor Ross Shaw Sterling a comedy or a calamity might narrowly center on nativity; the rivalry between Oklahomans and Texans was/is always rich. The crux of the matter swirled around the opening of a free bridge across the Red River joining the two states, one ultimately negating any necessity for the well-worn toll bridge heretofore guaranteeing citizens’ crossings and effective but not cost-free commerce. The plotting and machinations and federal court ordered injunctions are real and are now, thankfully, genesis for a clothbound scholarly

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treatment: One easy to read and profoundly informative. Suffice to say Oklahomans were sent—the National Guard—to clear the way across the toll-free bridge and face off against the Texas Rangers who had been ordered to maintain the spirit and strict technicalities of the injunction temporarily closing the state-of-the-art steel-span. As far as a newsworthy story—and national story—it was a humdinger. Despite the chances for volatility anytime fractious crowds congregate, the Rangers’ resorting to violence was but whittled to one near laughable instance wherein Captain Tom Hickman deemed it his sworn duty—a real obligation—to “slap” an inebriated and cursing troublemaker, “dropping the drunk to the roadbed and blooding his nose.” In truth, it was serious business but with the ambiance of a carnival, not a bona fide warfront. Texas Rangers pleased the crowd with exhibition shooting, and after moving their firing range farther down into the river bed, delighted the crowd when they “practiced machine gunnery.” Cheerful waitresses from a Denison (in Grayson County) restaurant competed with each other, hoping they would be chosen to take hot meals to the Texas Rangers on duty—all four of them. Captain Hickman, at one point, “fetched a wind-up phonograph” and all so soon visitors and Rangers alike were “singing along to popular tunes and cowboy ballads. . . .” There was, however, no dancing. Publicity-wise the colorful cadre of Rangers were dashing figures, embodying the Old and the New West, an image sent worldwide with the help of Life magazine’s onsite photographer. In the end all turned out well, the barricades came down and the Texas Rangers rode away—in automobiles, not atop high-stepping horses.33 The Texas Rangers, once again, demonstrated they could and would conduct business when and wherever ordered. Something else was being conducted in Texas: studies designed to improve state government, namely an analysis by the governmental research firm of Griffenhagen and Associates, based in Chicago. Specifically with regards to the Texas Rangers, the partnership’s analytical findings were telling: “the report termed their numbers too small to discharge the duties they had been assigned. It was alleged they were handicapped in transportation, equipment, and the

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absence of a means to develop and preserve evidence. Weaknesses were also noted in crime reporting, particularly concerning known criminals and their modus operandi, and it was urged that Rangers be required to submit complete activity reports. Finally, the state was asked to select Texas Rangers by a method other than political appointment by the Governor.”34 Clearly for their 1933 report the researchers noted that there was a widespread need for Texas Rangers throughout the state: “Gun-running, alien ‘dope’ and ‘booze’ smuggling, cattle rustling, and small bank robbing predominate in the west while the highly developed swindler, the organized racketeer, the automobile thief, and the stick-up man are rapidly encroaching upon the eastern part of the state.”35 As early as 1924 the aforementioned Captain Tom Hickman had been touting the need for some type of organizational law enforcing reforms for Texas. The captain had studied the state policing systems of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Oregon. During his overseas travels—on leave judging rodeos—he had personally surveyed the national policing agencies of Belgium, Holland, France, and England, later confidently commenting Scotland Yard was the “most efficient law enforcing system in existence.”36 The politically potent Texas Sheriffs Association was, too, hammering out proposals that there should be—must be—a state-level organization dedicated to criminal investigation as well as motor vehicle traffic enforcement.37 Gubernatorial candidate James V. “Jimmie” Allred, a two-term Texas Attorney General was campaigning on a law-and-order platform, promising reforms if elected. He was and there were. Without resorting to the finite intricacies of legislative maneuvering, Conference Committee negotiations, and Congress Avenue wheeling and dealing, a bargain was reached and a new outfit was birthed on 10 August 1935: The Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS). No longer would Texas Rangers answer to the adjutant general’s office, they and the fledgling Texas Highway Patrol, along with a rudimentary Crime Lab, would now be commanded by the three persons on the Commission of Public Safety, who were charged with selection of and appointment of a DPS Director to oversee day to

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day operations. Subsequent to the resignation of the first Director L.G. Phares, Commander of the Highway Patrol, and the relatively short tenure of H.H. Carmichael before his untimely heart attack, Homer Garrison, Jr. would reign as the DPS Director for the next thirty years, a competent administrator always championing for the Texas Rangers, and they, for the most part, idolizing and respecting him. For the twentieth-century and into the future past that, Homer Garrison, Jr. nurtured the Texas Ranger legacy—and made damn sure subordinates honored DPS stated goals: Courtesy, Service, and Protection.38 Threading into the nonfiction story of the Texas Rangers it’s but apropos to, again, make note that although the so-called gangster films had temporarily knocked the storied Western movie aside, general audiences and Hollywood were yet enthralled with the mystique of the Texas Rangers. Galveston-born King Vidor, subsequent to the 1935 publication of Walter Prescott Webb’s now classic—and venerating—The Texas Rangers: A Century of Frontier Defense, premiered his celluloid contribution at the Majestic Theater in Dallas the following year, The Texas Rangers featuring a movie actor on the rise, Fred McMurray. Other Hollywood releases that year that are particularly germane for the treatment in hand were, The Kid Ranger, Ride, Ranger, Ride and The Unknown Ranger. And for those wishing to stay at home, turning the radio’s dial and tuning in a serialized episode of the Lone Ranger was an option. The fictional Texas Ranger would also be thrown into contemporary world affairs with Republic Pictures’ 1941 release of King of the Texas Rangers starring TCU football great Sammy Baugh, wherein Texas Rangers took on Nazi spies operating from a dirigible silently drifting overhead.39 As opposed to reel Rangers, real Texas Rangers on the ground were thrust into the war effort confronting and challenging America. Wartime duties were diverse. World War II rationing of certain commodities created a black market economy and the presence of predominately German-speaking communities in the Texas Hill Country nurtured mistrust. Harkening to days of the 1870s Mason County War, many “Americans” were wholly convinced not just a few

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“Germans” were sympathetic to their overseas brethren. Concerns of possible sabotage were, perhaps in hindsight overblown, but at the time not discarded as puffed paranoia. Cooperating with the FBI with regards to the possibility of un-American subversives, Rangers participated in background investigations and surveillance. Even more troubling, however, than “foreigners” in their midst, were U.S. Army deserters turning to crime—petty and felonious—as they slipped underground to avoid shouldering a rifle and defending the homeland. Similarly, due to correctional officers’ volunteering or conscripted, short-staffing at the state’s penitentiary units fostered a dramatic upswing in escapes—Rangers hunted fugitives relentlessly. And though he was carrying but a Special Ranger’s commission at the time, the ever audacious Frank Hamer had earlier wired the King of England that he could and would recruit fifty men—presumably former Rangers—to protect the United Kingdom’s waterfront from sabotage. Owing to neutrality laws, expediently the United States’ State Department nixed the pitch.40 Two guys not concerned with America’s war struggles, nevertheless were hellish fighters. Their rap-sheets were lengthy, their emancipation from prison short. Robert Lacey Cash and Cleo Andrews had escaped on 21 January 1943 from the state prison system’s Retrieve Unit in Brazoria County, not far from the county seat, Angleton. Retrieve was no Sunday School camp, but a racially pure facility reserved for white offenders, convicts with one or more prison terms on the books. Passing through Houston in a stolen car, the escapees stopped to use a telephone. The call was not smart, but a lucky break for Captain Manuel Terrazas “Lone Wolf” Gonzaullas, headman of Company B, Texas Rangers. The informant informed. Rangers Dick Oldham and Robert L. “Bob” Badgett, along with their two-gun captain, managed a quick trip to Gladewater in the northwestern quadrant of Gregg County. There they were to confront the outlaws, now armed with stolen firepower. Though it was the dead of winter and icy, the Rangers were soon met by area lawmen who would, too, form the welcoming committee for a duo of convicts who had unwisely tipped their hand—and revealed their plan. Subsequent

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to their vehicle being surrounded on the highway between Gilmer and Gladewater at 8:45 p.m. on the twenty-fifth of January, the outnumbered crooks were afforded—by all accounts—the opportunity to surrender, hands reaching for sky. They opted otherwise, opening fire on the lawmen. The return bombardment was fast and fatal, at least for Robert Lacey Cash who had fallen from the car onto the pavement, lifeless, his body “riddled with bullets.” Cleo Andrews, in an upright position, slumped motionless at the steering wheel. Just as Lone Wolf was opening the car door, Upshur County Sheriff Gordon Anderson detected movement and screamed to Gonzaullas: “Look out, Cap. I think he’s playing possum!” And he was. Andrews’s bullet clipped the captain’s lapel and grazed his shoulder but Lone Wolf’s left-handed shooting with a 1911 Colt .45 was dead on and dead right, an empty magazine and Cleo’s cold-eyed vacant stare mute validation.41 The midcentury mark was but around the corner, and the Texas Rangers were yet standing tall—facing danger and capturing adulation.

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Spiking the Legacy

at fifty-four, captain robert a. “bob” crowder, a former Dallas policemen, ex-Marine, and lawman with Texas Highway Patrol know-how under his belt, would in the eyes of many typify the One Riot-One Ranger persona. An incident on 16 April 1955 would amplify the Company B commander’s image and further underwrite matters furthering the Texas Rangers’ vivid legacy. Orders from the Director of the Texas Department Safety, Homer Garrison, Jr., had been blunt. There was a riot underway at Rusk State Hospital, the institution housing among other patients, the state’s adjudicated criminally insane: Captain Crowder was ordered to take center stage fast. The distance from his headquarters post, Dallas, and the East Texas city of Rusk is roughly 120 miles, ground Captain Crowder covered in his brand-new 1955 Oldsmobile at breakneck speed. Although all of the facility’s residents were mentally troubled, patients in Ward 6 and 7 were classed as inmates, too. And that’s where prisoner Ben Riley was chief spokesman for the black patients armed with scissors and ice-picks, those holding civilian employees hostage. They were intent on securing the same rights and treatments as the “white patients.” Blood had already been spilled by the time Crowder pulled in, and threat for a wholesale tragedy was at the tipping point. Truthfully there were, by now, other lawman onsite— outside—but it would be Captain Bob Crowder who would go inside, alone! Figuratively the solitary Texas Ranger was armed with three 369

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things: Commonsense in his brain, compassion in his heart, and ice-water in his veins. Literally, Captain Crowder carried two more things: cocked and locked semi-automatic Colt .45s in hand-carved holsters at each hip. Cautiously and skillfully Crowder defused the rioters’ pent-up angst and they, one and all, filed past the captain discarding their sharp weapons into a pile at the toe of his handstitched boots. Later, when quizzed as to what he might have done had the situation turned Western, Captain Crowder’s response was straightforward and absent any razzle-dazzle: “I don’t know what the story would have been. . . . but I know one thing, I had two .45s with eight shots in each of them, and that’s about as far as I know.”1 Just as the 1950s performance of Captain Crowder at Rusk furnished another building block for maintaining an unparalleled state policing legacy, an episode during the spring of 1957 calked the mortar for another. Gene Paul Norris was bad to the bone, a contract killer with a back-trail of dead bodies that would have—or should have—shamed John Wesley Hardin had not Constable John Selman’s 1895 headshot inside an El Paso saloon ended his knack for meanness, audacity, and embellishment. Within the inner circles of the Southwest’s gangland world Gene Paul Norris, his shotgun for hire, was well-established and unanimously feared. Though for this particular treatment passing over much of Gene Paul Norris’s biographical storyline is obligatory, placing emphasis on his last blueprint for wrongdoing is not. In law enforcers’ lexicon, at the time Gene Paul Norris would have simply been referred to as a “character,” the short version for being branded a notorious criminal, a repeat offender well-known to the policing community. Working confidentially with two other known characters, William Carl “Silent Bill” Humphrey and James E. Papworth, the trio had calculated what was to be an almost mindboggling plan. Subsequent to a home invasion and making hostages of or murdering a bank employee and her twelve-yearold son, stealing her keys and car with the decal on her windshield allowing entry past a checkpoint at the military base on the western edge of Cow Town, they would still be characters, but rich ones. They were if everything went right, on the last day of April to rob the Fort

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Worth National Bank located on Carswell Air Force Base grounds and the armored car delivering the month’s payroll cash: $500,000. With bags of loot in hand the outlaws would return to the lady’s residence in the stolen car and then flee for parts unknown in their clean getaway car. Witnesses there would be, but Norris was a “psychopathic, cold-blooded killer.” What did predator Gene Paul have in store for the bank lady and her boy? Bullets buy silence!2 After gathering evidence of Gene Paul Norris’s latest bloodbath, the macabre double homicide of Johnny Brannan and his wife, Lillie, at Houston, Captain John J. “Johnny” Klevenhagen, the commander of Ranger Company A, found himself at Fort Worth hunting for Gene Paul Norris, murder warrants in hand. And it was there, working with Jay Banks, Captain of Company B from Dallas, along with Fort Worth Police Chief Cato Hightower, that a terrified informant risked his life by snitching lawmen into the then ginning criminal enterprise of Gene Paul Norris. The Texas Rangers’ dilemma was ticklish: a premature action would queer the deal and burn the informant but inaction might warrant a catastrophic outcome. Captains Klevenhagen and Banks orchestrated a super secret meeting with the lady, securing her cooperation and absolute silence: No one, not even her bosses, could be or would be updated. Her home would be placed under surveillance, inside and out, twenty-four and seven. Chief Hightower with an added touch of insurance, posted four sniper teams—crack shots—just in case the conniving crooks made an early appearance.3 And they did! But it really was no surprise. Working hand in glove with the FBI through Special Agent in Charge W.A. “Bill” Murphy, the Texas Rangers were clued in on the gangsters’ designs. Their motel room had been clandestinely and electronically bugged—and lawmen were privy to good news: The outlaws would make a day-before dry run—just like bandit Sam Bass at Round Rock—making any last minute adjustments and warily eyeballing likely routes to and from the bank.4 From the prosecutorial perspective that dry run— an overt act—would help move the conspiracy from talk to deed— the law demanded that; juries needed assurance before throwing

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away the jailhouse keys. And just like that fateful day in Williamson County seventy-eight years before, when it turned Western the Texas Rangers would be there. With Captain Banks at the wheel, inside the new Dodge, a pursuit vehicle, were Ranger Captain Klevenhagen, Tarrant County Sheriff Harlan Wright, Chief Hightower, and Captain of Detectives O.R. Brown. Texas Rangers Arthur Hill and Jim Ray (a future captain), along with Chief Detective Andy Fournier, were in another automobile, strategically positioned near Meandering Road, where bank employee Elizabeth Barles maintained her residence. Riding in another state vehicle were Ranger Private Ernest Daniel, driving, and Tarrant County Deputies George Brakefield (a future Ranger) and Robert Morton. As a backup should the brigands give them the sudden slip and make fast tracks for Oklahoma, Ranger Lewis Rigler of Gainesville would oversee a team stationed at the likely Red River crossing. FBI Agents would tail the suspects from the motel to Ms. Barles’s neighborhood then, via radio transmission, hand off to Texas Rangers for the take down. Maybe the stratagem was good—on paper. Yet the tactical plan went haywire in a heartbeat. Gene Paul Norris and Silent Bill Humphrey knocked off the surveillance and recklessly made a break for liberty in their 1957 Chevrolet getaway car. Captain Banks and passengers, the first car in pursuit, were steeled to reality as Gene Paul Norris, leaning from a door-window, opened the ball with gunfire from at least one of his pistols. Naturally, the lawmen returned the compliment. The exchange of gunfire became intense. During the ensuing car chase at speeds topping 100 mph, squalling tires laying rubber for twenty-one miles, not any too soon a muddy road donated its part: The desperadoes wrecked on the banks of Walnut Creek three miles east of Springfield in Parker County. Bailing from the car, the characters opted for flight, firing over their shoulders as they splashed and struggled for escape. Buckshot from Captain Klevenhagen’s borrowed shotgun and .45 bullets from Captain Bank’s M-3 Grease Gun (submachine gun) stitched the fight tight for morticians; twenty-three wounds for Silent Bill, but only sixteen for Gene Paul Norris.5

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Taken into custody away from the gunfight and charged with conspiring to rob the bank, a federal violation, James Papworth stood pat on his right to remain silent: Not because he feared hard time at Leavenworth or Atlanta, he just wasn’t sure Gene Paul Norris was incapable of having him snuffed into eternity—from inside or outside of a penitentiary. Advantaging himself of what’s commonly referred to as a “down and out,” Ranger Sergeant Arthur Hill took inmate James Papworth downstairs and out the jailhouse door. At the morgue, the prisoner was at last, visually convinced that Gene Paul Norris was, for damn sure, sledgehammer dead: incapable of revenge. Thereafter, again calling forth a policing idiom, James Papworth “let his milk down,” confessing everything to Sergeant Hill.6 Though but par business for sharks with chum in the water, attorney Byron Matthews who had previously represented Gene Paul Norris, was gnashing that Texas Rangers had “executed” his now dead ex-convict ex-client. The local press would have none of it. Correspondents from the widely read Dallas Morning News, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, and the Fort Worth Press were not dancing to detractors’ downbeat tunes. Predictably, statewide the incident once again spiked the Texas Ranger publication relation’s story over the net. Practically, two salient points emerge. Texas Rangers were adeptly capable of working within a task-force model, cooperating with agencies outside DPS and, secondly, once again it was evident Texas Ranger captains, pistols in hand, could and would lead from the front. During a real-life drama Gene Paul Norris had gone down in a hail of Texas Ranger gunfire. From the comfort and safety of living rooms everyday folks could catch fictionalized recreations of Texas Ranger daring-do by watching Tales of the Texas Rangers on television. Bending to audience appeal of the Rangers, the series alternated week to week between recreating tales of the Old West era and the New Age era of super-charged police cruisers and twoway radios.7 The viewing audience was hooked. The legend of the Texas Rangers was fixed. Laying down a legacy was ongoing, a work

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in progress. Real time Texas Rangers were/are acutely aware of the boots they are filling—and the history they are making. And that very same year—1957—Rangers made history at seaside Galveston, at the time an epicenter for illicit gambling in Texas. Due to inaction by the county sheriff and city police, the state’s attorney general sent Texas Rangers to do what local lawmen were hostile to doing: Something! Though it took some time and no little effort, eventually the Rangers figuratively cut the legs out from under the pier, the one supporting the infamous Balinese Room jutting out from Galveston’s seawall, a fancy supper club and high-stakes gaming spot with a nationwide allure for genuine high-rollers, as well as popular East Coast and West Coast entertainment celebrities. As a nightspot it was a hotspot. At the end of the game, so to speak, the Texas Rangers raked the pot, luckily and ultimately seizing the “mother lode” which equated to $1,200,000 worth of gambling paraphernalia: Secretly stored at the shutdown Hollywood Dinner Club were 1500 illicit slot machines, roulette wheels, blackjack tables, dice tables, etc.8 And therein was and is today a salient fact: For whatever reason, when or if local lawmen can’t or won’t get the job done, Texas Rangers will. At least for awhile one of the most niggling assignments handed to Texas Rangers revolved around labor and civil rights disputes. And like so many other law enforcing missions—where there are two at loggerheads factions—perception boils down to whether one was a member of management or a gal or guy on strike, or part of a minority population subset. In most arenas where corporate executives and union affiliates butted heads the local law enforcing officials were at a deficit for ample long-term resources and manpower. Whether the unrest and turmoil turned around striking railroad workers at Forth Worth or Temple, discontented miners at Thurber (in Erath County), disgruntled longshoremen at seaside Galveston, thoroughly dissatisfied rank and file at the Lone Star Steel Plant in Morris County south of Daingerfield, or organizing farm workers in South Texas, an onsite Texas Ranger presence was ordered from headquarters. Likewise, during an emerging and enlightened era

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regarding civil rights, Rangers would be dispatched to protect lives and property as public school doors were opened to everyone— regardless of race. Dyed-in-the-wool segregationists had little or no use for Rangers upsetting the applecart of intolerance. Similarly, partisan voices in South Texas had plenty to say about Texas Rangers— mostly critical. There’s little doubt some of their complaints were legit; prejudice and discrimination were ugly backdrops of the Lone Star State’s landscape at the time. So while strident voices were hollering for setting right social injustices, other folks in their heart of hearts spirited the proposition that there must be law and order, regardless. Metaphorically for this timeframe a few Texas Rangers were for awhile under the microscope of closer scrutiny and some unfavorable press reports, but when all was said and done there was a hardcore truth: Texans wanted their Texas Rangers and Texans had their Texas Rangers.9 And too, there was a move underfoot to establish a Hall of Fame and Museum to guarantee that the Texas Rangers’ history and legend was preserved and the ongoing legacy was protected, actions for the benefit of all Texans, young and old, and for enthralled worldwide travelers from elsewhere. And thus the Waco, Texas, headquarters for Company F and the museum was birthed, with no little fanfare and hoopla from the state government’s top executives and popular entertainment personalities from Hollywood and New York City during ground-breaking and opening day ceremonies marking the 1960s. And even somewhat later, by state lawmakers’ legislative action the superlative facility at Waco would be designated the Lone Star State’s Official Repository for the Texas Rangers, recognition of no little significance.10 Correspondingly the Texas Rangers’ management team wanted their enforcement personnel updated with the very latest training advances, a philosophical approach that had been in place since at least the post-WW II-era when Texas Rangers gathered at Camp Mabry in Austin during March of 1948 for a five-day session of in-service schooling. Later, taking advantage of an opportunity to send a Texas Ranger to the FBI National Academy, an esteemed

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educational program for specially selected state, local, and international law enforcing employees, was and would be a most significant step in furthering professionalized educational goals. When the FBI’s summer session for 1969 kicked off there were 100 students, representing all fifty states as well as the Philippines, the Canal Zone, Australia, Canada, Thailand, and Hong Kong. More than 25 percent of the class had Bachelor of Arts or Science Degrees, with an even half-dozen equally splitting Masters or Law Degrees. All were experienced peace officers from their sweeping jurisdictional spheres, ranging in age from twenty-eight to forty-nine years, with an average length of law enforcing service exceeding a dozen years. Attending that class, representing the Rangers, their very first attendee, was Captain E.G. Albers, Jr., Company F, headquartered at Waco. Subsequent to intensive training in a widespread array of policing disciplines—Criminal Law and Procedures, Behavioral Science, Police Management, etc.—and no little time exhaustively spent with calisthenics, offensive and defensive tactics, and time on the firing range at Quantico, Virginia, Captain E.G. Albers earned a diploma from the “West Point of Law Enforcement.”11 Other Texas Rangers would follow Captain Albers’s FBI Academy training. As previously noted, the hallmark of Ranger viability is adaptability. Keeping up with the times is vital—formalized training is the key—a lesson not lost by Texas Ranger administrators, then or now. Perhaps one of the most delicate assignments thrown at Rangers is that involving the taking of hostages. The promise of a positive outcome teeters in the real time balance between what to do and when to do it—or what not to do and when not to do it. Seldom are solutions easy. During mid-October 1971 a manhunt in the busy Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex was underway. Lawmen, including Rangers from Company B, were trying to run to ground Huron Ted Walters, another of those police characters, one having just robbed a liquor store and shot at Euless, Texas, police officer B.E. Harvell. The next day when the morning sun cracked over an eastern horizon it shone down on Hoyt Houston’s 1969 Mercury. Peering outside from the

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inside were the sedan’s owner, his wife, Mary, and the couple’s fiveyear-old daughter Jana—and Huron Ted Walters sitting in the backseat holding them prisoner at the business end of a sawed-off twelve gauge. Mary Houston was at the wheel, turning left or right at Huron Ted Walters’s whim. Luckily, after spotting the car and a short chase, the villain’s trip ended. Boxed in by police cars at the bridge crossing a creek near Grapevine, Huron Ted Walters could go not forward or backward— but neither could the family Houston. It was a proverbial Mexican Standoff sans a Mexicano. Texas Ranger Tom E. Arnold, after shouted and fruitless negotiations from behind cover of his state car, was faced with a difficult decision: Wait till the fifty-three-year-old with a forty-year history of “violent crime and prison time” opted to blow the heads off his hostages and commit “suicide by cop,” or throw down his scattergun and surrender—in light of a near guaranteed life sentence, the latter not a very likely scenario. Time is not always a lawman’s ally. Sensibly speaking, career crooks are not good guys; hostage takers are worse! Mentally and physically preparing for what had to be done Texas Ranger Tom Arnold fixed the crosshairs of his scoped rifle on the outlaw’s head and waited for opportunity. Distracted, momentarily, by other lawmen relocating from a different direction, Huron Ted Walters repositioned his shotgun and Tom Arnold took advantage of the split-second break and triggered a mortal end to the madness. Dryly an old-timer characterized the outcome of times personnel resorted to the gun: “Rangers ain’t much on fast, but they’re hell on sure.”12 Portending temperature inside the Walls Unit of the then Texas Department of Corrections was uncomfortable would be a mistake— it was hot: Physically miserable and a situational crisis! Convicts Ignacio “Nacho” Cuevas, Rudolfo Sauceda “Rudy” Dominguez Jr., and the gang’s leader Federico Gomez “Fred” Carrasco, a murderous Mexican Mafia drug smuggling kingpin, had taken a dozen employees and other inmates as hostages inside the facility’s education center and library on 24 July 1974. Astonishingly, the white-suited kidnappers were each armed with a revolver and copious supply of

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cartridges. The cooped kidnappers were desperate and delusional. Desperate in that they had made the play, delusional in presupposing prison officials would fold. The alarm was sounded. Texas Rangers responded. Ranger John Wesley Styles (former sheriff of Baylor County) assigned to Huntsville was onsite inside of fifteen minutes, quickly notifying his company captain. Hurrying to Huntsville were Captain James Frank “Pete” Rogers, commander of Company A headquartered at Houston, and Sergeant Johnny Krumnow along with several other Rangers. Arriving from the Dallas area field office were additional Rangers and the Company B Captain, G.W. Burkes. Captain Rogers, a twenty-seven-year veteran of the Rangers and a distinguished and decorated World War II fighter pilot, would stand in charge of the Texas Rangers deployed to Huntsville, a jurisdictional sphere within his mapped on-paper territory. Additionally, the DPS was officially represented by Agent Winston Padgett of the Intelligence Division, while the FBI’s cooperative toehold was held down by the Resident Agent in Charge from reasonably close-by Bryan in Brazos County, Robert E. “Bob” Wiatt, a seasoned investigator with twenty-three years’ experience and gunplay behind him. Also, then and over the next few days, the fierce media frenzy engulfed the small prison and college town, with folks from nationally affiliated news organizations and magazines setting up rickety tripods, testing microphones, adjusting camera lens, and calling in pay-phone reports ahead of hard deadlines. Aside from the lengthy string of Texas journalists onsite, writers and photojournalists and broadcasters from as far away as Miami, New York, Atlanta, Chicago, and Montreal added to the din. For eleven frightful days the captives suffered, never sure of their fate while prison officials and fatigued lawmen strategized— and newshounds bayed and yelped stories of varying veracity. Buying ever-precious time the good guys bent to the fixated convicts’ demand for shop-made iron helmets and delivery of an armored car into the prison yard—their getaway ride. Foolish, indeed, had been the inmates’ thinking. Penitentiary bigwigs and Texas Rangers knew from the get-go that the borrowed Purolator Security truck

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would never—ever—pass back through the gate carrying convicts and hostages, no matter the costs. Cutting to the nub, the convicts concocted the plan of moving to the getaway vehicle—with several hostages—concealed inside a titanic cardboard box with peep holes, a Trojan Horse of sorts. Lawmen, too, had blueprinted their plan. At the right time using water from high-pressure fire hoses they would knock over the oversized piñata, rescuing the prison personnel and disarming the mal hombres. Donning bullet-proof vests Captains Rogers and Burkes, Intelligence Agent Padgett, and the FBI’s Bob Wiatt and others made ready for war—or, hopefully, capitulation. Abruptly a ruptured fire hose depowered the high-pressure stream and the nighttime shooting commenced from inside and outside the colossal carton now euphemistically referred to as the Trojan Taco. FBI Agent Wiatt as well as the two Ranger captains took hits to the chest, but were saved by their protective vests and continued to do battle. Braving gunfire TDC Lieutenant Willard N. Stewart managed to cut the net-rope anchoring several hostages as human shields outside the soggy contraption. When the smoke cleared and the screaming abated, gruesome reality registered. Cowardly and coldheartedly convict Fred Carrasco had put a fatal bullet into teacher Elizabeth Yvonne “Von” Beseda’s heart before he ate the barrel, killing himself. Rudy Dominguez triggered three rounds into the back of librarian Julia C. “Judy” Standley, mercilessly executing her before bullets from Winston Padgett and Bob Wiatt evermore capped his career as a hostage taker and horrible human. Nacho Cuevas survived intact and uninjured until—seventeen years latter—the state’s pharmaceutical injection dispensed long overdue justice and eternal good behavior. As but a quick sidebar, the intense post-incident investigation revealed that trustee Lawrence James Hall, an inmate with outside duties, had smuggled the three revolvers and near two hundred rounds of ammunition behind the walls concealed in carvedout hollows in fresh cuts of meat and tampered with and relabeled food tins. Already a six-time loser, for his part in the tragic affair Larry Hall caught another life sentence, dying in prison during his fifty-seventh year.13

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A Texas Ranger in his forty-first year died on a back porch in Denton County, not at the hands of escape-bent hostage taking convicts, but because of the senselessness of a crazed college student, a poignant reminder of risks facing every lawman—everyday. Even folks pocketing diplomas with honors and working on graduate degrees can pose a threat. Ranger Bobby Paul Doherty, stationed in Fort Worth, was dutifully assisting DPS Narcotics Agents and local officers with the execution of an arrest on 21 February 1978 at Argyle. Gregory Arthur Ott, twenty-seven, the drug-dealing suspect and student at North Texas State University (now University of North Texas), jumped tacky and fired a shot through the house’s rear door, fatally wounding Carolyn Doherty’s devoted husband and father of teenagers, Kelly Lynn and Buster Wayne.14 The law-enforcing brotherhood collectively cried: But for the grace of God or Lady Luck there go I. The following year it would be the FBI in receipt of a lucky break, thanks to the investigative credibility of Ranger Captain Jack O. Dean, commander of Company D then headquartered at the Alamo City. Often as not, even in the world of sophisticated forensics, good detective work yet boils down to interpersonal skills: Developing and disseminating critical intelligence while at the same time inspiring confidence and maintaining true confidentiality when it’s appropriate. On the morning of 29 May 1979 U.S. District Court Judge John H. “Maximum John” Wood was assassinated in his driveway. The sniper’s rifle shot had been dead on. The killer’s identity was a mystery, a genuine whodunit. Expectedly Texas Rangers and city police and federal authorities converged at the crime scene and, jurisdictionally the FBI was officially tasked with conducting the homicide investigation. And almost as quickly the FBI’s wheel-horse from Washington, D.C. declined any outside assistance—declaring that both the municipal detectives and Texas Rangers really could and should consider themselves persona non grata. Such barefaced condescension buttressed the stereotypical image of Potomac River bureaucrats, but did nothing to further the search for Judge Wood’s executioner. Truthfully and practically

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speaking the FBI was clueless. Captain Dean saved their bacon. Due to his stellar reputation as a first-rate investigator and man who could exercise discretion, Captain Dean was in possession of a tip— known contract-killer Charles Harrelson had been in San Antonio the day Judge Wood was assassinated. Laudably, not letting ego and/or any bureaucratic haughtiness sidetrack his devotion to duty, Captain Jack Dean shared the valuable intelligence with the FBI. Armed with meaningful and workable intelligence hit-man Charles Harrelson was ultimately convicted of the Judge Wood homicide and imprisoned for life. “But for his lead, the FBI might never have ended the case. Yet the media spotlight fixed solely on the FBI, which never let the public know that Dean or any other state or local officers had been involved.”15 Further north, at Wichita Falls Texas Ranger William R. Gerth, though he knew it not at the time he went to work that morning, would be awarded the DPS Medal of Valor for his actions, the Department’s highest honor, a commendation awarded for those employees displaying “conspicuous gallantry, courage and heroism at considerable risk to their own lives.” The 19 May 1983 incident spiraled to inanity quick. During an automobile pursuit the hijacker suddenly stepped hard on the brakes, screeching tires, generating smoke and burnt-rubber stink. At a standstill the guttersnipe bailed out and began barraging the close-by DPS State Trooper with hellacious fire from an automatic weapon—advancing step by step keeping the unfortunate Highway Patrolman hopelessly pinned down in his squad, expecting a shot in the neck and a call to cataleptic eternity. Texas Ranger Bill Gerth interdicted, drawing fire but returning the favor. The bank robbing fellow drew short. Ranger Gerth had killed an outlaw, but in doing so saved a law-enforcing colleague from certain death—and for that heroism he earned the Medal of Valor, the first Texas Ranger to do so—but not the last. Whether or not hostage takers are using people as bargaining chips for thwarting punishment or kidnapping for profit doesn’t matter to Rangers—thugs are thugs. From their 1823 or 1835 inception (readers may choose) Texas Rangers had always been challenged

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with the abduction of children. Slow-turning hands on the century clocks had not expunged that brand of criminality. Three 1980s cases merit mention, and all involve innocent kiddos and terrified parents. Thirteen-year-old Amy McNeil, a pretty and petite junior high school cheerleader, didn’t know where she was or who she was with, but she was intelligent enough to know the men were not nice, one carrying a pistol the other a sawed-off shotgun. At gunpoint she had been snatched from the Jeep driven by her seventeen-year-old brother Mark on their way to school at Alvarado in Johnson County, thirty miles due south of Fort Worth. The 11 January 1985 abduction was for ransom; Amy’s daddy Don McNeil was financially wellfixed and a director of the Alvarado State Bank. Texas Rangers, working with the FBI, jumped into action: Vanished children their highest priority. The commander of Company F, headquartered at Waco in McLennan County was Captain Robert K. “Bob” Mitchell. From the Rangers’ perspective Bob Mitchell was the best liked and, perhaps, the most respected twentieth-century Texas Ranger, a testimonial not then or now much disputed. Otherwise clueless, lawmen were in wholehearted agreement, they would have to wait until the telephone call for ransom and apprehend the kidnappers at the money’s drop site. Although the narrative of collecting the $100,000 payment and following Don McNeil through the string of convoluted instructions from phone booth to phone booth along I-30 into East Texas is doable, it’s really not necessary for moving the story. With Texas Rangers Ralph Wadsworth and Stan Guffey positioned as spotters in a DPS plane and helicopters overhead and mobile surveillance teams on the highway following Mr. McNeil’s black Cadillac, Rangers and FBI Agents, it was anticipated, would be in the right place at the right time. In the end such prognostication proved to be true, though the dicey undertaking withstood a hectic on-the-ground adjustment or two. Subsequent to suspicious activity of a vehicle erratically circling the purposed drop site and attracting the attention of Company F Ranger John E. Aycock and Company B Ranger Brantley Foster, and after learning the 1983 Buick had been stolen in Arlington earlier

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that night, Rangers were right sure occupants in that car were the right bad guys. The fact was confirmed when those fellows opened fire on Rangers Joe Wilie (a future captain) and Jimmy Ray, who had to hold their fire fearing Amy was inside the vehicle. Luckily for the kidnappers one of their bullets disabled the Rangers’ lead car, puncturing the radiator. The shooters’ good luck didn’t hold, however, and they ran out of gas, quickly taking cover behind a car parked in a residential neighborhood driveway. Fortunately, Company B Texas Ranger Howard B. “Slick” Alfred (future sheriff of Henderson County) and Company F Ranger John Waldrip, soon joined by Company F Ranger John Dendy and Johnson County Deputy Sheriff D.J. Maulder, found themselves involved in a firefight with the kidnappers at the small town of Saltillo, just west of Sulphur Springs (in Hopkins County) and more than 100 miles from their point of origination. Miraculously the Texas Rangers and Deputy Maulder had saved Amy McNeil and taken into custody two wounded yahoos, and three other unscathed misfits, one being a young woman.16 Before the year was out, Sergeant Robert G. “Bobby” Prince of Company F was forced to deal with another episode, this one at Meridian in Bosque County, about an hour’s drive northwest of Waco. Having specialized training as a hostage negotiator, the future captain of both Texas Ranger Companies A and F was, once again, the right man at the right place at the right time. Ex-convict and then current fugitive from an Illinois jailbreak, Jimmy R. Cooper aka just Bob, was holding Mary Lou York, twenty-five, and her five-year-old son, along with seventeen-year-old Jennie Davenport prisoner and, if those lawmen surrounding the residence weren’t damn careful, “he’d pile up some bodies in front of the house.” Though Sergeant Prince was unawares that on a previous occasion outlaw Bob had finessed an Indiana hostage negotiator and, after he was close, “shot him in the face,” the patient Texas Ranger proficiently applied psychological and practical techniques which ultimately led to the release of all three hostages. Training paid its dividend. Even though Jennie Davenport had been raped three times, and Jimmy Cooper knew he would face more hard time, a life sentence, he reluctantly

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laid his pistol on the porch and surrendered.17 Sergeant Bob Prince had typified the philosophy of modern age Rangers: take no unnecessary chances, but if it’s possible, talk first, shoot last! That said, other hostage-taking scenarios were spring-loaded cases for tempering nerves to hardcore reality. At Horseshoe Bay, a somewhat ritzy lakefront community northwest of Austin and just southwest of Marble Falls, twenty-two-year old Denise Johnson, house-keeper and nanny for the prominent and prosperous William Whitehead family, had basically vanished on 14 January 1987. Shortly, though, she had managed a quick phone call saying she had been kidnapped and was being held in a vacant home. There were no ransom demands and no workable leads, in all likelihood because she had been abducted by mistake, confused with the intended victim, Mrs. Whitehead. A prompt investigation and search of some vacant summer homes proved negative. During the wee morning hours of 22 January, scarcely a week later, the inexorable Rangers periodic nightmare resurfaced: Twoyear-old Kara-Leigh Whitehead had been kidnapped from her bedroom and, somewhere, was being held pending payment of the ransom, $30,000 in $20s. Should William Whitehead wish to forego upping the cash, well, the telephone message was explicit, dreadfully so, the poor little girl would be murdered and turned into “hamburger meat.” In but a figurative real time flash Captain Bob Mitchell and Sergeant Joe Wilie (future captain), as well as Company F Rangers Stan Guffey, Joe Davis, Jim Miller, Fred Cummings, and John Aycock were onsite, soon joined by Ranger Johnny Waldrip posted at Llano. FBI Special Agent Sykes Houston was there, too, lending expertise and a helping hand, as was recent FBI Academy graduate Agent Nancy Fernari. It was serious business. Advantaging themselves of Ranger Fred Cummings’s sound liaison with the District Attorney Sam Oatman, Texas Rangers were furnished a 1987 Lincoln Town Car, a vehicle large enough to execute the battle plan and rescue toddler Kara-Leigh. Mr. Whitehead would willingly deliver the money when and wherever directed—no cops! At the Whitehead residence with the luxury car—the designated

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drop vehicle—parked in the closed garage the backseat removed, there would be enough time and adequate room for Rangers Guffey and Aycock to be perfectly concealed from prying eyes. William Whitehead awaited the kidnapper’s instructions. Across and down the street was a vacant house, a summer home, and in all likelihood due to a surreptitiously traced telephone call that’s where the scoundrel Brent Albert Beeler, twenty-three, a certifiable criminal running from service of a blue warrant (a parole or probation violation—no bail) was cruelly holding the bewildered child. At this point—if that were indeed true—storming the house with overwhelming force, drawn Colt .45 autos and tossing flash-bang grenades, was out of the question. After dark, half past nine, telephonic instructions were given to Mr. Whitehead: He was to drive the Lincoln across the street, park in the driveway, leave the engine running, have the loot on the front seat, keep the headlights on and the driver’s door standing open—then quickly scoot back home. Brent Albert Beeler would then come to the neighborhood, leave Kara-Leigh in the front yard and split—driving his newfound luxury getaway car. William Whitehead followed orders, explicitly. Rangers Guffey and Aycock were secreted behind the driver’s seat, blanket atop them, screening them from exterior notice, pistols in hand. With Mr. Whitehead exiting the scene, Brent Albert Beeler emerged from the house, no big surprise, carrying Kara-Leigh Whitehead snugly wrapped beneath a tablecloth in one hand, a loaded Smith & Wesson Model 29 .44 Magnum in the other. Placing the helpless child in the front seat, he then shoved her across to the passenger’s side, before the evil ne’er-do-well began shifting himself behind the steering-wheel. Seemingly the crook’s plan was snapping into place. Grabbing the briefcase of greenbacks, Brent Albert Beeler pitched it onto what he thought was the big car’s back bench-seat, not John Aycock’s midsection. At that point it turned Western. Ranger Stan Guffey commandingly shouting “State Police,” in unison with Brent Albert Beeler’s spontaneously shrieked, “Oh, Goddamn” while he clumsily unlimbered himself from the Lincoln but discharging his six-shot revolver twice as he fumbled and stumbled. His first shot

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missed, his second didn’t, striking Guffey in the forehead. In those split-seconds, Ranger Aycock, sustaining a presence of mind, using his body as Kara-Leigh’s shield, unleashed hellfire with his handgun, firing until Brent Albert Beeler went down DRT—Dead Right There, a handy policing acronym. Rallying to rush Ranger Guffey to the ER, he was placed into the backseat of an FBI vehicle for the trip, Agent Nancy Fernari holding his hand and comforting him with heartfelt compassion, a selflessness not unnoticed by hard-bitten Rangers. Sadly, Stan Guffey died during the journey. And what fate had befallen the missing nanny, Denise Johnson? Behind the vacant home, in a boathouse, her lifeless and sexually assaulted body, hands and ankles restrained by duct tape, clearly exhibiting that she had been tortured with burning cigarettes, was recovered.18 Though awarded posthumously for Texas Ranger Stanley K. Guffey, both he and Texas Ranger John E. Aycock received the DPS Medal of Valor for their heroism during the rescue of Kara-Leigh Whitehead, truly an act of putting devotion to duty ahead of self. On the much broader scale Texas legislators recognized the need for Texas Rangers and formally shortstopped the occasional critics haranguing that they were—institutionally—an anachronism. Lawmakers, ever attuned to pleasing constituents, breathed everlasting life into Texas Ranger viability on the first day of September 1987. At downtown Austin, the seventieth Lone Star legislature with language rewording the state’s Government Code as it dealt with organizational matters affecting DPS made more than emphatically clear where they and the general public stood with regards to their historically iconic and highly revered state policing outfit, by statute: “The division relating to the Texas Rangers may not be abolished.”19 Interestingly and, almost unbelievably, and as but a quick sidebar, less than a decade later Ranger Aycock would be recognized again with awarding of a second DPS Medal of Valor, this time, too, for saving the life of a child. The fourteen-month-old was being scarily held at gunpoint by an unhinged fellow wielding a twelvegauge shotgun. Ranger Aycock successfully liberated the toddler and arrested the perpetrator.

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Someone else that was arrested was America’s television audiences, figuratively handcuffed to their remote controls, salted bowl of popcorn in the other hand. Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Larry McMurty’s blockbuster novel Lonesome Dove had made the mini-series television market. All Texans—and the rest of that outside world—know, personally it seems, ex-Texas Rangers Gus McCrae (Robert Duvall) and Woodrow Call (Tommy Lee Jones), religiously inviting them into their living rooms those successive weeks during 1989. “Dramatic, witty, exciting, romantic, tragic, and beautifully filmed, Lonesome Dove was a superlative entertainment. The public had fallen in love with the two old Rangers. . . .”20 The fascinating but fictional Gus and Woodrow from the Rio Grande/Río Bravo borderland’s Hat Creek Cattle Company laid down their legacy; twentieth-century Texas Rangers were yet building theirs. Who was not arrested was untrustworthy David Koresh, headman and doomsday exponent of the fanatical Branch Davidians and their heavily armed compound on the outskirts of Waco that Sunday morning in February 1993. Subsequent to the murders of four federal agents and the wounding of many others—dramatically playing out on TV—during the execution of a lawfully drawn search warrant, the U.S. Attorney’s office was faced with a genuine practical dilemma: Who could be impartially and competently tasked with perfecting criminal cases for prosecution, either in state or federal courts—or both? Jurisdictional nimbleness was imperative. Due to their investigative integrity and experience working homicides, a cadre of Texas Rangers were formally sworn as Deputy U.S. Marshals and handed the job. Formality of the Rangers’ institutional task was to investigate the homicides and assaults, not to resolve the resultant standoff. That task fell to the FBI, which was walking between its internal fine lines: one drawn by pure tactical factors, the other by trained hostage negotiators’ high hopes for some type of peaceful resolution. The intra-FBI strategic struggles, at times, seemed at cross-purposes, understandably so. On the other hand, challenges facing the Texas Rangers with ensuring the admissibility of physical evidence, untangling the knots of

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circumstantial evidence, assuring the unconditional legality of witness testimony and not just a few of the perpetrators’ voluntary confessions were near incomprehensible daily tests facing the capable incident commander, Captain David Byrnes, Company B. Likewise, instances of CYA on the part of some top-tier federal bureaucrats did not skate past Texas Ranger notice. History well records the unfolding tragedy at what was called the Mount Carmel Compound as it went up in smoke amid the arsons, explosions, murders, and suicides. Through it all, though controversy and conspiracy theories swirled across tabloid pages and atop beer-table arguments, and eventually decorous U.S. Congressional hearings at Washington, for their investigative role in the gloomy and gut-wrenching drama—the Texas Rangers’ standing as topnotch and nonaligned criminal investigators remained unsullied.21 All too soon, relatively speaking, Texas Rangers would again be put to the test. Extremist thinkers tagging themselves the Republic of Texas, at least a faction of them, had established an “embassy” in the pretty Davis Mountain country of West Texas. Their philosophy was plain. Texas had been annexed to the United States illegally and, therefore the Lone Star State was yet an indisputably independent republic, not a state and, therefore, laws passed and promulgated in the statehouse at Austin were not applicable to them—no need for diver’s licenses or vehicle registrations and safety inspection windshield stickers or anything else they deemed as forcing them into the funnel of lawful compliance if they chose otherwise. Texas real-estate, all 171,901,440 acres—plus other land Mexico had ceded in the 1848 Treaty Guadalupe Hidalgo and the Gadsden Purchase of 1853—was sovereign territory of the Republic of Texas. Crackpot as it may seem they were, in truth, dead serious! Subsequent to Sheriff Steve Bailey, Jeff Davis County (county seat Fort Davis) arresting their purported Chief of Security for weapons violations, other Republic of Texas adherents orchestrated a violent home invasion, wounding a fellow with gunfire while taking him and his wife hostage. Supposedly the unlucky and anxious couple had at this point been classified as prisoners of war. The heretofore niggling nuisance had now morphed

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to madness. Though Jeff Davis County was pretty and sprawling West Texas ranch and tourist country—it was not heavily populated. As far as county lawmen, there was Sheriff Bailey and his deputy, occasionally aided by couple of non-paid volunteer Reserve Deputy Sheriffs, normally enough manpower but at this juncture and, for the situation at hand, a woefully understaffed contingent regardless their creditable intentions. Not unexpectedly the proverbial 3:00 a.m. phone call for help went out, but it was midmorning Sunday, 27 April 1997. On the other end of the line was thirty-nine-year-old Barry K. Caver, Commander of Company E, Texas Rangers, headquartered at Midland, the halfway point between Fort Worth and El Paso. Captain Caver immediately notified his widely posted Rangers to meet him at Fort Davis, and he and Highway Patrol Captain David Baker—via a whirling fast DPS helicopter ride—were onsite, as other Company E Texas Rangers began rolling in for who knew what—nevertheless it was their job and, to the man, they were disposed to duty.22 In contrast to the horrors at Waco, wherein Rangers were tasked with homicide investigations and FBI components were internally debating and looking to Washington for strategy and tactics regarding other matters, Captain Barry Caver was indisputably in command. One trademark of the Ranger leadership model is allowing autonomy for in-the-field personnel. The ball was in Captain Caver’s court and he could call the shots; the Austin-based headquarters would support him in every way, not try to second-guess him from afar. At the height of the standoff, the number of personnel from various law-enforcing and support agencies—federal, state, and local—numbered in the vicinity of 300, which was in and of itself a nightmare of scheduling and supplying, aside from the normally expected concerns for ensuring neighborhood security and officer safety around the clock. Thankfully, in this instance, the U.S. Forest Service Incident Command System took over matters of scheduling assignments and appropriately rotating manpower, tribulations they had fine-tuned throughout years of fighting wildfires—which even in the Davis Mountains was an issue of no little concern. Captain

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Caver could well then concern himself with matters more pressing: saving lives. Though the decision-making tasks were complex, Captain Caver ultimately—with the capable assistance of supporting personnel— brought about the safe return of the “prisoners of war,” and brokered a peace settlement with the local outfit’s ringleader, Richard McLaren and some of his cohorts who voluntarily surrendered, albeit they were eventually sentenced to penitentiary terms ranging upwards to 99 years. Another Republic of Texas fellow, Mike Matson, took another route. He scooted out the “embassy’s” backdoor and into the rattlesnake and mountain lion infested wilds, where he shot and killed a Texas Department of Corrections trailing dog. Then he foolishly trained gunfire on a DPS helicopter circling overhead. Fortunately, it’s reasonable and rational to report, the berserk Matson was himself mortally cut down by the canine’s handler, Eric Pechacek, with a well-placed shot from a scoped .270 rifle before anyone else suffered a murderous bullet wound, wildcat clawing, or a pit-viper’s venomous injection.23 Captain Barry Caver and the Texas Rangers of Company E—and responding Rangers from other companies—had stood tall, upholding in spades an enviable legacy. Though clocks are stoppable, time isn’t. Even as Texas Rangers were tailing off toward the twenty-first century, lurking peril reared its ugly head. Hopkins County is about the halfway point between Dallas and Texarkana. The county seat is Sulphur Springs, and it was there, at the DPS District Office, on 16 January 1998 that irrational behavior triggered tragedy. A fellow holding what was purported to be a bomb had slipped off track and gone into the public building, threatening detonation. Pluckily, Highway Patrol Troopers Cody Sanders and George K. Harris evacuated the facility and, assisted by Texas Ranger Danny V. Rhea, then on the scene, began negotiating with the deranged but decidedly dangerous fellow and the potentially explosive state of affairs. Unfortunately for everyone, when the bad actor pulled a pistol from his pocket, pointing it at Trooper Harris, it turned Western. Having but a split-second and no viable option, Ranger Rhea fired a single round, fatally wounding the man.

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For his “courage, decisive action, and dedication to duty in this tense and volatile situation,” one bringing “great credit to him, the Texas Department of Public Safety and the profession of law enforcement,” Texas Ranger Danny Rhea was awarded the distinguished DPS Medal of Valor.24 As the new millennium was drawing near, another national newsmaker propelled Rangers to the forefront of America’s interest with criminality—a serial killer was on the loose. Colloquially known at the “Railroad Killer,” Rafael Resendez-Ramirez, aka Ángel Maturino Reséndiz, a Mexican national, was riding the rails in hobo fashion, raping and murdering as he toured. Creditable forensic clues had led to his positive identity, but not his whereabouts. Texas Rangers Andrew F. Carter, Jr. and Brian Taylor skillfully interviewed an Albuquerque relative, which, in the end, resulted in the suspect’s offer to voluntary surrender—to a Ranger! An arrest was made, the courtroom conviction achieved, and the death sentence carried out.25 Before finishing this, the next to last chapter for Texas Rangers: Lives, Legend, and Legacy, it certainly is but fitting and respectful to mention by name and date those Texas Rangers suffering on-duty deaths subsequent to the Frontier Battalion era, those state-paid Texas Rangers of the Ranger Force timeframe and, later, the ongoing Texas Department of Public Safety epoch: Alsobrook, William M. 08 December 1919 Accidental Gunshot Buchanan, Joseph Benjamin 25 December 1921 Killed by Mexicano Revelers Burdett, Robert Lee 07 June 1915 Killed by Mexicano Bandits Carnes, Quirl Bailey 31 July 1910 Killed by Mexicano Smugglers Doherty, Bobby Paul 21 February 1978 Killed by Anglo Drug Suspect Franklin, Robert Lee 05 September 1933 Automobile Accident Goff, Thomas Jefferson 13 September 1905 Killed by Mexicano Prisoner Goodwin, Oscar W. 10 February 1916 Natural Causes—On Duty Guffey, Stanley Keith 22 January 1987 Killed by Anglo Kidnapper

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Hulen, Eugene B. Hunt, Robert Ernest Hyde, Thomas Carlyle

24 May 1915 15 October 1918 30 April 1918

McDuffie, Dan Lafayette

07 July 1931

Moran, John August Pennington, Benjamin L. Perkins, T.E. Paul Ransom, Henry Lee Roebuck, W. Emmett

12 December 1918 07 October 1918 07 November 1918 01 April 1918 09 September 1902

Russell, Grover Scott Sadler, Leonard Tillman Shaw, Joseph R.

23 June 1913 15 September 1918 21 August 1918

Stillwell, William P. Thomas, Nathanial P. “Doc”

03 April 1918 05 January 1909

Timberlake, Delbert

10 October 1918

Turner, Jr., Henry Ross

11 July 1933

Veale, Bertram Clinton

07 February 1919

Watson, James Aaron

21 February 1924

White, Emmett White, H.A. White, Homer

08 August 1933 08 December 1961 04 February 1908

White, Sr., John Dudley

12 July 1918

Killed by Mexicano Bandits Spanish Influenza Amoebic Dysentery/ Bad Water Anglo Disgruntled Employee Spanish Influenza Spanish Influenza Killed by Mexicano Smuggler Killed by Anglo Feudists Killed by Mexicano Assassins Killed by Mexicano Bandits Accidental Gunshot Killed by Mexicano Smugglers Killed by Mexicano Bandit Killed by Anglo Deputy Sheriff Killed by Mexicano Smuggler Died on Duty— Apoplectic Stroke Killed by Fellow Texas Ranger Killed by Anglo Moonshiners Automobile Accident Automobile Accident Killed by Anglo During an Arrest Killed by Anglo Army Deserters

Photo Gallery

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Emmett Robuck, the first Texas Ranger murdered during the Ranger Force era, 1901–1935. Courtesy Texas Ranger Hall of Fame & Museum.

Captain William Jesse “Bill” McDonald would see service with the Texas Rangers both in the Frontier Battalion and Ranger Force eras. Courtesy Texas Ranger Hall of Fame & Museum.

Although the Texas Rangers had a statewide reach, local area lawmen also comprised necessary patchworks in the covering blanket of policing fabric. Here the proficient photographer posed and captured an interesting quintet of armed Guadalupe County (county seat Seguin) lawmen. Courtesy Texas Ranger Hall of Fame & Museum.

Here the celebrated Captain J.A. Brooks is seated at left with his son, John Morgan Brooks, next to Special Texas Ranger J.D. Harkey. Standing L to R are Rangers Ivan Murchison, Nathanial Pendergrass “Doc” Thomas, and James Dallas Dunaway. Doc Thomas would be murdered by a Potter County deputy sheriff at Amarillo and though he would survive, J.D. Dunaway would be horrifically shotgunned from an upstairs window by a Trinity County lawyer at Groveton. Courtesy Suzanne Montgomery.

Even prior to exposure of the murderous Plan de San Diego, the reading public was fascinated with the exploits of Texas Rangers, a fact made perfectly clear by this April 1914 edition of Leslie’s Illustrated Weekly Newspaper featuring the article “The Texas Ranger as He Is.” Courtesy Tony Sapienza.

Regardless of motivation these Mexican raiders miscalculated when raiding the King Ranch’s Norias Division headquarters below Kingsville, attacking U.S. soldiers stationed thereat. Enthusiastically it seems Texas Rangers and others posed for aftermath photographs. Horseback L to R are Captain Henry L. Ransom, Captain James Monroe Fox, and Ranger Frank A. Hamer. Also pictured above is the fancy hand-crafted Bona Allen saddle Frank Hamer was astraddle. Courtesy Pete Rainone.

A fearless set of Texas/Mexico borderland Rangers with an allied deputy sheriff. Kneeling on the front row L to R: Ranger Sergeant Light Townsend, Captain William Lee “Will” Wright, Ranger Tom Brady, and Webb County Deputy Sheriff W.B. Wright. Standing L to R are: Texas Rangers John E. Hensley, Dan Coleman, W.S. Peterson, unidentified, unidentified, and John W. Sadler. Note the barrels of Will Wright’s and Tom Brady’s 1895 Winchester lever-actions have been cut near the fore-stock for close-quarter life and death work in the thorny brasada of South Texas. Courtesy Texas Ranger Hall of Fame & Museum.

For Texas Rangers assigned to the Texas/Mexico border, actually obtaining a life insurance policy was but iffy at best—as evinced by the above letter. Courtesy Doug Dukes.

Unfortunately but provably, Captain Henry Lee Ransom, a certified man-killer, here seated at left, was a cog in the wheel that turned some Rangers’ names into infamy and temporarily seared darkness onto the institution’s reputation. Courtesy Texas Ranger Hall of Fame & Museum.

As the caption on this photograph clearly illustrates, danger for Texas Rangers was omnipresent, a historic image taken subsequent to the murder of Ranger Dudley White, Sr. during July 1918. Courtesy Texas Ranger Hall of Fame & Museum.

The transformation of Texas Rangers into traditional business attire rather than rough-duty clothing is clearly discernible in this period photograph of stalwarts dispatched to Galveston during a labor dispute which shut down the port. Seated from L to R: William M. Molesworth, Edward McCarthy, Jr., Captain Joseph B. “Joe” Brooks, John Monroe Rooney, and Benjamin Thomas Tumlinson, Jr. Standing L to R are James W. Milam, Dee W. Cox, Telyphus T. “Tell” Hawkins, John Lewis Bargsley, Thomas J. Cole, Claude Darlington, and James Taylor Martin. Courtesy Texas Ranger Hall of Fame & Museum.

Preceding the law enforcing raid at Mexia, Texas Ranger Greathouse, working in an undercover capacity gathered critical intelligence. Courtesy Tony Sapienza.

Texas Rangers taking a break after the seizure of illicit distilleries in the Trinity River bottoms. Courtesy Tony Sapienza.

Lawmen and guardsmen examine gambling paraphernalia and moonshine whiskey at the notorious Winter Garden near Mexia. Courtesy Texas

Ranger Hall of Fame & Museum.

Although Rangers per se were not involved with the ambushing of murderous ne’er-do-wells Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow, the contents of their vehicle revealed the technological advances in weaponry Texas Rangers faced during the gangster era. From The Texas Ranger Annual, Vol. III, courtesy Texas Ranger Hall of Fame & Museum.

These five clean-shaven and tie-wearing Company D Texas Rangers stationed at Falfurrias, Brooks County in South Texas, were armed and ready for action. From L to R. Ranger Tom L. Heard, Ranger Bob Smith, Sergeant John W. Sadler, Captain A.R. Mace with the Thompson submachine gun, and the double-rigged two-gun man, Ranger Elbert Riggs. Courtesy Texas Ranger Hall of Fame & Museum.

Captain Tom Hickman, a Texas Ranger with gunplay under his belt and rodeo showmanship a part of his overall persona, studied policing systems throughout the United States and Europe, and was one of several driving forces creating the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS). Courtesy Texas Ranger Hall of Fame & Museum.

When birthed during 1935 all of the DPS Highway Patrolmen were motorcyclists. Courtesy Texas Ranger Hall of Fame & Museum.

For a timeframe in the twentieth-century a motorized Texas Ranger with a horse in tow was not uncommon—but rather routine in South and West Texas or for manhunts in the state’s interior. Courtesy Texas Ranger Hall of Fame & Museum.

Artist David Sanders, with his near life-size painting, captures the essence of Homer Garrison, Jr. who headed DPS for thirty years. Many were the Texas Rangers who would claim with pride that they were “Garrison Rangers.” Courtesy Texas Ranger Hall of Fame & Museum.

With creation of the DPS during 1935, a state operated crime lab and specialized emphasis on forensics came to fruition. Courtesy Texas Ranger Hall of Fame & Museum.

As stated, even before the onset of America’s involvement in World War II there was a national interest in the Lone Star State’s legendary Texas Rangers. Herein pictured is Captain Willie Lee Barler, front and center, commanding horseback Rangers along the Rio Grande. Front row from L to R: Nat B. “Kiowa” Jones, James Malone, Sidney Roberts, Captain Barler, James A. Wallen and C.F. “Dee” Perkins. Back row from L to R: John F. Herzing, Sie Bell, Charles A. Carta, Charles McBee, Troy R. Owens, John Carta, W.B. Davis, Richard “Red” Hawkins, Monty Kirkland, and Henry Glasscock. A separate photo image of Barler would appear as the cover for Life Magazine’s April 10, 1939, edition. Courtesy Texas Ranger Hall of Fame & Museum.

Captain Manuel Terrazas “Lone Wolf” Gonzaullas, an iconic Texas Ranger and one of the lawmen engaged in the deadly gunplay with prison escapees near Gilmer in East Texas. Courtesy Texas Ranger Hall of Fame & Museum.

Early on Colonel Homer Garrison saw the value in and emphasized Continuing Education. Here, during a post-World War II training session at Camp Mabry, students pose for their class photo. Many of these lawmen would earn well-known careers with the Texas Rangers, therefore they are enumerated by name: Front Row, L to R: Bob Massengale, Joe S. Fletcher, Colonel Homer Garrison, Jr., Captain Manuel T. Gonzaullas, and Captain Gully Cowsert. Second Row, L to R : James L. Rogers, Robert William “Bob” Coffee, Bennie C. Kruger, Jim C. Paulk, John J. Klevenhagen, James N. Geer, Dick Oldham, Stewart Stanley, Raymond Waters, and Tom Ralph Gallamore. Back Row, L to R: John R. Conner, Earl Campbell Stewart, Roscoe D. Holliday, Arthur W. Hill, Lewis Calvin Rigler, Norman K. Dixon, Zeno A. Smith, John Dudley White, John T. Cope and E.C. Campbell. Courtesy Texas Ranger Hall of Fame & Museum.

The next week, March 15-20, 1948, the following flight of Texas Rangers attended the training school at Camp Mabry: Front Row, L to R: Captain Robert Austin “Bob” Crowder, Captain Fred Olson, Captain Alfred Young “A.Y” Allee. Second Row, L to R : Eddie Oliver, Truemon Stone, William E. Renfrow, Ernest Daniel, Levi Duncan, E. J. “Jay” Banks, Joe Bridge, Frank Probst, Mart Jones, L.H. Purvis, Clinton Thomas “Clint” Peoples. Back Row, L to R: Ralph Rohatsch, Tully Elwyn Seay, Clarence Nordyke, Joe Thompson, Sam H. White, Selwyn Denson, Dick Middleton, M.W. Williamson, and Robert Logan “Bob” Badgett. Courtesy Texas Ranger Hall of Fame & Museum.

Even at midpoint of the twentieth-century movie goers were purchasing tickets for a vicarious action-paced thrill with Texas Rangers: Exhibited by this poster for The Texas Rangers starring fêted Hollywood stars George Montgomery and Gale Storm—in “SUPERcineCOLOR” no less! Capitalizing on profit an adventuresome comic book was spawned by this not so classic classic. Courtesy Texas Ranger Hall of Fame & Museum.

Doctor Delores “D” Taylor, an accomplished Surgical Pathologist, with a life-long passion for collecting Lone Ranger and Tonto memorabilia, amassed a large and quite prominent collection. The Lone Ranger’s personal gunbelt stuffed with his signature “Silver Bullets” and his pair of ivory-stocked matching revolvers, along with one of his promotional photograph, are a small part of that remarkable collection exhibited in the museum’s Pop Culture Gallery. Courtesy Texas Ranger Hall of Fame & Museum.

The Rusk Cherokeean of April 16, 1955, an Extra Edition headlining a riot at the Rusk State Hospital. Captain Bob Crowder stood tall: One Riot, One Ranger. Courtesy Texas Ranger Hall of Fame & Museum.

Texas Ranger Captain Bob Crowder (L) and Texas Ranger Captain E.J. “Jay” Banks (R). Captain Crowder would face down rioting inmates at the Rusk State Hospital during 1955 and Captain Banks would be a gutsy participant in the fatal 1957 gunplay with well-known “characters” Gene Paul Norris and William “Silent Bill” Humphrey along muddy Walnut Creek northwest of Fort Worth. Note Captain Crowder’s Thompson sub-machinegun. From The Texas Ranger Annual IV, courtesy Texas Ranger Hall of Fame & Museum.

Captain John J. “Johnny” Klevenhagen, Company A, Houston. Colonel Garrison said he “combined the qualities of the frontier Ranger and his modern day counterpart. . . . a peerless horseman and deadly shot, he was also versed in ballistics, fingerprints, and other facets of advanced criminology.” His biographer, Douglas V. Meed, characterized Captain Klevenhagen as “tall, lean, leathery, and unstoppable.” He, too, would display true grit as a standup Ranger during the Walnut Creek shootout that ended the life of twentieth-century outlaw and contract killer Gene Paul Norris. Courtesy Texas Ranger Hall of Fame & Museum.

Actors Willard Parker (L) playing the role of Texas Ranger Jace Pearson and Harry Lauter (R) assuming the fictional persona of Texas Ranger Clay Morgan. The clean-cut pistol packers rode their horses or steered their police cruisers via national television airways into American living rooms weekly. Tales of the Texas Rangers was quite popular—at least for fifty-two episodes. From The Texas Ranger Annual, Vol. IV, courtesy Texas Ranger Hall of Fame & Museum.

Captain Pete Rogers, a veteran World War II fighter-pilot Ace, later commanded Company A, a geographical area including Huntsville and scene of the 1974 hostage taking event at the prison. As a Texas Ranger captain he was expected to—and did—lead from the front, as did Ranger Captain G.W. Burks, taking part in the horrific shootout with three would-be escaping inmates. Courtesy Texas Ranger Hall of Fame & Museum.

During the siege behind the Walls Unit, the hostage-taking inmates, already in possession of smuggled revolvers and ammunition, demanded the construction of iron bulletproof helmets, and an armored car to make good their getaway. Rangers and prison administrators complied, but only in part, full well knowing the convicts would never be allowed to exit the facility under any circumstances—a hard and fast prison rule. Courtesy Texas Ranger Hall of Fame & Museum.

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though it might seem rather extraneous, nevertheless the backdrop of the Lone Star State’s vast geographical nomenclature is significant, especially as it applies to today’s Texas Rangers. The Texas land mass—including natural and manmade lakes—tallies at 268,597 sq. miles. On her longest east/west straight line the distance to be traversed measures 773 miles, while Texans can boast of a north/south straight line measuring 801 miles. Though the geographical center of the state is in McCulloch County some fifteen miles northeast of Brady, were one bent on starting at that core-point and crossing into another state or wading in warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico, the trip would not be accomplished shortly. Texas is subdivided into 254 separate counties, meaning there are 254 elected sheriffs tasked with serving their constituents. Not surprisingly, the population numbers for those independent counties vary considerably, ranging at the top end from 4,253,700 for Harris County (county seat Houston) to 71 folks living in Loving County (county seat Mentone) in far West Texas bordering the state of New Mexico. For Texas Rangers: Lives, Legend, and Legacy, factoring in the number of bona fide Texas Peace Officers—municipal policemen and other commissioned and licensed law enforcing personnel—systematically spotted throughout Texas in the particular counties is also relevant, ranging on the high end at 9,272 lawmen for one county, 427

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to the low end of one sworn officer for another county. Whether the requesting law enforcing agency is exceptionally large or incredibly small, today’s Texas Rangers always stand ready to respond, singularly or in force.1 Distilling his descriptive remarks to a capsule version, Randy Prince, Assistant Director of the Texas Department of Public Safety and Chief of the Texas Rangers, offers commentary about his committed workforce: “The Rangers have been called one of the most effective investigative law enforcement agencies in the world. These highly motivated men and women, selected from many outstanding candidates, take pride in the colorful traditions they have inherited and the modern challenges they face. As elite law enforcement officers of the twenty-first century, they have added college degrees, networked computers, cell phones and state-of-the-art forensic analyses. The Texas Rangers are a heritage to be valued and a symbol of service for future generations.”2 And of what duties are today’s 173 Texas Rangers charged? Possessing organizational status as a separate division within the overall structuring of DPS, the Texas Rangers are responsible for a myriad of law-enforcing and peacekeeping functions. Absent resorting to the particulars of enabling legislation and specifically crafted legalize, the Texas Rangers’ responsibilities include but are certainly not limited to some of the following undertakings: A. Major Incident Criminal Investigations [Homicide, Robbery, Kidnapping, Felony Theft, Burglary, Sexual Assault, etc.]. B. Fraud [Bank Fraud, Credit Card Fraud, Computer Fraud, etc.]. C. Public Corruption and Public Integrity Investigations. [Misconduct of Public Officials]. D. Unsolved Crime Investigations [Cold Cases]. E. Officer Involved Shootings. F. Apprehension of Fugitives [Prison Escape Manhunts and Service of Arrest Warrants]. G. Threats Against the Governor and/or Other State, Federal, and Local Officials.

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H. Border Security [Apprehension of Narcotics Traffickers, Human Smugglers, Terrorists]. I. Maintain Law and Order and Protection of Property [Riots, Natural Disasters, etc.]. J. Disseminate Critical Criminal Intelligence To Other Law Enforcing Entities. K. Partake in Educational Training for Other State and Local Law Enforcing Arms. L. Participate in Educational Programs for School Children and the General Public. Obviously population density and quantifiable crime statistics are interconnected: Sparsely populated rural areas register fewer reportable criminal offenses than do heavily populated metropolitan neighborhoods. Statistically some Texas counties tally multiple homicides every week; others from that pool of 254 counties chronicle not one in several years. Therein spotlights a basic, a plain truth. Murder is not a routine matter, everywhere. For other felonies, as would be expected, there is a proportional correlation between people numbers and the statistical crime-rates. Although numerical measurements and correlations are vital, in the field of on-the-ground criminality nothing is 100 percent certain: Unspeakable crimes can take place anywhere at anytime. Often owing to budgetary and manpower matters, many Texas counties are ill-equipped to fulfill occasional demands imposed by time-consuming and multifaceted criminal investigations, those situational interruptions necessitating resources not customarily at hand. Within that context the Texas Rangers literally ride to the rescue, not on a charging white stallion, but with a jam-packed late model radio-equipped pickup-truck or SUV loaded with technologically advanced investigative paraphernalia and/or law enforcing equipment—and a knowledgeable background of specialized forensic training. Rangers are pre-positioned to be of service. Unquestionably organizational structure is subject to change, and governmental bureaucracies are constantly undergoing rethinking

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and readjustments and realignments, but as of this writing (2016) the deployment model for Texas Ranger company headquarters is: Company A Company B Company C Company D Company E Company F

Houston [Harris County] Garland [Dallas County] Lubbock [Lubbock County] Weslaco [Hidalgo County] El Paso [El Paso County] Waco [McLennan County]

Captains no longer stand as commanders for the individual companies. Major is the official rank and pay-grade of Texas Rangers tasked with the overall administration and supervision of particular companies within the organizational framework. Day by day operational matters fall within the purview of the company’s lieutenants, normally two or three per company, each of them having an assigned assortment of specific counties for jurisdictional accountability. Investigative and law-enforcing assignments in the field are conducted by individual Texas Rangers, nominally owning areas of responsibility covering two to four—or sometimes more—Texas counties. These Rangers, widely disbursed within the territory assigned their specific company, carry the pay-grade of a DPS Sergeant.3 As but one example, the following staffing model is applicable to Company F headquartered at Waco, a Texas Ranger command having, at this time, forty-three assigned counties. At Waco there is the major and a lieutenant, with additional lieutenants at Austin and San Antonio. Texas Rangers working under the San Antonio lieutenant are based at Hondo (Medina County), Jourdanton (Atascosa County), Floresville (Wilson County), Victoria (Victoria County), New Braunfels (Comal County) and several Rangers at San Antonio (Bexar County). The Company lieutenant based at Austin has Texas Rangers posted at San Marcos (Hays County), Seguin (Guadalupe County), Kerrville (Kerr County), Bastrop (Bastrop County), Georgetown (Williamson County), as well as several Rangers

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assigned to Austin (Travis County). Texas Rangers working under the Waco lieutenant are stationed in Burnet (Burnet County) Llano (Llano County), Lampasas (Lampasas County), Temple and Killeen (Bell County), along with a cadre of Texas Rangers working out of Waco in McLennan County. Another enforcement province, Company C, illustrates the extraordinarily wide expanse of ground Rangers of that unit ably cover: a large swathe of West Texas and the Texas Panhandle. These Rangers are stationed at Lubbock (Lubbock County), Amarillo (Potter County), Childress (Childress County), Abilene (Taylor County), Plainview (Hale County), Dumas (Moore County), Brownfield (Terry County), Hereford (Randall County), Eastland (Erath County), Graham (Young County), Brownwood (Brown County), Pampa (Carson County), Wichita Falls (Wichita County), and Snyder (Scurry County). Similar staffing patterns are applicable throughout the state, not one of the 254 counties falling outside the sizeable umbrella of Texas Ranger attention. Such sweeping geographical coverage, broadly positioning the Rangers’ presence far and wide, typifies the underlying management philosophy: The blanket of protection and proficient criminal investigation and access to state resources must be available to local lawmen and everyday citizens no matter whether they be in a crowded big city or a secluded farming and ranching neighborhood. All Texans—and their guests—warrant coverage. The upper-tier command structure is headquartered at Austin. There, an Assistant Director for DPS—Chief of the Texas Rangers— and his second in command, a Deputy Assistant Director for DPS—Assistant Chief of the Texas Rangers—are responsible for broad-spectrum institutional administration, budgetary issues, legislative matters, personnel management, interpretative analysis of trending criminality, ongoing assessment of the very latest obtainable technological policing tools and available assets, as well as the thoughtful development and implementation of policies and law-enforcing strategies statewide. Also operating out of these Ranger headquarters is a captain responsible for overseeing

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particular administrative duties and a major commanding the Public Integrity Unit. Another Ranger coordinates education and intensive ongoing training. Moreover, two Forensic Artists, recognized experts in their field, are assigned to Texas Ranger headquarters. In a nutshell the Forensic Artists’ scientific specialties are these: postmortem reconstructions of facial features; facial reconstruction through 2D and 3D imaging of skeletal remains for identification purposes; forensic age progression analysis (how facial features change as a person ages); and development of the portrait sketch of a suspect through skilled interpretive questioning of victims and/or witnesses: “In other words, drawing an identifiable portrait of the unknown bad guy—or girl, so that an arrest may be made.”4 A select number of Texas Rangers posted in the field are extensively trained and certified hypnotists, a handy discipline allowing cooperative witnesses to bring to the surface subconscious details and meaningful clues. Although not actually a formalized chain-of-command component of the Texas Rangers but housed within the Austin headquarters complex is a DPS network of specialized analytic experts. Thoroughly dedicated to seemingly a zillion different criminal intelligence gathering and analytical tasks, this highly trained and skilled staff work hand-in-glove with Texas Ranger management.5 For television land the Lone Ranger was fine; in the real world of complicated and ever-changing crime-fighting teamwork is essential, a lesson the Rangers have well learned. Cooperation and collaboration catch crooks. One geological measurement places the Texas/Mexico border at 889 miles along the international river’s line. There is, however, a real mileage computation relevant to the treatment in hand, but more importantly for today’s Texas Rangers. When taking into consideration the sometimes isolated meanderings—its twist and turns—the number is pushed to 1,254 snaking miles for the Rio Grande. The serpentine river is a smuggler’s dream, a lawman’s nightmare. Herein there is no need to expand on common knowledge about the seemingly unparalleled crime and appalling violence

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now associated with the Texas/Mexico borderland and its narcotic trafficking cartels. Nor would it be necessary to idly wring hands about the isolated and hardly populated crossings along the river being but a gateway for potential terrorists with big-time evil in their syllabus of deviltry. Seared into the Texas Ranger psyche is—as previously noted—the brand of real time adaptability. It’s no easy job! Addressing these noteworthy and gigantic problems—and many others—the Texas Ranger front office thoughtfully blueprinted The Special Operations Group, commanded by a major, stationed at the Austin headquarters. Without revealing trade secrets and sensitive structural intelligence, suffice to say The Special Operations Group maintains autonomy and identity for The Special Weapons and Tactics Team (SWAT) stationed in Austin and is responsible for fast statewide response to critical incidents: those of high risks, particularly active shooter and/or hostage taking confrontations; Ranger Reconnaissance Teams, charged with both overt and covert intelligence and enforcement missions, generally in dangerous and remote areas like the Texas/Mexico borderlands where local law enforcement is handicapped by a shortage of manpower and physical resources; Special Response Teams (SRTs) to conduct high-risk warrant service and initial speedy responses to critical incidents within a given DPS regional framework; highly trained Crisis Negotiation Teams (CNTs); and active participation in the Border Security Operations Center (BSOC) at Austin, which serves as the focal point for a halfdozen Joint Operations and Intelligence Centers (JOICs) strategically positioned along the Texas/Mexico border and the isolated and unpopulated places of the Texas Gulf Coast. Assisting the major of The Special Operations Group is a captain coordinating enforcement and intelligence gathering activities of the Texas Ranger Recon Teams and two staff lieutenants working in conjunction with the JOICs operations. Borderland security is a perilous and multipronged effort. However, no matter the duty station, today’s Rangers are subject to an event turning Western! Although rank may have its privileges and perks, it’s no exemption from standing tall during a crisis.

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Big-wheels are expected to lead from the front, just as their predecessors did—building a legend, guaranteeing a legacy. On 12 July 2004 at Trinidad, staked along the Trinity River separating Henderson and Navarro Counties, a routine traffic stop sparked excitement and alarm. The violator, Mark Haller, a thirty-two-yearold with a lengthy criminal record including prison time, bailed out of his auto and fled helter-skelter into the nearby woodlands, afoot, just as a local officer had flipped the red lights’ toggle-switch on the marked squad car. The now abandoned vehicle was—legally—subject to an inventory and tow. Lo and behold! The true reason for the fellow’s fast departure was divulged: A thoroughly dead body had been haphazardly stuffed into the trunk of the car. It was nighttime and pursuit was temporarily put on hold. Such may have been a not unwise decision. As the sun topped over Malakoff, also in Henderson County, west of the county seat, Athens, the morning manhunt netted results. Mark Haller was at a farm house, holding a hostage. Incredibly—and luckily—the elderly man eyed opportunity and made good his safe getaway. Mark Haller was all alone, except for his loaded and cocked .45, the 1911 Government Model, a superb man-stopper favored by real Rangers and real gangsters alike. The cornered man-killing outlaw, riding the wild bucking horse of drug-induced paranoia was armed and agitated. When notified at his Waco headquarters, Captain Kirby Dendy, the commander of Company F and later Chief of the Rangers, accompanied by Lieutenant George Turner, a Texas Ranger veteran, one well-respected and well-seasoned, made haste for Malakoff in roaring high gear. Ray Nutt, Henderson County Chief Deputy Sheriff and former Texas Ranger, was onsite, as was the Texas Ranger officially posted at Athens, Steve Foster, who was courageously trying to negotiate with Haller. The standoff was dicey and dangerous. With little to lose and nothing to gain but another prison stretch or being strapped to a gurney in the state’s death house at Huntsville, desperado Mark Haller opted to go down fighting—taking a few “goddamned” lawmen with him. Tactically armed with his AR-15 .223 rifle, Captain Dendy, and Lieutenant Turner, with but his duty

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pistol in hand, did what Rangers were supposed to do—something! When the shooting started—bullets whizzing between them—they charged, not daring to let Mark Haller do serious damage to other lawmen or innocent citizens should he slip the dragnet, a wounded predator on the loose in an otherwise peaceful East Texas neighborhood. It was, in the easygoing colloquial speech of police talk, “a good shooting.” The Texas Rangers and other peace officers had selflessly done what had to be done, and the only casualty was the bad guy, a murderer who would murder no more. The leadership tradition for Texas Rangers had been nourished, once again.6 Traditionally the Texas Ranger company commanders lead from the front, not riding a deluxe swivel-chair pushing paperwork, patently trying to evade administrative or legal accountability by pushing those tasks onto the backs of subordinates. Inside-theBeltway excuse-making and avoiding difficult situations are not luxuries owned by Texas Rangers. Not every taxing situation, however, is punctuated with gunshots and dead or dying desperadoes. A prime example of first-rate leadership shines through for a real ticklish episode in West Texas near the small community of Eldorado, the county seat and the only town in Schleicher County, San Angelo’s immediate neighbor to the south. Occupying a 1,770-acre under fence compound but a few miles north of town, a somewhat secretive offshoot of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, the Fundamentalists, were continuing the Mormon Church’s outlawed practice of polygamy. As with Waco’s religious sect the Branch Davidians, there were ever increasing allegations: These particular folks had okayed religious and ceremonial matrimony—multiple marriages—between older fellows and underage girls, children in the eyes of Texas’s not indistinct Penal Code. Pseudonyms are permissible for victims of sexual assault, and “Sarah” a sixteen-year-old, had been wed and was now carrying a child fathered by her “husband,” a pedophile now nearing fifty. Purportedly there were hundreds of youngsters home-schooled at the Yearning for Zion property, children not permitted social contact with the outside world. Who knew what secrets they reluctantly

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kept—unhappily held? Once more, Captain Barry Caver, Company E, was faced with a challenge as Texas Ranger Brooks Long (later Major) began interlacing facts which would lawfully support Probable Cause, enough for issuance of a watertight search warrant. Captain Caver would stand as the man in charge of executing the search warrant—and as with the Republic of Texas standoff—the Texas Ranger headquarters command staff would not second-guess him, but would support his tactical decisions and respond accordingly to his needs for manpower and equipment. Working closely with the state’s Child Protective Services and the Schleicher County Sheriff, David Doran, plans were drawn and in place. Dithering and indecisiveness there would not be. On 3 April 2008 more than 200 Highway Patrol Troopers, other Lone Star State commissioned peace officers, including thirty-five Texas Rangers, as well as local lawmen, and a whopping assemblage of devoted social workers were ready to execute the District Judge’s lawful order. And though it should really come as no shocker, the FBI was and would be busy elsewhere that day.7 Tactically prepared for the worst but hoping for the best, Captain Caver and his highly trained hostage negotiator Jess Malone defused the potential for disaster and death with reasoned logic and a considerate but no nonsense overtone. The search warrant would be served with respect, but served it would be. Any resistance to the Texas Rangers, by design and agreement due to proficient palavering, would be passive. The sect’s male members would not voluntarily open any padlocked doors or willingly cooperate in surrendering any self-incriminating evidence, but they would not offer fight. Captain Caver, in plain but no uncertain terms, said that seemed like “A damned good idea!”8 Though the long and the short was not so short—executing the search warrant took several days—the end result was from a legal standpoint quite impressive: 372 boxes of evidence were collected and witness testimony locked tight. Enough so, ultimately the Grand Jury returned Felony Indictments on several sexual abusers, the most notable being Warren Jeffs, the cult’s ostensible

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headman who “caught the chain,” and was forced to stand in a chow line and start his erotic nighttime dreams behind an electronically locked steel door. Not unexpectedly the enforcement action caught attention from the national news media and, once again, the proficiency of the Texas Rangers was heralded to an eager nationwide audience. Captain Caver will be the first to admit the operation was a joint effort, but even with that caveat, clearheaded outside analysis demonstrates the Texas Rangers stood tall, answering the cry to duty, not sidestepping to the safe side.9 The commitment to children in dire straits had earlier been the focus of Ranger attention in West Texas when Sergeant Brian Burzynski (now Major commanding Company D) relentlessly pursued information that kiddos being detained in certain Texas Youth Commission (TYC) facilities had suffered sexual and other forms of horrific abuse at the hands of those entrusted to protect them. With bulldog tenacity Sergeant Burzynski hounded after justice, taking more than a 100 written statements and collecting more than 300 pieces of evidence. The striking depth of Sergeant Burzynski’ investigative probe was not six-shooter stuff of the Wild West era, but dogged determination which, in the end, resulted in prosecutions, sweeping resignations, and revamping of TYC, and no little personal—and deserved—recognition for the Texas Ranger’s stellar loyalty to an oath he had sworn to the people of the Lone Star State.10 True professionalism, it may be argued, is attained through formalized education, on-the-job training, and a healthy dose of practical experience and demonstrated sound decision making. Political appointments can undercut the efficiency of an agency’s personnel selection processes and adversely affect employee morale. Although veteran law enforcement officers from agencies outside DPS could apply for and did receive positions as Texas Rangers prior to the mid-1980s, such practices were ended by executive order of Colonel James B. “Jim” Adams. A native Texan and former Assistant Director of the FBI, upon taking command of DPS Colonel Adams sought to ensure new Ranger recruits were competing fairly for positions

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as openings presented. Guaranteeing that job competitors were on equal footing with regards to training and testing, Colonel Adams tailored hiring procedures. Thereafter applicants vying for Texas Ranger vacancies would be graduates of the DPS Training Academy. Hopeful Texas Ranger recruits would have—must have—at least eight years of prior law enforcing experience and, for the four years immediately preceding appointment as a Ranger, that time must have been spent with DPS. There is no shortcut. DPS investigative personnel, regardless of intra-department assignments, are academy graduates. Practically speaking then, today’s commissioned Texas Rangers were at one time or another Highway Patrol Troopers. Though they could have tested for and banked experience with DPS’s other investigative subdivisions dealing with criminal intelligence, auto theft, and/or narcotics, the everyday common denominator for all Texas Rangers is now successful completion of the DPS Training Academy. That equates to no little time on the state’s highways in a spiffily pressed uniform, sitting behind the steering wheel of a radio-equipped black and white pursuit vehicle. More often than not operating alone—sometimes in exceptionally desolate rural areas—Highway Patrol Troopers day and night, twenty-four and seven, represent the state. Their duties are unarguably numerous and hazardous. Issuing citations, investigating serious and fatality motor vehicle accidents, interdicting drunk driving madness, backing up local lawmen, arresting wanted persons, and occasional fisticuffs with nitwits and belligerents is common. Gunplay is not routine, but is an ever-present possibility. Violator contacts are educational. Violator contacts really do sculpt coolness and self-reliance. Although ownership of a full-scale college degree is yet not mandatory for Highway Patrol Troopers, a sliding scale crediting any previous law enforcing experience and the number of college hours on one’s transcript is required. An absence of the right ratio is a total disqualifier. All divisions of DPS value the importance of formal education with attaining the overall goal of advancing professionalism. Particularly of interest for today’s Texas Rangers it has been

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noted and written: “The majority of present-day Texas Rangers have bachelor’s degrees and some have master’s degrees. Many have prior military service.”11 There is, on the other hand, something all DPS enforcement personnel own: An extensive background investigation designed to cull wannabes and whiners and wrongdoers. Going in, all Highway Patrol Troopers—some who will be future Texas Rangers— have impeccable character credentials. They and, they alone, can choose to lose or uphold their good names. What they have no choice about is maintenance of physical conditioning. Even subsequent to graduation from training academies and mandatory continuing education classes and additional particularized schooling, DPS—which includes the Texas Ranger Division—personnel undergo regularly scheduled tests of physical stamina specifically tailored to weight and age categories. Failure to meet the minimum standard is unacceptable.12 Endurance is critical. During a traffic stop gone bad or during the execution of a tetchy search warrant there are no timeouts to catch a breath. Physical fitness, literally, may make the difference between seeing the kids at day’s end or pushing up daisies. Subsequent to compliance with all of the prerequisites, DPS personnel applying for Texas Ranger openings are eligible to take the written test—and if successful, uncomfortably but hopefully sit before a no-nonsense oral Review Board answering probing questions and resolving hypothetical scenarios. If satisfactorily surviving that type of a grueling grilling, the applicant is numerically ranked on an eligibility list and it is from that roster vacancies are filled, until that list expires and the process is started anew. Realistically the Texas Ranger management team is sitting in the catbird’s seat, they can afford to be selective—there are always more applicants than open positions to be filled. That said, it’s also more than important to emphasize that many DPS Troopers and/or other DPS Criminal Investigation Special Agents optimally choose to meaningfully maintain or advance estimable law-enforcing careers outside the Ranger Division. Upward professional progression within the uniformed or other investigative ranks is a highly regarded career pathway of

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public service. Although it somewhat shatters myths, not everyone opts to be a Texas Ranger. Likewise, some that do can’t. With the mandate of eight years’ previous law enforcing experience as one mark of eligibility for becoming a Texas Ranger there is that bottom-line reality: On that very first day he or she pins on that iconic star-and-wheel badge, Texas Ranger peers and the public know a tenderfoot is not reporting to their first assigned duty station. One and all they measure to a knowledgeable and time-proven standard. Quickly, as but an illustrative sidebar, the average age of today’s Texas Ranger is about forty-four, which is more or lest consistent with an exceptionally meticulous and informative 1971 study. That examination, now nearly fifty years ago, placed the average age of far fewer Texas Rangers at 45.5 years.13 Subsequent to selection, the new Texas Ranger receives formalized instruction in criminal investigation and the use of investigative equipment, as well as the mandated protocols and procedures specific to the institutionalized outfit. “Upon successful completion of basic training the Rangers receive a multitude of tools and assorted equipment for processing crime scenes, including Nikon digital cameras. They are also assigned either late model pick-up trucks or SUVs for transportation. Each new Ranger is issued a variety of weaponry, including a .308 caliber LaRue Tactical OBR (Optimized Battle Rifle), a .223 caliber Bushmaster M-4, a Sig Sauer .357 pistol and a Remington or Mossberg 12-gauge shotgun. Soft body armor and heavier level IV armor are also provided. Adopting the latest equipment and adapting as situations demand is as relevant now as it was back then, when Captain Frank Jones was in command of Company D [1890s].”14 Texas Rangers are given leeway to carry and qualify with their own firearms, and many tend to favor the aforementioned Colt Model 1911 semi-automatic pistol or one of the numerous clones custom built on that platform.15 These weapons are carried in what is simply referred to as the “cocked and locked” mode, which to the untrained eye appears unsafe but in fact is not. Appearances can truly be deceiving. At one time or another, a concerned citizen will

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kind-heartedly point out to a Ranger that the hammer on his/her pistol is back—in the cocked position—warning him/her that such a visibly and unintended slip-up is rather dangerous. There is a stock rejoinder. With tongue in cheek, nine times out of ten, the Ranger will politely reply: “If it wasn’t dangerous I wouldn’t be carrying it!” Cleary Ranger Matt Cawthon’s Model 1911 .45 autoloader was dangerous, DRT dangerous. Perhaps words are to a degree clichéd, but now honorably ex-Texas Rangers Matt Cawthon and Christine Nix, really had exhibited true grit that day in McLennan County. Upon notification that a downtown Waco bank had been robbed at gunpoint the two Rangers had done what Rangers were expected to do: catch the crook. While responding to the crime scene, Matt behind the wheel, Christine observantly caught sight of the suspect’s fleeing getaway vehicle and coolly advised her impromptu partner of the day. The radio transmission went out and the chase was on— although due to the typically high volume of traffic on the northbound side of I-35 not necessarily at a high-clip—but a car chase it was nevertheless. Quickly joined by Highway Patrol Troopers in their marked cruisers and local lawmen in their squad cars, redlights flashing and sirens blaring, the final outcome really would be a no-brainer. The escaping desperate desperado could absolutely stop and surrender—or not! The highjacker was clearly brandishing a pistol, an act of lunacy in light of the situation at hand. Execution of the tactical stop was flawless. The bandit wrecked but was not maimed or killed. The big choices to make were now his and his alone. Bailing out of their state car, weapons in hand, Texas Rangers Cawthon and Nix rushed the suspect’s smoke spewing and stock-still car. At that exact moment the robber opted to point the muzzle of his pistol at a close-by Highway Patrol Trooper. With his .45, Ranger Cawthon and Ranger Nix with her 9mm, issued an end to the madness, as several other officers added to the crescendo of finality. Robbing the bank had been an unambiguous violation of the U.S. Penal Code, and therefore an Assistant United States Attorney for the Western District of Texas, Bill Johnston, appropriately presented a totality of facts to the Federal Grand Jury, which forthrightly cleared the

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Rangers and other area lawmen of even the slightest allusion to any wrongdoing. The Texas Rangers—once again—had stood tall. The legacy had been in good hands.16 What the individual Texas Ranger cannot immediately bring with him/her, a call to his/her immediate company commander or to headquarters staff remedies the shortfall. Statewide the majority of local police departments and sheriff’s offices do not have readily available crime labs, experienced criminalists and/or ballistic professionals, DNA chemists, tool and dye mark experts, blood-splatter specialists, sketch artists, hypnotists, polygraph operators, airplanes and/or helicopters. The working Ranger can, if need be, have one of the division’s fully equipped command-post type trailers quickly delivered to their investigative doorstep. Whether the need be for an around-the-clock presence at a crime scene or as a state-of-the-art communications stage during an emergency, the mobile units are integral components of the Texas Ranger response systems.17 The everyday working Ranger can and does—almost at their fingertips—have the ability to bring forth a wide array of resources, assets crucial to many an investigation, from their arsenal and/or DPS’s extensive inventory. And, too, another dynamic is of great consequence. Since Texas Rangers are purposefully and widely deployed throughout the Lone Star State, when a Ranger in the Panhandle needs someone interviewed or to see what automobile is parked in a suspect’s South Texas driveway, a quick Ranger-to-Ranger telephone call nets results not easily attained by many short-staffed local law enforcing agencies. Rangers pride themselves on quickly complying with the requests of a distant comrade, knowing in due time the helpfulness will be reciprocal. The Texas Rangers’ statewide reach is, hands down, a handy channel for furthering or concluding criminal investigations.18 Although the possibility of an anomaly is always possible it’s but reasonable to postulate that when it turns Western in Texas and/or there is a high-profile newsmaker pertaining to criminality a Texas Ranger will be engaged—before, during, or after the fact. The following quartet of tragic episodes serves as example. The world was aghast when a U.S. Army fellow embarked on his terroristic killing

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spree at America’s largest military base, Fort Hood. Texas Rangers responded! Long after the headline press conferences and the hasty departure of certain federal investigators, Texas Rangers remained on scene, ably cooperating and coordinating the nitty-gritty cleanup work of gathering crucial evidence and assisting as military authorities complete the work, absent tastelessly and tactlessly hounding after the limelight.19 Subsequent to the cruelly calculated assassination of a Kaufman County Assistant District Attorney the Texas Rangers were onsite with a helping investigative hand, as were they a short time later when the District Attorney and his wife were brutally and mortally cut down in their comfortable home by the same coldblooded revenge-seeking perpetrator, a former public office holder. Custodial arrests and prosecution followed the competent and intensive investigation conducted by Rangers and the Kaufman County Sheriff, David A. Byrnes, himself the former captain of Company B, Texas Rangers. Where the blame may be cast is immaterial but when rival outlaw motorcycle gangs ran amok inside and outside on the parking lot of the franchised Twin Peaks eatery at Waco and nine genuine dead bodies were littering the landscape, it should be no shocker; Rangers were there! They were quickly on scene conducting a crime scene investigation, gathering crucial evidence and interviewing witnesses and/or taking statements from alleged and not so alleged suspects. And, even more recently, was when a terribly radicalized fellow slipped off the cog of rational thinking during 2016 at a Black Lives Matter protest and decided that Blue Lives mattered not at all, killing five Dallas policemen in the course of but a few minutes. Texas Rangers summarily answered the call to arms and analysis—the crime scene reconstruction covering several city blocks was a massive but not insurmountable task for investigating Texas Rangers. Deputy Assistant DPS Director and Assistant Texas Ranger Chief Frank Malinak reiterated reality for today’s hardworking and highly trained Texas Rangers: Although symbolic badges pinned above their hearts and pistols at their hips are part of their basic everyday wear, laptop computers and cell phones are nowadays also necessary tools of the trade.20

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Even with all the technological tools at hand, old fashioned diligent detective work on the part of Texas Rangers can and does still gin meaningful outcomes. A case in point would be a 1999 homicide in Coryell County. The first shot into the victim occurred while he slept; the next shots were while he ran terrified down the house’s hallway where he dropped and died. For seventeen long years the obvious act of criminality registered as an unsolved whodunit. Ranger Jason Bobo, Company F, reopened the dormant investigation—cold case—in 2013. Perseverance paid its dividend. Subsequent to meticulous execution of a search warrant and the analytical perusal of telephone records and other investigative leads, coupled with the skillful interviews of potential witnesses holding this or that tidbit of relevant evidence and/or testimony, a criminal case was presented to Coryell County District Attorney Dusty Boyd. Teamwork was in play, investigative and prosecutorial chips all in. The two-week trial during October 2016 was a sizzling legal contest. The competing lawyers’ orations were hot. Texas Ranger Bobo coolly reeled off the facts during direct examination and, most creditably, never wilted during the withering cross-examination. True Ranger professionalism was on full display. Whether the jury would dub presentation of the case a slam-dunk may be but speculative, however, return of their deliberative verdict is not. Beyond a Reasonable Doubt, one and all, determined that the murder victim’s wife was guilty as charged.21 The Blind Mistress of Justice had not been asleep—just resting until nudged awake by a Texas Ranger’s fidelity to duty. Highlighting the fact Texas Rangers are busy folks indeed may be drawn from that telling but necessary bureaucratic bank of statistics. For the fiscal year ending 2015 the Texas Rangers had conducted 3,224 criminal investigations, which netted them 1,583 felony arrests as well as more than a hundred misdemeanor arrests. For a few of these investigations, 16 to be exact, hypnosis was applied with meaningful results. During the course of those investigations— some quite complex—Texas Rangers secured more than 5000 statements, including 694 legally obtained written confessions of guilt. During that year Texas Rangers executed more than 1000 search

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warrants for evidence of criminality and/or the recovery of stolen property, which in the latter case tallied at $1,038,713. Adding to the statistical mix was the seizure of contraband valued at $315,505. There were courtroom outcomes as well: 1,820 convictions for various crimes which crossed the bar of justice at one death sentence, 42 life sentences, and a total of 9,580 years of imprisonment for others with a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel—though sometimes a very elongated tunnel. Though there will not be an effort herein to quantify a truth, even so it is common knowledge. For the contemporary job-market, retired Texas Rangers are in demand. Corporate executives like having a former Texas Ranger onboard, a part of their internal or external security department apparatus. Their demonstrated integrity and investigative acumen is above reproach and hardly matched. Likewise, nowadays and for historic days of the past, numerous are the communities placing the retired Texas Ranger at the top of their ticket for their top law-enforcing jobs. Many are the former Texas Rangers who have served terms as sheriffs before hanging their hand-tooled gun-belts on a peg in the hallway and retiring to long overdue peace and quiet. More than a hundred years after release of the Ranger’s Bride, in 1910 the movie-going public and Hollywood producers and investors are yet captivated with tales of real-time Texas Rangers. Although a fictional drama, Hell or High Water debuted on the big-screen in theaters during the summer of 2016. The storyline has a tenacious pair of pickup-truck driving modern-era Texas Rangers (Academy Award-winner Jeff Bridges and actor Gil Birmingham) chasing and plotting the capture of two Lone Star State bank robbers (Ben Foster and Chris Pine). Though hardcore Texas Ranger aficionados and/ or Texas Rangers themselves might zero in on an error or two of minor technical inference, generally movie reviewers and the theater patrons heartily gave the big-screen treatment high marks—a big thumbs-up! The long-term ebb and flow of Hollywood script-writers and casting agents making room for Rangers in their motion picture productions seems not to have waned with the passage of time.22

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Nor has the general public’s interest with Texas Rangers. A stirring ceremony in the historic stockyards district of Fort Worth— now a tourist Mecca—honored three Old West era Texas Rangers on 29 October 2016 when their names and embossed bronzed sidewalk medallions were added to the names of previous inductees of the Texas Trail of Fame, an estimable honor of no little significance. The three honored inductees were Texas Rangers Leander H. McNelly, John B. Armstrong, and Francis A. “Frank” Hamer. A trio of today’s Texas Rangers, Major Grover Huff, Lieutenant A.P. Davidson, and Ranger Don Stoner accepted homage recognizing their predecessors. The splendid tribute was first class in every way and inspirational— and a genuine crowd pleaser!23 And yet even later in the year Texas Rangers were banking acclaim. Not long before this project morphed from manuscript to book, NBC’s television magazine Dateline in a two-hour episode on 9 December 2016 narrated the gruesome details of a whodunit murder. Not at all surprisingly a Texas Ranger was an integral player in the unfolding drama. Ranger Reuben Mankin, Company B, during extensive on-air time professionally carried enthralled viewers from crime scene to courtroom. Suspects? There were not just a few! With a verdict of guilty, a trial jury affirmed Ranger Mankin’s and local investigator Brian Tschudy’s logical deductions. Stellar police work and interagency cooperation had, once again, netted results. Even as this book was going to press, a memorial ceremony on 21 January 2017 honoring the sacrifice of Ranger Stan Guffey was held at Horseshoe Bay. Many dignitaries were present. Although it’s always literally and literarily tricky to let one voice speak for the many, perhaps in this, the concluding chapter of Texas Rangers: Lives, Legend, and Legacy, the appropriateness of hearing from an in-the-field company commander is okay. Major Todd Snyder, Company C, makes clear modern era Texas Rangers’ values and viewpoints: “Today, the 19 Rangers of Company ‘C’ assist local and federal law enforcement agencies to investigate major crimes and bring the lawbreakers to justice. All the while, we realize that the heritage we enjoy is the result of hard work, courage, integrity,

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perseverance and keen sense of right and wrong of those Rangers who came before us. We also realize that we have a duty to the present generation to conduct ourselves in such a way as to maintain that tradition. We are ever mindful that it is our responsibility to preserve the legacy for future generations; our vision and goal is to be trained and equipped sufficiently to provide to the law abiding citizens and the unfortunate victims the best criminal investigation assistance available anywhere.”24 There is, once again, that hard bottom-line: The Texas Rangers—as an institution—have without doubt outlived their earlier myth-making press agents as well as their agenda-driven detractors. Old-time horseback Rangers made history—and twenty-first century motorized Texas Rangers are making history. Their legend and legacy is secure. Although but a statewide law enforcing agency, the Texas Ranger favorable reputation is a worldwide phenomenon. Certainly they are as well known as the super sleuths of Scotland Yard, and on equal policing footing with the “always get your man” Mounties of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Sustained adaptability has been the hallmark of the Texas Rangers’ institutional survivability. Such organizational flexibility has put them on the front line as circumstances and criminals project new challenges for those committed men and women now wearing that handsomely engraved star-in-wheel badge, the one hammered from a cinco peso. Their legitimate stories have and will continue to stand the test of time.

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The late Captain Robert K. “Bob” Mitchell, Company F, a twentieth-century Ranger’s Ranger. As a down-to-earth law-enforcing leader Bob Mitchell earned the utmost admiration from his men: He had their back, and they his. Bob Mitchell played a part in and/or supervised many newsworthy Texas Ranger investigations. Courtesy Texas Ranger Hall of Fame & Museum.

Captain Jack Dean (future United States Marshal) received an informant’s tip that facilitated the conclusive undoing of a hired killer, the calculating twentieth-century outlaw that assassinated Federal District Court Judge John H. “Maximum John” Wood at San Antonio. Courtesy Captain Jack Dean, Texas Rangers, Ret.

Texas Ranger Bobby Paul Doherty was killed in the line of duty by a college student in North Texas while executing an arrest. Courtesy Texas Ranger Hall of Fame & Museum.

The Texas Department of Public Safety’s Medal of Valor—to date—has as been awarded to Texas Rangers five times. Pictured here from the top clockwise are the recipients: John Aycock, twice decorated, Stan Guffey, awarded posthumously, Bill Gerth, and Danny Rhea. Courtesy Texas Ranger Hall of Fame & Museum.

Upon surrendering the Republic of Texas leader, Richard Lance McLaren, due to the respect he was accorded, asked to shake hands with Captain Caver. Though the handshake was rather awkward because of handcuffs, the gesture was accomplished by the Ranger Commander reaching inside the prisoner’s sport-jacket. Looking on were Texas Rangers Coy Smith holding McLaren’s hat, and John Allen. Courtesy Captain Barry Caver, Texas Rangers, Ret.

Texas Ranger John Dendy at the promotion of his son Kirby to the rank of Ranger Lieutenant. As a career lawman Kirby W. Dendy would advance through the ranks, ultimately becoming Assistant Director of DPS—Chief of the Texas Rangers. Echoing gunfire would register on both the father’s and the son’s on-duty careers. Courtesy Chief Kirby W. Dendy, Ret.

Lieutenant George Turner, a well-seasoned veteran Texas Ranger participated and survived a twenty-first-century desperado’s final gunplay: The outlaw came in second place, dead last! Courtesy Texas Ranger Hall of Fame & Museum.

Near Eldorado in Schleicher County at the high-walled compound, Texas Rangers, ably assisted by other law enforcing personnel, prepare to breach the fortification, hoping for the best, but fully prepared for the worst. Courtesy Captain Barry Caver, Texas Rangers, Ret.

Scale of the Ranger’s challenge is reflected in this photograph of the sect’s headquarters temple. Sound management and cool heads prevented a tragedy. Incident commander Caver’s portrait is captured for the inset. Courtesy Captain Barry Caver, Texas Rangers, Ret., and the Texas Ranger Hall of Fame & Museum.

Texas Ranger Jason Bobo, Company F, at a crime scene. As well as his cocked and locked .45 auto-loading pistol, cell phones, laptop computers, and Nikon digital cameras are indispensible tools of his modern-era tradecraft. Author’s photograph courtesy Texas Ranger Bobo.

Make no mistake. Though technical evolution in forensic tools for conducting twenty-first century crime scene investigations are integral components of a Ranger’s paraphernalia, when need be he/she can become a warrior. Here, Lieutenant Jamie Downs, Company F, is pictured with not only a cocked and locked handgun, but also his issued .308 caliber LaRue tactical rifle. Courtesy Steve Wharram.

The myriad duties performed by modern-era Texas Rangers are illustrated with this pair of photographs submitted by Texas Ranger Lieutenant Wende Wakeman. Top: the arrest of an unhappy suspect in a felony investigation. Bottom: selflessly visiting with schoolchildren during an officially sanctioned Career Day. Courtesy Texas Ranger Lieutenant Wende Wakeman.

The letter of commendation to Major Frank Malinak (now Assistant Texas Ranger Chief) from U.S. Army Lieutenant General Mark A. Milley, then commanding the Fort Hood military base, regarding the Texas Rangers’ quick and gallant response on 2 April 2014 to the murderous terroristic affair is self-explanatory. The Ranger legacy had, once again, been in safe hands. Courtesy Texas Ranger Hall of Fame & Museum.

Deputy Assistant Director of DPS and Assistant Chief of the Texas Rangers Frank Malinak thoughtfully enlightens an enthralled and edge-of-your-seat audience of more than 350 about present-day Texas Ranger activities at the beautifully refurbished Knox Hall within the historic Ranger Hall of Fame & Museum complex during the 2016 Lone Star History Conference III. Courtesy Bill O’Neal, State Historian of Texas.

Subsequent to the mortal gunning down of an Assistant District Attorney, the District Attorney, and his wife, in Kaufman County, Texas Rangers were on the scene. As the result of a search warrant and the unlocking of an area storage unit, the treasure-trove of admissible evidence was unearthed leading to the successful prosecution for this horrific Capital Murder investigation. Rangers standing L to R: Reuben T. Mankin, Lieutenant A.P. Davidson, Lieutenant Eric Kasper, Major Dewayne Dockery (Ret.), and Jim Hicks. Courtesy Texas Ranger Reuben Mankin.

On 29 October 2016 three old-time Texas Rangers were inducted into the Texas Trail of Fame at the historic Fort Worth Stockyards multiplex, one of the city’s gemstone sightseeing attractions. The outstanding and well attended ceremony was coordinated by Clara Holmes, standing at far right with cowboy hat. Accepting honors for their predecessors, Rangers McNelly, Armstrong, and Hamer were current front-row Company B Rangers, from R to L: Texas Ranger Don Stoner, Lieutenant A.P. Davidson, and Major Grover Huff. Courtesy Clara Holmes, Secretary/Treasurer Texas Trail of Fame.

On the 9th day of December 2016 NBC televised a two-hour episode of Dateline chronicling the investigative work of Texas Ranger Reuben Mankin and Detective Brian Tschudy and their notable role in solving a genuine “whodunit.” The murder suspect was, arrested, tried, and found guilty. Courtesy Texas Ranger Reuben Mankin, Company B.

Texas Ranger Patrick Peña, Company F, graciously displayed for the camera equipment he must have at hand for immediate response to emergency situations. Regardless the challenge Ranger Peña must be prepared to respond anywhere and at once. Not pictured, but also a part of his state issued gear, are several tightly sealed containers holding crime scene processing and evidence collecting paraphernalia. Author’s photo courtesy Texas Ranger Lieutenant Jamie Downs.

Even as Texas Rangers: Lives, Legend, and Legacy was moving to press a poignant Memorial Dedication Service was held on 21 January 2017 at the Horseshoe Bay Police Department. Reverently honoring the line-of-duty sacrifice of Stan Guffey thirty years earlier, the respectful audience was numerically immense. Here, standing beside the engraved marker are L to R, Texas Ranger Major Chance Collins, Company F, and Randy Prince, Chief of the Rangers. Courtesy Texas Ranger Hall of Fame & Museum Board Member Steve Wharram.

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Today’s Texas Rangers

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Notes Chapter 1 “Everything to make and nothing to lose” 1. Gregory Michno, The Settlers’ War: The Struggle for the Texas Frontier in the 1860s, p. 1: “Actually, Europeans were in the present-day boundaries of Texas before their future adversaries, the Comanches.” Also see Thomas W. Kavanagh, The Comanches: A History, 1706–1875, 63–132. 2. Not surprisingly at this late date, the availability of material relating to Amerindians abounds. Of particular value for readers with this text in hand—for this time period—might be Elizabeth A.H. Johns, Storms Brewed in Other Men’s Worlds: The Confrontation of Indians, Spanish, and French in the Southwest, 1540–1795; David J. Weber, The Spanish Frontier in North America; Edward H. Spicer, Cycles of Conquest: The Impact of Spain, Mexico, and the United States on the Indians of the Southwest, 1533—1960; Bernard Mishkin, Rank and Warfare Among the Plains Indians; Frank Raymond Secoy, Changing Military Patterns of the Great Plains; Frank Gilbert Roe, The Indian and the Horse; Ernest Wallace and E. Adamson Hobel, The Comanches: Lords of the South Plains, p. 6: “The Comanches were relatively late arrivals in the South Plains.” Elliott West, “Called Out People: The Cheyenne and the Central Plains,” Montana: The Magazine of Western History, Summer 1998, p. 4: “Around 1680, as the Comanches began their odyssey toward the southern plains. . . .” 3. Michno, The Settlers’ War. Author Michno’s compelling fidelity to historical accuracy—though perhaps in varying degrees troubling for a cadre of partisan idealists—is straight talk and refreshing: “Native Americans took their lands from other Native Americans. The European ‘Americans’ took it from them, and they will own it until it is taken by another conqueror of the future. The United States is the temporary landlord. Whether this is fair or not is endlessly debatable, but irrelevant.” Echoing the unvarnished words of respected historian Donald Worster, Michno reminds readers that certain Indians acquired lands they “owned” simply by intransigent feats of martial supremacy, which in truth was but an unapologetic and clear-cut act of “naked conquest.” See p. 3. Classically, then as now, sovereignty is bought with blood, a disheartening yet nevertheless static reality. 4. Roy R. Barkley and Mark F. Odintz, eds., The Portable Handbook of Texas, contributor George Klos, p. 457: “The Apaches had a problem more severe than the Spanish. Just as they had displaced weaker bands from the South Plains, 485

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they too resisted dislocation at the hands of a more powerful newcomer to the region—the Comanches.” Also see, David M. Vigness, “Indian Raids on the Lower Rio Grande, 1836–1837,” The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, July 1955, p. 2: “During the last of July 1837, a band of Comanches reportedly one thousand strong [emphasis added] came to within a few leagues of the City of Matamoros [Mexico], where they encountered the military outpost and killed a Colonel Cortina, carried off large numbers of mules and horses, and burned several ranching settlements.” Henry Bamford Parkes, A History of Mexico, is not ambiguous or culturally hypersensitive with his overt assessment: “In the seventeenth century, after the French had colonized Quebec, European guns came into the possession of the Indians of the plains and were passed from tribe to tribe until some of them reached the Mexican frontier. For centuries the Comanches of Texas and the Apaches of Arizona would ride into Mexico, killing Spaniards and stealing cattle; and it was left for white colonists of another race and a later epoch to put a stop to their depredations.” Quotation on p. 81. That the Apaches, early on, somewhat retarded the expansion of Spanish ranching in what would become Texas is easily revealed in the piece by Robert H. Thonhoff, “The First Ranch in Texas,” West Texas Historical Association Yearbook, October 1964: “Because of this serious situation [Apache raids], Governor Manuel de Sandoval, who took office in 1734, took measures to protect the presidial horse ranch by moving it to this secluded site on the Cibolo, sixteen leagues distant from San Antonio. A garrison with a small detachment of soldiers was established to protect the horse ranch. . . . The early attempt to establish the fort, however was short-lived, for after two Indian raids in 1737, both the garrison and the horses were moved back to San Antonio.” See pp. 90–91. Also see, Sandra L. Myres, “The Spanish Cattle Kingdom in the Province of Texas,” Texana, Fall 1966, for an article detailing cattle ranching in Texas by Spaniards prior to the independence of Mexico and/or Texas. “Long before the first Texas longhorn moved northward along the trail to Abilene and fame and fortune, a Spanish ‘cattle kingdom’ similar in its evolution, techniques, and economic importance had existed on the plains and grasslands of northern Mexico and Texas.” See pp. 233–246. For Comanches making a living stealing Mexican cattle, the interested reader is referred to the commendable work of Jack Jackson, Los Mesteños: Spanish Ranching in Texas, 1721–1821: “It will be recalled that ranchers were hard hit in the 1760s, that between the desperate thefts of the starving Lipans and the new incursion by Comanches serious losses were sustained to herds pastured in the area. Once the presidio at San Sabá was abandoned in the spring of 1768, following Parilla’s crushing defeat on the Red River a decade earlier, the Comanches and their norteño allies struck closer to Béxar. So many outrages swept outlying ranches that

Notes

5.

6.

7.

8. 9. 10. 11.

487

the town cabildo appealed to the interim governor, Oconor, for protection, echoing Captain Menchaca’s claim that not one road or place in all of Texas was safe from hostile Indians.” Quotation on p. 107. Rupert Norval Richardson, The Comanche Barrier to South Plains Settlement, 16; Anna Muckleroy, “The Indian Policy of the Republic of Texas,” The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, April 1922, 235: “the Comanche by the end of the seventeenth century had crowded the Apache from their hunting grounds on the headwaters of the Arkansas, Red, Trinity, and Brazos Rivers, and occupied New Mexico and the Panhandle country.” Spicer, Cycles of Conquest, 230: “They [Apache] became more belligerent as they were wedged between the Spaniards and the advancing Comanches. They were battling for existence during the first half of the 1700’s.” Robert M. Utley, “Peace on Paper: War on the Plains,” Wild West, October 2008, 36: “Too often overlooked is that the values and attitudes of people today, regardless of race, ethnicity or gender, are not those of the late 19th century. For Indians, whites, blacks, Hispanics and others of past generations, these values were products of their time and place, not today’s. Whites can be faulted for making a mess of relations with Indians, but not for failing to treat them as today’s beliefs might dictate.” Frank E. Simmons, “Early Day Tribes in Central Texas,” Frontier Times, May 1926, 1: “THE COLONIZATION and settlement of the new country by a strong race of people has always been marked by a series, or one continuation, of aggressions. The development of enmities, hatreds between the races occupying the contested territory, disregarding of the rights of the weak by the strong, and finally wars and dispossession or extermination of the weak by the strong. Primal possession, long periods of established homes and governments, and cultural institutions have seldom been considered by the aggressor. There is not a powerful race extant that is not guilty of part, or all, of the offenses.” S.C. Gwynne, Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History, 23. Ibid., 59. Scott Zesch, The Captured: A True Story of Abduction by Indians on the Texas Frontier, 66–67. Gwynne, Empire of the Summer Moon, 59; Odie B. Faulk, ed. and translator, “A Description of the Comanche Indians in 1786 by the Governor of Texas [Domingo Cabello],” West Texas Historical Association Yearbook, 177–182; Kavanagh, in The Comanches, knowledgeably registers the 1786 Spanish assessment of the Comanche, which said in part: “Following that which is known of this nation, the most colorful and warlike of those who inhabit

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the North, with a generous spirit; when they have friendship, they are expressive and friends with their friends, although delicate in the mode which they must be treated. . . . Marriages are celebrated with four women if they can maintain them. . . . They are extremely jealous and for any motive kill their women; and in any case they treat them as if they were slaves. . . . The trade and interest that some rancherías have with others is that the Eastern Comanche take horses which they acquire in their wars and rapines to the rancherías of the Western Comanches. . . . who barter for guns, powder, balls, lances, cloth, jars, knives. etc. . . . Intervening is also the trade in buffalo hides with and without hair, which benefits them and they prepare very well.” Quotation found on p. 107. 12. Stephen L. Moore, Savage Frontier: Rangers, Riflemen, and Indian Wars in Texas, Vol. 1, 8–9; Paul N. Spellman, Old 300: Gone to Texas, 212–213; Harold J. Weiss, Jr., “Organized Constabularies: The Texas Rangers and the Early State Police Movement in the American Southwest,” Journal of the West, January 1995, 28. 13. W.W. Newcomb, Jr., The Indians of Texas: From Prehistoric to Modern Times, Chapter 3, “The Karankawas: Gulf Coast,” 59–81; Frederick Wilkins, The Legend Begins: The Texas Rangers, 1823–1845, 4; and, J.W. Kuykendall, “The Carankawa Indians,” Frontier Times, March 1945, p. 179: “They were believed by many of the early settlers to be cannibals, but it is probable that the only cannibalism to which they were addicted was that occasionally practiced by the Tonkawas, if not all the Texas Indians. This consisted in eating bits of an enemy’s flesh at a war dance, to inspire them with courage.” Exact wording of this article, under the same title, also appeared in the Frontier Times edition of January 1948 with the byline of J.H. Kuykendall, 113–114. Also see the most peculiar little tome by Sibley S. Morrill, The Texas Cannibals or Why Father Serra Came to California, wherein there is a comparison—unscientific to be sure—of how human meat of particular ethnicities tastes in comparison to meat of specific animals, pages 9–10. Pertaining to actual cannibalism as practiced by some Texas Indians from an era much earlier, in speaking of the Coahuiltecans, Jerry D. Thompson, A Wild and Vivid Land: An Illustrated History of the South Texas Border, knowledgably writes on page 13: “Victorious warriors often returned to camp with scalps and captives. Like the Spartan women of ancient Greece, the women who had sent their men off to battle with great emotion would joyously greet the warriors on their return. Scalps, serving as trophies of war, were placed on poles, the poles were raised, and a celebratory dance by both men and women was enacted. Prisoners were often killed, thrown on the fire to roast, and then eaten. Warriors of the same band who had died in combat were also consumed.” A ritualistic cannibalism was, indeed, practiced by the Tonkawa: “For the general background of the

Notes

14. 15.

16. 17.

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Tonkawas, suffice it to say that at the dawn of history they ranged in south central Texas mostly, though on occasion much farther afield. They were the Ishmaelites and tillé Eulenspiegels of the Indian race. Every Indian hand was against them and they usually came out on the worst end of any venture. They were different from their Indian neighbors, and we are afraid of that which is different. Their practice of cannibalism gave their Indian neighbors the pretext to abhor them. It is supposed that the victors expected to acquire the strength and courage of the slain. The wolf legend of the origin of their tribe forbade them to cultivate the soil. Instead their religion, they said, required them to make a living by hunting, raiding, and stealing. This naturally brought them into collision with their Indian neighbors, particularly their inveterate enemies, the Comanches who had intruded into Texas.” See, Kenneth F. Neighbours, “Tonkawa Scouts and Guides,” West Texas Historical Association Yearbook, 1973, 90–113. Robert M. Utley, Lone Star Justice: The First Century of the Texas Rangers, 13–14. Mike Cox, The Texas Rangers: Wearing the Cinco Peso, 1821–1900, 28; Charles M. Robinson III, The Men Who Wear the Star: The Story of the Texas Rangers hews an unbridled declaration on p. 20: “It is estimated that nine tenths of the fatal encounters between colonists and Indians between 1821 and 1824 involved Karankawas.” For his 2016 treatment and a long overdue contribution to understanding armed conflicts sans sentimentality and maudlin excuse making, Nathan A. Jennings, a career U.S. Army officer and former history instructor at West Point, in his refreshing and revealing Riding for the Lone Star: Frontier Cavalry and the Texas Way of War, 1822–1865, characterizes the Karankawas as “an aggressive coastal people that excelled in dismounted and brown-water combat in rivers and costal waters. These warriors stood predisposed for aggression against the [Texas] colonists due to past conflicts with European pirates and explorers. Since their camps were located within marching distance of San Felipe, and because the Karankawa did not use horses for tactical mobility, the first colonial skirmishes occurred as light infantry affairs.” Quotation on pp. 18–19. D.E. Kilgore, A Ranger Legacy: 150 Years of Service to Texas, 10–11. Wilkins, The Legend Begins, 5; Harold J. Weiss, Jr., “Hedgehogs and Foxes: Texas Ranger Captains and Their Transition to Mounted Constables,” National Association for Outlaw and Lawman History Quarterly, October– December 1995, p. 3: “Through Anglo settlement, revolution, and statehood, the dominating theme in Ranger campaigns was military in nature. Whether militia, Rangers, volunteers, or irregulars, the mindset of citizen soldiers—that all able-bodied men would stand and fight for family and community—made Anglo Texans engage Mexicans and Indian tribes,

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especially the Comanches, in deadly warfare. Such actions reinforced the antimilitary tradition in American society in the early nineteenth century.” A thumbnail sketch of José Felix Trespalacios (1781–1835) may be found in Dan L. Thrapp’s Encyclopedia of Frontier Biography, vol. 3, 1440. For an interesting and insightful look at an early-day Mexican state’s micromanaged attempt at formulating rigid rules for a regional militia, the reader is referred to Richard G. Santos, ed., “Regulations for the Civic Militia of Coahuila y Texas, 1834,” as published in the Winter 1967 edition of Texas Military History, 283–300. Indicative that such was a rudimentary attempt at collective citizens’ self-protection is reflected in many of the tenets, i.e. Article 74: “The militiaman who owns arms and other accoutrements will do an appreciative act if he brings them with him when presenting himself for duty.” 18. J.H. Kuykendall, “Reminiscences of Early Texans,” The Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association, July 1903. Gibson Kuykendall asserted Caddo Chief Carita was compelled to accompany them, a hostage, so as to ensure that unprotected white families would be safe from an attack by his tribesmen in the trailing settlers’ absence. See p. 30. Many, if not most, of the old-timer’s remembrances refer to Skull Creek as “Scull Creek” or “Scul Creek.” The editor, Andrew Forest Muir, for Texas in 1837: An Anonymous, Contemporary Narrative, submits in note 2 on page 204: “Seemingly, this stream was named for the Scull family, which is still represented in the neighborhood [1958].” Modern-era maps typically opt for the more typical spelling; Gregory F. Michno and Susan J. Michno, Forgotten Fights: Little Known Raids and Skirmishes on the Frontier, 1823 to 1890, 1–2; Kelly F. Himmel, The Conquest of the Karankawas and the Tonkawas, 1821–1859, 48; Marshall E. Kuykendall, They Slept on Their Rifles: The Story of the Captain Robert H. Kuykendall Family in America and the Entry of the Family with the Anglo Settlement into Mexican/Texas in Stephen F. Austin’s Colony in 1821,49. 19. Ibid., 5–6; Kilgore, A Ranger Legacy, reports the Indians were Wacos or Tawakonis. 26; Cox, The Texas Rangers, suggests the Indians were Wacos accompanied by “Spanish army deserters,” 31. 20. Kuykendall, “Reminiscences of Early Texans,” 32, 49–50, 34; Cox, The Texas Rangers, identifies three suspected murderers as being beheaded, Vicente Castro, Julian Chirino, and Felix Mendosa. See p. 31. Muir, Texas in 1837, p. 160, spotlights another example of rough frontier justice, even subsequent to Texas independence: “I know of but one instance where punishment was inflicted under the criminal code of Texas during my residence in the country. A doctor who was not satisfied to live with the profits of his profession was convicted of petit larceny and condemned to be branded and publicly whipped.” Also see 217, n. 16: “This was probably Dr. James Adams, whom the Harrisburg County Grand Jury had indicted for larceny on March 21,

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1837. On the same day, Adams pleaded guilty, and a jury assessed the punishment as restoration to Lawrence Ramey of $259, as well as the notes and papers specified in the indictment, thirty-nine lashes on the bare back, and the letter T branded in the right hand. The judge pronounced sentence to be carried out on March 31 in some public place in Houston. The author, then, was in Houston on the date that [the] sentence was carried out.” 21. Wilkins, The Legend Begins, p. 7 quite rightly proffers and ponders: “Austin, acting on his own authority, made an effort to provide protection. He offered employment to ten men, to be paid by himself, to serve as rangers attached to the command of Lieutenant Moses Morrison. The exact date of Austin’s offer, written on the back of a proclamation by the Baron de Bastrop dated August 4, 1823, is unknown. There is no formal record of the formation of this detachment but it is nevertheless important because it is probably the first use of the term ‘ranger’ in Texas. It is interesting to note that Austin, evidently making a distinction between rangers and the men already in service [the militia] specified these men would serve as rangers and would be attached to Morrison’s detachment. Austin also wrote letters on August 11 and November 30 asking for a sergeant and ten additional men. Nothing came of these requests.” Though there is absolutely no argument Moses Morrison was in the field with nine identifiable subordinates, the ever-niggling question revolves around whether these fellows were militiamen or rangers. Certainly, they by definition seemed to comport with the perception awarded Rangers: They were “a group of armed men who operated independently from a regular military organization. They were generally self-armed, non-uniformed squads of civilians who patrolled the outer frontier of a settled area to protect against Indian hostilities.” See, Moore, Savage Frontier, Vol. 1, 8–9. Also, see Christina Stopka, Director, Armstrong Texas Ranger Research Center, Texas Ranger Hall of Fame & Museum (TRHF&M), Waco, Texas, for the outstanding compilation, Partial List of Texas Ranger Company and Unit Commanders: “There have been ranging companies in the region now known as Texas almost as long as non-Indians have called Texas home. The modern Texas Rangers date their origins from ranging companies organized by Stephen F. Austin and Moses Morrison in 1823. These paramilitary volunteers were called by many names in the 19th century—rangers and ranging companies, minute men, mounted volunteers, mounted gunmen, mounted riflemen, spies, frontier men, Texas State Troops, Frontier Regiment, Frontier Organization, Frontier Forces, Special State Troops, Special Force, Frontier Battalion, State Rangers and Texas Rangers. Their duties were essentially the same—protect the frontier from depredations by hostile forces—regardless of origin. By 1900, the ranging companies had been reorganized into a crime fighting, crime

492

22. 23. 24.

25.

26. 27.

28.

29. 30. 31. 32. 33.

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prevention and crime investigation organization, and their name had been standardized as ‘Texas Rangers.’ ” See p. 1. Moses Morrison was, officially, a lieutenant for the legitimately drawn militia district covering Stephen F. Austin’s lower Colorado River settlements. Militiamen or Rangers? It’s the reader’s call. Utley, Lone Star Justice, 15. Harold J. Weiss, Jr. during Laureate Meeting, “A Ranging Tradition, 1823– 1873,” TRHF&M, Waco, Texas, 18 October 2014. Harold J. Weiss, Jr., “Flying Forces: The Origins of the Texas Rangers,” A paper presented to the Annual Meeting of the Texas State Historical Association, 7 March 1997. Weiss advised that the first colonial American “Rainger” in 1634 was Edward Blacker, who worked for Virginia and the Isle of Kent in the Upper Chesapeake region. Stephen L. Hardin, The Texas Rangers, 4; Thomas T. Smith, The Old Army in Texas: A Research Guide to the U.S. Army in Nineteenth-Century Texas, p. 27: “In fact, there were Georgia Rangers a century before there were Texas Rangers.” Jeff John, “Necessity’s Child,” Guns Magazine, April 2015, 56–57. Byron A. Johnson, Executive Director, TRHF&M, Laureate Meeting, 18 October 2014; Andrés Tijerina, Tejanos and Texas Under the Mexican Flag, 1821–1836, 9; Thomas W. Knowles, They Rode for the Lone Star: The Saga of the Texas Rangers, 5–7; William C. Davis, Lone Star Rising: The Revolutionary Birth of the Texas Republic, 152: “but the Mexicans were well emplaced behind defenses around the town [San Antonio de Béxar], and even in its streets, as well as in the old mission San Antonio de Valero. In the early part of the century the mission had housed the Flying Company of San José y Santiago del Alamo de Parras, and from its tenure there locals commonly called the place ‘el Alamo.’ ” Also see, Jackson, Los Mesteños: Spanish Ranching in Texas, 564–565. L. Lloyd MacDonald, Tejanos in the 1835 Texas Revolution, 70: “[Compañia Volante] whose duties and methods would after 1835, serve as pattern for the first Texas Rangers.” James T. DeShields, Border Wars of Texas, 16–17; J.W. Wilbarger, Indian Depredations in Texas, 201–202; Michno and Michno, Forgotten Fights, 9. Spellman, Old 300, 209. John Henry Brown, Indian Wars and Pioneers of Texas, 7; Bill Groneman, Battlefields of Texas, 15–17. Moore, Savage Frontier, vol. 1, 11–12; Spellman, Old 300, 203–204. Ibid. Moore places the number of these militia companies at five, 565 men in the aggregate.

Notes

34. 35. 36. 37. 38.

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Ibid.; Darren L. Ivey, The Texas Rangers: A Registry and History, 9. Wilbarger, Indian Depredations, 206–207. Ibid. Ibid.; Andreas V. Reichstein, Rise of the Lone Star: The Making of Texas, 44. Utley, Lone Star Justice, 22–23. Although recounted in a popular periodical rather than a scholarly journal, Duane J. Allison, “Mutilation Was the Warrior’s Weapon of Terror,” Frontier West, October 1972, 17–19, 72, gives accounts of some rather bizarre—to say the least—acts of Indian inspired terrorism, some particularized to Comanche tribesmen. Kavanagh, The Comanches, 61: “Among the Comanches, warfare was not simply an arena in which to demonstrate bravery; it could be a direct material resource as source of war booty.” Muckleroy, “The Indian Policy of the Republic of Texas,” 237: “The Kiowa Indians migrated across the Arkansas River early in the nineteenth century, and located west of the Comanches, with whom they became closely allied. Among the prairie tribes, the Kiowa were noted for their fierce war-like disposition. It is estimated that in proportion to their number they killed more white men than any other tribe of Indians.” Jean Louis Berlandier, John C. Ewers, ed., The Indians of Texas in 1830, makes abundantly clear his point that Comanche valued martial supremacy: “The Comanches, like most of the natives of northern Mexico [Texas], are subject to no laws whatever in time of war. The man who takes a gun or any other object in the sack of a village is its real owner, but if two men claim a right to the same object the authorities do not meddle in the matter in any way. The stronger man wins.” Quotation is on p. 75. Gerald Betty, Comanche Society: Before the Reservation, with his Comanche kinship analysis, wields the whittling knife of truth with aplomb: “When Comanches could find no genealogical link to a person, they had no reason to behave socially toward them. As far as Comanches were concerned, those persons with whom they had no relationship whatsoever did not require their benevolence. Consequently, they felt no need for self-restraint when it came to stealing livestock, abducting women and children, robbing traders, and taking the lives of anyone unrelated to them. . . . Comanches actively encouraged one another to exhibit this sort of hostile behavior toward unrelated persons.” See p. 128. Stephen L. Moore, Taming Texas: Captain William T. Sadler’s Lone Star Service, p. 85, likewise taps into truth: “Young Comanches especially were taught to prove themselves as being brave in combat; physically striking an opponent in battle was far more courageous than merely shooting the same person from a distance. Scalping an enemy while alive was considered a great feat. This grisly act involved using a sharp knife to remove the entire scalp with ears if possible, although the raiding process often left insufficient time to take the entire scalp.”

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39. In Michno and Michno, Forgotten Fights, 18–19, the authors rightfully acknowledge the discrepancies of dates within varying accounts of what was afterward called the fight at Battle Island. Wilbarger, Indian Depredations, 209–210. For additional information relating to the noteworthy Aylett C. “Strap” Buckner, the interested reader is referred to Spellman, Old 300, citations throughout; Moore, Savage Frontier, Vol. 1, 13. Interestingly, Himmel, The Conquest of the Karankawas and Tonkawas, seems to offer confirmation that the Karankawas were responsible for the deaths of the Cavinas and Mrs. Flowers; see page 50. Robinson, The Men Who Wear the Star, p. 27, reports that during this engagement the Texians’ unremitting gunfire was somewhat haphazard: “Buckner’s men heard the shots and hurried to the rescue, charging into the Karankawas, firing indiscriminately and killing men, women, and children. One man killed a mother and her baby with a single shot that passed through both of their bodies.” 40. DeShields, Border Wars, 60–66; Wilbarger, Indian Depredations, 91–98; Groneman, Battlefields of Texas, p. 18, calls this encounter the Calf Creek Indian Fight. J. Marvin Hunter, Sr., “Bowie’s Battle on the San Saba,” Frontier Times, October 1947, 2–7. 41. Moore, Savage Frontier, Vol. 1, 3. 42. San Antonio Daily Light, March 3, 1912, byline A. J. Sowell and reprinted as “Indians Murder a French Merchant” in the October 1926 edition of Frontier Times, 4–7. Also see, A.J. Sowell, Early Settlers and Indian Fighters of Southwest Texas, 434–440; Michno and Michno, Forgotten Fights, 26–28; Brown, The Indian Wars, 14–16; Moore, Savage Frontier, Vol. 1, 1–5. 43. For a thoughtful analytical piece comparing Anglo settlers’ justifications for separating Texas from Mexico, and early-day colonists clamoring for the American Revolution, the interested reader is referred to Sam W. Haynes and Gerald D. Saxon, eds., Contested Empire: Rethinking the Texas Revolution, particularly Chapter 2, an article by Haynes, “Imitating the Example of Our Forefathers: The Texas Revolution as Historical Reenactment,” 43–77. 44. Moore, Savage Frontier, Vol. 1, 33–35. 45. Eugene C. Barker, ed., “Journal of the Permanent Council (October 11–27, 1835),” The Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association, April 1904, 260–261. 46. Ibid. Also see, Stephen L. Moore, Texas Rising: The Epic True Story of the Lone Star Republic and the Rise of the Texas Rangers, 1836–1846, 47. 47. Ibid. And see, John L. Davis, The Texas Rangers: Their First 150 Years, 8. 48. Utley, Lone Star Justice, 19. 49. Ibid.: “Unwittingly, Captain Robert M. Coleman became the first Ranger captain sanctioned by law.” And, “Thus the law established the formal

Notes

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51.

52.

53.

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beginning of the Texas Rangers as July 1835, and as the first captain to take to the field in that month Robert M. Coleman gained distinction as the first captain of Texas Rangers.” Ibid.; Wilkins, The Legend Begins, asserts on pp. 29–30: “It is clear, however, that Coleman was not popular with the settlers, however much they welcomed the rangers. Coleman was evidently a lax disciplinarian and allowed his men wide license in foraging.” E.H. Alexander, “Amos Alexander and His Son Killed by Indians,” Frontier Times, September 1927, 40–41; Moore, Savage Frontier, Vol. 1, 16–19; DeShields, Border Wars, 130–131. As previously cited, Falls of the Brazos is an actual geographical site located in Falls County, on the river just below Marlin, Texas. Occasionally, while reviewing manuscripts or published memoirs by old-timers, reference is made to the early frontier community of Bucksnort. This settlement, which no longer exists, is now marked by a Texas State Historical Marker, located southeast of Marlin, Texas, not too far above Falls of the Brazos County Park. For details of a horrifying Falls County attack wherein Indians killed a number of citizens, scalping and beheading one girl, then “her hairless head was spiked on a pole,” see, Marjorie Rogers, “The Story of the Morgan Massacre,” appearing in the December 1935 edition of Frontier Times, 141–144. Ibid., quoting Robert Coleman’s letter of 20 July 1835 on p. 20. For additional information on Falls of the Brazos, an exceptionally important landmark for the times, see Marjorie Rogers, “Falls of the Brazos,” Frontier Times, December 1933, 103–105. And Betty Dooley Awbrey and Claude Dooley, Why Stop?: A Guide to Texas Historical Roadside Markers, 307; Jack K. Selden, Return: The Parker Story, quoting copy of a letter from Isaac Duke “I.D.” Parker to James T. DeShields circa 1894, suggests that Robert Morris Coleman’s July 1835 attack on Indians, and several resultant Ranger sorties operating out of Fort Parker, would be the springboard for Indians eventually storming the fortress on 19 May 1836, 61–60. Setting aside political correctness—just for the sake of political correctness— William C. Davis, Lone Star Rising: The Revolutionary Birth of the Texas Republic, refreshingly hammers home reality: “They [Texans] wanted to direct their own affairs in their own land, a wish coincidentally identical with that of the liberals in Mexico with whom the immigrants so long made a rocky common cause. Denying that autonomy was bad enough, but when councils in Mexico City repeatedly proved themselves incapable of providing efficient rule thanks to internal instability, revolutions, distance, and simple neglect or ineptitude, the situation in the colonies became intolerable. After a decade of experience taught them that Mexican rule meant seemingly capricious lurches from right to left and back again, when they saw

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the organic law either ignored or unable to maintain itself, and when their own voice in the councils that determined their affairs seemed so weak, Texians’ ancestral instincts awakened. Mexico seemed to have only the will to rule them, but not the skill or the internal stability to do so with security or efficiency. When the only alternative in 1835 appeared quite logically to be more decades of upheaval and confusion, stunting economic policies, onerous interference in their public and even personal lives, and denial of rights whose concept of inalienability most of them brought from east of the Sabine, the choice became steadily more clear and unavoidable. They must rule themselves in their own land.” Quotation on pp. 308–309. 54. An assertion that Texas Rangers perished at the Alamo is reasonably easy to sustain. Moore’s Vol. 1 of Savage Frontier devoted Chapter Five to same, “The Alamo’s ‘Immortal Thirty-Two,’ ” wherein he specifically identifies the Gonzales Rangers, differentiating between them and regular Republic of Texas troops. See pp. 88–100. Moore also writes, “Lieutenant [George C.] Kimbell and his rangers were commemorated on the [1936 Centennial] marker as the ‘Immortal Thirty-Two,’ ” p. 100. Likewise, MacDonald in Tejanos in the 1835 Texas Revolution is certainly not indistinct, referencing the Gonzales Ranging Company of Mounted Volunteers. See pp. 145–146. 55. Barkley and Odintz, Portable Handbook of Texas, contributor J. Norman Heard: “The practice of captive-taking among North American Indians goes back to prehistoric time. Centuries before white men came to these shores, captives were taken from neighboring tribes to replenish losses suffered in warfare or to obtain victims to torture in the spirit of revenge. When warfare developed between Europeans and Indians, white captives were taken for the same reasons or to hold for ransom. . . . Mature males who fell into Indian hands were as good as dead. Captive white women were usually compelled to serve their captors as concubines and menials (the roles of most Indian women). Their ordeals frequently led to early deaths, before or after redemption.” See p. 453. Also, Pekka Hämäläinen, The Comanche Empire, 223. Gary Clayton Anderson, The Indian Southwest, 1580–1830: Ethnogenesis and Reinvention, p. 249, seemingly proffers a somewhat benign validation for the Comanches imprisoning non-Comanche: “The Comanche economy had an immense need for labor and easily incorporated captives, who performed coerced labor depending on their skills.” The authors herein note that the Plantation South also easily incorporated captives—in part— due to an economic rationale. 56. Moore, Texas Rising, 83: “John Tumlinson’s January 20, 1836, fight near Walnut Creek was the first between Comanches and Texas Rangers.” Michno and Michno, A Fate Worse Than Death, 7–10. For more data with regards to the most interesting Hugh Martin Childress, see Tabitha Landsaw Morgan

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and Frank Duane Jenkins, Two Texas Pioneers Called Hugh Martin Childress and Barbra Barton, Pistol Packin’ Preachers: Circuit Riders of Texas. Also peruse James M. Day and T.R. Havins, “Peter W. Gravis on the Outside Row of the Texas Frontier,” West Texas Historical Association Yearbook, 1966: “He [Peter Gravis] journeyed to Camp Colorado where he met another Methodist itinerant, Hugh M. Childress, who was described as ‘a Daniel in religion.’ Childress had been a Texas Ranger. . . . and now, in his later years was described as ‘a good Indian fighter and old bear hunter,’ who had always been on the front of civilization.” Quotation on p. 45. A chapter-length look at his son, the equally interesting—and likewise dangerous—Hugh Martin Childress, Jr., is found in Bob Alexander’s Lawmen, Outlaws, and S.O.Bs, Vol. 2, 232–249. 57. Gregory Michno and Susan Michno, A Fate Worse Than Death: Indian Captivities in the West, 1830–1885, 16–40; Moore, Savage Frontier: “ ‘Granny’ Parker, was stripped to her underwear, was speared and otherwise violated by the Indians, who then left the poor eighty-year-old woman for dead.” See Vol. 1, 134. For the Harvey Massacre, 208; Gwynne, Empire of the Summer Moon: “The Indians then went to work on them, attacking the old man [Elder John Parker] with tomahawks, and forcing Granny Parker, who kept trying to look away, to watch what they did to him. They scalped him, cut off his genitals, and killed him, in what order no one will ever know. Then they turned their attentions to Granny, pinning her to the ground with their lances, raping her, driving a knife deep into one of her breasts, and leaving her for dead,” p. 17. Abram Anglin, who was there, reportedly said that Granny Parker had been “abused, stabbed, and left for dead,” by Comanches attacking Fort Parker. See, D.W.C. Baker, Compiler, A Texas Scrap-Book: Made Up of the History, Biography, and Miscellany of Texas and Its People, 199. Later, in the Pioneer Edition of The Groesbeck Journal of May 15, 1936, Anglin’s words regarding the matter are quoted sans any inference of sexual assault: “Approaching the object it proved to be old Granny Parker, whom the Indians had wounded and stripped, with the exception of her underwear.” Jo Ella Powell Exley, Frontier Blood: The Saga of the Parker Family after mentioning that several of the Fort Parker folks were stripped of their clothing writes that Granny Parker was “abused,” p. 55. Writing of Comanche treatment of Rachel Parker Plummer, Selden, Return: The Parker Story says on p. 93: “The family’s great joy at her return was tempered by the scars on her body and soul plus the unknown fate of her son. . . . Some questions were never asked though the unspoken knowledge of her treatment was a palpable presence.” Likewise, reading between the lines is assuredly less than precise, but for the times in question the contemporary press and book writing journalists veiled specifics of sexuality, as did the published reflections of actual returned, ransomed, or rescued captives. See, Rachel Plummer,

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Narrative of the Capture and Subsequent Sufferings of Mrs. Rachel Plummer During Captivity of Twenty-one Months Among The Comanche Indians; With a Sketch of Their Manners, Customs, Laws, &c., &. With a Short Description of the Country Over Which She Traveled Whilst With the Indians—Written By Herself. They killed a great many of our cattle as they went along. They soon convinced me that I had no time to reflect upon the past, for they commenced whipping and beating me with clubs, &c., so that my flesh was never well from bruises and wounds during my captivity. To undertake to narrate their barbarous treatment would only add to my present distress, for it is with feelings of the deepest mortification that I think of it, much less to speak or write of it; for while I record this painful part of my narrative, I can almost fell [sic feel] the same heart-rending pains of body and mind that I then endured, my very soul becomes sick at the dreadful thought. (94)

Indians resorting to the practice of killing captured infants is well documented, although now in particular revisionist treatments often downplayed, diluted, or altogether discarded. See, Thomas W. Kavanagh, ed., Comanche Ethnography: Field Notes of E. Adamson Hoebel, Waldo R. Wedel, Gustav G. Carlson, and Robert H. Lowie, p. 280: “Frank Chekovi’s fatherin-law would throw captured babies in the air and then catch them on his spear.” Betty, Comanche Society: Before the Reservation: “This time the Comanche took the infant, threw it up into the air, and caught it on the point of his lance. Apparently, Comanches did not tolerate crying infants when they conducted their campaigns.” See p. 128. Wallace and Hoebel, The Comanches: Lords of the South Plains, suggest on p. 260 the full-blood Comanches were really not near as cruel and were, in fact, less prone at meting out gratuitous violence and torture than their “adopted captives.” The clever and somewhat uninspiring rationale, an inane genealogical distinction, would have been lost on nineteenth-century mothers and older siblings witnessing murders of their infants at the hands of anyone, full-blood Comanche or Indianized captive. Also see, Wilbarger, Indian Depredations, regarding the murder of Rachel Plummer’s suckling newborn, quoting the mother: “As soon as the Indians ascertained that the child was still alive, they tore it from my arms, and knocked me down. They tied a plaited rope around its neck and threw it into a bunch of prickly pears and then pulled it backwards and forwards until its tender flesh was literally torn from its body. One of the Indians who was mounted on a horse then tied the end of the rope to his saddle and galloped around in a circle until my little innocent was not only dead, but torn to pieces,”pp. 312–313. As well, Walter

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Prescott Webb, The Texas Rangers: A Century of Frontier Defense, recounting the horrors experienced by Sarah Hibbins (sometimes Hibbons) following her and two children being captured by Comanches: “The other child was a young babe, and the poor little creature, whose suffering the mother could not allay, cried so continuously that at length one of the Indians snatched it from her and dashed it brains out against a tree,” p. 35. Surely not unexpectedly, Gary Clayton Anderson, The Conquest of Texas: Ethnic Cleansing in the Promised Land, 1820–1875, evokes less than compelling excuses for occasions when raiding Indians murdered white infants. See p. 137. Herein, the authors will make no lame excuses for those instances, and there were those occasions when the Texans were responsible for the deaths of Indian children. With regards to Indians sexually violating an elderly Granny Parker during the Fort Parker massacre, Anderson, The Conquest of Texas, p. 129, unsurprisingly asserts that Granny Parker was not raped but only stripped to her undergarments because the Indians merely wanted her clothing, and then they “left.” And, “As in the case of Granny Parker, the warriors wanted the clothing for their own women and were not contemplating sexual assault,” see p. 133. It would seem, from 150-plus years removed, an outspoken aptitude for knowing precisely what marauding Indians were or were not “contemplating” is, indeed, somewhat remarkable. And, in Granny Parker’s situation, would actually being forcefully stripped of her dress “with the exception of her undergarments” really prove to be a prophylactic preventing a sadistic sexual assault? Most certainly DeShields, Border Wars of Texas, thought not: “and ‘Granny’ Parker was stripped of everything except her under-clothing, speared, outraged, and left for dead,” p. 157. The thinking adult reader may determine for himself/herself whether or not the circumstance of absolute and total nakedness is really a prerequisite for any sexual engagement, violent or otherwise. Likewise, whether or not Granny Parker was sexually assaulted will be the probing reader’s call; Kavanagh, The Comanches, quite bizarrely has but little to say regarding the Fort Parker atrocities: “Parker’s Fort on the Navasota River was hit on May 19, 1836. Five persons, including Rachel Plummer and Cynthia Ann Parker, were taken captive,” p. 250. A rather succinct commentary it would seem. Also see, Gregory Michno, “Nocona’s Raid and Cynthia Ann’s Recapture,” Wild West, August 2010, 38: “For 9-year-old Cynthia Ann, the first several days of her capture were terrifying. She was beaten and abused, and she saw the Indians rape her cousin Rachel and Rachel’s Aunt Elizabeth.” And, L. Auer, “Horror of Rachel Plummer,” Real West, May 1962, 44–45, 55–58. 58. William Physick Zuber, My Eighty Years in Texas, Janis Boyle Mayfield, ed., 105. 59. Z.N. Morrell, Flowers and Fruits in the Wilderness. 20. That as early as 1837 Texas Rangers were operating north of the Falls of the Brazos in what would

500

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62.

63.

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become Waco is unmistakable. See discharge of Ranger John Tucker on 24 June 1837, as reprinted in James M. Day’s One Man’s Dream: Fort Fisher and the Texas Ranger Hall of Fame, 10. The Ranger camp was known as Fort Fisher, now home to The Texas Ranger Hall of Fame & Museum at Waco, Texas, and named in honor of William S. Fisher, a significant martial player during the fascinating days of the Republic of Texas. Muir, Texas in 1837, 169. Michno and Michno, A Fate Worse Than Death, 46–52. Betty, Comanche Society, quite rightly offers a generalized twenty-first century comment, one that would have not been lost on nineteenth-century Texans. “Comanches could be extremely cruel when it came to dealing with their enemies. Stories of shocking displays of brutality by these Indians are scattered throughout the historical record.” See pp. 127–128. Michno and Michno, Forgotten Fights, 36; Moore, Taming Texas, p. 201, adds Cherokee Indians into the mix for massacring the Killough family. For the Surveyor’s Fight, aka Battle Creek Fight, see Harry McCorry Henderson, “The Surveyors Fight,” The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, July 1952. Henderson, who lists the dead surveyors by name, records eighteen killed during the battle. See p. 34. Also see Brown, Indian Wars, 47–50. Additionally, Groneman, Battlefields of Texas, 80–82. One of the most comprehensive accounts, buttressed with extensive endnotes, is Jimmy L. Bryan, Jr., “ ‘More Disastrous Than All’: The Surveyor’s Fight, 1838,” East Texas Historical Journal 38 (2000): 3–14. Also see an admirable article by Donna Gholson Cook, “Battle Creek: Where Surveyors Fought Like Soldiers,” Wild West, December 2008, 54–59. Michno and Mincho, A Fate Worse Than Death, 55–63; Stephen L. Moore, Savage Frontier, Vol. 2, 96–97; Wilbarger, Indian Depredations, 1–2. Also see, Brazos [pseudonym], The Life of Robert Hall: Indian Fighter and Veteran of Three Great Wars, Introduction by Stephen L. Hardin. Robert Hall, who was a participant in the chase after the kidnappers of Matilda Lockhart and the Putman children, proffered his particularized version as to why the chase was forsaken: “The trail passed right through where the town of Marion now stands [in Guadalupe County], and on the head of the Guadalupe. I was in advance, and when I got on a ridge I saw the Indian camp. I think there must have been at least a thousand warriors. It was agreed to leave it to the rank and file whether we should attack the enemy at once or not. The order was given for all who were in favor of advancing to step to the front. Just one-half of the men were in favor of battle. Old Paint [Mathew Caldwell] had the casting vote and favored a retreat. At that time many of us were very mad at him, but years of experience in Indian warfare has taught me that he was right. The Indians outnumbered us fifty to one, and if we had

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charged them not a soul would have been left to tell the story of the slaughter. We retired back to the Comal.” See pp. 39–40. 64. Captain J.H. Moore to Albert Sidney Johnston, 10 March 1839, as cited in Texas Indian Papers, 1825–1843, Dorman H. Winfrey, ed., 57–59. 65. Ibid., 58. 66. Moore, Savage Frontier, Vol. 2, 162; Noah Smithwick: “The Texas Rangers 1836–1839,” Frontier Times, March 1947. This article, published after the author’s death, is an accessible first-person account. Regarding Andrew Lockhart, Smithwick reports: “I never felt sorrier for a man than I did for Colonel Lockhart, whose young daughter had been taken captive by the Comanches and who we had every reason to suppose was in the camp. When, some time afterward, she was rescued, she said she screamed as loud as she could to try to make us hear her, but there was such an uproar we failed to distinguish her cries.” See p. 354. Another eyewitness account, that of Cicero Rufus “Rufe” Perry, may be accessed by reviewing the Memoir of Capt’n C.R. Perry of Johnson City, Texas: A Texas Veteran, edited by Kenneth Kesselus. Perry’s fascinating and colorful remarks about this particular wearying expedition and fight (12–13) are herein repeated, wholly unedited excepting for the misspelling of his commander’s name: in 39 John H Moar [Moore] raisd 58 men and 42 Lepans and wee went on an expedition a gainst the Comanches wee found them in camp on the San Saba and complettly Surprised them wee commenced the attac at day light but when wee got a boute half way through thair camp Moar orded a retreat wee retreated to a gully that protected us wee then faugt them until a boute 2 ocloc wee then fel bac to whair wee left our horces but when wee go thair wee found know horces thair nor blankets nor Saddles that was worth taken thay got a way with evry thing wee had Saddles blankets provishions in fact all wee had thair was about 500 Sarounded us and cept us at bay until dark wee the started for home our woonded wee had to pac on litters it being coald wee had to bild fiors and Sleep between them but one of our woonded men dyed that was Martin Fealix Taylor Feals Mayunor Ealstin Lefingwel and one Lepan Wee kild 48 Indions dead Woond meny moar

67. Ibid., 158–169. Of the numerous accounts of this action, author Stephen Moore’s is the most reliable and detailed. That some journalists register John Moore’s engagement with the Comanches from a myopic blinding light of negativity is evident, i.e. the article in the February 1926 edition of Frontier

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Times, “Moore’s Defeat on the San Saba.” See pp. 1–2. Gwynne, Empire of the Summer Moon, typically, proffers cogent logic with his barebones breakdown of this engagement: “If the Comanches had taken a lesson from what happened on the San Saba—and apparently they had not—it would have been that the nature of the game had changed completely. The Texans were not the Spanish or the Mexicans. They were tougher, meaner, almost impossible to discourage, willing to take absurd risks to secure themselves a plot of dirt, and temperamentally well suited to the remorseless destruction of native tribes. They did not rely on a cumbersome, heavily mounted, overly bureaucratized, state-sponsored soldiery; they tended to handle things themselves, with volunteers who not only were not scared of Indians but actually liked hunting them down and killing them. Their president [Lamar] did not drone on as most government officials from time immemorial had about dreary, overly technical treaties that granted Indians boundaries and homelands in exchange for promises to return hostages or to refrain from harming whites. Lamar was talking about extinction. Extermination. That was the meaning of the Moore raid, as inept as it was.” Quotation on p. 82. The blunt “game changer” Gwynne refers to was more than significant—not necessarily politically correct—just correct. Comanche could not now raid into the Texas interior, murdering and/or capturing vulnerable mothers and children at their homes, envisioning a dissimilar indemnity upon returning to their homes. The clichéd goose and gander equivalence seems somewhat fitting. Also, David F. Crosby, “Texas Rangers in the Battle of Brushy Creek,” Wild West, August 1997, 60–62: “Certain that a Comanche band that close would soon search out and attack homesteads, the men of Bastrop and LaGrange decided to raise Ranger companies to attack the camp before the Indians moved elsewhere. . . . Moore knew that his only chance might be fighting the Comanches while they were in the open and horseless. Judging from the number of teepees, there very well could have been 500 or more warriors.” That John Henry Moore’s attack on the San Saba was, indeed, precursor to a new adaptation of Indian-fighting tactics on the part of Anglo Texans—but not Spaniards—may also be found in reports of another 1839 engagement. See, J.W. Benedict, “Diary of a Campaign Against the Comanches,” The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, April 1929. Galvestonians formed a local 70-man company intent on carrying the battle to the Comanches on their home turf. See pp. 300–310. Also see, Moore Savage Frontier, Vol. 2, 323–336, and for a complete roster of the “Galveston Mounted Gunmen” refer to 330. Also see, James Kimmins Greer, Colonel Jack Hays: Texas Frontier Leader and California Builder, 36–37: “Hays’s last expedition with Colonel Karnes in 1839 was to the Pedernales. A majority of this force were from Galveston and Harris counties. . . . When Hays

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reported to Karnes that thirty well-mounted Indians were led by one of the prominent Comanche chiefs, Isomania, Karnes promptly brought his command upon the camp; but just as the Rangers were closing in on the Indians, a horse belonging to a redskin became frightened and alarmed the sleeping band. The surprised Indians grasped their weapons but thought more of escaping than of fighting. After the fleeing Comanches had broken through their ring of attackers, twelve dead warriors were found.” That early day Spaniards had on occasion carried the war to the Comanches is documented by Kavanagh, The Comanches, who highlights an attack on a Comanche village “on the Medina River north of Béxar” during 1781 wherein the Spaniards killed eighteen warriors, “including their chief who wore a horned headdress and a scalp-ornamented shirt. . . . In the village the Spaniards found clothing and jewelry identifiable as belong to victims from the vicinity of Bexar, apparent evidence that those Comanches had participated in the recent raids.” See p. 95. Appropriately Robert S. Weedle chronicles an even earlier Spanish expedition against hostile Indians’ homelands subsequent to the 1758 attack on the Mission Santa Cruz de San Sabá within the context of his adroit treatment, After the Massacre: The Violent Legacy of the San Sabá Mission. 68. Ibid., 170; and see, Joseph W. Robertson to James S. Mayfield, Texas Secretary of State, 7 April 1841, as reprinted in Texas Indian Papers, 1825– 1843, pp. 122–123; Wilbarger, Indian Depredations, 147–148; Brown, Indian Wars, 61–62; Luke Gournay, Texas Boundaries: Evolution of the State’s Counties, 40–41; Groneman, Battlefields of Texas, 84. 69. For the dangers faced by early day surveyors in Texas the reader may wish to retrieve Forrest Daniell, “Texas Pioneer Surveyors and Indians,” The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, July 1952, 501: “The Indians knew well the significance of the compass, and the Comanche Indians called the instrument ‘the thing that steals the land.’ The surveyor with compass became a main enemy of the Indian. With rifles at their sides, the surveyors read the compass, cut brush along the boundary lines, and chained distances. The surveying parties, in drawing the fire of hostile Indians, were the first line of defense of the weak colonists. Usually working beyond the frontier, the surveyors frequently were first to encounter Indians bent on depredations and the first to spread the alarm among the settlements.” 70. Moore, Savage Frontier, Vol. 2, 290–294. As Moore ably points out there are date discrepancies with recounting this incident; Awbrey and Dooley, Why Stop?, according to inscription on the monument, place the date of attack as 27 August 1839. Also see, Michno and Michno, A Fate Worse Than Death. For their treatment, the authors identify Dolly Webster’s three-year-old

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daughter as Patsy, rather than Virginia, see their pp. 66–71. Wilbarger, Indian Depredations, pp. 19–22, makes reference to “James” Webster and places the incident taking place during 1838, rather than 1839, and also fails to mention the captivity of Dolly’s son Booker. 71. Michno and Michno, A Fate Worse Than Death, 57.

Chapter 2 “Drove a lance through her heart” 1. Henderson Yoakum, History of Texas from Its First Settlement in 1685 to Its Annexation to the United States in 1846, vol. 1, 227; Webb, The Texas Rangers, 49; Journal of the House of Representatives of the Republic of Texas, 1st Congress, 2d Sess., 12; Vicente Cordova to Manuel Flores, 19 July 1838, Records Relating to Indian Affairs, Record Group 005, Series I, Indian Affairs as published in The Indian Papers of Texas and the Southwest, Document 2, Texas State Library and Archives (TSA); Anson Jones to John Forsyth, 31 December 1838, TSA; Valentin Canalizo to Manuel Filisola, 27 February 1839, TSA; Edward Burleson to Mirabeau B. Lamar, 4 April 1838 [1839], TSA; Papers of Andrew Jackson Houston, Documents 4602.19g and 4602.19a, TSA. The intriguing interaction between Cherokee Indians and Mexican government officials during this time and in readable context may be accessed by examining The Great Comanche Raid: Boldest Indian Attack of the Texas Republic, by Donaly E. Brice, with particular attention to Chapter 1, “Mexican Intervention into Indian Affairs,” 5–14. Also see the exceptional work of Moore, Savage Frontier, Vol. 2, citations throughout. 2. Regarding this tragic affair, see Stephen L. Moore, Last Stand of the Texas Cherokees: Chief Bowles and the 1839 Cherokee War In Texas; and, Battles of Texas, Dorman H. Winfrey, contributor, “The Battle of the Neches,” 81–100. 3. Paul N. Spellman, Forgotten Texas Leader: Hugh McLeod and the Texan Santa Fe Expedition, 18.Spellman, absent an agenda other than truth, also explores the interplay between Mexican subagents and East Texas Indians and the perceived potential and promise for a grand conspiracy designed to martially retake the Republic of Texas, returning her into the Mexican fold, see pp. 27–40. Also, William Preston Johnston, The Life of Gen. Albert Sidney Johnston: “Colonel Burleson announcing the interception of letters from General Canalizo, commander of the Central forces at Matamoras, to the chiefs of the Seminoles, Caddoes, Biloxies, Kickapoos, and to Bowles and others, with instructions for them and the plan of operations to be pursued against the Texans. . . .” Quotation from 1997 State House Press reprint of 1878 edition, p. 109. 4. Mary Whatley Clarke, Chief Bowles and the Texas Cherokees, 112; Moore, Taming Texas, p. 201: “Among the written documents captured was an

Notes

5.

6.

7. 8.

9.

10.

11.

12. 13.

505

account book belonging to the Killough family of East Texas which belied Sam Houston’s claim that Cherokees had never killed white men in Texas.” Brice, The Great Comanche Raid, 20; and see, Mike Coppock, “The Forced Expulsion of the Cherokees,” Wild West, August 2008, p. 23: “In May 1839, near Sequin [sic: Seguin], Texas, Texans killed a Manual Flores during a Mexican incursion, and papers on the body showed that Bowles was communicating with the Mexicans.” Wilkins, The Legend Begins, p. 79: “The Council House Fight was not a ranger affair.” Utley, Lone Star Justice, p. 25: “Early in 1840, the Penateka Comanches made another bid for peace. Its progress and climax involved no Texas Rangers. But its consequence for the Texas frontier, and for the Rangers who strove to guard it, were profound.” Cox, The Texas Rangers, “[Council House Fight] involved regular Texas troops, not Rangers . . . ,” 76. Moore, Savage Frontier, vol. 3, 2. Barkly and Odintz, The Portable Handbook of Texas. Contributor Jodye Lynn Dickson Schilz adds another motivation for Central Texas Comanche suing for a cessation of hostilities: “Penateka Comanches, driven by fear of Cheyenne and Arapaho attacks along the northern frontier of Comanche territory, sought in January 1840 to make peace with their Texan adversaries.” See p. 248. Henry W. Karnes to Albert Sidney Johnston, 10 January 1840, TSA; Anderson, Conquest of Texas, p. 181, asserts that the Mexican captive was in fact John Horn. DeShields, Border Wars, 288. Quoting an excerpt from the below cited correspondence. And see, Winfrey, Texas Indian Papers, 1825–1843, for complete text of letter citied below. See pp. 105–106. Albert Sidney Johnston to Lieutenant Colonel William S. Fisher, 30 January 1840, Records Relating to Indian Affairs, Record Group 005, Document 77, TSA. Michno and Michno, A Fate Worse Than Death, 58. Anderson, The Indian Southwest, pp. 238–239, lucidly acknowledges: “Comanche society placed a great stock in offering young men the opportunity to prove themselves, either in a military raid, designed to punish an enemy, or in a economic raid, designed to gain property.” It would seem then, revenge and/or thievery were laudable; Michno and Michno, A Fate Worse Than Death, 58. In fairness, the authors predicate the assertion that Rhoda Putman was the young captive killed and buried with the Comanche chief’s mother with a “probably.” See pp. 57 and 83, n.29: “The death of Rhoda at this time is speculative. Webster claims the Indians killed a little Putman girl. The others [Putman children] can later be accounted for,

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16.

17.

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except for Rhoda.” Certainly, Brazos, Life of Robert Hall, proffers an alternative version with regards to a Putman child being executed and buried alongside her adoptive Comanche mother—review 42–43. Brice, The Great Comanche Raid, 22. Spellman, Forgotten Texas Leader, 47–48; T. R. Fehrenbach, Comanches: The Destruction of a People, asserts, and perhaps accurately: “The release of the Lockhart girl to the Texas authorities at San Antonio was a terrible blunder; it would have been far better had the chiefs brought in no captives at all,” see p. 325. Also, “David G. Burnet’s Letters Describing the Comanche Indians with an Introduction by Ernest Wallace” for mention of Comanche women torturing prisoners and, in his estimation, the women were “infinitely more cruel and ferocious than the men.” See, West Texas Historical Association Year Book, October 1954, 129. Report of Colonel Hugh McLeod to President Mirabeau Lamar, 20 March 1840, Journals of the House, 5th [Texas] Congress, 1st Session, Appendix, 136– 139, TSA; Mary Maverick, Memoirs of Mary A. Maverick: Arranged by Mary A. Maverick and Her Son George Madison Maverick, edited by Rena Maverick Green: Matilda Lockhart’s nose was “actually burnt off to the bone—all the fleshy end gone, and a great scab formed on the end of the bone. Both nostrils were wide open and denuded of flesh. . . .” see p. 44. Moore, Savage Frontier, Vol. 3, 25. Somewhat incredulously—though surely not unanticipated, Anderson, Conquest of Texas, 419, n45, appears to be profoundly committed to downplaying and/or discounting the physical abuse suffered by Matilda Lockhart at the hands of her Comanche kidnappers. Writing that Mary Maverick “may [emphasis added] have exaggerated” the deliberate disfigurement of the Indians’ hostage due to the “growing criticism of Texas in the American and European press” seems, unreservedly, a wobbly speculative bridge too far; Kavanagh, The Comanches, for his scholarly treatment even explicitly disputes that the beleaguered Miss Matilda Lockhart was relinquished to Texans just prior to the Council House imbroglio at San Antonio, advocating—in his opinion—that “she must have been recovered earlier,” and for whatever motive opts to forego even mentioning any physical or mental mistreatment of the prisoner while in Comanche custody. Quotation on p. 263. J. Marvin Hunter, ed., “The Council House Fight in San Antonio,” Frontier Times, April 1924. Picking up an excerpt from Hilory G. Bedford’s Texas Indian Troubles, 3. Quite interestingly it seems, George E. Hyde, Rangers and Regulars, speculatively discounts Matilda Lockhart’s veracity or reliability: “The little girl [Matilda] was now questioned. It is improbable that a small white girl could distinguish one Comanche band from another; but the Texan officials took her word for it that the group now present in San Antonio held many more white captives.” See p. 37.

Notes

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18. Brice, The Great Comanche Raid, 23; Fehrenbach, Lone Star: A History of Texas and the Texans, 458: “The Texas commissioners grimly asked why the other prisoners had not been delivered as promised. Muguara, bald and wrinkled, said they were with other tribes but could be bought.” 19. Gwynne, Empire of the Summer Moon, 85. 20. An assertion—aside from the numerous first-person accounts of nineteenthcentury victims—that Comanche captives, at least some, suffered sexual abuse is not difficult to sustain, especially when taking into to crystal-clear account historian Wallace’s and anthropologist Hobel’s exhaustive social research for their frequently cited treatment, The Comanches: Lords of the South Plains. With emphasis added, the noted academicians enlighten: “Rape, except upon captives, occurred infrequently and was not part of the general pattern,” page 240. Straight from the shoulder it would seem, the renowned researches concluded a Comanche raping a Comanche was generally outlawed but a Comanche raping an unfortunate non-Comanche captive was not. Also, Stanley Noyes, Los Comanches: The Horse People, 1751–1845, 282: “Matilda Lockhart, it turned out, had not only been raped by the men as was customary with female captives, . . .” For incisive analysis regarding what are loosely referred to as the “Captive Narratives” the interested reader is referred to Michno and Michno, A Fate Worse Than Death, and their wide-ranging recital of hard fact versus romanticized fiction counterfeited as history and how certain modern era writers sugarcoat their purported scholarship. See pp. 457–480. 21. An interested reader desirous of more specifics of the Council House Fight would find merit in accessing Moore, Savage Frontier, Vol. 3, 21–34; Spellman, Forgotten Texas Leader, 45–51; and Brice, The Great Comanche Raid, 21–26. 22. Ibid.; Ed Blackburn, Jr., Wanted: Historic County Jails of Texas, 37. 23. Utley, Lone Star Justice, seems to wind down his account of the Council House affair evenhandedly taking into consideration two widely divergent viewpoints from two ethnic backdrops: ”The ‘Council House fight,’ as it came to be known, enraged the Comanches of all tribes as far north as the Arkansas River. . . . Twelve chiefs and twenty warriors had been slain in a deliberate act of treachery. . . . Their pacific overtures had been encouraged by Texans and then met with betrayal, entrapment, and slaughter. . . . Texans felt just as grievously betrayed. Twice the Comanches had promised to bring in all their captives and sign a peace treaty. . . . Plainly, the Indians were acting in bad faith. They caused their own demise by fighting instead of yielding themselves as hostages for the fulfillment of their promises. . . . Viewed through their respective cultural lenses, both Comanches and Texans were right. . . . Texans and Comanches were fated

508

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26. 27. 28.

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to fight to the end for possession of Texas,” p. 27. Cox, The Texas Rangers, graphically but fittingly says: “What happened next involved regular Texas troops, not Rangers, but like a bloated carcass it poisoned the well for years to come in regards to Texas-Comanche relations. It started when one of the chiefs bolted for the door, stabbing a soldier blocking his exit. Another soldier shot down that Indian, as the other chiefs, drawing their knives, rushed to get outside. . . . Violence only begat violence,” p. 76. Analytically on target, Ivey, The Texas Rangers, comments: “Both sides felt aggrieved and readied themselves for war,” p. 22. Maverick, Memoirs of Mary A. Maverick, 36–37. Gerald S. Pierce, “A Minor Tragedy in the Texas Army: Lysander Wells and William D. Davis,” Texas Military History, Fall, 1965, 121–129; Moore, Savage Frontier, Vol. 3, 59–60; Brown, Indian Wars, 77. As an interesting sidebar, during the Council House Fight, Calvary Commander Wells was armed with the relatively new Colt’s Patent Arms revolving pistol, commonly called the Colt Paterson, No. 5, a weapon at first obtained for the Texas Navy, then for the Texas Army—and later made more than famous by the Texas Rangers (Moore, as cited, 22–24). Also, Texas Sentinel, April 15, 1840: “Colonel Wells had one of Colt’s repeating pistols.” During an informative 15 May 2015, interview with Doug Dukes, researcher and writer, and a prominent authority on firearms employed by Texas Rangers, a timeframe now spanning three centuries, he advised that use of the Colt’s Paterson at the Council House Fight may very well be the first time such weapon was used militarily in Texas; at least it is the first instance he is aware of. Reasonably though, he leaves open any implications as to when the Colt’s Paterson revolver was used for the very first time in the Republic of Texas or the Lone Star State—i.e., a personal confrontation such as the example cited in this text. It was possible that open market purchases in the United States, with buyers bringing the improved and innovative revolvers into the Republic of Texas, and/or private transactions within the Republic having had taken place; John Joseph Linn, Reminiscences of Fifty Years in Texas presents the two duelists as fellows named “Howard” and “Red” and after the challenge, the mortal contest was settled at “Seguin’s Ranch” some few miles below San Antonio, see page 347. Moore, Savage Frontier, vol. 3, 61. Ibid., 78; Kavanagh, The Comanches, 253. Brice, The Great Comanche Raid, 27; Sam Houston Dixon, Romance and Tragedy of Texas History: Being a Record of Many Thrilling Events in Texas History Under Spanish, Mexican, and Anglo-Saxon Rule, 226; Barkley and Odintz, The Portable Handbook of Texas, contributor Craig H. Roell blends the Comanches’ desire for revenge and the subplot of “Mexican Centralists working to defeat Canales, [and] to attack Linnville and Victoria in 1840,” p. 526.

Notes

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29. Ibid., 28–30. For an examination of the aforementioned assertion that Mexican nationals were instigators of the Great Comanche Raid, see Brice as cited, 57–65. Also, James N. Smith, “Autobiography,” 3:218, ms, Center for Texas History, University of Texas, Austin, Texas. One of the items recovered from the Comanches’ property was: “a letter written from a Mexican to one of the Indian chiefs. In the letter the Mexican stated that ‘they would meet each other at Corpus Christi or Lynvill [sic].’ ” And see, Wilkins, The Legend Begins, 83; Also see Moore, Savage Frontier, Vol. 3, 77, 122: “The Indian offensive was reportedly encouraged by General Valentin Canalizo, the military commander of northern Mexico, who was headquartered in Matamoros. . . . Canalizo’s spies had likely cautioned the Indians to delay their attack until Colonel Wheeler’s militia regiment broke up in mid-July.” As previously noted the Great Comanche Raid launched during the first week of August 1840, circumstances that comport handily with Moore’s assessment; Kavanagh, The Comanches, seems to dismiss any significance of Mexican involvement with the attacks on Victoria and Linnville by stating (emphasis added): “John Smith, A Texas officer, allegedly found a letter from a Mexican officer at Plum Creek suggesting that the raid would be profitable,” p. 264. Likewise interesting is the author’s take, a two-sentence recount of Comanches’ even raiding to the Texas Gulf Coast (again, emphasis added): “In August a large Comanche war party, reportedly 500 men, made a sweep through southern Texas. They attacked Victoria and then moved to the coastal village of Linnville,” p. 264. There is, curiously, no mention of the Comanches’ killings and mutilations, taking captive women and children, the wholesale theft of horses and mules, looting warehouses, and/or the burning of Linnville to the ground. 30. James Wilson Nichols, Catherine W. McDowell, ed., Now You Hear My Horn: The Journal of James Wilson Nichols, 1820–1887, 56. 31. Brice, The Great Comanche Raid, 31. 32. Nichols, Now You Hear My Horn, 57. 33. Austin City Gazette, August 26, 1840. 34. Brice, The Great Comanche Raid, 28–37; Fehrenbach, Comanches, 339: “Warriors broke into the customs office and seized Watts’s wife, a fair, very handsome woman. They immediately tried to strip her, but they were baffled by the sturdy whalebone corset she wore. Finally, in frustration, they tied her to a pony in her underclothes.” Gwynne, Empire of the Summer Moon, 95: “The tribe cut a bloody swath of violence across the coastal lowlands, looting, killing, and burning on their way to Matagorda Bay, and sweeping the entire country of horse stock as they went.” 35. Ibid., 46: “and baby alligators packed in the Indians’ bundles.” Also, Moore, Savage Frontier, Vol. 3, 122: “Some men thought the Comanches were

510

36. 37. 38. 39.

40.

41.

42.

43. 44.

45. 46. 47.

48. 49.

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carrying them [baby alligators] back as either curiosities or proof that they had actually gone as far as the coast.” Linn, Reminiscences of Fifty Years in Texas, 342. Washington D. Miller to Austin City Gazette, August 17, 1840, quoted in Moore, Savage Frontier, Vol. 3, 92–23. Brice, The Great Comanche Raid, 34; Kilgore, A Ranger Legacy, 43–44. Jack W. Gunn, “Ben McCulloch: A Big Captain,” Texas Military History, August 1961, 26; Victor M. Rose, The Life and Service of Gen. Ben McCulloch, 56; Brown, Indian Wars, 80. Also see, Thomas W. Cutrer, Ben McCulloch and the Frontier Military Tradition, 41–42. Names of the Texas participants, several of whom authored first-person accounts, may be accessed by examining alphabetical listings of Muster Rolls as tabulated by Moore, Savage Frontier, Vol. 3, 106–107, and Brice, The Great Comanche Raid, 68–70. Brown, Indian Wars, 82. Contained within an informative map of the Plum Creek vicinity, Groneman, Battlefields of Texas, showcases the geographical spot where “warriors began to kill captives,” 98. Nichols, Now You Hear My Horn, 63; Jodye Lynn Dickson Schilz and Thomas F. Schilz, Buffalo Hump and the Penateka Comanches, p. 22: “As the Penatekas retreated, they killed their captives and left their bodies on the prairie, hoping to slow pursuit.” Ibid., 64. Morrell, Flowers and Fruits, 66; Sowell, Early Settlers. Sowell, page 418, states that Juliet Watt’s life was saved, indeed, due to good luck: “Mrs. Watts was also shot in the breast, but the arrow, striking a steel corset which she wore, glanced and gave her a painful but not fatal wound.” See also Fehrenbach, Comanches, page 346: “Her captors fastened her to a tree trunk, then shot an arrow into her breast. The same formidable whalebone corset that had protected her chastity blunted the arrow’s force and saved her life.” Nichols, Now You Hear My Horn, 65–66. Brown, Indian Wars, 82. Linn, Reminiscences of Fifty Years in Texas.343. For his contribution in the Portable Handbook of Texas, Roell is of the same mind: “The Indians stole away with their captives and plunder but were defeated by volunteers at Plum Creek, near the site of present Lockhart, on 12 August,” p. 527. Brice, The Great Comanche Raid, 48; Moore, Savage Frontier, Vol. 3, 122. Former U.S. Army Military Academy history instructor Nathan Jennings in Riding for the Lone Star is not indefinite, saying on p. 150: “The western counties were not satisfied with the victory at Plum Creek and soon moved to unleash further attacks into the heart of Comancheria.” Kavanagh, The

Notes

50. 51.

52. 53.

54.

511

Comanches, reports that the Comanches “were routed, losing 50 or more,” p. 264. Utley, Lone Star Justice, is not vague on p. 32: “Whatever the exact casualties, the battle of Plum Creek was a disaster for the Comanches.” Zenas R. Bliss, The Reminiscences of Major General Zenas R. Bliss, 1854–1876, Thomas T. Smith, Jerry D. Thompson, Robert Wooster, and BenE. Pingenot, eds., “Buffalo Hump is best remembered for the 1840 raid on Victoria and Linnville and his subsequent defeat in the battle of Plum Creek,” p. 56, n. 14. For his contribution to Battles of Texas, Peck Westmoreland, Jr. concurs: “The Comanches, considered to be the fiercest Indians in Texas, never recovered completely from this decisive blow . . . ,” p. 112. Moore, Texas Rising, 260–261. Ibid., 266. Here Stephen Moore, an expert on the state of affairs through the days of the Texas Revolution and the early Republic of Texas era, is quoting the letter from Captain William Turner Sadler, to President Mirabeau B. Lamar, a document archived at TSA. For a systematic examination of the trials and tribulations of this most interesting Texas stalwart, the reader is referred to Moore’s Taming Texas. In this treatment on page 135, Moore specifically tabulates the dead women and children, casualties of what came to known as the Edens-Madden Massacre of Houston County. Telegraph and Texas Register, November 18, 1840; Brice, The Great Comanche Raid, 49–50. Berlandier, The Indians of Texas in 1830, who actually briefly journeyed with a band of Comanche, was awestruck at their collective inattentiveness to campground defense: “It is a remarkable fact that even when they are on the warpath they take no precautions, either by day or by night, either for their camps or for their horses. I should never have been able to believe it if I had not traveled with some Comanches at a time when they were at war with the Lipans. Two nights in a row we had false alarms, due to their childish confidence and their extreme sloth. More than a hundred families of this immense people were traveling with us, and had we not had the foresight to post the dragoons who were escorting us as sentinels throughout the trip, there would have been no one seeing to the security of our camps. . . . If they find no sign of the enemy the [Comanche] scouts return, generally after the tribe has made camp, and everyone goes peacefully to sleep until next morning. With this lack of precaution, it is easy to understand how, by making a forced march for a single day, one could surprise a whole tribe by night without being perceived,” quote on pp. 68–69. Ibid.; Moore, Savage Frontier, Vol. 3, 145–157; Wilbarger, Indian Depredations, suggests this episode took place near Ballinger in Runnels County. See p. 185. Anderson, Conquest of Texas, opts to inform readers: “The Lipan Apaches, like their ranger brethren, rode for booty and revenge. They mostly were at

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war with the Comanches,” p. 190. Without resorting to putting a thumb on the scale, were one to accept that at face value, then, perhaps another sentence would equivalently ring true: “The Comanches, like their Kiowa brethren, rode for booty and revenge. They mostly were at war with the Lipan Apaches.” Quite accurately Anderson further enlightens: “They [Moore and followers] chose their time to ride knowing that Indians in villages never expected a winter attack,” p. 190. Surprising an enemy and taking him wholly off guard—throughout epochs of recorded history—is known as a mark of outstanding generalship. Exploiting weakness, superior armament, logistical dominance, capitalizing on advantages of good fortune and terrain, all the while maximizing an enemy’s casualty numbers, at the same time minimizing the damage he is allowed to inflict, is warfare—not necessarily fair play. And never is it pretty! Wilbarger, Indian Depredations, 135. Moore, Savage Frontier, Vol. 3, 154. Ibid., 144; R.L. Wilson, COLT: An American Legend, 3–21; K. D. Kirkland, America’s Premier Gunmakers: COLT, 6. Telegraph and Texas Register, November 18, 1840. Johnston, The Life of Albert Sidney Johnston, 118; Moore, Savage Frontier, Vol. 3, 153–154. Brice, The Great Comanche Raid, 53. Moore, Texas Rising, 301.

Chapter 3 “Baptized in her Precious Blood” 1. Rebecca J. Gilleland Fisher, “Capture and Rescue of Mrs. Rebecca J. Fisher, Née Gilleland,” The Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association, January 1900, 209–213. Depending on the source—of which there are several—various spellings are used to identify this family, even within primary source materials, i.e., Gilleland, Gilliland, and Gillilan. Too, there is at least one account placing this raid during 1840, which is erroneous and should be rectified to the correct 1842. Likewise, there is variance regarding the kidnapped children’s ages, though for the purpose of this narrative those discrepancies are truly insignificant; both children were pre-teens when forcibly abducted and brutalized by Comanches. Michno and Michno, A Fate Worse Than Death, 75–76. Anderson, The Conquest of Texas, not surprisingly, opts to forego mentioning the Gilliland murders or seizure of their children. DeShields, Border Wars, 360; Barkley and Odintz, The Portable Handbook of Texas, 453. 2. Hobart Huson, Refugio: A Comprehensive History of Refugio County from Aboriginal Times to 1953, vol. 1, Quoting Lieutenant Anthony B. Hannum,

Notes

3. 4.

5. 6.

7.

8. 9.

513

M.D.on pages 465–469: “The [Comanche] never rallied, but ran leaving guns, shields and Chieftan’s [sic] feathers, all no great trophy. We recovered the children prisoners, a little boy, lanced or shot through the side, and a pretty curly haired girl.” Moore, Savage Frontier, Vol. 4, 28–29. For John Coffee Hays’s command status of various Texas Ranger companies see Stopka, Partial List, 3–4. Moore, Texas Rising, 302–312; Utley, Lone Star Justice, 296: “With the passing years, reminiscences of rangers who rode with him [Jack Hays], embellished by popular writers, inflated Hays’s deeds and created some that likely did not happen. A life-size diorama in the Texas Ranger Hall of Fame at Waco, for example, depicts Hays alone atop Enchanted Rock fighting off hordes of converging Comanches. This exploit commands no contemporary documentation, and all reminiscent accounts are chronologically vague.” Wilkins, The Legend Begins, 202: “Hays’ epic lone stand at Enchanted Rock is the oldest of these questionable fights.” Certainly Henry McCulloch was not as enchanted with Jack Hays as many others, not when set against the deeds of his brother Ben. In his words, Hays was “the pet” of the government, and for that reason acceded to a command position over his brother, even though Ben was “first in the feelings and confidence of the people.” See, Thomas W. Cutrer, Ben McCulloch and the Frontier Military Tradition, 64. Not all Texans were enamored with Hays, see Robert Hunter, A Texan in the Gold Rush, edited by Robert W. Stephens, 13–14. Clearly, General W. J. Worth of Mexican War prominence seemed inclined to revere the celebrated Texas Ranger, however, remarking: “Jack Hays is the tallest man in the saddle in front of the enemy I ever saw.” See, Greer Colonel Jack Hays, 153. Also see Glenn Dale Hadeler’s piece in vol. 11, of the Edwards Plateau Historian, “Jack Hays’ Big Fight: Separating Folklore from History.” Cox, The Texas Rangers, 89. Jennings, Riding for the Lone Star, regarding the Walker’s Creek battle, notes on pp. 185–186: “The Texas Rangers ideal of superior mobility, firepower, and frontier adaption—the tactical cornerstone of the Texan way of war— had attained full maturation.” Hadeler, “Jack Hays’ Big Fight,” 70; Ivey, The Texas Rangers, pp. 27–28: “This [use of the Colt’s revolver] allowed the rangers to employ the mounted charge and meet the Comanches and other horse-riding enemies on their own terms. Due to the rangers’ renowned use of the pistol, the Colt would also become known as the ‘Texas Paterson.’ ” Gene Fallwell, The Texas Rangers: A Factual, Illustrated Account of the Nation’s Oldest and Most Famous State Law Enforcement Officers—Since 1823, 9. Ron Soodalter, “Yonder Comes a Thousand Indians: Jack Hays and the Battle of Walker’s Creek,” American Cowboy, Special Issue, 2014, 77.

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10. Perry, Memoir of Capt’n C.R. Perry, 21. The mortal casualty was Ranger Private Peter Fohr, and the wounded Ranger was, besides Samuel Walker, Robert Addison “Ad” Gillespie. For a quick profile of Ad Gillespie, see Wayne R. Austerman’s piece in the April 2010 edition of Wild West, “Ambush and Siege at Paint Rock,” 47. 11. Hadeler, “Jack Hays’ Big Fight.” This encounter between Rangers and Indians—generally known as the Battle of Walker’s Creek—has been written about extensively. By any standard, Hadeler’s account is fresh and insightful, not only detailing the actual clash, but also delving into geographical settings—both farfetched and real—as well as how this fight was characterized by various contemporary and modern-era raconteurs. 12. Firearms expert Doug Dukes during the program “Gunfighterology” at the TRHF&M, 1 August 2015. 13. Bruce A. Glasrud and Harold J. Weiss, Jr., eds., Tracking the Texas Rangers: The Nineteenth Century. Contribution of Stephen L. Moore, “The Deadly Colts on Walker’s Creek,” p. 94: “Hays and his small company of rangers were unwittingly changing the course of frontier fighting this day, trusting in their little-used five-shooter Colts.” Wilkins, The Legend Begins, 185; Walter Prescott Webb, The Great Frontier, p. 244: “Hays seems to have recognized the potential value of the revolvers because he tried them out shortly in an Indian battle. . . .” 14. Utley, Lone Star Justice, 11–12. 15. Bill O’Neal, Texas State Historian, quoting remarks of Texas Senator Sam Houston in his thoughtful and intriguing twenty-first-century treatment of the iconic Texan’s supervisory skills, Sam Houston: A Study in Leadership, p. 188. 16. Michno and Michno, A Fate Worse Than Death, 79–85. The abduction of the Simpson children and the murder of Jane seems not to have merited mention by Anderson, The Conquest of Texas. For several examples of trade goods exchanged to ransom hostages taken by Indians, the reader may refer to Jerry Sullivan, “Devils in Sombreros—The Comancheros,” True West, October 1970, 16–19, 52–54; also see, Charles L. Kenner, The Comanchero Frontier: A History of New Mexican-Plains Indian Relations, numerous citations throughout. Also see Colonel George Archibald McCall, Robert W. Frazer, ed., New Mexico In 1850: A Military View, 102–103. 17. Carol and Thomas Christensen, The U.S.-Mexican War, page v: “The issues raised during the U.S.-Mexican War are ones we still grapple with today: the contradiction between stated ideals and actual practice; the distinction between a ‘just’ and an ‘unjust’ war; the way we define citizenship and identity in a multicultural society; and the challenges in building progressive and democratic nations.” For an alternative approach regarding who

Notes

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actually provoked the Mexican/American War, the interested reader may wish to review Pedro Santoni, Mexicans at Arms: Puro Federalists and the Politics of War, 1845–1848, and Sanford H. Montaigne, Blood Over Texas: The Truth About Mexico’s War With the United States. Kenneth C. Davis in A Nation Rising: Untold Tales of Flawed Founders, Fallen Heroes, and Forgotten Fighters from American’s Hidden History, distills his personal reasoning succinctly, on pages 241–243: “For the first time in its short history, the United States didn’t go to war with a foreign power over independence, provocation, or global politics. This was a war fought unapologetically for territorial expansion. . . . Won quickly and at relatively little expense, the Mexican War basically fulfilled the dream of Manifest Destiny.” 18. Stopka, Partial List, 1. For an all-inclusive listing of Texas Volunteer unit rosters the reader is referred to Charles D. Spurlin, Texas Volunteers in the Mexican War, 141–263. Palo Alto Battlefield National Park Historian Douglas A. Murphy, Two Armies on the Rio Grande, adds on p. 172: “Samuel Walker’s small group of mounted Texans provided only a limited amount of extra support. Taylor had welcomed Walker’s offer to organize a company of Texas Rangers as a support unit for the army and quickly signed the men up for a short, quite possibly illegal, three-month enlistment.” For a comprehensive enumeration of the various Texas volunteer units operating during the Mexican-American War and their commanding officers’ corps, see, Ivey, The Texas Rangers, 59–73. 19. Ibid. Frederick Wilkins, Defending the Borders: The Texas Rangers, 1848– 1861, page 1: “In addition to the ranger units fighting in Mexico, there were a considerable number of ranger companies protecting the Texas frontier, all financed by the United States.” Another set of “Rangers” performing service during the Mexican War were from Missouri, the Laclede Rangers, named after French trader Pierre Laclede, one of the founders of St. Louis. See, Richard Smith Elliott, Mark L. Gardner, and Marc Simmons, eds., The Mexican War Correspondence of Richard Smith Elliott, 7, 231 n. 6. For this outstanding treatment the indexed references to the Laclede Rangers are far too numerous to include herein. 20. Buck Barry, James K. Greer, ed., Buck Barry: Texas Ranger and Frontiersman. In speaking of Texans’ fighting philosophy and Rangers’ lack of adherence to a formalized chain-of-command, Buck Barry elucidated on page 36: “Every man had to assume the right to be his own commanding officer.” Characterizing the state volunteer units during the Mexican War— including Texans—Charles M. Robinson III, Texas and the Mexican War, supplements the first-person remarks of Buck Barry. “In some cases, the governor appointed the officers, but more often they were elected. Consequently, they exercised very little authority over their unruly troops,

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21.

22.

23.

24.

25.

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who considered themselves free citizens not subject to the discipline of military service. . . . Likewise the volunteers viewed themselves as entitled to spoils of war; plundering the local citizens was chronic.” See p. 52. Michael L. Collins, Texas Devils: Rangers and Regulars on the Lower Rio Grande, 1846–1861, 8–35; Christopher D. Dishman, A Perfect Gibraltar: The Battle for Monterrey, Mexico, 1846, p. 16: “Of all the volunteers called up, those from Texas were the most unique. With their red shirts, slouched hats, blue overalls, and beards and mustaches, they looked nothing like a regular soldier. . . . For a weapon, most Texans carried one or two revolvers, a Bowie knife, and a short-barreled rifle, known as a ‘plains rifle,’ that could fire a large caliber bullet at distant targets. Their ‘baggage’ consisted of a small wallet with salt, ammunition, some tobacco, and parched corn as well as a blanket hung from the saddle.” Jimmy L. Bryan, Jr., More Zeal Than Discretion: The Westward Adventures of Walter P. Lane, p. 62: “[Zachary] Taylor seemed willing to endure a measure of the rangers’ peculiar capacity for violence in order to benefit from their service.” Walter Prescott Webb, The Texas Rangers in the Mexican War. Here, Webb, though politically incorrect for today’s marketplace, enumerates his opinion about many nineteenth-century Texans’ opinions: “From long experience with Mexico, the Texans had come to distrust every word and deed of the race. The affair at the Alamo had taught them to expect no mercy; the Massacre of Fannin’s men in violation of all law had taught them distrust of Mexican honor; the fate of the Mier prisoners in Perote prison had taught them never to surrender; and the victory of San Jacinto had taught them contempt for Mexican valor.” See p. 8. Bob Alexander, Riding Lucifer’s Line: Ranger Deaths along the Texas Mexico Border, 2. Many of the Mexicans, too, could earn rightful status as hardcore fighters with plenty of pluck. “Buck” Barry particularly noted after one harrowing martial engagement: “They fought through our line. . . . I have never called a Mexican a coward since.” See, Barry, Buck Barry: Texas Ranger and Frontiersman, 35. Don Graham, Kings of Texas: The 150-Year Saga of an American Ranching Empire. “Racism in the modern sense was doubtless part of the equation, but the specific events of the spring of 1836 certainly played a large role in the creation of and fostering of deep divides between Mexico and Texas. Two places became the flashpoints of hatred: the Alamo and Goliad. Approximately 200 men died at the Alamo, and approximately 400 were massacred at Goliad. . . . It is no wonder that a long legacy of dislike and mistrust came out of the Texas Revolution. Also, in any calculus of hatred, one must not overlook the payback slaughter of Mexican troops by Sam Houston’s army at the Battle of San

Notes

26.

27.

28.

29.

517

Jacinto, where, after the eighteen-minute battle was over decisively in Texas’s favor, the killing of 600 or more Mexican troops went on into the afternoon.” Quotation from pp. 63–64. Arnoldo De León, The Tejano Community, 1836– 1900, on page 10 attributes Texans’ racist attitudes regarding Mexicans to an earlier era than that of the 1836 Texas Revolution. James Donovan, “Two Sams and Their Six-Shooter: How an Unlikely Friendship Between a Northern Industrialist Named Samuel Colt and Legendary Texas Rangers Samuel Walker Forged the Revolvers That Won the West,” Texas Monthly, April 2016, 88–91, 152–156, 187, and 190. Wilson, COLT: An American Legend, 23–32; Kirkland, America Premier Gunmakers: Colt, 15–19; Jim Steely, “Legend of the Texas Ranger,” Texas Highways, May 1984, 41: “Together Colt and Walker redesigned the weapon to be more suitable for frontier use. Its cylinder now contained six chambers, a trigger guard was added, and the weight of the new model was ‘such as to render it serviceable as a club when empty.’ . . . When the [Mexican] war ended in 1848, tales of the Rangers and their Colt six-shooters were spread nationwide by returning American soldiers.” Also, Tom Power, “Packing Iron,” Texas Heritage 1, 2015, 26: “most early handguns were large and cumbersome. . . . Early revolvers, such as the Colt Dragoon, were issued in pairs with a set of pommel holsters that could be affixed to a horse’s saddle in front of the rider.” For a sketch of Samuel Walker’s south of the border activities, see Charles Spurlin, “Ranger Walker in the Mexican War,” Military History of Texas and the Southwest 9, no. 4, 1971, 259–279. For an interesting comment regarding Rangers’ horseflesh, refer to Cutrer, Ben McCulloch and the Frontier Military Tradition, quoting newspaperman George Wilkins Kendall who had noted of the Texans’ mounts: “every man had a horse under him that could ‘run for your life,’ and save it.” See p. 67. John Salmon Ford, Stephen B. Oates, ed., Rip Ford’s Texas, Chapter 8, “Los Diablos Tejanos!” 75–85, with particular attention to 81 and 81, n.2; Utley, Lone Star Justice, p. 83: “Not without justification, the people of Mexico City remembered the Texas Rangers as Los Diablos Tejanos. It was an epithet that would resonate among Mexicans for generations to come.” Mary Margaret McAllen Amberson, James A. McAllen, and Margaret H. McAllen, I Would Rather Sleep in Texas: A History of the Lower Rio Grande Valley and the People of the Santa Anita Land Grant, p. 85: “General Taylor received Secretary Marcy’s order to advance to the Rio Grande on February 3, 1846. As he prepared to march south, Taylor sent letters translated into Spanish to ranchers along the north bank of the Rio Grande explaining that their property, citizenship, and religion would be respected. Reaction among the ranchers was divided between those who remained loyal to Mexico and those willing to cooperate with General Taylor.” Milo Kearney and Anthony

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Knopp, Boom and Bust: The Historical Cycles of Matamoros and Brownsville, p. 59–60: “The reaction of the local residents to the American invasion was divided between patriotic indignation and willingness to cooperate with Taylor’s army. . . . The motivations of those who cooperated with Taylor ranged from realistic resignation to enthusiastic collaboration against a Mexican government whose tariff and military policies had wrecked the earlier prosperity of the region.” 30. Charles Spurlin, “Camp Life of the Texas Volunteers in the Mexican War,” Military History of Texas and the Southwest 15, no. 4, p. 40: “Both Mexican and Anglo traders and local entrepreneurs did a brisk business with the soldiers.” See, Spurlin, “Camp Life of the Texas Volunteer in the Mexican War,” Texana 12, no. 3, 248–263; Kearney and Knopp, Boom and Bust, 60; Florence Johnson Scott, comp., “George Washington Clutter in the Mexican War,” Texas Military History, Summer 1964, p. 125: “The Mexicans charge very high for every thing we purchase of them. . . .” Economic factors within the Mexican communities in what would shortly become America’s New Mexico Territory were also playing out during the Mexican War. See, Elliott, The Mexican War Correspondence of Richard Smith Elliott, 106. 31. Christensen, The U.S.-Mexican War, 147; Colonel M. L. Crimmins, “General John E. Wool in Texas,” West Texas Historical Association Year Book, October 1942, 49–50: “The disorganized volunteers from Kentucky, Tennessee, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Mississippi, as soon as they rested would have started trouble for most generals, but not for General Wool. . . . Among the volunteers was Colonel Yell’s regiment of mounted Arkansans. . . .” Particularly noting of the volunteer units—not just Texas companies— Samuel L. Chamberlain, the edition with Foreword by John Eisenhower, and Introduction by Roger Butterfield, My Confession: The Recollections of a Rogue, wrote: “The volunteer officers on the other hand would tie up a man one day, drink and play cards with him the next, and excuse their favorites from drill and guard duty; in short, most of them were totally incompetent, and a disgrace to their profession.” Quotation from p. 61. Though oft-quoted for his remarks about Texas volunteers, Chamberlain, a regular soldier, was rather disdainful of all volunteers: “Men of the 2nd Mississippi Rifles, and the 1st North Carolina Volunteers under Colonel Payne, were especially unruly, committing many depredations and outrages on the inhabitants of the San Juan valley” (144). 32. Ibid. According to the account of the U.S. Army’s Sam Chamberlain, at the crime scene, “Women and children were clinging to the knees of the murderers and shrieking for mercy.” Also see, Postscript by Butterfield in My Confession, as the page 88 footnote posits: “Official [emphasis added] accounts of this ‘massacre’ are at variance with Chamberlain’s narrative.”

Notes

33. 34.

35.

36. 37.

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Interestingly, it seems, there is not a dispute as to several murders having had taken place, but: “No mention of scalping was made at this hearing, or in any of the standard histories of the Mexican War.” Though surely confounding for well-intended academicians, sometimes some things were best left unsaid. Was Chamberlain spicing his story, or was it dead on? Stephen B. Oates, “Los Diablos Tejanos!,” American West, Summer 1965, 41–50. Christensen, The U.S.-Mexican War, 145. Quite interestingly—and often overlooked—was a vexing legal problem for the U.S. Army’s command staff in a foreign land, a predicament highlighted by Robert Selph Henry, The Story of the Mexican War: “The sufficiently difficult task of keeping order among the soldiers, whether the regulars or those whom General Scott called ‘the wild volunteers’ was made immeasurably more difficult by the fact that there was nothing in the military laws of the time providing for trial and punishment of soldiers for offenses other than those specified in the Articles of War. When committed in the United States, offenses other than military were triable by the ordinary civil courts. Since no United States Army had operated for any length of time beyond the national boundaries before the War with Mexico, the competence of military tribunals in such cases was deemed questionable. The War Department, therefore, had asked Congress, at the session beginning in December 1845, to extend the jurisdiction of courts-martial when forces were serving in foreign countries, but Congress had failed to act. The Secretary of War informed General Taylor, on November 25, that another effort was to be made to secure Congressional authority for punishment of civil offenses committed by United States soldiers in foreign lands, but in the meanwhile there seemed to be no clear warrant for any punishment, even in most flagrant cases, except to send the culprit away from the army—which was eminently satisfactory to most of the culprits.” See p. 176–177. Collins, Texas Devils, 9; Jennings, Riding for the Lone Star, p. 194: “Though tactical and strategic benefit came at high cost in terms of indiscipline and excessive brutality, rangers and mounted riflemen nevertheless augmented regulars with valuable and specialized combat skills. This unique fighting capacity, so crucially needed against a larger army with more numerous cavalry, proved generally, though by no means uniformly, helpful to the American invasions and occupations of Mexico.” Also, Frederick Wilkins, The Highly Irregular Irregulars: Texas Rangers in the Mexican War, p. 61: “Whatever he thought, Taylor made full use of the Texans.” Christensen, The U.S.-Mexican War. Quoting Ulysses S. Grant, p. 76. Timothy J. Henderson, A Glorious Defeat: Mexico and Its War with the United States, p. 172: “The surrender of Mexico City did not stop the fighting. The

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conflict simply devolved into something resembling class warfare, as the city’s léperos—the urban poor so feared by the comfortable classes—joined by prisoners Santa Anna had ordered released from the city’s jails, ransacked the National Palace and other public buildings. Even after the city seemed pacified, both the U.S. soldiers and city residents committed excesses and atrocities. Soldiers who ventured out into the streets, especially if they wandered from the city’s center, were often shot from rooftops. On one occasion the corpses of several U.S. soldiers were found in a tavern where they had apparently been served poisoned pulque, the fermented maguey juice that was the favorite intoxicant of the Mexican poor.” Wilkins, The Highly Irregular Irregulars, chimes in: “Mexico was supposedly an occupied place, but it was sometimes difficult to tell the captives from the captors. While there was not another armed uprising, the American troops were subjected to constant attack. Any soldier by himself, especially after dark, or any drunken soldier, was fair game. If he was lucky, all that happened was a robbery. Usually, though, it was murder. Scott was forced to order all saloons closed by 6:00 in the evening to cut down on losses and keep drunken soldiers alive. . . . If the Texans had a reputation when they came to Mexico City, they added to the legend while there. Quartered in town, they could not help but have run-ins with the local citizens. Certainly, they made no effort to avoid confrontations, and the Mexicans probably tried to see how much they could get away with against the hated Rangers. Some of the incidents seem like unwarranted force, even deadly force, but the Rangers made little distinction between petty thievery and serious attempts on their lives.” See pp. 176–177. 38. Henry W. Barton, Texas Volunteers in the Mexican War, 63. 39. Christensen, The U.S.-Mexican War, 146. Writing to his wife Sarah, Lieutenant George Washington Clutter highlighted the ever-present danger—not necessarily on the battlefield—herein recounted unedited: “I am riged with a Sabre, a pair of holsters, with good pistols a Mexican Saddle etc. etc. I presume you would not know ‘Adjutant Clutter,’ if you were to meet him in the road between this Camp and the town of Meir, for recollect we never go out of Camp without being ‘armed to the teeth,’ to use a rough expression—we have good reason for doing so as nothing is more common than a murder or two a week here, where men venture out unarmed.” See, Scott, “George Washington Clutter in the Mexican War,” 127–128. Also, Nathan Dale Howard, typescript, “The Texas Rangers in the Mexican War”: “The Mexicans had been actively engaged in guerilla warfare for about a year and their actions were often cruel and brutal. On February 24, 1847, a barbaric massacre by Mexican guerillas of a U.S. supply train of wagons occurred,” p. 2 of document in TRHF&M.

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521

40. Ibid., quoting Deena González. And see, Jennings, Riding for the Lone Star. “[Winfield] Scott’s fears proved correct as the defeated Mexican elite embraced the timeless resistance strategy of all occupied societies: guerrilla warfare. . . . If Mexico could not win through decisive confrontation, it would isolate and destroy the American army with patriotic savagery.” See p. 214. 41. Jane Clements Monday and Frances Brannen Vick, Petra’s Legacy: The South Texas Ranching Empire of Petra Vela and Mifflin Kenedy. 27, 29; Amberson, I Would Rather Sleep in Texas, adds that the murderers, after raping the frightened women then “chopped off the fingers of a few of the women to obtain their rings, and threw their bodies into the arroyo,” see p. 91. Also see, Murphy, Two Armies on the Rio Grande, for an assessment of Mexican General Mariano Arista’s “imperfect command of his frontier horsemen,” on p. 170–171. For a quick and interesting look at early day El Fronton de Santa Isabel (originally Point Isabel, now Port Isabel), see John C. Rayburn, Virginia Kemp Rayburn, and Ethel Neale Fry, eds., Century of Conflict, 1821– 1913, pp. 20–32. 42. Samuel C. Reid, Jr., The Scouting Expeditions of McCulloch’s Texas Rangers or, the Summer and Fall Campaign of the Army of the United States in Mexico-1846; Including Skirmishes With the Mexicans, and an Accurate Detail of the Storming of Monterey; Also, the Daring Scouts at Buena Vista, Together With Anecdotes, Incidents, Descriptions of Country, and Sketches of the Lives of the Celebrated Partisan Chiefs, Hays, McCulloch, and Walker, 53. 43. Ibid. 44. Ibid. 45. Collins, The Texas Devils, 15. Brutality and gratuitous violence were not limited to Texans and/or Mexicans during the Mexican War. In the recently conquered lands that would become New Mexico Territory, revolting Pueblo Indians attacked and killed James White Leal, a private in one of Missouri’s volunteer troops, the aforementioned Laclede Rangers. Private Leal’s demise was gruesome: “The Indians, soon after killing the Governor [Charles Bent], went to the house where Mr. Leal was, stripped off all his clothes, and then made him march through the streets of the village, they singing and amusing themselves by shooting arrows a little way into his flesh, to torture him. After this they took him to the house, shot a number of arrows into his face, taking aim at his eyes, nose, mouth, &c., and then scalped him while yet alive. They then left him in this miserable condition for some time; at length they returned, and shot him with arrows till he died. His body was thrown out, and the hogs ate part of it. . . .” See, Elliott, The Mexican War Correspondence of Richard Smith Elliott, 140–143.

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46. Reid, The Scouting Expeditions of McCulloch’s Texas Rangers. Of the horrors and realities of war the author writes, graphically: To avoid inhaling the “horrid incense” of the battle-field, we rode on, leaving the wolves and carrion birds to gorge and fatten undisturbed on upon the dainty feast prepared for their revolting appetites by man. Terrible and sad as are the scenes of savage or civilized warfare, awful as are its sights and sounds, it hath no sadder or more soul-chilling sight, than the lonely, deserted battle-field’ no more disgusting, hair-freezing sounds, than the snarl and growl of the wild wolf, as he tears his helpless prey, or the flapping wings and discordant cry of the carrion bird, as he stoops to his hateful feast. (41–42)

That many early Texan fighters were well acquainted with resorting to the blade subsequent to discharging their single-shot rifles and single-shot pistols, and later revolvers, may be heard from Barry, in Buck Barry: Texas Ranger and Frontiersman, if his remarks are taken on the whole regarding the 1836 Battle of San Jacinto: “The captain never told us, but we naturally came to the conclusion that he [Jim Crooks], and the majority of the Texas army never took time to load their guns after the first fire, for he told us that out of the several hundred Mexicans killed, three-fourths of them were killed with bowie knives.” See pp, 41–43. 47. Thomas A. Britten, The Lipan Apaches: People of Wind and Lightning, 207. 48. Jennings, Riding for the Lone Star, quoting Ford, p. 233. 49. Chamberlain, My Confession, 61. Though repeating the story secondhand, Chamberlain again mentions Mexicans’ familiarity with and use of the lariat: “and a Lancer appeared on a hill behind the ranch, waving his lance. Then leather-clad ‘greasers,’ with terrific yells, dashed out of the chapperal [sic], and the work of death commenced. Captain Box made for the hills when he was charged on by two of the band, one with a lance, the other swinging the more fatal lazo. The Captain with his holster pistols sent them to grass, ran down a third who tried to bar his way, and gained the shelter of a dense thicket. From there he witnessed the most fiendish acts of wanton cruelty committed by the guerillars. Teamsters were lassoed, stripped naked, and then dragged through clumps of cactus, and horribly mutilated; a boy of sixteen who drove a forge was lashed in front of the bellows, a charcoal fired kindled and a fire hole blown into him, until he expired in the most fearful agony. Another had an incision made in his abdomen, cartridges inserted and the victim blown up!” See pp. 175–176. That uncoiled catch-ropes were truly weapons in the arsenals of Mexican “rancheros” and/or “guerrilleros” is highlighted in the comprehensive typescript “The Texas Rangers and the Mexican War,” by James J. Worsham. “The guerrilleros, which evolved from the volunteer

Notes

50.

51. 52.

53.

54. 55.

56.

57.

523

ranchero cavalry units, were a more dangerous and vicious foe [than the regular Mexican army]. Comprised of blood-thirsty, plunder-seeking bandits, the guerrilleros would rob any American supply train available’ and if that could not be obtained, they would plunder from their own people. . . . At their left sides were their sabers, in their right hands their escopetas, and over their shoulders they carried their lassos—all three deadly weapons in combat.” See pp. 29–30. Typescript courtesy TRHF&M; Robert D. Moser, Texas Iron: Guns of the Texas Rangers, p. 20 is emphatically clear—and historically accurate—in stating that at least one of the reasons Mexican War-era Rangers universally armed themselves with Bowie knives was so, in case they were roped around the neck by the enemy, they might free themselves before being dragged or choked to death. Ibid., 69; Utley, Lone Star Justice, p. 77: “On February 22, 1847, Mexican lancers and irregulars captured an American wagon train, killed and mutilated a hundred teamsters, and took prisoner the infantry escort.” Barton, Texas Volunteers In the Mexican War, 63. Philip N. Barbour, Rhoda van Bibber Tanner Doubleday, ed., Journals of the Late Brevet Major Philip Norbourne Barbour, Captain in the 3rd Regiment, United States Infantry and his wife, Martha Isabella Hopkins Barbour: Written During the War with Mexico—1846, 107. Chamberlain, My Confession, 58: “It [Monclova, State of Coahuila] was formerly the Capital of the State and contains about four thousand inhabitants who I judge obtain a precarious living by murder and robbery; the women appeared to be all of the most common character and the men, regular assassins.” Neil Sapper, “Barbarism and Restraint: The Occupation of Mexico City,” Texas Military History 8, no. 2, 104; Ford, Rip Ford’s Texas, 83–84. Chris Frazer, Bandit Nation: A History of Outlaws and Cultural Struggle in Mexico, 1810–1920, p. 44: “The [Mexican/American] war was a disaster for Mexico. It opened a chasm into which half of the country plunged, annexed to the United States at war’s end. But the worst was still to come. The humiliation of defeat left liberals and conservatives more divided than ever.” And also see, “By midcentury the United States had humiliated Mexico in War,” p. 78. Theodore Laidley, James M. McCaffrey, ed., “Surrounded by Dangers of All Kinds”: The Mexican War Letters of Lieutenant Theodore Laidley, 88. And Don Jones, “The Texas Rangers: A Contextual Overview,” The Rampant Colt, Summer 2015, 10. Christensen, The U.S.-Mexican War, 132–133; Dana, in speaking of the Texas volunteers’ general appearance, would write that “the best of them looked as if they could steal sheep.” Though it would be but speculative, perhaps

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there was a tinge of jealously or envy on the part of personnel of the regular army, soldiers duty-bound to respect and answer to a formal chain-ofcommand, wear a standardized uniform, adhere to a predetermined Code of Conduct, and be wholly dependant on the quartermaster’s department for sustenance and supplies. Reasonably, it would seem, the freewheeling spirit and independence of the Texas Volunteers, i.e. Rangers, might have appealed to soldiers hamstrung by rules and regulations. Such was the subject of journalists then—and now. 58. Frederick Law Olmsted, A Journey Through Texas: Or, a Saddle-Trip on the Southwestern Frontier, 302; Barton, Texas Volunteers in the Mexican War, 56. For a look at the Battle of Monterey from a war-correspondent’s viewpoint, one writing for the New Orleans Picayune, interested readers are referred to George Wilkins Kendall, Lawrence Delbert Cress, ed., Dispatches From the Mexican War, 118–141. 59. Jennings, Riding for the Lone Star, p. 10: “This wartime service popularized the Texas Ranger legend and garnered them fame and notoriety, across the continent.” Wilkins, Defending the Borders, p. 1: “The Texas [Mexican War] units—universally labeled rangers—became nationally known, the first time the Rangers had been recognized outside their own boundaries.” Cox, The Texas Rangers, p. 121: “The rangers who fought in Mexico returned as heroes. . . . What would take more time to realize is that the volunteers from Texas had given the words Texas Ranger worldwide cachet.” Utley, Lone Star Justice, p. 85: “Thus the Texas Rangers ended the Mexican War with the twin legacy of combat excellence and vengeful excess. They also ended the war with a secure place in the imagination of Americans everywhere.” 60. Typescript (July 1937) by Captain Roy W. Aldrich, “The Texas Rangers”: “After close of the Mexican war the belief that the Federal Government would extend its protecting arm over its newly acquired empire proved a delusion, and the long-suffering Texans were again forced to take measures to protect themselves . . . ,” p. 7. Courtesy Archives of the Big Bend (ABB), Bryan Wildenthal Memorial Library, Sul Ross University, Alpine, Texas. After the Mexican War the American Army established a series of military posts throughout Texas to deal with any threats from activist Mexican nationals and/or hostile Indians. For article-length, rather than booklength surveys of these pre-Civil War configurations, the interested reader may wish to consult Arrie Barrett, “Western Frontier Forts of Texas, 1845– 1861,” The West Texas Historical Association Year Book, June 1931, 115–139; and/or Colonel M.L. Crimmins, “The First Line of Army Posts Established in West Texas in 1849,” The West Texas Historical Association Year Book, October 1943, 121–127.

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525

61. Texas State Gazette, September 1, 1849, (with emphasis added) as quoted by Colonel M.L. Crimmins, “The Second Dragoon Indian Campaign In Texas,” West Texas Historical Association Year Book, October 1945, 50–51: I see that the Comanches are still continuing their forays upon the Texas borders, murdering and carrying off defenseless frontier settlers who had been granted protection. . . . They (the Comanches) must be pursued, hunted, run down, and killed—killed until they find we are in earnest. . . . If [Colonel William S.] Harney can have his own way, I cannot but believe he will call in Hays, McCulloch, and all the frontier men, and pursue the Comanches to the heads of the Brazos, the Colorado and even up under the spurs of the Rocky Mountains—they must be beaten up in all their covers and harassed until they are brought to the knowledge of . . . the strength and resources of the United States. Harney can take the dragoons along with him, but for the light work he must have Texas Rangers—without them even he . . . can effect but little.

62. Thomas T. Smith, “U.S. Army Combat Operations in the Indian Wars of Texas, 1849–1881,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly, April 1996, p. 510: “During 1849–1850 several companies of federally financed Texas Mounted Volunteers fought nine skirmishes while operating directly under army command, a short-lived arrangement for which neither party had much enthusiasm.” Ford, Rip Ford’s Texas, 142–143; David Paul Smith, Frontier Defense in the Civil War: Texas’ Rangers and Rebels: “In the summer of 1849 General Brooke called upon Gov. George Wood for three companies of Rangers to patrol the area between Goliad and the Rio Grande for a six-month period. The brief episode of Texas Rangers in federal service ended in 1851 by order of General Brooke.” Quotation on p. 5. Utley, Lone Star Justice, p. 89: “When called out by the governor, Ranger units operated within a federal defense system erected by the army in the decade following annexation.” 63. Coleman McCampbell, “Romance Had Role in Founding of Corpus Christi,” Frontier Times, September 1933, 569; Mary Jo O’Rear, Storm Over the Bay: The People of Corpus Christi and Their Port, 12; Alexander, Riding Lucifer’s Line, 39; Collins, Texas Devils, 209. Purportedly, as a young Lieutenant Ulysses Grant had remarked to General Taylor that there were so many wild horses in the area—the Wild Horse Desert—that it would have required corrals the size of small Eastern States to hold them. See Thomas E. Speir, “The Spanish Mustang: Historical and Archeological Implications in Texas,” The Steward: Collected Papers on Texas Archeology 4, 1997, 82. 64. Olmsted, A Journey Through Texas, 301–302.

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65. Wilkins, Defending the Borders, 13; Caldwell and DeLord, Texas Lawmen: The Good and the Bad, 298–299; also see, Program, The Thirteenth Biennial Texas Peace Officers’ Memorial Service, May 1–2, 2011, ceremony at the Texas State Capitol, 65. 66. Michno, A Fate Worse Than Death, 171. 67. Michno, Encyclopedia of Indian Wars, 4. 68. Ibid., 6–7. Quotation from the most excellent and most recent biography of John Salmon Ford, Richard B. McCaslin’s, Fighting Stock: John S. “Rip” Ford, 39. McCaslin states Ford’s “scratch from an arrow on the back of his right hand” had actually occurred on 12 May 1850, the first day of what measured a two-day skirmish. Though it’s of but a trifling and inconsequential magnitude here, deference will be awarded McCaslin’s latest research. Also, Smith, The Old Army in Texas, 137. 69. Ibid., 7; W.J. Hughes, Rebellious Ranger: Rip Ford and the Old Southwest, 87. 70. Jennings, Riding for the Lone Star, 248–249. 71. Wilbarger, Indian Depredations, 668–670. Since Wallace is a real but also a folkloric Texas hero, a healthy sampling of circumspection is recommended. 72. Ibid. Wilkins, Defending the Borders, is inclined toward downgrading Wallace’s casualty count: “These figures seem quite high, based on other fights of the time and the numbers engaged; time may have enhanced Big Foot’s memory,” See p. 16. ¿Quién sabe? Smith, The Old Army of Texas, p. 138, is not as hesitant to downgrade Wallace’s body count: “seven Indians killed, and nine Indians wounded.” 73. McCaslin, Fighting Stock, 38. 74. Ford, Rip Ford’s Texas, 168, 170. 75. Ibid., 171. 76. Ibid., 172; Ronald D. DeLord, ed., The Ultimate Sacrifice: Trials and Triumphs of the Texas Peace Officer, 1823–2000, 40. 77. Ibid. 78. Wilbarger, Indian Depredations, 617. 79. Ford, Rip Ford’s Texas, 178. 80. Wilbarger, Indian Depredations, 619. 81. Caldwell and DeLord, Texas Lawmen: The Good and the Bad, 300–301. 82. Ibid., 302. 83. Michno, Encyclopedia of Indian Wars, 29–30. A reasonably complete roster of the provisionally enlisted Rangers may be had by examining the Mustering Out Roll of Captain Owen Shaw’s Company of Texas M’t’d Volunteers, TSA. Also see, Smith, The Old Army in Texas, 139. 84. Utley, Lone Star Justice, 95.

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85. Bob Alexander, Six-Shooters and Shifting Sands: The Wild West Life of Texas Ranger Captain Frank Jones, 3–4; Candice DuCoin, Lawmen on the Texas Frontier: Rangers and Sheriffs, 47; John Stribling Moursund, Mabel Stribling, eds., Blanco County Families, 245. 86. Sowell, Early Settlers, 429. 87. Wilkins, Defending the Borders, 48. 88. Ernest C. Shearer, “The Callahan Expedition, 1855,” The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, April 1951, 432. 89. W.E. Jones to Governor E.M. Pease, 22 September 1855, reprinted in Dorman H. Winfrey, Texas Indian Papers, 1846–1859: “It is reasonable to expect that the Indians will again return the latter part of this month or during the next.—It is believed that they are Lipan & Comanche & possibly some of Wild Cats Seminole are engaged in the business with them—It is known that some of the horses stolen are carried across the Rio Grande & it is generally believed that most of all of them go to the same place,” p. 245. June Rayfield Welch, Riding Fence, p. 113: “Accompanying Wild Cat was John Horse. . . . Chief of the Seminole blacks. John Horse was the son of a black mother who was part Indian and a Seminole father who had some Spanish blood. John Horse was a ‘tall fine-looking, ginger-colored man’ known for his courage. . . . Because many runaways fled to Mexico, slave catchers regularly worked Eagle Pass. One day Warren Adams brought John Horse to Eagle Pass in handcuffs, claiming to own him. Wild Cat agreed to a $500 ransom which was paid in $20 gold pieces. Each coin was stained with dried blood. Adams quickly released his hostage.” Collins, Texas Devils, 76–78. 90. Shearer, “The Callahan Expedition, 1855.” Due to what appears an inadvertent typographical error on p. 439, the author places the date of this engagement as 3 March 1855, rather than the correct 3 October 1855. 91. Interview with Christina Stopka, Deputy Director TRHF&M, 10 October 2013. Also see, Caldwell and DeLord, Texas Lawmen: The Good and the Bad, 303–304. Utley, Lone Star Justice, quite likely sets the casualty count right: “The two sides exchanged fire until night fall, when the Mexicans withdrew, having lost four killed and three wounded. Claiming victory, Callahan also withdrew with four killed and seven wounded and the conviction that his men had slain sixty to seventy of their opponents.” See p. 96. 92. Ronnie C. Tyler, “The Callahan Expedition of 1855: Indians or Negroes?” The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, April 1967, 580; Jennings, Riding for the Lone Star, 258. An itemized list of property lost during this engagement, ranging from six-shooters, a shotgun, a rifle, saddles, and horses, may be found by examining Property Lost in the Battle at Escondido, 3 October 1855, certified by Captain Callahan on 15 October 1855, in TSA.

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93. Ibid.; Kevin Mulroy, Freedom on the Border: The Seminole Maroons in Florida, the Indian Territory, Coahuila, and Texas, does not dispute the assertion that the Seminole Maroons may have also contributed to burning the Mexican village of Piedras Negras. See p. 79. 94. Charles Spurlin, “With Taylor and McCulloch through the Battle of Monterey,” Texas Military History, Fall, 1967, 206: “No sooner had the Americans reached the village than the Mexicans fired several buildings, which were hurriedly extinguished by American cavalry.” Colonel M.L. Crimmins, “Camp Cooper and Fort Griffin, Texas,” The West Texas Historical Association Year Book, October 1941. Speaking of a separate engagement highlights the regularity of using fire to hasten a martial advantage: “The Indians had set fire to the high grass which covered their retreat and made it difficult to feed the horses of their pursuers” p. 34. 95. Shearer, “The Callahan Expedition, 1855,” 450. Quite interestingly, but not surprisingly, Anderson, The Conquest of Texas, implies Texas Governor Pease was wholly in support of Captain Callahan’s actions in Mexico, stating: “In Austin, Governor Pease jubilantly proclaimed the action as heroic and justified,” 269. Truthfully, the governor did praise Callahan and his Rangers for their bravery, but that was just an element of his overall comments. Governor Pease was clearly perturbed, chiding Callahan: “but you had not the right to take possession of or to occupy Piedras Negras or any other village or property of Mexican Citizens. After the termination of your engagement with the Indians you should have returned immediately to this side of the Rio Grande and I trust that you have already done so.” See Texas Governor Elijah M. Pease to Captain James H. Callahan, 10 October 1855, TSA. 96. Tyler, “The Callahan Expedition of 1855: Indians or Negroes?” 574–585. Tyler does, in fact, probe the clandestine machinations within an alleged conspiracy between slaveholders and Callahan’s incursion into Mexico. When taken in part, the assertion is provocative and well reasoned, though outside the realm of absoluteness. Professing that the recovery of runaway slaves was but a secondary goal seems logical. 97. Collins, Texas Devils, 88. 98. Cox, The Texas Rangers, 142. The Cart War is also addressed by Arnoldo De León in They Called Them Greasers: Anglo Attitudes Toward Mexicans in Texas, 1821–1900, 82–83; Linn, Reminiscences of Fifty Years in Texas, page 353, contemporary to the times, is clear and absolute: “In transporting goods to San Antonio the Mexicans’ tariff of freight was so low as to practically rule the American teamsters entirely out of the competition. . . . The merchants, as a matter of course, patronized the cheapest carrier. . . . Often, in addition to the murder of the Mexicans and the destruction of their carts, the

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lawless chevaliers de industrie would rob the carts of their freight and appropriate the valuable cargoes to themselves.” 99. Wilkins, Defending the Borders, 72–73. 100. Ibid.; Stopka, Partial List, 8. Although generically Texas Rangers, Captain Nelson’s company, commissioned from October to December 1857, were formally classified as the Texas Mounted Militia. 101. Entertainingly, Anderson, The Conquest of Texas, overtly downplays the validity of the autobiographical writings of former Indian prisoners, inculcating, “The captivity narrative—often a short re-creation of some supposed Indian attack—became a staple of American reading,” 37–38. Common sense would suggest it would be highly unlikely that a victim of Indian outrages would characterize their initial detention and treatment as result from “some supposed Indian attack.” For a clearheaded and refreshingly nonpartisan analysis of the so-called captive narratives, readers are referred to the Michnos’ Conclusion in A Fate Worse Than Death, 457–480. 102. Wilbarger, Indian Depredations, 499–500; page from the Johnson Family’s bible, courtesy Dave Johnson. 103. Michno, A Fate Worse Than Death, 174–175. Also see, Tevis Clyde Smith, Frontier’s Generation, pp. 9–10: “The Indians then turned on the eldest daughter, a girl of some eighteen years of age, she was showing much courage, and because she had tried to aid her father and mother, she, too, was killed. In the meantime, the frightened children had attempted to escape; they were quickly seized, the youngest was killed, and the other two carried away.” Also, Cox, The Texas Rangers, 150–153. 104. Wilbarger, Indian Depredations, 490; and see, James C. White, The Promised Land: A History of Brown County, Texas, p. 13: “The Jackson murders were among the most savage and gruesome of all the tragedies occurring during the frontier period.” 105. Stopka, Partial List, 10; Michno, A Fate Worse Than Death, 175–177; T.R. Havins, Something About Brown, 22. 106. Frankie Davis Glenn, Capt’n John: Story of a Texas Ranger, 65–67. And see, Stopka, Partial List. Though in between call-ups when this particular incident happened, Captain John William Sansom served from April 1856 to July 1856, Texas Mounted Rangers/Volunteers, Middle Town, Comal County, and also from August 1859 to November 1859. See p. 9. In his characterization of Captain John W. Sansom, Utley, Lone Star Justice, refers to him as “capable and energetic.” 138. 107. San Antonio Daily Herald, August 13, 1859. 108. Reprint of letter to the editor of the Austin Intelligencer from G.W. Tood, picked up by The Texas Republican for the edition of June 2, 1860. “Mr. Hoerster’s son, that was stolen by the Indians about a year ago from this neighborhood

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[Mason County], has reached home in fine health.” For this most interesting story of an Indian kidnapping also see, Heinrich (Henry) Hoerster to C. (Christopher) Carson, 28 December 1859; E. W. Cave, Texas Secretary of State, to Colonel Kit Carson, 14 January 1860; and C. (Kit) Carson to J.L. Collins, Superintendent of Indian Affairs, 18 January 18, 1860. Copies of these letters courtesy Dave Johnson, via the most cooperative efforts of the late Jane Hoerster, Mason County Historical Commission. Also refer to Amelia W. Williams and Eugene C. Barker, eds., The Writings of Sam Houston, Vol. 7, 404, and Gammel, The Laws of Texas, 1822–1897, Vol. 5, 314–315, wherein a resolution of the Texas Legislature set aside $500 to cover expenses of returning William Hoerster from New Mexico Territory to Texas. 109. San Antonio Herald, August 13, 1859. 110. Certainly the definitive and outstanding biography of Juan Nepomuceno Cortina is Jerry Thompson’s Cortina: Defending the Mexican Name in Texas. For a thumbnail biographical sketch, see Thompson’s entry in Barkley and Odintz, The Portable Handbook of Texas, 248. For the fact that Cortina was under felony indictment, see Cortina: “Under indictment in Cameron County for murder and stealing livestock, Cortina came to town [Brownsville] heavily armed,” 7. Utley, Lone Star Justice, characterizes the borderland fellow: “This time the troubles could be personalized in a swashbuckling rouge named Juan Nepomuceno Cortina, whose offenses along the river between Brownsville and the Rio Grande magnified exponentially as the news swept northward. . . . Juan Nepomuceno Cortina was a thug and a patriot rolled into one. Thirty-five in 1859, illiterate yet smart and cunning, he used his mother’s ranch nine miles up the river from Brownsville as base for a variety of nefarious schemes. He readily joined with Anglos in stealing horses on both sides of the boundary and disposing them on the other side. Nor was he troubled by working with the minority establishment to attain their ends, so long as he benefited. . . . At election time, Cortina could deliver the votes of forty or fifty ‘very good friends,’ which explains why for a decade arrest warrants sworn against him for cattle theft and even murder went unserved. Despite his thuggish side, Cortina was a patriot, proud of his Mexican heritage and deeply offended by the discrimination, injustice, and casual violence and death inflicted by the handful of Anglo rulers on the ‘crowd of greasers.’ ” See pp. 106–109. Ostensibly, at least according to Graham, Kings of Texas, “Cortina hired out to the Anglos to bring Tejano peons to the polls to vote,” p. 78. Julian Samora, Joe Bernal, and Albert Peña, for their agenda-driven indictment of the Texas Rangers, Gunpowder Justice: A Reassessment of the Texas Rangers, acknowledge that Juan Cortina was a thief, a borderland criminal subject to “often venturing into cattle stealing, but always managing to escape conviction,” p. 14.

Notes

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111. Andrew R. Graybill, Policing the Great Plains: Rangers, Mounties, and the North American Frontier, 1875–1910. 74; Collins, Texas Devils, 109. Readers interested in the comparative survey between Canadian Mounties and Texas Rangers may also wish to access Eddie T. Woodard’s 1992 treatment A Compare Contrast Study of the History of the R.C.M.P. and the Texas Rangers and the Public Service Records of Personnel, copy archived at TRHF&M. Though written with a preprogrammed concept, Américo Paredes, With His Pistol in His Hand: A Border Ballad and Its Hero, perhaps reveals inadvertent and uncomfortable truths easily picked up by discerning readers: “Cortina, whose family once owned much of the land on which Brownsville is now located, was the first Border Mexican to ‘fight for his right with his pistol in his hand.’ He was forced into open conflict with American authority after he shot the Brownsville city marshal, who was mistreating a servant of Cortina’s mother.” (Emphasis added) p. 134. With additional clarification Américo Paredes also says of Juan Cortina: “The notorious Lugo brothers were captured and executed by Cortina, the border raider.” (Emphasis added), p. 30. 112. Thompson, Cortina, 37; Rayburn and Fry, Century of Conflict, 1821–1913, pp. 64–65: “While he was having an argument with his prisoner, he saw that Cabrera was trying to get a large pocket knife. Immediately Mr. Shears pulled out his revolver and struck Cabrera over the head and got the knife which was thrown on the ground.” Thompson, Cortina, “Some say the man was drunk and armed with a knife when he resisted, Shears began pistol-whipping him while attempting to drag him off to jail,” p. 37. Perhaps because it defuses a carefully crafted characterization of Bob Shears as an unmitigated ogre and depraved brute, the typical source is normally quoted only in part. One who knew him had this to say in full: Mr. Robert Shears during the time that he was in the Ranger service was considered by his comrades one of the most fearless men in the company. He had very little to say outside of his duty. His own comrades when referring to his ways often quoted that “Bob Shears art to have been a woman because he detested to hear smutty stories and stale jokes.” When in conversation with friends, he generally remained silent and listened to what his friend had to say, occasionally he chipped in a word. His only faults were that he used chewing tobacco to an excess leaving a pool of tobacco juice wherever he stood or sat, and with all his good characteristics, whenever he got angry at any one, he would on the spur of the moment issue a flow of curses and words that would require a rosary to keep track of what he had to say. But, I will say, he seldom got angry.

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The above is William Neale’s assessment of Bob Shears as found in Century of Conflict, 1821–1913. Many writers, quite interestingly, are inclined to equate Shears’s tobacco chewing habits with an inclination toward gratuitous violence. Similarly, Juan Cortina himself characterizes lawman Shears as the “squinting sheriff,” as if that, in and of itself, is another reason to rigorously condemn the ex-carpenter, ex-Ranger, reluctantly turned city marshal. Unequivocally, should policeman Bob Shears’s behavior warrant denunciation—and it might—it would not be because of habits associated with the use of tobacco or a tic afflicting his eyes, or, perhaps the unfulfilled need for eyeglasses. Thompson for his unparalleled treatment, Cortina, although partially critical of Neale’s remembrances, says: “These recollections, written many years after the fact, should be read with caution. Many of Neale’s errors relative to Cortina, however, have been corrected by the editors,” p. 260, n. 16. Whether or not Bob Shears actually owned a “penchant for violence” as mentioned by Collins in Texas Devils (109) might prove more speculative than certain. The first name of Cabrera is drawn from Collins (109) and, factually, one of Cortina’s sub-lieutenants was Tomás Cabrera. Likewise, if true, the act of going for a knife while in the process of being arrested is categorically a foolish move. Thumping a suspect’s head with a pistol barrel to thwart being skewed with a blade is not irrational. Any excessive and unreasonable force, however, is and would be worthy of censure. 113. Frank Cushman Pierce, A Brief History of the Lower Rio Grand Valley, p. 36: “and soon many Mexicans flocked to his [Cortina’s] standard, regarding him as the man who would right the wrongs of the Mexicans.” For convenient capsule analysis, three pages, see De León, They Called Them Greasers, 53–55. 114. Certainly the most thorough recount of the actual criminality and martial engagements of the first Cortina War may be found in Thompson’s Cortina, 67–127. Kearney and Knopp, Boom and Bust, p. 109: “Had he not overestimated his own strength Cortina might have worked his way to the position of political boss of Cameron County. However, caution and patience were characteristics singularly lacking in Cortina’s frenetic personality, and in midsummer 1859 he overplayed his hand.” 115. McCaslin, Fighting Stock, p. 84: “One day after Tobin’s Rangers rode into Brownsville, some of them participated in lynching one of Cortina’s lieutenants who had been captured by militia from the town.” Cox, The Texas Rangers, 154; Will and John Gorenfeld, “Chasing Juan Cortina,” Wild West, February 2016, 49. 116. Caldwell and DeLord, Texas Lawmen: The Good and the Bad, 307–310; Ivey, The Texas Rangers, 239.

Notes

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117. Thompson, Cortina, 41–45. 118. Ibid., 68. 119. Winfrey, Texas Indian Papers, 1846–1859, 342. 120. McCaslin, Fighting Stock, 85. 121. Utley, Lone Star Justice, 107. 122. Barkley and Odintz, The Portable Handbook of Texas, 248. For more depth on the first Cortina War, the interested reader might also wish to peruse Samuel P. Heintzelman, Jerry Thompson, ed., Fifty Miles and a Fight: Major Samuel P. Heintzelman’s Journal of Texas and the Cortina War.

Chapter 4 “It was Hell on the Home Front” 1. Michno, The Settlers’ War, x. The author’s take on the 1860s is insightful and devoid of atoning sentimentality simply for the sake of twenty-first-century political correctness. Quite properly it seems Michno expounds that rather than attempting to moralize or portray protagonists of his research as good or evil, he will—as it should be—allow that: “The characters’ actions will define them,” (ix). 2. Although mention of the so-called battle of Antelope Hills herein is leapfrogging backwards out of chronological order, for this treatment such was deemed fitting within the overall context. This clash between Texas Rangers and Comanches has received appropriate journalistic attention. The reader wishing to explore this episode in-depth may wish to review McCaslin, Fighting Stock, 674–78; Ford, Rip Ford’s Texas, 219–240; Wilkins, Defending the Borders, 75–99; Hughes, Rebellious Ranger, 129–159; Utley, Lone Star Justice, 100–103; and Cox, The Texas Rangers, 144–148. And, perhaps, also Anderson, The Conquest of Texas, 302–306; Caldwell and DeLord, Texas Lawmen: The Good and the Bad, 305–306. Quite interestingly and heretofore overlooked by nonfiction writers intent on either glorifying or vilifying Texas Rangers, Professor McCaslin in Fighting Stock dutifully posits: “John S. Ford’s battle with the Comanches on May 12, 1858, has come to be known as the Battle of Antelope Hills or the Battle of Little Robe Creek. It is worth noting that a military map of Texas published in 1857 shows the site to be almost entirely in Texas, not in the Indian Territory,” pp. 291–292, n.7. The obvious question arises: Was Ford using a copy of this map for the Antelope Hills campaign? ¿Quién sabe? 3. For an alternative interpretation of the Antelope Hills or Little Robe Creek episode an interested person may wish to consult Kavanagh, The Comanches. With that tome in hand, the reader may award weight—or not—to an assertion that “the Texans cowered behind the ‘calico breech-cloths of their motley, many-tongued, bronze allies,’ ” pp. 365–367. Nevertheless, the

534

4.

5.

6.

7.

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Comanche, rightly or wrongly, suffered a humiliating defeat at the hands of Texans and their Indian allies. Gwynne, Empire of the Summer Moon, 170–171; Anderson, The Conquest of Texas, p. 311: “everything in the camp was burned and those who escaped were entirely destitute.” Wallace and Hoebel, The Comanches, p. 302: “But during 1858 both the Texas and federal forces penetrated to the Comanches’ farthest retreat with sufficient strength to destroy the Indians wherever they set their lodges. . . . Thus it seemed to the Comanches that on every front they were met by aggressive foes; the hand of every white man was against them. In despair they huddled their families together near the agency on the Arkansas, while they sent their young warriors in small parties to harass the settlements from Red River to Corpus Christi.” George Klos, “ ‘Our People Could Not Distinguish One Tribe from Another’: The 1859 Expulsion of the Reserve Indians from Texas,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly, April 1994. Cogently the author identifies at least part of the problem: “One group of Comanches accepted reservation life on the Clear Fork of the Brazos River, but the majority still lived freely and conducted the raids for which the reservation people received blame. . . . The Comanches raided the margins of their territory, stealing horses in Texas and Mexico and trading them for other goods elsewhere. . . . Reserve Indians also suffered from stock raids,” pp. 601–606. Robert W. Lull, James M. Williams: Civil War General and Indian Fighter, p. 156: “Southwestern Apaches, Comanche, and Kiowas saw conflicts between white men as an opportunity for exploitations. . . . Largely unopposed, they capitalized upon the opportunity by resuming raids on settlers.” Utley, Lone Star Justice, p. 103: “Everyone, including the Indians themselves, agreed that the reservation experiment had failed and that the only solution lay in moving the residents to the Leased District north of Red River.” Michno, A Fate Worse Than Death, 182–183. Conceding that the Lemley girls were raped, Anderson, The Conquest of Texas, is loathe to admit the perpetrators were Indians, assuredly ringing somewhat hollow: “One of the worst attacks occurred in February 1860, when a party of renegades stole some four hundred horses, killed seven people in Erath County, and carried off two girls belonging to the Lemley family. They raped the girls repeatedly and after a few days abandoned them, naked but alive,” see p. 330. Conveniently or not for the author, true, Nancy and Hulda Lemley were raped and set free, but only after Lucinda Wood and Liddie Lemley were first raped, then executed. Noteworthy, too, was the fact that Lucinda Wood was also scalped after her death.

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8. Ibid.; Wilbarger, Indian Depredations, 507–508, places the murders during 1861, as does Brown, Indian Wars, 122. 9. Ibid., 184–186. 10. Ibid.; Gwynne, Empire of the Summer Moon, puts evidence across the anvil and hammers out the truth: “Even in one of the bloodiest years on the frontier—1860—the killing of Martha Sherman stood out. Maybe it was because she had been gang-raped and tortured while she was pregnant. Maybe it was because of her dead baby or because the precise, horrific details of what happened to her, which she herself related in the few days she lived, spread so quickly in Parker, Jack, and other counties. Whatever the case, in the days following the Sherman raid, all hell broke loose,” p. 173. Acknowledging that one of Mrs. Sherman’s attackers and rapists was “that big old red-headed Indian” is certainly fodder enough to suggest that a renegade white man—perhaps an assimilated captive—was now a part of the Comanche raiding party. Peculiarly, Anderson, The Conquest of Texas, opted to forgo mention of the Indians’ November 1860 raid and rapes and murders and livestock thefts—which actually precipitated the legendarily chronicled Pease River Campaign, nor did he choose to mention Martha Sherman’s horrendous and seemingly nonstop sexual abuse, her stillborn delivery and resultant death. Also see, Brown, Indian Wars, “seized Mrs. Sherman, conveyed her back to the house, committed nameless outrages on her person, shot numerous arrows into her body, scalped and left her as dead; but she survived four days, to detail the horrors she had undergone,” p. 121. 11. Michno, A Fate Worse Than Death, 36–39; Gwynne, Empire of the Summer Moon, for quotation, 174. Not unexpectedly, renditions of this story from both primary and secondary accounts are legion. For their piece in Glasrud’s and Weiss’ Tracking the Texas Rangers: The Nineteenth Century, “The ‘Battle’ at Pease River and the Question of Reliable Sources in the Recapture of Cynthia Ann Parker” authors Paul H. Carlson and Tom Crum, dissect previous writings regarding this incident. The validity of their interpretations will be left a judgment call for readers who may also want to access their book-length treatment, Myth, Memory and Massacre: The Pease River Capture of Cynthia Ann Parker. And see, Dallas Herald, January 2, 1861, picking up a story from the “Correspondent of the Dallas Herald, BELKNAP, TEXAS, Dec. 23d. 1860” as reported in Hugh D. Corwin’s Comanche and Kiowa Captives in Oklahoma and Texas, 65–66: “In their possession, I found the Bible of Mrs. Sherman, with her name on the fly leaf: and also papers of Henry Reilley, all of which I placed in the hands of Captain Currington [Cureton]. . . . The evidence is conclusive—clothes, papers &c. being recovered from them, which proves

536

12.

13.

14.

15.

16. 17.

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beyond doubt that they are the guilty wretches. Captain Ross and the men and officers under him, deserve, as they will receive, the thanks of the frontier.” Also see, J. Evetts Haley, Charles Goodnight: Cowman and Plainsman, 53: “Before they struck the trail where Ross had intercepted it, Goodnight picked up Mrs. Sherman’s Bible, where it had been dropped by the Indians. It had fallen with the lids closed and was undamaged by the rain.” Wanda Browning Falk, Peta-Anne Tenney, ed., Mrs J.A.B.: A Tribute to a Pioneer Grandmother, 1847–1931, 38. The veracity of Joseph Alansing Browning is taken at face value, although there rightly is room for a degree of innocent confusion with his declaration that Cynthia Ann dunked one of her sons, when in truth it was most likely her infant daughter Toh-tsee-ah aka Prairie Flower. Note: This Joe Browning was not the Josephus Browning killed and mutilated by Comanches during a June 1860 raid into Texas. W.C. Holden, “Frontier Defense in Texas During The Civil War,” West Texas Historical Association Yearbook, June 1928, 16–17: “Between February 18 and April 13 [1861], the eighteen federal posts in Texas were abandoned or surrendered. Some of the federal troops were allowed to withdraw from the state; others were held as prisoners of war. A few entered the service of the Confederacy.” Alwyn Barr, ed., “William T. Mechling’s Journal of the Red River Campaign, April 7–May 10, 1864,” Texana, Fall 1963, 364: “In February, 1861, Mechling had been appointed captain and acting assistant adjutant general to Colonel Ben McCulloch, commander of the Texas state forces which captured the United States arsenal in San Antonio.” The most detailed coverage of this timeframe is Smith’s Frontier Defense. See also, D.S. Howell, “Along the Texas Frontier During the Civil War,” West Texas Historical Association Yearbook, October 1937, 93. Awbrey and Dooley, Why Stop? 183; Floyd E. Ewing, Jr., “Unionist Sentiment on the Northwest Texas Frontier,” West Texas Historical Association Yearbook, October 1957: “The Peace Association was a secret group having a sign, password, and grip, and three separate degrees of membership. . . . Their plan was to ‘rise up in the night’ on a prearranged date, seize the military stores at Gainesville and Sherman, and proceed with the conquest. No person’s life or property was to be respected unless he had the sign, password, and grip; families of southern sympathizers were to be slain; property would be taken and retained; and the region was to be held by force until the arrival of Federal troops.” Quotation on pp. 64–65. Also see, for a thorough and meticulously well documented account, Richard B. McCaslin’s, Tainted Breeze: The Great Hanging at Gainesville, Texas, October 1862. Holden, “Frontier Defense In Texas During The Civil War,” 28–29. Ibid.

Notes

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18. Fehrenbach, Lone Star, 364. 19. R.H. Williams, E.W. Williams, ed., With the Border Ruffians, Memories of the Far West, 1852–1868: Sometime Lieutenant in the Kansas Rangers and Afterwards Captain in the Texan Rangers, 229–253. 20. Jerry D. Thompson, Vaqueros in Blue and Gray; Howard N. Martin, “Texas Redskins in Confederate Gray,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly, April 1967, 586–592. Also, L.W. Horton, “General Sam Bell Maxey: His Defense of North Texas and the Indian Territory,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly, April 1971: “He [Maxey] had some 6,000 Indians in the pay of the Confederate government, drawing clothing, rations, and forage. The Indians were so poorly armed and had so little ammunition that they were generally ineffective as a fighting force.” Quotation on p. 509. 21. Smith, Frontier Defense in the Civil War, 171. And see, David Pickering and Judy Falls, Brush Men and Vigilantes: Civil War Dissent In Texas. 22. Marilynne Howsley, “Forting Up on the Texas Frontier During the Civil War,” West Texas Historical Association Yearbook, October 1941. 72. 23. Utley, Lone Star Justice, 137. 24. Anderson, The Conquest of Texas, purports: “Officials released exaggerated accounts of raids and kidnappings, leading some historians to conclude that as many as four hundred Texans were either carried off or killed by Indians during the war. In reality, the number is closer to forty. . . . In other words, while a few minor Indian raids occurred—as well as one large one in 1864—it is fundamentally a myth that Indians overran the frontier areas of northwestern Texas between 1860 and 1865,” p. 328. Certainly the author is somewhat specific with regard to the timeframe, although whether the years 1860 and 1865 were inclusive or exclusive would prompt a fair question. As with beauty, whether an atrocity was “minor” or not may be in the eye of the beholders—or the lucky survivors. Too, the geographical designation of “northwest Texas” is somewhat problematic in that there is no clarification as to what constitutes “northwest Texas” and/or were the marauders only confining their sudden sorties to “northwest Texas” or were they, in fact, riding through “northwest Texas” to commit depredations elsewhere? Texans throughout the state were concerned, regardless which bands of Indians were inflicting the misery, be they from below the Rio Grande or from above the Red River. By contrast, Michno, The Settlers’ War, Appendix A, enumerates by year, month, location, and names of deceased murder victims. Tallying these figures—for this specific timeframe including 1860 and 1865—results in a Texas death count of 212. And for this same time-period, the Michnos in their A Fate Worse Than Death, specifically identify by name 24 individuals taken as captives. Even deferentially bending and charitably dropping 1860 and 1865 from Anderson’s equation of “the number is closer

538

25. 26.

27. 28.

29. 30. 31.

32. 33.

34.

35. 36.

37. 38.

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to forty,” would still triple his nonspecific estimate. The discerning reader may place confidence and/or value in the apparently competing versions as he or she deems appropriate. Howell, “Along the Texas Frontier During the Civil War,” 89; Smith, Frontier Defense, 130. Smith, Frontier Defense, p. 134: “The Indians burned eleven homes on October 13, [1864] after looting them of everything of value all horses that could be found were taken, and the cattle not driven off were killed.” Michno, A Fate Worse Than Death, 264. Ibid.; Smith, Frontier Defense, p. 132 writes that Mrs. Elizabeth Fitzpatrick was the mother rather than grandmother of the thirteen-year-old burned to death by Indians. Kenneth Neighbours, “Elm Creek Raid in Young County, 1864,” West Texas Historical Association Yearbook, October 1964, 89. Barry, Buck Barry: Texas Ranger and Frontiersman, 192. J. Marvin Hunter, “The Battle of Dove Creek,” West Texas Historical Association Yearbook, October 1934. This article is based on the first-person remembrances and quotations of Judge I.D. Ferguson, a participant in the engagement, on pp. 74–87. Ibid., 80. For this engagement also see, William C. Pool, “The Battle of Dove Creek,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly, April 1950, 367–385. For a roster of the twenty-six dead Texas Rangers at the 8 January 1865 battle of Dove Creek the reader is referred to Caldwell and DeLord, Texas Lawmen: The Good and the Bad, 319–323; also see, August Santleben, A Texas Pioneer: Early Staging and Overland Freighting Days on the Frontiers of Texas and Mexico (Forgotten Books edition) for a partial listing on p. 266. W.E. Jones to Governor E.M. Pease, 7 August 1867, and reprinted in James M. Day and Dorman Winfrey, eds., Texas Indian Papers, 1860–1916, p. 237: “There is no safety for life or property at any point within forty or fifty miles of the outside settlement, except immediately about the Military Posts or in the Towns and even the latter are not perfectly safe.” Michno, The Settlers’ War, xi. Charles W. Ramsdell, “Texas from the Fall of the Confederacy to the Beginning of Reconstruction,” The Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association, January 1908, 207. Howell, “Along the Texas Frontier During the Civil War,” 93. The reader seeking a far-reaching probe of the timeframe in the Lone Star State would well be advised to consult the exhaustive work of Carl H. Moneyhon in Texas After the Civil War: The Struggle of Reconstruction. Additionally, one might wish to judiciously access Kenneth W. Howell, ed., Still the Arena of Civil

Notes

39. 40. 41.

42.

43. 44.

45.

46.

47.

539

War: Violence and Turmoil in Reconstruction Texas, 1865–1874. This compilation by numerous scholars—as with all anthologies—must be measured circumspectly. Modern-era sociologists Adalberto Aguirre, Jr. and Jonathan H. Turner postulate in American Ethnicity: The Dynamics and Consequences of Discrimination, that to have truly been effective the “radical Reconstruction” would had to have been extended “over several generations” to “markedly” reduce discrimination in America, see p. 70. Also see, and read analytically, James M. Smallwood, Barry A. Crouch, and Larry Peacock, Murder and Mayhem: The War of Reconstruction in Texas. Lon Bennett Glenn, Texas Prisons: The Largest Hotel Chain in Texas, 49–50. Theresa Jach, Huntsville Penitentiary, p. 8: “Some white convicts were leased to railroad companies.” Glenn, Texas Prisons, 50. And see, Gary Brown, Singin’ a Lonesome Song: Texas Prison Tales, p. 174: “Land, often in the worst of conditions, was cleared, tracks laid, and railheads built—in large part by inmate labor for which the wealthy railroads usually paid Texas only pennies per day per convict.” Ole T. Nystel, Three Months with the Wild Indians: A Brief Sketch of the Life of Ole T. Nystel, Embracing His Experience While in Captivity to the Comanches and Subsequent Liberation From Them, 5–6. Ibid., 14. Ole was ransomed in Kansas. Zesch, The Captured, 70; Lillian Bidal, The Run of the Elk: A Biography of Angie Lydia Hendrix Cleve: “The early settlers of the Hill Country of Texas were under constant threat of Indian attack. During an attack on a neighboring family a young mother and her two children were killed. Another woman in the house was scalped. After scalping her, the Indians drove a sharp pointed arrow into her body. Although still alive she didn’t flinch. She realized that if she did she would certainly be killed. The woman survived the ordeal, and afterwards always wore a lace cap to hide the ragged scar of her massive head wound,” p. 9. Michno, A Fate Worse Than Death, 389; Anderson, Conquest of Texas, for whatever reason, though not surprisingly, foregoes any mention of the Legion Valley raid and the subsequent kidnappings, sexual assaults, and the murders of innocent women and children. J. Marvin Hunter, Horrors of Indian Captivity: True Accounts of Cruel Torture and Treatment of Captives Taken by Indians on the Frontier of Texas, 37–42; Alexander, Six-Shooters and Shifting Sands, 17–19. Michno, A Fate Worse Than Death, 390; also see, Nichols, Now You Hear My Horn, p. 165: “Crossing over the top of ceder [sic] mountain they left the young lady dead and scalped, and she had been cruelly outraged and her mangled body lay on the ground with her feete [sic] and hands tied to stakes. . . .”

540

TEXAS RANGERS

48. San Antonio Express, March 34, 1868. An article treating this attack is M. Bright, “The Scalping of Matilda Friend,“ Real West, January 1965, 20–21, 53. 49. Certainly one of the first assessments of the Texas State Police from a historical perspective would be William Curtis Nunn’s Master of Arts Thesis, “A Study of the State Police During the E.J. Davis Administration,” University of Texas, 1931. Nunn’s research clearly shaped an overall negative premise regarding The Texas State Police, for him: “It may be concluded that the state police (1) was unnecessary to begin with, (2) despotic in character, and (3) filled with a personnel of low type who, in some cases, committed crimes of unnatural brutality. . . . Thus, because it was unessential for the preservation of peace, monarchial in character, and possessed numerous members of questionable ability and morals, the state police must always darken the names of the administration who created it,” pp. 192–194. Quite interestingly, but not necessarily ironically, is a chronological detail. Webb, for his admittedly venerating but nevertheless classic The Texas Rangers: A Century of Frontier Defense, wholly devotes Chapter 11 to pillorying the Texas State Police. Compellingly, it’s but fair to mention that Nunn’s 1931 thesis predated Webb’s 1935 book by four years—and that Professor Webb was one of the graduate student’s faculty advisors, signing off on Nunn’s submission. Webb worthily credits Nunn’s research in the first footnote of Chapter 11. The reader desiring an alternative look at the man attributed as being the father of the Texas State Police would be advised to delve into Carl H. Moneyhon’s Edmund J. Davis: Civil War General, Republican Leader, Reconstruction Governor. 50. Gammel, The Laws of Texas, vol. 6, 193–195. Perhaps quite perceptively and objectively, William T. Field, Jr., “The Texas State Police, 1870–1873,” Texas Military History, Fall 1965, p. 131 posits: “the State Police system despite its heralded shortcomings, was, in certain respects, an efficient unit in an era which virtually precluded successful operations.” 51. Nunn, “A Study of the Texas State Police,” p. 194: “The men serving upon the force were often characters of a low type, and negroes and unscrupulous white men composed a large element in the membership of the organization.” 52. James B. Gillett, Six Years with the Texas Rangers, 1875–1881, p. 73: “Governor Davis had formed in Texas a state police force. Naturally its members were rank Republicans, and many of them were termed carpet-baggers. This body was never popular in Texas, especially as many of the force were negroes.” Ann Patton Baenziger, “The Texas State Police During Reconstruction: A Reexamination,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly, April 1969, measures the organization’s racial ratio: “The racial composition of the police appears to have been about 60 per cent white and 40 per cent Negro,” p. 475. A

Notes

53. 54. 55. 56.

57.

58. 59. 60. 61. 62.

63.

64. 65. 66. 67.

541

book-length treatment of the organization is The Governor’s Hounds: The Texas State Police, 1870–1873, by Barry A. Crouch and Donaly E. Brice. Subsequent to exhaustive research the authors somewhat downgrade the previously reported breakdown: “If we average these results to about 75 percent of those not listed by any race, blacks will account for about 32 percent of all who served for any length of time in the State Police, even though the analysis confirms that African Americans had by far the shortest average tours of duty among those reported.” See p. 176. Sergeant J.M. Redmon to Adjutant General Frank L. Britton, February 17, 1873, TSA. Couch and Brice present a detailed roster of known Texas State Policemen in their closely researched treatment, The Governor’s Hounds, 253–298. Ibid. Accessible reports also reveal the Texas State Police—for this timeframe—recovered approximately $30,000 worth of stolen property. 48–49. Marion Humphreys Farrow, Troublesome Times in Texas, p. 26: “Martial law was declared three times in 1871. In two of these counties, Hill and Limestone, the State Police, themselves, caused the lawless conditions to exist.” Nunn, “A Study of the State Police During the E.J. Davis Administration,” 66; Field, “The Texas State Police, 1870–1873,” 131. Certainly a more circumspect examination regarding Davidson’s alleged theft of state funds is covered in Couch and Brice, The Governor’s Hounds, 142–143. Michno, Encyclopedia of Indian Wars, 241, 242, 245, and 246. Michno, Forgotten Fights, 282–283. Michno, A Fate Worse Than Death, 407–430. Sowell, Early Settlers, 204. Caldwell and DeLord, Texas Lawmen: The Good and the Bad, 1835–1899, 325– 326. For an earlier work DeLord, The Ultimate Sacrifice, places the deaths of Texas Rangers Walter Richarz and Joseph Riff on 8 December 1870, see p. 45. Utley, Lone Star Justice, 139–139. Though speaking of Comanche raiding into Mexico, it seems author George M. Hyde in Rangers and Regulars is compelled to pontificate: “Many of the Comanches were also inclined to hoot at these peace schemes, which made them in theory good friends with the Texans, but left the Texas Rangers free to attack them when they were traveling through their own lands with the purpose of attending to their lawful business of raiding the Mexicans beyond the Rio Grande,” pp. 43–44. Ibid. Also see, Stopka, Partial List, 30. Wilbarger, Indian Depredations, 581–582. Neighbours, “Elm Creek Raid in Young County, 1864,” 88–89. Crimmins, “Camp Cooper and Fort Griffin,” 42; James M. Day and Dorman Winfrey, Texas Indian Papers, 1860–1916, page 381: “Captured a Mule train of Warren & DeBose—& burned 7 teamsters to death & robbed & destroyed

542

68. 69.

70. 71.

72.

73. 74. 75.

TEXAS RANGERS

the whole train.” Bill O’Neal, Fighting Men of the Indian Wars: A Biographical Encyclopedia of the Mountain Men, Soldiers, Cowboys, and Pioneers Who Took Up Arms During America’s Westward Expansion, 82–83. Brown, Indian Wars, 121. H. Allen Anderson, ed., “Indian Raids on the Texas Frontier: The Personal Memoir of Hugh Allen Anderson,” West Texas Historical Association Yearbook. October 1975, 90. Ed Carnal, “Reminiscences of a Texas Ranger,” Frontier Times, December 1923, 24. For activities of the illicit but lucrative traffic the interested reader might refer to J. Evetts Haley’s, “The Comanchero Trade” as found in the January 1935 edition of the Southwestern Historical Quarterly and Charles L. Kenner’s, The Comanchero Frontier: A History of New Mexican-Plains Indian Relations, originally published under the title A History of New Mexican Plains Indian Relations as previously cited herein. Also reference is made to Carl Coke Rister’s piece, “Harmful Practices of Indian Traders of the Southwest, 1865–1876,” New Mexico Historical Review, July 1931. John Hittson’s raid into New Mexico Territory is covered by his biographer Vernon R. Maddux, John Hittson: Cattle King on the Texas and Colorado Frontier. Also see, Edgar C. McMechen, “John Hittson: Cattle King,” The Colorado Magazine, September 1934; and see, Philip J. Rasch, “The Hittson Raid,” the New York Posse of the Westerners, Brand Book, 1963. Also Bob Alexander’s chapter devoted to Hittson, “A Modern Hercules to the Rescue,” in Bad Company and Burnt Powder a revised rendition of his article “Comanchero Nightmare: John Nathan Hittson,” as it appeared in the April–June 2004 edition of the National Outlaw/Lawman History Association Quarterly. Rather succinctly and accurately, biographer Clifford R. Caldwell reflects on the outlook of his subject: “For Wylie, however, the memory of Hittson’s attack was fresh in the minds of would-be rustlers and buyers of purloined livestock from Texas, thereby discouraging such activities.” See Caldwell, Robert Kelsey Wylie: Forgotten Cattle King of Texas, 62. Rocky Mountain News, January 5, 1873, picking up a story from the New York Evening Post. Frederick Nolan, Bad Blood: The Life and Times of the Horrell Brothers, 16–17. David Johnson, The Horrell Wars: Feuding in Texas and New Mexico, 31–43. Johnson, a noted expert on Texas feuds and their aftermaths, covers this episode, “The Lampasas Horror,” in sound analytical detail, not simply relying on the typically regurgitated blend of some fact and much folklore. All of the slain Texas State Police officers are memorialized at Washington, D.C. See, National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial: Roll Call of Fallen Officers, 32, 44, 128, and 207.

Notes

543

76. Dallas Daily Herald, April 22, 1873. 77. George E. Shelley, “The Semicolon Court Case of Texas,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly, April 1945, 467. 78. Colonel M.L. Crimmins, “The Second Dragoon Indian Campaign in Texas,” West Texas Historical Association Yearbook, October 1945, quoting a letter in the 1 September 1849 edition of the Texas State Gazette, submitted by George W. Kendall, publisher of the New Orleans Picayune. Quotation on pp. 50–51. 79. Thad Sitton, The Texas County Sheriff: Lord of the County Line and Texas High Sheriffs. 80. Gammel, The Laws of Texas, Vol. 8, 86. 81. Adjutant General William Steele to Major John B. Jones, 16 June 1874, TRHF&M: “The companies can be Seventy-five in addition to the officers.” 82. Gammel, The Laws of Texas, Vol. 8, 86. 83. Dudley G. Wooten, ed., A Comprehensive History of Texas, 1685 to 1897, 2 vols. Former Adjutant General W. H. King contributed the chapter, “The Texas Ranger Service and History of the Rangers, With Observations on Their Value as a Police Force,” Vol. 2, 329–367. 84. General Order No. 2, Frontier Battalion, TSA. 85. Waco Daily Examiner, March 12, 1874. 86. Though often mentioned in Texas Ranger chronicles, Major John B. Jones had not been the subject of a comprehensive biography until award-winning author Rick Miller tackled the overdue task, crafting the definitive work in his Texas Ranger John B. Jones and the Frontier Battalion, 1874–1881. 87. Miller, John B. Jones, 43–44; Alexander, Riding Lucifer’s Line, 4–5. The Washington County Volunteer Company A’s rolls mustering the enlisting personnel into state service and out of state service are extant in the TSA. A biography of the unit’s commander is Chuck Parsons’s and Marianne E. Hall Little’s Captain L.H. McNelly, Texas Ranger: The Life and Times of a Fighting Man.

Chapter 5 Frontier Battalion, Company A 1. General Order No. 1, Frontier Battalion, May 1874, TSA. 2. Muster & Payroll, Company A, Frontier Battalion, TSA; Frederick Wilkins, The Law Comes to Texas: The Texas Rangers, 1870–1901, 32; Tise, Texas County Sheriffs, 176. 3. Miller, Texas Ranger John B. Jones, 36; Leon Metz, John Wesley Hardin: Dark Angel of Texas, 142. 4. General Order No. 1, Frontier Battalion, May 1874, TSA.

544

TEXAS RANGERS

5. General Order No. 2, Frontier Battalion, May 1874, TSA. 6. Alexander, Winchester Warriors, 18–19. That Major Jones was emphatic— at least at first—regarding the non-employment of married Rangers is buttressed in his communiqué to Captain Jeff Maltby, 15 August 1874, which says, in part: “The reason forbidding the enlistment of married men in the orders for the organization of the Battalion was that none might be enlisted who would have excuse for going home during the entire term of service, except to be remounted, sickness or for some other extraordinary or unavoidable reason.” Found in TRHF&M. 7. Miller, Texas Ranger John B. Jones, 41–42. 8. Hardin, The Texas Rangers, 25. 9. Alexander, Winchester Warriors, 23. 10. Wooten, A Comprehensive History, Vol. 2, 347; Wilkins, The Law Comes to Texas, 42; Utley, Lone Star Justice, 147; Webb, The Texas Rangers, 312; Gillett, Six Years with the Texas Rangers, 62. Also, Dr. E. G. Nicholson to Texas Adjutant General (AG) William H. Steele, 2 July 1874, TSA. 11. Miller, Texas Ranger John B. Jones, 46. 12. George Durham, Clyde Wantland, ed., Taming the Nueces Strip: The Story of McNelly’s Rangers, 20–21. For use of the 1866 Winchesters during a desperate clash between Texas Rangers and Indians, see Wayne R. Austerman, “The Day Rangers Relied on Winchesters,” Wild West, October 2012, 36–39. 13. Gillett, Six Years with the Texas Rangers, 1875 to 1881, 4. 14. Corsicana Observer, May 27, 1874. 15. Alexander, Riding Lucifer’s Line, 44. 16. Alexander, Winchester Warriors, 27. 17. As a sidebar it’s quite interesting to note the remarks of Urban Bernhard Frederic Henning von Bosse, Lillian Bidal, ed., in Henning’s Story. The early-day traveler had been gifted with a carbine for protection and to hunt buffalo with, a weapon he described as “too large for a pistol and too short for a gun.” Rather curiously he wondered, was the designation “carbine” genesis for the term “son-of-a-gun?” See pages 33–34. 18. Muster and Payroll, Company A, Frontier Battalion, TSA. 19. Beside the incident cited in the following endnote, another example of John Wesley Hardin’s running into a tougher customer may be found in Jan Devereaux’s award-winning article “Jagville” as published in the January– March 2004 edition of the Quarterly of the National Association for Outlaw and Lawman History, Inc: “At booming Eddy [New Mexico], Hardin’s story made the newspapers too, and the Phenix [New Mexico] crowd was no doubt a little amused, but they knew their town hadn’t ‘lost its nerve.’ Many suspected that the El Paso badman [Hardin] was due a seminar in proper

Notes

20. 21.

22.

23.

24. 25. 26. 27. 28.

545

barroom etiquette. Around August 1, 1895, John Wesley Hardin was back in Phenix, and while there, he ‘tried to work his El Paso game of picking up money from a gambling table.’ Not intimidated in the least by John Wesley’s viperous reputation, an unwavering [Richard Alonzo “Lon” Bass] Lon Bass poked his cocked six-shooter into Hardin’s face and demanded he put the money back and he did! ‘John Wesley only tarried in Eddy between trains that day,’ so a flabbergasted newspaperman [for the Pecos Valley Argus] wrote,” p. 10. Tevis Clyde Smith, Frontier’s Generation, 53. Ibid., 54. For the location of the Williams Ranch refer to James C. White, ed., The Promised Land: A History of Brown County, Texas, 47; Joseph G. Rosa, Age of the Gunfighters, The Taming of the West, with myth-shattering aplomb shares reality: “In examining the killings credited to John Wesley Hardin, it is apparent that he concocted devious schemes to get the drop on any opponent, rarely facing down a man in the traditional manner. For someone reputed to be a wizard with a six-shooter, and who could have earned a living in a circus as a trick shot, he seems to have been surprisingly reluctant to engage in face-to-face conflict.” Quotation on p. 52. Chris McNab, ed., Gunfighters: The Outlaws and Their Weapons, editorially following suit it seems, makes the same assessment of John Wesley Hardin, making use of the same verbiage as cited above, see p. 73. Richard C. Marohn, The Last Gunfighter: John Wesley Hardin. Marohn’s biography of John Wesley Hardin is the most thorough—with numerous diagrams—treatment of the death of Brown County Deputy Sheriff Charley Webb; Norman Wayne Brown, “The Killing That Put Hardin on the Run,” True West, November 2016, hypothesizes that Deputy Webb’s “claim to fame came when his plan to kill notorious gunfighter John Wesley Hardin backfired.” Absent evidence the author supplements conjecture: “When Webb learned that Hardin had a price on his head, dead or alive, he must have decided to go bounty hunting. What other business could he have had to ride outside his county to the town of Comanche?” See p. 34. That John Wesley Hardin’s life’s story is yet liberally sprinkled with mythology, even in twenty-first century biographies, is easy to unearth. Circumspection is advised. Hardin vs. The State of Texas, No. 44, APP, 360 (1878). Citizens Petition to Governor Coke, 28 May 1874, TRHF&M. Special Order, No. 6. Frontier Battalion, 3 June 1874, TRHF&M. Captain Waller to Major Jones, 30 May 1874, TRHF&M. Miller, Texas Ranger John B. Jones, 41; Special Order No. 8, Frontier Battalion, June 13, 1874: “Z.T. Wattles private of Co. ‘A’ will proceed

546

29. 30. 31. 32. 33.

34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41.

42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51.

TEXAS RANGERS

without delay to Austin with dispatches for Gen Steele, Adjt. General of the State. Then proceed with pack mule and ammunition, to Comanche and report to Capt. Waller for duty. . . .” in TRHF&M. Monthly Return, Company A, Frontier Battalion, June 1874, TSA. Ibid. Proclamation of Governors’ Reward, 3 July 1874, TSA. Marohn, The Last Gunfighter, 86–87. Ibid., 87; Metz, Dark Angel of Texas, clarifies: “The town had no jail, however. Comanche authorities incarcerated Joe Hardin and the others in a twostory rock structure, in all probability the former dry goods store operated by David Carnes on the east side of the square,” page 142. Ibid., 88. Chuck Parsons and Norman Brown, A Lawless Breed: John Wesley Hardin and Violence in the Wild West, 180. Handwritten Remembrances of J.H. Taylor, in TSA. Monthly Return, Company A, Frontier Battalion, June 1874, TSA. J.D. Stephens on Fleming and Stephens letterhead, to Governor Richard Coke, 10 June 1874, TRHF&M. Monthly Return, Company A. Frontier Battalion, June 1874, TSA. Miller, Texas Ranger John B. Jones, 49. Monthly Return, Company A, Frontier Battalion, June 1874, TSA; Tise, Texas County Sheriffs, 70, 107, 126; Stopka, Partial List, 32; Cindy Evans and Pauline Hochhalter, eds., The Genealogy and History of Brown County Sheriffs, 1857–2008, 33–37; and Ivey, “Ranging District: Coleman County with headquarters at Camp Colorado,” The Texas Rangers, 145. Monthly Return, Company A, Frontier Battalion, July 1874, TSA. Special Order No. 3. Frontier Battalion, 15 July 1874, Signed, AG Steele, TRHF&M. AG Steele to Major Jones, 8 [?] August 1874, TRHF&M. The day of the month, a single digit, is somewhat blurred. Major Jones to AG Steele, 1 July 1874, TRHF&M. Ibid. Private A.L. Taylor, Company A, Frontier Battalion, to AG Steele, 31 July 1874, TRHF&M; Muster & Payroll, Company A, Frontier Battalion, TSA. Ibid. The attorneys’ remarks are handwritten below Andrew Taylor’s signature. Ibid. AG Steele’s decision and notation, TRHF&M. Special Order No. 19. Frontier Battalion, 27 September 1874, TRHF&M. Ibid.

Notes

547

52. Major Jones to AG Steele, 30 September 1874, TRHF&M. Also quoted in Miller, Texas Ranger John B. Jones, 73. 53. Dr. E.G. Nicholson, Battalion Surgeon, to Major Jones, 6 November 1874, TRHF&M; Monthly Return, Company A, Frontier Battalion, October 1874, TSA; Muster Roll, Company A, Frontier Battalion, May 1874, TSA. On the original Muster Roll Griffith is enumerated as 4th Corporal, but clearly at the time he received the self-inflicted bullet wound he was ranked as one of the Company A Sergeants, a reasonably presumable field promotion. Interestingly, later, when applying for an Indian War pension, Griffith stated that he had suffered “a bullet wound in my left thigh.” See Robert W. Stephens, Texas Rangers Indian War Pensions, 37–38. Certainly the question begging an answer would be, did Ellis R. Griffith receive but one wound during his Texas Ranger service—he would also serve in Company E—or was there a second injury due to hostile hands of an Indian? 54. 1st Sergeant G.M. Doolittle to Major Jones, 15 October 1874, TRHF&M; 1st Lieutenant J.W. Millican to Major Jones, 12 November 1874: “Every thing is quiet and we are drilling twice a day. . . .” In the TRHF&M. 55. Special Order No. 27, Frontier Battalion, 7 November 1874, TRHF&M; 1st Lieutenant Millican to Major Jones, 7 November 1874 in TRHF&M: “he [James Hollis] has disobeyed My order… and refuses to Submit to the penalty: Which is Sufficient evidence to me that he is an unfit Subject for a Ranger and had ought to be discharged.” 56. Ibid. 57. Lieutenant Millican to Major Jones, 8 November 1874, TRHF&M. 58. Major Jones to AG Steele, 7 November 1874, TRHF&M. 59. Monthly Return, Company A, Frontier Battalion, November 1874, TSA. 60. General Order No. 5, Frontier Battalion, 27 October 1874, Subjection II, TRHF&M. 61. General Order No. 8, Frontier Battalion, 25 November 1874, TRHF&M. 62. Ibid. 63. General Order No. 7, Frontier Battalion, 9 December 1874, TRHF&M. 64. Citizens Petition to Governor Coke, 11 November 1874, TRHF&M. 65. Special Orders No. 31 and 32, Frontier Battalion, 21 December 1874, TRHF&M. 66. Sergeant Doolittle to Major Jones, 14 December 1874, TRHF&M. 67. Lieutenant Wilson to Major Jones, 16 January 1875, TRHF&M. 68. Monthly Return, Company A, Frontier Battalion, January 1875, TSA. 69. Lieutenant Wilson to Major Jones, 8 March 1875, TRHF&M; Monthly Returns, Company A, Frontier Battalion, January, February, and March 1874, TSA; Tise, Texas County Sheriffs, 402.

548

TEXAS RANGERS

70. N.A. Jennings, A Texas Ranger, 56. 71. Lieutenant Wilson to Major Jones, 15 February 1875, TRHF&M. 72. Major Jones to Lieutenant Wilson, 15 March 1875, TRHF&M: “You were right in not allowing the men to trade their horses for inferior ones. The law expressly forbids the men to dispose of their horses after they are appraised without the consent of their commanding officers.” 73. Lieutenant Wilson to Major Jones, 15 February 1875, TRHF&M. 74. Major Jones to Lieutenant Wilson, 25 March 1875, TRHF&M. 75. Major Jones to AG Steele, 30 March 1875, TRHF&M. 76. Major Jones to AG Steele, 30 April 1875, TRHF&M; Miller, Texas Ranger John B. Jones, 98. 77. Major Jones to Ira Long, Decatur, Texas, 25 August 1875, TRHF&M; Special Order No. 43, Frontier Battalion, 25 August 1875, TRHF&M. 78. Major Jones to AG Steele, 9 July 1875, TRHF&M. 79. Major Jones to Ira Long, 25 August 1875, TRHF&M. 80. Ira Long to Major Jones, 11 August 1875, TRHF&M. 81. Major Jones to Ira Long, 25 August 1875, TRHF&M. 82. Ibid. 83. Ira Long to Major Jones, 20 August 1875, TRHF&M. 84. Special Order No. 52, Frontier Battalion, 14 December 1875, TRHF&M. 85. AG Steele to Major Jones, 20 December 1875, TRHF&M; Lieutenant Long to Major Jones, 26 December 1875, TRHF&M. 86. Monthly Return, Company A, Frontier Battalion, December 1875, TSA. 87. Lieutenant Long to Major Jones, 31 December 1875, TRHF&M; Alexander, Six-Shooters and Shifting Sands, 70–71. One of the Texas Rangers escorting prisoner C.C. Rush to Decatur was Frank Jones, the future longtime Captain of Company D, Frontier Battalion, a leader mortally cut down chasing borderland bandits during 1893 along the Rio Grande in El Paso County. Accompanying Jones were Rangers J.D. Nelson and Charles Walsh.

Chapter 6 Frontier Battalion, Company B 1. General Order No. 1, Frontier Battalion, May 1874, TSA. 2. Muster & Payroll, Company B, Frontier Battalion, May 1874, TSA; Tise, Texas County Sheriffs, 549; Ivey, The Texas Rangers, 144 and 147; Stopka, Partial List, 30, 33, and 34. 3. J.C. Loving’s Report of Indian Depredations, 9 November 1875, TRHF&M. 4. Muster & Payroll, Company B, Frontier Battalion, TSA. Here it is noted that Captain Stevens was also mounted on a horse that appraised at $150. Monthly Return, Company B, Frontier Battalion, June 1874, TSA.

Notes

549

5. Robert G. Carter, On the Border with Mackenzie: or Winning West Texas from the Comanches, 213; Charles M. Robinson III, Bad Hand: A Biography of General Ranald S. Mackenzie, 161–162. Interestingly and sparking twentyfirst-century controversy, one of the hide-hunters, Billy Dixon, purportedly killed a horseback warrior at the incredible distance of 1,538 yards with his Sharps .50-90. The fascinated reader may wish to peruse Bob Boze Bell’s “A Long Shot: Buffalo Hunters vs. Quanah Parker’s Warriors” as featured in the April 2016 edition of True West, 54–57. Also see, the Letters to the Editor, as carried in True West, May 2016, p. 8, for thought-provoking ballistic findings regarding the legendary “Long Shot.” 6. Monthly Return, Company B, Frontier Battalion, July 1874, TSA; Muster & Pay Roll, Company B, Frontier Battalion, TSA. 7. Ibid.; Miller, Texas Ranger John B. Jones, 51–52. 8. Quotation from James L. Haley, The Buffalo War: The History of the Red River Uprising of 1874, 86. 9. An account of this engagement may be found in the October 1926 edition of Frontier Times in the piece penned by John M. Turner, “Indian Fight on Cameron Creek,” 12–13. 10. Michno, Encyclopedia of Indian Wars, 272–273. 11. Ernest Wallace, Ranald S. Mackenzie on the Texas Frontier, 119. 12. William Sturtevant Nye, Carbine and Lance: The Story of Old Fort Sill, 182– 183; Day and Winfrey, Texas Indian Papers, 1860–1916, p. 383: “July 10— Ind Killed Jno Heath herdsman of Loving.” 13. Alexander, Winchester Warriors, 42. 14. Miller, Texas Ranger John B. Jones, 52; Tise, Texas County Sheriffs, 402. 15. Monthly Return, Company B, Frontier Battalion, July 1874, TSA. 16. Miller, Texas Ranger John B. Jones, 52–53; Haley, The Buffalo War, 87. 17. Alexander, Winchester Warriors, 42. 18. Ibid., 43. Here it seems appropriate to note that in Captain Dan Roberts’s near-classic little tome Rangers and Sovereignty there is a chapter titled “Lost Valley Fight.” The author rightly advises the reader he was not personally involved, but is picking up and quoting in entirety the story from the El Paso Morning News as penned by another nineteenth-century Texas Ranger, James B. Gillett. This recount of the Texas Ranger battle at Lost Valley must be examined with caution and circumspection. The inaccuracies are multiple. 19. Nye, Carbine and Lance, 196. 20. Miller, Texas Ranger John B. Jones, 54. 21. Haley, The Buffalo War. Major Jones committed “the cardinal sin of Indian warfare: He split his meager command into still smaller groups to try to rediscover a main trail,” 87.

550

TEXAS RANGERS

22. Ed Carnal, “Reminiscences of a Texas Ranger,” Frontier Times, December 1923, 21. 23. Sowell, Early Settlers, 799. 24. Walter M. Robertson, “The Loss [sic, Lost] Valley Fight,” Frontier Times, December 1929, 102. 25. Alexander, Winchester Warriors, 44. 26. Miller, Texas Ranger John B. Jones, 54; Sowell, Early Settlers, 798–803; Muster & Pay Roll, Company D, Frontier Battalion, TSA; also, typescript: Max Brown, “John Valentine Wheeler’s Pension File,” Courtesy the author and compiler, Max Brown, Ringgold, Montague County, Texas. 27. Alexander, Winchester Warriors, 45; Muster & Pay Roll, Company E, Frontier Battalion, TSA. 28. Ibid., 46. The assertion that Ranger Billy Glass was a North Carolinian is suppositional but is drawn from the fact that the Muster & Pay Roll for Company B, Frontier Battalion, enumerates J.K. Glass, 2nd Corporal, and J.W. Glass, Private, both from North Carolina. And in point of fact, in a second Muster & Pay Roll, noting the death of Billy Glass is the entry: “J.K. Glass for heirs of W. A. Glass.” In the first instance the total entry for W.A. Glass is simply: “Killed in battle July 12, 1874.” In the TSA. The fact that the death of Glass is mentioned on these initial Muster & Pay Rolls clearly indicates they were not completed at the time of enlistment, but were compiled well afterwards. 29. Miller, Texas Ranger John B. Jones, 55; Mrs. Edgar T. Neal, “Runtiest Ranger Is Hero of ’74 Fight With Indians,” Frontier Times, November 1931, 59–60; Sowell, Early Settlers, 800. Several separate accounts suggest that Wattles was assisted by other Texas Rangers during the dash to rescue Billy Glass. See Muster & Pay Roll, Company A, Frontier Battalion, TSA. 30. Ibid., 56; Utley, Lone Star Justice, p. 150: “Jones kept his head and provided an example of courage and cool deliberation that braced his men.” Cox, The Texas Rangers, p. 226: “The major’s bravado motivated the men, but it could have gotten him killed.” 31. Typescript, Texas Indian Fighters and Frontier Rangers: Their Organization and Some of Their Noted Battles With an Account of the Battalion of 1874, With Brief Sketches of the Most Noted Leaders, And an Appendix by Ben C. Stuart, 185, TSA; Weekly Dallas Herald, August 1, 1874. “The number of horses killed and permanently disabled was twelve, and the number slightly wounded, ten.” 32. Cora Melton Cross, “Ira Long: Cowboy and Texas Ranger,” Frontier Times, October 1930, 25.

Notes

551

33. William Crump Callicott, “The Lost Valley Fight,” Webb Papers, Center for American History, University of Texas, Austin; Utley, Lone Star Justice, p. 150: “Lone Wolf himself exacted his revenge by smashing Bailey’s skull and dismembering his body.” 34. Nye, Carbine and Lance, 200. Somewhat tellingly it seems, Anderson, Conquest of Texas, chose to wholly omit mention of the 1874 clash at Lost Valley between Major John B. Jones’s Rangers and Chief Lone Wolf’s Kiowa, and the resultant mutilation and disembowelment of Texas Ranger Dave Bailey’s corpse. Likewise, the combat death of Private Billy Glass, the first Frontier Battalion Ranger killed in the line of duty, is not a part of Anderson’s narrative. 35. Allen Lee Hamilton, Sentinel of the Southern Plains: Fort Richardson and the Northwest Texas Frontier, 1866–1876, 151. 36. Alexander, Winchester Warriors, 51. 37. Ben Procter, Just One Riot: Episodes of Texas Rangers in the 20th Century, p. 23: “On September 1, 1968, forty-one year-old Lee Roy Young, a fourteen-year veteran who was a DPS [Department of Public Safety] investigator in San Antonio, became the first black appointee in Ranger history, and on January 1, 1989 was joined by thirty-five year-old Earl Ray Pearson, formerly a Highway Patrol sergeant, who proudly pinned on the Ranger badge.” Robert M. Utley, Lone Star Lawmen: The Second Century of Texas Rangers: “smoothed the way for the appointment, in July 1988, of the first black Ranger, Lee Roy Young.” See p. 315. 38. Major Jones to AG Steele, 15 July 1874, TRHF&M; Monthly Return, Company B, Frontier Battalion, July 1874, TSA. 39. Ibid. 40. H.H. McConnell, Five Years a Cavalryman: Or, Sketches of Regular Army Life on the Texas Frontier, 1866–1871, 160. 41. Devereaux, Pistols, 79–81. 42. Major Jones to AG Steele, 17 July 1874, TRHF&M. 43. Major Jones to AG Steele, 24 July 1874, TRHF&M. 44. Major Jones to AG Steele, 19 September 1874, TRHF&M. 45. AG Steele to Major Jones, 2 October 1874, TRHF&M. 46. Corpus Christi Weekly Gazette, August 1, 1874; Weekly Dallas Herald, August 1, 1874, picking up the story from the Galveston Daily News. 47. Major Jones to AG Steele, 14 July 1874, TRHF&M. 48. AG Steele to Governor Coke, 31 August 1874, TRHF&M. 49. Major Jones to AG Steele, 1 December 1874, TRHF&M.

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50. Walter Prescott Webb, The Story of the Texas Rangers, p. 68: “The fight at Lost Valley was a bad start for the Frontier Battalion.” Wilkins, The Law Comes to Texas, p. 46: “It was a costly experience, but the Rangers had learned a great deal about fighting Indians. Although the honors went to the Kiowa. . . .” Utley, Lone Star Justice, p. 150: “A neophyte at Indian warfare, Jones probably believed that he had driven the enemy from the field and won a victory.” Cox, The Texas Rangers: “Jones’ first Indian fight, only two months after the organization of the battalion, came close to being his last. At best, the confrontation with Lone Wolf had been a draw.” See p. 228. James Farber, Texans with Guns, p. 107: “Only nightfall saved the Rangers.” Bern Keating, An Illustrated History of the Texas Rangers, p. 103: “Lone Wolf who dealt the Rangers one of their rare defeats. The battle of Lost Valley. . . .” Michael D. Pierce, The Most Promising Young Officer: A Life of Ranald Slidell Mackenzie, p. 144: “In that fight [Lost Valley 1874] the Rangers came out second best.” Miller, Texas Ranger John B. Jones, p. 60: “Jones’ first conflict as commander of the Frontier Battalion can probably be rightfully criticized.” 51. Special Order No. 12, Frontier Battalion, 30 July 1874 and Special Order No. 14, Frontier Battalion, 11 September 1874, TRHF&M. 52. Monthly Return, Company B, Frontier Battalion, August 1874, TSA. 53. G.B. Pickett to AG Steele, 26 August 1874, TRHF&M. Also see, Day and Winfrey, Texas Indian Papers, 1860–1916, p. 385: “Augt 74 Ind Killed Mrs Huff & 2 grown daughters—Scalped and Mutilated them.” Also, S.M. Gose, Presiding Justice Wise County, to Major Jones, 25 December 1874 and M.M. McKnight, Presiding Justice Montague County to Major Jones, 28 December 1874, TRHF&M. 54. Monthly Return, Company B, Frontier Battalion, August 1874, TSA; Rosalie Gregg, ed., Wise County History: A Link with the Past, 333; Mary Cates Moore, Centennial History of Wise County, 58–59. 55. Muster & Pay Roll, Company B, Frontier Battalion, TSA; Ray Heinsohn, “Who They Really Were: Company C Texas Ranger Frontier Battalion, 1874,” Master of Arts Thesis, The University of Houston Clear Lake, 2007. “Twenty year old Company B Texas Ranger Private G.W. ‘Lum’ Huff was a Company B private serving in Young County when Indians killed his mother and two sisters.” See p. 54. Though Heinsohn’s astute thesis is, as stated, focused on the early-day activities of Company C, Frontier Battalion, the “Huff Massacre” is mentioned due to fervent involvement of both Company B and C in hunting for the murderous Indians’ trail. 56. Major Jones to AG Steele, 4 October 1874, TRHF&M. 57. Certification of Loss of Private T. L. Vandargiff’s Horse, 1st Lieutenant S.G. McGarrah, 2 October 1874, TRHF&M; Special Order No. 21, Frontier Battalion, 2 October 1874, TRHF&M.

Notes

58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63.

64. 65. 66.

67. 68. 69.

70. 71.

72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77.

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Special Order No. 27, Frontier Battalion, 7 November 1874, TRHF&M. Special Order No. 29, Frontier Battalion, 20 November 1874, TRHF&M. General Order No. 5, Frontier Battalion, 27 October 1874, TRHF&M. Captain Stevens to Major Jones, 27 October 1874, TRHF&M. General Order No. 6, Frontier Battalion, 5 November 1874, TRHF&M; Major Jones to AG Steele, 29 October 1874, TRHF&M. Charges and Specifications Preferred Against Captain George W. Stevens, Co. “B” Battalion Texas Rangers, Signed, 15 May 1874 by S.G. McGarrah, TRHF&M. Informally, the charges had been brought forward at an earlier date. Captain Stevens to Major Jones, 14 November 1874, TSA. Dr. John F. Robinson, Physician Company B, to Major Jones, 14 November 1874, TRHF&M. Captain Stevens to Major Jones, 14 November 1874, TRHF&M. Texas Ranger Charles Heard is not listed on the initial Muster & Pay Roll for Company B, indicating he was enlisted at a later date, during the rather routine coming and goings of Frontier Battalion personnel. Captain Stevens to Major Jones, 24 November 1874, TRHF&M. Moses Maier, 4th Sergeant, Company B, Frontier Battalion, to Major Jones, 24 November 1874, TRHF&M. Certificate of Pay and Discharge, Moses Maier, Company B, Frontier Battalion, 10 December 1874. With notation: “Segt. Moses Maier Served as Sergeant up to Nov. 11th and as private up to this date,” TRHF&M; Frances T. Ingmire, Texas Ranger Service Records, 1847–1900, Vol. 4, 59. General Order No. 7, Frontier Battalion, 9 December 1874, TRHF&M. J. Evetts Haley, Jeff Milton: A Good Man with a Gun, 31. Milton’s assertion that Ira Long “couldn’t read or write,” may or may not be correct. On the other hand, that Ira Long could exhibit the courage of a lion is fact. Assuredly, Lieutenant Ira Long’s skill as a mathematician is easily extrapolated from his correspondence with Major Jones on 15 January 1875, wherein he computes by fraction measurements the rations recommended for the 42 head of horses and mules of Company B. In the TRHF&M. Lieutenant Long to Major Jones, 15 January 1875, TRHF&M. Monthly Return, Company B, Frontier Battalion, January 1875, TSA. Monthly Return, Company B, Frontier Battalion, February 1875, TSA. Monthly Return, Company B, Frontier Battalion, March 1875, TSA. Monthly Return, Company B, Frontier Battalion, April 1875, TSA. Major Jones to AG Steele, 9 May 1875, TRHF&M; Major Jones to AG Steele, 10 May 1875. “Sir—Enclosed I have the honor to hand you vouchers from Lt. Long for horse killed in battle, $150,” TRHF&M. Michno, Encyclopedia

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78. 79. 80.

81. 82. 83. 84. 85. 86.

87. 88. 89. 90. 91. 92. 93. 94. 95. 96.

97. 98.

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of Indian Wars, 291; Alexander, Six-Shooters and Shifting Sands, 58 and 390 n.24; Miller, Texas Ranger John B. Jones, 99–101. Ibid. Telegram, Major Jones to AG Steele, 9 May 1875, TRHF&M; Graybill, Policing the Great Plains, 45. Major Jones to AG Steele, 9 May 1875, TRHF&M; Muster & Pay Roll, Company B, Frontier Battalion, May 1874, TSA. Anderson’s twentyfirst-century declaration in The Conquest of Texas (p. 359), that combatant Ay-cufty “was likely a renegade rather than a member of any tribal society,” would most likely fall flat in the minds of nineteenth-century Texas citizens and/or Rangers: He was, after all, renegade or not, riding and raiding with Reservation Comanches—which seems to indicate his actions were encouraged and condoned by Comanches. Major Jones described Ay-cufty thusly: “another was of half breed or quarter, spoke broken English, was quite fair and had curly auburn hair.” Major Jones to AG Steele, 6 May 1875, TRHF&M. J.C. Loving’s Report of Indian Depredations, 9 November 1875, TRHF&M. Major Jones to AG Steele, 10 May 1875, TRHF&M. Miller, Texas Ranger John B. Jones, 101. Major Jones to AG Steele, 10 May 1875, TRHF&M. Lieutenant G.W. Stevens to Major Jones, 16 June 1875, in the TRHF&M: “Sir—I have the Honor to inform you that I am now in Command of Company ‘B’ F.B.” Lieutenant Long to Major Jones, 2 June 1875 and 7 June 1875, TRHF&M; Lieutenant Stevens to Major Jones, 16 June 1875, TRHF&M. Major Jones to Lieutenant Stevens, 21 June 1875, TRHF&M. Miller, Texas Ranger John B. Jones, 108. Major Jones to Lieutenant Stevens, 21 June 1875, TRHF&M. Ibid.; Major Jones to AG Steele, a series of July, August, and September 1875 orders and vouchers, TRHF&M Major Jones to Mr. Gray, Jacksboro, Texas, 16 September 1875, TRHF&M. Major Jones to Lieutenant Stevens, 16 September 1875, TRHF&M. Major Jones to Lieutenant Stevens, 17 September 1875, TRHF&M. Lieutenant Stevens to Major Jones, 12 November 1875, TRHF&M. Major Jones to AG Steele, 12 November 1875, TRHF&M. Apparently Sergeant Hamilton was not a charter member of Company B, his name not appearing on the initial Muster & Pay Roll. Miller, Texas Ranger John B. Jones, 125. Sergeant C.H. Hamilton would later be promoted to lieutenant, and given command of a downsized Company B. Major Jones to AG Steele, 12 November 1875, TRHF&M.

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Chapter 7 Frontier Battalion, Company C 1. General Order No. 1. Frontier Battalion, May 1874, TSA. 2. Heinsohn, “Who They Really Were,” 67. 3. Muster & Pay Roll, Company C, Frontier Battalion, TSA; Heinsohn, “Who They Really Were,” 11; Miller, Texas Ranger John B. Jones, 36; Day and Winfrey, Texas Indian Papers, 1860–1916, 385 and 379. 4. Robinson III, The Men Who Wear the Star, 172. 5. AG Steele to Major Jones, 5 June 1874, TRHF&M. 6. Invoice/Receipt, State of Texas to E.F. Ikard, TRHF&M; Mary Kearby, Pioneers Remembered, Lita H. Watson and Rebecca Trammell, eds. Cowboy W.A. Engledow said the Ikard brothers had 50,000 head of cattle. See p. 49. 7. Captain Ikard to Major Jones, 7 June 1874, TRHF&M. 8. Ibid. 9. Monthly Return, Company C, Frontier Battalion, July 1874, TSA; Tise, Texas County Sheriffs, 379. 10. Major Jones to AG Steele, 23 July 1874, TRHF&M. 11. Muster & Pay Roll, Company C, Frontier Battalion, TSA; Heinsohn, “Who They Really Were,” 42, 108. 12. Special Order No. 11, Frontier Battalion. 23 July 1874, TSA. 13. Muster & Pay Roll, Company C, Frontier Battalion, TSA; Heinsohn, “Who They Really Were,” 108, 125. 14. Heinsohn, “Who They Really Were,” 69. 15. Smith, The Old Army in Texas, 157–158. 16. Ibid., 158–159; Robert A. Calvert, Arnoldo De León, and Gregg Cantrell, The History of Texas, 181. 17. Wallace, Ranald S. Mackenzie on the Texas Frontier, 144. 18. Ibid., 145. 19. Captain Ikard to Major Jones, 11 and 12 October 1874, TRHF&M; Special Order No. 23, TRHF&M. Noticeably, Sergeant Foushee had avowed not to engage in any more Indian fighting but later, his application for an Indian War Pension was approved. See Stephens, Texas Rangers Indian War Pensions, 30. 20. Webb, The Texas Rangers, p. 316: “On October 8 [1874] he [Major Jones] left Jacksboro with one hundred men drawn from the different companies of the north, including his regular escort, for a scout to Pease River and the upper waters of the Big Wichita.” 21. Major Jones to AG Steele, 24 October 1874, TRHF&M. 22. Ibid.; Miller, Texas Ranger John B. Jones, 75–76. 23. West Gilbreath, Death on the Gallows: The Encyclopedia of Legal Hangings in Texas; J.B. (Red) John Dunn, Perilous Trails of Texas, 59–67; Clifford R.

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24. 25.

26. 27. 28.

29. 30. 31. 32.

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Caldwell and Ron DeLord, Eternity at the End of a Rope: Executions, Lynchings and Vigilante Justice in Texas, 1819–1923, 202–203; Graham, Kings of Texas, p. 127–128: “Vasquez, who was also apparently a member of the Corpus Christi police force, is part of the sub rosa and largely undocumented history of King Ranch during the ultraviolent years of the 1870s. Today, even for those who might be admitted to the King Ranch archives at the Henrietta Memorial Center in Kingsville, the decade of the 1870s is closed to all researchers.” Amberson, McAllen and McAllen, I Would Rather Sleep in Texas, add: “The [Rabb] Commissioners purported that the foremen of the cattle operation, caporals Tomás Vazquez and Fernando López of the King Ranch and Pedro Lucio of the Punte del Monte Ranch, routinely branded cattle that did not belong to those ranches.” Quotation found on pp. 326– 327. Rayburn and Fry, Century of Conflict, 101–107, place El Peñascal in Cameron County at the time of the attack and an interested reader may wish to consult that volume for information regarding the subsequent and wholesale burning of the Baffin Bay settlement. Daily Democratic Statesman, October 14, 1874. Testimony Taken by the Committee on Military Affairs in Relation to the Texas Border Troubles (Hereafter, Border Troubles in Texas). House of Representatives, 45th Congress, 2d Session, Mis. Doc. No. 64. 95; Fehrenbach, Lone Star, 579; Alexander, Riding Lucifer’s Line, 46; Thompson, Cortina, 225. Parsons and Hall, Captain L.H. McNelly, 166; Thompson, Cortina, identifies the thief as José María Holguín, p. 226. Rayburn and Fry, Century of Conflict, 117–118. Captain Coldwell to Major Jones, 11 March 1875: “On the 27th of February, Six Mexicans crossed the river below Edinburgh [a correct spelling at the time] and Killed two men, a Mr. Fulton, and his clerk and immediately re-crossed the river.” Document in TRHF&M. Pierce, A Brief History, 108. Ivey, The Texas Rangers, 156. Utley, Lone Star Justice, 164. Dunn, Perilous Trails of Texas, 86–87. Pierce, A Brief History, 108; Kearney and Knopp, Boom and Bust, refer to the victim as Billy MacMahon and reference the leader of the gang that murdered and dismembered him as “a man called Agriyo” (154). While Pierce places the murder and mutilation of the schoolteacher as taking place November 1874, Rayburn and Fry, Century of Conflict, citing primary source documents, report the incident as occurring 12 June 1875, according to the Cameron County Precinct Four Justice of the Peace, Cornelius Stillman. See p. 123.

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33. Rayburn and Fry, Century of Conflict, 119. The scene of the crime, the La Jarra Ranch, is cited by Amberson, McAllen and McAllen, I Would Rather Sleep in Texas, 324. 34. For a cogent examination and multidimensional analysis of this state of affairs the interested reader is referred to Thompson, Cortina, 200–218. Also see, Graham, Kings of Texas, for an articulate assessment of the dueling investigations of Rio Grande/Río Bravo affairs sponsored by two governments with wholly differing perspectives, the United States and Mexico. See pp. 115–133. Also, the inquisitive reader might access the methodical and commonsense breakdown offered by Amberson, McAllen, and McAllen in I Would Rather Sleep in Texas, 316–328. And even some of the Texas Rangers’ harshest critics, who rely heavily on Paredes’s welding of folklore with fact, With His Pistol in His Hand: A Border Ballad and Its Hero, Samora, Bernal, and Peña in their less than dispassionate treatment Gunpowder Justice, lay much of the blame for the Lower Rio Grande Valley’s nastiness and bloodshed at the doorstep of that irascible borderland personality: “Feuds, cattle rustling, and raids by Cortinas’s vaquero bands kept South Texas in a turbulent state,” p. 47. 35. Major Jones to AG Steele, 27 October 1874, TRHF&M. 36. General Order No. 5, Frontier Battalion, 27 October 1874, TRHF&M. 37. General Order No. 7, Frontier Battalion, 9 December 1874 and General Order No. 6, Frontier Battalion, 25 November 1874, TRHF&M. 38. E.F. Ikard to Major Jones, 12 December 1874, TRHF&M. 39. Monthly Return, Company C, Frontier Battalion, January 1875, TRHF&M. 40. Monthly Return, Company C, Frontier Battalion, February 1875, TRHF&M. 41. Adjutant General Clerk Duval Beall to Major Jones, 20 February 1875, TRHF&M. 42. Major Jones to Edward Eastburn, Merchant, Jacksboro, Texas, 26 February 1875, TRHF&M. The logistical headaches and pre-planning are also typified in Major Jones’s letter to Lieutenant Wilson, Company A, of 3 February 1875: “The last bill of Supplies sent from Dallas for your company give you Flour, Bacon, Potatoes, Onions, Pickles and Candles sufficient to last until the 5th of April—Coffee, sugar and Soda till the 20th of May—Soap to the 1st of May—rice to the 1st of June and some 300 pounds of Salt more than you will need during your term of Service. The next bill ordered will be just sufficient of difficult articles to last until the first of June.” In the TRHF&M. 43. Lieutenant Beavert to Major Jones, 20 January 1875, TRHF&M. 44. Monthly Return, Company C, Frontier Battalion, January 1875, TSA. 45. Monthly Return, Company C, Frontier Battalion, February 1875, TSA. 46. Lieutenant Beavert to Major Jones, 14 February 1875, TRHF&M. For these type financial shortfalls—small ones—Major Jones would finagle fixes: “I

558

47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54.

55.

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Send you a Draft for one hundred dollars to purchase beef & for any emergency that may arise.” See, Major Jones to Lieutenant Foster, 16 March 1875, TRHF&M. Lieutenant Beavert to Major Jones, 3 March 1875, TRHF&M. Lieutenant Beavert to Major Jones, 16 March 1875,TRHF&M. Major Jones to AG Steele, 27 March 1875, TRHF&M. Major Jones to Lieutenants Beavert and Long, 15 March 1875, TRHF&M. Major Jones to AG Steele, 22 February 1875, TRHF&M. Major Jones to F.A. McIver, 25 March 1875, TRHF&M. Dr. E.G. Nicholson to Major Jones, 21 March 1875, TRHF&M. Special Order No. 34, Frontier Battalion, 17 March 1875, TRHF&M; Major Jones to Lieutenant Beavert, 17 March 1875, TRHF&M; Major Jones to Lieutenant Long, 17 March 1875, TRHF&M; Receipt of State Property turned in by Lieutenant Beavert, signed by Lieutenant Long, dated 30 March 1875, TRHF&M. Innocent confusion regarding the factual framework and lifespan of the Frontier Battalion is not uncommon. Herein are but a few examples—and they are certainly not proffered as gratuitous criticisms but, rather, a slight tweaking for informational purposes. For Militarizing the Border: When Mexicans Became the Enemy, author Miguel Antonio Levario writes: “The Frontier Battalion operated until 1881,” p. 20. Graham, Kings of Texas, pens on page 136: “From now on, there would be only one duly authorized law enforcement unit in the region, and that would be McNelly’s Frontier Battalion.” In the first instance the Frontier Battalion existed until 1901 when it was formally disbanded and replaced with the Ranger Force. With regards to Leander McNelly, he at no time captained a Frontier Battalion company, but was commander of the Washington County Volunteer Militia, Company A (the only company) also sometimes referred as the Special Force or Special Troops, first assigned to DeWitt County pertaining to the Sutton/ Taylor Feud and later to South Texas and the Lower Rio Grande Valley in regards to borderland criminality; Bob Scott’s Leander McNelly, Texas Ranger: He Just Kept On Keepin’ On, is likewise imprecise: “Early in 1875, Major Jones summoned Leander McNelly to his Austin office and told him that he and Governor Davis had agreed that solving the South Texas ‘problem’ would be entirely up to McNelly.” See p. 105. In this instance, as previously stated, McNelly was never organizationally or institutionally associated with Major Jones’s Frontier Battalion and, perhaps even more inexactly for this treatment the state’s chief executive at this time was not Edmund J. Davis, but was Texas Governor Richard Coke. Though not connected with the Frontier Battalion, McNelly’s troops, in truth, were also referred to

Notes

559

by the citizens, press, and Texas government officials as Rangers. As but one primary source example, with emphasis added, see Governor Coke to Captain McNelly, 9 July 1875: “the pride of true Texans in the historic fame of the Texas rangers is fully gratified in the record your command is making,” TRHF&M. For secondary references, see, Utley, Lone Star Justice, 158, and Alexander, Riding Lucifer’s Line, 4–5; Robert Draper, “The Twilight of the Texas Rangers,” Texas Monthly, February 1994, page 82, settles for the stricter technical interpretation: “His [McNelly’s] troops were structurally and budgetarily set apart from the six companies making up the separately legislated Frontier Battalion of Texas Rangers.” Miller, Texas Ranger John B. Jones, confirms: “Although not a part of the Frontier Battalion, these ‘Special Troops,” as they came to be known . . . ,” 51. 56. This account of the infamous attack on Thomas J. Noakes and family is, by and large, an abbreviated synthesis from the following: Leopold Morris, “The Mexican Raid of 1875 on Corpus Christi,” Texas Historical Association Quarterly, July 1900. Quite interestingly this article carries a rather comprehensive narrative of the affair penned by a participant, Thomas J. Noakes; William M. Hager, “The Nuecestown Raid of 1875: A Border Incident,” Arizona and the West 1, no. 3 (Autumn 1959); Coleman McCampbell, “The Famous Noakes’ Store Raid of 1875,” Frontier Times, December 1933; and Ruth Dodson, “The Noakes Raid,” Frontier Times, July 1946. 57. Dunn, Perilous Trails of Texas, 102; De León, They Called Them Greasers (p. 99), rightly identifies the Nuecestown raiders as “a division of Mexican bandits,” but the declaration that “Whites retaliated with a vengeance,” while absolutely true, seems to suggest that outraged Tejanos and Mexican immigrants were but sideline spectators in a quest for the perverted sense of perceived justice. Clearly, posse member Red Dunn mentions another Hispanic helpmate: “We had a Mexican with us whom we had picked up at King’s Ranch on our way down. His name was Luis Robelos. When Luis saw that no one was coming to volunteer to fire the house, he went to a nearby ‘jacal’ and pulled a lot of straw out of the roof. He lighted the straw and mounting his horse, galloped to the building and threw the blazing straw on top of a shed that joined the main building. It burned slowly for a few minutes and then the roof caught fire,” see p. 98. Also, Dunn further comments: “It is a mistaken idea sometimes prevalent to believe that all Mexicans are cowards. There were two Mexicans with us and they would go into places that few white men would dare go,” p. 106. Clearly Red Dunn had high regards for Jesús Seguira, almost heroically casting him: “No braver man ever lived. In the fight at Nuecestown he stayed right with us during the whole encounter, although he did not have so much as a pocket knife,” p. 105.

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58. Texas Border Troubles, 30; Clarence C. Clendenen, Blood on the Border: The United States Army and the Mexican Irregulars, 72. 59. Major Jones to AG Steele, 9 July 1875, TRHF&M.

Chapter 8 Frontier Battalion, Company D 1. General Order No. 1, Frontier Battalion, May 1874, TSA. 2. Perry, Memoir of Capt’n C. R. Perry, 4. Quotation from Introduction by Kenneth Kesselus, ed. 3. Ibid.; Thomas W. Cutrer, contributor, The New Handbook of Texas, Vol. 5, 157; Miller, Texas Ranger John B. Jones, 32; Alexander, Winchester Warriors, 8. 4. Ibid., 10–11. 5. Muster & Pay Roll, Company D, Frontier Battalion, May 1874. On this document L.P. Sieker is enumerated as being twenty-six years old, from Baltimore, Maryland, and a “Lawyer” and his brother E.A. Sieker, two years younger, is enumerated as being a “Clerk,” but also from Baltimore. In TSA; Stephens, Texas Ranger Sketches, 144. 6. Stephens, Texas Rangers Indian War Pensions, 60; Chuck Parsons and Donaly E. Brice, Texas Ranger N.O. Reynolds: The intrepid, p. 21: “William H. Ledbetter, formerly an attorney in Fayette County [La Grange]. . . .” 7. Muster & Pay Roll, Company D, Frontier Battalion, May 1874, TSA. 8. Anderson, The Conquest of Texas, 8, 359. 9. Quite refreshingly the late Elmer Kelton, celebrated writer of Old West literature and former president of the West Texas Historical Association, suggested history would be best served by accurately recording what had actually happened, rather than continually spinning a false narrative as to how modern-era enlightened intellectuals and pseudo-intellectuals would have preferred it to have unfolded. Sometimes history isn’t pretty. Instead of apologetic folks wanting to blame great-granddad for all that went wrong in the nineteenth and early twentieth-century West, the more-or-less fed-up Kelton straightforwardly quipped: “I feel that it is time to blow the whistle on them and tell it like it was.” See, Elmer Kelton, “Generational Chauvinism,” West Texas Historical Association Yearbook, 1991, 133. Particularly focusing his chapter on Rangers during the Frontier Battalion era, Utley, Lone Star Justice, drops the hammer on truth: “It [the battalion] attracted good men and bad, though more of the former than the latter.” Quotation on p. 147. 10. John Brown to AG Steele, (no date, but shortly precedes formation of the Frontier Battalion), TRHF&M.

Notes

561

11. Congressmen L.M. Rogers and A.J. Nicholson, to Governor Coke, n.d., TRHF&M. 12. Remembrances of James B. Hawkins, Center for American History, University of Texas, Austin; Gillett, Six Years with the Texas Rangers, 24: “I told him I had two good pony mares. He burst out laughing, and said a mare was not allowed in the service.” 13. Robert W. Stephens, Texas Ranger Captain Dan Roberts: The Untold Story, 13; Jean Dale Sherman, “A Century with the Texas Rangers,” The Cattleman, March 1937, p. 51: “Most early-day rangers were mere boys, led by commanders not much older.” More accurately, as will be cited, certain commanders had some age. 14. Major Jones to AG Steele, 22 June 1874, TRHF&M. 15. Special Order No. 9, Frontier Battalion, 22 June 1874, TRHF&M. 16. Captain C.R. Perry to AG Steele, 11 June 1874, TRHF&M. Obviously from the penmanship and mostly correct grammar, this correspondence, although perhaps dictated by Captain Perry, was not written, nor actually signed with his signature. 17. Alexander, Winchester Warriors, 25. 18. Monthly Return, Company D, Frontier Battalion, June 1874, TSA. 19. Ibid. 20. Stephens, Texas Ranger Captain Dan Roberts, 5–8; Alexander, Six-Shooters and Shifting Sands, 42; John Sayles and Henry Sayles, eds., Early Laws of Texas: General Laws from 1836 to 1879. Vol. 3: “JOINT RESOLUTION awarding Winchester rifles to certain persons,” page 220. 21. Monthly Return, Company D, Frontier Battalion, June 1874, TSA. 22. Wilson Hey, Presiding Justice of Mason County, to Governor Coke, 25 June 1874, TRHF&M. The consummate expert on this Wild West conflict is David Johnson, author of The Mason County “Hoo Doo” War, 1874–1902. Mr. Johnson advises, even after three decades of nonpartisan research, he has not found any quantifiable evidence indicating that Allan G. Roberts was an outlaw or livestock thief, either before, during, or after the notoriously tagged “Hoo Doo War.” 23. Walter Struve, Germans and Texans: Commerce, Migration, and Culture in the Days of the Lone Star Republic, 3–10; Alexander, Winchester Warriors, 62–63. 24. Charles Kenner, “Guardians in Blue: The United States Cavalry and the Growth of the Texas Range Cattle Industry,” Journal of the West, January 1995, 48. 25. Ibid. 26. San Antonio Daily Herald, June 16, 1876. 27. J. Frank Dobie, Cow People, 18.

562

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28. Thomas W. Gamel, as told to Glenn James and Henri Rupe Capps, The Life of Thomas W. Gamel, 13. 29. Monthly Return, Company D, Frontier Battalion, July 1874, TSA. 30. Monthly Return, Company D, Frontier Battalion, August 1874, TSA. Although the arrest of Felix Mann had taken place on 29 July 1874, it was reported in the August rather than the July Monthly Return; Alexander, Winchester Warriors, 56–57. 31. S.P. Elkins, “Served as a Texas Ranger,” Frontier Times, August 1928, 439. 32. Monthly Return, Company D, Frontier Battalion, August 1874, TSA. The 30 July 1874 arrest of Hopper is likewise carried in the Monthly Return for August; Parsons and Brice, Texas Ranger N.O. Reynolds, 36. 33. Circular to Frontier Battalion Company Captains from Major Jones, 15 July 1874, TRHF&M. 34. Special Order No. 15, Frontier Battalion, 15 September 1874, TRHF&M. For more on these particular personnel discharges and disciplinary actions see Alexander, Winchester Warriors, 57–61. 35. Perry, Memoir of Capt’n C.R. Perry, 29. 36. Roberts, Rangers and Sovereignty, 46. 37. Alexander, Winchester Warriors, 72. 38. Roberts, Rangers and Sovereignty, 49. 39. Captain Perry to Major Jones, 21 November 1874, TRHF&M; Major Jones to AG Steele, 25 November 1874, TRHF&M. 40. Alexander, Winchester Warriors, 72–73; S.P. Elkins, “Captured an Indian,” Frontier Times, March 1929, p. 246: “As the people crowded in to see the wild Indian we had captured we put him up for a show. . . . The next day the Governor ordered the Indian confined in the penitentiary as a public enemy, and he died there some time later.” 41. Austin Daily Statesman, November 28, 1874. 42. Carnal, “Reminisces of a Texas Ranger,” 21. 43. General Order No. 6, Frontier Battalion, 25 November 1874 and General Order No. 7, Frontier Battalion, 9 December 1874, TRHF&M. 44. Major Jones to AG Steele, 9 December 1874, TRHF&M. 45. Alexander, Winchester Warriors, 75. 46. Monthly Return, Company D, Frontier Battalion, December 1874, TSA. Muster & Pay Roll, Company D, Frontier Battalion, May 1874, TSA. 47. Parsons and Brice, Texas Ranger N.O. Reynolds, 41. 48. Lucia Holmes, Lucia Holmes Diary, 1875–1876: The Hoo Doo War Years, 5. 49. As previously cited, the major work regarding this multi-year conflict is Johnson’s The Mason County “Hoo Doo” War. Aside from the thorough

Notes

50. 51. 52.

53. 54. 55.

56. 57.

58. 59.

60. 61.

563

research, decades in the making, author Johnson presented a paper at the Lone Star History Conference (11 May 2013) at the TRHF&M wherein he deftly explored the causes of the Texas Rangers’ less than stellar performance, and their subsequent and quantifiable resetting on the road toward professionalism. Alexander, Winchester Warriors, 82; Johnson, The Mason County “Hoo Doo” War, 64. Ibid., 84; Harold J. Weiss, Jr., “The Texas Rangers Revisited: Old Themes and New Viewpoints,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly, April 1994, 640. Parsons and Brice, Texas Ranger N.O. Reynolds, 52. Thus far an exhaustive search of Texas Ranger files archived at TSA and TRHF&M has failed to produce any documents reflecting that Lieutenant Roberts personally authored any official contemporary reports regarding this extralegal episode. Houston Daily Telegraph, March 3, 1875. Lieutenant Roberts to Major Jones, 1 March 1875, TRHF&M. Johnson, The Mason County “Hoo Doo” War, 64; Miller, Texas Ranger John B. Jones allows on p. 92: “That observation [as yet they’ve harmed no good men] certainly hints, at a minimum, that Roberts was making some value judgments about which side was right, and his dearth of investigative effort would seem to be a direct result of such a bias.” Miller, Texas Ranger John B. Jones, 107–108. Special Order No. 41, 10 July 1875, TRHF&M. Unfortunately, in Texas Ranger records pertaining to Ranger Dunn there is room for confusion between J.A Dunn and T.H. Dunn, both Company D Rangers during the Frontier Battalion era. The matter could not be categorically resolved, even after diligent search of archived materials coordinated by TRHF&M Research Liberian Raymond “Rusty” Bloxom. During the 1 July 2016 interview regarding these discrepancies, Mr. Bloxom confirmed the unfortunate regularity of deficiencies in certain Texas Ranger resource documents, especially when taking into consideration handwritten transcriptions and phonetic interpretations. San Antonio Daily Herald, August 18, 1875. Miller, Texas Ranger John B. Jones, citing other newspaper editions adds: “Cooley, in separate accounts, shot Wohrle seven times, cut off his ears or scalped him, then fled,” p. 108. The governor’s reward for Scott Cooley’s arrest is mentioned on 111 and 330, n. 47. Austin Daily Democratic Statesman, August 25, 1875. Roberts, Rangers and Sovereignty, 26. One of these presentation Winchesters, the one awarded to James Thomas “Tom” Bird, is on display at the Panhandle-Plains Museum, Canyon Texas. Also, a cropped photograph

564

62.

63. 64. 65. 66.

67. 68. 69. 70.

71. 72. 73. 74. 75.

TEXAS RANGERS

of the Winchester’s specially inlaid stock with silver shield is pictured in Ella Elgar Bird Dumont: An Autobiography of a West Texas Pioneer, Tommy J. Boley, ed., frontispiece facing Foreword. Gillett, Six Years with the Texas Rangers, 56. Gillett’s Winchester, identified by serial number in his autobiography, is a part of the remarkable Gillett Collection displayed at TRHF&M. Somewhat later, the Company D commander would step to the plate trying to help the rank and file; see Lieutenant Roberts to Major Jones, 1 March 1876: “if you can get some ammunition from the State for these guns [1873 Winchesters] I would be very much obliged, it will save them of buying on their own account,” in TRHF&M. Johnson, The Mason County “Hoo Doo” War, 98–99. San Antonio Daily Herald, September 14, 1875. AG Steele to Major Jones, 23 September 1875, TRHF&M. Alexander, Six-Shooters and Shifting Sands, 62–63; David Johnson, John Ringo, King of the Cowboys: His Life and Times from the Hoo Doo War to Tombstone, 87. Mrs. D.W. Roberts [Lou Roberts], A Woman’s Reminiscences of Six Years in Camp with the Texas Rangers, 10. Major Jones to AG Steele, 30 September 1875, TRHF&M. Chief Clerk Beall to Major Jones, 7 October 1875, TRHF&M. Monthly Return, Company D, Frontier Battalion, October 1875, TSA; Special Order No. 47, 7 October 1875 and Special Order No. 48, 11 October 1875, TRHF&M. In fairness, it must herein be pointed out that N.O. Reynolds would eventually return to the Frontier Battalion with supervisory status as a Texas Ranger Lieutenant, and later would become the respected sheriff of Lampasas County. As a Texas lawman his portfolio of participation in many high-profile episodes is catalogued in Texas Ranger N.O. Reynolds, by Parsons and Brice. Major Jones to AG Steele, 28 October 1875, TRHF&M. Major Jones to AG Steele, 20 October 1875, TRHF&M. Ibid. Major Jones to AG Steele, 28 October 1875, TRHF&M. Ibid.

Chapter 9 Frontier Battalion, Company E 1. General Order No. 1. Frontier Battalion, May 1874, TSA. 2. Muster & Pay Roll, Company E, Frontier Battalion, May 1874, TSA; Robert Lee Williamson, “A History of Company E of the Texas Frontier Battalion,

Notes

3. 4. 5.

6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13.

14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21.

565

1874–1879, “ Master of Arts Thesis, University of Texas, 1952, 34–35; T.R. Havins, “Activities of Company E, Frontier Battalion, Texas Rangers, 1874– 1880,” West Texas Historical Association Year Book, 1935, proffers that Maltby commanded the 17th Texas Volunteer Infantry Company’s G rather than Company E, but does confirm Maltby’s Indian campaigning: “He returned to his home in 1863 and was one of the leaders of a group of determined men who fought the Indians upon every incursion of the savages during the perilous days of 1863–1865,” see p. 65; Lou Rodenberger, contributor, The New Handbook of Texas, vol. 4, 477. Miller, Texas Ranger John B. Jones, 36–37; Hicks A. Turner, ed., I Remember Callahan: History of Callahan County, Texas, 25. Captain William Jeff Maltby to Major Jones, 7 June 1874, TRHF&M. Approval of Payment to Schuyler, Hurley & Graham No. 7651 for purchase of Colt’s revolvers in the aggregate amount of $3,744.30 (including insurance) captioned “Invoice of Pistols—July 30, 1874.” In the TRHF&M. Major Jones to AG Steele, 13 June 1874, TRHF&M. AG Steele to Major Jones, 23 June 1874, TRHF&M. Monthly Return, Company E, Frontier Battalion, June 1874, TSA. Ibid.; Tise, Texas County Sheriffs, 389. Major Jones to AG Steele, 1 July 1874, TRHF&M. Captain Maltby to AG Steele, 3 July 1874, TRHF&M. Ibid.; Also see, Miller, Texas Ranger John B. Jones, 48. Captain Maltby to Major Jones, 21 July 1874, TSA; Monthly Return, Company E, Frontier Battalion, July 1874, TSA. The Rangers particularly identified for this extract would be Sergeant M. T. Israel, twenty-five, from Decatur, Indiana, and Henry Sackett, twenty-three, from England, riding and losing a horse valued at $100; Lieutenant B.S. Foster to Major Jones, 6 March 1875, regarding temporary loss of Sackett’s horse, papers in the TRHF&M. Special Order No. 10, Frontier Battalion, 30 June 1874, TSA; Captain Maltby to Major Jones, 25 July 1874, TRHF&M. Stephens, Texas Rangers Indian War Pensions, 33. Muster & Pay Roll, Company E, Frontier Battalion, May 1874, TSA. Major Jones to AG Steele, 9 August 1874, TRHF&M. Major Jones to Captain Maltby, 15 August 1874, TRHF&M. Ibid. Lieutenant Connell to AG Steele, 25 August 1874, TRHF&M. Williamson, “A History of Company E of the Texas Frontier Battalion, 1874–1879,” cogently offers insight into the difficulties faced by Captain

566

22. 23. 24.

25.

26. 27.

28. 29. 30.

31. 32. 33.

34.

35.

TEXAS RANGERS

Maltby and the resultant failures and successes associated with bringing a brand-new Texas Ranger company to fruition. See pp. 35–36, 41–42. Postscript, Major Jones to AG Steele, 9 August 1874, TRHF&M. AG Steele to Major Jones, 21 August 1874, TRHF&M. Captain Maltby to Major Jones, 26 August 1874, TRHF&M; Monthly Return, Company E, Frontier Battalion, August 1874, TSA; Muster & Pay Roll, Company E, Frontier Battalion, May 1874, TSA; Stephens, Texas Rangers Indian War Pensions, 44. G.W. Ellington, “When Cattle Trails Were Highways: Reminiscences of G.W. Ellington, A Trail Driver of Early Days in Texas and a Former Member of the Frontier Battalion of Texas Rangers,” Unpublished Typescript, 10–11, TSA; Muster & Pay Roll, Company E, Frontier Battalion, May 1874, TSA; Stephens, Texas Rangers Indian War Pensions, 26. Havins, “Activities of Company E, Frontier Battalion, Texas Rangers, 1874– 1880,” 67. W.J. Maltby, Captain Jeff: Frontier Life in Texas with the Texas Rangers, 82. Regarding Ranger Rush, the Muster and Pay Roll for Company E, Frontier Battalion, identifies him as “C. Rush” rather than Josephus as mentioned in Maltby’s autobiographical tome, in TSA. Captain Maltby to Major Jones, 30 September 1874, TRHF&M. Caldwell and DeLord, Texas Lawmen: The Good and the Bad, 330. Dr. E.G. Nicholson to AG Steele, 29 December 1874, TRHF&M. Although his battalion-wide dietary suggestions were made in this correspondence, the scurvy afflictions referred to regarding Companies B and E had taken place during October 1874. Lieutenant Foster to Major Jones, 30 October 1874, TRHF&M; Monthly Return, Company E, Frontier Battalion, October 1874, TSA. Williamson, “A History of Company E of the Texas Frontier Battalion, 1874–1879,” 66. Ibid.; General Order No. 4, Frontier Battalion, 02 October 1874, “By order of Governor & Commander in Chief,” Signed by William Steele, Adjutant General, TSA. Lieutenant Foster to Captain Maltby, 30 October 1874, TRHF&M: “I report to you that private H. Hatcher of Company ‘E’ F.B. did positively refuse to go on Scout after being detailed for the Same for which offense I have excluded the said Hatcher from duty in the Company.” Special Order No. 28, Frontier Battalion, 13 November 1874, TRHF&M; Muster & Pay Roll, Company E, Frontier Battalion, May 1874, TSA; Stephens, Texas Rangers Indian War Pensions, 110. Monthly Return, Company E, Frontier Battalion, November 1874, TSA. The Texas Ranger who lost his $70 horse in this instance was John Alonzo

Notes

36. 37. 38. 39.

40.

41.

42. 43.

567

Shannon, a twenty-five-year-old from Yalobusha County, Mississippi. See, Muster & Pay Roll, Company E, Frontier Battalion, TSA. Also, Stephens, Texas Rangers Indian War Pensions, 99. Stephens, Texas Rangers Indian War Pensions, 18. Monthly Return, Company E, Frontier Battalion, November 1874, TSA. Captain Maltby to Major Jones, 30 November 1874, TRHF&M. Captain John M. Elkins, Life on the Texas Frontier.(A reprint of the 1908 edition, © Norman Wayne Brown & Don Merle Jay, 2010). Statement of Curley Hatcher, 85–89, and Statement of William J. Lowrance, 89–100. Also see, John M. Elkins, Indian Fighting on the Texas Frontier (© Chris D. Elkins, 2000). Havins, “Activities of Company E, Frontier Battalion, Texas Rangers, 1874– 1880,” 69. Havins lifts the quotation from page 96 of Maltby’s Captain Jeff; Brutus Clay Chrisman, Early Days in Callahan County., pp. 219–220: “and his [Captain Maltby] untiring efforts in finally disposing of the wily Kiowa Chief, Big Foot, who had succeeded in evading the Texas Rangers for nine years.” Cox, The Texas Rangers, 231; Muster & Pay Roll, Company E, Frontier Battalion, TSA. On the roster the Ranger is identified as H.J. Thomas from Burnet County, when in fact he was James Henry Thomas from Burnet County. Ibid., 232. Glen Smith, “Some Early Runnels County History, 1858–1885,” West Texas Historical Association Year Book, 1996, 116. Former Company E Texas Ranger Curley Hatcher carries the story forward, unpleasant to be sure, but nevertheless—possibly—true: “John St. Clair and I were quite a way in front, and old Jake [Jape] was away behind the Indians. I took St. Clair’s mare by the bridle and told him to jump off, kneel down and take the last shot, and he did so, and old Jake fell off. We ran up to him and he raised his hands and surrendered, and told us of helping kill the Williams family. So we decided to take him back to where we had left Lieutenant Best as Williams was with the main scout, and let him kill him. But when he came back, Williams would not kill him. So I said we would take him on to headquarters, which we did, and I killed and scalped him. . . . After the fight was over, we came back to where I left the chief [Big Foot]. He had gotten up and gone about sixty yards down the creek and crawled under a rock and was still alive when I found him. I shot him in the head and scalped him, and when we got to headquarters, Captain Maltby said he wanted Company E to get the first scalp to Austin and he would give me $25.00 for the chief’s scalp, which was a fine one, with silver ornaments. So I let him have it, as it was not the first scalp I had taken, by several years before, in Northern

568

44. 45.

46. 47.

48.

49.

50. 51. 52.

TEXAS RANGERS

Texas. Jake’s scalp I cut up and divided among the boys. Will Williams took three pieces—put two pieces on his bridle and one on his pistol.” See, Elkins, Life on the Texas Frontier. 86; Also see, Miller, Texas Ranger John B. Jones. “One of his [Maltby’s] Rangers, Hiram ‘Curley’ Hatcher, later claimed that he killed the first Indian of those killed by the Frontier Battalion. Maltby gave him fifty dollars for the Indian’s scalp and took it to Austin,” see p. 42. And see, Curley Hatcher, “Got Fifty Dollars for an Indian’s Scalp,” Frontier Times, July 1924, p. 7: “Captain Maltby gave me fifty dollars for the scalp and took it to Austin, where I suppose it is yet.” The Williams referred to by Hatcher was forty-one-year-old William S. “Will” Williams, originally from Anson County, North Carolina, southeast of Charlotte. See, Muster & Pay Roll, Company E, Frontier Battalion, TSA; and see, J. Marvin Hunter, “Curley Hatcher Was a Daring Ranger,” Frontier Times, November 1958, p. 88: “Two Indians were wounded and unhorsed in this fight, and one of them was the chief. One of them was taken back as a prisoner, but the chief was found badly wounded, crawling behind some rocks, where he was killed.” J.M. Elkins to Major Jones, 21 December 1874, TRHF&M; Tise, Texas County Sheriffs, 107. Captain Maltby to AG Steele, 22 June 1874, with headquarters notation that this rather unusual action for the “Medical Services” of Dr. King would “be allowed,” TRHF&M. Muster & Pay Roll, Company E, Frontier Battalion, May 1874, TSA; Ellington, Typescript, 14–15, TSA. Special Order No. 18, 21 September 1874. TRHF&M; Muster & Pay Roll, Company E, Frontier Battalion, May 1874, TSA. The battalion surgeon would have been Dr. E.G. Nicholson, not the Company E physician, Dr. W.H. King. Monthly Return, Company E, Frontier Battalion, May 1874, TSA. Though Private Onstott is listed on Company E’s Muster & Pay Roll as “S.P. Onstott,” his correct name was most likely Joshua Polk Onstott, at least according to the Indian War Pension Files. Ellington Typescript, 12, TSA; Sergeant Mather’s roping and slaying the bear is also covered in a most colorful and questionable recreation in Capitan Jeff, a delightful two-part tome written in part by an anonymous author, and in part by William Jeff Maltby, 85–86. Ellington’s account—from the logical perspective—is more reasonable and more likely closer to the truth. General Order No. 7, Frontier Battalion, 9 December 1874, TRHF&M. Major Jones to AG Steele, 24 December 1874, TRHF&M; Quartermaster Martin M. Kenney to AG Steele, 24 December 1874, TRHF&M. General Order No. 6, Frontier Battalion, 25 November 1874, TRHF&M.

Notes

569

53. Sergeant Jacob Hand, Company E, Frontier Battalion to Major Jones, 19 January 1875, TRHF&M. 54. Captain Neal Coldwell, Company F, Frontier Battalion to Major Jones, 31 March 1875, TRHF&M: “The Epizootic of Influenza Seems to have taken a fresh hold among the horses and mules of this Company. One Pack mule has died with it during this month and fifteen of the horses are suffering with it at present.” 55. Major Jones to AG Steele, 20 February 1875, TRHF&M. 56. J.S. Wheeler to AG Steele, 20 January 1875 and AG clerk’s notation on letter, TRHF&M. 57. Letters to Frontier Battalion Lieutenants from AG Steele, 16 February 1875, TRHF&M. 58. Major Jones to Lieutenants Beavert and Long, 15 March 1875, TRHF&M. 59. Captain Coldwell to Major Jones, 3 March 1875, TRHF&M. 60. Monthly Return, Company E, Frontier Battalion, May 1875, TSA; Lieutenant Foster to Major Jones, 16 May 1875, TRHF&M; Williamson, “A History of Company E of the Texas Frontier Battalion, 1874–1879,” 87–88; Miller, Texas Ranger John B. Jones, 101. 61. Ibid.; James Albert Cheatham’s younger brother, Manoh Richard Cheatham, was also serving in Company E. See, Stephens, Texas Rangers Indian Wars Pensions, 20–21. 62. Williamson, “A History of Company E of the Frontier Battalion,” 85. 63. Handwritten (not on the standard preprinted form) Muster & Pay Roll, Company E, Frontier Battalion for service from 1 June 1875 to 31 August 1875, TRHF&M; Wilkins, The Law Comes to Texas, 124; Stephens, Texas Rangers Indian War Pensions, 4; Tise, Texas County Sheriffs, 251, 536. 64. Williamson, “A History of Company E of the Frontier Battalion,” 89. 65. Chief Clerk Beall to Major Jones, 13 July 1875, TRHF&M. 66. Sergeant Hand to Major Jones, 2 July 1875, TRHF&M. 67. Major Jones to AG Steele, 25 July 1875, TRHF&M. 68. Major Jones to AG Steele, 27 July 1875, TRHF&M. 69. Major Jones to Lieutenant Foster, 8 August 1875, TRHF&M. 70. Whether or not Major Jones’s impression of 1st Sergeant Jacob Hand was spot on or flawed is indeterminate. What is clear, however, is the documentable fact that subsequent to the commander’s recommendation that he be replaced, the Company E noncom remained on duty for months, maintaining the rank of sergeant. See, Sergeant Hand to AG Steele, 28 October 1875; Receipts for “Pistols, belts and holsters,” 1st Sergeant Hand, 2 November 1875.

570

TEXAS RANGERS

71. Major Jones to Lieutenant Foster, 17 September 1875, TRHF&M. 72. Monthly Return, Company E, Frontier Battalion, September 1875, TSA; Tise, Texas County Sheriffs, 107. 73. Monthly Return, Company E, Frontier Battalion. October 1875, TSA. 74. Monthly Return, Company E, Frontier Battalion. November 1875, TSA. 75. Monthly Return, Company E, Frontier Battalion. December 1875, TSA. 76. Major Jones to AG Steele, undated letter (probably November 1875), TRHF&M.

Chapter 10 Frontier Battalion, Company F 1. General Order No. 1, Frontier Battalion, May 1874, TSA. 2. Muster & Pay Roll, Company F, Frontier Battalion, June 1874, TSA; Charles Schreiner III, ed., A Pictorial History of the Texas Rangers: “That Special Breed of Men,” 19; Miller, Texas Ranger John B. Jones, 37; Stephens, Texas Rangers Indian War Pensions, 22; Joseph E. Bennett, Sixguns and Masons, 50–53; Bob Bennett, Kerr County, Texas, 1856–1956, 44–45, 47–48. 3. Ibid.; Tise, Texas County Sheriffs, 503. 4. Ibid. 5. Bob Alexander, Six-Shooters and Shifting Sands, 84; Pat Dolan, in addition to serving as the Uvalde County Sheriff and a commissioned officer with the Texas Rangers, would also serve as the sheriff of Jeff Davis County. See, Lucy Miller Jacobson and Mildred Bloys Nored, Jeff Davis County, 153. Also, Tise, Texas County Sheriffs, 285. 6. Muster & Pay Roll, Company F, Frontier Battalion, June 1874, TSA. 7. Major Jones to AG Steele, 13 June 1874, TRHF&M. 8. Monthly Return, Company F, Frontier Battalion, June 1874, TSA; Muster & Pay Roll, Company F, Frontier Battalion, June 1874, TSA; Major Jones to AG Steele, 29 August 1876, and AG Steele to Major Jones 30 August 1876, TRHF&M; Stephens, Texas Rangers Indian War Pensions, 67; Kerrville Mountain Sun, March 20, 1909. 9. Monthly Returns, Company F, Frontier Battalion. July and August 1874, TSA. 10. Major Jones to AG Steele, 14 September 1874, TRHF&M. 11. Lieutenant Franklin H. Nelson to Captain Coldwell, 7 August 1874, TRHF&M; Jasper N. Corn should not be confused with his brother, Lee B. Corn, also a member of Company F and a member of Major Jones’s escort detail during the Lost Valley fight with Lone Wolf’s Kiowa raiders. Muster & Pay Roll, Company F, Frontier Battalion, June 1874, TSA. See also, Ingmire, Texas Ranger Service Records, 1847–1900, Vol. 1; and, Haley, The Buffalo War, 88.

Notes

571

12. Captain Coldwell to Major Jones, 8 August 1874, TRHF&M. Interestingly, several of the Company F Rangers jumped the chain-of-command, submitting a petition for Lieutenant Nelson’s removal from the Frontier Battalion, see, AG Steele to Major Jones, 21 August 1874, TRHF&M. 13. Lieutenant Nelson to Major Jones, 28 August 1874, TRHF&M: “I have made application through Capt. Coldwell to be transferred to your Staff.” 14. Ibid. 15. Major Jones to AG Steele, 14 September 1874, TRHF&M; Major Jones to Lieutenant Nelson, 8 September 1874: “there is no course left for you except to return to duty with your company or resign.” In TRHF&M. 16. Special Order, No. 13, Frontier Battalion, 8 September 1874, TRHF&M. 17. Captain Coldwell to Major Jones, 24 July 1874, TRHF&M. 18. Captain Coldwell to Major Jones, 12 August 1874, TRHF&M. 19. Ivey, The Texas Rangers, 156. Lieutenant Refugio Benavides’s company of Webb County Frontier Men would likewise be mustered out of service as of 13 December 1874. 20. Major Jones to AG Steele, 15 September 1874, TRHF&M. Private Davis was, at the time, a Company E Ranger. 21. Alexander, Winchester Warriors, quoting a Notice of Desertion authorized by Major Jones, p. 112. 22. As but one example, see Major Jones to Editor, San Saba News, 19 September 1874, TRHF&M. 23. Monthly Return, Company F, Frontier Battalion, October 1874, TSA. 24. General Order No. 3, Frontier Battalion, 13 September 1874, TSA. 25. Monthly Return, Company F, Frontier Battalion, October 1874., TSA. 26. Lieutenant Neal Coldwell (he had accepted a voluntary downgrade) to Major Jones, 5 December 1875, TRHF&M. 27. Major Jones to AG Steele, 25 October 1874, TRHF&M; General Order No. 5, 2 November 1874, TSA; Muster & Pay Roll, Company F, Frontier Battalion, TSA. For a delightful peek at the law-enforcing Jones clan the interested reader is referred to DuCoin’s admirable treatment, Lawmen on the Texas Frontier: Rangers and Sheriffs. Also see, Stephens, Texas Ranger Sketches, 63–75. A full-length biography of one of the Jones brothers, Texas Ranger Captain Frank Jones, is Alexander’s Six-Shooters and Shifting Sands. 28. AG Steele to Major Jones, 6 November 1874, TRHF&M. 29. Austin Daily Democratic Statesman, November 28, 1874. 30. “Statement of the number of miles traveled by the scouts of the six companies composing the Frontier Battalion, from June to November, inclusive,” TRHF&M. 31. Major Jones to AG Steele, 1 December 1874, TRHF&M.

572

32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38.

39.

40. 41. 42. 43. 44.

45. 46.

47. 48.

49. 50.

TEXAS RANGERS

General Order No. 8, Frontier Battalion, 25 November 1874, TRHF&M. General Order No. 6, Frontier Battalion, 25 November 1874, TRHF&M. AG Steele to Captain Coldwell. 17 November 1874, TRHF&M. Gournay, Texas Boundaries, 77. Durham, Taming the Nueces Strip, 25. Blackburn, Wanted: Historic County Jails of Texas, 105. Barkley and Odintz, The Portable Handbook of Texas, Cynthia Orozco, cont: “There was a lucrative trade in stolen cattle and horses in Mexico. Skinning wars or ‘hide-peeling’ incidents were also common at this time,” see p. 625. Graham, Kings of Texas, 126; Charles W. “Bill” Hellen, ed., “El Cojo” (The Lame One): The Story of South Texas Cattleman and Banker Charles Waugh Hellen, Sr., “It was about the time of the Civil War that there developed a good demand for hides. This made it possible to realize some cash out of the wild cattle, consequently some people devoted themselves to hunting and killing these crafty old animals, solely for their hides. . . . There was much stealing being done by thieves and bandits during these early days. Men who had no right whatever to any cattle, moved around from one temporary camp to another, slaughtering cattle both branded and unbranded for their hides and bandits drove off many bunches of cattle, some to the north but mostly to Mexico,” see pp. 52–53. Leon C. Metz, Border: The U.S.-Mexico Line, 150; Dewey, Pesos and Dollars, 36. Tom Lea, The King Ranch, vol. 1, 265. Kearney and Knopp, Boom and Bust, 153. Kenner, “Guardians in Blue,” 48. Ivey, The Texas Rangers, 156. The estimate of Spanish-surnamed Texas Rangers is drawn from Glasrud and Weiss, Tracking the Texas Rangers: The Nineteenth Century, David E. Screws contributor, “Hispanic Texas Rangers Contribute to Peace on the Texas Frontier, 1838 to 1880,” see p. 197. Lieutenant Refugio Benavides to AG Steele, 27 June 1874, TRHF&M. Blackburn, Wanted: Historic County Jails of Texas, 106; De León, They Called Them Greasers, 99; also, Graham, Kings of Texas, p. 126: “Alberto Garza, an outlaw from Mexico, conducted widespread hide-peeling activities in Nueces County in 1873.” De León, They Called Them Greasers, 99, 130 n. 36. Captain Warren Wallace to AG Steele, 31 July 1874, TRHF&M; Dunn, Perilous Trails of Texas, mentions the extralegal killing of a “signal man” working for the notorious Alberto Garza, 74–75. Thompson, Cortina, 216. Blackburn, Wanted: Historic County Jails of Texas, 106.

Notes

573

51. Paul Horgan, Great River: The Rio Grande in North American History, vol. 2, 854. 52. The population for Concepcion, Duval County, is listed in the 2014–2015 edition of the Texas Almanac as numbering but 62 individuals. See p. 280. 53. AG Steele to Captain Coldwell, 18 November 1874, TRHF&M. 54. Special Order No. 30, 1 December 1874, TRHF&M. 55. Major Jones to AG Steele, 2 December 1874, TRHF&M; Monthly Return, Company F, Frontier Battalion, December 1874, TSA. 56. Lieutenant William Kenner Jones to Major Jones or AG Steele (the letter was addressed to Frontier Battalion Headquarters), 2 February 1875, TRHF&M; Monthly Return, Company F, Frontier Battalion, January 1875, TSA. 57. Ibid. 58. Ibid. 59. Captain Coldwell to Major Jones, 11 February 1875, TRHF&M. 60. Ibid. 61. Major Jones to AG Steele, 20 February 1875, TRHF&M. 62. Captain Coldwell to Major Jones, 28 February 1875, TRHF&M; Monthly Return, Company F, Frontier Battalion, February 1875, TSA. 63. Ibid. 64. Captain Coldwell to Major Jones, 28 February 1875, TRHF&M. 65. Captain Coldwell to Major Jones, 11 March 1875, TRHF&M. 66. Major Jones to Captain Coldwell, 26 March 1875, TRHF&M. 67. Monthly Return, Company F, Frontier Battalion, March 1875, TSA; Captain Coldwell to Major Jones, 28 February 1875, TRHF&M; Tise, Texas County Sheriffs, 256. 68. Ibid. 69. Captain Coldwell to Major Jones, 19 March 1875, TRHF&M. 70. Captain Coldwell to Major Jones, 4 May 1875, TRHF&M. 71. Texas Border Troubles. The actual question was: “What is your opinion about the Texas militia [i.e., Rangers] as a guard along the border? “ See p. 139. 72. Monthly Return, Company F, Frontier Battalion, April 1875, TSA. 73. Ibid. 74. Ibid.; Captain Coldwell to Major Jones, 4 May 1875, TRHF&M; Parsons and Little, Captain L.H. McNelly, 178. 75. Ibid. 76. Judge A. McFarland to Major Jones, 17 March 1875, TRHF&M. 77. Captain Coldwell to Major Jones, 19 March 1875, TRHF&M.

574

78. 79. 80. 81. 82. 83. 84. 85.

TEXAS RANGERS

Texas Border Troubles. Testimony of Julius G. Tucker, 229. Parsons and Little, Captain L.H. McNelly, 158. Texas Border Troubles, Testimony of Captain J.W. Clous, 130–131. Ibid., Testimony of Captain H.C. Corbin, 151. Ibid., Testimony of Brigadier-General O.C. Ord, 95. Monthly Return, Company F, Frontier Battalion. April 1875, TSA. Monthly Return, Company F, Frontier Battalion. May 1875, TSA. Hardin, The Texas Rangers, 30; Calvert, De León, and Cantrell, The History of Texas, 19: “The Mexican tradition of ley de fuga (law of flight). . . .” For numerous examples of ley de fuga, the interested reader may wish to review Paul Joseph Vanderwood’s Ph.D dissertation, “The Rurales: Mexico’s Rural Police Force, 1861–1914,” University of Texas, 1970. Also see, Cornelius C. Smith Jr., Emilio Kosterlitzky: Eagle of Sonora and the Southwest Border, 101; Douglas V. Meed, Bloody Border: Riots, Battles and Adventures Along the Turbulent U.S.-Mexico Borderlands, distills the subject down: “There would be no arrests, no lawyers wrangling in a courtroom, no bail bonds, no judge, no jury. For bandidos, it would be a quick bullet, or a not so quick rope. The façade of the Ley Fuga was obvious to all. The phrase in Spanish meant the law of the fugitive and in Mexico it meant it was not only permissible, but indeed the duty of policing officers, to shoot down an escaping prisoner. If it was the written law in Mexico, it was often the unwritten law of Texas Rangers and cattlemen on the north side of the Rio Grande.” See p. 48. 86. Durham, Taming the Nueces Strip, 40; Calvert, De León, and Cantrell, The History of Texas, p. 191: “The Mexican tradition of ley de fuga (law of flight) became a standard practice, as Rangers killed many a prisoner who allegedly had attempted to escape.” Lea, The King Ranch, confirms on p. 282: “McNelly used ruthless methods.” 87. Ibid., 41. For the widely held opinion that McNelly was operating under orders to eradicate Mexican bandits found on the Texas side of the Rio Grande and not bother himself with the taking of prisoners, an interested reader may also wish to access Erik T. Rigler, “A Descriptive Study of the Texas Rangers: Historical Overtones on Minority Attitudes,” Master of Arts Thesis, Sam Houston State University, Huntsville, Texas, 1971, 9. 88. Parsons and Little, Captain L.H. McNelly, 231 and xii. Though certainly not condoning McNelly’s methodology, scholars Calvert, De León, and Cantrell, The History of Texas, seem to acknowledge that the measures were—at a minimum—somewhat successful: “Equally bold in implanting justice was Captain McNelly. Despite his lean, 135-pound frame, McNelly stood up to the most feared bad men of Texas as commander of the Special Force of

Notes

575

Rangers. He is credited with breaking up the organized cattle rustling across the Texas-Mexico border in the 1870s.” See p. 192. 89. Captain Coldwell to Major Jones, 28 February 1875, TRHF&M. 90. J. Lee Stambaugh and Lillian J. Stambaugh, The Lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas, 151. 91. Captain Coldwell to Major Jones, 28 February 1875, TRHF&M. 92. Captain Coldwell to Major Jones, 31 March 1875, TRHF&M. 93. Captain Coldwell to Major Jones, 4 May 1875, TRHF&M. 94. Ibid. 95. Captain Coldwell to Major Jones, 3 June 1875, TRHF&M. 96. Major Jones to Captain Coldwell, 16 June 1875, TRHF&M. 97. Captain Coldwell to Major Jones, 21 June 1875, TRHF&M. Subsequent study of the Company F Monthly Returns reveals the deficit of horseshoes and horseshoe nails was rectified. 98. Captain Coldwell to Major Jones, 28 June 1875, TRHF&M. 99. Major Jones to Captain Coldwell, 16 June 1875, TRHF&M. 100. Major Jones to AG Steele, 1 July 1875, TRHF&M; Judge A. McFarland to Major Jones 28 June 1875. This document is name and number specific with regards to the thefts or alleged thefts of area citizens’ horses and mules. In TRHF&M. 101. Captain Coldwell to Major Jones, 31 July 1875, TRHF&M. 102. Major Jones to AG Steele, 5 August 1875, TRHF&M; Special Order No. 43, Frontier Battalion 25 August 1875, TRHF&M. 103. Major Jones to AG Steele, 5 August 1875, TRHF&M. 104. Monthly Return, Company F, Frontier Battalion. August and September 1875, TSA. 105. Lieutenant Coldwell to Major Jones, 23 October 1875, TRHF&M; Monthly Return, Company F, Frontier Battalion, October 1875, TSA. 106. Monthly Return, Company F, Frontier Battalion, November 1875, TSA. 107. AG Steele to Major Jones, 17 December 1875, TRHF&M. 108. Lieutenant Coldwell to Major Jones, 25 December 1875, TRHF&M. 109. Wilkins, The Law Comes to Texas, 79.

Chapter 11 The Legend 1. Kent Ladd Steckmesser, The Western Hero in History and Legend, 3. 2. Frank Richard Prassel, The Western Peace Officer: A Legacy of Law and Order, 159; Lorie Rubenser and Gloria Priddy, Constables, Marshals, and More: Forgotten Offices in Texas Law Enforcement, 3; Melanie Chrismer, Lone Star

576

3.

4. 5.

6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13.

14. 15.

16. 17.

18.

TEXAS RANGERS

Legacy: The Texas Rangers Then and Now, 19. Professors Robert M. Bohm and Keith N. Haley, though crediting the 1835 birthday for the Rangers, nevertheless comment on long-term viability in their textbook, Introduction to Criminal Justice, p. 165: “The Texas Rangers were officially formed in 1835, and the organization remains in existence today as an elite and effective unit of the Texas Department of Public Safety.” Ibid., 155. Certainly the reader is warned of rich and extravagant hyperbole masquerading as truth, such as Will Henry’s characterization on page 171 in The Texas Rangers: “They [Rangers] had never taken a backward step to any wrongdoer, be he red, white, or brown. They had never surrendered. They had never deserted a comrade. They had never come back without their man.” Ranger Private H.B. Waddill to Major Jones, 27 February 1877, TRHF&M. Certainly the seminal study for this state of affairs and its aftermath is Rose’s The Reckoning: The Triumph of Order on the Texas Outlaw Frontier, particularly 46–72 for stage setting. Alexander, Six-Shooters and Shifting Sands, 92; Brice and Parsons, Texas Ranger N.O. Reynolds, 83. Utley, Lone Star Justice, 179. Cox, The Texas Rangers, 276; Alexander, Winchester Warriors, 124. Miller, Texas Ranger John B. Jones, 150. Galveston Daily News, September 22, 1877. Texas Border Troubles, 249. Major Jones to AG Steele, 6 May 1877, TRHF&M. Johnson, The Horrell Wars, 107–131; Clifford R. Caldwell, “Revisiting the Horrell-Higgins Feud,” Wild West History Association Journal, April 2011, 3–20. Bennett, Sixguns and Masons, 9. Johnson, The Horrell Wars, 130–131. Also, for more on the life of one of the feudist leaders see Bill O’Neal, The Bloody Legacy of Pink Higgins: A Half Century of Violence. Dora Neill Raymond, Captain Lee Hall of Texas, 130. For a remarkable biography of the noted manhunter from Dallas, see, Rick Miller’s Bounty Hunter. Wayne Gard, Frontier Justice, 228: “With his six-shooter he [Armstrong] gave him [Hardin] a blow on the head that kept him quiet for two hours.” Allyn Allen, The Real Book About the Texas Rangers: The Story of the HardRiding, Fearless Men Who Were the Law in Texas—Written by a Native-Born Texan, 118. Chuck Parsons, John B. Armstrong: Texas Ranger and Pioneer Ranchman, covers the capture of Hardin and the discrepancies of several competing versions of the arrest on pp. 47–61.

Notes

577

19. Ibid., 56. 20. Report of the Adjutant General of the State of Texas, Fiscal Year Ending August 31, 1878, 13, TSA. 21. Bob Alexander, Dangerous Dan Tucker: New Mexico’s Deadly Lawman, 35. Reviewing only one source regarding what is historically identified as the El Paso Salt War is ill-advised, if seeking thoughtful analysis and unvarnished truths are the objective. Charles Francis Ward’s “The Salt War of San Elizario (1877),” Master of Arts Thesis, University of Texas, 1932, is most helpful. An interested reader wishing for book-length treatments may wish to consult C.L. Sonnichsen’s The El Paso Salt War of 1877, and the late Paul Cool’s expansively researched and award-winning Salt Warriors: Insurgency on the Rio Grande. For Major Jones’s role the interested reader would check Miller’s, Texas Ranger John B. Jones, and for the deaths of two Texas Rangers during the affair, Alexander’s Riding Lucifer’s Line. For article-length accounts profiling personalities or carve outs, the reader may wish to review Paul Cool’s “Salt War Sheriff: Charles Kerber,” National Outlaw/Lawman History Association Quarterly, January–March 2003, and the same Quarterly for July–September 2001, carrying Cool’s article “El Paso’s First Real Lawman: Texas Ranger Mark Ludwick.” Author Cool profiles another of the relevant players in “J.A. Tays: The Forgotten Officer,” Texas Ranger Dispatch, Summer 2004. Also see, Jack Shipman’s “The Salt War of San Elizario” in the December 1933 and January 1934 editions of Voice of the Mexican Border. 22. Leon Claire Metz, The Shooters, 217. 23. Ward, “The Salt War of San Elizario,” 8. 24. Utley, Lone Star Justice, 188–189. 25. United States House of Representatives Executive Document 93, 45th Congress, 2d Session, 1878, El Paso Troubles in Texas. Hereafter El Paso Troubles (EPT). Statement of Wesley Owens, 59; Bob Alexander, Desert Desperadoes: The Banditti of Southwestern New Mexico, 100–101. Not unexpectedly there are various spellings of the former Travis County Sheriff’s name. Also see, Tise, Texas County Sheriffs, 494. 26. Report of the Adjutant General, 1878: “As soon as it became known that Howard contemplated locating the salt lakes as agent for Geo. B. Zimpelman, Cardis at once set to work to circumvent him, and was unceasing in his machinations against the interest of Howard, even to the extent of endeavoring to have his life taken,” p. 13; Sonnichsen, The El Paso Salt War, 33. Of justifying Howard’s killing of Cardis, Eugene Cunningham, “Salt,” Frontier Times, January 1930, theorizes it was, indeed, a clear case of “let every man kill his own snakes,” the metaphor for getting the other guy before he gets you. See pp. 100–101.

578

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27. EPT: Statements of Juan N. Garcia, 96; Benjamin S. Dowell, 54; and Adolph Krakauer, p. 60: “his [Cardis] pistol was found in the scabbard and was cocked.” Also statement of Deputy Sheriff H.H. Harvey: “I noticed that he [Cardis] had two scabbards on, but one was entirely empty; the other had a pistol in it, partly drawn out, the handle turned outward from the body, at full cock,” p. 64. 28. Cool, Salt Warriors, 41; Alexander, Riding Lucifer’s Line, p. 58: “Howard’s self-image was more than generous. His bitterest political rival in El Paso County was an Italian, Louis Cardis, a man similarly caught up in shady schemes with a central motivation of profit. Additionally, Cardis was a master player at manipulation, becoming a proactive voice for El Paso County’s majority population. Louis Cardis, too, had an outsized ego.” Also, Rick Hendricks and W.H. Timmons, San Elizario: Spanish Presidio to Texas County Seat, p. 87: “Cardis saw an opportunity to champion Mexican interest and increase his own political following.” 29. Ibid., 142–143: “James and John [Tays] supplemented their incomes smuggling Mexican cattle into Texas. . . .” 30. Bob Alexander, “Tucker X Texas = Trouble,” Wild West History Association Journal, June 2008, and Alexander’s Riding Lucifer’s Line, Chapters 2 and 3 specifically identify by name, criminality, and reputation some of the questionable Texas Rangers recruited for Lieutenant Tays’s Company C detachment; Muster Roll, Frontier Battalion, Company C, El Paso Detachment, TSA. Also, Peter Brand, “Sherman W. McMaster(s): The El Paso Salt War, Texas Rangers and Tombstone,” Western Outlaw and Lawman History Association Journal, Winter 1999; Paul Cool, “The Many Lives and Suggested Death of Jim McDaniels,” in Revenge! And Other True Tales of the Old West, edited by Sharon Cunningham and Mark Boardman, 21–39; Alexander, Lawmen, Outlaws, and S.O.Bs., vol. 1, Chapter 2, “Adrenaline, Alcohol, and Attitude: Jimmy McDaniels, Lincoln County Mal Hombre,” 29–49. Biographical profiles of some of these nefarious characters—Rangers though they may be—are also highlighted in Fredrick Nolan’s two-part piece “Boss Rustler: The Life and Crimes of John Kinney,” True West, September and October 1996; The notorious John Kinney is also the subject for Alexander’s chapter, “Most Feared Gangster of the Time,” in Bad Company and Burnt Powder: Justice and Injustice in the Old Southwest, 259–298. 31. Cool, Salt Warriors, p. 196: “All three corpses were mutilated and dumped into a well.” 32. C.L. Sonnichsen, Pass of the North: Four Centuries on the Rio Grande, Vol. I, p. 109: “While the mob fell to looting the stores and homes of the Americans, the Rangers, disarmed and disgraced, went back to their quarters. Next

Notes

33.

34.

35. 36. 37.

579

morning Chico [Francisco “Chico” Barela] overrode the voices of those who wanted to ‘shoot all the gringos,’ gave them back their horses, and sent them out of town.” Wilkins, The Law Comes to Texas, p. 142: “The mob was looting Atkinson’s store and house even before the bodies had been dragged away. They took everything, clothing, jewelry, furniture, bedding.” Cox, The Texas Rangers, 286: “Others simply took it as an opportunity for looting.” Utley, Lone Star Justice, p. 197: “Except for the passions generated by the war furor, they came mainly for loot.” Cool, Salt Warriors, p. 286: “In the days after Howard’s execution, wagon load after wagon load of plunder was hauled away from town to the opposite side of the river.” Robert J. Casey, The Texas Border: And Some Borderliners: “Other ‘foreigners,’ which is to say Americans, were driven out of town and their homes looted. . . . the looters carted $30,000 worth of property of Americans and other foreigners across the river in forty eight hours.” See pp. 149–150. Alexander, Bad Company and Burnt Powder, 270–271. Interestingly, Andrés Tijerina in his piece “Foreigners in Their Native Land: The Violent Struggle between Anglos and Tejanos for Land Titles in South Texas during Reconstruction,” in the anthology Still the Arena of Civil War: Violence and Turmoil in Reconstruction Texas, 1865–1874, edited by Kenneth W. Howell, posits: “Moreover, the Salt War appears to have all the markers of the ethnic cleansing seen in the other major raids of the 1870s—the raids, mass murders, systematic rape, and the same callous dehumanization of Tejanos,” p.  322. Realistically, were one to actually subscribe to a theory of ethnic cleansing in this case, taking into consideration the totally lopsided Mexicano population numbers in El Paso County, the laying siege to legitimately empowered Texas Rangers and others, the admitted duplicity of the mob’s spokesman, the extralegal executions and bloody mutilations, coupled with the acknowledged looting of stores and homes and chaotic rioting, it would seem most logical to ask: “Just who was trying to ethnically cleanse who?” Certainly Utley, Lone Star Lawmen, p. 168, seems to have an answer: “Unsated by the executions, the crowd cried for death to all gringos, which meant the Rangers.” An expert on the topic, Cool, Salt Warriors, is forthright and truthful on p. 168: “Others were bloody-minded. For them, Howard’s death was but a step along the path to cleansing the county of gringos.” Twenty-first century political correctness being at odds with nineteenth-century historic correctness is now, sorry to say, commonplace. Ward, “The Salt War of San Elizario,” 122. Sonnichsen, The El Paso Salt War, 58. Galveston Daily News, December 26, 1877.

580

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38. Alexander, “Tucker X Texas = Trouble.” 12; EPT: Statements of Pedro Cauelario, 16 February 1878; Salome Telles, 16 February 1878; Antonio Cadena, 4 March 1878; Noverto Pais, 4 March 1878; and J.P Miller, 7 March 1878. 39. Utley, Lone Star Justice, 202–203. 40. Ibid., 205. 41. Leon C. Metz, Turning Points in El Paso, Texas, 47. 42. Sonnichsen, The El Paso Salt War, 61. 43. The definitive treatment of this, at the time extraordinarily notorious train robber, is Rick Miller’s exhaustively researched Rube Burrow, Desperado. 44. Unquestionably—by any measure—the now standard treatment regarding the real and folkloric Sam Bass is Rick Miller, Sam Bass and Gang, a painstaking study of the man and his outlawry. 45. Ibid., 201–203. 46. Miller, Texas Ranger John B. Jones, 206; Stephens, Texas Ranger Sketches, 41, 59, 151. 47. Bob Alexander, Rawhide Ranger, Ira Aten: Enforcing Law on the Texas Frontier, 1–9; Miller, Sam Bass and Gang, 241–262; Parsons and Brice, N.O. Reynolds, 182–200. 48. Miller, Sam Bass and Gang, 257, 374 n. 18. 49. Handwritten statement of Texas Ranger C.L. Nevill, 23 July 1878, ABB. Copy courtesy Steve Wharram, Cleburne, Texas. 50. First Telegram, Major Jones to AG Steele, 20 July 1878, TRHF&M. 51. Second Telegram, Major Jones to AG Steele, 20 July 1878, TRHF&M. 52. Leona Bruce, Bannister Was There, 37–38; Alexander, Rawhide Ranger, 6. 53. Caldwell and DeLord, Texas Lawmen: The Good and the Bad, 334–335; Miller, Texas Ranger John B. Jones, 181–182; Parsons and Brice, N.O. Reynolds, 145–166. 54. Gillette, Six Years with the Texas Rangers, 91. 55. Ibid., 92–95. 56. Grant County Herald, July 19, 1879. Also, Grant County Criminal District Court Records, Silver City, New Mexico, Criminal Causes Nos. 573 and 574, Murder, and Criminal Cause No. 576, Stealing Horses: Grand Jury Term of July 1879. Copies courtesy, Terry Humble, Bayard, New Mexico. 57. Lieutenant C.L. Nevill to AG John B. Jones, 6 February 1881, TRHF&M; Utley, Lone Star Justice, 215; also, James M. Day, “El Paso’s Texas Rangers,” Password, Winter 1979, 160–161. 58. Miller, Texas Ranger John B. Jones, p. 282: “This conflict came to be termed the last Indian fight in Texas.” Robinson, The Men Who Wear the Star, p. 244:

Notes

59.

60. 61.

62. 63.

64.

65. 66.

67.

68. 69. 70.

581

“This was the last Indian fight in Texas.” Ben Kemp, Cow Dust and Saddle Leather, taking issue, proffers that in actuality the last fight Texas Rangers had with Indians was one taking place during the summer of 1881, see his page 29. For this particular Ranger vs. Indian encounter interested readers should access George Wythe Baylor’s Into the Far, Wild Country: True Tales of the Old Southwest, Jerry D. Thompson, ed., not failing to pay particular attention to exhaustively researched chapter endnotes presented by Thompson, 304– 322. For Major Jones’s ascension to the position of Texas Adjutant General, readers are referred to Miller’s John B. Jones: Texas Ranger, 226–227. Miller, John B. Jones: Texas Ranger, 296. Wayne Gard, “The Fence Cutters,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly, December 1969, 2; Joanne S. Liu, Barbed Wire: The Fence That Changed the West, 46. James L. Haley, Passionate Nation: The Epic History of Texas, 377. San Saba News, August 17, 1939, highlighting minutes of the San Saba County Commissioners’ Court Meeting of 11 February 1879: “Be it resolved by the Commissioners’ Court of San Saba County that our members of the Legislature be requested to use their endeavors to prevent the passage of any law making such fences legal, and to secure the passage of a law making it a penal offense for any one to use or own any such fence. . . .” Alexander, Rawhide Ranger, 104–125; also see, R.D. Holt, “Introduction of Barbed Wire into Texas and the Fence Cutting War,” West Texas Historical Association Yearbook, June 1930, 66, and Henry D. and Frances T. McCallum, The Wire That Fenced the West, 3–98. Ibid. Corporal P.C. Baird’s Report of Scout to Green Lake, 08 August 1884, TRHF&M; P.C. Baird, “The Fight at Green Lake Waterhole,” Frontier Times, March 1926; Harold D. Jobes, “Fence Cutting and a Ranger Shootout at Green Lake,” Wild West History Association Journal, October 2009, 39–48. Interview transcript, Ira Aten to J. Evetts Haley, February 1928. Courtesy Nita Steward Haley and J. Evetts Haley Memorial Library and History Center (HML&HC), Midland, Texas; Alexander, Rawhide Ranger, 110–123. In his handwritten memoirs James Abijah Brooks reports no Rangers were injured. Courtesy Suzanne Montgomery. Caldwell and DeLord, Texas Lawmen: The Good and the Bad, 342. Telegram, Captain George Baylor to Adjutant General Wilburn Hill King, 8 July 1883, TRHF&M. Telegram, Captain James Gillespie to AG King, 19 August 1885, TRHF&M; June Rayfield Welch, The Texas Courthouse Revisited, writes that the then

582

71.

72.

73.

74.

75.

76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81.

TEXAS RANGERS

Pecos City (now Pecos) in 1883 “had more saloons per capita than any town in Texas. . . . and the gambling tables operated twenty-four hours day,” p. 195. Work about Arrington abounds. Interested readers may wish to peruse Frederick Nolan’s Tascosa: Its Life and Gaudy Times; Rick Miller’s limited and exhaustively annotated edition of James B. Gillett’s Six Years With The Texas Rangers, 1875 to 1881, 154, n. 89; Jerry Sinise’s George Washington Arrington: Civil War Spy, Texas Ranger, Sheriff and Rancher; John Miller Morris’s A Private in the Texas Rangers: A.T. Miller of Company B, Frontier Battalion, or for a meticulously researched and cleverly written recount regarding a spectacular conspiracy and heist, Bill Neal’s Skullduggery, Secrets, and Murders: The 1894 Wells Fargo Scam That Backfired. San Antonio Daily Express, September 19, 1891; Alexander, Rawhide Ranger, 172–185; Interview transcript: Ira Aten to Earl Vandale, Evetts Haley, and Hervey Chesley, July 1941, HML&HC. Caldwell and DeLord, Eternity at the End of a Rope, 345–346; Harold Preece, Lone Star Man, Ira Aten: Last of the Old Texas Rangers, 176–183. The core strength and weakness of Preece’s book is that it is partly true. Alexander, Winchester Warriors, 200–201; AG King’s policy of commissioning Special Rangers has been carried forward to 2017 and will undoubtedly continue. As but one example, Field Inspectors for the Texas & Southwestern Raisers Association are certified and licensed Texas peace officers but carry commissions as Special Texas Rangers, drawing their paychecks from the private association, not from public funds of taxpayers. Handwritten Memoir of Calvin Grant Aten, Courtesy Robert W. Stephens; Alexander, Bad Company and Burnt Powder, 15–18; Ranger John R. Hughes to AG King, 25 December 1889, TRHF&M; Captain Frank Jones to Captain Sieker, 29 December 1889, TRHF&M. That Hughes was probably using a Winchester carbine during this nighttime enforcement action may be drawn from the remarks of Dane Coolidge in Fighting Men of the West, p. 139: “The Captain [John R. Hughes] is a good man with a rifle—he doesn’t think so much of a six-shooter.” Paul N. Spellman, Captain J.A. Brooks: Texas Ranger, 46. Ibid., 46–50; Sarah Ellen Davidge, “Texas Rangers Were Rough and Ready Fighters,” Frontier Times, November 1935, 127–128. San Antonio Daily Express, October 24, 1891. Jeffrey Burton, The Deadliest Outlaws: The Ketchum Gang and the Wild Bunch, 71. San Antonio Daily Light, October 24, 1891. For front to back recreation of this train robbery and its aftermath, see Franklin W. Daughtery, “Las Vegas de los Ladrones and the Flynt Gang,”

Notes

82.

83. 84.

85. 86. 87. 88. 89. 90. 91. 92. 93.

583

Journal of Big Bend Studies, 1991, and Bob Alexander, Whiskey River Ranger: The Old West Life of Baz Outlaw, 194–208; also see handwritten document at ABB titled “Joe Sitter’s Account of the Trailing and Capture of the Train Robbers,” penned by Harry Warren as he conducted an interview with Joseph Russell Sitter. Spellman, Captain John H. Rogers, Texas Ranger, 68. A full-length biography of Catarino Garza is Elliott Young’s Catarino Garza’s Revolution on the TexasMexican Border. The author’s from afar psychosexual analysis is rather amazing: “One must remember that Garza’s view of proper gender relations was neither unique to him nor to Mexicans. However, he deployed these popular conceptions of gender roles to express the more contentious claim of Mexican cultural superiority. Women, especially Anglo women, became the objects of a territorial battle between Anglo and Mexican males. Penetrating and occupying Anglo women’s bodies and then discarding them had the dual purpose of asserting male control over women and Mexican control over Anglo ‘property,’ ” p. 47. Titillating? Impotent? Likewise, in speaking of one of Frederick Remington’s 1892 illustrations for Richard Harding Davis’s The West from a Car-Window, author Young contends: “The Mexican revolutionist is standing shoeless next to his horse while two soldiers pat him down, presumably for weapons. The one soldier standing directly behind the revolutionist has his hands on the suspect’s waist while his long rifle protrudes from the soldier’s pelvis to the suspect’s rear. The overall effect of these visual clues is to render the shoeless Mexican as subordinate and passive next to the dominant and active soldiers,” p. 237. ¿Quién sabe? Utley, Lone Star Justice, 255. Louis Ray Sadler to Bob Alexander, 21 April 2012: “the Federal Records Center in Fort Worth has 600 case files/indictments of Catarino Garza supporters.” Alexander, Riding Lucifer’s Line, 125. Utley, Lone Star Justice, 268. The book-length capture of this fascinating Texas true tale is Leo N. Miletich’s Dan Stuart’s Fistic Carnival. Citation to Texas Rangers throughout. Harold J. Weiss, Jr., Yours to Command: The Life and Legend of Texas Ranger Captain Bill McDonald, 118. Alexander, Winchester Warriors, 288–289. Spellman, Captain John H. Rogers, 96–98. Harvey N. Castleman, The Texas Rangers, 24; William Warren Sterling, Trails and Trials of a Texas Ranger, 375. Spellman, Captain John H. Rogers, 99–100. Cox, The Texas Rangers, 372–373.

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94. Spellman, Captain John H. Rogers, 101–102. 95. Castleman, The Texas Rangers, 24. 96. Erik Rigler, “Frontier Justice in the Days Before NCIC,” FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin, July 1985, 16–22. An interested reader may wish to access Fugitives from Justice: The Notebook of Texas Ranger Sergeant James B. Gillett, published at Austin by State House Press, 1997; Gillett’s original Fugitive List Book is archived at TRHF&M. 97. “Employee Character Sketches, Company D, Frontier Battalion, 1899, J.R. Hughes, Commanding,” TSA. 98. Dallas Morning News, May 26, 1900. 99. Utley, Lone Star Justice, 272. 100. Ibid., 273. 101. Cox, The Texas Rangers, 341–342, and 432, n. 15. 102. The Texas Volunteer, June 15, 1892; Davis, The West from a Car-Window. That writer Davis was awe-struck by meeting Texas Rangers in the field is abundantly clear: “But the West is not wholly reconstructed. There are still the Texas Rangers, and in them the man from the cities of the East will find the picturesqueness of the Wild West show and its happiest expression. If they and the sight of cowboys roping cattle do not satisfy him, nothing else will. . . . They [Rangers] bring with them their own horse, blanket, and rifle, and revolver; they wear no regular uniform or badge of any sort, except the belt of cartridges around the waist. The mounted police of the gold days in the Australian bush, and the mounted constabulary [Mounties] of the Canadian border are perhaps the only other organizations of like nature and with similar duties. . . . Boots above the knee and leather leggings, a belt three inches wide with two rows of brass-bound cartridges, and a slanting sombrero make a man appear larger than he really is; but the Rangers were the largest men I saw in Texas, the State of big men. And some of them were remarkably handsome in a sun-burned, broad-shoulders, easy, manly way.” See pp. 11–13. 103. Victoria Neufeldt, ed., Webster’s New World Dictionary of American English, 3rd. College Edition, 771. 104. Clifford R. Caldwell and Ron DeLord, Texas Lawmen: More of the Good and the Bad, 1900–1940, 391–392; Weiss, Jr., Yours to Command, 200–202. 105. Weiss, Jr., Yours to Command, 210; Muster & Pay Roll, Company D, Frontier Battalion, May 1874, TSA.

Chapter 12 The Legacy 1. Quotations are from Utley’s Lone Star Justice, 274–275; Tise, Texas County Sheriffs, 209, 210 and 296; C.L. Patterson, Sensational Texas Manhunt: “How did they capture him? Just like taking a baby. . . . Now it was so easy and

Notes

2.

3. 4.

5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

10.

585

all over. The Texas Rangers had him.” See pp. 14–15. Spellman, Captain John Rogers, 111–117; Paredes, With His Pistol in His Hand, is a book-length study of the borderland ballad, El Corrido de Gregorio Cortez. That Cortez turned informant is drawn from the award-winning treatment by Charles H. Harris III and Louis R. Sadler, The Texas Rangers and the Mexican Revolution: The Bloodiest Decade, 1910–1920, p. 128: “Chapa introduced Cortez to the local Bureau of Investigation office, for whom Cortez readily agreed to become an informant . . .” Perhaps the best primary source material for this incident is found in the rather comprehensive Special Report of Adjutant General Thomas Scurry to Governor Joseph D. Sayers, 11 November 1902, TSA. Hereafter cited as SRAG followed by name of affiant. The unfortunate affair is also addressed in Alexander’s Riding Lucifer’s Line, 199–209; Spellman’s Captain J.A. Brooks, 143–148; Graham’s Kings of Texas, 199–200. For an article-length treatment, Bob Alexander, “Death on the Line: The First Ranger Force Death Along the Texas-Mexico Border,” True West, May 2013, 25–31. First quotation in paragraph is from Sterling, Trails and Trials of a Texas Ranger, 323. Second quotation from testimony of Edward B. Raymond, SARG. Interestingly, Graybill, Policing the Great Plains, acknowledges, at the time of his death Ramón de la Cerda was “illegally branding a steer” though is inclined to somewhat mitigate the overt criminality by the follow-up remark that the violator was “an opponent of King Ranch expansion.” See p. 105. For analysis of the “Texas Rule” of self-defense and its legal interpretations readers may wish to access Richard Maxell Brown’s No Duty to Retreat: Violence and Values in American History and Society, 26–28. Harris and Sadler, The Texas Rangers and the Mexican Revolution, 57. Ibid.; also, Telegram: Captain Brooks to AG Scurry, 10 September 1902, TSA; Houston Chronicle, September 10, 1902; Galveston Daily News, September 11, 1902; Brownsville Daily Herald, September 10, 1902; Corpus Christi Caller, September 12, 1902. SRAG-Brooks. Captain Brooks to AG Scurry, 12 September 1902, TSA. Monthly Return, Company A, Ranger Force, September 1902, TSA; Welch, The Texas Courthouse Revisited, 206. SRAG-Brooks. Captain Hughes to AG Scurry, 4 May 1901, TRHF&M; Alexander, Winchester Warriors, 311; J. Paul McFadden, “Captain Bill McDonald: Texas Ranger,” TSRA Sportsman, July/August 2012, 22–24; Weiss, Yours to Command, 225; Albert Bigelow Paine, Captain Bill McDonald: Texas Ranger, 276–277. A most comprehensive narrative and analysis of the Conditt murder case is found in Weiss, Yours to Command, 229–242. Also, Caldwell and DeLord,

586

11.

12. 13. 14.

15. 16. 17.

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Eternity at the End of a Rope, 472–473 and 481; Circumspection—a double dose—is prescribed regarding Tyler Mason’s Riding For Texas: The True Adventures of Captain Bill McDonald of the Texas Rangers . . . As told by Colonel Edward M. House to Tyler Mason. Thankfully, the reader is forewarned: “Fictional names have been used to cover the identity of those opponents of the rangers whose tactics or whose careers as badmen might prove embarrassing to a later generation. Similarly, towns and communities since reformed have been spared the re-discovery of a past that casts no honor. . . . We have aimed at color and drama more moving than the rigid limitation of biographical exactitude would have permitted.” xi–xii. As example the Conditt homicide case is covered in Chapter 8 under the heading, “Nine O’Clock Murder,” and the authentic Lora Conditt has been recast as “Mrs. Knox,” while the bloody crime scene is in the fictionalized town of “Lola” rather than the very real Edna, Jackson County, Texas. The first quotation is in John D. Weaver, The Brownsville Raid, 80. That the term “muddled” seems apt is lifted from Weiss, Yours to Command, Chapter 13, “Brownsville Affair: A Muddled Incident,” 243–272. Mexicanos’ selfimposed societal segregation by economic and heritable standing is accessed in Benjamin Heber Johnson, Revolution in Texas: How A Forgotten Rebellion and Its Bloody Suppression Turned Mexicans into Americans, 15. Paine, Captain Bill McDonald: Texas Ranger, 328; Weiss, Yours to Command, 258. State of Texas Reward Notice for the Arrest of Augustine Garcia, TRHF&M. Alexander, Riding Lucifer’s Line, 210–218; Report of Scouts and Arrests, Company C, Ranger Force, July 1905, TSA; Telegram, Captain John H. Rogers to AG John A. Hulen, 14 September 1905, TRHF&M; Captain Rogers to AG Hulen, 16 September 1905, TRHF&M; Waco Times-Herald, September 19, 1905; Caldwell and DeLord, Texas Lawmen: More of the Good and the Bad, 394–396. Spellman, Captain John H. Rogers, 152–153. John Busby McClung, “Texas Rangers Along the Rio Grande, 1910–1919,” Dissertation, Texas Christian University, Fort Worth, 1981, p. 23. Brownsville Daily Herald, August 2, 1910; Biennial Report of the Adjutant General for the Period Ending December 15, 1910, TSA; Maude T. Gilliland, Wilson County Rangers, 1837–1997, 41–47; Caldwell and DeLord, Texas Lawmen: More of the Good and the Bad, 68–69. For the murders of Texas Ranger Russell and Deputy Garlick see Bob Alexander, “Hell Paso,” National Outlaw/Lawman History Association Quarterly, April–June 2002, 5–14; Also, El Paso Morning Times, June 24, 1913; El Paso Herald, June 24,1913; Alexander, Riding Lucifer’s Line, 219–227. Bill O’Neal, Reel Rangers: Texas Rangers in Movies, TV, Radio and Other Forms of Popular Culture, 1–7; Mike Cox, Texas Ranger Tales II, 265; Hon. O.B.

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Colquitt, Governor of Texas, “The Texas Ranger as He Is,” Leslie’s Illustrated Weekly Newspaper, April 16, 1914. 19. Charles H. Harris III and Louis R. Sadler, The Plan De San Diego: Tejano Rebellion, Mexican Intrigue, 1–5; Barkley and Odintz, eds., The Portable Handbook of Texas, “Plan of San Diego,” as thoughtfully and skillfully summarized by contributor Don M. Coerver: “There would be a no-quarter race war, with summary execution of all white males over the age of 16. . . . Moreover, the plan’s legacy of racial antagonism, endured long after the plan itself had been forgotten.” Quotation found on pp. 671–672. For last quotation see, Wesley Hall Looney, “The Texas Rangers in a Turbulent Era,” Master of Arts Thesis, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, 1971, 5–10. 20. For the deaths of Texas Rangers Eugene Hulen and Robert Lee Burdett, see Alexander, Riding Lucifer’s Line, 237–253; Caldwell and DeLord, Texas Lawmen: More of the Good and the Bad, 399–400. Readers interested in the Mexican bandit Chico Cano may access Alexander, Lawmen, Outlaws, and S.O.Bs., Vol. 2, 267–283, and see John H. Rogers, United States Marshal for the Western District of Texas, to the Attorney General of the United States, Washington, D.C., 29 May 1915, regarding the murder of U.S. Mounted Customs Inspector Jack Howard. “It is the general opinion that this crime was committed by what is known as the Cano gang of outlaws.” National Archives [NA]; W.D. Smithers, “Bandit Raids in the Big Bend Country,” Sul Ross State College Bulletin, September 1963. 75; Also, Tony Cano and Ann Sochat’s biography, Bandido: The True Story of Chico Cano, the Last Western Bandit. For the brutal murder of Pablo Jiménez, see, Ron C. Tyler, The Big Bend: A History of the Last Texas Frontier, 163. For further details regarding the killing of Pascual Orozco Jr., based on primary sourced data, readers may wish to review Alexander, Lawmen, Outlaws, and S.O.Bs., 255–276; El Paso Morning Times, September 1, 1915; El Paso Herald, October 7, 1915; U.S. Mounted Customs Inspector Herff A. Carnes to Collector of Customs, El Paso, Texas, 01 September 1915, courtesy NA; Statements at Inquest by W.H. Schrock and Culberson County Sheriff John Morine, courtesy Culberson County District/County Clerk, Van Horn, Texas; Bob Alexander, Fearless Dave Allison: Border Lawman, 184–210; A period photograph of the arms, ammunition, and other paraphernalia taken from Pascual Orozco and his cohorts may also be found in Alexander’s Lawmen, Outlaws, and S.O.Bs, 267. Undue reliance on Joyce Means, Pancho Villa Days at Pilares and Robert S. Bolling, Death Rides the River, Tales of the El Paso Road, is probably best avoided; source citations come in in large part from gossip, hearsay, and overly partisan, but unsubstantiated oral and not necessarily written or even contemporaneous tales. An alternative narrative is Raymond Caballero’s Lynching Pascual Orozco: Mexican Revolutionary Hero and Paradox. Whether or not Pascaul Orozco actually qualified as a hero must be left to

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the astute reader’s judgment. And for a short version of Mr. Caballero’s theories, an article in the August 30, 2015, edition of the San Antonio ExpressNews is reasonably accessible. 21. John Bossenecker, Texas Ranger: The Epic Life of Frank Hamer, The Man Who Killed Bonnie and Clyde, 133: “Ransom captured four suspects and, despite [Cameron County Sheriff] Vann’s protestations, took them into the brush and executed them.” McClung, “Texas Rangers Along the Rio Grande, 1910–1919.” “Ransom summarily declared that four of the prisoners were guilty of murder, marched them into the brush, and ‘executed them,’ ” p. 83. Mike Cox, Time of the Rangers: Texas Rangers from 1900 to the Present, 66; Utley, Lone Star Lawmen, 27–34. Not surprisingly, as the book’s title suggests, Pat Goodrich, Captain Ransom’s granddaughter, in Captain Ransom, Texas Ranger: An American Hero, 1874–1918, offers commentary and interpretation somewhat divergent with the sworn testimony rendered during contemporary governmental hearings, as well as the fact-based analysis of latter day academics and nonfiction writers. Disappointingly, in the overall context of the Texas Ranger fascinating narrative, institutionally their blackest days are welded to behavior and misbehavior and murderous conduct associated with the Mexican Revolution era, a disturbing history that may not—nor should it be—erased. 22. Paul N. Spellman, “Dark Days Of The Texas Rangers,” Journal of South Texas Studies, Spring 2001, 71–97. Although Spellman’s piece is, when appropriate, critical of Texas Rangers for this place and era, commendably he approaches the subject with historic fidelity and not a predetermined partisan agenda. He simply lets the factual chips fall where they may; The Austin American-Statesman, April 5, 2015, with byline by Lucia Benavides, carries an article wherein the subtitle is: “Rangers said to have killed as many as 5,000 Mexicans in early 1900s,” Quoted, interestingly, within the story it is noted, “Historians dispute the numbers but estimate 300 to 5,000 MexicanAmericans were killed.” For this particular piece, Associate Professor of English at the University of Texas, John Morán González, addresses the apparent gross numbers disparity with theoretical insinuation and a noticeable shortage of substantiation. Logically, well-informed and cogent readers may grade the merit or lack of merit of his proposition as they see fit. Pierce, A Brief History of the Rio Grande, describes much of the Lower Rio Grande Valley violence by date, name, and place. 89–115. Pierce particularly recounts: “Private Richard J. Johnson was missing. Johnson with his horse and equipment was taken prisoner by the Mexicans, carried across the river, his ears first cut off and then he was decapitated, his head being displayed on a pike,” p. 95. Mark Boardman, “No Quarter: The Texas Rangers vs. Mexican Insurgents, 1915–1919,” True West, January/February 2006, p. 44: “They

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24.

25.

26.

27.

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looted and burned the place, and captured Army Pvt. Richard Johnson, taking him with them when they retreated back to Mexico. Johnson was executed, and two Carranza men removed his ears as souvenirs. His head was cut off and placed on a pole for the Americans to see.” Alexander, Riding Lucifer’s Line, 161. The reader wishing to access in-depth analysis and comprehensive research findings regarding U.S. Military buildup along the Texas/Mexico border would be advised to examine the outstanding work of Charles H. Harris III and Louis R. Sadler, The Great Call-Up: The Guard, the Border, and the Mexican Revolution. Harris and Sadler, The Plan De San Diego, 241–263; Paredes, With His Pistol in His Hand, for the groundless assertion that Texas Rangers cowered behind U.S. Army skirts. See p. 24. David Dorado Romo, Ringside Seat to a Revolution: An Underground Cultural History of El Paso and Juárez, 105; Vanderwood, “The Rurales: Mexico’s Rural Police Force, 1861–1914.” First quotation in text, and “Anti-Porfirian propaganda has consigned the force to a villainous role it never played,” p. vii. Barkley and Odintz, The Portable Handbook of Texas, Contributor, Martin Donell Kohout, “Glenn Spring Raid,” 372–373; Paul J. Vanderwood and Frank N. Samponaro, Border Fury: A Picture Postcard Record of Mexico’s Revolution and U.S. War Preparedness, 1910–1917, 11 and 169. On the latter page the authors conjecture “Some eighty Mexicans raiders—one suspects that there were several Americans among them—attacked the settlements of Glenn Springs and Boquillas in the Big Bend in May 1916.” Were the Americans Tejanos?; Carlysle Graham Raht, The Romance of Davis Mountain and Big Bend Country, characterizes some of the Glenn Springs and Boquillas raiders—regardless of nationality—as “the fiercest outlaws of Mexico,” page 351. Christopher Lance Habermeyer, Gringo’s Curve: Pancho Villa’s Massacre of American Miners in Mexico, 1916, 54–69; Alpine Avalanche, September 14, 1951, byline Cas Edwards, “Story of Glenn Springs Raid Is Told From Eye Witness of Border Murders.” Charles H. Harris III and Louis R. Saddler, The Border and the Revolution: Clandestine Activities of the Mexican Revolution, 1910–1920, 101–112; Alexander, Riding Lucifer’s Line, 256–258. J.C. Cameron, Executive Secretary for the Great Southern Life Insurance Company to Adjutant General James A. Harley, 10 December 1917. Courtesy, Doug Dukes. John Busby McClung, “Texas Rangers Along the Rio Grande, 1910–1919,” Dissertation: Texas Christian University, Fort Worth, Texas, 1981, 93–94. For the death of U.S. Mounted Customs Inspector Howard, see Glenna D. Kieffe, “Finis: The Final Entry,” Customs Today, Fall 1990 and Charles L. Wright, “A Western Tragedy,” Customs Today, Fall 1992. Also, Deputy Collector of Customs Luke Dow to Collector of Customs, Eagle Pass, Texas,

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15 February 1913, NA; Telegram, Collector of Customs [J.A. Harvin], Eagle Pass, Texas, to Secretary of the Treasury, Washington, DC, 12 February 1913, NA; Glenn Justice, Little Known History of the Texas Big Bend, 141– 164, covers the Brite Ranch Raid and Porvenir murders in detail; Utley, Lone Star Lawmen, 58. For current assertions that the U.S. Military may have been culpable participants in the Porvenir homicides, see San Antonio Express-News, April 3, 2016. 28. C.A. Hawley, “Life Along the Border,” Sul Ross State College Bulletin, September 1964, 33. Another border country fellow echoed the thought, see Kirby F. Warnock, Texas Cowboy: The Oral Memoirs of Roland A. Warnock and His Life on the Texas Frontier, 41–42. 29. Alexander, Riding Lucifer’s Line, 254–298; Texas Ranger Will Stillwell’s murder site was not in Texas but was south of the Rio Grande/Río Bravo just inside Mexico; Caldwell and DeLord, Texas Lawmen: More of the Good and the Bad, 401–409; Verdon R. Adams, Tom White: The Life of a Lawman, 10. 30. Harris and Sadler, Texas Rangers and the Mexican Revolution, perhaps, present the most thoroughly balanced interpretation of the hearings and specifically address each of the nineteen allegations leveled at the Texas Rangers institutionally and/or individual Rangers, not shying away from direct or circumstantial evidence or even inconvenient truths. Commendably they seem not to have a dog in the hunt. 427–461. Also see this work, 396–398, for a recap of and description of the WWI Loyalty Rangers, a non-taxpaid force of “real” Texas Rangers, three handpicked men from each county, tasked with aiding local authorities in ferreting out disloyal and/or subversives and/or suspected saboteurs operating within Texas during WWI; Proceedings of the Joint Committee of the Senate and the House in the Investigation of the Texas State Ranger Force, TSA; for the Q&A of Sheriff Vann herein quoted refer to pages, 563, 567, and 585, TSA. For unsupported number of Mexicano deaths at the hands of Texas Rangers and/or others, see, Arnoldo De León, ed., War Along The Border: The Mexican Revolution and Tejano Communites, contribution of Richard Ribb, “La Rinchada: Revolution, Revenge, and the Rangers, 1910–1920.” 56–106 and Webb, The Texas Rangers, “The number killed in the entire valley has been estimated at five hundred and at five thousand, but the actual number can never be known,” p. 478. While condemning Texas Rangers for atrocities—and there were some—Harris and Sadler, Texas Rangers And The Mexican Revolution seem to hammer their findings from facts, rather than simply relying on overinflated insinuation. “But no credible source for these numbers [500 to 5000] has appeared,” p. 296. The concluding overall analysis of José Tomás Canales’s ineffectiveness for these governmental proceedings and the resultant collapse of his political career is succinctly addressed in Johnson, Revolution in Texas, 174, 176.

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31. James Randolph Ward, “The Texas Rangers, 1919–1935: A Study in Law Enforcement,” Dissertation, Texas Christian University, Fort Worth, Texas, 1972, pp. 67–69. 32. Ibid., 74–76; Utley, Lone Star Lawmen, 92–96; Cox, Time of the Rangers, 112; Tise, Texas County Sheriffs, 319; and for the most recent recount of the Mexia oilfield raids, see Boessenecker, Texas Ranger: The Epic Life of Frank Hamer, 248–258. 33. This particular incident is extraordinarily well covered and superbly source cited in The Red River Bridge War: A Texas-Oklahoma Border Battle by Rusty Williams. Also see the delightfully informative work of Carol Dawson and Roger Allen Polson in Miles and Miles of Texas: 100 Years of the Texas Highway Department, 122–124. Sterling, Trails and Trials, adds his humorous touch to Guardsmen from Oklahoma facing off with Texas Rangers: “Adjutant General Barrett, of Oklahoma, and I [Sterling] were good friends. Both of us had recently attended a National Guard conferences in Washington. I sent him word that the Texas end of the bridge was being held by four Rangers. If he was sending a brigade to open it, I would keep all four of them there. If only a regiment was to be used, I would let a couple of the boys go home,” pp. 222–223. 34. James W. Robinson, The DPS Story: History of the Development of the Department of Public Safety in Texas, 8. 35. Ibid. 36. Stephen William Schuster IV, “The Modernization of the Texas Rangers, 1930–1936,” Thesis, Texas Christian University, Fort Worth, Texas, 1965, pp. 38–39. That Hickman was not drawing taxpayer monies during his 1924 overseas sojourn judging rodeos is confirmed by Walter Prescott Webb’s article “Texas Rangers Quell Troubles,” for the August 1924 edition of The State Trooper, p. 14. 37. Ibid., 40. 38. Robinson, The DPS Story is—by far—the most authoritative treatment of the Texas Department of Public Safety’s rich organizational history. And, for a brief historical reference the interested reader may wish to access Herbert Molloy Mason, Jr., Texas Rangers, 134–139. 39. Jay Hyams, The Life and Times of the Western Movie, 44; Cox, Texas Ranger Tales II, 249–262; O’Neal, Reel Rangers, 30–31. 40. Readers wishing to explore the activities of Texas Rangers during War II and into the 1950s Cold War era, would be well advised to review the work of Kemp Dixon, Chasing Thugs, Nazis, and Reds: Texas Ranger Norman K. Dixon. For Frank Hamer’s volunteering for an overseas trip to scotch waterfront saboteurs, see H. Gordon Frost and John H. Jenkins, “I’m Frank Hamer”: The

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Life of a Texas Peace Officer, 269; Boessenecker, Texas Ranger: The Epic Life of Frank Hamer, 451. 41. Robert Lacey Cash, in selected writing is also known simply as Robert Lacey. Recounting of this episode is a synthesis of several sources, including: Mitchel P. Roth, Convict Cowboys: The Untold History of the Texas Prison Rodeo, for mention of the Retrieve Unit, 102; Roger N. Conger, “ ‘Lone Wolf’ Gonzaullas: Courage With Composure,” The Texas Ranger Annual 4, 8; Brownson Malsch, Lone Wolf: Captain M.T. Gonzaullas, 145–147; Robert W. Stephens, Lone Wolf: The Story of Texas Ranger Captain M.T Gonzaullas, 67–70. Interesting biographical data regarding Lone Wolf Gonzaullas may be accessed by reviewing Charles H. Harris III, Frances E. Harris, and Louis R. Saddler, Texas Ranger Biographies: Those Who Served, 1910–1921, 126–128.

Chapter 13 Spiking the Legacy 1. Ben Procter, Just One Riot: Episodes of Texas Rangers in the 20th Century, 85–101; Longview Daily News, November 28, 1972; Robert Nieman, “Captain Bob Crowder and the Rusk State Hospital Riot,” Texas Ranger Dispatch, Spring 2001. Nieman writes that smartly DPS Trooper Jim Ray, future Texas Ranger and later Chief of the DPS Criminal Law Enforcement Division, was on the outer perimeter at Rusk State Hospital armed with a sniper rifle as a backup should the situation have gone bad for Captain Crowder. Lewis C. Rigler and Judyth Wagner Rigler, In The Line of Duty: Reflections of a Texas Ranger Private, 165. For a generalization regarding violators standing toe to toe with an armed lawman, perhaps the words of Captain John M. Wood punctuate the necessity of owning an advantage: “Well, Thomas was mean but he wasn’t stupid. He knew a bullet-made buttonhole was a verdict he couldn’t appeal. Him and his bodyguard dropped their knives like they was red-hot pokers and stuck their hands straight up in the air.” See, John M. Wood, Texas Ranger in the Oil Patch, 110. 2. Douglas V. Meed, Texas Ranger Johnny Klevenhagen, 173–186. Meed’s skillful biographical profile of Gene Paul Norris and his life of criminality is fascinating and informative; Stan Redding, “Top Gun of the Texas Rangers,” True Detective Magazine, February 1963, 71–73; Gary W. Sleeper, I’ll Do My Own Damn Killin’: Benny Binion, Herbert Noble, and the Texas Gambling War, 63–64. Also, S. E. Spinks, Law on the Last Frontier: Texas Ranger Arthur Hill. Clearly, as will be seen, Texas Ranger Sergeant Arthur Hill was not in the dark about what Gene Paul Norris had in store for the bank worker and her boy: “and that they were planning to kill one of the employees, a woman and her young son.” See p. 132. And, Fort Worth Press, November 21, 1957:

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5. 6.

7. 8.

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“Norris planned to kidnap a woman employee of the bank, hold her and her child as hostages and then kill them both.” Ibid. For more regarding this particular episode and past criminality of Gene Paul Norris, see Linda Jay Puckett, Cast a Long Shadow: A Casebook of the Law Enforcement Career of Texas Ranger Captain E.J. (Jay) Banks, 110–122. Spinks, Law on the Last Frontier, 132; Cox, Time of the Texas Rangers, 240– 24; Robert M. Utley, “Terminating Oklahoma’s Smiling Killer,” Texas Ranger Dispatch, Summer 2005. Dallas Morning News, April 30 and May 3, 1957; Utley, Lone Star Lawmen, 214; Susie Mills, Legend in Bronze: The Biography of Jay Banks, 4–6. Spinks, Law on the Last Frontier, 138. For this episode as well as a most insightful examination of Fort Worth gangsterdom during this electrifying and literally explosive era, see Ann Arnold’s Gamblers and Gangsters: Fort Worth’s Jacksboro Highway in the 1940s and 1950s. Arnold writes that outlaw William Carl Humphrey’s nickname was “Wimpy” rather than the oft cited “Silent Bill.” Regardless, the ensuing drama is rich with excitement and contract killings, exposing Fort Worth’s then underbelly of traditional vice and criminality—and look the other way corruption. Cox, Texas Ranger Tales, vol. 2, 253. For readers interested in this truly fascinating example of Rangers acting to enforce the law when local officers demurred, several works are recommended: The exhaustively researched and adroitly written Galveston’s Maceo Family Empire: Bootlegging and The Balinese Room by T. Nicole Boatman, Scott H. Belshaw and Richard B. McCaslin; Robert “Bobby” Nieman’s excellent piece, “Galveston’s Balinese Room: Born 1942—Died 2008, “ Texas Ranger Dispatch, Summer 2008; Ed Gooding and Robert Nieman, Ed Gooding: Soldier, Texas Ranger, 107–116; and James M. Day, Captain Clint Peoples: Texas Ranger, 84–89. Utley, Lone Star Lawmen, cogently it seems, approaches these subjects with an evenhanded and analytical approach, particularly the Texas Ranger involvement with South Texas farm workers and union organizers and political activists, 235–251. For the Lone Star Steel Strike, interested readers might wish to access Glenn Elliott and Robert Nieman, Glenn Elliott: A Ranger’s Ranger, 103–113; also, Bob Favor, My Rangering Days, 1967–1992, 44. Also see this volume for an informative and delightfully penned account of Texas Ranger Bob Favors’s first day on the job under the ever independent-minded and gutsy Captain A.Y. Allee, p. 30–34. And, Bob Arnold, First in Texas: Three Texans and Their Contributions to Texas History, 1821–1978, 180–183. Also, Captain Bob Mitchell, Texas Ranger, Ret., to Robert Nieman, 29 October 1996, Typescript, TRHF&M. That Texas Rangers had their detractors and name-callers is indubitably reiterated in W. Eugene Hollon’s Frontier

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11.

12.

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Violence: Another Look, p. 42: “The Texas Ranger’s reputation as an unswerving defender of law and order has been enhanced to the point of mythology on one side of the international boundary, but to the Mexicans on both sides he possessed all the sensitivity of a rattlesnake. . . . .who vociferously demand that the Rangers be abolished.” Although herein it’s perhaps unnecessary to reiterate, but institutionally the Texas Rangers have outlived their nay-saying detractors, and their long-term viability as a first-rate state law-enforcing entity is by legislative diktat secure. For a succinct peek at a Texas Ranger dispatched to Galveston for the 1920s longshoremen’s strike, see Ida Harbison Luttrell, The Road to Randado: The Life Story of Former Texas Ranger Pell Harbison and His Pioneer Ancestors, 123–126. The story of TRHF&M’s founding is preserved in Day’s One Man’s Dream: Fort Fisher and The Texas Ranger Hall of Fame; John Schwartze, “Texas Ranger Hall of Fame and Museum,” RECOIL Magazine, Issue No. 27, 2016, page 28: “Founded in 1964, the state gave permission to Waco to construct the Texas Ranger Hall of Fame and Museum, which opened its doors in 1968.” Paula Blesener, “Ranger Museum Marks 50th.” Also see, Waco Today, September 2014, 40–45. Joe H. Bridge, Jr., The Life and Times of Joe H. Bridge, 52. Photographs from M.T. “Lone Wolf” Gonzaullas Collection, TRHF&M; E.G. Albers, Jr., The Life and Reflections of a Texas Ranger, 79–85. Fort Worth Star-Telegram, October 14, 1971; Jim Gatewood, Decker: A Biography of Sheriff Bill Decker, Dallas, County, Texas, 1898–1970, 215; Utley, Lone Star Lawmen, 266–268; Cox, Time of the Rangers, 287–289; Redding, “Top Gun of the Texas Rangers,” 60; Undated news clip, San Angelo Standard Times, VF-Tom Arnold, TRHF&M. An assertion—true or not—that some Texas Rangers were, indeed, fast on the draw may be drawn from Raymond West’s Bennie C. Krueger: Texas Ranger. . . . Texas Gentleman. Purportedly, twentieth-century Texas Ranger Charlie Miller—a man of legendary standing within law enforcing circles—who carried his pistol in his waistband or pocket, was so fast that during one gunplay with a violator he set his own shirttail on fire with the muzzle blast from his .45 autoloader. See p. 30. ¿Quién sabe? Narration for this event is drawn from several sources: William T Harper’s excellently researched and skillfully written Eleven Days in Hell: The 1974 Carrasco Prison Siege at Huntsville, Texas. Also, the twenty-page written report of Warden Howell H. “Hal” Husbands, “The Escape Attempt of Inmates Fred Gomez Carrasco, #237163, Rudy Dominguez, #232414, and Ignacio Cuevas, #218121,” TRHF&M. Also, “Investigation of Attempted Escape at the Walls Unit of the Department of Corrections, Huntsville, Texas on July 24, 1974. This Investigation Ordered By: The Honorable

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Governor Dolph Briscoe, Under the Direction of: Texas Ranger Captain J.F. (Pete) Rogers.” Particularly useful were the investigative reports of Texas Ranger Wesley Styles and the voluntarily written statement of inmate Lawrence James Hall in the TRHF&M. Ramiro “Ray” Martinez, They Call Me Ranger Ray, 127–132. And for truly fascinating insight from a then ground-level corrections officer and later Warden of the Walls Unit, and yet later Director of the Texas Prison Museum, the reader should access Jim Willett’s and Ron Rozelle’s exceptional Warden: Prison Life and Death from the Inside Out, which also highlights the fact that while this dramatic event was unfolding, there was yet a vital correctional institution to maintain and felony inmates to securely detain. See pp. 91–113. Jorge Antonio Renaud, Behind the Walls: A Guide for Families and Friends of Texas Prison Inmates, p. xiii: “inmates will not be allowed to buy their freedom by taking hostages, not in Texas.” Captain Rogers is succinctly profiled in the October 7, 1973, edition of the Borger News-Herald and the Houston Post of August 31, 1969, both pieces preceding the prison takeover. Dallas Morning News, February 24 and 23, 1978, March 4 and 8, 1978, May 31, 1978, June 14 and 17, 1978; DeLord, The Ultimate Sacrifice, 172; VF-Bobby Paul Doherty, TRHF&M. Jack O. Dean, Texas Ranger Captain, Ret. and former United States Marshal for the Western District of Texas, Oral History Transcript, TRHF&M. Multiple interviews with Jack Dean by Bob Alexander; Utley, Lone Star Lawmen, 278–280. Rather cleverly pre- and post- WW II Texas Ranger Joe Bridge underscores the absolute value of cultivating personal sources of information—informants and cooperative witnesses—for proficiently conducting criminal investigations: “it was difficult to catch a cow thief with a finger print kit.” See, Bridge, The Life and Times of Joe H. Bridge: Texas Ranger, 1936–1956, 47. Cleburne Times-Review, January 14,1985; Dallas Times Herald, January 14, 1985; Dallas Morning News, January 14 and 16, 1985; Fort Worth StarTelegram, January 15, 1985, February 9 and 23, 1985, March 26 and 29, 1985; Waco-Tribune Herald, April 28, 1985; Greenville Herald Banner, August 21, 1996; Robert Nieman, “Howard ‘Slick’ Alfred and the Amy McNeil Kidnapping,” Texas Ranger Dispatch, Winter 2008. Capt. Bob Prince, Ret., “The Meridian Hostage Crisis,” Texas Ranger Dispatch, Spring 2003; Utley, Lone Star Lawmen, 285–287. Once again a synthesis of resource materials was utilized for recounting this event. Particularly interesting was the oral history interview with Captain Bob Mitchell by Robert Nieman, 29 October 1996, TRHF&M; Dallas Morning News, January 24, 1987; the “Eulogy Delivered by Colonel Adams at Guffey’s Funeral,” as carried in the March 1987 edition of the Texas

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22.

23.

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DPSOA Monthly, the official publication of the Department of Public Safety Officers Association, 39–41. For an edifying and most readable account the reader is referred to H. Joaquin Jackson and David Marion Wilkinson, One Ranger: A Memoir, 177–185; Utley, Lone Star Lawmen, 292–295. Cox, Time of the Rangers, 335. O’Neal, Reel Rangers, 144–145. Report to the Deputy Attorney General on the Events at Waco, Texas, February 28 to April 19, 1993. United States Department of Justice Report. Richard Scruggs, Assistant to the Attorney General, et al., Courtesy, TRHF&M; Captain David A. Byrnes, Company B, Texas Rangers to Bob Alexander, Special Agent, U.S. Treasury Department, 28 September 1994; Captain Byrnes to Robert Nieman, 7 January 2006, Transcript courtesy TRHF&M. Also, Mike Cox, Stand-Off in Texas: “Just Call Me a Spokesman for DPS . . .”, pp. 48–70. Barry Caver and Robert Nieman, “Barry Caver on the Republic of Texas Standoff,” Texas Ranger Dispatch, Winter 2004, also reprinted in Glasrud and Weiss, Tracking the Texas Rangers: The Twentieth Century, 204–237. Ibid.; and interview with Barry K. Caver, Captain Texas Rangers, Ret., by Bob Alexander, 17 October 2016. Also, Doyle Holdridge, Working the Border: A Texas Ranger’s Story, for numerous interesting true tales of Texas borderland law enforcement activities and, particularly for the Republic of Texas episode wherein the Texas Department of Corrections’ dog was killed, see, 239–245. TRHF&M. A brief but salient illustration of how a so-called routine day for Texas Rangers—or any other law enforcers—can spike to excitement and turn into hell-in-a-hand-basket at but a heartbeat is illustrated by Joe B. Hunt’s (former Ranger and Sheriff of Tom Greene County) Texas Ranger: Campfire Tales, 99–101. Cox, Time of the Rangers, 358–363; Bill Crawford, Texas Death Row: Executions in the Modern Era, 368.

Chapter 14 Rangers Today 1. Elizabeth Cruce Alvarez, ed., Texas Almanac: 2014–2015. 2. Assistant Director DPS and Chief of the Texas Rangers Randy Prince’s quotation from TRHF&M’s compilation of Ranger assignment and deployment register; 17 November 2016 interview with Chief Prince by Bob Alexander. 3. Interview with Texas Ranger Patrick Peña, Texas Ranger, Company F, by Bob Alexander, 18 October 2016. 4. Devereaux, Pistols, 32–33.

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5. Interview by Bob Alexander with Deputy Assistant Director of DPS, Assistant Chief of the Texas Rangers, Frank Malinak, 25 October 2016. 6. Interview by Bob Alexander with Kirby W. Dendy, Chief, Texas Rangers, Ret., 14 October 2016; Interview by Bob Alexander with George Turner, Lieutenant, Texas Rangers, Ret., 14 October 2016; Athens Daily Review, July 13, 2004. 7. Captain Caver to Bob Alexander as cited; Lieutenant Wende Wakeman, Texas Rangers, interview by Bob Alexander, 31 October 2016. 8. Cox, Time of the Rangers, 374. 9. Captain Caver to Bob Alexander as cited. 10. Ibid.; Cox, Time of the Rangers, 369–375. 11. Kirby W. Dendy, Chief, Texas Rangers, Ret., from the Foreword of Bob Alexander’s Six-Shooters and Shifting Sands, viii. 12. Interview by Bob Alexander with Reuben T. Mankin, Texas Ranger, 28 October 2016. 13. DPS Internal Statistical Analysis; Rigler, “A Descriptive Study of the Texas Rangers: Historical Overtones on Minority Attitudes,” 30. 14. Kirby W. Dendy, Chief, Texas Rangers, Ret., from the Foreword of SixShooters and Shifting Sands, as cited. 15. Glasrud and Weiss, Tracking the Texas Rangers: The Twentieth Century, contribution of Pamela Colloff, quoting the Texas Ranger Kyle Dean (now retired), p. 254: “I don’t carry the weapon that DPS issues us, which is the SIG Sauer P226. Like a lot of other Rangers, I carry the Colt .45. It’s a luxury we’re afforded that the other services are not. We can carry the firearms that we think best fits our assignment. The way I see it, the Colt is a link to the past. That’s what the Rangers who came before us carried, and we’re continuing that tradition.” 16. Interview by Bob Alexander with Matt Cawthon, Texas Ranger, Ret., 26 October 2016; Glasrud and Weiss, Tracking the Texas Rangers: The Twentieth Century, contribution of Pamela Colloff, 254. 17. Interview by Bob Alexander with Lieutenant Jamie Downs, Texas Ranger, 30 April 2016. 18. Presentation of H.L. “Hank” Whitman, Jr., Chief, Texas Rangers, Ret., to Heart of Texas Historians and Storytellers at Brady, Texas, 18 September 2016, and interview by Bob Alexander. 19. Interviews with Texas Ranger Assistant Chief Frank Malinak, as cited and interview with Texas Ranger Chief Kirby Dendy, Ret., by Bob Alexander as cited; for more on this act of domestic terrorism see, Anita Belles Porterfield and John Porterfield, Death on Base: The Fort Hood Massacre. A note of friendly watchfulness: Texas Ranger participation in the Fort Hood episode

598

20.

21.

22. 23. 24.

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for this captivating volume is mentioned on pages 93–94 rather than the indexed 103–104. Interview by Bob Alexander with Texas Ranger Assistant Chief Frank Malinak, as cited. Interview with Chief Kirby Dendy, Texas Rangers, Ret., by Bob Alexander as cited; Janet Meek Jones, “Closing Career as a Texas Ranger, Waco Today, September 2014, 46–50. Interview by Bob Alexander with Texas Ranger Jason Bobo, 2 November 2016; Series of October 2016 articles in the Copperas Cove Leader Press covering the trial and items of related interest. Not surprisingly, now retired Texas Rangers John Aycock and Fred Cummings also testified during this trial. Henry C. Parke, “A Defiant Outlaw-Hero Ballad,” True West, 62–64. Author Bob Alexander, representing TRHF&M, was pleased to be a participant and witness to this ceremony. Interview by Bob Alexander with Major Todd Snyder, Company C, Texas Rangers, 2 November 2016.

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622

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624

TEXAS RANGERS

Rister, Carl Coke. “Harmful Practices of Indian Traders of the Southwest, 1865– 1876.” New Mexico Historical Review, July 1931. Ritter, Al. “Death on the Rio Grande.” DPSOA Magazine [Department of Public Safety Officers Association]. March/April 1996. Robertson, Walter M. “The Loss Valley Fight.” Frontier Times, December 1929. Rogers, Majorie. “The Story of the Morgan Massacre.” Frontier Times, December 1935. ———. “The Falls of the Brazos.” Frontier Times, December 1933. Santos, Richard G., ed. “Regulations for the Civic Militia of Coahuila y Texas, 1834.” Texas Military History, Winter 1967. Sapper, Neil. “Barbarism and Restraint: The Occupation of Mexico City.” Texas Military History 8, no. 2. Scott, Florence Johnson, ed. “George Washington Clutter in the Mexican War.” Texas Military History, Summer 1964. Shearer, Ernest C. “The Callahan Expedition, 1855.” The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, April 1951. Shelley, George E. “The Semicolon Court Case of Texas.” Southwestern Historical Quarterly, April. 1945. Sherman, Jean Dale. “A Century with the Texas Rangers.” The Cattleman, March 1937. Shipman, Jack. “The Salt War of San Elizario.” Voice of the Mexican Border, January, 1934. Simmons, Frank E. “Early Day Tribes in Central Texas.” Frontier Times, May 1926. Smith, Glen. “Some Early Runnels County History, 1858–1885.” West Texas Historical Association Yearbook, 1996. Smith, Thomas T. “U.S. Army Combat Operations in the Indian Wars of Texas, 1849–1881.” Southwestern Historical Quarterly, April 1996. Smithers, W.D. “Bandit Raids in the Big Bend Country.” Sul Ross State College Bulletin, September 1963. Smithwick, Noah. “The Texas Rangers 1836–1839.” Frontier Times, March 1947. Soodalter, Ron. “Yonder Comes a Thousand Indians: Jack Hays and the Battle of Walker’s Creek.” American Cowboy, Special Issue. 2014. Speir, Thomas. “The Spanish Mustang: Historical and Archeological Implications in Texas.” The Steward: Collected Papers on Texas Archeology, 1997. Spellman, Paul N. “Dark Days of the Texas Rangers.” Journal of South Texas Studies, Spring 2001. Spurlin, Charles. “Ranger Walker in the Mexican War.” Military History of Texas and the Southwest9, no. 4 (1971). ———. “Camp Life of the Texas Volunteers in the Mexican War.” Military History of Texas and the Southwest 14, no 4.

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626

TEXAS RANGERS

Newspapers: Alpine Times Athens Daily Review Atlanta Daily Constitution Austin American Statesman Austin City Gazette Austin Daily Democratic Statesman Borger News-Herald Brownsville Daily Herald Cleburne Times-Review Chicago Tribune Copperas Cove Leader Press Corpus Christi Caller Corsicana Observer Dallas Daily Herald Dallas Morning News Dallas Times Herald El Paso Daily Times Fort Worth Press Fort Worth Star-Telegram Galveston Daily News Grant County Herald Greenville Herald Banner Groesbeck Journal

Houston Chronicle Houston Daily Telegraph Houston Post Kerrville Mountain Sun Knoxville Journal Longview Daily News New York Times New York Evening Post Omaha World Herald Rocky Mountain News San Angelo Standard Times San Antonio Daily Express San Antonio Daily Herald San Antonio Daily Light San Antonio Express News San Saba News Telegraph and Texas Register Texas State Gazette Texas State Times The Daily State Journal Waco Daily Examiner Waco Tribune Herald

Index -----, Charles – 13 -----, George – 124 -----, Joe – 181 Abell, Zadok – 142 Abernathy, John R. “Jack” – 347 Abrams, William W. – 134, 142 Acklin, Christopher “Kit” – 37 Adams, James B. “Jim” – 437, 438 Adams, John W. – 171 Addington, Thomas – 191 Addington, William B. – 178, 191, 340 Ad-la-te (Loud Talker) – 150 Adobe Walls – 146–147 Aguillar, Teodoro – 181 Ainsley, S. M. – 243 Alamo – 19, 29, 33, 51, 72, 195, 246, 271, 380 Albers, E. G. Jr. – 376 Alexander, Amos R. – 17 Alexander, Amos R. Jr. – 17 Alexander, F. H. – 137, 142 Alexander, Joseph – 182 Alfred, Howard B. “Slick” – 383 Alice, Texas – 339, 343 Allen, John Oliver – 203, 218, illustration 454 Allen, Texas – 318 Allison, William Davis – 355 Allison, William L. – 243 Allred, James V. “Jimmie” – 365 Allsens, Adam – 56 Alsobrook, William M. – 391 Alvarado, Texas – 382 Amarillo, Texas – 339, 350 Anadarkos – 76 Anderson County, Texas – 351 Anderson, Alexander H. “Ham” – 129, 130, 255

Anderson, Ben – 309 Anderson, Benjamin H. – 191 Anderson, Gordon – 368 Anderson, Rufus – 191 Anderson, Texas – 350 Andrews, Cleo – 367–368 Andrews, Micha – 42 Angleton, Texas – 9, 367 Anglin, William B. – 340 Apaches – 1, 84, 211, 266, 323, 324 Applewhite, John H. – 171 Archer City, Texas – 176 Archer County, Texas – 176 Argyle, Texas – 380 Arlington, Texas – 382 Armstrong, John Barkley – 311, 446 Arnett, Albert Henry – 243 Arnett, Lon – 243 Arnold, Tom E. – 377 Arrington, George Washington “Cap” – 240, 327, illustration 294 Arviett, Hall – 351 Ashcraftt, Elijah Robert – illustration 298 Aten, Austin Ira – 327, illustration 297 Aten, Calvin Grant – 328 Atkinson, J. V. – 130, 142 Atkinson, John – 315 Austin, Stephen F. – 3, 4, 6, 8 – 10, 13, illustration 104 Austin, Texas – 19, 36, 41, 48, 49, 59, 74, 86, 96, 121, 123, 124, 127, 145, 159, 160, 174, 183, 184, 188, 195, 199, 204, 206, 211, 212, 214, 215, 221– 223, 226, 239, 246, 251, 254–256, 263, 266, 268, 271, 319, 321, 327, 340, 342, 349, 350, 362, 375, 384, 386, 388, 389, 430, 431–433 Austwell, Texas – 63 Avery, W.M.– 171 627

628

Index

Aycock, John E. – 382, 384, 385, illustration 453 Aycock, Kossuth – 142 Ay-cufty (Reddish) – 166 Baccus, Elijah – 207, 208 Baccus, Pete – 207, 208 Bader, Carl – 210 Badgett, Robert L. “Bob” – 367 Bagwell, William H. – 191 Bailey, David W. H. – 154–156, 171, 340 Bailey, Phelps – 9 Bailey, Steve – 388 Bailey, Press – 252 Baird, John – 213 Baird, Moses – 212, 213 Baird, Phillip Cuney “P.C.” – 326, illustration 295 Baker, Anderson Yancey – 343–345, 347 Baker, David – 389 Baker, Henry H. – 275 Baldwin, T. A. – 156 Ball, Moses L. – 171 Baltimore, Maryland – 196 Bandera County, Texas – 246 Banks, E. J. “Jay” – 371, 372, illustration 422 Banquette, Texas – 256 Barber, Alford C. – 142 Barber, J. W.– 218 Barber, S. H. – 142 Barbour, Philip Norbourne – 56 Barefoot, John – 242 Barekman, Alexander H. “Alec” – 129, 130, 255 Barler, Willie Lee – illustration 415 Barles, Elizabeth – 372 Barnes, Seaborn – 319, 320 Barry, Buck – 85 Bartholomew, Charles – 218 Bartlett, Edwin J. – 192 Bartlow, James H. – 192 Bartlow, Joe – 333 Barton, Baker – 63 Barton, Thomas D. – 362 Basquez, Tomas (Vasquez) – 181

Bass, Sam – 317, 318, 319, 320, 321, 371 Bastrop, Texas – 11, 17, 21, 41, 196 Bates, William Wells – 218 Bates, Winfred Finis – 345 Batesville, Texas – 64 Bath County, Kentucky – 228 Battle of Plum Creek – 37–41, 45, illustration 110 Battle of San Jacinto – 19, 40 Battle of the Neches - 26 Battle of Walker’s Creek – 46, 48 Baugh, Sammy – 366 Baylor County, Texas – 378 Baylor, George Wythe – 323, 326 Beall, Duval – 185, 186, 214, 241 Bean, Robert – 97 Bean, Roy – 332 Beauman, Melvin E. – 340 Beavert, Larkin P. – 185, 188, 189, 192 Beckham, Joe P. – illustrations 120, 302 Beeler, Brent Albert – 385, 386 Belknap, Texas – 145 Bell County, Texas – 70 Ben Bolt, Texas – 63 Benevides, Refugio – 100, 257 Berbier, Herculana – 346 Beseda, Elizabeth Yvonne “Von” – 379 Best, B. F. – 223, 231, 236, 237, 243 Bexar County, Texas – 68, 72, 260, 343 Biediger, Lorenzo – 92 Big Foot – 233, 234 Big Mush – Cherokee chieftain – 26 Big Saline River – 205 Big Spring, Nebraska – 318 Big Wichita River – 170, 174, 180 Biggs, John – 252 Billingsley, Jesse – 196 Bingham, George R. “Red” – 340 Bird, George Howard – 218 Bird, James Thomas – 218 Bird, Joseph Dorris – 218 Birmingham, Gil – 445 Blackwell, James W.- 218 Blackwell, Jane – 157 Blackwell, W. C. – 243

Index Blanco County, Texas – 82, 196, 197 Blanco River – 64 Blanco, Texas – 196 Blunt, Doctor W. T. – 333 Bly, George W. – 171 Bly, Ira – 171 Bobo, Jason – 444, illustration 459 Boerne, Texas – 70, 249 Bohanon, William – 340 Boice, Josiah – 125, 142 Bolt, Allen – 206, 207 Bomar, James Lee – 218 Boone, Daniel – 34 Boquillas, Texas – 357 Boreing, James Wesley – 192 Bosque County, Texas – 68, 78, 87, 383 Bowie, James - 13 Bowie, Rezin - 13 Bowles – Cherokee chieftain – 27 Bowles, John – 27 Bowman, Mollie – 157 Bowyer, George W. – 171 Boyd, Dusty – 444 Boyd, James J. – 149, 171 Boykin, Frank M. – 142 Bradley, J. E. – 192 Brady, Texas – 427 Brakefield, George – 372 Branch Davidians – 387 Brannan, Johnny – 371 Brannan, Lillie – 371 Brannan, Vince I. – 243 Brazoria County, Texas – 87, 367 Brazos County, Texas – 378 Brazos River – 3, 4, 6, 11, 15, 16, 18, 24, 83, 131, 146, 181 Breaux, Oscar J. – 340 Brennen, James – 243 Brent, James H. – 223 Brewster County, Texas – 357 Bridges, Jeff – 445 Brite, Lucas Charles “Luke” – 357 Brooke, George Mercer – 58 Brooks, James Abijah – 329, 339, 343, 345, 346, illustrations 306, 397 Brooks, Joseph B. – illustration 404

629

Brown County, Texas – 69, 121, 126, 129, 131, 221, 223, 242, 326 Brown, Hamilton – 359 Brown, Harvey S. – 11 Brown, J. B. – 218 Brown, John – 79 Brown, John Henry – 9, 38 Brown, John W. – 247, 275 Brown, O. R. – 372 Brown, William Henry – 243 Browne, James G. – 182 Browning, Joseph Alansing “Joe” – 80, illustration 116 Brownsville Affair – 348 – 349 Brownsville, Texas – 71, 182, 256, 266, 270, 343, 344, 346, 360 Brownwood, Texas – 126, 221, 223, 229, 232 Bryan, J. A. – 218 Bryan, Texas – 378 Bryant, Charles Grandison – 59 Bryant, Ed – 336 Bryant, George Washington – 218 Buchanan, Joseph Benjamin – 391 Buckley, S. B. – 132 Buckner, Aylett C. “Strap” – 13 Buckner, William – 192 Bumgardner, William Mitchell – 243 Bunch, David F. – 142 Bunch, George T. – 192 Bundy, Zachary Taylor – 128, 142 Burdett, Robert Lee – 354, 391 Burrell, Joseph – illustration 120 Burke, J. J. – 192 Burkes, G. W. – 378, 379 Burleson, Edward – 27, 33, 37, 195 Burleson, Edward Jr. – 62 Burnet County, Texas – 78, 221, 222, 234 Burnet, David G. – 26 Burnet, Texas – 214, 221 Burney, Robert Henry – 275 Burns, James D. – illustration 283 Burr, B. F. – 243 Burrow, Rube – 317, 318 Burt, C. W. – 218 Burzynski, Brian – 437

630

Index

Butler, F. M. – 160, 171 Byrnes, David A. – 338, 388, 443 Cabrera, [Tomás ?] – 71, 72 Caddos – 13, 17, 18, 21, 76 Cadena, Antonio – 317 Caldwell County, Texas – 37, 343 Caldwell, Matthew “Old Paint” – 37, 39 Caldwell, Pickney Coatsworth – 34 Calhoun County, Texas – 35 Callahan County, Texas – 131 Callahan, James Hughes – 65, 66, 67 Calvert, Texas - 20 Cameron County, Texas – 71, 72, 182, 256, 344, 345, 351, 360 Cameron, J. C. – 357 Camp Mabry, Texas – 375 Campbell, Eugene – 218 Campbell, George Washington – 177, 185, 192 Campbell, J. T. – 192 Campbell, Thomas M. – 351 Canadian River – 76, 146 Canadian, Texas – 327 Canales, José Tomás – 360, 361 Candelaria, Texas – 358 Cano, Chico – 354 Canoma – Caddo chieftain – 17 Cardis, Louis “Don Luis” – 314 Cargill, Napoleon – 168, 169 Carita – Tonkawa chief - 5 Carmichael, H. H. – 366 Carmichael, Jim – 329 Carnal, Edward B. “Ed” – 151, 205, 218 Carnes, Herff Alexander – 355 Carnes, John – 131, 133 Carnes, Quirl Bailey – 351, 391 Carpenter, T. H. – 192 Carr, John T.– 192 Carrasco, Federico Gomez “Fred” – 377, 379 Carrizo, Texas – see Zapata, Texas Carroll County, Georgia – 178 Carroll, Henry – 201 Carson, Christopher “Kit” – 70 Cart War – 67, 68

Carter, Andrew F. – 391 Carter, Elijah – 84 Carter, Joseph Henry – 232, 233, 243 Carter, Robert Goldthwaite – 94 Cartwright, ----- 326 Cartwright, A. B. – 163, 171 Cartwright, L. F. – illustration 292 Cartwright, Thomas J. – 160, 171 Cash, Robert Lacey – 367, 368 Cassidy, Butch – 317 Castell, Texas – 211 Castleman, Andrew - 5 Castleman, John – 13 Castro – Lipan Apaches chieftain – 41 Cates, Robert G. – 142 Caudle, Malinda – 89 Cauelario, Pedro – 316 Caver, Barry – 436, 437, illustrations 454, 458 Caver, Barry K. – 389, 390 Cavina, Charles [Cavinagh] – 12 Cawthon, Matt – 441 Center Point, Texas – 246, 272, 274 Centerville, Texas – 360 Chamberlain, Samuel – 52, 53, 55 Champion, G.W. – 261, 268, 275 Cheatham, James Albert – 239, 243 Cheatham, Manoh Richard – 243 Cherokee County, Texas – 21 Cherokees – 10, 26 Cherry, Wesley – 96 Cheyenne – 146, 179 Cheyney, James “Jim” – 213 Chicago, Illinois – 198 Childress, Hugh Martin – 19 Chimito – 181 Chinn, Hal W. – 142 Chipman, Herber – 275 Christen, Louis T. – 333 Civil War – 75 - 86 Clark, E.S. “Stoke” – 350 Clark, George W. – illustration 300 Clark, John – 206, 207, 212 Clark, Thomas W. – 244 Clarke, C. P. – 247, 251, 275 Clarke, J. M. – 247, 275

Index Clay County, Texas – 91, 174, 175 Clay, Henry – 322 Cliff, Joseph – 230 Cliff, Miranda – 230 Cliff, W. H. – 230, 244, 340 Clinton, Paul– 192 Clopton, William H. – 66 Clous, J. W. – 267 Coahuila y Texas – 11, 12, 18 Coakley. F. M. – 182 Coffee, Rich – 228 Cohen, William – 357 Coke County, Texas – 91 Coke, Richard – 97, 130, 132, 181, 182, 189, 210, 212, 216, 222, 224 Colbaith, Ambrose Henry – 218 Colburn, Edwin – 192 Coldwell, Cornelius Vernon “Neal” – 100, 246–249, 253–258, 260–268, 271, 273, 274, 274 Cole, W. F. – 244 Coleman County, Texas – 129, 131, 221, 225, 234, 242 Coleman, Albert – 24 Coleman, Elizabeth – 24 Coleman, James – 24 Coleman, Robert Morris – 17, 18, 24 Coleman, Thomas – 24 Collin County, Texas – 318 Collins, Chance – illustration 468 Collins, Dempsey Jones – 160, 171 Coloe, Steven – 357 Colorado City, Texas – 41 Colorado County, Texas – 5 Colorado River – 3, 5, 11, 13, 15, 19, 41–43, 46, 198 Colquitt, Oscar Branch – 352 Colt, Samuel – 42, 43, 46, 48, 51 Colton, C. H. – 247 Columbia, John L. – 203, 218 Columbus, New Mexico – 357 Columbus, Texas – 5 Colvin, ----- 196 Comal County, Texas – 64 Comanche County, Texas – 126, 127, 130 Comanche, Texas – 126, 128

631

Comancheros – 70, 95 Comanches– 1–3, 12–14, 19–42, 44, 45, 47–49, 60, 62–65, 68,70, 75–78, 83, 84, 87, 92, 123, 127, 128, 132, 146, 147, 149, 165, 175, 177, 179, 203, 205, 236, 266, 323, illustration 103 Combs, L. – 244 Compton, Garrett – 357 Concepcion, Texas – 183, 256, 268, 260–261 Concho County, Texas – 91 Concho River – 228 Conditt, Joseph – 347 Conditt, Lora – 347 Conditt, Mildred – 347 Conn, Hugh E. – 218 Connell, James G. – 223, 231, 244 Conner, Bill – 329 Conner, Charlie – 329 Conner, Frederick “Fed” – 329 Conner, Willis – 329 Connor, Christian Reyzor “Chris” – 319, 320 Conrad, Samuel L. – 171 Cook County, Illinois – 198 Cook, Thalis Tucker – 275 Cooke County, Texas – 81 Cooke, William G. – 29, 30 Cooley, William Scott – 203, 204, 210, 213, 214, 215, 218 Cooper, Charles H. – 244 Cooper, Jimmy R. (Bob) – 383 Corbin, H. C. – 267 Corn, Jasper N. – 248, 249, 250, 275 Corn, Lee B. – 152, 155, 275 Corpus Christi, Texas – 49, 58–61, 73, 181, 189, 256, 260, 262, 263 Corse, H. N. – 192 Corse, Henry – 141 Corsicana, Texas – 22, 223 Cortez, Gregorio – 342, 343 Cortina War – 72 – 74 Cortina, Juan Nepomuceno – 71–74, 182, 184, 257, 262, 267 Coryell County, Texas – 78, 444 Cosby, George B. – 63

632

Index

Costen, William Gadsby – 247, 275 Cotton, C. H.– 275 Cotulla, Texas – 333 Cotulla, Texas – 63 Council House fight – 30–32 Coushattas - 21 Cowan, J. D. – 218 Craig, J. B. – 171 Crauson, A. W. – 232 Crawford, Jane Goacher – 21 Crawford, Paint – 93 Crawson, A. W. – 244 Creel, John A. – 218 Crews, J. F. – 171 Crist, Henry – 340 Crockett, Andrew – 223 Crosby, ----- 34 Crosby, Nancy – 34, 35, 38 Crow, Edward Lothry – 192 Crowder, Richard R. “Bob” – 369, 370, illustration 422 Cuero, Otto – Comanche chieftain – 60 Cuero, Texas – 36, 348 Cuevas, Ignacio “Nacho” – 377, 379 Culberson County, Texas – 91, 354 Culberson, Charles A. – 332 Culberson, David B. – 97 Cullen, George – 92 Cullen, Mina – 92 Culwell, Joshua Asbury – 142 Cummings, Fred – 384 Cummings, L. S. – 192 Cupp, John D. – 206, 218 Cureton, Dennis – 93 Curry, W. A. – 142 Curry, W. H. – 137 Dade County, Missouri – 246 Daingerfield, Texas – 374 Dallas County, Texas – 318 Dallas, Texas – 311, 362 , 369, 376, 390 Dalton Gang – 317 Dameron, Shad – 148 Damon, H. F. – 142 Dana, Napoleon – 57 Daniel, Ernest – 372

Daniels, J. M. – 96 Daniels, J. R. – 239 Daughtery, ----- 265 Davenport, Bill – 95 Davenport, Jennie – 383 Davidson, A. P. – 446, illustrations 464, 465 Davidson, James – 91 Davies, Henry D. – 178, 192 Davila, Andres – 181, 182 Davis, Bud – 92 Davis, Edmund J. – 89, 92, 97 Davis, J. G. – 218 Davis, James Lovelace – 218 Davis, Joe – 384 Davis, L. R. – 244, 251 Davis, Richard Harding – 338 Davis, W. A. – 244 Davis, Ben – 252 Day, E. H. – 171 Day, James P. – 215, 218 Dayton, Dr. Lewis B. - 6 De Jarnette, N. B. – 143 de la Cerda, Alfredo – 344, 345, 347 de la Cerda, Ramón – 343, 344 De Lartiegue, Eugene – 126 Dean, Jack O. – 380, 381, illustration 451 Decatur, Texas – 92, 142, 145, 160 Deggs, Cookman Lawson – 203, 218 Del Rio, Texas – 330 Delawares – 10, 178 Dendy, John – 383, illustration 455 Dendy, Kirby – 434, illustration 455 Denison, Texas – 364 Denton County, Texas – 318, 380 Department of Public Safety – illustrations 411, 414 Devils River – 169, 211, 252 DeWitt County, Texas – 22, 130, 266, 348 DeWitt, Green - 10 DeWolf, Gotlip – 40 Diaz, Porfirio – 331 Dickenson, Charles H. – 232, 244 Dimmit County, Texas – 59 Dimmit County, Texas – 92 Dixon, Tomas K. – 128

Index Dixon, William A. “Bud” – 128 Doaty, Robert E. “Bob” – 331, 332, 340 Dockery, Dewayne – illustration 464 Doctor Oscar J. Breaux – 333 Doell, Heinrich “Henry” – 209 Dohausen – 155 Doherty, Bobby Paul – 380, 391, illustration 452 Doherty, Buster Wayne – 380 Doherty, Carolyn – 380 Doherty, Kelly Lynn – 380 Dolan, Pat – 247, 248, 253, 256, 275 Dollahite, James B. – 275 Dominguez, M. Ygnacio “Joe” – 348 Dominguez, Rudolfo Sauceda “Rudy” Jr. – 377, 379 Donnaly, N. – 218 Doolittle, George M. – 131, 135, 143, 310 Doran, David – 436 Doran, Robert B. – 143 Downs, Jamie – illustration 460 Dublin, Dell – 323 Dublin, Dick – 323 Dublin, Roll – 323 DuBose, Harry G. – 334, 335 Duffey, Marcus M. – 192 Duncan, John Riley “Jack” – 311 Duncan, Richard H. “Dick” – 328 Dunman, William H. “Bill” – 236, 244 Dunn, J. R. “Red” – 183, 190 Dunn, Thomas H. – 210, 218 Durbin, Bazil – 10 Durbin, Joseph Walter – illustrations 293, 300 Durham, George P. – 268 Durham, Paul – 203, 215, 218 Durkin, Susanna Carter – 84 Dutton, J. B. – 143 Duval County, Texas – 183, 256, 257, 259 Duvall, Robert – 387 Dwyer, Joseph E. – 240 Dynamite booms – illustration 299 Eagle Lake, Texas – 5 Eagle Pass, Texas – 64, 66, 327 Earle, John H. – 244

633

Eastland County, Texas – 131 Eckford ---- 92 Edens, John – 40 Edinburg, Texas – 260, 270, 344 Edmondson, S. R. – 138 Edna, Texas – 347 Edwards County, Texas – 326, 328 El Frontón de Santa Isabel – see Port Isabel El Olmito, Texas – 93 El Paso County, Texas – 93, 100, 312, 313, 314, 354 El Paso Salt War – 312–315 El Paso, Texas – 313, 332, 352, 370 Eldorado, Texas – 435, illustrations Texas Rangers at Eldorado 457, 458 Eldridge, John T. – 73 Elkins, John M. – 234 Elkins, John M. Sr. – 131 Elkins, Samuel P. – 202, 218 Ellington, George Washington – 228, 235, 236, 244 Elliott, Memphis W. – 244 Elliott, Samuel – 94 Ellis, Charles – 315 Ellis, Clark D. – 192 Erath County, Texas – 77, 121, 374 Escobares, Texas – 261 Euless, Texas – 376 Ewan, Israel S. – 192 Falcon, Cesario G. – 93 Fannin County, Texas – 261 Fannin, James W. – 45 Fanning, Martin W. – 275 Farrington, Charles B. – 171 Faulkner, Daniel Boone – 171 Faulkner, Edward W. – 275 Fayette County, Texas – 2, 10, 20, 41 Ferguson, I. D. – 85 Fernari, Nancy – 384 Fimely (Finnely?), S.A. – 171 Fisher, William S. – 28–30 Fitzpatrick, Elizabeth – 84 Fitzsimmons, Bob – 332 Flaco – 41

634

Index

Fleming, J. R. – 133 Fleming, Martin V. –129 Fletcher, James Ned “Jim Ned” – 192 Flores, Ricardo – 182 Flores, Salvadore – 43 Flowers, Elisha – 12 Flowers, Mrs. Elisha – 12 Flynt, John M. – 330 Foard County, Texas – 80 Fogleman, H.– 172 Foley, Tucker – 34 Ford, E. J. – 143 Ford, John Salmon “Rip” – 59, 61, 73–75, illustration 118 Ford, W. F. – 143 Fort Belknap, Texas, – 83, 84, 94, 147, 149 Fort Bend County, Texas – 333 Fort Brown, Texas – 349 Fort Clark, Texas – 148 Fort Concho, Texas – 91 Fort Davis, Texas – 64, 83, 388 Fort Griffin, Texas – 93 Fort Hancock, Texas – 340 Fort Mason, Texas – 201 Fort McKavett, Texas – 322 Fort Murray, Texas – 84146, 147 Fort Parker, Texas – 18 Fort Richardson, Texas – 94, 156, 167, 177 Fort Sill, Oklahoma – 92, 167, 175, 225, 327 Fort Sterling, Texas – 18, 318 Fort Worth, Texas – 347, 370, 371, 374, 376, 380, 382, 446 Foster, Ben – 445 Foster, Birch S. – 231, 237, 239, 240, 241, 244 Foster, Brantley – 382 Foster, Steve – 434 Fournier, Andy – 372 Foushee, William T. “Bill” – 177, 180, 192 Fowler, Hiram – 79 Fowler, Mary Ann – 78, 79 Fox, James Monroe – 358, 359, illustration 399

Fox, John – 72 Franklin, Robert Lee – 391 Franklin, Texas – see El Paso Frayne, Thomas J. – 275 Frazier, Samuel – 340 Frederick, Oklahoma – 347 Fredericksburg, Texas – 81 Fredonian Rebellion – 10 Freeport, Texas – 9 Freestone County, Texas – 363 Friar, D. B. – 15 Friend, John S. – 88, 89 Friend, Lee Temple – 89 Frio County, Texas – 265 Fuller, T. Lawrence – 339, 340 Fulton, George W. – 183 Fusselman, Charles Henry Vanvalkenburg – 332, 340 Gage, Anna – 78 Gage, Calvin – 78 Gage, Jonathan – 79 Gage, Matilda – 79 Gage, Polly – 78 Gainesville, Texas – 81, 372 Galbreth, M. H. – 252 Galveston, Texas – 200, 366, 374 Garcia, Augustine – 350 Garcia, Gregorio – 93 Garcia, Herncion – 344 Garcia, Viviano – 73 Garlick, William Henry – 352 Garrison, Homer Jr. – 366, 369, illustration 413 Garrison, James – 192 Garvey, Leroy Clayton – 167, 172 Garza, Alberto – alias Caballo Blanco (White Horse) – 257 Garza, Catarino – 330, 331 Garza, Encarnicion – 345 Gatesville, Texas – 78 Gaye, Peter – 275 Gerrish, George Henry – 225, 239, 244 Gerth, William R. – 381, illustration 453 Geser, ----- 13, 14 Gibson, Daniel M. – 165, 168, 169, 172

Index Gibson, Monk – 348 Gideon, James Harvey – 131 Gilbert, C. – 172 Giles, Benjamin F. – 275 Gillcrease, E. S. – 253 Gillespie County, Texas – 81, 82 Gillespie, Addison – 47, 196 Gillespie, James T. – 326 Gillespie, Thomas – 219, 322 Gillespie, William – 60 Gillett, James Buchanan – 211, 323 Gilliland, Johnstone – 44 Gilliland, Mary – 44 Gilliland, Rebecca Jane – 44, 45 Gilliland, William McCalla – 44, 45 Gilmer, Texas – 368 Gipson, Archibald – 37 Gladden, George – 212, 213 Gladewater, Texas – 367, 368 Glass, J. K. – 172 Glass, John W. – 172 Glass, William A. “Billy” – 152, 153, 156, 172, 340 Glen Spring, Texas – 357 Glenn,David – 252 Glover, R. M. – 342 Goacher, James – 21 Gobble, Charles J. – 275 Godinez, Felix – 189 Goff, Thomas Jefferson – 391 Goff, Thomas Jefferson “Tom” – 350 Goldthwaite, Texas – 69 Goliad, Texas – 19, 51 Gonzales County, Texas – 10, 203 Gonzales County, Texas – 342 Gonzales, ----- 13 Gonzales, Texas – 10, 13, 36 Gonzaullas, Manuel Terrazas “Lone Wolf” – 367–368, illustration 416 Gooch, Ben F. – 201 Goodnight, Charles – 80 Goodwin, Oscar W. – 391 Gore, Henry C. – 192 Gossett, Thomas Jefferson – 143 Grady, Caleb W. – 234 Graham, Margaret – 324

635

Granaldo, Santiago – 334 Grant County, New Mexico – 323 Grant, James – 324 Grant, Ulysses S. – 53 Grant, William G. – 172 Grapevine, Texas – 377 Gravis, John E. – 340 Gravis, John R. – 332 Gray, ----- 169 Gray, Doctor Arthur – 34 Gray, Henry C. – 275 Grayson County, Texas – 97, 364 Great Comanche Raid – 33–39 Great Gainesville Hanging – 81 Greathouse, Grey – illustration 405 Green Lake, Texas – 326 Green, William Marion – 143 Greenwood, Garrison – 15 Greer, ----- 83 Gregg County, Texas – 367 Grey, Zane – 352 Grier, Thomas – 72 Griffin, ----- 78 Griffin, J. H. – 143 Griffin, Thomas – 219 Griffith, Ellis Ringold – 135, 143 Griffith, Leander Jackson – 235, 244 Grimes County, Texas – 350 Grimes, Ahijah W. “Hi” – 319 Gross, John C. – 143 Guadalupe County, Texas – 5, illustration Guadalupe County lawmen – 396 Guadalupe River – 22, 23, 46, 64, 191, 272 Guaderrama, Juan – 352 Guaderrama, Marina – 352 Guajardo, Santiago J. – 275 Guffey, Stanley Keith – 382, 384–386, 391, 446, illustration 453, memorial 468 Haby, Jacob – illustration 120 Hall, Jesse Leigh “Red” – 311 Hall, Lawrence James – 379 Hall, William – 6 Haller, Mark – 434, 435

636

Index

Halstead, Samuel T. – 131, 135, 143 Hamer, Frank Augustus – 361, 362, 367, 446, illustrations 305, 399 Hames, Joseph C. – 165, 172 Hamilton, C. H. – 170–171 Hamilton, Orange – 219 Hamilton, Samuel Virgil – 143 Hampton, W. B. – 244 Hand, Jacob – 242, 244 Harcourt, Charles “Doc” – 210 Hardin, Jane – 311 Hardin, John Wesley – 126, 127, 132, 252, 311, 312, 370 Hardin, Joseph Gibson – 128 Hargus, Peter Burrow – 172 Harkley, Joseph – 219 Harley, James A. – 357 Harper, J. P. – 192 Harrell, E. W. – 143 Harrell, Garrett – 43 Harrelson, Charles – 381 Harris County, Texas – 427 Harris, George K. – 390 Harris, John H. – 143 Harris, Mrs. – 20 Harris, Richard H. – 143 Harris, Wesley – 252 Harrison, Dick – 322 Hart, Timothy – 59 Hartman, Joseph S. – 172 Harvell, B. E. – 376 Harvey Massacre memorial – illustration 106 Harvey, Ann – 20 Harvey, Elizabeth – 20 Harvey, John B. – 20 Harvey, William – 20 Haskell County, Texas – 336 Hatcher, Hiram “Curley” – 229, 232, 233, 244 Hattie (Kiowa interpreter) – illustration 107 Havana, Cuba – 257, 267 Hawbaken, Samuel – 125, 134, 143 Hawkins, James B. “Jim” – 198, 206 Hays County, Texas – 14, 246

Hays, John Coffee “Jack” – 37, 45–48, 195, illustration 113 Heard, Charles – 163 Heart-of-a Young-Wolf (Gui-tain) – 148 Heath, John – 147, 148 Heath, Joseph J. – 244 Hedwig’s Hill, Texas – 212 Heintzelman, Samuel P. – 73 Hemphill County, Texas – 240, 329 Henderson County, Texas – 383, 434 Henderson, Joseph – 244 Henderson, Texas – 228 Henrietta, Texas – 174, 175, 176 Henry, Samuel A. – 228, 244 Hensely, J. H. – 143 Hensley, James H. – 192 Hensley, John – 252 Herman, David – 72 Hernandez, Nicolas – 345 Herold, George – 319, 320, illustration 290 Herrera, Agapito – 334 Herrera, Refugia – 334 Hert, Thomas L. – 275 Hey, Wilson – 200 Hibbins, John Jr. – 19, 20 Hibbins, John Sr. – 19 Hibbins, Sarah Creath – 19, 20 Hickman, Tom Rufus – 362, 364, 365, illustration 410 Hicks, Jim – illustration 464 Hidalgo County, Texas – 183, 260, 262, 344 Higgins, John Calhoun Pinkney “Pink” – 310 Hightower, Cato – 371 Hill, Arthur – 372, 373 Hill, Michael – 203, 219 Hines, J. E. – 192 Hipp, Molly – 157 Hittson, John Nathan “Cattle Jack” – 95, 96 Hix, Nathaniel B. – 143 Hoerster, Daniel – 213, 214 Hoerster, John Henry – 70 Hoerster, William – 70

Index Holguin, Demetrio – 358 Holland, Hal K. – 66 Hollis, James H. – 135, 143 Hollowell, John C. – 143 Holmes, John P. – 156 Holmes, John P. – 219 Holmes, Lucia – 206 Holt, Edmond P. – 219 Hoo Doo War – 206 – 217, 311, 366 Hood, N. F. – 143 Hooker, Walker Lee – 333, 340 Hoover, Henry – 192 Hopkins County, Kentucky – 230, 383, 390 Hopper, Thomas – 202 Horn, Sarah Ann – 20 Hornsby, Ruben – 19 Horrell-Higgins Feud – 310 Horrell brothers – 310 Horrell, Ben – 96 Horrell, Martin “Mart” – 96 Horrell, Merritt – 96 Horrell, Sam – 96 Horrell, Tom – 96 Horseshoe Bay, Texas – 384 Hotchkis, Finlay Montgomery – 219 Houston County, Texas – 40 Houston, Hoyt – 376, 377 Houston, Jana – 377 Houston, Mary – 377 Houston, Sam – 48, 195, illustration 112 Houston, Sykes – 384 Houston, Texas – 357, 363, 367, 371, 427 Howard, Charles Henry – 314, 315 Howard, George Thomas – 43 Howard, Jack – 358 Howell, D. S. – 86 Howell, George D. – 172 Hubbard, Richard Bennett – 314, 316 Hudson, Charles L. – 148 Hudson, D. – 143 Hudson, J. C. – 244 Hudson, Robert M. “Duke” – illustration 305 Hudson, Walter W. – 59 Hudspeth County, Texas – 324, 340, 354

637

Huff, C. W. – 160, 172 Huff, Grover “Frank” – 446, illustration 465 Huff, Molly – 160 Huff, Palestine – 160 Hughes, John Reynolds – 327, 328, 336 Hulen, Eugene B. – 354, 358, 392 Hulin, William H. – 192 Humphrey, William Carl “Silent Bill” – 370–372 Hunt, Joseph – 244 Hunt, Robert Ernest – 359, 392 Hunt, W. C. – 148 Hunting Horse (Tsain-tonkee) – 152 Huntsville Penitentiary – 87, 204, 312, 434 Huntsville, Texas – 378 Huston, Felix – 37 Hutchins, Texas – 318 Hutchinson County, Texas – 146 Hyde, Thomas Carlyle “Charlie” – 359, 392 Iberville Parrish, Louisiana – 232 Ikard, Elisha Floyd – 99, 174, 175, 180, 184, 185, 192, 195 Ikard, William “Sud” – 174, 176 Indian Fight – illustration 102 Indianola, Texas – 200 Ingraham, Prentiss – 338 Ingram, Elijah – 19 Insall, Cade – 275 Ionis – 18, 22 Ireland, John – 325 Isa-toho (Black Coyote) – 165 Israel, M. T. – 228, 231, 244 Jack County, Texas – 78, 82, 91, 149, 166, 176 Jacksboro, Texas – 78, 145, 149, 157, 158, 162, 164, 169, 177, 184 Jackson County, Texas – 347 Jackson, Frank – 319, 320, 321 Jackson, Newt – 78 Jackson, Rebecca – 69 Jackson, Tobe – 69 Jacksonville, Texas – 21

638

Index

James, A. F. – 219 James, D. R. – 219 James-Younger Gang – 317 Jape – 233 Jeff Davis County, Texas – 64, 83, 358, 388, 389 Jefferson County, Texas – 265 Jefferson, Texas – 97 Jefferson, William D. – 275 Jeffs, Warren – 436 Jenkins, N. L. – 192 Jermyn, Texas – 166 Jim Wells County, Texas – 59, 63, 64, 339 Jiménez, Pablo – 354 Johnson County, Texas – 382, 383 Johnson, Ben – 322 Johnson, Beverly F. – 244 Johnson, Britt – 93 Johnson, Charles Walker “Charlie” – 207, 208 Johnson, Denise – 384, 386 Johnson, F. – 317 Johnson, Fielty – 88 Johnson, George – 219 Johnson, Gilbert – 275 Johnson, John– 172 Johnson, Lewis – 264 Johnson, Nancy Elizabeth – 88 Johnson, Peter Cartwright – 68 Johnson, Peter Jr. – 68 Johnson, Rebecca – 88 Johnson, Robert L. – 73 Johnson, Samantha – 88 Johnson, T. – 192 Johnson, V. – 172 Johnston, Albert Sidney – 26, 28, 45 Johnston, Bill – 441 Jones, A. J. – 172 Jones, Frank – 332, 340, 440 Jones, Hulbert M. – 143 Jones, John B. – 99, 100, 123, 127, 130, 132, 134–137, 139, 140 147–154, 158–161, 164, 165, 168, 170, 175, 177, 178, 180, 181, 184, 186, 191, 202–204, 206, 208, 210, 212–217, 222, 223, 226, 227, 234, 237, 238,

241, 242, 244, 245, 248, 249, 251, 254, 262, 263, 271, 272, 308–311, 314, 317, 318, 324, 328 320, 321, 335, illustration 280 Jones, John Lafayette – 275 Jones, Oliver – 11 Jones, Pinckney “Pink” – 253–254, 275 Jones, Randal - 9 Jones, Richard J. – 247, 275 Jones, T. W. – 193 Jones, Tommy Lee – 387 Jones, W. E. – 66 Jones, William Bales – 244 Jones, William E. – 253, 254 Jones, William Early – 64 Jones, William Kenner – 247, 253, 256, 260, 262, 265, 276 Jones, Willis H. – 66 Jordan, Peter – 213 Joy, A. – 244 Joy, W. – 276 Joy, William – 247 Juarez, Ernesto – 358 Juergens, Mary Theresa Hennecke – 20 Junction, Texas – 308 Karankawas – 4, 5, 9, 12, 63 Karnes County, Texas – 342 Karnes, Henry W. – 28 Kasper, Eric – illustration 464 Kaufman County, Texas – 203, 443 Keating, M. M. – 193 Keeton, James W. “Jim” – 350 Keller, August – 209 Kellogg, Elizabeth Duty – 20 Kelso, L. R. – 219 Kelverer, Jacob – 180, 193 Kemp, J. H. – 219 Kendall County, Texas – 64, 70 Kenedy County, Texas – 181 Kenney, John J. – 276 Kenney, Martin M. – 199 Kenny, Martin– 230, 237 Kent, Bosman Clifton – 259, 276 Kerber, Charles – real name Fredrick Sperfechter – 316

Index Kerr County, Texas – 237, 246, 248, 261, 272 Kerrville, Texas – 266, 272 Kichais – 21 Kickapoos – 40, 65, 84, 85, 254 Kilgore, Martin B. – 92 Killoughs, ----- 22 Kimble County Roundup – 308–310, 323 Kimble County, Texas – 195, 246, 308, 309, 312, 323 Kincade, Drury R. – 143 King, Joe – 244 King, Richard – 181, 265 King, W. H. – 235, 238, 244 King, W. W. – 247, 276 King, Wilburn Hill – 328 Kiowas – 33, 47, 70, 77, 83, 84, 91–93, 123, 132, 146–149, 151–155, 161, 175, 177, 179, 233, 236, 266, illustration 291 Klevenhagen, John J. “Johnny” – 371, 372, illustration 423 Knight, Louis C. – 193 Koozier, Charles – 92 Koozier, Daniel – 92 Koozier, Elizabeth – 92 Koozier, Ida – 92 Koppel, Henry – 319 Koresh, David – 387 Korn, Adolph – 91 Krumnow, Johnny – 378 Kuykendall, Abner – 10, 11 Kuykendall, Robert – 5 Kyle, David C. – 193 La Bahía, Texas – 19, 45 – see also Goliad La Compañía Volante – 8 La Grange, Texas – 10, 21 La Grange, Texas – 21 La Salle County, Texas – 63, 333 Lacasse, Frank – 244 Lackey, William – 63 Lacy,Irvin – 252 Laidley, Theodore – 56 Lamar, Mirabeau B. – 28 Lampasas County, Texas – 223, 310, 312

639

Lampasas, Texas – 227, 319 Landman, James – 78 Landman, Jane – 78 Landman, Nancy Vandiver – 78, 79 Lane, Tarlton – 265, 276 Langtry, Texas – 332 Lanham, Samuel Willis Tucker – 349 Lansford, Jim – 330 Lardner, William N. – 193 Laredo, Texas – 59–62, 93, 148, 181, 257, 319, 333, 334, 340 Lavaca River – 34 Lavaca, Texas – 36 Lawhon, Jesse – 64 Lawhon, John Thomas – 276 Lawhon, John W. – 276 Lawhon, Lavonia – 64 Lawrence, Henry Benjamin “Benny” – 351 Laycock, Daniel D. – 185, 193 Layman, Thomas H. – 160, 172 Layton, Andrew – 276 Lea, Alexander J. – 263 Leahy, John– 172 Leal, Mauricio – 183 Leander, Texas – 25 Ledbetter, William Henry – 196, 200, 205, 219 Ledford, Mamie – 350 Ledman, Thomas – 276 Lee, Horatio Grooms – 219 Lee, Rosa – 157 Legion Valley Massacre – 88 Lehmann, Herman – 91 Lehmann, Willie – 91 Lemely, Catharine – 157 Lemley, Hulda – 77 Lemley, Liddie – 77 – 78 Lemley, Nancy – 77 Lemons, James – 193 Lemons, Thomas – 193 Leon County, Texas – 360 Lerma, Amador – 181 Level, David M. – 60 Lewis, James P. – 276 Lewis, P. G. – 143 Lewis, W. R. – 276

640

Index

Lewis, William Winslow – 219 Lexington, Kentucky – 228 Lichlyter, Fredrich A. – 146, 172 Limestone County – 18, 362, 363 Lindsey, Warren – 180, 193 Lingleville, Texas – 78 Linn, John Joseph – 40 Linnville, Texas – 35, 36, 40, 42, 43 Lipan Apaches – 23, 41, 179 Lipan Apaches – 54, 59, 63–65 Little Saline River – 205 Little Wichita River – 91, 146, 174, 176, 180 Little, Belle – 157 Live Oak County, Texas – 260, 274 Livingston, A. W. – 345 Llano County, Texas – 45, 46, 91, 200, 211 236 Llano River – 191, 198, 248, 274, 308 Llano, Texas – 384 Lockhart, Andrew – 22, 31 Lockhart, Matilda – 22, 23, 25, 29, 30, 31, illustration 109 Lockhart, Texas – 37, 343 Lone Wolf (Gui-päh-go) – Kiowa chieftain – 148, 150, 154, 155 Long Kate – 157 Long, Brooks – 436 Long, Ira – 140, 141, 146, 163, 164, 165, 167, 172, 189, 214, 217, illustration 288 Long, Sam – 219 Longley, Bill – Execution of, illustration 289 Lost Valley Fight – 148 – 159, 177 Loudon, A. S. – 193 Loveless, William M.– 193 Lovell, Dr. ----- 260 Loving County, Texas – 427 Loving, George B. – 167 Loving, James C. – 146, 147, 148, 167, 241 Lowrance, William J. – 233, 244 Lucid, Daniel – 247, 276 Luna, Pancho – 181 Lynch, ----- 83 Lynch, John – 27

Lynch, Michael – 219 Lyons, Warren – 21 Mace, Albert R. – 363 Mackenzie, Ranald S. – 179 Madisonville, Kentucky – 230 Maher, Peter – 332 Maier, Moses – 164, 172 Malakoff, Texas – 434 Malinak, Frank – 443, illustration 463 Malone, Jess – 436 Maltby, William Jeff – 100, 221–227, 229, 232, 233, 236, 237, 245, illustration 280 Mama-day-te – 155 Maman-ti (Sky-Walker) – 150, `155 Mankin, Reuben – 446, illustrations 464, 466 Mann, Felix – 202 Manning, James David – 163, 172 Manning, William Elton – 172 Mapel, John – 143 Marble Falls, Texas – 384 Marfa, Texas – 357 Marion County, Texas – 97 Marshal, Thomas Elwood – 172 Martin, Emily Caroline – 246 Martin, Thomas Pooley – 276 Martinez, Antonio – 181 Mason County War – see Hoo Doo War Mason County, Texas – 200, 201, 206, 210, 212 Mason County, Texas – 71 Mason, Charles A. – 219 Mason, Texas – 195, 200, 206, 208, 210, 212–215 Massegee, Jonathan R. – 193 Masterson, Katherine – 78, 79 Matagorda County, Texas – 13 Matagorda, Texas – 13 Matagorda, Texas – 200 Matamoros, Mexico – 256, 257, 267 Mather, ----- 141 Mather, Andrew – 236, 245 Matson, Mike – 390 Matthews, Byron – 373

Index Matthews, W. Thomas – 180, 193 Maulder, D. J. – 383 Maverick County, Texas – 64, 328 Maxey, John Valentine “Volly” – 92 Maxey, Rhoda – 92 May, George B. – 340 Mays, Beverly – 134, 143 McBride, John E. – 315, 340 McCabe, Mollie – 157 McCann, G. T. – 276 McCarthy, Francis J. “Ed” – 247, 276 McCarty, Timothy J. – 322, 341 McCollum, Aaron Neal – 159–160, 172 McCollum, James Washington – 143 McCrey, Charles – 247, 250, 276 McCulloch County, Texas – 427 McCulloch, Ben – 37, 196 McCulloch, Henry E. – 37, 63, 196 McDonald, William Jesse “Bill” – 339, 347–349, illustration 395 McDuffie, Dan Lafayette – 392 McElroy, Stephen Goldsby – 248, 276 McFarland, ----- 266, 272 McFarlane, ----- 273 McGarrah, Seborn Graham Sneed – 146, 157, 162, 163, 172 McGhee, Henry – 322 McGrarrah, James A. – 172 McGrew, F. G. – 219 McGuire, Nettie – 157 McIver, Fountain A. – 143 McKay, William – 72 McKee, Doc – 64 McKenize, Ranald – 132 McKer, S. W. – 252 McKidrick, Joseph W. “Buckskin Joe” – 332, 341 McKinney, Alex – 245 McKinney, Joe – 252 McKinley, William – 347 McKnight, Henry – 219 McLaren, Richard Lance – 390, illustration 454 McLearen, W. T. – 143 McLennan County, Texas – 382, 441 McLeod, Hugh – 26, 29, 30

641

McMahan, Billy – 184 McMimm, John – 238 McMullen County, Texas – 20 McMurray, Fred – 366 McMurty, Larry – 387 McNeil, Amy – 382 McNeil, Don – 382 McNeil, Mark – 382 McNelly, Leander Harvey – 100, 267–271, 311, 446, illustration 287 McPherson, W. S. – 193 McWhorter, John Sutton – 245 Medina County, Texas – 92 Melville, Andrew – 96, 97 Menard County, Texas – 13, 198, 333 Menard, Texas – 198, 206, 228 Menardville, Texas – see Menard Méndez, Librado – alias La Lisa – 184 Mentone, Texas – 427 Meridian, Texas – 78, 383 Merrill, H. M. – 143 Merritt, Andrew Jackson – 276 Mertzon, Texas – 84 Mescalero Apaches – 65, 323 Mesquite, Texas – 318 Mexia, Texas – 362, 363 Mexican Revolution – 353 Mexican War – 49, 50, 97 Michan, John B. – 247 Michan, John B. – 276 Midland, Texas – 389 Midway, Texas – 59 Milett [Mallet], Nicholas R. – 72 Miller, Alsey S. – 37 Miller, Charley – 322 Miller, Ida – 322 Miller, J. P. – 317 Miller, Jesse – 342 Miller, Jim – 384 Millican, James W. – 128, 131, 135, 136, 137, 143 Mills County, Texas – 69, 126 Minder, Emil – 276 Mineral Wells, Texas – 79, 233 Mitchell County, Texas – 41 Mitchell, Charles – 247, 276

642

Index

Mitchell, Robert E. “Bob” – 382, 384 Mitchell, Robert K. – illustration 450 Mix, Tom – 352 Mobeetie, Texas – 240 Monroe, ----- 78 Montague County, Texas – 141, 177 Montague, Texas – 177 Monterey, Mexico – 57 Montes, Telesforo – 100 Moore, A. C. – 172 Moore, Coley – 252 Moore, Francis M. “Frank” – 248, 276, 309 Moore, George K. – 152 Moore, George K. – 245 Moore, J. H. – 161, 172 Moore, J. J. - 245 Moore, James H. “Jim” – 329, 341 Moore, John – 43 Moore, John B. – 219 Moore, John H. – 195 Moore, John Henry – 23, 24, 31, 41 Moore, Maurice B. – 319 Moran, John August – 359, 392 Mordecai, Benjamin – 36 Moreland, Julius Constantine – 245 Moreland, M . S. – 245 Morgan, James G. – 172 Morphis, G. B. – 144 Morrell, Z. N. – 21 Morris County, Texas – 374 Morris, George – 73 Morris, J. T. – 326 Morris, W. H. – 144 Morris, W.T. “Brack” – 342 Morrison, Moses Mortimer, Conrad E. – 315, 341 Morton, John – 182 Morton, Michael – 182 Morton, Robert – 372 Moss, Joe – 276 Muke-war-rah [Muguara or Spirit Talker] – Penateka Comanche chieftain – 29–31 Munday, S. M. – 160, 161, 172 Murphy, Jim – 319

Murphy, Mat H. – 196, 219 Murphy, W.A. “Bill” – 371 Murray (Murrah), Texas – 83 Murray, Newton Harris “Plunk” – 202, 219 Murray, William H. “Alfalfa Bill” – 363 Murrell, James H. – 144 Mustang Prairie, Texas – 40 Nacogdoches, Texas – 10 Natus, Frank – 348 Navarro County, Texas – 22, 99, 153, 233, 326, 434 Navasota River – 18 Navasota, Texas – 351 Neale, William Peter – 73 Nebo, Charles – 247, 263, 276 Neches River – 16 Neff, Pat Morris – 362 Neill [Neal], Alpheus D. – 61, 62 Nelson, ----- 25 Nelson, Frank W. – 245 Nelson, Franklin H. – 247, 248, 249, 250, 251, 254, 276 Nelson, G. H. – 68 Nelson, John D. – 276 Nevill, Charles L. – 219, 321 New Braunfels, Texas – 64 Newcomb, J. G. – 148 Newman, Fred – 144 Newman, J. W. – 177 Newman, John W. – 147, 172 Newman, Joseph - 5 Nichols, James Wilson – 38, 39, 173 Nicholson, A. J. – 198 Nicholson, Dr. E. G. – 124, 141, 188, 230 Nickel, Robert – 76 Nigh, Thomas P. – 326, 341 Nix, Christine – 441 Noakes, Thomas J. – 189, 263 Nolan County, Texas – 236, 326, 359 Norris, Gene Paul – 370–373 Norris, Robert – 173 North, John Hunter – 276 Norton, C. B. – 134, 144 Nueces County, Texas – 49, 250 Nueces River – 58, 100, 246, 333

Index Nueces River Massacre – 82 Nuecestown, Texas – 189, 262, 265 Nuner, William M. – 34 Nutt, Ray – 434 Nystel, Ole T. – 87, 88 O’Neil, ----- 70 O’Neill, Joseph – 35 Oakville, Texas – 260, 274 Oatman, Sam – 384 Octaviano – 181 Odell, S. W. – 144 Odle, Alvin – 328 Odle, Will – 328 Offer, Mathes – 247, 276 Oglethrope, James – 7 Old, A.Y. “Augie” – 334 Old, Will – 334 Oldham, Dick – 367 Olguín, José María – alias El Aguja (The Needle) – 182, 184 Olmito, Texas – 360 Onstott, Joshua Polk – 238, 245 Orange County, Texas – 339 Orange, Texas – 339 Ord, Edward Otho Cresap “E.O.” – 267 Ordell, Burton – 252 Orozco, Pascual Jr. – 354 Orrick, John C. Jr., – see Arrington, George Washington Ortiz, L. R. – 333 Ott, Gregory Arthur – 380 Ottine, Texas – 342 Outlaw, Bazzell Lamar “Baz” – 328, 332 Owen, Clark L. – 42 Owens. Samuel – 144 Owl’s Head, Texas – 83 Oxford, W. G. – 144 Oxford, William G. – 134 Ozuña, Estevan Garcia – 344 Padgett, Winston – 378, 379 Pais, Noverto – 317 Palestine, Texas – 351 Palo Pinto County, Texas – 79, 80, 138, 149, 223, 273

643

Papworth, James E. – 370, 373 Parker County, Texas – 176 Parker County, Texas – 372 Parker, A.J. “Jack” – 341 Parker, Cynthia Ann (Nautdah) – 20, 80, illustration 116 Parker, Daniel Sr. – 15 Parker, John Richard – 20 Parker, Quanah – illustration 117 Parker, Sallie “Granny” – 20 Parker, Silas M. – 15 Parsons, John W. – 232, 245 Paso del Norte, Mexico – 313 Paterson, New Jersey - 43 Patterson, B. M. C. – 144 Patterson, James W. – 203, 219 Patton, Thomas Franklin – 276 Paulk, J. K. – 245 Pearce, Thomas – 22 Pearsall, Texas – 265 Pease River – 80, 180, 184 Pease, Elisha Marshall – 64 Pechacek, Eric – 390 Pecos City, Texas – 326 Pecos River – 93, 169, 211, 320, 340 Pemberton, J. W. – 193 Pena, Patrick – illustration 467 Penateka Comanches – 28, 33 Pendergrass, Alfred Warren – 253, 276 Pennington, Benjamin L. “Ben” – 359, 392 Pensacola, Florida – 311 Pérez, Francisco “Chicon” – 183 Perkins, Absolom Tidwell – 173 Perkins, George W. – 160, 173 Perkins, T.E. Paul – 392 Perkins, T.E. Paul “Ellzey” – 359 Perrin, William F. – 173 Perry, Cicero Rufus – 47, 99, 184, 195–199, 202, 203, 205, 219, 228, illustration 108 Perry, William – 245 Peveler, Franz – 84 Phares, L. G. – 366 Phelps, Edwin M. – 351 Pickett, G. B. – 160

644

Index

Picketville, Texas – 83 Piedras Negras, Mexico – 66, 67 Pierce, ----- 70 Pierson, E. – 193 Pilares, Mexico – 358 Pine, Chris – 445 Piper, John M. – 173 Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania – 236 Plácido – Tonkawa chieftain – 37 Platte River – 1 Pluenneke, Heinrich “Henry” – 213 Plummer, James Pratt – 20 Plummer, Rachel Parker – 20, illustration 109 Polk County, Missouri – 177 Ponton, Doctor Joel – 34 Pool, C. L. – 128 Pool, Carter Y. – 144 Poole, George F. – 339 Poole, Oscar – 339 Poole, Thomas – 339 Port Isabel, Texas – 54 Porter, Emil – 193 Porter, John W. – 276 Porter, Mel W. – 154, 155, 173 Porvenir, Texas – 358 – 360 Potesenaquaship (Buffalo Hump) – Penateka Comanche chieftain – 33 Potter, John E. – 276 Potter, William – 309 Powell, Felix – 348 Presidio County, Texas – 358 Prince, Randy – illustration 468 Prince, Robert G. “Bobby” – 383–384 Puebla, Mexico – 56 Putman, ----- 32 Putman, Elizabeth – 22 Putman, James – 22, 23, 29 Putman, Juda – 22 Putman, Rhoda – 22, 29 Quantrill, William Clarke – 202 Rabb, John – 17 Rackensacker Massacre – 52, 53 Rackensackers – 52

Ragland, Tom – 335 Rainey, J. L. – 135, 144 Randall, Barney – 37 Randles, D. H. – 144 Randolph County, Indiana – 178 Ransom, Henry Lee – 355, 359, 392, illustrations 399, 402 Ravenscraft, S. A. – 144 Ray, Charles Lemuel – 173 Ray, Jim – 372, 383 Ray, Joseph Warren – 173 Raymond, Edward B. – 344 Realitos, Texas – 258 Reasoner, Thomas J. – 193 Reconstruction – 86 – 100 Red Otter – 152 Red River – 83, 147, 150, 171, 174, 175, 176, 181, 224, 318, 363 Red River Bridge War – 363, 364 Red River War – 178, 323 Redd, William Davis – 32, 33 Redmon, J. M. – 90 Reed, ----- 21 Reed, George W. – 180, 193 Reed, R. C. – 252 Reeves County, Texas – 326 Refugio County, Texas – 44 Reid, Samuel C. – 54 Reiger, James H. – 173 Remington, Frederick – 338 Resendez-Ramirez, Rafael – alias Angel Maturino Resendiz – 391 Reyes, Clemente – 73 Reynolds, J. M. – 309 Reynolds, N. O. – 322 Reynolds, Nelson Orcelus “Mage” – 215, 219 Reynolds, William – 219 Reynosa, Mexico – 54 Reynosa, Texas – 183 Rhea, Danny V. – 390, 391, illustration 453 Rhodes, Ike H. – 277 Rich, J. T. – 173 Richarz, Henrich Joseph – 92 Richarz, Walter – 93

Index Richeson, Varlan – 34 Richmond, Texas – 333 Riff, Joseph – 93 Riggs, Margaret – 70 Riggs, Mrs. ----- 70 Riggs, Rhoda – 70 Riggs, William C. – 70 Rigler, Lewis– 372 Riley, Ben – 369 Ringo, John Peters – 213 Río Blanco – 14 Río Bravo – see Rio Grande Rio Grande – 44, 49, 51, 57, 58, 65, 66, 71–73, 81, 86, 93, 100, 169, 182, 183, 240, 250, 256, 257, 260–263, 266, 269, 270, 313, 324, 327, 328, 330, 332, 345, 349, 351, 354–357, 359, 360, 397 Rio Grande City, Texas – 61, 74, 182, 191, 270 Rishworth, H. – 219 Ritchie, Andrew Travis – 219 Rivers, John - 245 Robelos, Luis – 265 Roberts, Alexander “Buck” – 37 Roberts, Allan G. – 200 Roberts, Blinford C. – 173 Roberts, Daniel Webster – 200, 204–211, 217, 219 Roberts, Francis S. – 173 Roberts, Luvenia “Lou” Conway – 213, 214 Roberts, Moses Brown – 173 Robertson County, Texas – 20 Robertson, Dr. J.W. – 25 Robertson, Sterling Clack – 18 Robertson, Walter – 220 Robinson, Dr. John F. – 163 Robinson, John – 33 Robinson, Robert E. – 220 Robuck, William Emmett – 343, 344, 345, illustration 394 Rodriguez, Catarino Erasmo Garza – see Garza, Catarino Roebuck, W. Emmett – 392 Rogers, Anderson – 54

645

Rogers, Hudson – 357 Rogers, James Frank “Pete” – 378, 379 Rogers, John – 193 Rogers, John Harris – 329, 333, 334, 340, 343, 351, illustration 304 Rogers, L. M. – 198 Rogers, Patterson – 54 Rogers, Pete – illustration 425 Rogers, Robert – 8 Rogers, William – 54 Rogers’ massacre – 54 Roosevelt, Theodore “Teddy” – 347 Ross, James Jefferies – 10 Ross, Lawrence Sullivan “Sul” – 76, 79, 80 Ross, Shapley P. – 75 Round Rock, Texas – 319, 320, 321, 371 Runnels County, Texas – 233 Runnels, Hardin Richard – 73 Running Bird – illustration 286 Rush, C. C. – 142 Rush, Charles – 239, 245 Rush, Joseph – 229 Rusk County, Texas – 228 Rusk, Texas – 369, 370 Russell, Grover Scott – 352, 392 Ruzin, A. A. – 341 Ryne, George W. – 277 Sabine County, Texas – 329 Sabine River – 26, 328 Sackett, Henry - 245 Sadler, Lenard Tillman “Lenn” – 359, 392 Sadler, William Turner – 40, 41 Saltillo, Texas – 383 Samples, Robert S. – 193 Samson, John William – 69 Samuels Siding, Texas – 330 San Angelo, Texas – 435 San Antonio de Béxar – see also San Antonio – 5, 13 San Antonio, Texas – 27, 29, 32, 45, 60–62, 64, 72, 86, 92, 148, 251, 260, 268, 343, 380, 391 San Augustine County, Texas – 359 San Diego, Texas – 64 San Elizario, Texas – 93, 315

646

Index

San Felipe de Austin, Texas – 15, 18 San Gabriel River – 25, 78, 196 San Marcos, Texas – 14, 246 San Patricio County, Texas – 61, 62 San Saba County, Texas – 63, 78, 223, 237 San Saba River – 11, 23, 27, 31, 63 Sanchez, Louis – 247, 250, 277 Sanders, Cody – 390 Sanders, J. W. – 277 Sanders, Katy – 78 Sangamon County, Illinois – 221 Sansom, George L. – 277 Sansom, John W. – 93 Sansom, T. J.– 277 Santa Anita, Texas – 261 Santa Anna, Antonio López de – 15, 56, 195 Santa Gertrudis, Texas – 62 Santa Ysabel, Chihuahua – 357 Sarahville de Viesca, Texas - 18 Sauceda, A. – 345 Saunders, Steve – 322 Savils, W. H. – 193 Sayers, Joseph D. – 337 Scabtown, Texas – 322 Schleicher County, Texas – 435 Schmid, Frank Louis Jr. – 333, 341 Schmidt, William – 220 Schrock, John W. – 193 Schulenburg, Texas – 21 Schutz, Solomon – 314 Scott County, Illinois – 232 Scott, Elihu Winfield “Ail” – 144 Scott, James – 220 Scott, Jeremiah D. – 96 Scott, Samue – 245 Scott, William “Billy” – 329 Scurry, Thomas – 337 Seay, Edward Sanders – 245 Sebree, Victor – 331 Seguin, Texas – 5 Seguira, Jesús – 190 Sellers, James – 259, 277 Selman, John – 370 Seminole-Negro – 179 Shackelford County, Texas – 83, 93

Shannon, John Alonzo – 232, 245 Sharp, George W. – 277 Shaw, Joseph R. – 392 Shaw, Joseph Robert “Joe” – 359 Shaw, Owen – 63 Shaw, W. W. – 158 Shawnees - 10 Shears, Robert “Bob” – 71, 72 Sheffield, D. N. – 193 Sherman, A. B. – 144 Sherman, Frank N. – 193 Sherman, Martha Johnson – 79, 80 Sieker, “Lam” – 340 Sieker, Edward Arman – 220 Sieker, Frank E. – 341 Sieker, Lamartine Pemberton “Lam” – 196, 220 Silver City Rangers – 316 Silver City, New Mexico – 316, 317, 323 Simeon, Henry – 182 Simmons, Jim – 252 Simpson, Jane – 49 Simpson, Nancy – 49 Simpson, William – 49 Sims, Bartlett – 11 Singer, William H. – 9 Sinton, Texas – 61 Sitter, Joseph Russell – 354, 358 Sitting-in-the-Saddle (Tau-ankia) – 148 Skaggs, M. S. – 78 Slocum, Texas – 351 Smallpox War – 334, 335 Smith, Augustus – 66 Smith, Coy – illustration 454 Smith, Ezkel (Ezekiel) – 38, 39 Smith, French – 38 Smith, J. B. – 193 Smith, J. Ernest – 330 Smith, Jackson Elmore – 193 Smith, Thomas S. – 337 Snyder, Todd – 446 So-no-ya-na (Little Bull) – 204 Spangler, J. W. – 79 Sparks, John C. – 310 Spencer, Tillman S. – 264, 277 Spencer, William S. – 9

Index Springer, William H. “Bill’ – 206, 220 Springfield, Illinois – 221 Springfield, Missouri – 246 Springfield, Texas – 372 St. Clear, John - 245 St. Leon, Ernest “Diamond Dick” – 333, 341 St. Louis, Missouri – 203 Standley, Julia C. “Judy” – 379 Stanger, ----- 63 Starr County, Texas – 61, 93, 261 State Police – 89 – 92, 96 – 98 Steele, David – 60 Steele, William H. – 98, 132, 133, 141, 159, 170, 175, 189, 208, 214, 216, 222, 224, 226–228, 238–241, 249, 254, 258, 310, 321, 324, 335 Stephens County, Texas – 83, 121, 131, 145 Stephens, ----- 34, 130, 133 Stephenville, Texas – 121, 242 Sterling, Ross Shaw – 363 Stevens, Enoch N. – 173 Stevens, George Washington – 99, 145, 147, 149, 151, 158–164, 168, 169, 173, 177, 184, 277, 322, 323 Stewart, Willard N. – 379 Stillwell, William P. – 392 Stillwell, William P. “Will” – 359 Stinnett, Texas – 146 Stone, Redman D. – 173 Stone,Houston – 252 Stoner, Michael Don – 446, illustration 465 Stoudemier, Dallas – 125, 144 Strouts, Tom aka Tom Fields – 330 Stuart, Dan – 332 Styles, John Wesley – 378 Sublette, Martin – 203, 220 Sullivan, Daniel C. “Doc” – 61, 62 Sulphur Springs, Texas – 383, 390 Sundance Kid – 317 Sutton – Taylor feud – 266 Sweetwater, Texas – 236, 326, 359 Tachudy, Brian – 446 Tandy Station, Texas – 360

647

Tapia, Hypolita – 181, 182 Tardy, R. L. – 341 Tarrant County, Texas – 318, 372 Tatum, Sam H. – 277 Tawakonis – 10, 18, 76 Taylor, Andrew L. – 133, 134, 144 Taylor, Brian – 391 Taylor, Creed – 334, 335 Taylor, J. H. – 129 Taylor, Jim – 128 Taylor, John Henry – 144 Taylor, Zachary “Old Rough and Ready” – 53, 54 Tays, John Barnard – 314, 316 Tebo, Amaziah E. – 144 Tehuacanas – 4, 22 Telles, Salome – 317 Temple, Texas – 374 Terlingua, Texas – 350 Terrazas, Joaquín – 323 Terrell, John William – 193 Texarkana, Texas – 390 Texas Rangers – 3, origins of – 6–8, in the Republic of Texas 16–19, in the Mexican War– 49–57; armament evolution 51, 222, illustrations 105, 281, 284, 288, 408, 409, 412, 415, 417, 418, 421, 440; Los Diablo Tejanos (the Texas Devils) 51; early efforts to make them permanent 76, 77; creation of Frontier Battalion – 97–100; Frontier Battalion arms 122, 124, 125, 140, 141, introduction of the Winchester 211; Frontier Battalion restrictions 122, 123; illustration Commanders 301; disbanded 139–142; Frontier Battalion Company A 121–138, Company A Initial Roster – 142–144; Frontier Battalion Company B– 145–173, Company B Initial Roster 171–173; reduction in force 136, 164; Frontier Battalion Company C – 174–194; Company C Initial Roster 191–194; Frontier Battalion Company D 195–220; Company D Initial Roster 219–220;

648

Index

reduction in force 205; in the Hoo Doo War 206–217, illustration 296; Company E 221–245; Company E Initial Roster 243–245; reduction in force 236, 237; Company E disbanded and reformed 239, 240; reorganized 271–273; Company F 246–277; Company F Initial Muster Roll 275–277; legend – 307–342, illustrations 398, 419, 420, 424, 426; Frontier Battalion disbanded and reorganized 336–339; Diablos Tejanos 269; Legacy 342–368; Modern Rangers 427–447; current organization 429–434, illustrations Headquarters, 470–471, Company A 472–473, Company C 476–477, Company D 478–479, Company 480–481, Company E 482–483; training and requirements 437–440; illustrations interrelations with surveyors 111, group photo 119, 303; headquarters 430; life insurance 401; capture of deserters 403; in camp 406; with gambling raid paraphernalia 407; responsibilities 461; commendation 462 Texas Revolution – 15, 18 The Egg – 27 The Plan de San Diego – 353 – 357 Thomas, James Henry – 234, 245 Thomas, Nathanial Pendergrass “Doc” – 350, 392 Thompkins, Carlotta (aka Lottie Deno) – 157 Thompson, Mike W. - 245 Thompson, Thomas – 11 Thorpe, John W.- 245 Thurber, Texas – 374 Tilden, Texas – 20 Tilgner, Herman – 182 Timberlake, Delbert “Tim” – 359, 392 Tinker, W. C. – 173 Tobin, ----- 73 Tobin, William Gerard – 72 Todd, G. W. – 71 Tombstone, Arizona Territory – 213

Tonkawas – 4, 10, 23, 37, 76, 179 Townsend, Amanda – 88, 89 Townsend, Stephen – 17 Townson, G. L. – 193 Toyah, Texas – 326 Travis County, Texas – 24 Travis County, Texas – 314, 319 Traweek, William Burleson – 203, 220 Treadwell, Billy – 329 Treadwell, William – illustration 300 Trespalacios, José Félix - 4 Trinidad, Texas – 434 Trinity River – 15, 16, 318, 363, 434 Trotter, Albert – 231, 245 Truelove, Maggie – 157 Tsen-asu-sain – 152 Tsen-tainte (White Horse) – 91 Tucker, Dan – 316 Tucker, George H. – 336 Tucker, Julius G. – 266 Tuggle, James Clark – 232, 245 Tumlinson, John Jackson Jr. – 5, 19, 36, 37 Tumlinson, John Jackson Sr. – 5 Tumnlinson, Joseph - 5 Turley, Tom – 207, 208 Turner, George – 434, illustration 456 Turner, Jr., Henry Ross – 392 Turnover, Polly – 157 Twiggs, David E. – 71 Upshur County, Texas – 368 Utter, S. A. – 144 Uvalde County, Texas – 247 Uvalde, Texas – 92 Val Verde County, Texas – 330, 332 Valentine, Texas – 358 Van Buren, Michael E. – 64 Van Dorn, Earl – 76 Vandagriff, T. L. – 161, 173 Vanhook, Benjamin – 78 Vanhoosen, William B. – 220 Vann, W. T. – 360, 361 Veale, Bertram Clinton – 392 Victoria, Texas – 33, 36, 40, 347, 348 Victorio – 323, 324

Index Vidor, King – 366 Villeral, Jesus – 345 Villeral, Timetao – 345 Vinton, Louisiana – 339 Waco, Texas – 375, 382, 387, 434, 441 Wacos – 4, 5, 10, 13, 16, 76 Waddill, H. D. – 308 Wadsworth, Ralph – 382 Wages, William – 208 Wagner, Albert – 193 Wails, William – 193 Waits, Leroy – 194 Waits, William – 194 Waldrip, John – 383, 384 Walker County, Texas – 87 Walker, George W. – 173 Walker, Samuel – 47, 196, illustration 114 Walker, Samuel – 51 Wallace, Warren – 183, 250 Wallace, William Alexander Anderson “Big Foot” – 37, 60, 61, 100, illustration 115 Waller, John R. – 99, 121, 127, 128, 130 – 134, 144, 145, 223 Wallis, Harry J. – 343 Wallis, Hayes Moore – 343 Walters, Huron Ted – 376, 377 Wangle, ----- 272 Ware, Nick – 220 Ware, Richard Clayton “Dick” – 319, 320 Ware, W. L. – 341 Warm Springs Apaches – 323 Warren Wagon Train Massacre – 94 Warren, Benjamin Goodin – 326, 341 Warrenton, Texas – 20 Washington County, Pennsylvania – 236 Washington County, Texas – 100, 223 Watson, Jacob W. – 277 Watson, James Aaron – 392 Watson, James Anders – 144 Watson, Sally – 157 Wattles, Zachary Taylor – 144, 153 Watts, Hugh Oran – 35 Watts, Juliet – 35, 38 Wayborn, William David – 194

649

Wayborn, Wilson Leroy – 194 Weatherford, Texas – 176, 350 Weaver, Matthew Z. – 277 Webb County, Texas – 59, 257, 333, 340, 343 Webb, Alex – 327 Webb, Charles – 311 Webb, Charles M. – 126 Webb, Walter Prescott – 366 Webberville, Texas – 24 Webster, Booker – 25, 32 Webster, Dolly – 25 Webster, John – 25 Webster, Virginia – 25 Weed, Thurlow A. – 220 Weir, W. C. – 357 Welch, ----- 253 Welch, Louisa – 157 Welch, Micky – 358 Wellington, John “Three-Fingered Jack” – 330 Wesley, John – 126 Weymiller, Thomas – 277 Wheeler County, Texas – 240 Wheeler, Joel S. – 238, 245 Wheeler, John Valentine – 152, 155, 220, illustration 285 Whelan, Daniel M. – 138, 144 White City, Texas – 359 White, ----- 78 White, Emmett – 392 White, H. A. – 392 White, Hardy – 277 White, Homer – 350, 392 White, James A. – 134 White, James L. – 144 White, John Dudley Sr. – 359 White, Perry Alexander – 245 White, Sr., John Dudley – 392 White, Thomas J. – 194 Whitehead, Kara-Leigh – 384, 385 Whitehead, William – 384 Whitlock, William – 92 Whittington, John – 252 Wiatt, Robert E. “Bob” – 378, 379 Wichita County, Texas – 431

650

Index

Wichita Falls, Texas – 381, 431 Wiggins, Abe – 207, 208 Wightman, John – 10 Wilbarger, J. W. – 69 Wilbarger, John – 61, 62 Wild Bunch – 317, 318 Wild Cat – Seminole chieftain – 65 Wilie, Joe – 383, 384 Willhoyt, A. J. – 173 Williams, ----- 213 Williams, ----- 22 Williams, J. – 317 Williams, John – 69 Williams, Thomas G. – 96 Williams, W. S. – 245 Williamson County, Texas – 25, 236; 319, 320, 372 Williamson, Lorenzo Elmor – 245 Williamson, Tim – 209, 210 Willis, Henry J. – 63 Willmore, Thaddeus N. – 245 Wilson County, Texas – 351 Wilson, ----- 273 Wilson, Andrew – 220 Wilson, Charles – 194 Wilson, Doc - 273 Wilson, George – 23 Wilson, J. Thomas “Tom” – 135, 137–139, 144, 149 Wilson, James P. H. – 277 Wilson, Vernon Coke – 319 Wimberley, Texas – 14 Wing, A. – 180, 194 Wisdom, Jacob L. – 180, 194 Wise County, Texas – 92, 142, 145, 160, 161 Withers, W. T. – 220

Witt, William Henry – 277 Wohrle, John – 209, 210 Wood, J. G. – 341 Wood, John H. “Maximum John” – 380 Wood, Joseph – 144 Wood, Lucinda – 77–78 Woodbridge ----– 92 Woodruff, Fountain B. – 72 Woods, ----- 22 Woods, J. W. – 333, 341 Woods, Joseph– 173 Woods, W. E.– 144 Wooten, Dudley G. – 338 Worman, ----- 70 Worthington, N. – 194 Wright, Harlan – 372 Wright, James K. P. – 146 Wright, O. N. – 335 Wright, William Lee “Will” – 334, illustration 400 Wurmser, Martin – 91 Wynn, John P. – 220 Yazoo County, Mississippi – 247 Yazoo, Mississippi – 156 Yellowstone River – 1 York, Mary Lou – 383 Young County, Texas – 83, 94, 146 Young, Charley H. – 144 Young, R. R. – 245 Ysleta, Texas – 312 Zapata County, Texas – 63, 260 Zapata, Texas – 63, 260 Zavala County, Texas – 64 Zimpelman, George B. – 314 Zuber William Physick – 21