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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018
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YOURS,PRONOUN¶
SIX YEARS WITH THE TEXAS RANGERS 1875 TO 1881
James B. Gillett
LACONIA PUBLISHERS
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Copyright © 2016 by James B. Gillett
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
SIX YEARS WITH THE TEXAS RANGERS
FOREWORD
CHAPTER I.: THE MAKING OF A RANGER
CHAPTER II: THE TEXAS RANGERS
CHAPTER III: I JOIN THE RANGERS
CHAPTER IV: MY FIRST BRUSH WITH INDIANS
CHAPTER V: THE MASON COUNTY WAR
CHAPTER VI: MAJOR JONES AND HIS ESCORT
CHAPTER VII: THE HORRELL-HIGGINS FEUD
CHAPTER VIII: SERVICE WITH REYNOLDS, THE INTREPID
CHAPTER IX: SAM BASS AND HIS TRAIN ROBBER GANG
CHAPTER X: A WINTER OF QUIET AND A TRANSFER
CHAPTER XI: THE SALT LAKE WAR AND A LONG TREK
CHAPTER XII: OUR FIRST FIGHT WITH APACHES
CHAPTER XIII: SCOUTING IN MEXICO
CHAPTER XIV: TREACHEROUS BRAVES, A FAITHFUL DOG, AND A MURDER
CHAPTER XV: VICTORIO BECOMES A GOOD INDIAN
CHAPTER XVI: SOME UNDESIRABLE RECRUITS
CHAPTER XVII: LAST FIGHT BETWEEN RANGERS AND APACHES
CHAPTER XVIII: AN INTERNATIONAL EPISODE
CHAPTER XIX: LAST SCOUTINGS
CHAPTER XX: FRUITS OF RANGER SERVICE
SIX YEARS WITH THE TEXAS RANGERS
1875 TO 1881
BY
JAMES B. GILLETT
Ex-Sergeant Company “A,” Frontier Battalion
TO MY OLD RANGER COMRADES
WHEREVER THEY MAY BE
FOREWORD
TO WRITE A TRUE AND complete history of the Texas Rangers as a state organization would require much time and an able historian. I am not a historian and could not undertake such an exhaustive treatise, which would fill several volumes the size of this, and it is only at the earnest solicitation of my children, frontier friends, and old comrades that I have undertaken to write a short history of the rangers during the years I served with them. This little volume, then, has only the modest aim of picturing the life of the Texas Rangers during the years 1875-1881. I cannot, at this late date, recount in detail all the scouts that were made while I was in the service. I have, therefore, confined myself principally to the description of those in which I was a participant. Naturally, I remember those the best.
It has been said that truth never makes very interesting reading. Of the accuracy of this dictum I leave my readers to judge, for I have told my story just as I remember it, to the very best of my ability and without any effort to embroider it with imagination. If I can interest any of my old ranger comrades or even just one little boy that loves to read about a real frontier, I will feel amply repaid for all the time, trouble and expense expended in presenting this work.
I wish sincerely to thank Miss Mary Baylor for placing at my disposal all the books and papers of her distinguished father, Captain G. W. Baylor.
And I would be an ingrate, indeed, did I fail here to record my obligation to my wife without whose inspiration and sympathetic encouragement this book had never been written.
That I might show the training of the typical Texas Ranger, I have ventured to include a short biography of my own life up to the time I became a ranger, June 1, 1875.
SIX YEARS WITH THE TEXAS RANGERS.
CHAPTER I.
THE MAKING OF A RANGER
THE GREATEST SHAPING FORCE IN human life is heredity, and from my father I inherited my love of the open frontier and its life of danger and excitement. This inheritance was further strengthened by environment and training, and finally led me to embrace the life of the Texas Ranger. My father, James S. Gillett, was himself a frontiersman, though born in the quieter, more settled east. At a very early age his parents emigrated from his birthplace in Kentucky and moved to Missouri. Here, after a short time, they died and the young orphan lived with a brother-in-law. When still quite a youth my father, with three other adventurous Missourians, set out on an expedition to Santa Fe, New Mexico. While passing through Indian Territory, now the State of Oklahoma, the little party was captured by the Osage Indians. Fortunately for the youngsters, their captors did them no harm, but turned them loose after two weeks’ imprisonment in the redskin camp.
Despite this first setback my father persevered and reached Santa Fe. Here he lived several years and mastered the Spanish language. Not long afterward the emigrating fever again caught him up and he journeyed to Van Buren, Arkansas. While living there he studied law and was admitted to the bar. Shortly thereafter he removed to Paris, Texas, from which he was elected to the Texas Legislature as representative for Lamar and adjoining counties.
When Texas entered the Union and brought on the Mexican War with the United States, my father enlisted in 1846 and rose to the rank of major. In 1854 he was Adjutant-General of Texas. Between 1859 and 1860, during the governorship of Sam Houston, my father was quartermaster of a battalion of rangers, thus making it natural that I should also feel drawn toward this famous organization.
At the beginning of the Civil War my father was beyond military age,—he was born in 1810—but as the South became hard pressed for men he enlisted in the spring of 1864 and served in Captain Carington’s company until the end of the war.
In 1850, a few years before he became Adjutant-General, my father married Miss Bettie Harper, then a resident of Washington County, Texas. My mother’s father, Captain Harper, was a southern planter who emigrated from North Carolina between 1846 and 1848, and, settling in Washington County, established a Dixie plantation with a hundred slaves. My mother was a highly cultivated and refined woman. On her marriage she brought several negro servants with her to her new home in Austin. Of her union with my father five children were born. The first two, both boys, died in infancy. I was the fourth child born to my parents, and first saw the light of day in Austin, Texas, on November 4, 1856. An older sister, Mary, and a younger, Eva, survived to adulthood.
At the close of the Civil War my father returned to his family pretty well broken in health and probably also in spirit. His slaves were all freed and his land holdings, about two hundred acres of cedar land, some five or six miles from Austin, and a tract of pine land in Grimes County, Texas, were not very productive. There was not much law practice in Austin in the early post-war days, but my father set to work resolutely to provide for his family. Though I did not realize it then, I now know that he had a hard struggle. I was only eight and a half years old when father returned to us from the Confederate Army, but I remember he used to amuse himself by relating to us vivid accounts of his Indian fighting and frontier adventures. What heredity gave me a predilection for was strengthened by these narratives, and I early conceived a passionate desire to become a frontiersman and live a life of adventure.
In those early days in Texas there were no free schools in Austin, so my father sent the three of us, Mary, Eva, and myself, to the pay schools. None of these was very good, and I lost nearly two years at a German school, trying to mix German and English. I have never been of a studious nature—the great out of doors always called to me, and I found the desk’s dead wood particularly irksome. When school closed in the early summer of 1868, like some of Christ’s disciples, I went fishing and never attended school an hour thereafter. For books I substituted the wide-open volume of nature and began the life of sport and freedom that was to prepare me later for service with the rangers.
As poor as he was my father always kept a pony, and I learned to ride almost before I could walk. Raised on the banks of the Colorado River, I learned to swim and fish so long ago that I cannot now remember when I was unable to do either. I fished along the river with a few hand lines and used to catch quantities of gaspergou or drums. These were fine fish and sold readily on the streets of Austin, so I soon saved money enough to buy a small skiff or fishing boat. I now bought a trot line with a hundred hooks and began fishing in real earnest. About five or six miles below Austin on the Colorado was Mathews’ mill. Just below the dam of this mill the fishing was always good, and here I made my fishing grounds. I had a large dry goods box with inch auger holes bored in it. This box, sunk in the river and secured by a rope tied to a stob, made a capital trap, and into it I dropped my fish as they were caught. In this way I kept them alive and fresh until I had enough to take into town.
Many free negroes were farming along the banks of the Colorado, and I would hire a pony of them for twenty-five cents a trip when I was ready to take my catch into town. Many times I have left the river by starlight and reached the Old Market House at Austin at dawn, spread out a gunny sack, bunch my fish and be ready for the first early marketers. I kept up my fishing until the fish stopped biting in the fall of 1868.
Confederate soldiers returning home from the war brought with them many old Enfield muskets. These were smooth bore and chambered one large ball and three buckshot. These old guns, loaded with small shot, were fine on birds and squirrels, but they had one serious objection—they would kick like a mule. As the boys used to say, they “would get meat at both ends!” A day’s shooting with one of these muskets would leave one’s shoulder and arm black and blue for a week.
When fishing failed I decided to become a hunter, and bought one of these old guns for $3.50. It was as long as a fence rail, and at my age I could not begin to hold it out and shoot off hand, so I had to use a rest. The Enfield musket had the longest barrel I ever saw on a gun, and the hammer was as long as a man’s hand. I could cock my gun with both hands, but if I failed to get a shot I was not strong enough to let the hammer down without letting it get away, so I had to carry it cocked to keep from losing the cap. I would take it off the tube and put it in my pocket until I had a chance for another shot. I remember once when I cocked my musket I could see no cap on the tube and, thinking it had fallen off, I pulled the trigger. The cap had stuck up in the old hammer and the gun roared like a cannon. I was always sure to look for the cap after this. I did not make much headway using this kind of weapon, but it taught me the use and danger of firearms,—a knowledge I was to find very useful in later years.
When fishing opened up in the spring of 1869 I returned to my fishing lines, and in the fall of the same year I bought a double-barreled shotgun for $12. With it I killed quail, ducks and other small game, all of which I sold on the streets of Austin. By the fall of 1870 I was fourteen years old and could handle a gun rather well for one of my age.
Early that winter wild geese came south by the hundreds. I used to hunt them down the Colorado River, ten or twelve miles below Austin. The birds would feed in the corn fields in the early morning, then flock to the sand bars in the river during the middle of the day. There was nothing silly about those geese, for they were smart enough to frequent only the big islands, three or four hundred yards from any cover. It was impossible to reach them with any kind of a shotgun. I used to slip up to them as close as I could and watch them for hours, trying to think of some plan to get within gun shot of them. I saw as many as a thousand geese on those bars at a single time. I have thought regretfully of those birds many times since, and have wished I could have shot into one of those flocks with a modern rifle—I could have killed a dozen geese at a shot.
In the spring of 1871 I had my first trip to the frontier of Texas. My father traded some of his Grimes County pine land for a bunch of cattle in Brown County, and took me with him when he went to receive the herd. This was the first time I had ever been twenty-five miles from Austin. I was delighted with the trip, the people, and the country. Those big, fine frontiersmen, each wearing a pair of six-shooters and most of them carrying a Winchester, fired my boyish imagination. Their accounts of frontier life and their Indian tales fascinated me. I wanted to stay right there with them and lost all interest in ever living in town again. During the same year my father drove several bunches of cattle to Austin and I helped him on those drives. Thus I began to be a cowboy,—my first step toward the life of the open, upon which I had set my heart.
In the summer of 1872 my mother’s health began to fail and my father took her to Lampasas Springs. The water seemed to help her so much that he decided to make Lampasas our home. At that time Lampasas County was strictly a cattle country, but there was not much cow hunting during the winter in those days. The cattlemen and the cowboys spent a good deal of time in town just having a good time. During this period I became well acquainted with them. In the spring of 1873 my father made a trip back to Austin on some business. The frontier had been calling to me ever since my first visit there, and I now took advantage of my father’s absence to slip out to Coleman County, at that time on the frontier of Texas.
Monroe Cooksey and Jack Clayton had bought a bunch of cattle in Coleman County and I saw the outfit when it left Lampasas. I was slightly acquainted with most of the men in this outfit, so I decided to follow it and try to get work. It was an Indian country every step of the way, and I was afraid to make the trip alone. In a day or two I met a man named Bob McCollum. He was hauling a load of flour to Camp Colorado and let me travel with him. I bade my mother and sisters good bye and did not see them again until the next December.
We reached old Camp Colorado without mishap in about five days. Clayton and Cooksey’s outfit was there loading up supplies for the spring work. I stood around watching the cowboys making their preparations, but lacked the courage to ask them for work. Finally, the outfit started down on Jim Ned Creek to camp for dinner. I went with the men and at last got up spunk enough to ask Mr. Monroe Cooksey for a job. He looked at me for a minute and then asked, “What kind of work can a boy of your size do?”
I told him I was willing to do anything a boy of my age could do. He made no reply and we went on and camped for dinner. After dinner the men made ready to go over on Hoard’s Creek to camp for the night. The boys made a rope corral and began to catch their mounts. I just stood there like an orphan watching them. Presently Mr. Cooksey dashed his rope on a heavy set bay horse. The animal showed the whites of his eyes, made a rattling noise in his nose and struggled so violently that it took three men on the rope to hold him. Mr. Cooksey then turned to me and said, “Here, boy, if you can ride this * * * (giving an unmentionable name to the horse) you have a job cinched.”
I turned, grabbed my saddle, bridle and blanket and started to the animal. An elderly man in the outfit headed me off.
“Young man,” he said, “this is an old spoiled horse, and unless you are a mighty good rider you had better not get on him.”
I brushed him aside.
“Pshaw, I’m hunting work, and while I’m not a broncho buster, I will make a stab at riding him if he kills me.”
By this time one of the boys had caught the horse by both ears and was holding him fast. They threw my saddle on him, tightened up the cinch, and finally, after much trouble, got the bridle on him and lifted me into the saddle. When I had fixed myself as best I could they let the animal go. He made two or three revolting leaps forward and fell with his feet all doubled up under him.
Mr. Cooksey seemed to realize the danger I was in, and shouted to me to jump off. Before I could shake myself loose the old horse had scrambled to his feet and dashed off in a run. I circled him around to the remuda and rode him until night without further trouble. I had won my job, but it was a dirty trick for a lot of men to play on a boy, and a small boy at that. However, to their credit, I wish to say they never put me on a bad horse again but gave me the best of gentle ponies to ride.
Our first work was to gather and deliver a herd of cattle to the Horrell boys, then camped on Home Creek. We worked down to the Colorado River, and when we were near old Flat Top ranch the men with the outfit left me to drive the remuda down the road after the mess wagon while they tried to find a beef. I had gone only a mile or two when I saw a man approaching me from the rear. As he came up I thought he was the finest specimen of a frontiersman I had ever seen. He was probably six feet tall, with dark hair and beard. He was heavily armed, wearing two sixshooters and carrying a Winchester in front of him and was riding a splendid horse with a wonderful California saddle. He rode up to me and asked whose outfit it was I was driving. I told him Cooksey and Clayton’s. He then inquired my name. When I told him he said, “Oh, yes; I saw your father in Lampasas a few days ago and he told me to tell you to come home and go to school.”
I made no reply, but just kept my horses moving. The stranger then told me his name was Sam Gholston. He said it was dangerous for one so young to be in a bad Indian country and unarmed, that the outfit should not have left me alone, and counselled me to go back to my parents. I would not talk to him, so he finally bade me good bye and galloped off. His advice was good, but I had not the least idea of going home—I had embraced the frontier life.
The Cooksey and Clayton outfit did not stay in the cow business long. After filling their contract with the Horrell boys they sold out to Joe Franks. I suppose I was sold along with the outfit, at least I continued to work for Mr. Franks. A kinder heart than that of Joe Franks never beat in a human breast. He was big of stature and big of soul. He seemed to take an interest in his youthful cowpuncher, and asked me where I was raised and how I came to be away out on the frontier. As cold weather came on that fall he gave me one of his top coats. It made a pretty good overcoat for me and came down quite to my knees. The sleeves were so long I could double them up and hold my bridle reins, and in one garment I had both coat and gloves.
During the summer of 1873 John Hitsons, Sam Gholston and Joe Franks were all delivering cattle to old John Chislom, whose outfit was camped on the south side of the Concho River, about where the town of Paint Rock now stands. The other outfits were scattered along down the river about half a mile apart. There were probably seventy-five or a hundred men in the four camps and at least five hundred horses. One evening just after dark the Indians ran into Gholston’s outfit, captured about sixty head of horses and got away with them. The redskins and the cowboys had a regular pitched battle for a few moments, probably firing two hundred shots. This fight was in plain view of our camp and I saw the flash of every gun and heard the Indians and the cowboys yelling. One of Mr. Gholston’s men received a flesh wound in the leg and several horses were killed. Two nights later the Indians ran upon Franks’ outfit and tried to take our horses. Bob Whitehead and Pete Peck were on guard and stood the redskins off. We saved our horses by keeping them in a pen for the remainder of the night. I was beginning to get a taste of frontier life early in the game.
For years cattle had drifted south into Menard and Kimble Counties, and Joe Franks was one of the first of the Coleman County outfits to go south into the San Saba and Llano country. He worked the Big and Little Saline Creeks, the Llano and San Saba Rivers and found many of his cattle down there. By the last of November he had about finished work for the year, and, gathering three hundred fat cows to drive to Calvert, Texas, he left John Banister down on the Big Saline to winter the horses.
I passed through Lampasas with these cows, and saw my mother and sisters for the first time in nine months. When we reached Bell County a cow buyer met us and bought the cows at $10 per head. He just got down off his horse, lifted a pair of saddle bags off and counted out three thousand dollars in twenty dollar gold pieces, and hired some of the boys to help him drive the cattle into Calvert. Mr. Franks, with most of the outfit, turned back to Lampasas. When he settled with me Mr. Franks owed me just $200, and he handed me ten twenty dollar gold pieces. It was the most money I had ever earned and almost the greatest amount I had seen in my life.
I spent December and January at home, and early in February, 1874, I started back to Menard County with Mr. Franks, as he was anxious to begin work as early in the spring as possible. When we reached Parsons Ranch on the Big Saline we learned that the Indians had stolen all his horses,—seventy-five or eighty head, and he had left only eight or ten old ponies. Mr. Franks sent Will Banister and myself back to Coleman County to pick up ten or twelve horses he had left there the year before, while he himself returned to Lampasas and Williamson Counties to buy horses.
This trip from Menard County to Coleman County, a distance of about one hundred and fifty miles, was rather a hazardous trip for two boys to make alone. However, we were both armed with new Winchesters and would have been able to put up a stiff fight if cornered. Our ponies were poor and weak, so that it would have been impossible for us to have escaped had we met a band of Indians. And this is what we came very near doing.
There was no road from Menard to Coleman at that time, so we just traveled north. I had cow hunted over most of that country the year before and knew by landmarks pretty well how to go. We reached the head of Big Brady Creek one evening while a cold north wind was blowing. We camped for the night right down in the bed of a dry creek to get out of the wind. We saddled up next morning and had not gone more than a hundred and fifty yards from camp before we discovered where sixteen or seventeen Indians had just gone along,—at least there was that number of pony tracks. These redskins had hopped a skunk, gotten down and killed it with a chunk of wood. When we found the body it had scarcely quit bleeding. We saw moccasin tracks as if the savages had all gotten off their ponies for a few moments. Banister and I made the trip safely, and returned to Menard County early in March. Mr. Franks soon came with a new bunch of horses, and we went right to work gathering and delivering cattle.
About the first of June, Bee Clayton came to the outfit from Lampasas County and told me my father had been dead more than a month. Mr. Franks settled with me and I started for home the next day. Upon reaching Lampasas I began work with Barrett and Nicholls’ outfit. They were the biggest cattle owners in that country and ran three large outfits, one in Llano County, one in San Saba County, and another in Lampasas. I worked with the last mentioned outfit that I might be near my mother and sisters.
I had now become familiar with most aspects of frontier life. I had cow punched and seen Indian raids, but I had not yet met the Texas “bad man”—the murderer and the bandit. My education was not long neglected, for it was while working with Barrett and Nicholls that I made my acquaintance with gentry of that ilk. One day five or six of our boys were sitting down in a circle eating on a side of calf ribs. One of the men, Jack Perkins, suddenly became involved in an altercation with Levi Dunbar, and, without warning, jerked out his six-shooter and shot him to death. In rising to my feet I had my right shoulder powder burned.
I stayed with Barrett and Nicholls until they quit work about December 1, 1874. In those days cattle were not worked much in the winter months, so I spent the winter at home. By spring I had become as restless as a bear and longed to get back to the frontier. Finally I could stand the idleness no longer and told my mother I was going back to Menard County to work for Mr. Franks. I reached the town of Menardville early in March, 1875. There I learned that Joe Franks was then at work on South Llano in Kimble County, about sixty miles from Menard. Wess Ellis had just bought the Rufe Winn stock of cattle and was ready to start on a cow hunt. He wanted me to work for him, declaring he could pay me as much as Joe Franks or anybody else, so I hired to him for $30 a month,—the top wages for a cowboy at that time.
During the year I was at home a company of Texas Rangers commanded by Captain Dan W. Roberts had been stationed over on Little Saline. This company received its mail at Menardville, and I became acquainted with this famous organization. Their free, open life along the frontier had fired me with longing to become one of them and join in their adventurous lives. In the spring of 1875 the Governor of Texas authorized Captain Roberts to increase his command to fifty men. Almost immediately Captain Roberts announced in Menardville and vicinity that he would enlist twenty good men on June 1st to bring his company to full strength. Here was my opportunity, and I decided I would be one of those twenty recruits.
CHAPTER II
THE TEXAS RANGERS
THE TEXAS RANGERS, AS AN organization, dates from the spring of 1836. When the Alamo had fallen before the onslaught of the Mexican troops and the frightful massacre had occurred, General Sam Houston organized among the Texan settlers in the territory a troop of 1600 mounted riflemen. This company, formed for the defense of the Texan borders, was the original Texas Ranger unit, and it is interesting to note that the organization from its very inception to the present moment has never swerved from that purpose—the protection of Texan borders, whether such protection be against the Indian, the bandit or marauding Mexicans from beyond the Rio Grande. This little troop of rangers won everlasting laurels in its stand against Santa Anna at the battle of San Jacinto.
When the Republic of Texas was organized in December, 1837, the new state found herself with an enormous frontier to protect. To the south was the hostile Mexico while to the west and northwest roved the Indian and the bandit. To furnish protection against such enemies and to form the nucleus of a national standing army the ranger troop was retained. During the seven years that Texas had to maintain her own independence before she was admitted into the American Union, her rangers repelled hordes of Mexicans, fought the murderous Apaches, Comanches, and Kiowas, and administered justice on a wholesale plan to a great number of outlaws and ruffians that had flocked pell mell into the new Republic from the less attractive parts of the United States.
So vital was the service rendered by the rangers in protecting the lives and property of the settlers along the frontiers of the state that Texas retained twelve hundred rangers as mounted police for patrol of the Mexican border and as a safeguard against the savage redskins of the southwest. When the Civil War broke out between the North and the South, Texas was drawn into the conflict on the side of the Confederacy. General Con Terry, an old ranger, organized the famous body of men known as Terry’s Texas Rangers. This command was composed almost exclusively of ex-rangers and frontiersmen. From Bull Run to Appomattox this ranger troop rendered gallant service, and lost seventy-five per cent of its original muster roll. General Sherman, in his memoirs, speaks admiringly of the bravery of the rangers at the battle of Shiloh.
Return to peace and the days of reconstruction did not do away with the necessity for the service that could only be rendered by the ranger. Banditry, Indian uprisings and massacres, cattle thievery, all flourished, for the bad man confidently expected the post-war turmoil would protect him from punishment for his misdeeds. He was to be undeceived, for the rangers effectively taught him that they were in the state for the purpose of protecting lives and property, and right royally did they perform that duty. From 1868 to 1873 the ranger companies were gradually reduced from one thousand to about three hundred men.
The Federal Government adopted a most unfortunate policy toward the Indians after the war. The tribes were removed to reservations and rationed as public charges. Unscrupulous dealers, in their desire for gain, illegally sold firearms to the Indians, and whenever a redskin massacred a frontiersman he was sure to capture good weapons, so that they soon became well armed and very expert in handling their new weapons. As no attempt was made to confine them to the reservation limits, the redskins, under their native chiefs, were always sneaking off and raiding West Texas. These marauders stole thousands of horses and cattle, and did not hesitate to murder and scalp the defenseless people along the frontier. Numbers of women and children were carried off as captives, a very small proportion of which were subsequently ransomed. Repeated complaints to Washington brought no redress. Indeed, some of the government officials calmly declared that the Indians were doing no harm—it was white men disguised as redskins that caused the trouble!
In 1874 conditions along the frontier had become so acute that the need for an organized mounted police for the protection of the settlers against the continued Indian raids became apparent. As in the past the state looked again to her rangers. Early in 1874, during the administration of Governor Richard Coke, the first Democratic governor since secession, the Legislature appropriated $300,000 for frontier defense, thus authorizing the formation of the Texas Rangers as now constituted. The governor immediately issued a call for four hundred and fifty volunteers. These were formed into six companies of seventy-five men each. Each of these units was officered by a captain and a first and second lieutenant. The companies were designated A, R, C, D, E, and F, and received the official name of the Frontier Battalion of Texas Rangers. Major John R. Jones of Corsicana, Texas, was commissioned major of the command. At this time the captains received a salary of $100 per month, lieutenants $75, sergeants $50, and corporals and privates $40. Subsequently, as the Legislature continually sliced into the ranger appropriation, the pay of the private was reduced to only $30 a month, a mere pittance for the hazardous service demanded of them.
Early in 1874 the force took the field, and each company was assigned a definite territory along the frontier. Company “A,” being the northernmost company, was camped on the main fork of the Brazos River; Company “F,” the southernmost, was stationed on the Nueces River. The remaining four companies were posted along the line between the two commands mentioned about one hundred and twenty-five miles apart, so that the battalion of four hundred and fifty men was required to cover a frontier of between five and six hundred miles.
Major Jones was a very able commander, and quickly won the confidence of his men and of the people along the border he was sent to protect. The frontiersmen cooperated with him in every way possible, sending runners to the various ranger camps whenever an Indian trail was found or a bunch of horses stolen. During the very first six months of its existence nearly every company in the battalion had had an Indian fight and some of them two or three. This command finally cleared the Texas frontier of the redskins and then turned its attention to the other pests of the state,—thieves, bandits, and fugitives from justice. In this work the ranger rendered service second to none, and became in an incredibly short time the most famous and the most efficient body of mounted police in the world.
Between 1865 and 1883 the Texas Rangers followed one hundred and twenty-eight Indian raiding parties, and fought the redskins in eighty-four pitched battles. During this same period they recovered six thousand stolen horses and cattle and rescued three citizens carried off by Indians. In this period twelve rangers were killed. Despite this record of service, the Legislature at Austin could not always be made to see the advantages,—nay, the necessity,—for a ranger force, and it was continually tinkering with the appropriations for the support of the force. When the appropriation was small the command was reduced to keep within the expenditure doled out by the parsimonious solons, and recruited to full strength whenever the lawmakers could be prevailed upon to increase the annual ranger budget.
By 1885 conditions had changed. Texas was no longer endangered by Indians, for the rangers had done much to convert the red devils into good Indians,—that is, into dead ones. Although the Indians had utterly disappeared from the state, the activities of the rangers did not cease. The white “bad man” who had stirred up the first Indian troubles now began to plunder and murder his own race and indulge in every form of lawlessness. From hunting the murderous redskins the rangers became now stalkers of the man-killers and those who despoiled their neighbors of their property. The local legal authorities could not or would not handle this task themselves, so the rangers were made peace officers and given the right of arrest without warrant in any part of the state. They then became mounted constables to quell disorder, prevent crime and bring criminals to justice and assist the duly constituted authorities in every way possible. This new work was less romantic than the old Indian warfare, but it was every bit as dangerous and as necessary in the building up of the fast developing state. As in every other task assigned him the ranger did his duty fearlessly and well. Between 1889 and 1890 the rangers made five hundred and seventy-nine arrests, among them seventy-six murderers. With the coming of the railroads the rangers began to use them, as they permitted speed and the covering of greater distances than were possible on horseback. Moreover, commands could be dispatched from one part of the state to another as occasion demanded. This greater mobility led to larger usefulness and increasing number of arrests by the ranger forces.
The outbreak of the Spanish-American War found the ranger ready and anxious for service in the defense of the Union. Large numbers of them were enlisted in the world famous Rough Riders.
“I have heard from the lips of reliable rangers,” declared General Miles, in speaking of the ranger service in Cuba, “tales of daring that are incomparable. It is indeed too bad that the world knows so little about those marvelous men. There have been hosts of men among the Texas Rangers who were just as nervy as Davy Crockett, Travis, or Bowie at the Alamo.”
Thanks to her rangers, Texas is now one of the most law-abiding, most orderly states in the Union. And, today, more than forty-six years since the organization of the battalion, the state still maintains a tiny force of rangers numbering sixty-three officers and men. In 1920-21, the battalion was composed of a headquarters company and Companies A, C, D, E, and F. As in the beginning of its history, the force is stationed along the frontier. The headquarters company, under command of Captain J. P. Brooks, was stationed at Austin and used for emergency calls. Company “A,” stationed at Presidio, and commanded by Captain Jerry Gray, patrols the border between El Paso, Presidio, and Jeff Davis Counties and the back country southward. Company “E,” Captain J. L. Anders, patrols the line of Presidio and Brewster Counties to the line of Terrell and Val Verde Counties and eastward. Company “F,” under Captain W. W. Davis, was stationed at Del Rio and covered the line from Terrell and Val Verde Counties down the river to the line between Maverick, Dimmit and Webb Counties and the back country. Under the command of Captain William Ryan, Company “C” was located at Laredo and patrolled the line of Maverick, Dimmit and Webb Counties to the line of Zapata and Starr Counties and the back country, while Company “D,” stationed at Brownsville, under Captain W. L. Wright, patrols from the line of Zapata and Starr Counties down the Rio Grande to its mouth and the adjacent back country.
Sketchy as has been this history, it will show a ranger record of continuous duty throughout the forty-six years of its existence in guarding the lives, the liberty and the property of Texas citizens. And the ranger has been content to perform his duty unheralded and almost unsung. Performance of duty, it matters not where it may lead him, into whatever desperate situation or howsoever dangerous the thing demanded, has always been the slogan of the organization. For courage, patriotic devotion, instant obedience and efficiency, the record of the Texas Ranger has been equalled by no body of constabulary ever mustered.
Though formed into military units and officered as a soldier, the ranger is not a military man, for scant attention is paid to military law and precedent. The state furnished food for the men, forage for their horses, ammunition and medical attendance. The ranger himself must furnish his horse, his accoutrements and his arms. There is, then, no uniformity in the matter of dress, for each ranger is free to dress as he pleases and in the garb experience has taught him most convenient for utility and comfort. A ranger, as any other frontiersman or cowboy, usually wears good heavy woolen clothes of any color that strikes his fancy. Some are partial to corduroy suits, while others prefer buckskin. A felt hat of any make and color completes his uniform. While riding, a ranger always wore spurs and very high-heeled boots to prevent his foot from slipping through the stirrup, for both the ranger and the cowboy ride with the stirrup in the middle of the foot. This is safer and less fatiguing on a long ride. For arms, the ranger after 1877 carried a Winchester rifle or carbine, a Colt’s .45 revolver, and a Bowie knife. Two cartridge belts, one for Winchester and one for revolver ammunition, completed his equipment, and so armed he was ready to mount and ride.
