The Men Who War the Star: The Story of the Texas Rangers
Read The Men Who War the Star: The Story of the Texas Rangers Online
Authors: Charles M. Robinson III
Tags: #Fiction
Contents
Introduction: Are They Still There?
Map of South Texas and Nueces Strip
1– Life and Death in a Harsh Land
2– Indian Raids and Revolution
4– A Great Captain and a New Weapon
12– The Rise of McNelly’s Rangers
PART V From Frontier Defenders to State Police
16– Gunmen, Pugilists, and a “Fistic Carnival”
Conclusion: The End and the Myth
Also by Charles M. Robinson III
To Tom Munnerlyn in gratitude for everything
Los diablos tejanos!
(The Texan devils!)
—Mexican expression for Texans in
general and Rangers in particular
No man in the wrong can stand up against a fellow
that’s in the right and keeps on a-comin’.
—Ranger saying attributed variously
to Capt. Leander H. McNelly
and Capt. William J. McDonald
Acknowledgments
The idea for this book came almost simultaneously from three people: Douglas Plaisted of Houston, a lifelong friend; Tom Burks, then curator of the Texas Ranger Hall of Fame and Museum in Waco; and Thomas A. Munnerlyn of State House Press, in Austin. Tom Munnerlyn, whose press reprints many rare and hard-to-find books by and about Rangers, as well as original material, has encouraged the project from its inception, offering continued support in the form of books, papers, leads, comments, and advice. I am particularly grateful to him and his partner, Deborah Brothers, who provided virtually every book in the bibliography attributed to State House Press.
Special thanks also goes to my editor, Robert D. Loomis, of Random House, Inc., for his faith and patience with this project.
Others who deserve special mention are:
The Hon. George W. Bush, governor of Texas, and the Hon. Antonio O. Garza, former Texas secretary of state, for their comments and encouragement.
Leon C. Metz of El Paso, Chuck Parsons of Luling, Texas, and Robert M. Utley of Georgetown, Texas, for their advice, help, and encouragement.
The late Dr. C. L. Sonnichsen for his advice and criticisms concerning some aspects of Texas feuds, and whose books have been an inspiration since junior high school.
Robert A. Clark of the Arthur H. Clark Co., Spokane, Washington, through whose patience and tireless efforts I was able to secure many of the references needed.
At the risk of leaving some out, individuals and institutions deserving mention are:
Joan Farmer, former director of the Old Jail Art Center and Archive, Albany, Texas; Donaly E. Brice and John Anderson, Archives Division, Texas State Library and Archives, Austin; Mike Cox, chief of media relations, Department of Public Safety Public Information Office, Austin; Thomas Carroll and Aaron Mahr-Yanez, Palo Alto Battlefield National Historic Site, Brownsville; George Gause, Rio Grande Valley Regional Collection, University of Texas–Pan American, Edinburg, and the Interlibrary Loan Department at UTPA; James M. Day of El Paso; the library of the University of Texas at El Paso; Harold Weiss, Jr., of Leander, Texas; and the Texas Ranger Hall of Fame and Museum in Waco.
Grateful acknowledgment is extended to the following individuals, publishers, and holding institutions for permission to quote from various sources:
Courtesy of the Center for American History, the University of Texas at Austin
Caperton, John. “Sketch of Colonel John C. Hays, The Texan Rangers, Incidents in Texas and Mexico, Etc.” John Coffee Hays Collection 2R35.
DeShields, James T. “Indian Raid, Pursuit and Fight.” John Coffee Hays Collection 3F176.
DeShields, James T. “Jack Hays Fight on the Gaudaloupe [
sic
].” John Coffee Hays Collection 3F176.
Elm Creek Raid Statements (various). Earl Vandale Collection 2H481.
Gholson, Benjamin Franklin. “The Death of Nocona.” Earl Vandale Collection 2H464.
Hamby, Thornton K. “An Indian Raid in Young County, Texas, Oct. 13th 1864.” Elm Creek Raid Statements. Earl Vandale Collection 2H481.
Kuykendall, J. H. “Col. Samuel H. Walker.” Samuel Hamilton Walker Vertical File. Texas Collection Library.
Lockhart, John W. “Jack Hays’ Visit to Washington, Texas.” John Coffee Hays Collection 3F176.
Courtesy of Eakin Press, a division of Sunbelt Media, Inc.
Roemer, Ferdinand.
Roemer’s Texas, 1845 to 1847
. Special heritage ed.
Austin: Eakin Press, 1995.
Courtesy of Gerald Barry Hurst, Jacksonville, N.C.
Barry, James Buckner.
Buck Barry, Texas Ranger and Frontiersman
.
Bison Books ed. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1984.
Courtesy of State House Press, Austin, Texas
Jenkins, John Holmes III, and H. Gordon Frost.
“I’m Frank Hamer”:
The Life of a Texas Peace Officer
. Austin: State House Press, 1993.
Martin, Jack.
Border Boss: Captain John R. Hughes—Texas Ranger
.
Austin: State House Press, 1990.
Wilkins, Frederick.
The Legend Begins: The Texas Rangers, 1823–1845
.
Austin: State House Press, 1996.
Courtesy of Texas State Historical Association
Chamberlain, Samuel.
My Confession: Recollections of a Rogue
. Unexpurgated and Annotated Edition. Austin: Texas State Historical Association, 1996.
Erath, Lucy A. “Memoirs of Major George Bernard Erath.”
Southwestern Historical Quarterly,
Vol. 26, no. 3 (January 1923); Vol. 26, no. 4 (April 1923); Vol. 27, no. 1 (July 1923); Vol. 27, no. 2 (October 1923).
Holland, James K. “Diary of a Texan Volunteer in the Mexican War.”
Southwestern Historical Quarterly,
Vol. 30, no. 1 (July 1926).
Thompson, Jerry Don, ed.
Fifty Miles and a Fight: Major Samuel Peter
Heintzelman’s Journal of Texas and the Cortina War
. Austin: Texas State Historical Association, 1998.
Courtesy of Texas Western Press
Clayton, Lawrence R., and Joseph E. Chance, eds.
The March to Monterrey: The Diary of Lieutenant Rankin Dilworth, U.S. Army
. El Paso: Texas Western Press, 1996.
Justice, Glenn.
Revolution on the Rio Grande: Mexican Raids and Army
Pursuits, 1916–1919
. El Paso: Texas Western Press, 1992.
Courtesy of University of North Texas Press
Roberts, Madge Thornall, ed.
The Personal Correspondence of Sam
Houston
. Vol. 1: 1839–1845. Denton: University of North Texas Press, 1996.
Courtesy of University of Oklahoma Press
Haley, J. Evetts.
Charles Goodnight, Cowman and Plainsman
. New ed.
Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1949.
Nye, Wilbur Sturtevant.
Carbine and Lance: The Story of Old Fort Sill
.
Third ed. Revised. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1969.
Sterling, William Warren.
Trails and Trials of a Texas Ranger
. Norman:
University of Oklahoma Press, 1959, 1968.
Courtesy of University of Texas Press
Durham, George, as told to Clyde Wantland.
Taming the Nueces Strip:
The Story of McNelly’s Rangers
. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1962; reprinted 1990.
Ford, John Salmon, edited by Stephen B. Oates.
Rip Ford’s Texas
. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1963; reprinted 1995.
Jenkins, John Holmes III, ed.
Recollections of Early Texas: The Memoirs
of John Holland Jenkins
. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1958; reprinted 1986.
Peterson, John Allen, ed.
“Facts as I Remember Them”: The Autobiography of Rufe LeFors
. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1986.
Webb, Walter Prescott.
The Texas Rangers: A Century of Frontier Defense
. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1965.
Courtesy of Yale University Press
Gillett, James B., edited with an introduction by M. M. Quaife.
Six Years
with the Texas Rangers, 1875 to 1881
. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1925. Reprint. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1976.
Introduction:
Are They Still There?
When Richard McLaren, self-styled “ambassador of the Republic of Texas,” holed up in the dry, rugged mountains of west Texas during a weeklong standoff in the spring of 1997, many Texans feared a blood-bath. Federal law enforcement has not been universally admired or trusted in Texas since the Branch Davidian debacle near Waco, and McLaren had threatened destruction. Later it was discovered that his refuge was booby-trapped and rigged for defense against assault. Yet he released his hostages the second day and, six days later, surrendered peacefully with most of his followers.
Several things separated the relatively quiet McLaren standoff from the fiery end of the Branch Davidians. First, the state maintained jurisdiction; federal authorities functioned in a strictly “advisory” capacity, which is to say virtually no capacity at all. Second, the man in charge was a Texas Ranger; McLaren trusted the Rangers because they predated American rule. Finally, the Ranger in charge was a soft-spoken company commander from Midland named Barry Caver, who, at thirty-nine, was the youngest captain in the service.
In classic Ranger tradition, Caver made his own rules based on the immediate situation, educated guesses, and simple instinct. Where conventional hostage wisdom calls for procrastination in hopes of wearing down the suspects, he made decisions. First, he accommodated McLaren by swapping a jailed Texas separatist for the hostages. With the hostages safe, Caver had more freedom of action, and he dealt with McLaren with one hand while tightening the cordon around him with the other. McLaren finally saw the hopelessness of his situation and surrendered. Two of his followers escaped into the mountains, where one was later killed, but he and the majority of his group surrendered without a fight.¹
The McLaren case reaffirmed the prestige and skill of the Texas Rangers at a time when a small but vocal minority had begun to question whether they were even relevant to the modern age. Despite all the advances in criminology, they retain the nerve and sense of duty that have made them legendary throughout the world. In 1968, when I spent a weekend with a family in Glasgow, Scotland, I was introduced to their friends as a “Texas Ranger” for no other reason than that I am from Texas, and the Glaswegians viewed the words “Texas” and “Ranger” as inseparable. When the Washington Senators baseball team relocated to Dallas, they became the Rangers.
The name and the legend go far toward making the Rangers effective. Former adjutant general William W. Sterling, who commanded the Ranger Service in the 1920s and 1930s, once wrote:
There is no question but that a definite potency exists in the name “Texas Ranger.” Take two men of equal size and arm them with identical weapons. Call one of them a deputy sheriff and the other a Ranger. Send each of these officers out to stop a mob or quell a riot. The crowd will resist the deputy, but will submit to the authority of the Ranger.²