The Men Who War the Star: The Story of the Texas Rangers (47 page)

There is some evidence of German influence in the Plan of San Diego. Europe was then embroiled in the First World War, and German agents were active among the various revolutionary factions in Mexico. There was also a concerted (albeit unsanctioned) effort in the German Foreign Office to keep the Americans involved with Mexico so that they would stay out of Europe.
⁹

THE PLAN OF
San Diego was exposed on January 19, 1915, when one of the plotters was arrested in McAllen with a copy of the plan. It created a minor panic among area residents, and a county law officer later recalled:

Resentment toward strange Mexicans reached a new high, and several were found shot to death. Some of them may or may not have been bandits. People were shooting first and not talking afterward.
¹⁰

Nevertheless, the plot brought a new round of heavy raiding along the Lower Rio Grande, and the Texas Rangers were woefully inadequate for the situation. In June 1915, the service had only thirty-four men in three companies. Two of these companies, A, commanded by Capt. J. J. Sanders, and B, under Capt. J. Monroe Fox, were ordered to the Lower Rio Grande, and a fourth company, D, under Capt. R. L. Ransom, was organized and sent to the border. Fort Brown and Fort Ringgold were regarrisoned with regular troops.

Ranger Company B began its border service under a shadow that would haunt it until it was disbanded in disgrace three years later. One of its members resigned, claiming the sergeant was chronically drunk, and that a Ranger killed in a fight with Mexican smugglers had been deserted by his comrades. No action was taken on the allegations.
¹¹

In the summer of 1915, people had little inclination to worry about internal Ranger disputes. On July 4, a band of Mexican irregulars crossed the border and raided about sixty miles into Cameron County, killing three people. This began a series of raids and reprisals, culminating with the activities of Luis de la Rosa, a
tejano
revolutionary from Rio Hondo, a small farming community on the Arroyo Colorado, about thirty miles north of Brownsville. He initiated his campaign by tearing up railroad trestles and cutting telegraph wires, prompting military authorities to assign soldiers to guard trains between Harlingen and Raymondville. On August 6, he flaunted his opinion of Anglo-Saxon law and order by raiding Sebastian, a small town about ten miles north of Harlingen, and murdering Alfred L. Austin, president of the quasi-vigilante Sebastian Law and Order League, and his son, Charles. From there he turned his attention to the greatest and most venerable symbol of Anglo-Saxon authority in south Texas—the King Ranch.
¹²

THE 825,000-ACRE
King Ranch is divided into four divisions, covering parts of six counties. Stretched out in a single line, its fence rows would be two thousand miles long. Today it is a family corporation owned by the descendants of Richard and Henrietta M. King through their youngest daughter, Alice Gertrudis King, and her husband, Robert Justus Kleberg. The ranch’s prestige and influence are evident throughout south Texas—in the cities of Kingsville and Alice, Kleberg County, and several H. M. King High Schools. The southernmost division is Norias, which begins about ten miles north of Raymondville. The headquarters of the Norias Division, which attracted Luis de la Rosa’s attention, is about twenty miles farther north.

On August 7, de la Rosa’s men joined forces with twenty-five Mexicans led by officers of one of the factional armies of Mexico and rode north, planning to attack the house and railroad shed at Norias. They were spotted crossing one of the big ranches between the railroad and the coast, and their presence was reported to Caesar Kleberg, manager of the Norias Division, who telephoned Brownsville for Rangers and troops. Captains Ransom and Fox, several of their Rangers, and a squad of soldiers from Fort Brown left on a special train on the afternoon of August 8. Meanwhile, King Ranch cowboys, themselves descendants of Mexican
vaqueros
imported by Richard King in the 1850s, prepared to defend the division. These men, called
kineños,
or King’s people, held their jobs by hereditary right; their only loyalty was to the ranch and the King-Kleberg family.

When the Rangers and soldiers arrived at Norias, the
kineños
were ready with horses. The soldiers remained at the headquarters, while the Rangers and cowboys rode south to intercept de la Rosa’s men. Soon after their departure, the regularly scheduled train arrived from Brownsville, bringing three customs inspectors and a deputy sheriff. The group waited for the others, and after supper, customs inspector Marcus Hines walked out on the porch and remarked, “I see the Rangers coming back. They didn’t meet those bandits.”

“Rangers, hell!” another man remarked. “That’s bandits a-comin’!”

The customs inspectors and soldiers took a prone position on the railroad grade as de la Rosa’s men approached from the east across the tracks. The confident Mexicans had not bothered to reconnoiter and were unaware of a bull-proof fence of heavy wire parallel to the track in the brush ahead of them. Those in the lead slammed into the fence, and their companions piled in behind them. The defenders opened fire.

The startled Mexicans fell back, leaving behind eight dead, with several dead or wounded horses. Some of the horses were screaming in pain, and one of the defenders later remarked he had never before heard that kind of sound from a horse. A soldier was shot in the heel, and two of his companions started to pull him back into the ranch building. As they dragged him he was hit again, below the knee.

The Mexicans charged several more times, each time becoming entangled in the fence. When they finally broke off the fight, about 8:30
P.M.
, they left behind five more dead. Two U.S. soldiers were killed. About an hour later, the Rangers and cowboys came back. Fox and two others tied ropes around the dead Mexicans and dragged them behind their horses through the brush. Somebody took a photograph, and thousands of copies were distributed as a warning to future raiders.
¹³

Far from frightening the Mexicans, the treatment of the Norias dead only intensified ill feeling. Among other things, it established to the devoutly Roman Catholic Mexicans and
tejanos
that Ranger vengeance extended not only to this life but to the hereafter as well. By dragging the bodies into the brush and leaving them for coyotes and vultures, the Rangers denied the dead the final sacraments of their religion, including burial in consecreated ground. This only emphasized that the Hispanic people could expect little if any mercy if they crossed a Ranger. Even some members of the Anglo-Saxon community were offended, but these were by far the minority.
¹⁴

Mexicans, likewise, were ready to shoot first and ask questions later. One tactic was for a small group of bandits to allow itself to be cornered, then wave a white cloth and offer to surrender. Then, as the Rangers approached, the main band would open fire from the brush. Once they had fallen into this trap a few times, the Rangers habitually killed anyone waving a white cloth. Both sides were accused of maintaining “black lists” of people from the opposite ethnic group that someone might want killed.
¹⁵

LUIS DE LA ROSA,
meanwhile, was far from finished. Returning to the Rio Grande, he and his men skirmished with army patrols over the next two days, resulting in the death of one of his own men and a U.S. soldier. Then, in September, a second group of partisans led by Aniceto Pizana cut a swath of murder through Cameron County.

It was de la Rosa, however, who pulled the most daring raid of all, the destruction of the night train to Brownsville on October 17, 1915. The train had pulled out of San Benito as usual for the twenty-mile run to Brownsville, but at 11
P.M.
, Cameron County sheriff W. F. Vann was notified it was overdue. He telephoned Harlingen and found it had left on time. Then he tried San Benito and the line went dead. It had been cut. At 1
A.M.
, a porter from the train called and told him it had been wrecked near Olmito, about seven miles up the line. The porter had run three miles to a ranch to find the phone.

Vann and his deputies rushed up to Olmito. The first thing they found was a burning trestle. From the light of the fire, they saw the wrecked train beyond. To de la Rosa, the railroad represented everything detestable about American rule. He believed trains were segregated into Mexican and Anglo sections, an erroneous assumption, because Mexicans and
tejanos
were permitted in first class. Nevertheless, the belief exemplified all the irrationality that had taken over the border conflict, and de la Rosa was just as determined as Captain Fox to make an example.
¹⁶

Arriving at Olmito ahead of the train, de la Rosa’s men had removed the fishplates connecting two rails, then pulled out the spikes that held one of the rails in place. They attached a heavy wire to one of the rails and waited. As the train approached, they pulled the rail out. The locomotive went over onto its side. Live steam poured into the cab, scalding the engineer to death and badly burning the fireman. The cars tumbled off and piled up behind the locomotive. The baggage and mail cars rolled over, but the two passenger cars remained upright, although one of the coaches was leaning to one side, throwing the occupants off balance.

From the brush, de la Rosa’s men opened fire on the coaches. Passengers inside could hear them shouting, “Viva Carranza! [Mexican revolutionary leader and provisional president Venustiano Carranza] Viva Luis de la Rosa! Viva Aniceto Pizana!” Then, apparently realizing the train was not segregated and that he risked killing his own people, de la Rosa ordered a cease-fire and sent some of his men into the coach. Among the passengers, two soldiers were killed, and the county health officer was mortally wounded. Another soldier and former Ranger Henry Wallis were badly wounded. After robbing some of the passengers and setting fire to the trestle, de la Rosa’s men departed.
¹⁷

THE SHERIFF’S POSSE
was accompanied by Captain Ransom and several Rangers, and by soldiers. As the sun came up, Deputy John Peavey and his brother, Clarence, searched the brush and found the tools de la Rosa’s men had used to pull out the rail. Then Peavey and some deputies followed the trail of horse tracks and scattered plunder from the train to the river, where the bandits had crossed.

Returning to the wreck, they found that the Rangers had killed four
tejanos
for no other reason than that they lived in the immediate vicinity and therefore were presumed guilty. The sight disgusted Peavey, who was convinced he had tracked the real killers to the river and the Rangers had murdered innocent men. “I had seen things like this before,” he later wrote, “but to me it still seemed cold and cruel.”

Sheriff Vann agreed. He despised Ransom, whose primary qualification was his connection with Governor James “Pa” Ferguson, and had opposed Ransom’s appointment as company captain. Sharp words had been exchanged after Ransom announced he intended to kill the men. When Vann said he would have no part of it, Ransom accused him of cowardice.
¹⁸

RESPONDING TO THE
growing violence on the lower border, the possible conspiracy raised by the Plan of San Diego, and the raids of revolutionary leader Francisco “Pancho” Villa in New Mexico and the Big Bend of Texas, the Wilson administration called the National Guard into federal service on the Mexican border. The Lower Rio Grande area became one vast military camp. Governor Ferguson created units of Special Rangers to handle the crisis on behalf of the state. Faced with the growing might and power of the United States in the Lower Rio Grande, the raiding gradually tapered off. Upriver in the Del Rio area, Ranger Frank Hamer entered into an agreement with the
rurales,
the ruthless Mexican rural gendarmerie, whereby Hamer actually crossed the border and rode with the Mexicans, heading off trouble before it could reach Texas.
¹⁹

The Big Bend country, however, was a virtual war zone. Even today the most isolated, rugged, and mountainous area of the state, it is virtually impossible to completely seal off and patrol. For more than two decades, this area was almost the private preserve of Capt. John R. Hughes, who had weathered the various reorganizations of the Ranger Service to become senior captain. Although Hughes’s company was shifted elsewhere from time to time as the situation required, he invariably returned to west Texas, where he became known as the “Border Boss.”

Hughes’s great advantage was his knowledge of the people on both sides of the river, which enabled him to communicate with the leaders of the various revolutionary factions in Mexico. He was particularly friendly with Pancho Villa, and the two men had great respect for each other. His regular contact with the Revolutionaries brought accusations in both Mexico City and Washington of Ranger partisanship, although in fact he was obtaining advance information of impending battles that might reach the border and warning the leaders not to let stray shots fall into Texas. He also sent detachments of Rangers to march along the river parallel to Mexican troops to make certain they kept to their side.
²⁰

Hughes, however, was not able to entirely control so vast an area. Gunrunning through the Big Bend country was generally easy and always profitable, particularly since the Revolutionaries tended to pay in silver or in cattle. Even U.S. soldiers and Texas Rangers were known to engage in the trade, the soldiers stealing and selling machine guns from government armories. The arms trade was accompanied by the same violence that characterizes today’s drug trade in that region. It was aggravated by cattle and horse stealing and attacks on remote ranches. Unlike the violence of the Lower Rio Grande, which had political overtones through the Plan of San Diego, these raids were little more than ordinary banditry. No one was safe; in 1913, two U.S. Customs inspectors and an inspector for the Texas Cattle Raisers Association were gunned down as they escorted a prisoner. One of the customs inspectors was mortally wounded.
²¹