The Men Who War the Star: The Story of the Texas Rangers (41 page)

Tays, of course, had not been consulted, and when he saw the Rangers filing out to be disarmed, he was furious. The leaders came back and told him to go with his men. He replied that he had brought out Howard in good faith and didn’t plan to leave until the agreements between Howard and the mob were finalized. At that point, twelve armed men appeared and hustled him into another room, while they decided what to do with Howard, Atkinson, and McBride. It didn’t take long.

Chico Barela was the holdout. Regardless of what he personally thought of Howard, Atkinson, and McBride, he had given his solemn oath to preserve their lives. To reinforce it, he sent a runner across the river to inform the priest Borajo. The reply was not what he expected. “Shoot all the gringos,” Borajo advised, “and I will absolve you.” That ended it as far as the other leaders of the mob were concerned. Barela continued to protest, but by now the mob was out of control.

Howard was brought out first. One witness recalled, “He walked erectly, with his hands behind him.” At the command to halt, Howard stopped and turned to face the mob. A firing squad was formed, and moved up about ten feet from Howard, who calmly watched. Finally, in broken Spanish, he said, “You are now about to execute three hundred men,” apparently referring to the reprisals that were sure to follow. Then he pulled open his shirt and shouted, “Fire!”

Howard fell, badly wounded but not dead. The mob moved in and hacked him to death. The body was thrown into a nearby well.

Atkinson and McBride were next. McBride was described as “melancholy,” but Atkinson was defiant. This was too much for Chico Barela. He had shed no tears over Howard (his daughter had been engaged to Louis Cardis before Howard murdered him), but Atkinson and McBride were another matter. He had given his solemn oath that they would live, and he intended to uphold it. Picking up on that, Atkinson, who spoke fluent Spanish, asked the members of the mob if they intended to violate the oaths their leaders had made on their behalf. Someone shouted, “Finish them!”

“Then, there is no remedy?” Atkinson asked.

“No! No!” the crowd shouted.

“Then let me die with honor. I will give the word.” With that, he removed his coat and vest and opened his shirt. “When I give the word, fire at my heart. Fire!”

McBride died instantly, but Atkinson was hit five times in the stomach. He staggered, then recovered and shouted, “Higher, you sons of bitches!”
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Two more shots rang out, and he fell, but was still alive. He motioned to his head, and the commander of the firing party finished him.

Many members of the mob wanted to kill the Rangers as well, but Chico Barela was finally regaining control over a portion of the men, and said they would fight if there were any more killings. The Rangers were given their horses and escorted as far as Ysleta. Then the mob began plundering San Elizario.
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AT THIS POINT,
Col. Edward Hatch, commander of Fort Bayard, arrived with a large contingent of troops. Faced with regular soldiers under a determined commander, the mob quickly dispersed, and with peace restored, the reprisals began. Rangers began searching houses and gunning down anyone they believed even remotely connected with the mob, without bothering to determine whether they were, in fact, guilty.

A woman named Mariana Núñez testified she and her husband were in the kitchen of their home in Socorro when Sheriff Kerber arrived with “about a dozen Rangers who gunned down her husband and ransacked the house.” Two Mexicans were arrested in Ysleta and readied for transfer to San Elizario. A party was headed in that direction, consisting of thirty or forty men, including Sheriff Kerber, Lieutenant Tays and Rangers, and soldiers. There were also two wagons containing coffins for Howard, Atkinson, and McBride. A cavalry officer who saw the two Mexicans brought out noted their hands were bound and they had to be helped into one of the wagons. On the road, the two prisoners were shot while “trying to get away.”
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Even more ominous were reports that men identified as “rangers” ransacked houses for money, raped at least one woman, and in several cases broke into houses and searched them, demanding to know where the women were. Most of these outrages appear to have been the work not of the Rangers themselves, but of a gang of toughs brought in from New Mexico by Sheriff Kerber to form a posse and supposedly help the Rangers restore order. In fact, the majority report of the military commission that investigated the Salt War—and that was by no means friendly to the Rangers—stated that the New Mexico men “seem especially to be responsible for the rapes, homicides, and other crimes of which the people justly complained.”
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Even so, the Rangers were not altogether blameless. Tays himself admitted being present when Mariana Núñez’s husband was gunned down at the kitchen door. He contended it was self-defense, although there is little evidence to support that claim. Tays also witnessed the killing of the two bound prisoners on the road, and identified two Rangers as the men responsible. A local saddler, Antonio Cadena, positively identified Tays as one of a group of Rangers who, together with Sheriff Kerber, ransacked his house, confiscated his pistol and bullets, and made off with a bridle, saddle, spurs, and two horses.
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The bodies of the two prisoners killed by the Rangers were still lying by the road when Colonel Hatch rode past to inspect the towns in the vicinity. Approaching Socorro, he heard gunshots in the town. Hatch hunted up Sheriff Kerber and let him know in no uncertain terms that he expected the local authorities to do something about the reprisals. This was followed by a general order stating, “Outrages in the name and under color of the law, and by those who ought to be its representatives and guardians, will not be tolerated.” He also indicated he would use troops if necessary. The reprisals began to wind down, although, contrary to Hatch’s orders, Kerber made no attempt to arrest any of the Rangers or New Mexico men that the colonel held responsible.
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IN JANUARY 1878,
Major Jones grudgingly obeyed an order from Adjutant General Steele to serve on a U.S. military commission to investigate the violence, including the conduct of the Rangers. Anxious to avoid straining the already fragile diplomatic situation with Mexico, the army commissioners downplayed the involvement of Mexican citizens, indicating that the Salt War was a largely local matter. They also glossed over the military’s failure to act in time to avert the crisis. Losses through plunder and destruction of property were estimated at about $12,000. Finally, the army commissioners hinted that the Rangers were culpable for some of the violence.
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Jones would have none of it, and he prepared a minority report contradicting most of the findings. Mexican citizens, he maintained, were very heavily involved in the violence and plunder and came to Texas for that purpose, and the authorities in their country took no steps to prevent it. He criticized the military for its failure to act and indicated that many of the reprisals, “atrocities,” and “outrages” were the result of the federal government’s failure to maintain peace. Jones also estimated damage at $31,000. About the only thing everyone agreed on was that Fort Bliss should be reactivated and a permanent military presence established, as it subsequently was.
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No one was ever tried for the violence. Howard, of course, was dead, negating any action on the Cardis murder. As for the siege in San Elizario, a grand jury indicted six leaders of the mob, but all fled into Mexico and were never brought to justice.

The El Paso Salt War was over. Ironically, in the wake of all the bloodshed and misery, the locals henceforth quietly paid the fees to draw salt from the Guadalupe beds.
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PART 5

FROM FRONTIER
DEFENDERS
TO STATE POLICE

Chapter 15

The Last of the Old Guard

In Texas, at least, Sam Bass was probably one of the last of the
traditional badmen, and one of the most durable. In his own time, he was the subject of paperback “penny dreadfuls” hawked in railroad stations and on trains, as well as local poetry and a contemporary ballad that was a favorite among cowboys on the trail. In the 120 years since his death, there has probably been as much written about him as about any desperado who ever roamed the West. The late Ramon Adams, a leading authority on Western badmen, had some two hundred books concerning Bass in his personal library. Some of the penny dreadfuls—so flimsy that they fell apart after one or two readings and now are among the rarest of all Western books—have been reprinted as minor classics.

When measured against John Wesley Hardin, King Fisher, Ben Thompson, and Bill Longley, Bass seems almost a prankster. Although virtually illiterate and generally slovenly, he had a charming personality, loved to joke and show off, and was not given to killing unless absolutely cornered. To much of the public, he was a sympathetic figure, a sort of frontier Robin Hood with a reputation for generosity. With one or two notable exceptions, none of his robberies was very profitable, and in some cases he only took part of the available money, so as not to leave his victims completely destitute. And the fact that he was taking on railroads, express companies, and the U.S. Mail (all unpopular in Texas at the time) won him widespread public support.¹

Sam’s legendary criminal career spanned only two years, beginning in 1876, when he joined a band of Dakota highwaymen. After a year of incredibly unsuccessful attempts to rob stagecoaches, the gang ended up in Nebraska, where, on September 18, 1876, they took $60,000 in $20 gold pieces from a train. With his share of the loot, Sam Bass went to Denton, Texas.²

Bass remained in Denton, freely spending his share of the train holdup and gathering about him a gang of drifters and layabouts. He lay low for several months and then, on January 26, 1878, robbed the Fort Worth–Weatherford stage, taking about $400 in cash and several gold watches. Sam disliked stagecoaches, however. The Nebraska train robbery had been good to him, and he wanted to take on the railroads. On February 22, the gang robbed the Texas Central, inaugurating the biggest series of train robberies in the history of the state—four within a seven-week period and all within twenty miles of Dallas. In every case, the robbers were seen riding in the direction of Denton, leaving no doubt in anyone’s mind that the same gang was involved in all of them.

The fourth robbery was at Mesquite on April 10. By now the railroads were ready. Bass’s gang met with a hail of gunfire, and several of his men rode off carrying buckshot. Two days later, Adjutant General Steele ordered Major Jones to take personal charge of the hunt for the robbers. Because there were no Ranger companies in the Dallas area, he would organize a squad that nominally would be part of Company B.³

JONES ARRIVED IN
Dallas on April 14 and offered command of the new detachment to Junius “June” Peak, a former lawman then serving as city recorder. Initially Peak obtained a leave of absence from his duties with the city, and was commissioned as a lieutenant. He never returned to his desk in city hall, however, for on June 1 he became captain of Company B.

The Rangers were not alone. Although none of the robberies brought Bass an appreciable amount of money, they involved the express companies and the mails. Consequently, Dallas was swarming with Pinkerton detectives and federal lawmen, all trying to get a crack at the train robbers.
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So many strange lawmen were showing up in the Denton area that they ran the risk of being mistaken for bandits and picked up or shot by other lawmen. In one instance, June Peak’s Rangers collided with a posse under Deputy Sheriff Tom Gerren. Mistaking the Rangers for members of the gang, one of the posse opened fire, and the Rangers were preparing to shoot back when the error was discovered.
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On May 12, the Rangers, together with a sheriff’s posse, caught Bass and his men in camp in Wise County. The desperadoes had been running for several days, trying to avoid the growing crowd of lawmen. Now they stood their ground and returned fire. The lawmen, however, were stronger and more heavily armed and pushed into camp. Gang member Arkansas Johnson was killed, and the rest fled, abandoning their horses in a clump of timber. The Rangers assumed they would find the robbers with their horses and stopped to hunt them down, giving Bass and his remaining comrades time to flee on foot. Then, mounted on stolen horses, they returned to their familiar haunts around Denton.

Five days after the fight, Peak’s detachment was reduced from thirty-one to fifteen men, and they were ordered essentially to sit quietly in Dallas and abandon the chase. No one could understand why the Rangers had suddenly lost interest, but it was all part of a master plan worked out by Major Jones to put an end to Sam Bass, once and for all.
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