The Men Who War the Star: The Story of the Texas Rangers (42 page)

THE PLAN WAS
suggested by James W. Murphy, who was scheduled to go on trial in federal court in Tyler for harboring Bass. On May 21, Murphy proposed to June Peak and Deputy U.S. Marshal Walter Johnson that he join the gang and betray Bass to the lawmen. Johnson and Peak took him to see Jones, and he repeated his proposal. Jones ordered Murphy to wait while he discussed it with U.S. Attorney A. J. Evans. Half an hour later, he returned with the arrangements. Murphy would leave town early the next morning, and it would be announced in court that he had skipped bail. Evans would quietly protect the men who had posted Murphy’s bond. If he could deliver any of the five members of the Bass gang, all charges against him would be dismissed. If, through no fault of Murphy’s, none of the gang were captured, his cooperation would be entered on his behalf at his trial. Evans drew up the memorandum the same day.
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Murphy skipped bail as arranged and returned to his home in Denton County. The supposed “escape” of a federal prisoner while in Ranger custody brought sneers from newspaper editors throughout the state, some of whom ridiculed Peak by name. One of Murphy’s bondsmen, who was not let in on the deal and believed his money forfeit, accused the Rangers of incompetence. Peak silently endured it. In mid-June, Bass stopped by for a visit at Murphy’s farm, and arrangements were made to capture the gang that night. Unfortunately, the sheriff’s posse failed to appear. Over the next four days, Murphy made several other attempts to contact lawmen, all of which failed for one reason or another. He did manage, however, to attract unwanted attention to himself.

On June 17, the Bass gang, with James W. Murphy as its newest member, rode south. Bass hoped to pull one last job and then lie low in Mexico for a while. Murphy’s life was in serious danger, and he knew it. Already, Bass had learned he was a spy and had made up his mind to kill him. Believing it better not to try too much bluff, Murphy told him about the deal with Jones, but claimed he had agreed to give himself a chance to escape. Bass appeared jovial enough, and in Waco bought a round of drinks, paying for it with the last $20 gold piece from his Union Pacific haul in Nebraska. Nevertheless, Murphy was closely watched, and he made no further efforts to contact lawmen until the gang arrived in Belton, about sixty miles north of Austin, on July 13. There Murphy sent a letter to Sheriff William C. Everhart in Denton advising him that the gang was on its way to Round Rock to rob either the bank or the railroad office. By now he was desperate; he did not know how long he could maintain his cover. Farther south, in Georgetown, he wrote again, this time to Major Jones, saying they would rest their horses for a few days before heading on to Round Rock. He was convinced that if the lawmen didn’t act soon, he would be killed.
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When Jones received Murphy’s letter from Belton, the nearest Ranger unit was Capt. N. O. Reynolds’s Company E, which he believed was at Lampasas, some sixty miles to the northwest. There being no telegraph, he ordered Cpl. Vernon Wilson to ride to Lampasas and tell Reynolds to hurry to Round Rock. Wilson rode all night, killing his horse with the effort, only to find Company E had moved fifty-five miles farther to San Saba. Wilson made the daylong trip by stagecoach, finally reaching Reynolds after more than twenty-four hours on the road. Jones, meanwhile, had ordered three Rangers at the Capitol to ride the fifteen miles to Round Rock and conceal themselves.

The next day Jones arrived in Round Rock on the morning train, accompanied by Travis County deputy sheriff Morris Moore. They met with Williamson County deputy sheriff A. W. Grimes, informed him of the situation, and advised him to watch for strangers. Both deputies were former Rangers.

At San Saba, an eight-man detachment of Company E left camp at sunset on July 18 and rode all night. A storekeeper heard them pass in the night, and told his customers the next morning “that hell was to pay somewhere as the rangers had passed his store during the night on a dead run.” At sunrise, Friday, July 19, Reynolds halted at the crossing of the North San Gabriel River, forty-five miles from Round Rock, and gave them half an hour to eat, have coffee, and rest the horses. He held his watch on them the entire time. They reached Round Rock between 1 and 2
P.M.
that afternoon and went into camp outside of town, while Reynolds rode in to report to Major Jones.
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Soon after, Lee Hall arrived. Adjutant General Steele, worried that Reynolds wouldn’t make it in time, had ordered him to form a posse to back up Jones, his few Rangers, and the two deputies. Hall took John B. Armstrong, a couple of his Rangers, and a scout, along with his brother, Dick Hall, and a friend from San Antonio. About three miles outside of Round Rock, Hall directed them to go into camp, while he went into town to consult with Jones.
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AFTER SUPPER ON FRIDAY,
Bass’s gang rode into Round Rock. He planned to rob the bank the following morning, and he wanted to look over the building and determine the best escape route. Besides Bass and Murphy, the gang included Frank Jackson, whose friendship was the only thing keeping Murphy alive, and Seaborn Barnes, who wanted Murphy dead. As they approached town, Murphy realized this might be the day he had been waiting for, and he stopped at a feed store on the pretext of getting feed for the horses. Their guard momentarily down, Bass, Jackson, and Barnes continued on, tying their horses in the alley behind the bank. Walking past the building, they came to a store, where they stopped to buy some tobacco.

All was quiet. The Rangers were scattered about the area. Dick Ware, whom Jones had sent up from Austin, was in the barbershop getting a shave. The two deputies, Moore and Grimes, were lounging on the side-walk keeping an eye on the strangers. Jones had ordered them to report any suspicious activities to him, but when Moore said he thought one of the men was armed, Grimes decided to investigate. He went into the store and approached Bass.

“I believe you have a pistol,” he said.

“Yes, of course I have a pistol,” Bass answered. With that, the three drew their guns and fired point-blank into Grimes. Moore, who had followed Grimes to the store, emptied his revolver without hitting anything, then went down with a bullet in the lung.

Hearing the gunfire, Hall grabbed his rifle and came out onto the street in time to see Grimes fall facedown in front of the store and Moore supporting himself against the wall. Dick Ware had rushed out of the barbershop and was already in a single-handed fight with the three robbers. A slug hit a hitching post, sending splinters into Ware’s face, but he kept firing. Jones charged in, armed only with a small-caliber Colt’s double-action revolver (probably a Lightning or Thunderer model). Other Rangers were joining the fray.

The three desperadoes reached their horses, where Barnes went down with one of Ware’s bullets in his brain. Bass was mortally wounded, but Jackson untied his horse and assisted him into the saddle. Standing in the door of the feed store, Murphy saw them ride past. Bass was pale and bleeding.
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The next day, the Rangers found the dying Sam Bass concealed in a live oak thicket three miles out of town. By his own choice, he was alone. Loyal to the end, Jackson had wanted to stay and make a stand, but Bass ordered him on his way. Before he left, Jackson bound his wounds as best he could and tried to make him comfortable. The Rangers carried him back to town, where two physicians confirmed that death was imminent.

Bass lived until Sunday afternoon. As long as he had strength, he chatted genially with Major Jones, but he refused to give any information about friends who were still at large or that might convict those who had been arrested. “If a man knows anything, he ought to die with it in him,” he remarked. The information died with him at 3:58
P.M.
on July 21, 1878, his twenty-seventh birthday. Frank Jackson vanished from history, but there is good evidence that he got on the right side of the law and became a prosperous New Mexico rancher.
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JUST AS SAM
Bass’s death marks the passing of the traditional Texas badman, the Apache disturbances of the late 1870s mark the passing of the Texas Ranger as an Indian fighter. By then, the Trans-Pecos region was virtually the only place left in Texas where the Rangers could still find Indians to fight. Even the deadly northwest frontier was reasonably safe. The army had subdued the Kiowas, Comanches, and other Plains tribes, and the few young warriors who did slip into Texas to steal horses or cattle were promptly chased back to their reservations in Oklahoma. One man who served in the northwest in 1880 remarked, “There was not much that happened that was very exciting while I was with the Rangers. We caught several cattle thieves, and some criminals wanted in other parts of Texas and some wanted in other states.”
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The Trans-Pecos, however, was still the domain of the Western Apaches, and even Lieutenant Tays’s ill-starred El Paso Rangers had an Indian fight. It happened during a scouting expedition shortly after the Salt War siege in San Elizario. Approaching some springs, he divided the men into two groups of six each, to get water by detachments. As the first group rounded some rocks, they ran into a band of ten or twelve Indians riding away from the water holes. Both sides were startled, the Indians heading for the rocks, and five of the Rangers diving into a nearby gully. The sixth, identified as a Russian nobleman, chose to stand upright and fight like a “gentleman,” and was quickly cut down.

The four-day siege at San Elizario had steeled the nerves of the Rangers, who now gave a better account of themselves. One, George Lloyd, accidentally slammed a .45-caliber Colt shell into the receiver of his .44 Winchester. The rifle jammed as he closed the breech, and he had to use his knife to unscrew the side plates, remove the shell from the chamber, and screw the side plates back on, with Indians firing at him the whole time. He got his rifle back together and withdrew with the other Rangers.
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Tays resigned on March 25, 1878, and the company was disbanded for more than a year before newly commissioned Lt. George Wythe Baylor was ordered to reorganize it. The prospect of fighting Indians had prompted Baylor to apply for a position in the Rangers. Indian fighting was in his blood. His brother was the notorious John R. Baylor, who had created such turmoil on the northwest frontier in the 1850s, and George Baylor had had his share of scrapes with the Indians. According to his own recollection, he joined the Rangers by writing Jones and asking him “if he had any Indians out west that he wanted killed and scalped.”
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Jones, who had succeeded Steele as adjutant general, was less concerned with Indians than with peace and harmony in El Paso County. Although the Salt War had ended, ill feeling still remained. Some of Tays’s former Rangers still held a grudge, believing Tays “had a streak of yellow in him” and had himself ordered their surrender. The two factions still glared at each other across the barrier of language and culture, and Jones wanted someone who could reconcile them. “I would have to use a great deal of discretion in order to avoid further trouble,” Baylor later wrote. He was allowed to build his company around a nucleus of experienced Rangers from the central part of the state.

Baylor was well suited for the job. He spoke Spanish reasonably well. Both he and his brother, John, had spent time in the area as Confederate officers during the Civil War and had many friends and acquaintances. The detachment, accompanied by Baylor’s wife and three daughters, left San Antonio on August 2, 1879, and arrived at their headquarters in Ysleta on September 12. During one stage of the journey, the Rangers and a band of Mescalero Apaches shadowed each other, but neither party did anything to provoke a fight.
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BAYLOR’S FIRST ENCOUNTER
with Indians came in October, when Capt. Gregorio García informed him Apaches had attacked hay cutters downriver. The Rangers followed the trail to the Rio Grande, then asked permission to cross from authorities in the nearby Mexican town of Guadalupe. It was a touchy situation. Guadalupe was home to many of the Mexicans who had participated in the Salt War, and it was the parish of the fiery priest Antonio Borajo. No Ranger had been in that part of Mexico since the Salt War. But the hereditary hatred between Mexican and Apache outweighed any other grievance. The Rangers received permission and entered the town to an enthusiastic greeting from the citizens, many of whom had suffered losses to the Apaches. A detail of volunteers from Guadalupe and the nearby town of San Ignacio organized to help the Texans hunt down the Indians.

On learning that the Apaches had killed a herder near a stage stop some twenty miles south of Guadalupe, the Rangers and Mexicans took off in pursuit. The trail led into a mountain canyon, where the Rangers and Mexicans left their horses and moved in on foot. The Mexicans dashed ahead, found the Indians concealed among the rocks, and opened the fight. The Rangers joined in, and shooting continued until dark. Finally, realizing that the Apaches covered the available water holes and were in a position to charge and take their horses, the Rangers and Mexicans withdrew. “The next night,” Baylor wrote, “we spent with the hospitable
ciudadanos
[citizens] of Guadalupe, who treated us royally.” The hatreds of the Salt War were rapidly vanishing in the face of a common enemy.
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A MONTH LATER,
the Warm Springs Apache chief Victorio bolted his reservation in New Mexico, inaugurating a brief but bloody conflict known as the Victorio War. Ranger James B. Gillett remembered Victorio as “probably the best general ever produced by the Apache tribe. He was a far better captain than old Geronimo ever was, and capable of commanding a much larger force of men.”