The Men Who War the Star: The Story of the Texas Rangers (46 page)

Masterson decided the Chinese waiter wasn’t tending to him fast enough, and demanded attention. When the Chinese replied he was working as fast as he could, Bat lost his temper and jerked up a table caster to hit him.

“Don’t you hit that man!” McDonald ordered.

“Maybe
you’d
like to take it up!” Bat retorted.

“I done took it up!” McDonald replied.

Bat thought better of it, sat back down, and finished his meal quietly.
⁴¹

Or so wrote Paine. Masterson vehemently denied it, claiming that he and McDonald were longtime friends who never quarreled about anything, and branding Paine’s story “a brazen, cowardly lie.” Nevertheless, the Masterson-McDonald standoff has joined the lore, not only of the fight, but of the Rangers and Bat Masterson.
⁴²

THE TRAIN PULLED
into Langtry at 3
P.M.
on February 21 in a cold, drizzling rain. Judge Roy Bean was ready for the sporting crowd, waiting at the platform and extending his personal welcome with an invitation to stop by the Jersey Lilly for beer at a dollar a bottle before stumbling down the rugged path to the river. Mabry was skeptical. Familiar with Roy’s reputation for deviousness, he lined his Rangers up for inspection to demonstrate that—just this once—Judge Roy Bean was not the only law west of the Pecos.

But Roy was one jump ahead. The ring, he assured them, was outside state or federal jurisdiction. Nobody need worry about any laws being broken. Mabry was still suspicious, but Hughes accepted the situation with good grace. He knew Roy, although they had never dealt with each other in an official capacity, and if the conniving old jurist could make some money swindling the sporting crowd, that was fine with Hughes—provided the fight itself was held outside Texas jurisdiction.
⁴³

A newspaper correspondent described the scene as the crowd made its way toward the ring.

Over a rocky road, winding about the precipitous cliffs along the Rio Grande, the crowd wended its way to the sandy beach of the river. Forty-two Mexicans had carried the ring material down to the river bank last night after working hard all day upon a roadway down from the bluff. A narrow wooden footbridge had been put up across the swiftly flowing stream. The crowd stumbled over the stony path and waded ankle deep in the sand, guided by little Jimmy White, a boy who came from Toronto to be at the fight.

The battle-ground was a sandy flat upon a big bend in the Rio Grande River, on the Mexican side. It was just two miles from the village of Langtry. The ring was protected from outsiders’ view by a canvas wall. The board floor was covered with canvas, over which rosin was sprinkled. At one side was the frame compartment for the taking by the kinetoscope of the pictures of the fight as it proceeded. On the opposite side of the ring were two little tents for the principals.
⁴⁴

This was overly optimistic. The sky was too overcast for the Kinetoscope and there would be no films of the fight. And the canvas walls of the amphitheater were not high enough to block a clear view from the bluffs on either side. Now that they were sure no state or federal laws were being broken, the Rangers joined a nonpaying crowd of some two hundred Mexicans from across the river to watch the show from beyond the amphitheater.
⁴⁵

As it turned out, the months of political and legal sparring were more interesting than the main event. For one brief moment (literally) Maher put up a good fight. Then Fitzsimmons knocked him silly. Referee George Siler, the
Chicago Tribune
sportswriter and boxing expert who had covered the initial disputes in Dallas, said it lasted one minute forty-three seconds. The
El Paso Herald
figured 1:25, and the New York
World
said 1:35. Whatever the time, the fight ended before the Rangers and spectators on the banks even got comfortable.
⁴⁶

Dan Stuart’s Great Fistic Carnival was over. After all the wrangling, threats, charges and countercharges, and tens of thousands of dollars of expenses, it would be fair to say that probably the only person who came out ahead on the deal was Judge Roy Bean.
⁴⁷

Chapter 17

Tarnished Star

The Texas Rangers entered the twentieth century with another
of their periodic reorganizations, this one prompted by a reinterpretation of the 1874 law creating the Frontier Battalion. The law stated that “officers” of the battalion had the power to execute criminal processes and make arrests in accordance with the criminal procedures of the state. Traditionally, the term “officer” had been taken to mean any Ranger. In 1900, however, attorneys challenged the arrest power of rank-and-file Rangers, on the grounds that such powers were extended only to
commissioned
officers of the battalion. On May 26 of that year, the state’s attorney general agreed, nullifying the authority of every Ranger below the rank of second lieutenant.¹

The ruling effectively ended the existence of the Frontier Battalion, because most of its men now had no legal power. But Governor Joseph D. Sayers was loath to entirely dismantle the Ranger Service and requested an opinion on the extent to which it could continue to function. On June 1, using the second opinion, Sayers reduced the battalion to four companies, each consisting of three commissioned officers and three privates. Only commissioned officers could make arrests, but they could summon the privates to assist if necessary. Meanwhile, the legislature set to work to correct the defects in the law and, on July 8, 1901, passed a bill creating a “ranger force” whose responsibility would be “protecting the frontier against marauding and thieving parties, and suppressing lawlessness and crime throughout the state.” The new force consisted of four companies of twenty men each, including one captain and one sergeant. Commanding officers were John A. Brooks, Company A; W. J. “Bill” McDonald, Company B; J. H. Rogers, Company C; and John R. Hughes, Company D. All were veteran captains of the Frontier Battalion.²

Given the limited resources and statewide jurisdiction, the new companies were frequently shifted from one part of Texas to the other, generally in the west and along the Mexican border. Despite efforts by law enforcement and the military from the United States and Mexico, the border area was still a violent no-man’s-land where criminals from both countries congregated and took refuge. In many ways, little had changed in the sixty years since the Mexican War, and it was perhaps the last place in Texas where the Rangers used traditional frontier methods. A shootout near Del Rio, in December 1906, was reminiscent of the classic American West.

Five Rangers had cornered murderer Ed Putnam in a house near town. The family who lived there managed to get out, but one of the daughters told Capt. J. H. Rogers that Putnam had “a funny look in his eyes.” About that time, a shot came from the house, and the Rangers scattered under cover around the building. The ensuing fight lasted an hour, with Putnam dashing from window to window, firing whenever he had a chance. The Rangers poured lead into the house until, finally, a shot from Ranger Frank Hamer went into Putnam’s heart.

The house was in ruins. The Rangers counted more than three hundred bullet holes in the walls. Examining Putnam’s body, they found his pockets full of shells, enough to hold the Rangers off at least until dark and escape, had not Hamer shot him.³

THE YEAR 1906
was also busy for Capt. Bill McDonald. About midnight on August 13, a group of men had run through downtown Brownsville firing their weapons into the buildings. One man was killed and two wounded. The townspeople blamed soldiers of the First Battalion, Twenty-fifth Infantry, a black unit stationed at Fort Brown. The citizens resented the posting of black troops to Fort Brown, and almost from their arrival in Brownsville, a little more than two weeks earlier, citizens and soldiers had clashed verbally and physically. Whether the soldiers actually were guilty of the August 13 shooting has never clearly been established. McDonald, however, went to Brownsville with the notion that they were. He had with him two Rangers and District Judge Stanley Welch.
⁴

Although McDonald also believed that the military would try to cover up the incident and block a civilian investigation, he found the officers at Fort Brown remarkably cooperative. They allowed him onto the post to question officers and enlisted men, an act that brought criticism from one national civil rights group. Based on his investigation, McDonald secured warrants for the arrest of twelve soldiers. In September, after a three-week session, which included a charge from Judge Welch that was heavy with racist overtones, the Cameron County Grand Jury was unable to reach a conclusion, and the soldiers were released. At the behest of Brownsville citizens, Fort Brown was deactivated. The enlisted men of all three companies subsequently were dishonorably discharged without trial on orders of President Theodore Roosevelt.
⁵

Only three months after the Brownsville incident, Judge Welch was dead, shot in his sleep in Rio Grande City, where he was holding court. The shooting occurred on the eve of a hotly contested election, which, combined with the killing, brought together the conditions for a riot. On orders from Governor Samuel W. T. Lanham, McDonald went to Rio Grande City at the head of several men. They reached the railhead at Sam Fordyce, twenty miles downriver from Rio Grande City, late in the day and hired a hack for the remainder of the trip. It was a rough area, and travelers frequently were waylaid.

After dark, the Rangers were met by a second hack, approaching from the opposite direction. Their driver pulled over to allow the other to pass, but when it came within about thirty paces, they saw a rifle flash and a bullet sped by.

“Hold up there!” McDonald shouted. “We are Texas Rangers! Stop that shooting!”

One of the Rangers repeated the warning in Spanish.

Three men with rifles leaped out of the other vehicle, shouting in Spanish and firing. Four of their companions also opened fire, and the Rangers shot back. The fight lasted about thirty seconds, the men as close as twelve feet apart. When it was over, four of the assailants were dead, one was wounded, and two captured. There appeared to have been no particular reason for the fight, other than the mutual animosity that often existed between Rangers and border people.
⁶

The fight on the road was McDonald’s last. He arrived in Rio Grande City to find the situation had substantially calmed, and soon after, the transfer of Captain Hughes’s Company D to the city did much to restore peace to the area. Two months later, on January 16, McDonald left the Rangers to accept an appointment as state revenue agent. The murder of Judge Welch was never solved.
⁷

DESPITE THE TROUBLES
in Rio Grande City, even the frontier along the border was drawing to a close. The railroad reached Brownsville in 1904, and the area was opened up for settlement. Where previously the only communities along the first two hundred miles beyond the mouth of the Rio Grande were Brownsville, Edinburg, Rio Grande City, and Roma, dozens of new towns sprang up as the rails extended upriver. Edinburg itself no longer occupied the original site. After floods threatened the county buildings, the city was relocated fifteen miles inland in 1908, and old Edinburg became known as Hidalgo. Investors, home seekers, farmers, and speculators arrived by the trainload to take advantage of the lush, fertile river delta. Although Rangers still were periodically involved in border affairs, settling an occasional blood feud, hunting down cattle thieves, and investigating disputed elections, much of the area was peaceful, and the bulk of law enforcement fell on local sheriff’s deputies, town marshals, and newly established police forces.

In 1910, however, the thirty-year regime of Porfirio Díaz was overthrown, plunging Mexico into seven years of revolution that ultimately killed more than a million people. By 1913, there was a complete breakdown of law and order. The chaos in Mexico, which was no longer able to police itself, combined with the close proximity of the border, gave a boost to bandit activity in the ranching area around the newly established cities of the Lower Rio Grande. William W. “Bill” Sterling, who later became the last adjutant general to command Rangers, recalled that Rangers and customs inspectors chained twenty prisoners to mesquite trees after one raid on a bandit hideout. The old Anglo-Saxon population, which had gotten along reasonably well and even intermarried with local Mexicans and
tejanos,
was supplanted by new arrivals from the Midwest who were suspicious of anyone who had a dark face and spoke Spanish.
⁸

As the chaotic conditions on the border progressed, they began taking on political overtones. There was a resurgent nationalism among some of the Hispanic people of the Southwest because of several factors. Part of it was in response to discrimination by newly arrived Midwesterners. Part came from resentments that had smoldered since the end of the Mexican War. And part was due to the various international workers’ revolutionary movements then current in most industrialized nations. All found expression in the Plan of San Diego, a manifesto that originated in early 1915 among Mexican citizens and disgruntled
tejanos
influenced by the revolutionary movement in general and the revolution in Mexico in particular.

The plan, named for the little south Texas town of San Diego, which the conspirators used as a base, called for a race war pitting Hispanics, blacks, and the growing Japanese population against the Anglo-Saxons throughout theAmerican Southwest. A new Hispanic republic would be forged from Texas, California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Colorado, and the blacks would be given six additional states. Ancestral Indian lands would be restored, and every Anglo-Saxon male over the age of sixteen would be put to death. Efforts were made to secure support in Mexico by promising participation for any Mexican citizen, regardless of political faction.