Show Rang rst 6r at Reord Story of How Gallant Texans Carried on a Sixty Years WarContinual Fighting Against Cattle Thieves and All Manner of Desperadoes 7 Lived in the Saddle N BY N JL JENNINGS Author of A Texas Ranger etc The Texas Rangers an organization made up of former members of various vari-ous companies of the LOne Star states famous frontier fighters will meet in San Antonio Tex Xov 2 It is likely that many hundreds of exRangers will be at the meeting for about 3000 of these men are still alive and they all take a great pride in the organization Some of the exRangers are old white haired men who fought the murderous Apaches Comanches and Kiowas in the 40s and EOs but the greater number are those who saw equally dangerous service on the Texas frontier in the fifteen fif-teen years immediately following the civil war and whose principal duty it was to drive out the Mexican raiders from across the Rio Grande and to and where the last herds of the buffaloes buf-faloes yet grazed but the Ranger i company offered superior i inducements for such as they and It was with zealand zeal-and enthusiasm they entered the service I of the state Thirty Battles In Three Years Under McNelly we found all the adventure ad-venture we sought and to spare In the three years I was with the company we had nearly thirty open battles with Mexican raiders and Texas desperadoes despera-does and any number ot minor encounters encoun-ters with them We arrested over 2000 outlaws in that time and broke up gang after gang of horsethieves and cattlethieves and murderers wjib roamed over the western part of the state We literally lived inthe saddle We j carried our blankets with us and wherever wher-ever darkness overtook us On the plains or in the chaparral there w e Jay down i dt J I 1 I l rf i a l i f j F ti w A TYPICAL TEXAS RANGER I overcome the white desperadoes who I banded together and terrorized the settlers set-tlers of the border counties I In all truth it may be said that no I j body of frontier constabulary in the history of the world ever held such a record for bravery and effective work as the Texas Rangers They have been magnificent fighters ever since the time i hen forty of them fought their way through Santa Annas army to the Alamo to join its little band of desp < rate r-ate defenders and there gave up their lives with Davy Crockett Sam Bowie and Travis Those men were the original Texas Rangers and their example has even been in the minds of their successors apparently for it is a matter of common com-mon knowledge in Texas that no Ranger ever shirked his duty or turned his back to the enemy no matter mat-ter what were the odds against him In the war for the independence of Texas in the Mexican war and in the civil war the Texas Rangers did notable I not-able service Many of them joined the Rough Riders when the Spanish jymencan war wes declared and of them Colonel Roosevelt has written We drew a great many recruits from Texas and from nowhere did we get a higher average for many of them had served in that famous body of frontier fighters the Texas Rangers These needed no teaching They were already trained to oby and to take responsibility They were splendid shot horsemen and trailers They were accustomed to living in the open to enduring great fatigue and hardship and to encountering all kinds of danger dan-ger serBut wars have been but incidents in the career of the Rangers for they have been fighting a war of their own on the Texas frontier for over sixty years During all that time they have fought against the enemies of law and order in their state and have had hundreds hun-dreds upon hundreds of battles and skirmishes with the enemy The work of wresting Texas from the control of the lawless element which formerly reigned supreme along her borders has betn slow but it has finally been accomplished ac-complished by the gangers fighting for every foot of ground throughout the long years a The Writer a Ranger Himself It was my high privilege to tie a Texas Ranger for nearly three years from 1S75 to 1STS and 1 therefore feel qualified in a measure to act as their historian although the limits of this article are far too circumscribed to admit of any but the briefest reference refer-ence to the work of the Rangers as a whole I shall rather confine myself to telling of some of the exploits of my Immediate comrades in the service of the state and endeavor to give in sketchy outline an idea of our life from day to day in camp and in the saddle Captain L H McNelly who had achieved fame throughout the southwest south-west as a leader of irregular cavalry in the confederate service during the war was in command of the Ranger company hjch I joined at the age of 19 on the Rio Grande border There were but little more than forty men in our company but the first work we were set to do was to put an end to the cattle stealing by thousands of Mexican raiders along the Rio Grande a task which had proven too great for the many United States troops stationed along the river The raiders were well organized and had carried on their depredations for years They were fine horsemen expert plainsmen and courageous cour-ageous fighters when cornered Their leaders were notorious bandits who had fought their way to their places of command But although the Rangers in our troop were little more than boys they ranged from 18 to 23 years of age and McSTelly himself was under 30 the did not shrink from the e work ahead of them The captain had picked his men from thousands of applicants and the result proved how splendidly he could judge men I doubt if such a fearless body of young daredevils ever took the saddle in the service of any state = as were McNellys Texas Rangers But there was nothing of the border ruffian cowboy clement in the makeup make-up of the troop They were all well educated young fellows many of them college graduates in whose veins flowed the best blood of the south and southwest fi i south-west They were real gentlemen adventurers ad-venturers > not of a kind however with those who sailed itlre t Spanish Main They bad sought excitement out on the open prairies where wild cattle 8Jld wild horses still roamed at will and slept For two years I never once had so much as the shelter of a tent over me at night If it rained we pulled our hats over our facesfor raindrops rain-drops are cold when they strike the bare skin at nightand slept the sleep of tired children after a hard days play if it snowed we let the snow add a white covering to our beds and slept the sounder for it But frequently we rode all night so as to be where we could surround some desperado stronghold strong-hold at dawn and arrestor kill if they showed fight thote whom we sought Well armed with sixshooters and I carbines tireless riders ready at all I times to seek danger quick to shoot and well able to shoot straight Mc I Nellys Rangers were a formidable I body of men and it did not take long for their fame as fighters to spread I from one end of the state to the other On one occasion thirty of us pursued a body of Mexican rangers five miles into Mexico and fought them there They outnumbered us more than ten to one and they fought their best but we killed twentyseven of them and finally brought the others to terms and made them return the cattle they had stolen At another time seventeen of the rangers rang-ers met fourteen of the Mexican raiders raid-ers on an open prairie and aftacked them under a hot fire They killed one of our number but we killed the whole fourteen of them Twentyfive Against Hundreds With twent fie men we went to the stronghold or King Fishers great band of desperadoes numbering hundreds of the most desperate outlaws in Texas and fought them to a standstill scattering scat-tering the band and killing a number I of the worst men in it when they resisted re-sisted arrest With seventeen men under un-der Lieutenant Jesse Lee Hall we succeeded I suc-ceeded in puttingan end to a feud Of forty years standing hi De Witt coun I ty although both sides numbering hundreds of men were aTJayed agalnst us We made 120 arrests in that county I coun-ty in one month mos of them for murder We pursued and captured I stage robbers train robbers bank robbers I rob-bers and any number of lesser criminals crimi-nals who had successfully defied the efforts ef-forts of the sheriffs and other peace officers I i I of-ficers and once we put down a Serious j i railroad riot by simply riding on the scene giving a few yells and firing bur I sixshooters in the air The rioters disappeared I dis-appeared so quickly that we laughed A number of us were encamped atone at-one time in one of the suburbs of San I Antonio We were resting after months of hard riding on the plains A message mes-sage came to Captain McNelly saying I that many desperadoes had banded together to-gether orithe purpose of massacreing ten of + dur men whO und Sergeant 1 R P Orrell were in camp on the Nueces river about 150 miles distant McNelly called for two thin to ride to i l t 4 i ri Orrells camp and warn him of his danger We were all eager to go and we drew lots for the privilege George Boyd a ranger from California and I were the lucky ones and in ten minutes min-utes we were in the saddle and on our way It was late in the afternoon when we started and we rode all night atas rapid a pace as we could keep up without killing our horses We stopped to make a cup of coffee in the morning and to let our horses graze for a while Then we rode on We reached the Nue ces river on afternoon of the third day only to find it so swollen by recent re-cent rains as to be impassable and Orrell and his men were on the other bank We rode up the river for miles trying to find a place where we could i cross Finally we reached a place where it seemed practicable although even there the stream was fully half a mile wide and very rapid But we took off our boots and tied them to our saddles and urged our horses into the water We managed all right until we reached reach-ed about midocean Then the horses had to swim The current was verv swift and the poor animals tired as they were could not make any headway head-way We let them go and by tremendous tremend-ous exertions managed to reach the opposite bank more dead than alive In our bare feet we walked five miles before we reached the Rangers camp and by that time it was long after dark and they were all asleep They didnt even have a man standing guard We woke them up and explained ex-plained why we had come Orrell looked us over and laughed Didnt Need the Warning You boys are dum fools he said Why didnt you stay the other side of the river till it went down a bit sos you could cross We were told to hurry and warn I you about the desperadoes said Boyd I thought you and the captain had better sense said Orrell You ought I to know that there are not enough i desperadoes in Texas to tackle ten of I McNellys Rangers even when were asleep The best thing you can do is i to turn in and get some rest after I youve had something to eat r We knew that he was right about the desperadoes and we felt a little ashamed of ourselves although we had only obeyed orders There was no guard set that night and the Rangers were never attacked We found our horses the next day for they had reached land after all Never were men more obedient to their superior officers in times of action than the Rangers and probably in no like organization was there ever such a lack of military discipline when there was no work to do The officers treated the men as their social equals as they were We were not soldiers and hardly of the material of which soldiers are made 1 remember one incident of our camp life which will illustrate our lack of socalled discipline in times of peace although as I said we would cheerfully and unquestionably obey any order when danger was afoot Wewere encamped at the upper end of the long straggling village of Las Rucias on the bank of the Rio I Grande some forty miles above I Brownsville The boys were restless I for they had not been on a scout for j two weeks and time hung heavy on their hands At the lower end of the village about threequarters of a mile from our camp a protracted fandango was in progress and we knew it It so happened that at this time nearly all the boys were in bad standing with Captain McNelly and Lieutenant Robinson Rob-inson for going across the Rio Grande a few nights before and shooting JUt the lights at a fandango there and we were under strict orders not to leave camp without permission We didnt like this a bit and the grumbling was loud and continuous > con-tinuous Captain McNelly was I called away on some business and Lieutenant Robinson a very charming fellow from Virginia was in charge A Committee waited upon him with the reauest that a few of us should be permitted per-mitted to go to the fandango each night but he declined to entertain the proposition for an instant Then the I j I men talked it over and half a dozen I decided to take chances and go to the dance They slipped out of camp and I soon were having all kinds of fun dancing danc-ing with the Mexican senoritas at the fandango With a hmt from their six shooters the Rangers had made the Mexican men stand up as wall flowers about the dancing enclosure Made the Sergeant Dance Right in the middle of the fun Lieutenant Lieu-tenant Robinson suddenly appeared with notebook and pencil in hand He was cordially invited by the Rangers to get a partner but he quietly declined de-clined and as quietly ordered the six Rangers to report for extra guard duty at 6 a m to Sergeant Orrell They reported and were put to work cleaning up the camp but the next night went to the fandnngo again with Orrell and six other men Again the lieutenant appeared on the scene and this time ordered all hands to report to Corporal Rudd at 6 oclock for extra guard duty Now Rudd was something of a martinet marti-net on a small scale and attentive to his duty to a heartrending degree so we knew he would not he so easily led astray as Orrell had been He worked I us hard that day and made himself unpopular That night Rudd was put over six men to guard the camp and I heard Robinson say afterwards that a 0 t r I Jny I II j 1 W ii y J I = r r i V Jh A TEXAS BANGERS CAMP he retired with a feeling of perfect security that orders would be obeyed But about 1130 oclock that night the lieutenant was awakened by the sound of revolvers firing in the direction of the fandango He jumped up and called for Rudd but got no answer Then he investigated and found he asa as-a one in the camp We had captured Rudd and his guard and marched them off to the fandango and were making them dance in the middle of the ring to the accompaniment of our revolvers when the lieutenant appeared He merely shook his head and a shadow of a smile crept about the corners of his mouth but we never heard again of our mutiny He knew that the wild harebrained hare-brained boys there were loyal to the core to him and would have risked their lives a hundred times over to follow him into dancer But very few of McNellys Texas Rancers are alive now Many of then went over the range in the service t r f t > of f Uie state and others Have scattered far and wide A few of the survivors will be at San Antonio at the Rangers teunion but their hair will be streaked with gray and the weight of years will be on their broad shoulders for the times of which write are those of nearly a quarter of a century ago I There are a very few Rangers Still in the service of the state but theirvork is light now comnared to what their predecessors had cutout for them Still they are efficacious brave officers of the law and always acquit themselves them-selves well when called upon to assist a sheriff in rounding up some particularly particu-larly dangerous criminals1 |