Chapter XX: Taming the Pan-handle

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN COWBOYS AND "BAD MEN." HOW CAPTAIN BILL MADE COW-STEALING UNPOPULAR

The Texas Pan-handle is that portion of the State which lies directly south of what was No-man's Land, extending from parallels 100 to 103, east and west. Its shape suggests its name, and its name suggests limitless areas of waving grass; vast roving herds; cowboys and ponies--both of the unbridled variety; bad men whose chief business was to start graveyards, and the glad primeval lawlessness that prevails when worlds are new.

Not so many years ago the Pan-handle was distinctly a world apart, and a new one. With No-man's Land on the north, Indian Territory on the east and New Mexico on the west, civilization could come only from the south, and it did not come very fast. Indeed there was still plenty of territory to the southward to be subdued--two or three tiers of counties in fact--before the Pan-handle would be reached. So, it was a place apart--an isolated fertile land, justifying the assertion of a tramp that he had lost a hundred thousand dollars there in one year by not having cattle to eat up the grass.

The cattle came in due time, fighting back the Apache and the Comanche, protected by Rangers from Ft. Griffin, accompanied by stockmen of every nation, cowboys of every grade and criminals of every breed. That was a wild epoch--chaotic and picturesque--a time of individual administration and untempered justice.

It was also a time of mighty domain. Ranches there were as big as some kingdoms. One, the X.I.T., covered a good portion of the northern part of the Pan-handle. Another, the Matador, spread itself into five counties. When settlement became thicker--when there were ranch-houses not more than twenty-five to thirty miles apart--official allotment of the lands was made. Then there was a grand gobble. The big stockmen fenced everything with little regard for boundaries and less for the law.

With such examples as these in high places, it is not strange that a general indifference for legal rights and possessions prevailed. Next to cattle raising, cattle-stealing was the chief industry. The cowboy proper was not concerned in such work. He was likely to be a clean-handed, straightforward, even if reckless, individual, honest according to his lights. True, loyalty to his employer might render him a trifle indifferent as to brands and marks when strays mixed with the herd, but it was the employer and not the cowboy who profited by such laxity. The cowboy was a retainer who would fight for his ranch, would die for it when circumstances seemed to require such a sacrifice, and the increase of the ranch herd by any means short of actual raid and theft was a custom which bore no relation to disrepute. But individually the cowboy was likely to be the soul of honor and good-nature, troublesome only on holidays when he was moved to ride into the nearest settlement, drink up all the whisky he could buy, and then, with six-shooter drawn, go careering up and down the streets, shooting in random directions, explaining meantime with noisy and repetitious adjectives, that he was a bad man--a very bad man from very far up the Creek.

On such inspired occasions he would sometimes exclaim:

"Hide out little ones! Dad's come home drunk!" after which he would let go a round of ammunition and the inhabitants of that neighborhood, regardless of size, would proceed to hide out, as admonished. Sometimes a whole group of cowboys would engage in this pastime, whereupon the rest of the town disappeared and sat in cellars or flattened themselves under beds until the cyclone passed by.

It was in such manner that the cowboy found relaxations and social joy. He was not a bad man, in spite of his declaration. He was not really hunting for trouble and would be the last to kill, without offense.[7]

The truly bad man was of entirely different make-up. Always posing, and sometimes accepted, as a man of valor, he was in nearly every case merely a boaster and a coward. He would kill when he got the drop on his man, and he built his reputation upon such murders. He passed as a cowboy, when he was merely a cow-thief; as a hero, when he was only an assassin. Driven into a corner he would fight, but his favorite method was to slay from ambush. It was seldom that his reckless disregard for human life included his own.

The Pan-handle was full of bad men in the early nineties. Most of them had graduated from other schools of crime and found here a last resort. Some of them--a good many of them--had obtained official positions and were outlaws and deputies by turns, or worked conjunctively as both. As a rule they were in one way and another associated with a gang.

Local authorities, even when conscientious, were poorly equipped to cope with such an element, and it was for Company B, Ranger Force, consisting of eight men with quarters at Amarillo, Captain W.J. McDonald commanding, to police this vast wilderness, and to capture and convert, or otherwise tame, its undesirable citizens.

Some of them would not wait to be captured; some, of course, could not be tamed alive. Others, and these were not a few, would be able to wield official influence through which they would escape conviction, regardless of the evidence.

Soon after McDonald's appointment he was notified of a marauding band that across in Hutchinson County were committing the usual crimes. They had burned the hay belonging to a ranchman on Turkey Creek--several hundred tons in quantity--they had cut his wire fences; they had killed cows for their calves, butchered beef cattle, cut out brands--in a word they had conducted the business of cattle-stealing and general depredation on a large scale.

Taking a portion of his force, Captain McDonald went over to investigate. There seemed to be a good deal of mystery concerning the identity of the offenders; but a mystery of that sort does not stand a very good chance when it is operated upon by a man with eyes like those of Captain Bill and with a nose and pair of ears of his peculiar pattern. In a short time he had identified one member of the band in a young man prominently connected in that section. This young fellow--a dupe, no doubt, of professional cow-thieves, whose glittering reputation as bad men had dazzled him--was the son of an able and reputable lawyer, a member of the State legislature. The son, supposed to be a cowboy, had become in reality an outlaw.

Captain McDonald took him in charge one day, questioned him and secured sufficient evidence to file a complaint. The prisoner was turned over to the sheriff of Hutchinson County, and Captain Bill pursued his investigation. He located a bunch of stolen calves, herded in the brakes of the Canadian River, guarded by another member of the gang. He brought a man who had lost a number of milk cows and calves to identify the calves; no very difficult matter, for the man declared that he knew them as well as he knew his own children. The cows had been killed for their calves--and the latter had been "hobbled and necked." After locating the calves, Captain McDonald investigated the canyons and after several days found the cows that had been shot and killed. One after another the missing bunches of cattle were located, and the members of the band were brought in, and lodged in jail. The case against them was clear. They were found with the stolen property; some of them did not even attempt to make denial. Their examining trial was held at Plemons, the county seat of Hutchinson County, and the settlers gathered from far and near for the event. The trial was held in a big barn of a court house, and the prisoners were bound over to the district court. The Rangers were preparing to take them to Pan-handle City, where there were safer and more commodious quarters, when the sheriff--who had already distinguished himself by setting free the prominent young outlaw first captured--appeared and demanded the prisoners, on the ground that being sheriff of that county, they could not be removed without his consent. The Ranger Captain promptly informed him that, sheriff or no sheriff, he had shown his disqualifications for office, and that these prisoners would be taken to more secure quarters than he seemed willing to provide. The officer departed, and presently mustered a crowd, armed with Winchesters. Then he appeared once more before Captain Bill, produced the law which under proper conditions might have supported him in his demand, and again declared that he would have those prisoners, or that there would be bloodshed and several Ranger funerals. Captain Bill promptly called his men together.

"We are not going to stand any foolishness," he said. "If an attempt is made to take these prisoners, cut down on any one who takes a hand in it. Come, let's move on now, and get these men in jail."

The crowd that had gathered expected battle, then and there, but nothing of the kind took place. The sheriff's armed bluff had been called. Later, he obtained a writ of habeas corpus, but it was not effective for the reason that the men had been committed under bond. At all events it was not effective so long as McDonald and his Rangers were in charge of the jail.

It was now evident that conviction of these offenders was not to be expected in that county. Most of them had official influence of one kind or another. In fact, there appeared to be nobody except those whose property had suffered who seemed concerned in bringing these bandits to justice.

With such overwhelming evidence McDonald was determined, if possible, to secure their punishment. He kept them in jail several months and eventually was instrumental in getting their cases distributed and sent to other counties for trial. Even so, they managed to evade the law. Through influence of one kind or another, and the coöperation of officials--former associates, perhaps, in the business of crime--their cases were one by one dismissed.

In spite of this miscarriage of justice, the general effect of McDonald's vigorous prosecution was wholesome. The members of that band either left for the far isolations, or decided to reform. The case is given, one of many such, as an example of what the honest official had to contend with in the early Pan-handle days. Sometimes, indeed, justice was even more openly and briskly side-tracked. Once, when Captain Bill had caught a notorious cattle-thief, red-handed; brought him to trial and secured his conviction by jury; the judge, instead of passing sentence, took the law wholly into his own hands, and administered it in a manner rather startling for its unexpectedness and originality. He delivered an elaborate oration, which no one in the court room comprehended in any large degree--himself included, perhaps--and then read a lengthy decision concerning captures made upon the high seas; closing with his own decision to the effect that the clause covered this particular case as perfectly as if it had been made for it, and that the entire proceedings were irregular, irrelevant, without warrant and without effect; concluding his amazing declaration with the statement that the prisoner was discharged.

Cases like these would have discouraged and disgruntled a man of less resolution and character than Bill McDonald. To him such things meant only renewed determination. Strong in the knowledge that unless he happened to be killed he would eventually make criminals scarce, and corrupt or weak-kneed officials unpopular in that section, he gave neither rest nor respite to those who broke the law in the field, or to those who warped and disfigured it in the courts. Individually and in groups he brought the bad men in and filled the jails with them, and the box-cars, and when neither was handy he lariated them out, set a guard, and rode off after more. When he failed to convict in one court he tried another, and when he found an honest official he kept him busy. In a recent letter written by Col. W.B. Camp of San Antonio, to Edward M. House, one of the best known citizens of Texas, the writer says:

"When he (Captain McDonald) was captain of the Rangers in Texas, and doing his most effective work, I was District Attorney of the Thirty-fifth Judicial District, in the Pan-handle, and I learned to love, respect and admire this fearless officer, who always placed duty before his own life. In those days on the frontier of Texas, it was almost worth a man's life to uphold the majesty of the law, and the five years of such experience I had in doing so teaches me the value of such men as Captain Bill McDonald. History should hand down his name for the coming generations by the side of the heroes of the Alamo and San Jacinto."[8]

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 7: "The Kansas City Journal" recently printed the following cowboy song, with comments, offering it as a side-light on cowboy life and character. The Journal said:

"The night guards of cattle or horse herds were wont to sing to their charges as they slowly rode round and round them, keeping watch. If the cattle stampeded, and were then brought together again and began moving in a circle, which the punchers called 'milling,' and on all occasions of fear or uneasiness among the stock, the boys sang to them, and it had a quieting effect. These night riders were perfect horsemen and seasoned to the trail and range. Their hours were endless; the calls upon them for endurance were almost beyond human strength. Picture a night on a lonely prairie, wild, disconcerting, horse elements, a stampede among half-wild cattle, and it is not hard to know the task that the cowboy confronted. It is something fine to think that in such hours of danger the cattle could be 'crooned' back to normal quiet. Out of such occasions were the cowboy songs born." Then follow the words of

The Dim and Narrow Way.

"Last night as I lay on the prairie, Looking up at the stars in the sky, I wondered if ever a cowboy Would go to that sweet by and by; I wondered if ever a cowboy Would go to that sweet by and by.

The trail to that fair mystic region Is narrow and dim so they say, While the broad road that leads to perdition Is posted and blazed all the way; While the broad road that leads to perdition Is posted and blazed all the way.

They say there will be a grand round-up, Where cowboys like cattle must stand, To be cut out by riders of judgment, Who are posted and know every brand; To be cut out by riders of judgment, Who are posted and know every brand.

Perhaps there will be a stray cowboy, Unbranded by anyone nigh, Who'll be cut out by riders of judgment And shipped to the sweet by and by; Who'll be cut out by riders of judgment And shipped to the sweet by and by."]

[Footnote 8: That Captain McDonald and his little force had the entire supervision of that vast district is shown by Adjutant-General Maby's report for 1896. See Appendix A.]