Part 9

The ranch on Wanderer's Creek, conducted for the most part by his plucky wife, remained one of his possessions and in time became not unprofitable. McDonald was one of the first to break land in that section and when he put in a sowing of wheat it was thought that he had gone daft. But the following year when the plowed land turned off a crop of from twenty to thirty bushels to the acre, those who had been first to scoff were likewise the earliest to imitate.

Captain Bill now became chief promoter in a plan for the irrigation of this fruitful soil--the water to be obtained by damming Wanderer's Creek. Several years later, two men of influence and substance, Cecil Lyon and Joseph Rice, gave able support to this project with the result that thousands of acres of grazing land became fertile farms--the cowman's domain passing into the hands of tillers of the soil. The town of Quanah reflected the steady agricultural increase, and what had been an antelope range when McDonald and his wife first drove their herds to that region, became a bustling city--in due time law-abiding--with a population steadily increasing to this day.

The mention of the McDonald herds opens a way here for recording an incident connected with the stocking of the Wanderer's Creek range. McDonald and his wife had decided that they would raise goats as a sort of by-product and began business in this line by introducing a flock of considerable size. However, it was a mistake. The goats were a great nuisance. They would be feeding quietly on the range, when suddenly, without warning, they would be seized with an impulse for violent exercise, and would break away and go racing over the prairie for seven or eight miles, to the brakes of the Pease River, where it was very mountainous and hilly--altogether in accord with a goat's idea of landscape. All the horses on the range were in danger of being run to death chasing goats, getting them together and bringing them back to the range. Finally it got to be a regular occupation, when there was nothing else to do, to head for the Pease River and chase goats. One of the men came in one morning when Captain Bill happened to be at home, and asked:

"Well, Cap, what shall I do to-day?"

"Oh, I don't know. Go chase goats, I reckon."

"All right; but if you want me to do that, you'll have to get you some goats. I rode all my horses down a couple o' days ago, hunting for them in the brakes, and there ain't a goat to be found within forty miles.

"D----n the goats," said Captain Bill, "I don't care much for goats, anyhow."

There had been about two hundred of them, and for several years afterward, hunters from other States in these wilds used to bring down "mountain sheep" and "antelope," which bore strong resemblance to the flocks which had once been Captain Bill's.

It was not long after McDonald's appointment as Ranger Captain that the State political campaign came on. He had never lost his interest in politics since the first awakening in the old Mineola days, when he and Jim Hogg had been ranged against each other, ready to shed blood for their candidates. Now, Hogg was governor and a candidate for reëlection, with Bill McDonald ready to show what he could do in the way of gratitude for favors past and present. The convention for the nomination of the State officials was to be held at Houston, and there was a good deal of excitement, as the opposition was likely to be strong, with nominations closely contested. McDonald resolved to be on hand and ready for any condition or emergency. Arriving in Houston he learned upon investigation that the supporters of Hogg's opponent, George Clark of Waco, had laid a plan to pack the convention with Clark's friends; to occupy it so fully in fact, that it would be impossible for the regular delegates to get seats. This would make it necessary for them to meet elsewhere, and would cause them to be regarded as bolters from the regular convention. Upon satisfying himself that this was to be the program, Captain McDonald promptly went to his old friend and other leaders, and proposed to take charge of matters. As Captain of the Rangers, he was under the Governor's orders, and with Hogg's sanction he could use his own methods for preserving the peace and for the prevention of scrambling and riot.

The convention was to be held in the "car-shed," a very large building, which had been seated for the purpose. It had a wide entrance to admit cars, and it could easily have been filled and crowded by a mob. Captain Bill's plan was to put a good capable fence across this wide opening, leaving a narrow passageway for a gate, which would be completely guarded. No one unable to show credentials as a delegate would be permitted to enter until the delegates were in and seated.

Governor Hogg approved of the idea and issued an order accordingly. There was no delay in carrying it out. Captain Bill got some men together, worked all night, and by sunrise the wide gateway of the car-shed had been narrowed down to the little wicket-gate of official admission. It was a complete surprise to the opposition. The gang that had arranged to rush and pack the convention, regarded the barrier and the men delegated to defend it, with amazement and profanity. They began with epithets, and these they followed with more tangible missiles, such as umbrellas, old shoes, and handbags. In another part of the State they might have attempted the use of more effective ammunition. As it was, they were obliged to confine themselves to protests more spectacular than effectual. The regular delegates filed in and were seated. Then the crowds were permitted to enter in the usual way, whereupon another convention was immediately organized in the same hall, with another chairman on the same platform, and for a time two conventions were running side by side.

Captain McDonald was finally called to the platform to preserve order. There was a lively scene. The Ranger was kept busy keeping the two factions separate, taking away their knives, a few pistols, canes, umbrellas and such other weapons and missiles as they attempted to bring into action. The final result was that both Clark and Hogg were nominated, at the same time, in the same convention, and by the same political party, though the Clark followers were styled "Anti-Democrats" and bolters.

Hogg was re-elected in due time, by a good majority. The episode passed into history as the "Car-shed" Convention.

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.]

XXI

The Battle with Matthews

WHAT HAPPENED TO A MAN WHO HAD DECIDED TO KILL BILL MCDONALD

It was strange, indeed, that McDonald did not "happen to get killed" in those busy days of the early nineties. One of the favorite vows of tough "pan-handlers" was to shoot Bill McDonald on sight. But the reader will remember that there was a suddenness and vigor about Bill McDonald's manner and method that was very bad for a vow like that when the moment for its execution arrived. Still, there were those who tried to make good, and one of these, duly assisted, came near being successful. He would have succeeded, no doubt, if he had had time.

This man's name was John Pierce Matthews, which became simply John Pierce after its owner had got the drop on a steamboat captain one day in Louisiana and shot him dead. He took the new name with him to the Pan-handle, where in due time he got the drop on another man, somewhere up in the northern tier of counties, with the same result. This was a good while before he came down to Childress County and got to be sheriff, but there were those who had not forgotten, and among them was Captain Bill McDonald, then stopping at Wichita Falls. Matthews, or Pierce, as he was called, frequently came down to the Falls for a spree, and on one such visit made application to join a secret society. McDonald was a prominent member of that society and Matthews did not get in. This stirred the animosity of Matthews, and he began to clean his six-shooter daily and to practise sudden and accurate firing, which he knew would be necessary in case of a show-down.

By and by there was a sheriff's convention at Houston, and on a boat excursion between Houston and Galveston, Matthews spoke disrespectfully to Governor Hogg, who was on board. McDonald, who was also present, promptly called Matthews to account, and a general settlement might have been reached then and there had well-meaning, but misguided friends of both parties not interfered, and spoiled a very pretty sheriff's-picnic newspaper story. As it was, Matthews kept on oiling his pistol and practising, meantime enlisting the sympathy of friends, to whom he confided that some day when he had a little leisure he was going to look up Bill McDonald and kill him, suggesting that they be present and take a hand; _they_ being of the sort naturally interested in such an enterprise.