Time of the Rangers: Texas Rangers from 1900 to the Present

Mike Cox concludes his history of the Texas Rangers in TIME OF THE RANGERS: TEXAS RANGERS FROM 1900 TO THE PRESENT, his follow-up to THE TEXAS RANGERS: WEARING THE CINCO PESO, 1821-1900. Cox writes anecdotal history, informing us about what happened to the organization as a whole by telling us hugely entertaining stories about specific incidents.

For instance, there was the time a diminutive Ranger named Bates was called to action when a local deputy start beating up one of the working girls in a dive in the city of Batson. The Ranger insisted that the beating stop, and the deputy disagreed so adamantly, he went for his gun. Bates whipped out his .45 and clubbed the man over the head. When the deputy awoke, he discovered that he was chained to a tree. Newspapers in Beaumont and Houston had fun reporting that that a 220-pound deputy had been beaten senseless by a 120-pound Ranger, who hastened to correct the error and give his defeated foe his due. Bates, it seemed, actually weighed 125 pounds.

This was, in, part the pattern Rangers followed for town taming. Get rid of corrupt local authorities first and the criminals were sure to follow.
William MacLeod Raine’s A TEXAS RANGER, published in 1910, was the first non-dime novel about the Rangers. It played out like one of those Gene Autry oaters from the 1930s: One moment, the characters are riding horses, and the next, they’re in an airplane. The same year saw the Rangers break into the movies, with RANGER’S BRIDE, starring “Bronco Billy” Anderson.

There had always been a degree of racism in the Rangers’ ranks — Mexicans and Indians were never popular — but the Mexican Revolution really heated things up. Rebels raided above the border to steal cattle and horses, and the Rangers frequently retaliated by wiping out an entire household of Mexican-Americans who were accused of abetting the raiders.

All through the early years of the 20th century, the Ranger force rose and fell in numbers depending on who sat in the governor’s chair, but the Revolution prompted one of the increases. It was believed that, according to THE DALLAS MORNING NEWS, “the plan of the Mexicans contemplates the freeing of a portion of Texas between the Rio Grande and the Nueces River from American rule and the annexation of this territory to Mexico.”

This led to armed conflict, and that led to carping on the part of Ranger Captain Ransom as to what he would have done had he been there. One participant in a fierce battle responded, “Well, Captain, I don’t know what else you’d have done. We were here before they came, we were here while they were here, and we’re still here.” Prisoners in Ransom’s care had a habit of disappearing before they got to trial. So common did this phenomenon become, it added the word “ransomizing” to the dictionary of Texasisms.

Perhaps the most famous 20th-century Ranger was Frank Hamer, a no-nonsense lawman who slipped into history when he joined the hunt for Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow in early 1934. Hamer’s new assignment was kept a secret and his approach drew on the best of modern law enforcement theory. He found out everything he could about the pair — what they smoked, what they drank, the kind of cars and weapons Clyde favored. He drove the roads they drove and, like them, lived in his car.

That adventure came to an end on May 23, 1934, when Hamer and the lawmen he was working with pumped 167 rounds in Clyde’s car from ambush. When the press asked him how it happened, Hamer laconically replied, “Sure I can tell you. We just shot the hell out of them.” He later added, “I hate to bust a cap on a woman, especially when she’s sitting down.”

I loved another Hamer story. In September 1939, the retired Ranger sent a letter to the King of England offering the services of 49 former Rangers to deal with the Nazis. Four days later, he received a telegram from Buckingham Palace telling him to check with the British Embassy in Washington. When FDR heard about this Texas version of INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS, he reminded Gov. Lee O’Daniel of American neutrality. Hamer and the boys had to stay home, which I’m sure lengthened the war by several years.

As entertaining as these tales are, Cox is also adept at writing about the political side of the story. Politicizing law enforcement and the threat of danger for short-term political gain is nothing new.

Cox, who spent 15 years as spokesman for the Texas Department of Public Safety and who knows a lot of recent Ranger history because he was part of it, makes the less wild-and-wooly part of the tale as fascinating as the shoot-’em-up part. In fact, readers of contemporary true crime stories may be more interested in seeing how the Rangers evolved into the first rate investigative organization they are today than they are in the western part of the saga.

Whichever part interests you most, you will also read about the other by zipping through the pages as quickly as you can turn them. The story of the Texas Rangers has been told by several other historians lately, but none of them have Cox’s sure hand at blending solid history with entertaining and accessible narrative in the manner of Texas legend J. Frank Dobie.

This book and its predecessor are must-reads on many levels, and must-owns for the aficionado of Texas history or Old West law enforcement. —Doug Bentin

Buy it at Amazon.

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THIS AUTHOR:
• THE TEXAS RANGERS: WEARING THE CINCO PESO, 1821-1900 by Mike Cox

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