Captain Bill McDonald, Texas Ranger: A Story of Frontier Reform

by Albert Bigelow Paine

The Trans-cedar Mystery

THE LYNCHING OF THE HUMPHREYS AND WHAT HAPPENED TO THE LYNCHERS

Captain McDonald was still at Columbus when he received a telegram ordering him to report at once to Assistant Attorney General Morris and the local officials at Athens, Henderson County, Texas, for the purpose of investigating the lynching of three respectable citizens—a father and two sons, named Humphrey—in a timbered tract between Trinity River and Cedar Creek, known as the Trans-cedar Bottoms.

Henderson County is in East Texas, and the Trans-cedar Bottoms constitute just the locality and neighborhood for a murder of the Humphrey kind. Shut-in, thickly timbered and lonely—it is a place for low morals to become lower with each generation—for scant intellect to become scantier—for darkened minds to become darker and more impervious to pity, indeed to any human impulse except crime.

The Humphreys had not fitted an environment like that. They were honest, sturdy men—fearless and open in their dealings. They were a menace to a gang who made moonshine whisky, stole whatever they could lay hands on and would swear a man's life away for a lean hog. It was necessary for the welfare of the neighborhood that the Humphreys be disposed of, and they were taken by a mob one night and hanged—three of them to one tree—they having been placed upon horses and the horses driven from under them. Then, when the ropes had proven too long, and the feet of the three Humphreys had touched the ground, the mob had bent back the legs of the victims at the knee and tied the feet upward to the hands, so that the Humphreys might swing clear.

Bill McDonald knew something of the Trans-cedar country, and the character of its settlement, for, as we have seen in a former chapter, he had passed his youth and his early manhood at Henderson and at Mineola, both within seventy-five miles of that very district. He set out alone by first train, and arriving at Athens, learned the details of the ghastly crime which already, through the telegraphed reports, had stirred the entire State. He learned that the lynching had taken place about twenty-five miles from Athens, near a little post-office named Aley, and he hurried to that place, without delay, taking with him one Guy Green, an Athens lawyer, familiar with the neighborhood. With Green, the Ranger went straight to the scene of the murder and made an examination of the tracks and various clues that remained. Two days had passed since the crime, and many of the signs had been obliterated. Still there were enough for a man with the faculties of Captain Bill. He identified no less than four trails—one, as he decided, made by five horses; another by three; a third by two, and a fourth the track of a single horse. The trails wound in and out, crossed and recrossed, and were evidently made with the idea of balking pursuit. Captain McDonald did not consider them especially difficult, and having satisfied himself that they could be followed, he went on to Aley, for it was near nightfall.

At Aley he joined Assistant Attorney General Ned Morris; District Attorney Jerry Crook; Tom Bell, sheriff of Bell County, and Ben. E. Cabell, sheriff of Dallas County, who had come over to aid the investigation. He was assured that the work was going to be hard—that the greater portion of the inhabitants were either in sympathy with the lynchers or were so much in terror of them that it would be almost impossible to get direct evidence. Captain Bill looked thoughtful as he listened.

"Well," he said, "I'm going to stay here till I get it, and I'm going after it just like I was going for a doctor. You can give it out that I mean business and that nobody need to be afraid to testify. I'll take care of them."

He discussed the case with the officials and learned that one Joe Wilkerson was suspected as having been connected with the murder—it being well-known that Wilkerson had pursued the Humphreys and bemeaned them; finally accusing them of stealing hogs, and swearing to some meat which the Humphreys had earned by digging wells. In the evidence it had developed that the Wilkerson hogs, though mortgaged by him, had in reality been sold, and that he had thus attempted to evade the consequences of this illegal act by saddling the Humphreys with a still heavier crime. The Humphreys had not been convicted, but Wilkerson had never ceased to vilify them. Later, one of the Humphrey boys, George, had been set upon by some of the Wilkerson crowd and in defending himself had killed, with a knife, one of his assailants. The courts—there were honest courts in Athens—had cleared him, but in the Trans-cedar tribunal he had been doomed. These facts constituted about all the foundation of known motive upon which McDonald would have to build his evidence. It was while he was discussing these things with the attorneys on the night of his arrival that a man rode up to the gate just outside and called his name. Captain Bill rose, but the others protested, declaring that it might be a plot to shoot him in the dark. However, he went, six-shooter in hand, and sticking it in the face of the caller, demanded his business. The man protested that he meant no harm, but had come from one Buck Holley, who lived two miles down the road and said he knew Captain McDonald and wanted to see him. The Ranger Captain reflected a minute.

"I don't know any Buck Holley," he said. "I knew a scoundrel by the name of Bill Holley some years ago up in the Pan-handle, and if that is who it is I don't want to see him. I judge you fellows have got a gang down the road there to shoot me from ambush. Who are you, anyway?"