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

by Albert Bigelow Paine

All night he had lain awake, listening for the bay of the hounds. Once he had sat bolt upright in bed.

"Here they come!" he had exclaimed to a man who was staying with him. Soon after, he said: "I could put my hand on the man that committed that murder." And again: "There's one woman knows, and she may tell. As for Monk, he's told so many lies, the white people won't believe him, anyway."

Two little children named Reed, looking at the bleeding legs of some tied chickens, said to each other that the bloody string reminded them of the clothes their mother had washed for Felix Powell. This was repeated and whispered, and one of Powell's acquaintances charged him with the crime.

"They'll hang you for it, Felix," he said.

"When they do, a lot of white folks will go to hell with me," was the reply.

All these things came in due course to Captain Bill, and by and by an affidavit for murder was prepared and Powell was formally accused of the crime. When he knew of this he became furious and attacked McDonald in his cell and had to be overpowered and chained. Later, in a fit of rage, he snapped these chains and tore the shackles from his limbs. Then a heavier chain was put on him and he was padlocked to the floor.

Besides Felix Powell, charges were brought against Henry Howard and four women believed to be concerned in the killing—directly or as accessories to it, either before or after the fact. One of these—Augusta Diggs—on the second day of the examining trial, confessed her knowledge of the crime. She confirmed Captain Bill's belief that the murder of the Conditts had taken place in the morning and declared that Powell had come to her with the story of how he and Monk Gibson had killed the Conditts, bringing his bloody clothes for her to wash. She had refused and he had taken them elsewhere—to Bethel Reed. Other witnesses, willingly or unwillingly, gave further damaging evidence. Listeners began to wonder if there wasn't something in all these accusations besides a mere negro feud—to suspect that perhaps Bill McDonald might be able to establish his theories, after all.

But it is likely they would still have doubted and the case would have come to naught, had there not been one more link in Captain Bill's chain of circumstance. He had been closely observing Felix Powell's right hand when he could do so without attracting the prisoner's attention, and mentally comparing it with the bloody print sawed from the Conditt house. The print was a peculiar one; it showed an oblong spot for the thumb; a longer one for the forefinger; then two somewhat shorter ones for the middle and third finger, with a mere dot for the little finger. It was as if the hand had been maimed by accident, and the fingers cut away. Captain Bill at first had made a sketch of the print, which he could surreptitiously compare with the hand of Powell, when opportunity offered. The comparison puzzled him. Powell's little finger might make the dot, for it had been deformed by a bone felon and had a crooked bone at the end. But his other fingers were normal, and it was hard to imagine they had made that bloody impress. Still, the Ranger detective did not give up. He wanted to see the hand and the print together, or to see actual prints of the hand, by the side of tell-tale evidence left on the Conditt walls. Finally, one day, he got Felix Powell, whose diversions were few enough, interested in an experiment of camphor-smoked paper upon which almost photographic reproductions of any yielding object could be made. The negro was attracted by the results and willingly enough made the impress of his open hand. Captain Bill felt a qualm of disappointment. Only the dot for the stub of a little finger compared at all with the print left by the murderer. Then suddenly he had an inspiration. He put an object the size of a closed knife into Felix's hand, and told him to make a print with his fingers closed. The shadow of the gallows stretched out toward Felix Powell in that instant, but he did not know it. He pressed his hand to the paper, and as he lifted it Bill McDonald's heart gave a fierce bound of triumph. The likeness to the print of blood was exact. As Captain Bill said afterward, "I saw that Felix Powell's hand with a knife in it, would fit the print left on the Conditt walls, to a gnat's heel." Something of what was in his captor's mind must have filtered into the skull of Felix Powell, then, for he became wary and frightened, and when Captain Bill urged him to make other prints he moved his hand each time and blurred them. He was anxious, too, to know what use was going to be made of the ones already taken. When later he learned what had been done with them, and that his hand was identical with a bloody print found on the Conditt premises, he broke out in a rage.

"Aren't there any other hand like that in the world?" he cried.

There could be none. The tests of measurement and the similarity of line had been applied. They tallied exactly. They convinced Sheriff Egg completely—they convinced the most skeptical in Edna. When that examining trial ended, Captain Bill McDonald, Ranger and detective, from being a man whose presence was resented and whose theories were despised, became suddenly to the people of Edna a mighty criminal sleuth; a veritable Sherlock Holmes; a hero whose name was on every tongue. Outside of Edna, Texas had suspected this before, but now Edna took the lead in singing his praises, and every paper in the State joined in the chorus.