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

by Albert Bigelow Paine

ASSASSINATION OF JUDGE STANLEY WELCH. CAPTAIN BILL ORDERED TO THE SCENE. AN AMBUSH; A SURPRISE AND AN INQUEST

Within three months from the night of the Brownsville raid, there occurred another tragedy in the banks of the Rio Grande. In the hours of earliest morning of Tuesday, November 6th—Election Day—while asleep in his office room at Rio Grande City, District Judge Stanley Welch, prominently connected with the Brownsville episode, was shot dead in his bed by some unknown assassin; this cowardly killing being doubtless the harvest of factional discord, widely sown and carefully tended in that hotbed of political corruption and violence along the Mexican border.

Rio Grande City lies up the river from Brownsville a distance of about one hundred miles. It is the county seat of Starr County, and has no railroad nearer than Sam Fordyce, the terminus of the St. L.B. & M., some twenty miles away. There are no railroads at all in Starr County—a big county, full of cactus, hard, spiny mesquite grass, Mexicans, and hot burning sand. Riot and plot would flourish naturally, in a place like that, as they do in all Latin-American territory.

Starr County, in fact, is rather more Mexican than Mexico herself, using the word to convey the less fortunate characteristics of that hybrid race. It is not the better class of citizens that leave Mexico, or Italy, or China, and the United States has suffered accordingly. The border counties of Texas, because of their situation have been peculiarly unfortunate in this regard. In Starr County the elective offices are held almost entirely by Mexicans, and the struggle for place is very fierce and bitter. Affairs generally are conducted by Mexicans, and even the schools are in Mexican hands. From a statement concerning the school trustees and teachers, in Starr County, it appears that out of twenty-four trustees only seven could speak and write the English language, and out of thirty-nine teachers nineteen of them had no knowledge whatever of our national tongue. Commenting on this report, D.C. Rankin of Dallas, in an article in the Corpus Christi Crony, says:

"The male teachers are political heelers for the party in power, and the lady teachers are backed by workers in the ring.... No wonder that law and order amount to nothing in that rotten section, and no wonder that District Judge, Stanley Welch, was assassinated while asleep in his bed. No wonder that when Rangers were sent there to preserve the peace and protect the citizenship from the ravages of the so-called Americanized Mexicans, that they were ambushed and fired upon by a lot of these desperadoes."

It is this story of crime and ambush that we shall undertake to tell in this chapter. When the assassination occurred, District Attorney Kleiber, who also may be remembered as having figured in the Brownsville story, was asleep in the room adjoining the one occupied by Judge Welch—the two inhabiting a small one-story brick building not far from the court-house. They had retired about the same time and Kleiber slept soundly until next morning at seven. Hearing no movement in Judge Welch's room, he called, but received no answer. Thinking the judge had overslept, Kleiber then rose, and opening the door between, called again. The judge did not stir, and going nearer the district attorney saw blood coming from his left side. Judge Welch was lying on that side; the window behind him was up—the shutter closed. He had been shot in the back, from without, through a broken slat in the blind. Attorney Kleiber recalled having been partially roused from his sleep by some sudden noise, and now supposed it to have been the fatal shot.

Mr. Kleiber at once notified the authorities, and by eight o'clock news of the murder was on the street. It was Election Day, as already stated, and excitement followed the report, with demoralization among the better element—the party to which Judge Welch belonged. It should be explained here that the two parties in that section are the "Reds" and the "Blues"—nominally Democrats and Republicans, though the distinction would seem one of patronage rather than of politics. In Rio Grande City the party of Judge Welch, called the Reds (Democrats)—is in the minority.

On this Tuesday, November 6th, 1906, its franchise was even more restricted than usual. When the fact of the murder became known about fifty mounted men, "Blues," went through the crowds, demanding that the polls be instantly opened. Local officers were either unwilling or unable to deal with this mob, and open warfare between the Blues and the Reds was imminent. To avoid bloodshed, Chairman Seabury of the Reds assembled the best men among the leaders of the Blues and persuaded them to agree with him that no armed men should approach the court-house, where the voting place had been established; also that one man of each party should be appointed as special peace officer at the polls, and that a Blue and a Red should vote alternately as long as there existed material for such an arrangement.

The agreement was kept two hours, after which the Blues took possession of the court-house; entered the door, and held the same, backed by armed men on foot and on horseback, terrorizing and keeping out most of the opposition voters. When the polls closed at 6:30 p.m., about one hundred and twenty-five electors had not cast their votes.[19] There had been plenty of intimidation and some personal violence, but no loss of life. The elements for riot and bloodshed, however, were all there, and it needed only a little brisk stirring to precipitate a general killing.