The End of Rangering and a New Appointment
STATE REVENUE AGENT OF TEXAS. THE "FULL RENDITION" BILL ENFORCED. A GREAT BATTLE AND A BLOODLESS TRIUMPH
The Rio Grande affair was Captain Bill's last Ranger service of dramatic importance. He was continuously busy during the two months that elapsed between that episode and his official retirement, but it was only in the usual line of duty, chasing murderers, putting down riot and disarming unruly men—the things he had done so often that to look back on his career now was to gaze down a kaleidoscopic vista of death and disorder—a whirling maze of bad men and guns.
It was in January, 1907, that he went to Bellville as a witness in a murder case, and it was while he was there, January 16th, that Governor T.M. Campbell, who had just succeeded Governor Lanham, appointed him State Revenue Agent of Texas. Captain Bill's first knowledge of the matter came to him through the morning paper at Bellville. When his duties were over there, he set out for Austin to inquire into it. He knew that a State Revenue Agent was appointed to keep a general supervision over the collection of the State revenues—taxes, license money and the like—but he had only a dim idea as to the specific duties of the office. He was by no means certain that he wanted to exchange the wide free life of Rangering, whatever might be its drawbacks, for the routine duties of an office in the Capitol, with a desk, a revolving chair and a stenographer, whatever might be the comforts and perquisites of these things. He was no longer a young man, and he had been shot through from different directions. Desperate wounds, long hard vigils, cold and exposure, had left him weather-beaten and with shoulders and chest no longer as full and erect as in the old days. Yet his eye was just as clear, his ear as alert and his nerve as steady as in the beginning, and if this appointment was merely a sinecure; a reward for deeds performed—a sort of official manifest that he was down and out—he would have none of it. He could wear out, and he might some day stop a conclusive bullet, but he declined to rust out.
Perhaps there was a pretty general belief in Texas that Captain McDonald's appointment was, in fact, a sinecure, but if so the idea was transient. Arriving at the State Capitol, he called on Governor Campbell, without delay.
"How about this appointment, Governor?" he said. "What kind of a job is it?"
"Well, it's a better job than you've got, Captain. The pay is better and it's safer, too. You're going to die, or be killed, someday, going about in all kinds of weather and getting shot at, from ambush. We can't afford to lose you, just yet."
"Thank you, Governor, I don't want to be lost, either," Captain Bill said in his gentle drawl, "but I don't know as I can fill the bill. What do I have to do as State Revenue Agent, anyway. No chance to handle a gun, is there? I can do that about as well as anything."