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

by Albert Bigelow Paine

So now we have arrived at the end of our story—the story of "a man who does things"—who has been making history for twenty-five years, who is still making it, to-day. It is the story of a life so full of incident and episode that we have been able to give only a chapter here and there—to touch the high places as it were; for the tale entire would fill a library, and would involve the chronology of a State, which in that quarter of a century has increased its population nearly five times, its wealth in a like proportion, while its progress in education and morals has been incalculable. It is with the improvement last named that Bill McDonald, and the little army of State Rangers from which he had been selected as an example, have been chiefly concerned, though advancement in other directions has been collateral and dependent on moral growth. Order is not only the first law of Heaven, but of the frontier, and by the sturdy Frontier Battalion has the fight for order been made, and won. For in spite of plague-spots here and there (and in a State of so vast an area, and so recent and motley a settlement, it would be strange indeed if these did not exist), Texas is to-day a splendid empire of beautiful towns and cities—of fair and fruitful farms, and of handsome, hardy law-abiding men and women.

The Pan-handle has become a garden—not a Garden of Eden, exactly, but a garden of agriculture and home-culture—a larger garden than Eden, and happier and more profitable than Eden has ever been, since the fall.

And the best evidence of what the Ranger Force has done for Texas may be found in the steady reduction of its numbers. By the very nature of its achievements it has each year reduced the necessity of its existence. To-day it consists of four little companies, aggregating about thirty men, all told. They are brave, picked men—who face death daily and are not afraid. If from among these Bill McDonald has been marked for special distinction, it is not because he has been more willing to do and dare, or more resolute in its purpose of reform, but because he was at his birth marked by that special genius which, whatever his environment, would make episodic achievement and peculiar distinction his inevitable portion. Long before he became an officer he was a peace-maker. Wherever trouble occurred, McDonald had a genius for being there, separating and disarming the combatants, admonishing them in that convincing manner which few men ever resented. No one ever knew him to flinch at a time like that—perhaps no one ever dreamed that he would be likely to do so.

He was variously gifted. His perceptions were abnormally keen—his deductive conclusions often startling in their exactness. In his detective work, he was sometimes referred to as the Sherlock Holmes of Texas, though his processes would seem to have been more instinctive, and perhaps less intellectual, than those of Dr. Doyle's imaginary hero. For he had the eyes of a fox, the ears of a wolf and he could follow a scent like a hound.

"Cap, you have eyes in the back of your head and can smell a criminal in the dark," was once said to him, and perhaps this statement was not so wide of the mark.

His understanding of character—frontier character—was likewise a gift. Almost every man has a right side, and Bill McDonald always seemed to know how to reach that side. When no right side developed, he knew how to handle the wrong one. He seldom failed to win the confidence and the respect—even the friendship—of his prisoners. Such enemies as he has to-day are not among the men he caused to be punished, but among those who feared—and still fear—capture and punishment. There may be a good many such. Time and again his removal was not only requested, but demanded—sometimes by a whole community—a community which did not want the law's enforcement, and such a demand was likely to be accompanied by the threat of political revolt. But Texas, from the days of Sam Houston, has had good governors—governors to whom such a demand was in the nature of a compliment and the best reason for retaining the "offending" incumbent. Hence Bill McDonald not only remained in service, but was given an ever widening usefulness.

His "suddenness" and determination was a constant amazement to law-breakers. Once when he was in El Paso he received a telegram stating that some of his horses had been stolen from a ranch he then owned on the Oklahoma and Texas line. That ranch was nearly five hundred miles away as the crow flies, but Bill McDonald was on the train bound in that direction while the telegram was still damp. Arriving at his ranch, he struck the trail and set out alone to follow it, without rest, through Greer County, riding hot foot a distance of three hundred miles; overtaking the thieves at last somewhere beyond Norman, Oklahoma. Sid Woodring, a wary old outlaw, was in that gang, also his nephew, Frank Woodring, and a third member whose name is not recalled. It was a genuine surprise when Bill McDonald, whom they thought at the other end of Texas, charged in among them and had them disarmed almost before they realized what was going on. He marched them back to the jail at Norman; had them indicted in Greer County, where court was then in session; got them convicted for terms ranging from five to ten years, and returned with his recovered horses—completing, in the space of a few days, one of the neatest and most spectacular bits of official work on record.

The amount of his work was something enormous. In the two years ending August 31st, 1904, Ranger Company B, which he commanded, traveled 74,537 miles, made 205 scouts and 174 arrests. Thirty-one of the arrests were for murder, and nearly all for desperate crimes. When it is remembered that some of those scouts required days, and some of the arrests were hundreds of miles apart, and the result of long and arduous trailing and persistent detective work, the labor and the result can be better understood. Nor is this an unusual report. It has been selected at random and is by no means of the busiest period—the period of the early nineties—those riotous Pan-handle days.[24]

There was no show, no fuss and feathers about this work. Riot threatened or broke out here and there—the newspapers carried a line that Captain Bill was on the way to the scene. He arrived—often alone—disarmed a mob; made an arrest or two, perhaps; gave out a few quiet admonitions, and it was all over—next day to be forgotten. With many another man such cases would have meant resistance, bloodshed, troops, and the long animosities of years. That was his genius: to settle matters—to dispose of them—to get through and to be at other work without waste of time. Once when he was ordered to Galveston to prevent a prize-fight, he arrived at the hall where it was to take place, after the crowd had gathered. He did not bother to discuss matters with the managers or principals, but walked out on the stage and announced briefly to the audience that the fight would not take place, for the reason that it was against the law which he was there to enforce. That was a fair sample of his method—to know the law, and to enforce it, without a fire-works and without violence. No man has ever been his equal, perhaps, in that field.

It was true he was lucky, for bullets missed him, as a rule, and he steered clear of many dead-falls. Among the Mexicans, and bad men generally, there grew up a superstition that he was bullet-proof, and after the Rio Grande affair there would seem to be some reason for such a belief, for he stood up there in plain view, a tall and shining mark, blazing away, and no bullet touched him.