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

by Albert Bigelow Paine

The outlaws repeated their refusal and their warning that if he came another step they would shoot him dead. McDonald took out his watch.

"Well, boys," he said, "if you want to make a fight you might as well get at it. It's time for my men to be here. Your partner I got yesterday said you'd likely try to start something, so I come fixed for such fellows as you. Come, let's see what you can do."

McDonald waved his hand as if signaling to his companion half a mile in the rear and made a start toward the log fort. Before he had taken two steps, out of it piled the six outlaws and broke "lickety brindle" for the creek bottom, like a bunch of frightened steers. McDonald ran after them and saw them leap on their horses that they had tethered in the bushes and go tearing down the creek, without stopping to look behind. Evidently they did not doubt for a moment that the deputy had a posse, waiting nearby, for they would not be likely to believe that he had dared to face them alone unless assistance was close at hand. Deputy Bill, on his part was not sorry to see them go, for they had him at a serious disadvantage, and his only backing had weakened.

His companion was at the hack when he returned. The one man they had taken in charge had disappeared. Bill Jess made a few choice remarks and they set out for Kingfisher by way of Hennessey.

The following night as McDonald came out of a drug-store in Kingfisher, several shots were fired at him from the darkness. He pulled his six-shooter immediately and emptied it at the flash of the guns, running toward them as he did so. He heard retreating footsteps, but did not follow, as he discovered that he had left his cartridge belt in the hotel.

He was satisfied that the attack had been made by some of the Turkey Creek gang of the day before, trying to get rid of him, and resolved to delay no further in putting them out of business. He enlisted a man whom he knew, one Charley Meyers, and two other young men anxious for adventure, and next morning struck the trail which led, as they expected, in the direction of Turkey Creek. They followed it rapidly and toward evening came upon their game. There was no parleying this time. McDonald headed his force and they charged with a rush. Three of the men threw down their arms and surrendered—the others fired some scattering shots as they ran, and they must have kept on running, for they troubled that country no more. The Turkey and Sand Creek gangs no longer existed.[2]

It was while McDonald was at Kingfisher that he came in contact with Bill Cook and one "Skeeter," both of whom were later to become notorious in matters connected with the looting of banks and trains. The deputy was making some purchases in a store one evening when Cook attempted to ride his horse in the front door. McDonald grabbed the animal's bridle and set him back on his haunches, and before Cook could draw his gun—had him covered and under arrest. Immediately Cook's "side-partner," Skeeter, came up swearing vengeance, and was also suddenly disarmed and landed in jail. The incident closed there, but a sort of sequel was to come along a good many years later, as we shall see presently.

Meanwhile the work of "delivery" by the erstwhile tree-man was not delayed. Following the backward track he gathered up one undesirable citizen after another, until by the end of the season he had established official relations with no less than fifty of his former customers, and the rest had concluded not to wait. The story of the work of that year alone would fill a volume if fully told, but the telling is not necessary. Having planned a campaign along special lines it is only needful to give one or two examples of Bill McDonald's work to see what the rest would be in that particular field. Each field of labor was different and called for different treatment—requiring as much genius to conceive the method as bravery and presence of mind to carry it out. We have now seen what he accomplished in reclaiming a land so lost that it was called No-man's Land, and in cleaning up a strip of country infested by desperadoes supposed to be invincible. We have seen that he could do these things with thoroughness and despatch and with little bloodshed. The old manner of going in with a big posse and engaging in a general fight in which men were killed on both sides and nothing of value accomplished he had rendered obsolete. Men politically and personally opposed to Bill McDonald have referred to him in print and in spoken word as bloodthirsty, and a desperado. Certainly the reader who has followed these chapters thus far will find it hard to agree with such opinions. That he was fearless almost to the point of rashness we may believe, but that he ever wantonly shed blood, or, with all his opportunities, deliberately took human life will be harder to demonstrate.

"I never was a killer," he said once. "Some fellows seem to want to kill, every chance they get, and in a business like mine there's plenty of chances. But I never did want to kill a man, and I never did it when there was any other way to take care of his case."

It may not be out of place here to refer to the method of disarming men which McDonald used. The author has been asked how this sudden and efficient action was performed. His reply is that it is just about as hard to explain as those sleight-of-hand tricks which depend on deftness and exactness of motion—the result of a natural ability combined with long practice. Bill McDonald was born "as quick as a cat," and disarming became his special sleight-of-hand trick. He could locate a man's weapon and could daze and disarm him with a sudden movement that even he himself could not convey in words, and it was this performance that saved the lives of many men, good and bad, and often-times his own.