The cattle came in due time, fighting back the Apache and the Comanche, protected by Rangers from Ft. Griffin, accompanied by stockmen of every nation, cowboys of every grade and criminals of every breed. That was a wild epoch—chaotic and picturesque—a time of individual administration and untempered justice.
It was also a time of mighty domain. Ranches there were as big as some kingdoms. One, the X.I.T., covered a good portion of the northern part of the Pan-handle. Another, the Matador, spread itself into five counties. When settlement became thicker—when there were ranch-houses not more than twenty-five to thirty miles apart—official allotment of the lands was made. Then there was a grand gobble. The big stockmen fenced everything with little regard for boundaries and less for the law.
With such examples as these in high places, it is not strange that a general indifference for legal rights and possessions prevailed. Next to cattle raising, cattle-stealing was the chief industry. The cowboy proper was not concerned in such work. He was likely to be a clean-handed, straightforward, even if reckless, individual, honest according to his lights. True, loyalty to his employer might render him a trifle indifferent as to brands and marks when strays mixed with the herd, but it was the employer and not the cowboy who profited by such laxity. The cowboy was a retainer who would fight for his ranch, would die for it when circumstances seemed to require such a sacrifice, and the increase of the ranch herd by any means short of actual raid and theft was a custom which bore no relation to disrepute. But individually the cowboy was likely to be the soul of honor and good-nature, troublesome only on holidays when he was moved to ride into the nearest settlement, drink up all the whisky he could buy, and then, with six-shooter drawn, go careering up and down the streets, shooting in random directions, explaining meantime with noisy and repetitious adjectives, that he was a bad man—a very bad man from very far up the Creek.
On such inspired occasions he would sometimes exclaim:
"Hide out little ones! Dad's come home drunk!" after which he would let go a round of ammunition and the inhabitants of that neighborhood, regardless of size, would proceed to hide out, as admonished. Sometimes a whole group of cowboys would engage in this pastime, whereupon the rest of the town disappeared and sat in cellars or flattened themselves under beds until the cyclone passed by.
It was in such manner that the cowboy found relaxations and social joy. He was not a bad man, in spite of his declaration. He was not really hunting for trouble and would be the last to kill, without offense.[7]
The truly bad man was of entirely different make-up. Always posing, and sometimes accepted, as a man of valor, he was in nearly every case merely a boaster and a coward. He would kill when he got the drop on his man, and he built his reputation upon such murders. He passed as a cowboy, when he was merely a cow-thief; as a hero, when he was only an assassin. Driven into a corner he would fight, but his favorite method was to slay from ambush. It was seldom that his reckless disregard for human life included his own.
The Pan-handle was full of bad men in the early nineties. Most of them had graduated from other schools of crime and found here a last resort. Some of them—a good many of them—had obtained official positions and were outlaws and deputies by turns, or worked conjunctively as both. As a rule they were in one way and another associated with a gang.
Local authorities, even when conscientious, were poorly equipped to cope with such an element, and it was for Company B, Ranger Force, consisting of eight men with quarters at Amarillo, Captain W.J. McDonald commanding, to police this vast wilderness, and to capture and convert, or otherwise tame, its undesirable citizens.
Some of them would not wait to be captured; some, of course, could not be tamed alive. Others, and these were not a few, would be able to wield official influence through which they would escape conviction, regardless of the evidence.