The cattle days saw the wild times of the border prolonged. The buffalo range caught its quota of hard riders and hard shooters. And always the apparently exhaustless empires of new and unsettled lands—an enormous, untracked empire of the wild—beckoned on and
on; so that men in the most densely settled sections were very far apart, and so that the law as a guardian could not be depended upon. It was not to be wondered at that the name of Texas became the synonym for savagery. That was for a long time the wildest region within our national confines. Many men who attained fame as fighters along the Pecos and Rio Grande and Gila and Colorado came across the borders from Texas. Others slipped north into the Indian Nations, and left their mark there. Some went to the mines of the Rockies, or the cattle ranges from Montana to Arizona. Many stayed at home, and finished their eventful lives there in the usual fashion—killing now and again, then oftener, until at length they killed once too often and got hanged; or not often enough once, and so got shot.
To undertake to give even the most superficial study to a field so vast as this would require a dozen times the space we may afford, and would lead us far into matters of history other than those intended. We can only point out that the men of the Lone Star state left their stamp as horsemen and weapon-bearers clear on to the north, and as far as the foot of the Arctic circle. Their language and their methods
mark the entire cattle business of the plains from the Rio Grande to the Selkirks. Theirs was a great school for frontiersmen, and its graduates gave full account of themselves wherever they went. Among them were bad men, as bad as the worst of any land, and in numbers not capable of compass even in a broad estimate.
Some citizens of Montgomery county, Texas, were not long ago sitting in a store of an evening, and they fell to counting up the homicides which had fallen under their notice in that county within recent memory. They counted up seventy-five authenticated cases, and could not claim comprehensiveness for their tally. Many a county of Texas could do as well or better, and there are many counties. It takes you two days to ride across Texas by railway. A review of the bad man field of Texas pauses for obvious reasons!
So many bad men of Texas have attained reputation far wider than their state that it became a proverb upon the frontier that any man born on Texas soil would shoot, just as any horse born there would "buck." There is truth back of most proverbs, although to-day both horses and men of Texas are losing something
of their erstwhile bronco character. That out of such conditions, out of this hardy and indomitable population, the great state could bring order and quiet so soon and so permanently over vast unsettled regions, is proof alike of the fundamental sternness and justness of the American character and the value of the American fighting man.
Yet, though peace hath her victories not less than war, it is to be doubted whether in her own heart Texas is more proud of her statesmen and commercial kings than of her stalwart fighting men, bred to the use of arms. The beautiful city of San Antonio is to-day busy and prosperous; yet to-day you tread there ground which has been stained red over and over again. The names of Crockett, Milam, Travis, Bowie, endure where those of captains of industry are forgotten. Out of history such as this, covering a half century of border fighting, of frontier travel and merchandising, of cattle trade and railroad building, it is impossible—in view of the many competitors of equal claims—to select an example of bad eminence fit to bear the title of the leading bad man of Texas.
There was one somewhat noted Texas character,
however, whose life comes down to modern times, and hence is susceptible of fairly accurate review—a thing always desirable, though not often practical, for no history is more distorted, not to say more garbled, than that dealing with the somewhat mythical exploits of noted gun fighters. Ben Thompson, of Austin, killer of more than twenty men, and a very perfect exemplar of the creed of the six-shooter, will serve as instance good enough for a generic application. Thompson was not a hero. He did no deeds of war. He led no forlorn hope into the imminent deadly breach. His name is preserved in no history of his great commonwealth. He was in the opinion of certain peace officers, all that a citizen should not be. Yet in his way he reached distinction; and so striking was his life that even to-day he does not lack apologists, even as he never lacked friends.