Early in the spring of 1881 the old town of El Paso awoke out of her Rip Van Winkle sleep to find that four grand trunk railroad lines,—the Santa Fe, Southern Pacific, G.,H & S.A., and the Texas & Pacific—were rapidly building toward her and were certain to enter the town by the end of the year. Situated as it was, many hundreds of miles from any other town, it was a foregone conclusion that El Paso had the making of a great city and was a fine field for investment. Bankers, merchants, capitalists, real estate dealers, cattlemen, miners, railroad men, gamblers, saloon-keepers and sporting people of both sexes flocked to the town. They came in buggies, hacks, wagons, horseback and even afoot. There was not half enough hotel accommodations to go around, so people just slept and ate at any old place. El Paso Street, the only business thoroughfare at that time, was flooded with crowds.
DALLAS STOUDENMIRE
At night there was not enough room for people to walk on the sidewalks and they filled the streets. To me it looked just a miniature midway at a world's fair. A saloon was opened on almost every corner of the town with many in between. Each drinking place had a gambling house attached where the crowds played faro bank, monte, roulette, chuck-a-luck, stud poker and every gambling game on the calendar. If one wished a seat at the gaming tables he had to come early or he could not get within thirty feet of them. Two variety theaters, the Coliseum, operated by the Manning Brothers,—the largest in the southwest—and Jack Doyle's, were quickly opened.
An election was called in El Paso and the city was duly incorporated and a mayor and board of aldermen installed. George Campbell was elected city marshal and given one assistant, Bill Johnson. The new marshal had come to El Paso from Young County, Texas, where he had been a deputy sheriff. Campbell had done some good detective work and was a fairly good and efficient officer, but his assistant was much below ordinary.
The city marshal soon found that with but one man to aid him he had the biggest kind of a job on his hands with something doing every hour in the twenty-four. Campbell decided he was not getting enough pay for the work he had to do and asked the City Council for a raise in his salary, but the council refused it. The marshal at once resigned and left Bill Johnson to hold the town. Campbell was very friendly with the sporting element in El Paso, especially with the Manning Brothers, who were running two saloons and a big variety theater. Campbell and his friends decided to use strategy to force the council to increase his salary and planned to shoot up the town, thinking this would cause the city fathers to reinstate Campbell in his old position with a substantial increase in pay. At 2 o'clock one morning the town was shot up, some three or four hundred shots being fired promiscuously and with no attempt to make arrests.
The following morning Mayor McGoffin sent a hurry call to Captain Baylor at Ysleta and asked that a detachment of Texas Rangers be sent to El Paso to help police the town. At that time I had not severed my connection with the rangers, so I was ordered to make a detail of five rangers, issue them fifteen days' rations and have them report at once to the mayor of El Paso.
The peace loving citizens of the town welcomed the rangers, secured nice quarters for them and furnished the detachment with a stove on which to cook its meals. The rangers had been in El Paso on police duty about a week when there appeared in the town from New Mexico the famous Dallas Stoudenmire. The newcomer was six feet two inches in height, a blonde and weighed one hundred and eighty-five pounds. Stoudenmire had a compelling personality and had been a Confederate soldier, having served with General Joe Johnston at Greensboro, North Carolina. Mr. Stoudenmire applied to the mayor and City Council for the position of city marshal. He presented good references and was duly appointed town marshal.
George Campbell now saw his chances for reinstatement as an officer in El Paso go glimmering. Marshal Stoudenmire called on Bill Johnson for the keys of the city jail, but the latter refused to surrender them. Thereupon Stoudenmire seized the recalcitrant assistant, shook him up and took the keys from his pocket, thereby making his first enemy in El Paso.
About ten days after the new marshal had been installed it was reported in El Paso that two Mexican boys had been found murdered some ten or twelve miles from town on the Rio Grande. The rangers stationed in the city went out to the ranch to investigate. The bodies were brought to El Paso and a coroner's inquest was held in a room fronting on El Paso Street. Johnnie Hale, manager of Manning's little ranch, was summoned to appear before the coroner, and it was believed by the rangers that Hale and an ex-ranger named Len Peterson had committed the double murder.