I was an officer of El Paso for several years. Not very long after my acceptance of the marshalship Captain C.L. Nevill, with whom I had served in Lieutenant Reynolds' company, resigned his ranger command and became sheriff and tax collector of Presidio County, Texas. The Marfa country was now seen to be a very promising cattle section, so Captain Nevill and myself formed a partnership and embarked in the cattle business. This did not in the least interfere with our duties as sheriff and marshal, respectively, and we soon built up a nice little herd of cattle.
In the spring of 1885 General Gano and sons of Dallas, Texas, formed a company known as the Estado Land and Cattle Company. The new concern arranged to open a big ranch in Brewster County and General Gano wrote to Captain Nevill, asking him please to secure a good cattleman as ranch manager for the new company. Nevill at once wrote me and advised me to accept this position. In his letter he jokingly remarked:
"Jim, you have had a quart cup of bullets shot at you while a ranger and marshal, and now that you have a chance to quit and get something less hazardous I advise you to do it. Besides you will be near our own little ranch and can see your own cattle from time to time."
I considered the proposition seriously, and on the 1st day of April, 1885, I resigned from the police force of El Paso and became a cowboy again. In accepting the marshalship I reaped the fruits of my ranger service and now, in resigning from that position I completely severed all my connection with the ranger force and all that it had brought me. Henceforth my ranger days and ranger service were to be but a memory, albeit the most happy and cherished one of my life.
I was manager of the Estado Land and Cattle Company's ranch for nearly six years and during that period the herd increased from six to thirty thousand head. When I resigned the ranch managership it was that I might attend to my own ranch interests, which had also grown in that period. Though today I own a large and prosperous ranch in the Marfa country and though my business interests are many and varied, I still cherish the memory of my ranger days and am never too busy to see an old ranger comrade and re-live with him those six adventurous, happy and thrilling years I was a member of the Frontier Battalion of the Texas Rangers.
THE END
J.B. Gillett
IN
1921