easy it is to do _that_."
The big fellow gave a great jump and nearly fell over with surprise and
fright. His gun dropped as if it had been hot. The leader of the Reece
faction spoke up quickly.
"Boys, he is right," he said. "The Governor sent him here, and he's
obeying orders. He has no interest in one side or the other."
McDonald marched the Reeces over to a store, nearby, where they laid
down their guns, and the clerk was ordered to take charge of them.
The big man under arrest promised all manner of things if Captain
Bill would let him go. He was set free, with a warning. Peace now
seemed to be restored, and in the general gratitude of the community,
refreshments and invitations were tendered to Captain Bill from both
sides. He decided, however, to remain on duty during the rest of the
day and night. His two men arrived next morning, but everything was
still quiet, and there appeared no sign of a renewal of hostilities.
The Reece-Townsend trouble, for the time, at least, was over.[10]
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 10: Report of Adjutant-General Thomas Scurry of Texas (1899):
"During the month of March, 1899, Captain McDonald and two men were
ordered to Columbus, Colorado County, for the purpose of preventing
trouble between the Townsend and Reece factions. Captain McDonald went
alone, his men not being able to reach him in time, and his courage
and cool behavior prevented a conflict between the two factions." For
fuller official details of this and other work of that period, see
Appendix B.]
XXXI
The Trans-cedar Mystery
THE LYNCHING OF THE HUMPHREYS AND WHAT HAPPENED TO THE LYNCHERS
Captain McDonald was still at Columbus when he received a telegram
ordering him to report at once to Assistant Attorney General Morris and
the local officials at Athens, Henderson County, Texas, for the purpose
of investigating the lynching of three respectable citizens--a father
and two sons, named Humphrey--in a timbered tract between Trinity River
and Cedar Creek, known as the Trans-cedar Bottoms.
Henderson County is in East Texas, and the Trans-cedar Bottoms
constitute just the locality and neighborhood for a murder of the
Humphrey kind. Shut-in, thickly timbered and lonely--it is a place for
low morals to become lower with each generation--for scant intellect
to become scantier--for darkened minds to become darker and more
impervious to pity, indeed to any human impulse except crime.
The Humphreys had not fitted an environment like that. They were
honest, sturdy men--fearless and open in their dealings. They were a
menace to a gang who made moonshine whisky, stole whatever they could
lay hands on and would swear a man's life away for a lean hog. It was
necessary for the welfare of the neighborhood that the Humphreys be
disposed of, and they were taken by a mob one night and hanged--three
of them to one tree--they having been placed upon horses and the horses
driven from under them. Then, when the ropes had proven too long, and
the feet of the three Humphreys had touched the ground, the mob had
bent back the legs of the victims at the knee and tied the feet upward
to the hands, so that the Humphreys might swing clear.
Bill McDonald knew something of the Trans-cedar country, and the
character of its settlement, for, as we have seen in a former chapter,
he had passed his youth and his early manhood at Henderson and at
Mineola, both within seventy-five miles of that very district. He set
out alone by first train, and arriving at Athens, learned the details
of the ghastly crime which already, through the telegraphed reports,
had stirred the entire State. He learned that the lynching had taken
place about twenty-five miles from Athens, near a little post-office
named Aley, and he hurried to that place, without delay, taking with
him one Guy Green, an Athens lawyer, familiar with the neighborhood.
With Green, the Ranger went straight to the scene of the murder and
made an examination of the tracks and various clues that remained.
Two days had passed since the crime, and many of the signs had been
obliterated. Still there were enough for a man with the faculties
of Captain Bill. He identified no less than four trails--one, as he
decided, made by five horses; another by three; a third by two, and
a fourth the track of a single horse. The trails wound in and out,
crossed and recrossed, and were evidently made with the idea of balking
pursuit. Captain McDonald did not consider them especially difficult,
and having satisfied himself that they could be followed, he went on to
Aley, for it was near nightfall.
At Aley he joined Assistant Attorney General Ned Morris; District
Attorney Jerry Crook; Tom Bell, sheriff of Bell County, and Ben.
E. Cabell, sheriff of Dallas County, who had come over to aid the
investigation. He was assured that the work was going to be hard--that
the greater portion of the inhabitants were either in sympathy with
the lynchers or were so much in terror of them that it would be almost
impossible to get direct evidence. Captain Bill looked thoughtful as he
listened.
"Well," he said, "I'm going to stay here till I get it, and I'm going
after it just like I was going for a doctor. You can give it out that I
mean business and that nobody need to be afraid to testify. I'll take
care of them."
He discussed the case with the officials and learned that one Joe
Wilkerson was suspected as having been connected with the murder--it
being well-known that Wilkerson had pursued the Humphreys and
bemeaned them; finally accusing them of stealing hogs, and swearing
to some meat which the Humphreys had earned by digging wells. In the
evidence it had developed that the Wilkerson hogs, though mortgaged
by him, had in reality been sold, and that he had thus attempted to
evade the consequences of this illegal act by saddling the Humphreys
with a still heavier crime. The Humphreys had not been convicted, but
Wilkerson had never ceased to vilify them. Later, one of the Humphrey
boys, George, had been set upon by some of the Wilkerson crowd and in
defending himself had killed, with a knife, one of his assailants. The
courts--there were honest courts in Athens--had cleared him, but in
the Trans-cedar tribunal he had been doomed. These facts constituted
about all the foundation of known motive upon which McDonald would have
to build his evidence. It was while he was discussing these things
with the attorneys on the night of his arrival that a man rode up to
the gate just outside and called his name. Captain Bill rose, but the
others protested, declaring that it might be a plot to shoot him in the
dark. However, he went, six-shooter in hand, and sticking it in the
face of the caller, demanded his business. The man protested that he
meant no harm, but had come from one Buck Holley, who lived two miles
down the road and said he knew Captain McDonald and wanted to see him.
The Ranger Captain reflected a minute.
"I don't know any Buck Holley," he said. "I knew a scoundrel by the
name of Bill Holley some years ago up in the Pan-handle, and if that is
who it is I don't want to see him. I judge you fellows have got a gang
down the road there to shoot me from ambush. Who are you, anyway?"
The man said his name was Monasco; that he was staying at Holley's and
that he had a brother named Bill Monasco, in Amarillo.
"I know Bill Monasco," McDonald said, "and he has a brother that was
sent to the penitentiary. Is that you?"
The visitor acknowledged that he was the man--that he had been recently
released.
"Well," said McDonald, "that's about the kind of a crowd that I would
expect to find Bill Holley running with, and you can tell this _Buck_
Holley, as you call him, that I suspect him of being connected with
this mob, and that I used to make him stand hitched in the Pan-handle,
and that I'm going to do the same here."
Monasco said "good-night," and Captain McDonald never saw him again.
Somewhat later, when he met Bill Holley on the streets of Athens, he
said:
"Look here, Bill, I'm afraid your partner, Monasco, didn't tell you the
message I sent the night I came. I said I didn't know Buck Holley, but
that I knew a sorry bulldozing scoundrel by the name of Bill Holley,
and that I supposed he was down the road there to take a shot at me
from ambush. You weren't in this lynching mob, I reckon, but they're
your friends, and you'd help 'em if you could. Now, Bill, you've been
courting a funeral a good while, and if you try any of your nonsense
here, you'll win out."
He searched Holley for weapons and relieved him of a big pocket-knife,
the bully protesting that he was no longer a bad man. Captain Bill
learned, however, that he had recently whipped his wife, taken her
clothes and driven her away from home, and later had attempted to kill
her father for interfering in her behalf.
The Ranger Captain was out early the morning after his arrival in
Aley, and on the trail. The tracks of the five horses were followed
to the houses of Joe Wilkerson and his tenant, and to the homes of
John and Arthur Greenhaw. In Wilkerson's lot the officers found part
of a well-rope, the remainder of which had been cut away. It matched
precisely with the rope used to hang the Humphreys--the freshly cut
ends being the same on both. The Wilkersons and one of the Greenhaws
were taken into custody forthwith, and other arrests followed, as the
criminals were tracked home.
But it was hard to get evidence. A few who were anxious to testify,
hesitated through fear. Others, subpœnaed and examined, were evidently
in sympathy with the mob and withheld their knowledge accordingly.
Captain Bill had been reinforced by Private Olds from Company C, and
now began systematic investigation. He established his court of
inquiry under a brush arbor--a framework of poles, with brush a-top to
keep out the sun--and there for two months held high inquisition. It
was a curious, exclusive court. The Ranger Captain gave it out that he
would invite such attendance as he needed, and that mere spectators
would kindly remain away. His wishes were heeded.
Little by little evidence collected. Men willing to testify gained
confidence from Captain Bill's assurance of protection and told what
they knew. Men unwilling to testify found themselves unable to hide
their facts where they could not be reached by the keen persuasive
probing of the man with those ferret eyes, that quiet voice and those
alert extended ears. The testimony brought out the facts the Humphreys
had known of an illicit still run by two men--one Polk Weeks and a man
named Johns. Also that they had known of John Greenhaw stealing cattle
and hogs, and that John Greenhaw had once drawn a gun on the elder
Humphrey, who had taken it away from him, unloaded and returned it,
instead of killing him with it and rendering the community a service.
These things, added to the other provocations already named, had
made the Humphreys sufficiently unpopular in a neighborhood like the
Trans-cedar Bottoms to warrant their being hung to a limb, trussed up
to swing clear of the ground.
In the course of time, practically every resident of that district
had been before the brush-arbor court of inquiry, and if a shorthand
report had been taken of that testimony it would have furnished
material for many a character study and tale of fiction.
Guilty knowledge of the crime actually killed a man named Eli Sparks,
whose conscience tortured him day and night to the point of giving
testimony, yet whose fears upon the witness stand caused him to
withhold the truth. He was a large red-faced man, evidently greatly
excited when questioned, and concealing more than he told. Soon after
his first examination he met Captain McDonald and offered to testify
again, saying that he had been too frightened to tell the truth, the
first time, but thought he could do better, now. The Ranger Captain
scrutinized him keenly and made the prophecy that Eli Sparks would not
live thirty days, unless he got rid of the load on his conscience. He
died in just half that time; not, however, until he had fully confessed
a complete knowledge of the details of preparation for the crime, and
how once he had gone with the mob when they had intended hanging the
Humphreys, but for some reason had postponed the event. The poor wretch
did not go the second time, but his guilt nevertheless dragged him to
the grave.
Another who came to the brush-arbor inquiry was a banker who testified
that the Humphreys had received their just deserts for the reason that
they were thieves and should have been hung long before.
"How did _you_ come to escape, then?" asked McDonald. "I understand
that you were once indicted for cattle-stealing yourself, and that you
actually got the cattle. Is that so?"
Under severe pressure the witness admitted that there had been such a
charge and that the cattle had by some means got into his possession.
He got away at last and disappeared out of the case entirely, though he
had been active up to that point.
The efforts of the men believed to be concerned as principals in the
crime, to establish their innocence, were sometimes wary, sometimes
crudely absurd, and always fruitless. The mesh of fact that was weaving
and linking itself about them became daily more tightly woven, more
impossible to tear away. Knowing themselves closely watched, they dared
not attempt flight. To do so would be to confess guilt, and capture
would be well-nigh certain. Like Ahab, having compassed the death
of a neighbor, they "lay in sackcloth and went softly." Finally it
came to pass that three of these "children of Belial" turned State's
evidence--that is, they confessed fully, sacrificing their comrades,
under the law, to save themselves. Eleven men, including these three,
were brought to trial.
Yet, conviction was not easy, in spite of the direct character of the
evidence. The accused men employed lawyers who were ready to balk at
no methods that would save their clients, and there were plenty of
witnesses willing to testify as instructed. Efforts were also made to
influence and coerce the State's witnesses, and McDonald found it
necessary to threaten certain counsel for the defense with subornation
proceedings, before he could get the way clear for action. Even then
it was thought advisable to transfer the cases to Palestine, in the
adjoining county, for trial--sentiment in the neighborhood of Athens
being regarded as too favorable to the accused. In the final trial
John and Arthur Greenhaw and Polk Weeks, who were not only murderers,
but cowardly traitors, were given their freedom in exchange for their
evidence that sent their eight associates to the Penitentiary for life.
Polk Weeks, in giving his evidence, appeared much disturbed, but
confessed how he had climbed the tree and tied the ropes, and tied them
too long, making it necessary for the legs of the Humphreys to be bent
upwards, to clear the ground. John Greenhaw corroborated this, but
grinned as he told it, remembering how amusing it had been. He did not
live to enjoy his freedom, for he was shot soon after his discharge by
a son of one of the murdered Humphreys--young Willie Humphrey, who was
never punished for that righteous act.[11]
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 11: Extract from a letter relating to the Humphrey case,
written by Assistant Attorney General N.B. Morris to Adjutant-General
Thos. Scurry; included in the latter's Annual Report for 1899-1900.
"You will remember that at the request of the sheriff, county attorney,
and other local authorities of that county, Captain McDonald and
Private Old were sent to assist them and myself in the investigation
of that horrible murder which was then enshrouded in a mystery that it
seemed almost impossible to uncover. Before the Rangers reached us the
people in the neighborhood seemed afraid to talk. They said they would
be murdered, too, if they took a hand in working up the case. About the
first thing that Captain McDonald did was to assure the people that he
and his associates had come to stay until every murderer was arrested
and convicted, and that those who assisted him would be protected. They
believed him, and in consequence thereof, soon began to talk and feel
that the law would be vindicated, and I am glad to say that it was. The
work of the Rangers in this one case is worth more to the State, in my
opinion, than your department will cost during your administration. In
fact such service cannot be valued in dollars and cents."[12]]
[Footnote 12: For further official details of this and other work of
that period, see Appendix B.]
XXXII
Other Mobs and Riots
RANGERS AT ORANGE AND AT PORT ARTHUR. FIVE AGAINST FOUR HUNDRED
A riot at Orange, Texas, followed the Trans-cedar episode. Orange is
a lumber town on the Sabine River in the extreme south-east portion
of Texas, and many negroes are employed in the sawmills. A white mob
composed of the tougher element in and about the city had organized,
with the purpose of driving the negroes away. The negroes received
anonymous warnings, and as they did not go immediately, were assaulted.
Some twenty or more of the mob, one dark night, surrounded a house
where a number of the colored men were assembled and opened fire,
killing one man and wounding several others. Ranger Captain Rogers
of Company E, with his men, was ordered to Orange, but soon after
his arrival, while making an arrest among desperate characters, was
disabled through injury to an old wound. Captain McDonald then came
down from Athens with Rangers Fuller, Jones, Old, McCauley, Saxon and
Bell. They lost no time in taking a firm grip on the situation and
landed twenty-one of the offenders in jail, with evidence sufficient
to convict. But it was a hard profitless work. Whatever the citizens
might want, Orange officially did not care for law and order. A gang
controlled the law of the community, and the order took care of itself.
Private Fuller found it necessary to kill one man who interfered with
an arrest and attempted to use a knife. Later, Fuller was summoned to
Orange, ostensibly to answer to the charge of illegal arrest, but in
reality for purposes of revenge. Captain McDonald protested to the
Governor that it was simply an excuse to get Fuller over there to kill
him.
It turned out accordingly: Fuller was washing his face in a barber shop
when the dead man's brother slipped up behind and shot him through
the head with a Winchester, killing him instantly. The assassin was
made chief deputy sheriff, as a reward, and in due time was himself
killed by the city marshal, who, in turn, was killed by the dead man's
family; which process of extermination has probably continued to this
day, and perhaps Orange has improved accordingly. There was room for
improvement. The cases against the twenty-one men arrested by Captain
Bill and his Rangers were all dismissed, as soon as the Rangers got out
of town.[13]
Port Arthur, also on the Sabine River, below Orange, is a city of oil
refineries, and is a port of entry, as its name implies, its outlet
being through Sabine Pass. In March, 1902, trouble broke out there
between the longshoremen and the operators of the refineries. As a
result the longshoremen struck, and when the operators introduced
Mexican laborers, the strikers, numbering about four hundred, drove
them away and issued a manifesto, declaring that no more Mexicans need
apply.
It was at this stage of the proceedings that Captain Bill was ordered
by Adjutant-General Scurry to take several men and be on hand when
the next Mexicans arrived. He took four--Privates Grude Brittain, Jim
Keeton, John Blanton and Blaze Delling--picked men--and arrived on the
ground a day in advance of the next hundred Mexicans, then on the way.
The Rangers proceeded immediately to the refineries, which are located
several miles from the city, and saw nothing of the longshoremen that
day. It was likely they would be on hand next morning when the Mexicans
would arrive. Threats had been made that these Mexicans would not be
allowed to leave the train for the refineries, and that if any such
attempt was made, blood would flow.
When the train pulled in next morning Captain Bill and his men were on
hand, fully expecting trouble. Everything was quiet, and the Mexicans
were marched by the "Rangers to the refineries and went immediately to
work. Then, there still being no sign of interference, Captain Bill
said:
"Well, boys, let's go down in town now and see what's become of the
mob."
The mob was not hard to find. It had assembled on the street and was a
good deal excited. Men were talking, and gesticulating, and denouncing,
in words noisy and violent. As Captain Bill and his men drew up, a
voice loud enough for them to hear said:
"There are them damned Rangers, now."
The little company of five continued to advance until within easy
talking distance; then McDonald said:
"What are you men doing here, gathered in a crowd this way, on the
street?"
A longshoreman asked:
"Are you the Rangers?"
"That's what we are," said Captain Bill.
"Come down to protect the Mexicans, I guess."
"That's what the Adjutant-General sent us for," returned Captain Bill
pleasantly.
"Well, we're not going to let them work."
"They're already working," smiled Captain Bill.
"How many men did you bring with you?" asked the leader of the rioters.
"Enough to whip this crowd, if a fight is what you're looking for,"
Captain Bill answered--still pleasant.
"Where are they?"
"Here," said Captain Bill, indicating his brigade of four--five with
himself.
"Hell!" said the leader of the longshoremen, "there are four hundred of
us."
"Well, that makes it just about even," drawled Captain Bill, more
pleasant than ever, "if you think you want to fight, get at it!"
The leader of the strikers looked at the little army thoughtfully. Then
he turned to the others.
"Boys," he said, "I think these Rangers are all right. Let's all have a
drink!"
The Rangers politely declined this invitation, but continued on
friendly terms with the strikers. There was no further trouble, and a
few days later Captain McDonald and one of his men left Port Arthur.
The remainder of his force stayed a few weeks longer, but the war was
over.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 13: For official particulars concerning this incident and
other work of that period, see Appendix B.]
XXXIII
Other Work in East Texas
DISTRICTS WHICH EVEN A RANGER FINDS HOPELESS. THE TOUCHSTONE MURDER.
THE CONFESSION OF AB ANGLE
It was only a short distance--as distances go in Texas (only a hundred
miles or so, in a southeasterly direction)--from the Trans-cedar
country, made celebrated by the Humphrey lynching, to certain sections
of Walker, Houston, Madison and Trinity counties, where similar social
conditions have developed.
In Kittrell's Cut-off, for instance, and around Groveton, there has
developed a special talent for assassination. Men walking along the
road in daylight are sometimes shot from behind. When it is nightfall
the assassin may lie in wait by the roadside. If he gets the wrong man
by mistake, it is no difference--it keeps him in practice. Sometimes
the victim is called to his door at night and shot down from the dark.
These are a few of the methods for removing individuals not favorably
regarded by the active set, and many other forms of murder are adopted
or invented for particular cases. Even Captain Bill McDonald found
these districts hopeless as fields for reform, he said.