[Illustration: SERGEANT J.B. GILLETT, TEXAS RANGER IN 1879]
SIX YEARS WITH THE
TEXAS RANGERS
1875 TO 1881
BY
JAMES B. GILLETT
Ex-Sergeant Company "A," Frontier Battalion
[Illustration]
Von Boeckmann-Jones Co., Publishers
Austin, Texas
Copyright 1921
by
James B. Gillett
TO MY OLD RANGER COMRADES
WHEREVER THEY MAY BE
FOREWORD
To write a true and complete history of the Texas Rangers as a state
organization would require much time and an able historian. I am not a
historian and could not undertake such an exhaustive treatise, which
would fill several volumes the size of this, and it is only at the
earnest solicitation of my children, frontier friends, and old comrades
that I have undertaken to write a short history of the rangers during
the years I served with them. This little volume, then, has only the
modest aim of picturing the life of the Texas Rangers during the years
1875-1881. I cannot, at this late date, recount in detail all the
scouts that were made while I was in the service. I have, therefore,
confined myself principally to the description of those in which I was
a participant. Naturally, I remember those the best.
It has been said that truth never makes very interesting reading. Of
the accuracy of this dictum I leave my readers to judge, for I have
told my story just as I remember it, to the very best of my ability and
without any effort to embroider it with imagination. If I can interest
any of my old ranger comrades or even just one little boy that loves
to read about a real frontier, I will feel amply repaid for all the
time, trouble and expense expended in presenting this work.
I wish sincerely to thank Miss Mary Baylor for placing at my disposal
all the books and papers of her distinguished father, Captain G.W.
Baylor. And I would be an ingrate, indeed, did I fail here to record
my obligation to my wife without whose inspiration and sympathetic
encouragement this book had never been written.
That I might show the training of the typical Texas Ranger, I have
ventured to include a short biography of my own life up to the time I
became a ranger, June 1, 1875.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter Page
I The Making of a Ranger 11
II The Texas Rangers 29
III I Join the Rangers 41
IV My First Brush With the Indians 55
V The Mason County War 72
VI Major Jones and His Escort 81
VII The Horrell-Higgins Feud 103
VIII Service With Reynolds, the Intrepid 118
IX Sam Bass and His Train Robber Gang 155
X A Winter of Quiet and a Transfer 183
XI The Salt Lake War and a Long Trek 192
XII Our First Fight With Apaches 212
XIII Scouting in Mexico 225
XIV Treacherous Braves, a Faithful Dog, and a Murder 237
XV Victorio Becomes a Good Indian 251
XVI Some Undesirable Recruits 264
XVII Last Fight Between Rangers and Apaches 278
XVIII An International Episode 293
XIX Last Scoutings 309
XX Fruits of Ranger Service 322
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Sergeant J.B. Gillett Frontispiece
General Jno. B. Jones 29
Captain D.W. Roberts 41
Captain Neal Coldwell 102
Lieutenant N.O. Reynolds 118
Captain Geo. W. Baylor 192
Dallas Stoudenmire 322
James B. Gillett 332
SIX YEARS WITH THE TEXAS RANGERS
CHAPTER I
THE MAKING OF A RANGER
The greatest shaping force in human life is heredity, and from my
father I inherited my love of the open frontier and its life of
danger and excitement. This inheritance was further strengthened by
environment and training, and finally led me to embrace the life of the
Texas Ranger. My father, James S. Gillett, was himself a frontiersman,
though born in the quieter, more settled east. At a very early age
his parents emigrated from his birthplace in Kentucky and moved to
Missouri. Here, after a short time, they died and the young orphan
lived with a brother-in-law. When still quite a youth my father, with
three other adventurous Missourians, set out on an expedition to Santa
Fe, New Mexico. While passing through Indian Territory, now the State
of Oklahoma, the little party was captured by the Osage Indians.
Fortunately for the youngsters, their captors did them no harm, but
turned them loose after two weeks' imprisonment in the redskin camp.
Despite this first setback my father persevered and reached Santa Fe.
Here he lived several years and mastered the Spanish language. Not long
afterward the emigrating fever again caught him up and he journeyed to
Van Buren, Arkansas. While living there he studied law and was admitted
to the bar. Shortly thereafter he removed to Paris, Texas, from which
he was elected to the Texas Legislature as representative for Lamar and
adjoining counties.
When Texas entered the Union and brought on the Mexican War with the
United States, my father enlisted in 1846 and rose to the rank of
major. In 1854 he was Adjutant-General of Texas. Between 1859 and 1860,
during the governorship of Sam Houston, my father was quartermaster of
a battalion of rangers, thus making it natural that I should also feel
drawn toward this famous organization.
At the beginning of the Civil War my father was beyond military
age,--he was born in 1810--but as the South became hard pressed for men
he enlisted in the spring of 1864 and served in Captain Carington's
company until the end of the war.
In 1850, a few years before he became Adjutant-General, my father
married Miss Bettie Harper, then a resident of Washington County,
Texas. My mother's father, Captain Harper, was a southern planter who
emigrated from North Carolina between 1846 and 1848, and, settling
in Washington County, established a Dixie plantation with a hundred
slaves. My mother was a highly cultivated and refined woman. On her
marriage she brought several negro servants with her to her new home
in Austin. Of her union with my father five children were born. The
first two, both boys, died in infancy. I was the fourth child born
to my parents, and first saw the light of day in Austin, Texas, on
November 4, 1856. An older sister, Mary, and a younger, Eva, survived
to adulthood.
At the close of the Civil War my father returned to his family pretty
well broken in health and probably also in spirit. His slaves were
all freed and his land holdings, about two hundred acres of cedar
land, some five or six miles from Austin, and a tract of pine land in
Grimes County, Texas, were not very productive. There was not much law
practice in Austin in the early post-war days, but my father set to
work resolutely to provide for his family. Though I did not realize
it then, I now know that he had a hard struggle. I was only eight
and a half years old when father returned to us from the Confederate
Army, but I remember he used to amuse himself by relating to us vivid
accounts of his Indian fighting and frontier adventures. What heredity
gave me a predilection for was strengthened by these narratives, and I
early conceived a passionate desire to become a frontiersman and live a
life of adventure.
In those early days in Texas there were no free schools in Austin,
so my father sent the three of us, Mary, Eva, and myself, to the pay
schools. None of these was very good, and I lost nearly two years at
a German school, trying to mix German and English. I have never been
of a studious nature--the great out of doors always called to me, and
I found the desk's dead wood particularly irksome. When school closed
in the early summer of 1868, like some of Christ's disciples, I went
fishing and never attended school an hour thereafter. For books I
substituted the wide-open volume of nature and began the life of sport
and freedom that was to prepare me later for service with the rangers.
As poor as he was my father always kept a pony, and I learned to ride
almost before I could walk. Raised on the banks of the Colorado River,
I learned to swim and fish so long ago that I cannot now remember when
I was unable to do either. I fished along the river with a few hand
lines and used to catch quantities of gaspergou or drums. These were
fine fish and sold readily on the streets of Austin, so I soon saved
money enough to buy a small skiff or fishing boat. I now bought a trot
line with a hundred hooks and began fishing in real earnest. About
five or six miles below Austin on the Colorado was Mathews' mill. Just
below the dam of this mill the fishing was always good, and here I made
my fishing grounds. I had a large dry goods box with inch auger holes
bored in it. This box, sunk in the river and secured by a rope tied to
a stob, made a capital trap, and into it I dropped my fish as they were
caught. In this way I kept them alive and fresh until I had enough to
take into town.
Many free negroes were farming along the banks of the Colorado, and
I would hire a pony of them for twenty-five cents a trip when I was
ready to take my catch into town. Many times I have left the river by
starlight and reached the Old Market House at Austin at dawn, spread
out a gunny sack, bunch my fish and be ready for the first early
marketers. I kept up my fishing until the fish stopped biting in the
fall of 1868.
Confederate soldiers returning home from the war brought with them many
old Enfield muskets. These were smooth bore and chambered one large
ball and three buckshot. These old guns, loaded with small shot, were
fine on birds and squirrels, but they had one serious objection--they
would kick like a mule. As the boys used to say, they "would get meat
at both ends!" A day's shooting with one of these muskets would leave
one's shoulder and arm black and blue for a week.
When fishing failed I decided to become a hunter, and bought one of
these old guns for $3.50. It was as long as a fence rail, and at my age
I could not begin to hold it out and shoot off hand, so I had to use a
rest. The Enfield musket had the longest barrel I ever saw on a gun,
and the hammer was as long as a man's hand. I could cock my gun with
both hands, but if I failed to get a shot I was not strong enough to
let the hammer down without letting it get away, so I had to carry it
cocked to keep from losing the cap. I would take it off the tube and
put it in my pocket until I had a chance for another shot. I remember
once when I cocked my musket I could see no cap on the tube and,
thinking it had fallen off, I pulled the trigger. The cap had stuck up
in the old hammer and the gun roared like a cannon. I was always sure
to look for the cap after this. I did not make much headway using this
kind of weapon, but it taught me the use and danger of firearms,--a
knowledge I was to find very useful in later years.
When fishing opened up in the spring of 1869 I returned to my fishing
lines, and in the fall of the same year I bought a double-barreled
shotgun for $12. With it I killed quail, ducks and other small game,
all of which I sold on the streets of Austin. By the fall of 1870 I was
fourteen years old and could handle a gun rather well for one of my age.
Early that winter wild geese came south by the hundreds. I used to hunt
them down the Colorado River, ten or twelve miles below Austin. The
birds would feed in the corn fields in the early morning, then flock
to the sand bars in the river during the middle of the day. There was
nothing silly about those geese, for they were smart enough to frequent
only the big islands, three or four hundred yards from any cover. It
was impossible to reach them with any kind of a shotgun. I used to
slip up to them as close as I could and watch them for hours, trying
to think of some plan to get within gun shot of them. I saw as many
as a thousand geese on those bars at a single time. I have thought
regretfully of those birds many times since, and have wished I could
have shot into one of those flocks with a modern rifle--I could have
killed a dozen geese at a shot.
In the spring of 1871 I had my first trip to the frontier of Texas. My
father traded some of his Grimes County pine land for a bunch of cattle
in Brown County, and took me with him when he went to receive the
herd. This was the first time I had ever been twenty-five miles from
Austin. I was delighted with the trip, the people, and the country.
Those big, fine frontiersmen, each wearing a pair of sixshooters and
most of them carrying a Winchester, fired my boyish imagination. Their
accounts of frontier life and their Indian tales fascinated me. I
wanted to stay right there with them and lost all interest in ever
living in town again. During the same year my father drove several
bunches of cattle to Austin and I helped him on those drives. Thus I
began to be a cowboy,--my first step toward the life of the open, upon
which I had set my heart.
In the summer of 1872 my mother's health began to fail and my father
took her to Lampasas Springs. The water seemed to help her so much that
he decided to make Lampasas our home. At that time Lampasas County was
strictly a cattle country, but there was not much cow hunting during
the winter in those days. The cattlemen and the cowboys spent a good
deal of time in town just having a good time. During this period I
became well acquainted with them. In the spring of 1873 my father made
a trip back to Austin on some business. The frontier had been calling
to me ever since my first visit there, and I now took advantage of my
father's absence to slip out to Coleman County, at that time on the
frontier of Texas.
Monroe Cooksey and Jack Clayton had bought a bunch of cattle in Coleman
County and I saw the outfit when it left Lampasas. I was slightly
acquainted with most of the men in this outfit, so I decided to follow
it and try to get work. It was an Indian country every step of the way,
and I was afraid to make the trip alone. In a day or two I met a man
named Bob McCollum. He was hauling a load of flour to Camp Colorado and
let me travel with him. I bade my mother and sisters good bye and did
not see them again until the next December.
We reached old Camp Colorado without mishap in about five days. Clayton
and Cooksey's outfit was there loading up supplies for the spring work.
I stood around watching the cowboys making their preparations, but
lacked the courage to ask them for work. Finally, the outfit started
down on Jim Ned Creek to camp for dinner. I went with the men and at
last got up spunk enough to ask Mr. Monroe Cooksey for a job. He looked
at me for a minute and then asked, "What kind of work can a boy of your
size do?"
I told him I was willing to do anything a boy of my age could do. He
made no reply and we went on and camped for dinner. After dinner the
men made ready to go over on Hoard's Creek to camp for the night. The
boys made a rope corral and began to catch their mounts. I just stood
there like an orphan watching them. Presently Mr. Cooksey dashed his
rope on a heavy set bay horse. The animal showed the whites of his
eyes, made a rattling noise in his nose and struggled so violently that
it took three men on the rope to hold him. Mr. Cooksey then turned
to me and said, "Here, boy, if you can ride this * * * (giving an
unmentionable name to the horse) you have a job cinched."
I turned, grabbed my saddle, bridle and blanket and started to the
animal. An elderly man in the outfit headed me off.
"Young man," he said, "this is an old spoiled horse, and unless you are
a mighty good rider you had better not get on him."
I brushed him aside.
"Pshaw, I'm hunting work, and while I'm not a broncho buster, I will
make a stab at riding him if he kills me."
By this time one of the boys had caught the horse by both ears and was
holding him fast. They threw my saddle on him, tightened up the cinch,
and finally, after much trouble, got the bridle on him and lifted me
into the saddle. When I had fixed myself as best I could they let the
animal go. He made two or three revolting leaps forward and fell with
his feet all doubled up under him.
Mr. Cooksey seemed to realize the danger I was in, and shouted to me to
jump off. Before I could shake myself loose the old horse had scrambled
to his feet and dashed off in a run. I circled him around to the remuda
and rode him until night without further trouble. I had won my job, but
it was a dirty trick for a lot of men to play on a boy, and a small boy
at that. However, to their credit, I wish to say they never put me on a
bad horse again but gave me the best of gentle ponies to ride.
Our first work was to gather and deliver a herd of cattle to the
Horrell boys, then camped on Home Creek. We worked down to the Colorado
River, and when we were near old Flat Top ranch the men with the outfit
left me to drive the remuda down the road after the mess wagon while
they tried to find a beef. I had gone only a mile or two when I saw a
man approaching me from the rear. As he came up I thought he was the
finest specimen of a frontiersman I had ever seen. He was probably six
feet tall, with dark hair and beard. He was heavily armed, wearing two
sixshooters and carrying a Winchester in front of him and was riding
a splendid horse with a wonderful California saddle. He rode up to me
and asked whose outfit it was I was driving. I told him Cooksey and
Clayton's. He then inquired my name. When I told him he said, "Oh, yes;
I saw your father in Lampasas a few days ago and he told me to tell you
to come home and go to school."
I made no reply, but just kept my horses moving. The stranger then
told me his name was Sam Gholston. He said it was dangerous for one so
young to be in a bad Indian country and unarmed, that the outfit should
not have left me alone, and counselled me to go back to my parents. I
would not talk to him, so he finally bade me good bye and galloped off.
His advice was good, but I had not the least idea of going home--I had
embraced the frontier life.
The Cooksey and Clayton outfit did not stay in the cow business long.
After filling their contract with the Horrell boys they sold out to
Joe Franks. I suppose I was sold along with the outfit, at least I
continued to work for Mr. Franks. A kinder heart than that of Joe
Franks never beat in a human breast. He was big of stature and big
of soul. He seemed to take an interest in his youthful cow-puncher,
and asked me where I was raised and how I came to be away out on the
frontier. As cold weather came on that fall he gave me one of his top
coats. It made a pretty good overcoat for me and came down quite to
my knees. The sleeves were so long I could double them up and hold my
bridle reins, and in one garment I had both coat and gloves.
During the summer of 1873 John Hitsons, Sam Gholston and Joe Franks
were all delivering cattle to old John Chislom, whose outfit was camped
on the south side of the Concho River, about where the town of Paint
Rock now stands. The other outfits were scattered along down the river
about half a mile apart. There were probably seventy-five or a hundred
men in the four camps and at least five hundred horses. One evening
just after dark the Indians ran into Gholston's outfit, captured about
sixty head of horses and got away with them. The redskins and the
cowboys had a regular pitched battle for a few moments, probably firing
two hundred shots. This fight was in plain view of our camp and I saw
the flash of every gun and heard the Indians and the cowboys yelling.
One of Mr. Gholston's men received a flesh wound in the leg and several
horses were killed. Two nights later the Indians ran upon Franks'
outfit and tried to take our horses. Bob Whitehead and Pete Peck were
on guard and stood the redskins off. We saved our horses by keeping
them in a pen for the remainder of the night. I was beginning to get a
taste of frontier life early in the game.
For years cattle had drifted south into Menard and Kimble Counties,
and Joe Franks was one of the first of the Coleman County outfits to
go south into the San Saba and Llano country. He worked the Big and
Little Saline Creeks, the Llano and San Saba Rivers and found many of
his cattle down there. By the last of November he had about finished
work for the year, and, gathering three hundred fat cows to drive to
Calvert, Texas, he left John Banister down on the Big Saline to winter
the horses.
I passed through Lampasas with these cows, and saw my mother and
sisters for the first time in nine months. When we reached Bell County
a cow buyer met us and bought the cows at $10 per head. He just got
down off his horse, lifted a pair of saddle bags off and counted out
three thousand dollars in twenty dollar gold pieces, and hired some
of the boys to help him drive the cattle into Calvert. Mr. Franks,
with most of the outfit, turned back to Lampasas. When he settled with
me Mr. Franks owed me just $200, and he handed me ten twenty dollar
gold pieces. It was the most money I had ever earned and almost the
greatest amount I had seen in my life.
I spent December and January at home, and early in February, 1874, I
started back to Menard County with Mr. Franks, as he was anxious to
begin work as early in the spring as possible. When we reached Parsons
Ranch on the Big Saline we learned that the Indians had stolen all his
horses,--seventy-five or eighty head, and he had left only eight or ten
old ponies. Mr. Franks sent Will Banister and myself back to Coleman
County to pick up ten or twelve horses he had left there the year
before, while he himself returned to Lampasas and Williamson Counties
to buy horses.
This trip from Menard County to Coleman County, a distance of about one
hundred and fifty miles, was rather a hazardous trip for two boys to
make alone. However, we were both armed with new Winchesters and would
have been able to put up a stiff fight if cornered. Our ponies were
poor and weak, so that it would have been impossible for us to have
escaped had we met a band of Indians. And this is what we came very
near doing.
There was no road from Menard to Coleman at that time, so we just
traveled north. I had cow hunted over most of that country the year
before and knew by landmarks pretty well how to go. We reached the
head of Big Brady Creek one evening while a cold north wind was
blowing. We camped for the night right down in the bed of a dry creek
to get out of the wind. We saddled up next morning and had not gone
more than a hundred and fifty yards from camp before we discovered
where sixteen or seventeen Indians had just gone along,--at least there
was that number of pony tracks. These redskins had hopped a skunk,
gotten down and killed it with a chunk of wood. When we found the body
it had scarcely quit bleeding. We saw moccasin tracks as if the savages
had all gotten off their ponies for a few moments. Banister and I made
the trip safely, and returned to Menard County early in March. Mr.
Franks soon came with a new bunch of horses, and we went right to work
gathering and delivering cattle.
About the first of June, Bee Clayton came to the outfit from Lampasas
County and told me my father had been dead more than a month. Mr.
Franks settled with me and I started for home the next day. Upon
reaching Lampasas I began work with Barrett and Nicholls' outfit. They
were the biggest cattle owners in that country and ran three large
outfits, one in Llano County, one in San Saba County, and another in
Lampasas. I worked with the last mentioned outfit that I might be near
my mother and sisters.
I had now become familiar with most aspects of frontier life. I had cow
punched and seen Indian raids, but I had not yet met the Texas "bad
man"--the murderer and the bandit. My education was not long neglected,
for it was while working with Barrett and Nicholls that I made my
acquaintance with gentry of that ilk. One day five or six of our boys
were sitting down in a circle eating on a side of calf ribs. One of the
men, Jack Perkins, suddenly became involved in an altercation with Levi
Dunbar, and, without warning, jerked out his six-shooter and shot him
to death. In rising to my feet I had my right shoulder powder burned.
I stayed with Barrett and Nicholls until they quit work about December
1, 1874. In those days cattle were not worked much in the winter
months, so I spent the winter at home. By spring I had become as
restless as a bear and longed to get back to the frontier. Finally
I could stand the idleness no longer and told my mother I was going
back to Menard County to work for Mr. Franks. I reached the town of
Menardville early in March, 1875. There I learned that Joe Franks was
then at work on South Llano in Kimble County, about sixty miles from
Menard. Wess Ellis had just bought the Rufe Winn stock of cattle
and was ready to start on a cow hunt. He wanted me to work for him,
declaring he could pay me as much as Joe Franks or anybody else, so I
hired to him for $30 a month,--the top wages for a cowboy at that time.
During the year I was at home a company of Texas Rangers commanded
by Captain Dan W. Roberts had been stationed over on Little Saline.
This company received its mail at Menardville, and I became acquainted
with this famous organization. Their free, open life along the
frontier had fired me with longing to become one of them and join in
their adventurous lives. In the spring of 1875 the Governor of Texas
authorized Captain Roberts to increase his command to fifty men. Almost
immediately Captain Roberts announced in Menardville and vicinity that
he would enlist twenty good men on June 1st to bring his company to
full strength. Here was my opportunity, and I decided I would be one of
those twenty recruits.
[Illustration: _Jno. B. Jones_]