FRUITS OF RANGER SERVICE
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.
[Illustration: 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.
The inquest, being held in such a public place, attracted a crowd
of onlookers. Besides the rangers, Marshal Stoudenmire, ex-Marshal
Campbell, and Bill Johnson were present. A man named Gus Krempkau acted
as interpreter. The trial dragged along until the noon hour and the
proceedings were adjourned for dinner. The rangers went at once to
their quarters to prepare their meal, though there was still a crowd
standing about the scene of the inquest. Krempkau came out of the room
and was accosted by John Hale, who had become offended at the way the
interpreter had interpreted the evidence. After a few hot words Hale
quickly pulled his pistol and shot Krempkau through the head, killing
him instantly. Marshal Stoudenmire ran up, shot at Hale but missing
him killed a Mexican bystander. At the second shot from the marshal's
pistol John Hale fell dead. George Campbell had pulled his pistol and
was backing off across the street when Stoudenmire suddenly turned and
shot him down. Four men were thus killed almost within the twinkling of
an eye.
Stoudenmire was held blameless by the better class of citizens for the
part he had played, but a certain sporting element--mostly friends of
Campbell--was highly indignant at Marshal Stoudenmire for killing
Campbell, and declared the latter had been murdered. The Manning
Brothers were especially bitter against the marshal, as he had killed
their ranch foreman, Hale, and their friend, Campbell. This feeling
against Marshal Stoudenmire never subsided, and just a little more than
one year after, Dallas Stoudenmire was shot and killed in a street
fight by Jim and Dr. Manning within fifty feet of the spot where
Stoudenmire himself had killed the three men the year before.
The friends of George Campbell now sought to take the life of Marshal
Stoudenmire, and they used as their instrument Bill Johnson, a man
almost simple mentally. The plotters furnished Johnson with plenty of
free whisky and when they had made him drunk they told him Stoudenmire
had no right to catch him in the collar and shake him as if he were
a cur dog. Johnson finally agreed to kill the marshal. Armed with a
double-barreled shotgun the tool of the plotters took up a position one
night behind a pile of bricks in San Antonio Street where it enters El
Paso and lay in wait for his intended victim.
Marshal Stoudenmire was then down at Neal Nuland's Acme saloon, and it
was well known he would soon make his round up the street. Shortly
afterward he was seen coming, and when he had approached within
twenty-five feet of the brick pile Bill Johnson rose to his feet and
fired both barrels of his shotgun. Unsteady with drink, Johnson's fire
went over the marshal's head and left him unharmed. The marshal pulled
his pistol and with lightning rapidity filled Johnson's body full of
holes. At the same moment Campbell's friends, posted on the opposite
side of the street, opened fire on Stoudenmire and slightly wounded him
in one foot, but the marshal charged his attackers and single-handed
put them to flight.
From this day Marshal Stoudenmire had the roughs of El Paso eating out
of his hand. There was no longer any necessity for the rangers to help
him police the town and they were withdrawn. Stoudenmire's presence on
the streets was a guarantee of order and good government. He was a good
man for the class of people he had to deal with, yet he knew there were
those in El Paso that were his bitter enemies and always on the alert
for a chance to take his life. This caused him to drink, and when under
the influence of liquor he became mean and overbearing to some of his
most ardent supporters, so much so that by the spring of 1882 he was
asked to resign. In a dramatic and fiery speech Stoudenmire presented
his resignation and declared he had not been treated fairly by the
City Council and that he could straddle them all.
Immediately on leaving the rangers, as narrated at the close of the
preceding chapter, I accepted a position of captain of guards on the
Santa Fe Railroad under my friend, Captain Thatcher. I did not long
remain in the railroad's employ, and after a few months I resigned my
position there to become assistant city marshal under Mr. Stoudenmire.
Upon the resignation of Mr. Stoudenmire I was appointed city marshal
of El Paso. Upon my appointment the ex-marshal walked over, took me by
the hand and said, "Young man, I congratulate you on being elected city
marshal and at the same time I wish to warn you that you have more than
a man's size job on your hands."
Stoudenmire at once secured the appointment as United States deputy
marshal of the Western District of Texas with headquarters at El Paso.
Stoudenmire always treated me with the greatest consideration and
courtesy and gave me trouble on only one occasion. I reproduce here a
clipping from an El Paso paper of the time:
"Last Thursday night a shooting scrape in which ex-Marshal Stoudenmire
and ex-Deputy Page played the leading parts occurred at the Acme
saloon. It seems that early in the evening Page had a misunderstanding
with Billy Bell. Stoudenmire acted as peacemaker in the matter. In
doing so he carried Page to Doyle's concert hall, where the two
remained an hour or so and got more or less intoxicated. About midnight
they returned to the Acme and soon got into a quarrel. Stoudenmire
drew his pistol and fired at Page; the latter, however, knocked the
weapon upward and the ball went into the ceiling. Page then wrenched
the pistol from Stoudenmire and the latter drew a second pistol and the
two combatants were about to perforate each other when Marshal Gillett
appeared on the premises with a double-barrel shotgun and corralled
both of them. They were taken before court the following morning and
fined $25 each and Stoudenmire was placed under bond in the sum of $250
to keep the peace."
My election to the marshalship of El Paso I attribute solely to my
training as a ranger and to the notoriety my kidnapping of Baca out of
Mexico had given me, so that the marshalship of the town was one of the
direct fruits of my ranger service.
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
[Illustration:
_J.B. Gillett_
IN
1921]