The Men Who War the Star: The Story of the Texas Rangers (49 page)

The Dallas
News
went one step farther, editorializing:

The service which Mr. Canales has rendered in this matter merited a more generous recognition than it received from the committee. Merely to admit that Mr. Canales was “prompted by no improper motives” is to ignore that he rendered a large public service in disclosing a state of affairs which neither the people nor the Legislature knew anything about, which would probably have suffered to continue indefinitely if he had not the courage and sense of responsibility necessary to force a consideration of it. . . .

Apparently one of the chief recommendations which a man seeking employment as a Ranger has been able to give himself in the past has been that he is dexterous in the manipulation of a sixshooter and not averse to the use of it. So long as that talent and that proclivity are made the chief qualifications for service, it will be inevitable that the force will be made up in a large part of men who are not morally fitted to exercise the freedom and discretion which, it seems, must be given them, to make them effective.
³⁸

Conclusion:

The End and the Myth

The 1920s and 1930s were a traumatic period for the Texas
Rangers. One question in the minds of many was exactly what a Ranger was supposed to do in a modern society. Texas-born NewYorker Owen White saw the Ranger as an honored relic of an earlier, simpler era, but out of place in a world of superfluous and artificial values.

“The Texas Ranger is no more!” White lamented. “And he has passed away, not gloriously, with his boots on and wrapped in a winding sheet of his own six-shooter smoke but, ignominiously and supinely he has succumbed to the hysteria of a nation and, along with a number of other time-honored and excellent institutions, he has become a collateral victim of the operations of the deadly Volstead Act.”¹

Rangers had not been reduced to mere Prohibition agents under the federal Volstead Act. They still were statewide peace officers. Nevertheless they, like the many other “time-honored and excellent institutions,” were having to adjust to modern times. With the end of the border disturbances, the Rangers turned their attentions to general law enforcement and investigation, typical of that going on throughout the country. The two great issues of the period were Prohibition and the Ku Klux Klan. In enforcing the Prohibition laws, both state and federal agents were hindered by Texas’s long seacoast, the close proximity of Galveston to Cuba, the eight-hundred-mile border with Mexico, and the general problems of enforcing a law that nobody wanted or respected.

If Prohibition was viewed as a national joke, the Klan posed a far more serious situation in Texas, at least in the immediate postwar period. One citizen remembered, “It was all Democrats, but within the Democratic Party, you were either pro–Ku Klux or you were anti–Ku Klux. The Republicans . . . well, they were just quiet Republicans.” White-hooded horsemen were bold enough to ride openly down the main streets of Texas towns in daylight parades.²

Pa Ferguson hated the Klan. Prohibited by the legislature from holding office, he ran his wife, Miriam, on an anti-Klan platform. Ma Ferguson’s election signaled the end of the Klan’s real influence in Texas. With public opinion largely behind her, she secured legislation severely curtailing its activities. Despite this virtue and a generally progressive program, there was never any question that Pa was actually calling the shots, and Ma’s two nonconsecutive administrations marked the return of patronage and cronyism, particularly with the Rangers. One of her first acts was to discharge the entire Ranger Service. She then commissioned 2,300 “special” Rangers, some of whom were convicted felons.

Even when a Ranger was conscientious about his job, it brought trouble. Efforts to clean up crime and corruption in the “oil patch” of the Texas Panhandle brought cries of state interference in local affairs. This culminated in a suit to enjoin the Rangers from involving themselves in local government.³

Nevertheless, good Rangers like Frank Hamer, Clint Peoples, and Manuel T. Gonzaullus managed to uphold the integrity of the service. Known as the “Lone Wolf,”Gonzaullus was a Catalan, born in Barcelona. Nevertheless, as he walked down the streets of the rough oil towns, he seemed almost the embodiment of the classic Ranger. A newspaper editor who knew him in his prime wrote:

He was distinguished in appearance; rather heavily built, he moved with a silent tread, and his keen gray eyes seemed to be acutely aware of every person within their range. [He] had dark hair, olive complexion, and long, graceful fingers. He wore a neat, dark suit, boots, a large, white hat, and a broad belt with a big buckle. There was one other detail—a holster on each hip.
⁴

Of all the old Rangers, Frank Hamer made the transition from horse to automobile with the most ease. He had joined the Rangers in 1906, dropped out for several years while he worked in local law enforcement, then rejoined in 1915. He had seen service throughout central and west Texas and along the Mexican border. Even so, he is probably best remembered as a modern law officer who used old Ranger scouting methods to track Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow to their bloody end in the famous shootout in Louisiana in 1934.
⁵

The Bonnie and Clyde affair represented the end of one era and the beginning of another. The days of the horse-mounted Ranger who had to be as much a tracker and a gunfighter as a lawman were over. The age of the criminologist, with his automobile and crime scene kit, had begun. The transition for the Rangers became complete in 1935 when a reform administration swept the Fergusons from office and completely overhauled the state law enforcement system. On August 10, 1935, the Rangers were amalgamated with the Highway Patrol to form the Department of Public Safety.

As of 1996, the Ranger Service was composed of 105 men and women organized into six field companies headquartered in Houston, Garland (near Dallas), Lubbock, San Antonio, Midland, and Waco, and a headquarters company in Austin. Each field company includes a captain, a lieutenant, and about seventeen Rangers. All Rangers below lieutenant hold the rank of sergeant in the Department of Public Safety. Unlike DPS patrol officers, however, Rangers do not wear uniforms.
⁶

In Austin, the Ranger Division is commanded by the senior Ranger captain, supported by an assistant commander and approximately sixteen noncommissioned staff members. Nevertheless, in keeping with the frontier tradition, individual Rangers are scattered and decentralized in order to cover all 254 counties in Texas with maximum freedom of action.
⁷

WHILE THE REAL
Texas Ranger adapted to new methods and social values, the Texas Ranger of myth took on a new dimension, brought on by mass communications and mass marketing. Rangers had entered the realm of literature as early as the mid-nineteenth century, when Texas pioneers became aware of their role in history and began compiling memoirs and interviewing old comrades. Most of these were historical and nostalgia pieces, and it was several more decades before the Ranger became a key component of fiction. Many authors wrote Western stories in the nineteenth century. Among them was William Sidney Porter, who, as O. Henry, wrote stories about a character based on Capt. Lee Hall. But Western fiction did not truly come of age until 1902, with the publication of Owen Wister’s
The Virginian
. Describing cowboy life in Wyoming,
The Virginian
was the prototype, and has been so widely imitated that the original now seems trite. Nevertheless, Wister opened the door for Western novelists, most notably Zane Grey, who ultimately churned out fifty-four high-quality Westerns, most of which are still in print. Grey’s novels were set over the entire region, covering many different Western types in a wide variety of locales. Among his titles was
Lone Star Ranger,
dedicated to John R. Hughes, the Border Boss.

Hughes himself did much to promote the legend. Following his retirement, he grew a large, bushy beard and adopted Hollywood-style Western clothes, portraying the type of Texas lawman that people expected to see in the era of Tom Mix. He became a regular fixture as grand marshal of parades throughout the state. Yet somehow people knew that beneath the showmanship, he was the tough old Border Boss of the closing years of the frontier. Hughes, however, had outlived his era and his contemporaries. He became despondent and, at eighty-six, shot himself.
⁸

The 1920s and 1930s were the golden age of pulp magazines, heirs to the nineteenth-century dime novels that had made celebrities out of people like Buffalo Bill Cody. One of the earliest pulps was
Frontier Times,
which made its debut in the fall of 1923. Published in Bandera, Texas, by J. Marvin Hunter, the magazine billed itself as preserving the record of “Frontier History, Border Tragedy, Pioneer Achievement.” Hunter himself was a member of a pioneer Texas family, and when
Frontier Times
began publication, many of the early settlers were still alive. The magazine contained firsthand accounts and interviews, and scarcely an issue appeared without one or more items by or about early Rangers, or announcements of Ranger reunions.

Although
Frontier Times
was essentially a regional publication, it attracted a wide national following and continued for half a century until it was ultimately absorbed into
True West
. Now the senior Western magazine,
True West
also publishes Ranger material, although these days it is from a purely historical point of view. Meanwhile, Western Publications of Stillwater, Oklahoma, parent company of
True West,
reprints the early issues of Hunter’s
Frontier Times
on a subscription basis.

Hunter’s aim was just as he stated—to preserve the history of the vanishing frontier—and much of the proceeds from the magazine, as well as its spin-off books and pamphlets, went toward his Frontier Times Museum, which still operates in Bandera.
⁹
Under his ownership,
Frontier
Times
was a prosaic magazine, printed on cheap paper; it was virtually devoid of photography and its graphics consisted of only a few designs monotonously repeated. The articles themselves were not judged by excitement and readability as much as by whether they reflected life as it really was on the frontier. Not so the pulp magazines published in the East. They had beautifully rendered, action-packed cover art to match the short stories and novellas inside. The American West was a favorite theme, and among the many Western pulps was
Texas Rangers,
published during the 1930s by Better Publications of New York.
¹⁰

THE MOST FAMOUS
Texas Ranger of all made his debut on radio station WXYZ in Detroit on the evening of January 30, 1933. Listeners heard Rossini’s
William Tell
Overture, followed by hoofbeats and the shout of “Hi-yo, Silver!”

According to the story line, young Ranger John Reid was part of a company headed by his older brother in pursuit of the dastardly Cavandish gang. The gang ambushed the Rangers, killing them all—or so they thought. When the noble Indian Tonto discovered the massacre scene, the desperately wounded John Reid was the sole survivor. As Tonto said when he nursed Reid back to health, “You Lone Ranger.”

The Lone Ranger was an immediate hit. A black mask made from his brother’s shirt concealed his identity. He rode a beautiful white stallion named Silver. He carried silver bullets. And always at his side was his faithful companion, Tonto. Several motion pictures were made from the radio show, but the definitive Lone Ranger came to television in 1949 in the person of Saturday-afternoon-serial king Clayton Moore. Aside from looking the part, Moore was an excellent actor, as was Jay Silverheels, who played Tonto. Together they carried the series until 1961, as well making two color feature films. Since then, the Lone Ranger has been presented as a cartoon character, and there was an effort at another motion picture in 1981, but these seem like cardboard imitations compared to Moore and Silverheels.
¹¹

A more realistic approach was
Tales of the Texas Rangers,
which first aired on NBC Radio on July 8, 1950. Produced by Stacy Keach, Sr., the show was to the Texas Rangers what
Dragnet
was to the Los Angeles Police Department. Each of the ninety-seven radio episodes was based on an actual case, and all scripts were approved by Col. Homer Garrison, then director of the Texas Department of Public Safety. Just as
Dragnet
centered around the character of Sgt. Joe Friday,
Tales of the Texas
Rangers
centered around Ranger Jace Pearson, portrayed by veteran Western movie star Joel McCrea. Many of the episodes were based on the experiences of Capt. Manuel “Lone Wolf” Gonzaullas, a thirty-year veteran who served as Keach’s technical adviser.

Tales of the Texas Rangers
attracted a nationwide following and made a successful transition to television. After McCrea left the series, the Jace Pearson role was played at various times by Craig Stevens (who later portrayed television detective Peter Gunn), Willard Parker, and Harry Lauter. It also served as the basis of a Dell comic book series, although the comic book plots were imaginary. Interestingly enough, Gonzaullas owned half the rights to the radio and television programs.
¹²

Walker, Texas Ranger,
television’s Ranger offering of the 1990s, presents a totally different image. Ranger Cordell Walker (played by martial arts superstar Chuck Norris) is a thoroughly modern law enforcement officer—at least as modern as Hollywood will allow for Texas. He drives a four-by-four on public highways, leans toward an automatic pistol, has a computer and a fax machine, and deals with current problems like drugs and alien smuggling. The Rangers themselves don’t particularly care for the black hat Norris wears on the show (they prefer white or pearl gray), and they hate the long hair and beard. They do, however, sense and appreciate the values the Walker character represents.
¹³