FASTEST GUN IN TEXAS by Marisa Masterson

Maybe you've tried channels like Sling or Philo? They offer seven days free just to surf their programing. That's what I was doing when I ran into the fastest shootist Texas ever experienced.

I'm a documentary junky. I love learning. Perhaps that's why I became a teacher. For whatever reason, I ran across this documentary on a man who sent shivers through Texans.

John Wesley Hardin. Mothers used his name as a threat to make their children behave "or Wes would get them." Even Bill Hickok found himself facing the business end of this man's guns. So, exactly who was he?

John Wesley Hardin

Named for the evangelist John Wesley, Hardin was the son of a preacher and grew up in Civil War era Texas. With his father's encouragement, he practiced with the gun until he was a marksman at the age of twelve.

One of the tricks this shootist did to prove himself was to hit playing cards at fifteen paces, never missing. By the end of childhood, the man was deadly and bore a nasty grudge against Yankees and any people of color be they Mexican or African-American.

Maybe that's why he killed his first man when he was only fifteen. The former slave had bested him in a wrestling match. When he encountered the man alone in the woods, he shot him and claimed the man attacked him with a stick. The victim lived long enough to declare that a lie. Hardin ran from his home, fearing arrest.

Cowboys in Kansas

From there, he leaves a trail of dead men. He easily hid amongst a group of cattle drovers taking a heard to Kansas. That's how he eventually met Wild Bill Hickok in Abilene, Kansas. Guns weren't allowed while walking the streets of that town. Typically defiant, Hardin kept his on.

"Wild" Bill Hickok

Hickok confronted the armed cowboy, being the marshal, and demanded he remove the guns, Hardin did so and handed them toward Hickok with the handles first. Before that man could grab them, the shootist flipped them so he held them cocked and pointed close to the famous marshal's face.

This wasn't the first man Hickok talked down to avoid violence. The two went into a saloon and shared a drink bought by the lawman. When they met again another year, Hickok didn't ask the shootist to remove his guns.

That was just the type of man Hardin seemed to be. Showy, cocky, and willing to kill. After he returned to Texas and killed a lawman, Texans had had enough.Many put pressure on the governor to send a new group called the Texas Rangers after the man. With a $5,000 bounty on his head, the governor was confident the man would be caught.

I would think so, considering the amount. It was one more thing Hardin boasted about to people--the size of his bounty! In 1875, that $5,000 was equivalent in purchasing power to about $116,540 in 2020.

Someone was willing to risk Hardin's guns to claim it, and the rangers caught the man in a railroad car. Not a very glamorous life!

Here's where it gets interesting for me. While Hardin sat in Hunstville Prison, he wrote his autobiography. This is why historians view him as a man with no conscience. He detailed murders, excused them, and vowed he felt no remorse. He was the faster gun and that was all that mattered.

After serving seventeen years, the murderer went free, a supposedly changed man. While in prison, he'd earned a law degree and tried to set up a law practice. Surprise, surprise, but people were too afraid of him to use his services.

He eventually ended up in El Paso where he was shot from behind and killed. It didn't matter how fast he was since he hadn't guarded his back.

One last note--the word shootist. I used that rather than gunslinger to be authentic. Amazingly, the word gunslinger was invented in the 1920's by author Zane Grey. Men in the old west never used it, calling men like Hardin shootists. Very accurate for Hardin, I think!



If you enjoy action, romance, and adventure, please take a look at Ruby's Risk. With our 380,000 pages read on Kindle Unlimited, readers are falling in love with this book.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07YBK98P8

A man might homestead, but it takes a woman to turn that place into a home! This matchmaker will settle the West one couple at a time.

Under suspicion after his wife’s murder, Elias Kline knows he has to leave Mills Bluff. Learning a lynch mob is planning to kill him, he slips away from town. Taking only his smithy tools and his young son, he chooses a new name—Ezra King. Heading west seems a fine way to start over, but he’ll need a wife to raise his son and cook his meals. One sent by an agency shouldn’t expect love, he decides.

A matchmaker convinces lonely Ruby Hastings to take a risk on Ezra King. After all, the man is helping fulfill the nation's destiny of settling the west. Reading the man’s letter, Ruby aches for the widower's little boy and seizes on this chance to be a mama to him. After all, with a brother on the run from the law and a newly married sister, her siblings no longer need Ruby and this motherless boy does.

It should be a convenient arrangement. What happens when the mail-order wife begins to push past the walls guarding Elias’ heart, challenging him spiritually and emotionally? When danger follows him from Mills Bluff, will Elias be able to keep his family together?

“Ma” Ferguson and the Texas Rangers

Most of us from Texas have read about the origination of the Texas Rangers and the rough years they had with lack of state funding and low pay. But, it wasn’t until I was researching for my latest time travel, Birdie’s Nest, that I learned about the political problems the Rangers faced.

At the beginning of the 20^th century, lawyers became a major threat to the Rangers. They challenged the legality of Ranger arrests by quoting the 1874 law that allowed only supervisors to make arrests of which there were only four in the state. Law on the Frontier faded and the Frontier Battalion ceased to exist when a new law went to affect. The new Ranger Force dropped to four companies of 20 men each.

In 1905, the Rangers still had their Wild West era reputation, but they were gradually evolving into detectives and solved cases with modern crime fighting techniques. They still dealt with trouble along the border and after Spindle Top, kept peace in oil Boom Towns.

In 1927 Miriam “Ma” Ferguson, Democratic candidate, was elected the first woman Governor of Texas. Her husband, James Ferguson, served as Governor from 1915 to 1917 but during his second term he was impeached, convicted and removed from office to never hold office in Texas again.

His wife decided to run in his place promising to follow the advise of her husband. “A common campaign slogan was, ‘Me for Ma, and I Ain’t Got a Durned Thing Against Pa.’” During her first term, Ma averaged over 100 pardons a month. There were accusations of bribes and kickbacks, but attempts to impeach failed.

“Ma’s” second term was less controversial but rumors abounded that state highway contracts went to those companies that advertised in the Fergusons’ newspaper. A House committee found no wrongdoing. Ma was instrumental in establishing the University of Houston as a four-year institution. Though both she and her husband were teetotalers; she aligned herself with the “wets” in the war on prohibition. She took a firm stand against the Ku Klux Klan and pushed for sales tax and corporate income tax.

During her two terms, she granted almost four thousand pardons, many were those convicted of violating prohibition laws. Rumors circulated that pardons were available in exchange for cash payments to the governor’s husband. In 1936 the Texas Board of Paroles was invented to take over the power.

When “Ma” was re-elected, in protest over political corruption, 40 Rangers quit the force; the remaining Rangers were fired. Political appointments replaced them. In 1934, after an investigation of corruption, a panel recommended the formation of the Texas Department of Public Safety to be headed by an Independent Public Safety Commission. The newly elected Governor Allred revoked the commission of all Rangers appointed by the Ferguson administration.

In 1935, the Department of Public Safety begins operation. Tom Hickman is commissioned Senior Ranger. He later serves as a member of the Public Safety Commission.

Former Rangers Frank Hammer and Manny Gault are commissioned to end the crime spree of outlaws Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker.

Pictured is the Posse of Six, the officers who ended the life of the two outlaws. Manny Gault is standing on the right and Frank Hamer is kneeling on the left. The duo, who had killed 14 law-enforcement officers, were shown no mercy when ambushed by the six officers. 

In 1939, despite the neutrality of the US, Captain Frank Hammer and 49 retired Rangers offered their services to the King of England to protect their shores against Nazi invasion. The King thanked them for their offer. The US State Department was not amused.

During WWII, US Army Intelligence Division Officers train with the Texas Rangers in Austin at the DPS Headquarters.

References:

Texas Ranger History: Timeline - Order Out of Chaos (See The Official Ranger Hall of Fame and Museum in Waco, Texas Website.)

www.texasalmanac.com/topics/history/texas-rangers-horses-helicopters 

Happy Reading and Writing, folks...oh and let's not forget researching our next project.

Linda

www.lindalaroque.com

THE CREEPY LEGEND OF EL MUERTO by Sarah J. McNeal

Even though it’s not Halloween yet, I came across this legend and found it too fascinating to pass up posting about it now. The most captivating thing about this legend is that it is absolutely true. Yep, all true.

First of all the words, El Muerto, mean “The Dead One.” Well, that’s hair raising enough, but wait until you hear how El Muerto came about. It seems Texas had its own version of The Headless Horseman of Sleepy Hollow, the famous legendary story by Washington Irving. And the Texas legend begins in reality. Get ready because here comes a most grisly tale of Texas justice.

Texas was a pretty wild and lawless place in the 1800’s with countless numbers of thieves and murderers running around playing havoc with the peaceful and law-abiding folk. Needless to say the lawmen had grown tired of this lawless bunch of outlaws behaving in such a way. The Texas Rangers burst on to the scene with a commitment to help the settlers fend off the Indian raids, lawless characters from south of the Rio Grande, and the countless other criminals who harassed and endangered the settlers.

In those days the Rio Grande River had been the declared border between the United States and Mexico, but the Mexican government claimed the border to be the Nueces River, so this land between those two rivers became a sort of “No Man’s Land” in which outlaws felt free to do what they pleased. Of course, we all know it would take a war between Mexico and the United States in 1846 to make the Rio Grande the official border. It would take another thirty years for the Texas Rangers to clean up the riff-raff in this former “No Man’s Land.”

Apparently these miscreants didn’t hear the warning bell that the Texas Rangers were patrolling the area and meant business because they believed they could continue their lawless behavior without consequence. Well, we all know you do not mess with the Texas Rangers. Texas Rangers were expert gunmen who roamed the area living out of their saddles doling out brutal justice.

Texas Rangers

Two of these Rangers were Creed Taylor and William Alexander Anderson “Big Foot” Wallace. “Big Foot” Wallace, by the way, was a folk hero in his own right. With Creed’s blessing, “Big Foot” inadvertently created the legendary El Muerto.

A man known as Vidal was about his lawless business of rustling cattle in 1850 down in South Texas. He had a “dead or alive” price on his head. A Comanche raid pulled the Rangers to the north to fight the Indians which left the settlements to the south temporarily unprotected. Vidal and three of his men took advantage of this temporary loss of protection and gathered up a hefty number of horses along the San Antonio River as they headed toward Mexico.

Apparently Vidal did not realize that among his stolen herd were several prized mustangs belonging to Texas Rangers Creed Taylor, Big Foot Wallace, and a rancher named Flores. Flores, Creed and Wallace didn’t have too difficult a time tracking down Vidal and his three men. What happened next is the stuff of legends.

"Big Foot" Wallace, Texas Ranger

The Rangers found the outlaws asleep in their camp. The thieves were killed including Vidal. But it wasn’t enough to just dole out justice by killing the outlaws. No sir, a warning for outlaws needed to go out and Vidal happened to be the perfect outlaw to use as an example. Big Foot Wallace lopped off Vidal’s head and sat the headless outlaw on a Mustang. He lashed Vidal to the horse to maintain a position sitting up as if riding the horse and lashed his head to the saddle in front of him. He then sent the Mustang out to wander freely with the grisly corpse on its back.

It was reported the following day by some cowboys that a gray horse bearing a headless rider rode through their camp with the headless rider shouting, “It’s mine. It’s all mine!” The sightings of the headless horseman grew in number. Cowboys and Indians were so terrified by the sight of the rider, they shot the corpse full of bullets and arrows. Years later, the Mustang was found and relieved if it gruesome rider who was finally buried, and then the horse was set free.

But even after the corpse of Vidal had been buried, reports were made of the headless horseman. A sighting of the corpse was reported near Freer, Texas in 1969. The legend lives on even today with sightings of a headless rider galloping through the mesquite on clear, moonlit nights in South Texas.

Sarah J. McNeal is a multi-published author of several genres including time travel, paranormal, western and historical fiction. She is a retired ER and Critical Care nurse who lives in North Carolina with her four-legged children, Lily, the Golden Retriever and Liberty, the cat. Besides her devotion to writing, she also has a great love of music and plays several instruments including violin, bagpipes, guitar and harmonica. Her books and short stories may be found at Prairie Rose Publications and its imprints Painted Pony Books, and Fire Star Press. She welcomes you to her website and social media:

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Writing Time Travel Romances and Birdie's Nest

Why I Like to Write Time Travel Romances set in the Old West

While growing up, like most children, I watched Gunsmoke, Wagon Train, Rawhide, Have Gun Will Travel,  and other western television programs in black and white. Life in many ways was romanticized and fodder for a young girl’s imagination. I’d daydream. If I lived back then, would I be the banker’s wife, a poor farmer’s wife, the schoolteacher or one of Miss Kitty’s girls. Of course I had no idea what saloon girls did other than pour drinks and sit on men’s laps.

So, this love of things past carried over into my adult life. I went to college and trained to be a teacher, but loved my history courses. We learned interesting tidbits about politics and living in the white house. President Rutherford B. Hays, to the delight of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union banned wines and liquors from the White House. To get around the President’s decree, some staff and visitors injected oranges with vodka. It wasn’t uncommon to see people sucking on oranges. This ruling led Prohibitionists to vote Republican in the coming election.

I became a Home Economics Teacher (now called Family Consumer Sciences) but often regretted not getting a degree in history. Yet, studying Home Economics gave me the opportunity to learn about the history of dress, furniture styles and housing.

I digress here, but wanted to share my love of history which led to writing time travels that are set in the old west. The first one I wrote, My Heart Will Find Yours, I struggled with how I would make travel through time and space possible. A writer friend suggested I read up on ley lines, energy fields and ancient artifacts (ex. standing stones). While reading I also ran across data on spin torsion fields, a method used in the sequel Flames on the Sky. Oh boy I had fun with these.

It is hard, however, to make the methods believable. There has to be a key to make it possible. For example in Outlander, there were the standing stones. I've read stories where gateways open at different phases of the moon. I'm sure each of you could list an example of a method you've seen used. If you would, please list them in the comments below.

I hope I’m successful in making my methods of time travel believable. And I want life in the past to be factual and credible when I send my heroine back in time to a prior time period. Oh, the fun I have writing these stories. We are so lucky to live in this modern time where things are so easy. Imagine, learning to cook on a wood stove, churning your own butter, wearing a corset and being restricted from what men considered unladylike pursuits. The hardest thing for my heroine, Texas Ranger Birdie Braxton, to cope with in 1890 is not being allowed to participate in unladylike pursuits—mainly police work.

An idea for a new time travel is perking in my mind, but I'm having difficulty coming up with a method. It is to be set in Waco again sometime in the late 1800s. I'm stuck on the Victorian era as I love the styles.

I hope this gives you a little insight into why I like to write time travels. Thanks for stopping by today. Please take a look at my other books on my website. Birdie’s Nest is available at Amazon.com     

 

Blurb:

Texas Ranger, Birdie Braxton boards the Brazos Belle to attend a costume party, gets tossed into the Brazos and when she's pulled from the river she's told the year is 1890. A fact she can’t accept … until she looks across the river to see Birdie’s Nest, her ancestral home, no longer exists.

Tad Lockhart is a content man—a prosperous rancher with a ladylove in Waco. He's not interested in marriage and family, yet … until he pulls an unconscious woman from the Brazos who insists she's a Texas Ranger from the year 2012.

As romance blooms between Tad and Birdie, she struggles to earn enough money to build Birdie’s Nest, and Tad strives to mold Birdie into a Victorian lady suitable to be his wife. Can Birdie give up dabbling in police work and other unladylike pursuits yet stay true to herself? When faced with an indiscretion from Tad's past, is Birdie's love strong enough to support her man and be the woman he needs?

Excerpt:

His mother, Olivia Lockhart, listened intently as Tad talked. She enjoyed a good story and his tale of saving Miss Braxton titillated her interest.

                  “You say she thinks it’s the year 2012?” She fanned her face with her napkin. His mother wasn’t overly large but her face was often red, and she complained about the heat. “The poor dear. Do you think she’s crazy, son?”

                  “No, ma’am. Her blue eyes are clear as a bell and she talks rationally. If I didn’t know it was impossible, I’d believe her.” He took another bite of roast beef and swallowed. “She had a gun holster strapped to her leg and a Texas Ranger’s star pinned to it.”

                  She paled and the fanning increased in intensity. “You looked under her skirts?”

                  “No, Mother. The nurse who undressed her found it and turned it over to the detective in charge of the case. He showed it to me.”

                  “Well, thank goodness. All we need is another scandal to tarnish our good name.” She shot him a heated look. “If you’d just settle down, you’d --”

                  “Mother, don’t start that again or I’ll take my meals in the bunk house.”

                  She sniffed. “Well, I’m just saying, you’re not getting any younger.”

                  He laughed. “I’d hardly call thirty-five old.”

                  Her mouth turned down at the corners and she sputtered. “Well, I’m not getting any younger, and I’d like to dandle a grandchild or two on my knee before I die.” She fanned her face again. “At the rate I’m going, it may not be that far off.”

                  Tad blew out a breath. “Mother, you are not that old. I’ve seen you run up and down these stairs like a woman half your age.”

                  She pursed her lips and glared.

                  “When I find a woman who can keep my interest for more than a day, then I’ll marry.”

                  “What about that woman you’re keeping time with in town. What if she turns up pregnant and expects you to marry her?”

                  Thank goodness his sister was visiting with friends tonight. He didn’t want her impressionable young ears to be privy to his private affairs, which his mother considered scandalous.

                  “She’ll be sadly disappointed because I’ll not marry someone I don’t love. Plus, I’m not sure she’d be faithful.” As far as pregnancy, Doc Floyd kept him in a supply of condoms. Odd how the Comstock Law allowed a man to have access to them to prevent disease, but wouldn’t let him use them to prevent his wife from getting pregnant. Didn’t make a lick of sense to him. If he fathered a baby out of wedlock, he’d see the child was well taken care of.

                  “It’s a sinful relationship. God is going to strike you dead one of these days.”

                  “Let’s drop the subject, Mother.”

                  “Mark my words, your clandestine affair will come back to haunt you.”

                  He didn’t know how secret the relationship was, but if it bit him on the butt, so be it. He was ready to call it quits anyway.

Thanks for stopping by. I hope you'll leave a comment, especially if you have an idea for a mode of time travel. All help is appreciated.

Happy Reading and Writing!

Linda

www.lindalaroque.com

http://www.lindalaroqueauthor. blogspot.com

  

‘War, War on the Range…’ – Texas Range Wars

Home, home on the range,
Where the deer and the antelope play;
Where seldom is heard a discouraging word—

Now hold up there just a cotton-picking minute. What gave anyone that idea? “Discouraging,” my hind leg. Nineteenth-century Lone Star language could get downright inflammatory, especially on the range.

Take these four Texas quarrels, for example.

Texas vigilantes, Frank Leslie’s Illustrated
Newspaper, Nov. 12, 1881

Regulator-Moderator War, 1839-1844
Also called the Shelby County War, the first major battle to pit Texan against Texan erupted in the eastern part of the newly minted republic. The whole thing started with a land dispute between a rancher and the county sheriff. The sheriff called for help from the leader of a lynch-happy anti-rustling vigilante bunch known as the Regulators, and the rancher soon thereafter shook hands with Saint Peter. The Moderators, a group of anti-vigilante vigilantes who called the Regulators terrorists, jumped into the fray, and before anyone knew what was up, a judge, a sheriff, and a senator died, and homes burned in four counties. After a gun battle between 225 Moderators and 62 Regulators near Shelbyville, Sam Houston himself rode in with the militia and suggested both groups shake hands and go on about their business before he lost his temper

Texas cowboys, circa 1880

Hoodoo War, 1874-1876
Also called the Mason County War, this Reconstruction-Era Hill Country dust-up over dead and disappearing cattle pitted Union-supporting German immigrants against born-and-bred, former-Confederate Texans. A lynch mob of forty Germans lit the match when they dragged five Texans accused of cattle rustling from jail and executed three of them before the county sheriff, who had been elected by the Germans, reluctantly put a stop to the proceedings. In a sterling display of what can happen when a Texas Ranger goes bad, a vigilante gang led by a former Ranger embarked upon a series of retaliatory attacks against the German community. At least a dozen men died before still-commissioned Rangers restored order. Johnny Ringo spent two years in jail for his role on the side of the Texans, only to end up on the wrong end of Wyatt Earp’s good nature five years later in Tombstone, Arizona.

“Them Three Mexicans is Eliminated,” Frederic Remington, 1897

El Paso Salt War, 1877
The only time in history Texas Rangers surrendered happened in the tiny town of San Elizario, near El Paso. An increasingly volatile disagreement over rights to mine salt in the Guadalupe Mountains began in the 1860s and finally boiled over in September 1877. A former district attorney, intent on laying claim to the salt flats, rather flagrantly murdered his political rival, who had insisted the flats were public property and the valuable salt could be mined by anyone. The dead man’s supporters, primarily Tejano salt miners, revolted. A group of twenty hastily recruited Ranger stand-ins rushed to the rescue, only to barricade themselves inside the Catholic church in a last-ditch effort to keep the instigator alive long enough to stand trial. Five days later they admitted defeat and surrendered to the mob, who killed the accused murderer, chopped up his body, and threw the pieces down a well. Then the rioters disarmed the Ranger puppies and kicked them out of town.

Fort Bend County Courthouse
where the violence took place, 1889

Jaybird-Woodpecker War, 1888-1889
The last major set-to in Texas took place in Fort Bend County, near Houston. The liberal-Republican Woodpeckers, most of them former slaves, swept the county election in 1884. The conservative-Democrat Jaybirds, primarily white former Confederates, objected to such inconsiderate behavior for racist reasons. After Woodpeckers swept every office again in the 1888 election, retaliatory violence on both sides resulted in the deaths of several people. During the Battle of Richmond—a twenty-minute gunfight inside the county courthouse in August 1889—four men, including the sheriff, were killed. The white Jaybirds won the fracas, and with the assistance of Governor Sul Ross’s declaration of martial law, seized control of county government. Jaybirds forcibly ousted every elected Woodpecker and proceeded to disenfranchise black voters until 1953, when the Supreme Court put a stop to the whites-only voting shenanigans. Intermittent Jaybird-Woodpecker violence lopped over into 1890, when a white Woodpecker tax assessor, accused of murdering a white Jaybird who had been his political opponent, was gunned down in Galveston before he could face a judge.


These kinds of unpleasant situations are what comes of messing with Texas. If Texans can get this peevish with each other, just imagine the can of whoop-a—

Ahem.

Y’all just mind your manners when you visit the Lone Star State and you’ll be fine. Texans can be downright friendly when we’re not fightin’.

Speaking of mannerly... My publisher, Prairie Rose Publications—based in Texas—was feeling downright friendly and plunked my novel Prodigal Gun into the Kindle Unlimited program. Subscribers can read the book at no charge. See how nice Texans can be?



I may as well mention these fine works of western historical romance fiction, too...you know, just in case.


To thank y’all for being so polite and well behaved—and not letting your tempers run away with you as has been known to happen on occasion ’round these parts between the Rio Grande and the Red—I thought I’d give a choice of one e-book from my backlist (which you can find here) to a person who answers this question in the comments: If you could go back in time, which of the range wars above would you put a halt to by slapping somebody upside the head and telling them to get ahold of themselves?

I’ll pick a winner Sunday night.

A Texan to the bone, Kathleen Rice Adams spends her days chasing news stories and her nights and weekends shooting it out with Wild West desperadoes. Leave the upstanding, law-abiding heroes to other folks. In Kathleen’s stories, even the good guys wear black hats.

Her story “The Second-Best Ranger in Texas” won the coveted 2015 Peacemaker Award for Best Western Short Fiction. Her novel Prodigal Gun is the only western historical romance ever to receive a Peacemaker nomination in a book-length category.

Visit Kathleen’s hideout at KathleenRiceAdams.com. You can subscribe to her newsletter here.

This Means War: the Devil’s Rope Comes to Texas

I’m going to leave old Texas now.
They’ve got no use for the longhorn cow.
They’ve plowed and fenced my cattle range,
And the people there are all so strange.

                                     —from "The Cowman's Lament"

                                               (Texas folksong, origin obscure)

The Fall of the Cowboy, Frederic Remington, 1895 (Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas)

In the late 1860s and early 1870s, Texas saw a massive influx of former Confederates dispossessed by the Civil War and seeking a place to start over. Texas seemed like a good spot: The state offered plenty of open range and brimmed with feral cattle called longhorns. Many a man with nothing more than guts and grit built a fortune and a legacy by shagging longhorns from deep scrub and driving the tough, stubborn, nasty-tempered critters north to the railheads in Kansas and Nebraska. Others pushed herds to Montana and Wyoming to begin new lives where the West was even wilder.

Between 1866 and 1890, cowboys drove an estimated twelve million longhorns and one million horses north. A crew of twelve to twenty men could push a herd of 2,000 to 3,000 beeves about ten to fifteen miles a day, reaching Kansas railheads in three to four months.

(Photo by Darius Norvilas. Used with permission.)

The development of barbed wire in the mid-1870s — along with an incursion of sheepmen and farmers — put a crimp in the cattle drives by crisscrossing Texas’s wide-open spaces with miles and miles and miles of fence. To protect themselves and their herds from the yahoos who would use Texas range for something besides Texas cattle, wealthy ranchers strung wire around the land they owned or leased, often extending their fences across public land, as well. What once had been open range across which cowboys drove enormous herds of steak on the hoof became parceled off, causing no end of frustration and unfriendly behavior.

Fence-cutting began almost as soon as the first of the wire went up. Small confrontations over “the Devil’s rope” happened frequently, with wire-nipping taking place in more than half of Texas counties.

In 1883, the conflict turned deadly. Instead of merely cutting fences that got in the way during trail drives, bands of armed cowboy vigilantes calling themselves names like Owls, Javelinas, and Blue Devils destroyed fences simply because the fences existed. Fence-cutting raids usually occurred at night, and often the vigilantes left messages warning the fence’s owner not to rebuild. Some went so far as to leave coffins nailed to fenceposts or on ranchers’ porches. During one sortie, vigilantes cut nineteen miles of fence, piled the wire on a stack of cedar posts, and lit a $6,000 bonfire.

In response, cattlemen hired armed men to guard their wire…with predictable results. Clashes became more violent, more frequent, and bloodier. In 1883 alone, at least three men were killed in Brown County, a hotspot of fence-cutting activity, during what came to be known as the Texas Fence-Cutter War.

The bloodiest period of the Fence-Cutter War lasted for only about a year, but in that period damages from fence-cutting and range fires totaled an estimated $20 million — $1 million in Brown County alone.

Although politicians stayed well away from the hot-button issue for about a decade, in early 1884 the Texas legislature declared fence-cutting a felony punishable by a prison term of one to five years. The following year, the U.S. Congress outlawed stringing fence across public land. Together, the new laws ended the worst of the clashes, although the occasional fracas broke out in the far western portion of Texas into the early part of the 20th Century.

Texas Ranger Ira Aten, courtesy
University of North Texas Libraries'
The Portal to Texas History

The Texas Rangers were assigned to stop several fence-cutting outbreaks, and being the Texas Rangers, they proved remarkably effective…with one notable exception. In February 1885, Texas Ranger Ben Warren was shot and killed outside Sweetwater, Texas, while trying to serve a warrant for three suspected fence-cutters. Two of the three were convicted of Warren’s murder and sentenced to life in prison.

In 1888, a brief resurgence of fence-cutting violence erupted in Navarro County, prompting famed Texas Ranger Ira Aten to place dynamite charges at intervals along one fence line. Aten’s method was a mite too extreme for the Texas Adjutant General, who ordered the dynamite removed. The mere rumor of the explosive’s presence brought fence-cutting to a rapid halt in the area, though.

In my novel Prodigal Gun, a barbed-wire fence touches off a war in the Texas Hill Country, bringing an infamous gunman home to Texas for the first time since he left to fight for the Confederacy sixteen years earlier. Prodigal Gun is one of four full-length novels that compose A Cowboy's Touch, a boxed set of spicy stories about loves as big as Texas. Livia J. Washburn, Cheryl Pierson, and Kit Prate also contributed. The set is 99 cents at Amazon or FREE for Kindle Unlimited subscribers.

I'll gift a copy of A Cowboy's Touch to one of today's commenters who answers this question: In post-Civil-War Texas, would you have been for or against fencing?