Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 196, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 August 1916 — “SHOOT TO KILL,” RANGER'S MOTTO, RULES BORDER [ARTICLE]

“SHOOT TO KILL,” RANGER'S MOTTO, RULES BORDER

Hard-Riding, Tireless Handful of Men Slay 286 Bandits in Ten Months. METE OUT JUSTICE SWIRLY Hold Sway Throughout the Lone Star State —How They Ended the Career of Mercedes Raider— Worst Feared Man in Northern Mexico. Now this is the law of the border— Shoot first, shoot fast, shoot straight; To h with law and order On the rim of the Lone Star state!

Brownsville, Tex—Not even the wildest dime novel thrillers of Washington square artists of imagination, not even Zane Grey at his best, could reproduce in black and white the actual conditions on the Texas border today and expect to be believed. Facts and figures theriiselves are incredible. Right here in the Brownsville district, for example, which today has a civilian population several times smaller than its military, no less than 286 Mexicans, most of them proved bandits, have been slain in the past ten months. In that time, too, more than fifty American soldiers have been killed by bandits, seven American women have been attacked, and many more Widowed, and the Texas ranger rides, a lone figure in short khaki jacket, boots, spurs and wide-brimmed Stetson, grim menace personified, on his tireless patrol of the Rio Grande. Only Fifty Rangers in the District. There now are, including the New York division, upward of 40,0 X) brown faced, khaki-clad soldiers in the lower Rio Grande valley. And there are about fifty rangers. Tell a Mexican bad man that a company of soldiers' are on his trail and he will laugh and mysteriously disappear in the ever-convenient and dense brush. Tell him a ranger is after him and he will blanch, cross himself with a muttered “Dios mio,” and, spurring his caballo, put as many leagues as possible between himself and his relentless pursuer.

The Texas ranger is the worst-feared man in northern Mexico today. His law is that of the pearl-handled frontier .45 that hangs lop-sided from his four-inch-wide, cartridge-studded belt. He shoots first and asks questions afterward. His jurisdiction extends unhampered from one end of Texas to the other, but there are more of him in the Brownsville section than in any otherjfpart of the state. Many and fearsome are the tales told of the rangers. They are whispered about camp fires at night as the mesquite burns dimly; they are mooted softly about in the back rooms of cantinas and monte, houses; they are spoken of but seldom in public when there is a chance for a ranger to be near enough to hear. When Mercedes Was Raided.

Last fall there was a bandit raid in the vicinity of Mercedes, about forty miles up the river from Brownsville. Mercedes is a nice little town with an honest government and some beautiful parks. It is peopled by Irrigation farmers from Nebraska and lowa. The bandits raided a ranch three miles from the town, killed a rancher, carried away his wife and made their es-cape-all but one. That one, hotly pursued, galloped into the Mexican quarter of Mercedes and hid in a poolroom. Hiding under a pool table the palsied man heard three rangers enter the place. He fieard them order the poolroom keeper to deliver him. And he heard the poolroom keeper, his friend —for the bandit had been born and raised in Mercedes—commit the fatal error of denying knowledge of his whereabouts. Ten minutes later a tiny but grim procession started up the rqad toward

Donner, eight miles away. The three rangers were there, one leading, the Other two bringing up the rear. Between them stumbled the terror-strick-en bandit, the poolroom keeper, the poolroom keeper’s son, a Mexican who swept out the place for a dally wage and another Mexican who had been playing on the table under which the bandit had hidden. Ranger Justice Swift. The rangers said nothing. Nobody asked them where they were bound. Citizens vanished from the streets and road as if by magic. And the next morning five bodies were found, each of them with a bullet neatly drilled through his scalp, two miles beyond the city limits. Implacable ranger justice had done Its work. There have been no raids since near the beautiful little settlement of Mercedes. Bapdits shun the place as though it were the habitat of yellow fever. The difference between the Texas ranger and the soldier is simple and convincing. It was explained succinctly to me by a tall, sombreroed stockman. -.—; “It ain’t that the soldiers aren’t any less brave,” he said; “it’s just this: The soldiers only know how to shoot when they’re told, but the ranger never knows. when to stop shooting. There’s just' bnte way you can scare a Mexican —kill him. And there’ve been a powerful lot of ’em scared In these parts of late.” - Z

Governor Ferguson of Texas recently increased by more than treble the force of rangers In recognition of the work they did in the Brownsville region last fall and early this year. They have been given a distinctive uniform, consisting of short jacket, tall stock boots, huge spurs, wide-brimmed hat and black trousers that are tucked in the boots. Their guns are uniform —long barreled .45 Colts, most of them with the sight filed off, for a Ranger never aims from the shoulder when he shoots. He fires from the hip, and most of them are past masters of the art Of “fanning," or rapidly thumbing the hammer of a gun instead of using the trigger. For this the trigger must be removed. One of the newspaper contingent with the New York troops alighted from the train at Harlingen, the junction for Brownsville, and espied a tall, rangy individual whom he surmised to be a ranger standing on the platform. He walked up to him. He took off his hat. When he spoke his speech was very, very respectful and very, very timid. “Please, sir,” he said, quaveringly,. “are you a Texas ranger?” “Uh!” answered the ranger affirmatively. “Yes, sir, thank you, sir,” replied the newspaper man, gracefully, and backed precipitately toward the train. “Gimme the shivers,” he affirmed when he had sunk safely to the cushions. «