Excerpted from Along the Rio Grande, by Tracy Hammond Lewis
Published in 1916 by Lewis Publishing Company
Accessed (full version) in GoogleBooks
“There are no better trail finders nor handier men with their guns in the South [than Texas Rangers]. At a hundred yards or more a man is invariably dead if a ranger judges his life a burden on the community. Outside of the realms of fiction there are few men able with a revolver to hit a quarter thrown up in the air, but there are more capable of punishing Uncle Sam’s currency in this fashion among the rangers than in the entire remainder of the Texas population.
As a rule they are natural detectives. Very small clues indeed frequently result In their solving the cases upon which they are working. An instance of this was told me by John Kelly in Douglas, Ariz.
Kelly was a ranger, and although he no longer holds his commission as such, his thoughts still live in the days when he was employed by the State. ”
I used to be stationed at Ysleta years ago,” he said, biting off a chew of plug cut, “when there wasn’t any railroads comin’ into El Paso, and when all freight had to be hauled in ‘Chihuahua trains,’ which is the same as prairie schooners, all the way from San Antonio. There used to be a lot of smugglin’ goin’ on along the Rio Grande, and it was up to us to keep the greasers and outlaws from doin’ it. One time we caught a gang with $500 worth of stuff.” He spit contemplatively and looked at me reflectively to see whether I was impressed with the size of the amount. “
One time a fellow named Jem Lafferty killed the marshal at Ysleta. He shot him through the neck. We found the marshal’s body lying on the ground and near it was a little piece of a bandana, clipped off by a bullet. We saved it and hunted for Jem. It took us some time, but we got him. He was still a-wearin’ of the handkerchief around his neck. The bit we had fitted into the part lost out of his.
He was convicted and sentenced to nine years in the pen.
—This was when John Henry Lafferty said — in trial transcripts — that his brother had been in Rusk Penitentary. He must have been about 25 when he committed this crime (about 1882?). Rusk did not begin accepting prisoners until January 1883. This crime is referenced somewhat incorrectly in “Breaks of the Balcones”. John said that his brother had recently been recently released from prison (1891-2) and had gone to New Mexico. He had cousins living in New Mexico, whom he may or may not have know about — and members of his old gang were living there as well.
Later he killed another guy and got seventy-five years. He was about 50 then and never lived his sentence out.”
—This was referring to the murder of Ben Maples in 1892.
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