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228 Chapter 15 Chapter 15 Grover Scott Russell 1913 Seesawing back to the other end of the Texas/Mexican border is where another sad story will in due course play out. Stephenville, Erath County, Texas, was the birthplace of Grover Scott Russell, popularly known as Scott, but he would earn Ranger pay in faraway West Texas, primarily scouting along Lucifer’s Line in El Paso County. Samuel Nicholas “Sam” Russell and Clara May (Chastain) Russell were proud parents of eight, Scott being the second child and the first-born son, greeting the world on the second day of December 1887.1 Sam Russell was a full-time farmer and part-time deputy for Erath County Sheriff John Chesley Gilbreath. Somewhat later he gave up his deputyship and was elected to the position of Erath County Constable.2 Reportedly, Sam went about his law enforcement duties armed with a long-barreled six-shooter once belonging to the notorious Bloody Bill Longley, the self-promoting Texas rascal hanged at Giddings, Texas, on October 11, 1878. According to family lore Sam Russell won the revolver as result of a bet with a political rival over who would land the constable’s job.3 The county seat was Stephenville more or less dead center in the survey carving Erath County from Bosque and Coryell Counties during 1856, the same year it was formally organized.4 As she grew to maturity, like many early day Texas cities, Stephenville’s past would be recounted with shushed tones by genteel ladies engrossed with politeness and niceness and social standing. Be assured though, Stephenville was no sarsaparilla sippin’ town. For a period of time it was no secret: Stephenville was “the wildest little town in Texas.”5 Constable Sam Russell’s law-enforcing duties were typical: he tracked a man wanted for assaulting a fellow with a knife, found him at a dance at Morgan Mill north of Stephenville, arrested him and pitched him in the Erath County calaboose; Sam latched on to two women of questionable virtue who refused to give their last names, 228 Grover Scott Russell, 1913 229 but Fannie and Lillie were charged with Vagrancy anyway and each fined$1.00;KateMorsewaschargedwithKeepingaDisorderlyHouse as a result of the constable’s February 24, 1900, arrest, pleading guilty before the court; and Sam Russell arrested the thrice-married Annie Williams for stabbing and killing Austin King, editor of Stephenville ’s gossiping rag The Erath Appeal.6 Constable Sam Russell’s authenticated history as a frontier peace keeper was enviable, earning praise from one newspaper reporter as being “a splendid record of service.”7 Layperson psychoanalysis in the historical context is knotty, but suggesting Scott Russell’s career choice was influenced by his father’s sterling reputation as a lawman is not an overreach. At the age of twenty-four years and ten months, on the first day of October 1912, Scott Russell enlisted in the Texas Rangers. Private Russell was assigned to Company A, which after having undergone bureaucratic reshuffling was now under command of Captain John Reynolds Hughes. The five-foot, ten-inch, brown-eyed rookie Ranger reported for scouting duty at Fort Stockton, Pecos County.8 Scott Russell busied himself learning the ropes, much of the time working hand-and-glove with an ex-Ranger, Pecos County Sheriff Dudley S. Barker, who was in the midst of clearing up a murder investigation.9 It was a turbulent place and time, the borderland country. Mexico was ablaze with political upheaval, the Mexican Revolution intrigues and bloodletting were ongoing. Events taking place along the Rio Grande below El Paso would all too soon impact the life of Ranger Scott Russell. During early February 1913 armed revolutionary forces from Mexico attempted to breach the border, firing on two Rangers and an El Paso County deputy sheriff scouting the river. Company A Sergeant Charles Robert “C. R.” Moore, Private Charles H. Webster, and Deputy William Henry Garlick reined their horses to a standstill , withdrew Winchesters from saddle scabbards and in harmony squeezed triggers, emptying three Mexican saddles. Finding the temperature of the Rio Grande rather hot, the surviving insurgents turned tail, splashed out of the river, making a hasty retreat back into the Mexican state of Chihuahua, frantically abandoning a battle flag. The dropped banner was recovered and later sent to the Texas adjutant general with a note affixed from Sergeant Moore: “I don’t think our rebel would be in shape to again use the Mauser carbine we...

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