Law on the Last Frontier: Texas Ranger Arthur Hill by S. E. Spinks (review)

Law on the Last Frontier: Texas Ranger Arthur Hill. By S. E. Spinks, foreword by Robert M. Utley. (Lubbock: Texas Tech University Press, 2007. Pp. 288. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. ISBN 978-0-89672-619-2. $28.50, cloth.) Law on the Last Frontier chronicles the Texas Ranger service of Arthur Hill, who wore the badge for twenty-seven years. Most of his service period was under the supervision of Col. Homer Garrison, who directed the Texas Department of Public Safety for thirty years. As the granddaughter-in-law of Ranger Hill, author Sharon Spinks does a commendable job of covering the service of a man who served at a time when the ranging service was transitioning from the era of mounted gunmen to a more sophisticated phase of modern lawmen who used motorized vehicles, telephones, and other law enforcement agencies to help bring criminals to justice. Spinks takes the reader into the life of a Texas Ranger in the Big Bend area, where Hill tackled cases that ranged from murder, gambling, and cattle theft to smuggling and burglary. He joined the Department of Public Safety on September 1, 1941, just two months before America entered World War II. In the rugged country along the Rio Grande, Ranger Hill pursued outlaws both on horseback and in automobiles. This transition period of the ranging service in Texas required that new lawmen such as Hill be not only good with a gun, but be possessive of keen wits, diplomacy skills, and inborn perseverance to uphold the law in the most remote of areas. The author draws on Arthur Hill’s case files to tell stories of murders and of tracking suspects as they flee through the Big Bend area for Mexico. While many of the cases are not particularly famous, each illustrates the work of a Texas Ranger in the twentieth century. Spinks gives concise facts concerning each case by drawing on contemporary newspaper articles, DPS records, criminal case records, personal interviews, and Hill’s Weekly Ranger Activity Notebooks. One of Hill’s toughest assignments, and most personal, involved his tracking the killer of Presidio County’s sheriff. Hill and another ranger attempted to smuggle the prisoner out of an Ojinaga jail in Mexico but nearly lost their own lives to an angry Mexican mob hell-bent on protecting their local man. Law on the Last Frontier provides a glimpse into the illegal liquor rings, high-speed shootouts with hardened criminals, violent labor strikes, smuggling operations, and gambling-hall crackdowns that Texas lawmen of the 1940s and 1950s were called upon to handle. Future students of Texas Ranger history will benefit from studying the adventures of Hill in a multicultural region where he used personal relationships with lawmen on both sides of the Rio Grande border to solve crimes. This book offers the reader some interesting insight on a little-documented period of the rangers, and shows the dedication men like Hill had to possess to remain with their jobs. Details on the various badges and weapons of the Texas Rangers, as well as relevant period photos from the mid-twentieth century, offer some rare insight into this special profession. Spinks does not allow her book to bog down in lengthy detail, but instead 2009 Book Reviews 345 *jan 09 11/26/08 12:00 PM Page 345 maintains a comfortable pace in relating the techniques that Arthur Hill used in solving cases and apprehending felons. Law on the Last Frontier is a refreshing look at one man’s career in the fabled Texas Ranger service, carried out in a rugged, sparsely populated area of the state during a time that is often overlooked by historians. Lantana, Texas Stephen L. Moore World War II and Mexican American Civil Rights. Edited by Richard Griswold del Castillo. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2008. Pp. 256. Illustrations, appendices , notes, bibliography, index. ISBN 978-0-29271-738-1. $55.00, cloth. ISBN 978-0-29271-739-8. $24.95, paper.) The Mexican American struggle for civil rights predates World War II, but when hundreds of thousands of men left their segregated barrios, enlisted in the military, and went to war for the United States, they profoundly...