Yours to Command: The Life and Legend of Texas Ranger Captain Bill McDonald

Chapter 3. Captain Bill and Company B in the Panhandle

{ 5 2 } Bill McDonald led an active personal as well as professional life. As a rancher and a victim of crime, he showed resiliency and a dogged determination. At one point a newspaper reported, “Captain W. J. McDonald, farmer, Capt. State Rangers, was touched by a pickpocket , who obtained $50 cash and $300 diamond pin.”2 In addition , like many ranchers, he could do little about his cattle being stolen from his ranch near Quanah. While McDonald was away on police business, which often happened, his wife and a few hired hands were at times defenseless against rustlers who sought plunder and revenge by swooping down on his herds, making off with his cattle, and causing “Bill Jess” to “cuss a blue streak.”3 McDonald tried hard to achieve economic success at ranching. He even attempted to raise goats, but they became a nuisance and were finally freed to run wild.4 McDonald was also one of the first settlers in Hardeman County to grow wheat, and he promoted a successful irrigation scheme. He dammed Wanderers Creek. For a while he became a rancher-farmer.5 Chapter 3  CAPTAIN BILL AND COMPANY B IN THE PANHANDLE Suppose you saw in yesterdays news of my escapade with the pickpockets at Ft Worth. I am awful sore yet from running. They both made fight but I finally made them submissive [after they robbed an “old man.”]1 Religion played a role in Bill McDonald’s lifestyle. Both organized religious groups and the abstinence factor prevalent in nineteenth -century Protestant culture attracted his attention. As an adult living in Mineola, McDonald was baptized by W. D. Powell, a Baptist preacher whose flock also included James Hogg.6 In developing his religious beliefs McDonald benefited from his experiences and became a church-going person. His official biographer noted that he did accompany his wife to church in Quanah and called himself a “brother-in-law to the church.”7 At the end of his life McDonald also said to a friend, “I am now a devout Christian, a member of the Presbyterian Church, and attend Sunday School every Lord’s Day.”8 In addition, McDonald joined the Masonic Lodge. In early December 1892 he attended as a delegate, with other officers of the law, ranchers, farmers, businessmen, and professional people, the meeting of the Grand Lodge, Ancient Free and Accepted Masons, in Houston, Texas.9 Equally important, Captain Bill got rid of the immoral habits of his generation. In his early life in and out of the Rangers, McDonald liked to chew tobacco, use a pipe, drink bourbon, play poker and faro, and cuss when needed. Yet his official biographer who knew him in his declining years made a telling point: he did not drink; he did not smoke; and he did not use any stimulants, even coffee or tea.10 As McDonald once wrote, “I have long since quit all my bad habits.”11 Before and after his appointment as a Ranger captain, Bill McDonald was active in Texan politics. In the gubernatorial election of 1890 he chaired the Hardeman County Democratic Convention , which endorsed the candidacy of Jim Hogg. The Hardeman Democrats resolved “to take with them their winter clothes” to the state convention assembled in San Antonio in August and “if necessary, stay until November 7 to secure” the nomination for Hogg.12 In 1892, McDonald supported his old friend Hogg’s bid for reelection. In the bitter contest between Hogg and George Clark for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination at the convention in Houston in August 1892, which Hogg won, { 5 3 } CAPTAIN BILL AND COMPANY B IN THE PANHANDLE rumors were spread that Clark’s forces would try to pack the meeting . The convention met in the huge “car stable” or “car shed”—a building with one side not walled in order to move streetcars in and out. McDonald and a crew of men erected a fence across the open space with a small gate to allow official delegations to enter the floor of the convention. The next day, Clark’s supporters, who had planned to pack the session but were now held back by the barrier, hurled epithets and worse—shoes, umbrellas, and other objects—at McDonald’s guards.13 McDonald provided less spectacular support of the Hogg candidacy in the Panhandle region before and after the convention. In several letters to...