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

Chapter 1. Bill McDonald, the Historical Record, and the Popular Mind

{ 3 } Chapter 1  BILL MCDONALD, THE HISTORICAL RECORD, AND THE POPULAR MIND A lone rider, sitting easily in the saddle of his dusty horse, travels across the plains toward a small, new town with muddy streets and lively saloons. He wears a tattered, wide-brimmed hat, a loose-hanging vest [with a tin star], a bandanna around his neck, and one gun rests naturally at his side in a smooth, well-worn holster. Behind him, the empty plains roll gently until they end abruptly in the rocks and forests that punctuate the sudden rise of towering mountain peaks.1 The life and times of Texas Ranger Captain William Jesse “Bill” McDonald, better known as “Captain Bill,” can be viewed from several vantage points: first, the ins and outs of crime and violence in the trans-Mississippi West in the late 1800s; second, the operations of the Texas Rangers in theory and practice inside and outside the Lone Star State; third, the ambiguous nature of McDonald as a lawman in thought and deed; and fourth, the never-ending folk tales built around the exploits of the fabled Captain Bill. One difficulty with the historical literature about the life and times of Bill McDonald is the reliance by writers on the information provided by Albert Bigelow Paine, McDonald’s official biographer . Although Paine interviewed the Ranger captain, he failed to search for and use effectively official records. He also erred in not verifying his data and in downplaying the activities of those who served under McDonald in Company B. The result was a romantic story with flowery language that contained factual inaccuracies and misleading statements. Captain Bill (1852–1918) lived at a time when the United States was undergoing vast changes during the Gilded Age. The settlement of western lands by people of all creeds and colors led to warfare with Indian tribes, brought new states into the union, and made terms like “cowboy” and “gunfighter” popular expressions. In addition , agricultural machinery and railroad lines transformed the rural landscape and allowed for the production and transportation of crops and cattle to feed a growing population. Equally important, industrial firms discovered the processes needed to make steel and refine oil, which helped to create modern urban centers complete with skyscrapers, cars, telephone lines, and big-city police departments . The populace also found new ways to enjoy leisure time, from reading comic strips to enjoying spectator sports to watching silent films, like the Great Train Robbery. As events would show, such changes in lifestyles created a more complex network of police forces to combat a mobile underworld in Texas and the nation. BADMEN OF THE OLD WEST Violent criminal acts in the trans-Mississippi West varied in number and kind in time and space. Many settlers in the western lands, especially in farming, family-oriented communities, with their church steeples and bells summoning the faithful, cared more about building a new life for themselves in a hostile physical environment than about robbing or killing their neighbors or the strangers who happened to pass their way. Peace officers in Texas and other western areas had to spend much time and effort handling minor criminal offenses: rounding up drunks, stopping fist- fights, investigating petty thievery, and arresting those charged with disorderly conduct. These undramatic violations of the rules of society made some westerners afraid; others, though, still believed that they lived in law-abiding communities with the bad element under control. Westerners did try to structure society to function in an orderly way. Y O U R S T O C O M M A N D { 4 } One historian noted that “frontier violence has infinitely greater appeal to the reader than frontier calm.”2 In the pecking order of western crime and violence, the bank-and-train robber and the gunfighter gained the most notoriety. Many individuals have seen the actions of Old West bandits and gunmen as something more than criminal in nature. Such misdeeds were just boyish pranks; done to defend one’s honor; carried out to attack the oppressors of the common folk; executed to help foment a revolution . In western America a violent frontier heritage has meant glorifying the holdups and gun battles of such desperadoes as Sam Bass, the Texas Robin Hood, and John Wesley Hardin, a feared gunman in the Lone Star State. Many times lawmen carved an appropriate...