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2. A Texas Ranger
- University of North Texas Press
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San Antonio was a bustling town in 1880, filled with every opportunity imaginable, and every temptation, for an impressionable twenty-four-year-old cowboy just stepping off the train. Whatever Jim Brooks hoped would happen for him there, however, never materialized. His later memoirs pointedly omit nearly all of the events of the next three years of his life, except the confessions of an old man that the most famous distilled product from his Bourbon County home now became his lifelong partner. In one recollection Brooks simply wrote: “I located in San Antonio, [and] after a number of trips looking over South Texas, and a few business adventures most of which failed, one took me to Cotulla, La Salle County, several times.” But another memoir, scribbled on a desk calendar when Brooks was in his eighties, gives more insight into one of those “failed ventures .” After spending a few days in San Antonio, first at the old Southern Hotel, and then at “Miss Porter’s boardinghouse,” Brooks came back in contact with William Bartlett, the Kansas cattleman, and befriended Jerry Burnett’s son Sam, who had established himself in the Wichita Falls area (and who lent his name to the town of Burkburnett years later), as well as the Maltsbergers, father and son, of La Salle County.1 25 A TEXAS RANGER Capt. Scott encouraged me to be a real worthwhile Texas Ranger under all circumstances. 2 “Having satisfied myself that it would be dangerous to my health to return to Kansas, I sold my small herd of cattle to Mr. Bartlett, who placed the money on lien for me. Ever being on the alert for a chance to make an honest dollar, he interested me in making a trip to San Diego, Duval County. I sized it up as rather a dilapidated, slow little place. But when Sebastian Bell [a well-known cattle driver in those parts] and his rough and ready cowboys made their appearance late that afternoon, the town was much alive.” In San Diego, Brooks made several inquiries as to work opportunities and there met Ed Buckley, a rancher with whom he soon partnered up and invested his meager savings. “Having purchased 3,100 Mexican mutton, and having received them, Buckley and I started on our way [to drive them] to San Antonio, hoping to make a fine profit on them.” The wild frontier of South Texas in 1880 approached his camp the first night on the trail with word that King Fisher and his boys were on a raid in the area. John King Fisher was an infamous cattle rancher and cattle thief, a lawman of sorts in his later years, and either the scourge of that region or a Robin Hood figure to some. Flamboyant and ruthless, he was often described as wearing a black Mexican sombrero , a gold-embroidered jacket with red sash, and two pearl-handled revolvers. A sign on a La Salle County trail read: “This is King Fisher’s road. Take the other.”2 In his memoir, Brooks wrote, “There was suppressed excitement in our camp, for King Fisher and the King boys were on a raid. We passed a sleepless night. “On our way at sunrise we first reached the Nueces River, then the Frio at Dogtown (Tilden), arriving south of the Medina. My partner being well known in that sector, arranged for our camp in what was then free range, and left me and our old Mexican sheepherder to look after our herd. He soon returned with old man Hiram Clark who gave us a good profit on our mutton. I was surely a happy boy, barely two months as a herder of sheep. Well, I was satisfied with my part of the profit.” Captai n J. A. Brook s, Te xas Rang e r 26 [54.163.221.133] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 13:09 GMT) Brooks’s career as a sheepherder, however, proved short-lived. “I often wonder how a young man who had made a successful cow hand could become so dull. My partner, being in love and the girl of his dreams being everything worthwhile, sent me adrift. I again was thrown on my own.” Although surely Jim Brooks would have heard of or even encountered the Texas Rangers in and around Collin County, his first mention of them comes about the same time he gave up on sheepherding: “While at San Diego I learned that Capt. Lee...