1
A COWBOY OF THE HILL COUNTRY
Texas bred tough men, and none came any tougher than Frank Hamer. He was to the Lone Star State what Wyatt Earp was to Arizona and what Wild Bill Hickok was to Kansas. His iron strength was hammered on the anvil of his father’s blacksmith shop. His iron will was molded in forty tumultuous years as a peace officer. His iron character was honed by his struggles against horseback outlaws, Mexican smugglers, the Ku Klux Klan, corrupt politicians, the Texas Bankers Association, and Lyndon B. Johnson. His iron courage was forged in the flames of fifty-two gunfights with desperadoes. In an era when crooked police were a dime a dozen, he could not be bought at any price. Though a white supremacist of the Jim Crow era, he saved fifteen African Americans from lynch mobs. He was the greatest American lawman of the twentieth century.
Hamer was a son of the Hill Country, that undulating expanse of live oak, mesquite, and cedar brakes that stretches through central Texas from the Balcones Escarpment north and west to the Edwards Plateau. Rugged and isolated, its rivers and creeks rise from headwaters in the Edwards Plateau and slice through jagged limestone, flowing to the Gulf of Mexico. In the 1840s and 50s, settlers from the mountains of Missouri, Arkansas, and Tennessee poured into the Hill Country, long the domain of Apache and Comanche. Their battles against Indian raiders would, for generations to come, help define the character of Texans as fierce and unrelenting warriors. After the Civil War, the Hill Country was wracked by civil violence. With fewer Indians to fight, Texans turned on each other.
Beginning in the 1840s, feuds—between families, neighbors, and political rivals—became a tradition in Texas. Feuding, like vigilantism, was a notion of primitive law. After the Civil War, animosity between Northern and Southern sympathizers was the cause of feuds large and small. During the 1870s, Texas was wracked by infamous vendettas like the Horrell-Higgins feud in Lampasas County, the Mason County war, and, most notably, the Sutton-Taylor feud, the longest and bloodiest of them all. It lasted thirty years and left at least seventy-eight men dead. Notions of personal honor, coupled with an armed citizenry, excessive drink, lack of strong law enforcement, and a belief that social problems were best solved by individuals instead of government, all contributed to the plethora of feuds in frontier Texas. These concepts and conditions continued into the twentieth century. As late as 1912, when the leading partisan in the Boyce-Sneed feud was acquitted of cold-blooded murder, the jury’s foreman explained the reasoning: “We in Texas believe a man has the right to safeguard the honor of his home even if he must kill the person responsible.”1
The Hamer family—they pronounced their name “Haymer”—were relative newcomers to Texas. Frank’s father, Franklin Augustus Hamer, was born in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1853, and grew up in Ohio and in Pennsboro, West Virginia. As a youth he worked as a railroad brakeman, but he wanted adventure in the West. In 1874 Franklin enlisted as a private in the U.S. Army in Pennsylvania and was assigned to the Fourth U.S. Cavalry, stationed in Fort Clark, Texas. The Fourth Cavalry was commanded by Colonel Ranald S. MacKenzie, a brilliant leader and famous Indian fighter. Its assignment was to stop raids by Comanche, Apache, and Kickapoo from their hideouts in northern Mexico.
The elder Hamer, a colorful, hard-drinking character with an offbeat sense of humor, displayed the same courage and quick-witted thinking that would be the hallmark of his son’s career. One day, exhausted and separated from his cavalry unit, Hamer dismounted and lay down in the brush to nap. A nervous snort from his horse startled him awake in time to see that he had been surrounded by a Comanche war party. Hamer knew that his life depended on what he did next. Lurching to his feet, he staggered drunkenly through the brush, foaming at the mouth. Alternately singing in a loud voice and mumbling incoherently, he wobbled toward the astonished Indians. As he danced, whistled, and laughed, the warriors lowered their weapons. One of the Comanches exclaimed, “Muy loco!”
The Indians quickly retreated from the crazed soldier, fearful of the evil spirit that had possessed him. Swinging onto their horses, they galloped off. Hamer kept up his act until they disappeared, then caught his horse and raced hell-for-leather to Fort Clark.
Army life did not agree with Franklin Hamer. He received a medical discharge after just five months and settled in Fairview, a tiny Wilson County village of about a hundred, situated forty miles southeast of San Antonio. There, he worked as a farmer and blacksmith and wooed twenty-year-old Lou Emma Francis. The two were married by a justice of the peace in her parents’ home in Fairview in 1881 and promptly set out to raise a large family. Their first child, Dennis Estill Hamer, arrived ten months later. The second eldest, Francis Augustus, destined for a legendary life, was born in Fairview on March 17, 1884. More children followed: Sanford Clinton, called Sant, in 1886; Harrison Lester in 1888; Mary Grace in 1891; Emma Patience, known as Pat, in 1894; Alma Dell in 1898; and the youngest, Flavious Letherage, in 1899. The Hamer family were a mixture of Scottish, Irish, English, and German blood. Frank, to distinguish him from his father, was often called Gus (for Augustus) in his youth.2
From his father Frank inherited a dry, sardonic wit and learned to speak in colorful and sometimes profane language. His father’s heavy drinking was an attribute that the eldest son, Estill, inherited and that Frank was careful to avoid. As a young boy, Frank’s most vivid memories were of his maternal grandfather, L. J. Francis. The old man, a jagged scar down the side of his face, regaled the youth with stories of his adventures on the frontier. In 1840, at age twenty-two, he accompanied an overland trade caravan from Texas to Chihuahua in northern Mexico. The traders were set upon by Indians, who killed seven of the party before Francis was shot in the head with an arrow. He was captured and almost killed but soon escaped. In later years he became a Presbyterian minister, and young Frank was inspired to follow his grandfather’s religious life.3
Frank’s father had a roving disposition. As Franklin’s sister-in-law recalled, “Mr. Hamer was a great hand for moving from place to place.” In 1890, when Frank was six, his father brought his family to the Hill Country, settling at McAnelly’s Bend (now called Bend), on the Colorado River, fourteen miles southeast of San Saba. There, he ran a blacksmith shop. In 1894 the elder Hamer moved his family south to Oxford, another small settlement, fifteen miles below Llano on the road to Fredericksburg. He opened another blacksmith shop in a two-story, barnlike building fronting the Llano-Fredericksburg road. Next to it was a simple, board-and-batten house, into which crammed the Hamers’ growing brood. Estill and Frank helped their father, gathering firewood for the forge, pumping the bellows, and learning to hammer iron on his anvil. Years later, Frank and his good friend Bill Sterling, a Texas Ranger captain, happened to be traveling through Llano County. Recalled Sterling, “Hamer stopped our car in front of an old roadside blacksmith shop. He said that it had once belonged to his father. As a youth he had put in many hours of toil at the anvil, swinging a sledge hammer and working with other heavy tools. This was where Frank Hamer got his brawny arms.”4
Like most youths in the Hill Country, the Hamer boys also learned riding, roping, branding, managing cattle, and basic farming. When not helping out with chores, the older Hamer children attended the public school in Oxford. Frank was extremely intelligent, with a near photographic memory. But he was no scholar. He did excel in mathematics, and the teacher would ask him to help instruct the class from time to time. Frequently, he would solve arithmetic problems in his head. His teacher would ask, “Frank, why didn’t you work out the problem? Where is your paper?”
Hamer invariably answered, “I don’t know how to work it out on paper, Ma’am, but I can give you the right answer to the problem.” On one occasion, however, the teacher insisted that he stand before the class and explain how he arrived at the correct solutions. “I told the teacher I did not know how I reached the right answers and I refused to get up and talk to the class. She did not like this and I did not remain long in school.” In later years he would jokingly boast that he was “the only Texas Ranger with an Oxford education.” In truth, Frank had no formal schooling after the sixth grade. As Captain John H. Rogers of the Texas Rangers later commented, “While he is not an educated man, he is bright and intelligent.” Hamer himself freely admitted his paltry schooling, once saying, “The only education I got was on the hurricane end of a Mexican pony.”5
Religion was one of the greatest influences on Frank’s early life. His parents were devout Presbyterians. Camp revival meetings, coupled with the example set by his minister grandfather, reinforced Frank’s desire to follow a career in the cloth. For most of his youth, from age six to sixteen, Frank believed he was destined to be a preacher. Most rural Texas families owned but one book, the Bible. Frank was then not much of a reader, but in addition to the Bible he devoured Josiah Wilbarger’s Indian Depredations in Texas, published in 1889. The book was hugely popular among Texans, for it detailed how their ancestors had wrested the country from wild Indians. Hamer was fascinated by the tales of Comanche fights and Texas Rangers. But instead of being inspired to emulate the Rangers, the youth was most impressed by the underdogs—the Indians. “I made up my mind,” he later recalled, “to be as much like an Indian as I could.” His admiration for the underdog and his concern for those too weak or too outnumbered to protect themselves would become essential to understanding his character.6
Young Frank, when not working or attending school, and to escape the cramped confines of their tiny, crowded home, would often head alone into the hills. He took only his rifle, fishing gear, and bowie knife, exploring and living off the land. He recalled, “When a boy I liked to live in the woods … one to six weeks at a time. I got along fine for I fished, hunted, and slept upon the ground at nights. I was greatly fond of studying the habits of small animals and birds. I built an altar in the woods so I could talk to the Old Master.”7
The Hill Country’s heavily wooded slopes teemed with white-tailed deer, wild turkeys, and fowl of every type. There, Frank became intimately acquainted with nature, from insects to rodents, birds, and small and large game. As his friend and biographer Walter Prescott Webb once explained, “He studied bird calls and the animal cries and practiced imitating them until he could call them to him. Almost anyone can call crows, but Frank can call quail, deer, road runners, fox-squirrels, and hoot owls.” He became an expert trailer, able—like an Indian in the old adage—to “track a fly across a looking glass.” Hamer later said, with little exaggeration, that as a youth he slept outdoors for eight straight years. He took great pleasure in mastering woodmanship, Indian lore, and survival skills, not recognizing that he was simultaneously learning self-reliance, patience, endurance, and independence. To him, the dense, isolated timber of the Hill Country was not lonely and forbidding, it was home.8
Frank grew up around firearms. The Hamers, like all Texas families, kept a few rifles and shotguns in the house. All boys in rural Texas were expected to know how to load, shoot, and clean guns. Since the founding of the Republic of Texas, firearms had been a necessity to defend the frontier against raids by Comanche, Kiowa, and Kiowa Apache. Once the Indian danger was gone, Texans remained married to their guns. In the Hamer household, even the girls learned to use firearms. Frank’s sister Pat carried a toy pistol as a child, wore a real one on her hip as a young woman, and in old age kept a handgun in her purse.9
It was on his boyhood journeys that Frank Hamer became a dead shot. Money was scarce and ammunition expensive, so he learned to hit what he shot at. Careful practice enabled him to kill a running deer or a bird in full flight. In a place and time when dead shots were a dime a dozen, Frank Hamer’s marksmanship would become legendary. He also learned to use a knife, both as a tool and as a weapon. He hunted armadillos by throwing his bowie knife with such force he could pin the animal to the ground. Frank ate what he hunted and thought that armadillo meat tasted like fine-grained, high-quality pork.10
An extremely athletic youth, Frank excelled in both the high jump and the long jump. But organized sports did not interest him. The sports he liked most were horseback riding, hunting, fishing, and shooting. Other sports and leisure activities—football, bicycling, skating—became popular during the inaptly named Gay Nineties. Yet that 1890s America—of Frank Merriwell, of knickerbockers and celluloid collars, of baseball, pretzels, and beer, of tripping the light fantastic with Mamie O’Rourke—was utterly foreign to young Hamer. Instead, his boyhood in the Texas Hill Country was firmly grounded in the Old West, informed by the ethics and traditions of the Texas frontier. His heroes were not John L. Sullivan, “Gentleman Jim” Corbett, Cy Young, or Christy Mathewson—they were Captain Jack Hays, of the Texas Rangers, Colonel Ranald MacKenzie, of the Fourth Cavalry, and the Comanche war chiefs Buffalo Hump and Quanah Parker.
By his mid-teenage years Hamer was big for his age, tall and gangly, his sinewy limbs toned and hardened by long hours at his father’s anvil. Quiet and modest, with a broad smile set off by large, even teeth, he possessed supreme self-confidence. With children and women he was gentle and caring; with strangers, awkward and bashful. At the same time, he was stubborn, hardheaded, and short-tempered, softened somewhat by a sardonic sense of humor. Early encounters with neighborhood tormentors made him despise bullies and ruffians, and his fighting blood was easily aroused. As an admirer once remarked, “At sixteen he was equipped with a personality forceful enough to impress a straw boss,” adding, “He was the tall, silent youngster who invariably attracts the attention of schoolyard bullies.” In those years both men and boys were expected to “kill their own snakes”—that is, to solve their own problems. Boyhood disputes would often be resolved by angry wrestling matches, or by fisticuffs.11
Though Frank did not start fights, he became adept at ending them. Instead of punching his opponent, he would slap him with an open palm. He also learned to use his boots, said one observer: “He usually put a quick end to a scuffle with a mule kick to his opponent’s groin.” So adept was Hamer at fighting with his feet that his friend Bill Sterling thought Frank had been trained in savate, the French martial art. “From the way he performed,” said Sterling, “I thought perhaps some adventure-seeking Frenchman had drifted into the Pecos country and shown him how it was done in France. His answer was that he had never taken any lessons other than those given by experience. In youthful fights, when older boys ganged up on him, he discovered that his feet could be turned into high powered weapons.” Frank would later say, “My feet were always loaded.”12
Early on, Hamer learned the concept of personal honor. As he once explained, “I was born and raised in Texas. I was born and raised not to take an insult. Any time a man insults me he has to back it up.” This notion of honor was a vital component of masculine life in the American West of the nineteenth century. Honor was embraced by men of all classes in the West and the South. Honor meant courage, character, loyalty, respect for womanhood, and especially a firm resolve to never back down from an enemy. It was manifest in the code duello of the southern planter, the code of the West on the frontier, and the refusal to run from a fight so common to Texas feudists. It was codified in the Western legal doctrine of self-defense, known as “no duty to retreat” or “stand your ground,” which authorized a man to resist attacks, even verbal ones, with deadly force. A man possessed honor only if his peers said he did. If his peers failed to accept him as an equal, his honor was gone, and only an act of violent retribution or heroic valor could retrieve it. This concept of personal honor is central to an understanding of the character of Frank Hamer and would explain many of the actions in his adult life.13
Personal honor was also an important component of Texas gun culture. The use of violence to resolve social problems was widely accepted on the frontier, especially in Texas. As a result, the Lone Star State became renowned for its plethora of gunfighters, feudists, and fast-shooting lawmen. A Texan who had “killed his man” proved that he could defend his honor and thus earned both respect and notoriety. From the anti-Hispanic racism of West Texas came the boast of gunfighters like John King Fisher, who bragged of killing twelve men, “not counting Mexicans.” Texas gunfighter and killer-for-hire Jim Miller boasted, “I have killed eleven men that I know about. I have lost my notch stick on Mexicans I’ve killed out on the border.” N. A. Jennings, who served with Captain Lee McNelly’s Texas Ranger company in 1876, explained, “The taking of a Mexican’s life by the white desperadoes was of so little importance in their eyes that they actually didn’t count such an ‘incident’ in their list of ‘killings,’ as the murders were styled by them. Only white victims were reckoned by notches on their six-shooters.”14
Frank Hamer deeply absorbed Texas gun culture, but he never considered himself a gunfighter. The term gunfighter first came into regular use in the late 1880s. The word “gunslinger” was unknown in the Old West; it was coined by fiction writers in the 1920s. During Hamer’s youth, “gunfighter” held a negative connotation: a gunfighter was a man, often a hired killer, who sought trouble and who used firearms to settle personal quarrels. By the advent of motion pictures the term took on a more positive meaning, and by the television era of the 1950s the gunfighter had become a heroic figure, a quick-draw artist who wielded his guns for the common good. Of course, in the Old West, “fast draw” gunfights or “walk downs” on Main Street were all but unknown.15
By 1900, when Frank was sixteen, his father had moved the family again, this time to Regency, ten miles up the Colorado River in Mills County and about twelve miles northwest of San Saba. The town had just two hundred residents and a church, general store, and flour mill. That spring Frank went to work as a sharecropper for Dan McSween, a fifty-three-year-old widower and hardcase. He owned 340 acres on Spring Creek, which ran north from San Saba County and emptied into the Colorado River about four miles east of Regency. Hamer agreed to farm McSween’s land in return for half the crop at harvest time. Frank was assisted by his twelve-year-old brother, Harrison.
When not planting McSween’s fields, Frank practiced shooting. McSween quickly recognized that the youth was a dead shot with six-gun, rifle, and shotgun. One June day he asked Frank if he would like to earn $150. Hamer’s reply was typically sardonic: “Who do I have to kill?”
He was joking, but Dan McSween wasn’t. McSween explained that he had been having trouble with a prominent local rancher and wanted to get rid of him. Hamer was shocked.
“Wait a minute, now, Mr. McSween, wait a minute,” Frank exclaimed. “I was just kidding! I didn’t mean that I was gonna kill anybody. That’s the farthest thing from my mind. As a matter of fact, I want to be a preacher, and I just don’t think that you can be a preacher and go about killing people.”
To that, McSween retorted, “Well, if you’re on that kind of bent, I’ll up my offer to $200. I’ll tell you what I want you to do. I’ll hide you in a covered wagon and bring this man with me and we’ll stand right in front of the wagon. While we’re talking, take out your pistol and shoot him through a slit in the canvas. Nobody will ever find out what happened, and you’ll be $200 richer.”
“Hell no!” Frank exploded. “I’m not gonna kill that man for you! As a matter of fact, I’m gonna tell him what you’ve proposed.”
As Hamer stormed off, McSween shouted, “If you let one word of this out, I’ll kill you!”
A frightened Harrison, hiding behind a tree, heard the entire exchange. That night, the Hamer brothers mounted their horses, rode to the ranch of McSween’s enemy, and told him about the plot. The grateful rancher thanked the youths and said he would be on the lookout for McSween. Two days later, on June 12, 1900, the Hamer boys were plowing in the field when McSween approached and ordered Harrison to bring some tools from the barn. Then he told Frank to go to his house and fetch some food. Frank left immediately, while Harrison, unseen by McSween, lingered behind to rest the plow next to a chinaberry tree. Suddenly, the boy heard a noise and turned to see that his brother had already returned. Frank had dropped several cans of food and was bending over to pick them up. Behind him crouched Dan McSween, squinting down the rib of a double-barreled shotgun.
“Look out!” Harrison screamed. Frank dove to one side as McSween’s shotgun boomed. The heavy charge whined past harmlessly as the youth started to run. McSween fired the second barrel, and twenty buckshot slammed into Hamer’s back and the left side of his head. The force knocked him to the ground, but he managed to pull a small revolver and open fire. One shot struck McSween, dropping him to the ground. Frank fired again at his assailant, narrowly missing Harrison and slicing a limb off the chinaberry tree.
Harrison rushed to help his brother while the wounded McSween staggered back to his house. Frank, though desperately wounded, was able to walk, and the two boys managed to cross a hill and hide in a ravine. Soon Dan McSween appeared on horseback, an old buffalo rifle in hand, hunting for the boys. As he rode close, Frank drew his revolver to fire, but Harrison urged him not to shoot. “He has that old rifle, and its bullet will reach a lot farther than your pistol, and carries a lot more weight.”
As McSween rode off, the two boys made it back to their wagon. Bleeding heavily, Frank lay in the wagon bed in excruciating pain as Harrison took the reins. Frank later said that they were helped by an African American field hand who raced to bring a doctor to the Hamer home. The doctor was able to remove some, but not all, of the buckshot. Because Frank had lost so much blood, the doctor told his father, “I hate to say it, but the boy is not going to make it.”
Hamer recalled, “I knew he was wrong. I knew I was going to make it, but I couldn’t say it, because I was so far gone I couldn’t talk. I could hear, but I couldn’t speak. But, you see, I had talked to the Old Master about it, and I knew I was going to get well.”
Frank had high praise for the black field hand. “A colored man was the best friend I ever had in my life,” he recalled. “That colored man caused me to be living today.” At home, his mother nursed him, and he slowly recovered. Years later, Frank explained, “Several of those bullets are in me yet. I’d rather have them in than go through the trouble of having them cut out.”16
Hamer’s close brush with death at the hands of Dan McSween was the most significant event of his youth and one that profoundly affected his nature. It showed him, at a very early age, that he could face gunfire without flinching and that he was tough enough to survive a shotgun blast that would have killed a lesser man. It taught him that he had the courage to defend himself from a deadly attack, as well as the ability and presence of mind to shoot an assailant despite being grievously wounded. It brought him an even deeper loathing of bullies and lawbreakers. And it instilled in him a lifelong affinity for African Americans. Because blacks and Hispanics were scarce in the Hill Country, he did not inherit the racial hatred so common to folk in East Texas, which had a large black populace, or to Anglos along the Rio Grande, where Spanish was more widely spoken than English. Though Hamer certainly harbored many of the racist notions of the era, such attitudes would not be expressed in his public career. And though he plainly did not possess modern-day notions of ethnic sensitivity, he never forgot the black man who helped save his life. To African Americans in Texas, it was a debt that Frank Hamer would pay back again and again.
Dan McSween was never charged in San Saba or Mills counties with attempting to kill Hamer. Harrison, in old age, claimed that when Frank recovered from his wounds, he returned to McSween’s ranch and called him outside.
“I thought I’d finished you!” thundered the rancher.
“Not by a damned sight,” declared Frank. “I’ve come to settle accounts.”
As Harrison told the story, the two went for their guns, and McSween died instantly. That makes for a dramatic finale, but it never happened. Dan McSween sold his Spring Creek ranch in 1904 and moved to Kaufman, Texas, where he died of natural causes five years later.17
In fact, while Frank slowly recovered at the family home in Regency, his father had deep concerns about his safety. If McSween had tried to kill his son once, he certainly might try again. The elder Hamer had many friends in San Saba County, among them the Ketchum family. The Ketchums were San Saba pioneers. The eldest son, Green Berry Ketchum, had left the county in the 1880s to become a prosperous cowman in West Texas. Ketchum owned two ranches, one near Knickerbocker, south of San Angelo, and the other on Independence Creek, a tributary of the Pecos River, about nine miles southwest of Sheffield in Pecos County. He was best known as the older brother of Thomas “Black Jack” Ketchum, one of the Old West’s most infamous bandits. To all outward appearances, Berry Ketchum was an honest rancher. Although rumored to have benefited financially from the train robberies of the Ketchum gang, no proof ever surfaced.
Frank’s parents sent him and Harrison to stay in safety with Berry Ketchum at his Pecos ranch. To pass the time while his wounds healed, Frank bought a fiddle in Sheffield. He practiced often, performing before an undiscerning herd of cattle. Recalled his son, Frank Jr., “He used to tell me he ‘tortured the cowbrutes’ playing that fiddle until he got good at it.” When Frank was well enough, Ketchum put the Hamer boys to work, herding his horses and cattle on the Independence Creek ranges. The Ketchum ranch was a big one, encompassing 45,000 acres along the Pecos River. The Hamer brothers helped herd four hundred cattle and wrangle five hundred horses and mules. The Trans-Pecos desert was vastly different from the jagged Hill Country and the high savanna of the Edwards Plateau. The Pecos, flowing south from New Mexico to its confluence with the Rio Grande near Del Rio, was heavily alkaline and almost undrinkable for both man and beast. Above Sheffield the Pecos passes through a wide desert valley devoid of trees; below Sheffield it flows into a deep gorge to the Rio Grande. Frank’s work as a cowhand and horse wrangler would take him throughout the Pecos country. Frank gained valuable experience working for Ketchum and became intimately acquainted with the vast expanse of Pecos County, the second largest in Texas, almost twice the size of the state of Delaware. His knowledge of its loamy deserts, limestone formations, and rugged mountains would prove of immense value in the years to come.18
By this time Berry’s younger brother, gang member Sam Ketchum, had been killed by a posse, and Tom Ketchum was in prison in New Mexico under sentence of death. The Hamer boys were riding for Berry Ketchum when Black Jack was hanged in Clayton, New Mexico, on April 26, 1901. No doubt Frank read the newspaper accounts, for they were published extensively throughout the country. In one of the most notorious and horrific executions of that era, the hangman misjudged the drop, and Black Jack Ketchum was decapitated in the fall. From the ranch hands, and perhaps Berry Ketchum himself, Hamer heard many stories of the Ketchum gang, and he never forgot the bizarre hanging of Black Jack.19
Historically, West Texas had been open range, where cattle roamed freely. With the introduction of barbed wire in the 1880s, the free ranges were gradually fenced off. Nonetheless, much of the country west of the Pecos was isolated and unfenced, and it remained open range for many years. On the Pecos, Frank became a top hand and an expert horseman. He loved horses and felt that he could communicate with and understand them. Explained Walter Prescott Webb, “He believes that the endurance of a horse on long or hard journeys depends more on the rider’s knowledge of how to ride than on his weight. Though Hamer weighed nearly two hundred pounds, he could help the horse.… One must sit deep in the saddle, bear a part of his weight on the stirrups, and catch the rhythm of the animal. If the ride is long, there must be no galloping, but only the trot and walk. The cinch must be neither too loose nor too tight. Long hills must be taken at a walk, and, if time permits, with loose cinch for easy breathing.”20
Frank’s study of animal life would make him an astute observer of humans. Said Webb, who knew Hamer as well as anyone, “Every type of human being reminds him of some animal, of something in nature. The criminal is a coyote, always taking a look over his shoulder; a cornered political schemer is a ‘crawfish about three days from water.’ … The merciless murderer is ‘as cold-blooded as a rattlesnake with a chill.’” Frank considered himself most like an antelope, as he explained, “because antelopes are the most curious of all animals.” On the Pecos ranges, the seventeen-year-old Hamer grew to a sturdy six foot two, soon adding another inch. He was strikingly handsome and spoke slowly in a deep, deliberate Texas drawl. Like many cowboys, he picked up the smoking habit, and for the rest of his life was rarely seen without a cigarette, a cigar, or a pipe.21
In 1903 Frank took part in an incident that he would deeply regret, telling Walter Prescott Webb, “Had I not gone with the law, I would have gone against it.” As Frank candidly told the story to Webb, he was hired to help drive a remuda of horses to a buyer in San Angelo. Most of the wranglers were young, but one was an older man, an experienced criminal. As they herded the broncos outside San Angelo, the older hand filled the youths with tales of quick money. He explained how easy it would be for them to ride into town, hold up the bank, and escape into Mexico, where they could use the loot to start their own ranch. Hamer, like the other wranglers, was fascinated and agreed to take part. They hastily drew up plans and then took up positions on the street that led to the bank. They were about to make their play when the foreman rode up and ordered them to drive the horses to the corral. As Webb explained, “This interruption no doubt saved the man who has left his mark on the tradition of law enforcement in Texas.” With time to reflect, Frank realized he had been a fool. He resolved that in the future he would think for himself. Said Hamer, “It was the adventure, and not the money, that appealed to me. Had I gone into it, things would have been different.”22
In 1905 Frank was hired at the Carr ranch, located between Sheffield and Fort Stockton. For a time he was joined there by his nineteen-year-old brother Sant, who later drifted to Arizona to find work as a miner. One day two horses, with their bridles and saddles, were stolen. Frank took the trail alone, and for several days followed the meandering tracks eastward. Finally, he closed in on two riders. Dropping into a gully, Hamer circled around in front of them. As the horse thieves approached, Frank leveled his Winchester and took them by surprise. Hamer delivered his prisoners to the sheriff of Crockett County and returned the stolen mounts to his grateful boss at the Carr ranch.23
Frank had tasted his first manhunt, and it was exhilarating—just like hunting animals, but far more exciting and dangerous. The adventure, the adrenaline rush from taking his men alive, and the sense of pride and accomplishment in outwitting the horse thieves overwhelmed him. He wanted more of the same, and he would get it. Hamer was far too bright to be satisfied with the simple life of a drover. Growing bored with ranch life, he became heartily sick of driving, roping, and branding cattle. Two decades later, when invited to a rodeo, Frank declined, saying, “For many years I had a rodeo every morning by myself on the Pecos, and do not care to see another one.”24
Hamer was fascinated by a newfangled contraption at the Carr ranch—a telephone. After 1900, telephone systems in Texas expanded rapidly as equipment improved and long-distance lines were extended. By 1906 there were more than one hundred thousand telephones in Texas. The telephone at the Carr ranch was on a party line, in which anyone could listen in on the neighbors’ conversations. Hamer was often alone at ranch headquarters, and to relieve his boredom he spent much time on the phone, listening to neighboring ranchers’ news, gossip, and complaints about the weather. One night in October 1905, he overheard a call from the Pecos County sheriff, Dudley S. Barker, in Fort Stockton. Barker was asking his former deputy, Charlie Witcher, to intercept a horse thief who was headed Hamer’s way on a stolen mount.
Witcher replied that he “was busy [and] did not want to get mixed up in the courts.” Explained Witcher, “I’m sorry, Dud. I got my own things to take care of. Why don’t you go after him yourself?”
“I can’t,” Sheriff Barker responded. “I’m so busy here at the jail in Fort Stockton that I hardly have time to leave and get my meals. Besides, that coyote has had such a jump, it would take me quite some time to catch up with him.”
By this time Frank could not restrain himself. “I’ll go get him, Sheriff!”
“Who the hell are you?” Barker demanded.
“I’m Frank Hamer, and I’m working on the Carr ranch.”
“He’s headed your way,” said the sheriff, “and if you can catch him, I’ll be mighty happy. I’ll tell you what he looks like.”
“No need to,” Hamer replied. “I just heard you describe him to Charlie.”
“I’d be much obliged if you do catch him. I’ll ride out there tomorrow to give you a hand.”
Frank knew that it would take the horse thief until daybreak to reach the Carr ranch. The only water on the route was at the Carr windmill, some distance from ranch headquarters. Hamer was sure the rider would have to stop there to water his horse. He awoke at 3:00 A.M., buckled on his gun belt and six-shooter, saddled his mount, and, with Winchester in hand, rode out to the windmill. At daylight, a rider appeared in the distance, headed straight for the windmill. As the stranger dismounted, Frank stepped out of the brush and covered him with his Winchester.
“You’re under arrest,” Hamer told him in an even tone. Within moments the horse thief was back in his saddle, headed toward Fort Stockton, with Hamer following twenty feet behind. Recalled Frank, “I sure felt good that morning going up and down the long slopes with that thief ahead of me. Finally, after riding sixteen miles, I saw Dud Barker top out on a hill two miles off. He was driving a couple of fast horses to a light buggy and they were sure stepping. I wouldn’t have sold out very cheap that day.”25
As Barker handcuffed the prisoner, he said to Hamer, “This is the second time you’ve done my work. You did a mighty fine job of catching this man, Frank. How’d you like to be a Texas Ranger?”
“I never gave it too much thought before,” Frank answered. “It sounds pretty good, though. What do I have to do to get in?”
“You let me take care of that,” replied the sheriff. Dud Barker, thirty-one, had served three years as a Texas Ranger and achieved repute for his role in breaking up the San Saba Mob in 1896. He recognized a good Ranger recruit when he saw one. On February 26, 1906, Sheriff Barker wrote to the Texas adjutant general, John A. Hulen, in Austin and recommended that Hamer be enlisted as a Ranger. Barker praised Hamer’s capture of the horse thief and said he “has the ability to grasp the situation quickly.” Soon after, John H. Rogers, captain of Company C, wrote to his sergeant, Jim Moore, and instructed him to have Hamer report for duty in Sheffield. At that time Company C was headquartered in Alpine, in the Big Bend country, seventy miles southwest of Fort Stockton. Sergeant Moore was in charge of a small detachment of the company that had a camp four miles outside Sheffield. In keeping with the state’s failure to adequately fund the Rangers, they did not have housing. The lawmen slept outdoors in canvas army tents and cooked on open fires. If they were lucky, they might hire a local woman to do their cooking and washing.26
In mid-April Frank Hamer rode into the Ranger camp looking for Captain Rogers. But the captain was busy at his headquarters in Alpine, so Frank loitered about the camp, getting to know Sergeant Moore and Private E. S. McGee. Moore was an experienced Ranger, having served five years under Captain Rogers before being promoted to sergeant in 1905. But McGee had been a Ranger only seven months, and Captain Rogers had become dissatisfied with his performance. On April 15 the Rangers got a report that a Mexican had taken a horse “for the purpose of forcing the collection of a debt without any authority of law.” McGee and Hamer (whom Captain Rogers referred to in his official report as “a citizen by the name of Haymer”) started in pursuit and quickly caught their man. Wrote the captain, “They recovered the horse and delivered him to the rightful owner but not being able to make a case of theft … against said Mexican they did not put him under arrest. The owner of the horse was entirely satisfied with the recovery of his horse.”27
On April 21 Captain Rogers arrived in Sheffield to interview the gangly young recruit. At first he was disappointed, remarking, “Why, he’s only a boy.” But Rogers, impressed by Hamer’s volunteering to help the Rangers, was soon satisfied with Dud Barker’s recommendation. Calling the town’s justice of the peace, he had Frank take the Ranger oath: “I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully and impartially discharge and perform all the duties incumbent on me as an officer of the Ranger Force according to the best of my skill and ability, agreeably to the Constitution and laws of the United States and of this State, and I do further solemnly swear that since the adoption of the Constitution of this State, I being a citizen of this State, have not fought a duel with deadly weapons; nor have I acted as second in carrying a challenge, or aided, advised, or assisted any person thus offending. And I furthermore swear that I have not, directly nor indirectly, paid, offered or promised to pay, contributed nor promised to contribute, any money or valuable thing, or promised any public office or employment to secure my appointment. So help me God.”28
Every red-blooded Anglo boy in the Southwest dreamed of being a Texas Ranger. The new recruit, just twenty-two, was bursting with pride. Little did Captain Rogers realize how seriously Frank Hamer would take his Texas Ranger oath. Though his enlistment had been entirely coincidental, he was a Ranger born. His rugged life in the saddle had steeled him against hardship and privation. His massive size, physical power, superb marksmanship, and raw courage had melded him into a deadly adversary. A deep religious faith imbued in him strong notions of right and wrong. His lonely years in the wild country had made him so independent and self-reliant that he cared little for what others thought of him. His natural curiosity, his quick, analytic mind, and his near-photographic memory would mold him into a brilliant detective. Quiet and humble, rigid and unyielding, Frank Hamer now began his long ride into the halls of Texas legend and lore.
Copyright © 2016 by John Boessenecker
