Many men, some loyal to the Union and some simply unwilling to serve in the military, hid out on the fringes of settlements, “in the brush,” so to speak. A percentage of these brush men turned to outlawry, preying on weakened communities and outlying farms and ranches with near impunity because law enforcement had broken down. Whereas rangers before the war had concentrated principally upon Indians, by the time the war was over they were spending more and more of their energy and meager resources dealing with outlawry.

Under the reconstruction government imposed on Texas, the rangers went into limbo for almost ten years. They were replaced after a fashion by a force known as the state police, formed under the loose supervision of a federally approved governor. Many of these were honorable men, doing their best under trying circumstances. However, a minority were corrupt and oppressive, subverting the law to their own profit and purposes, abusing citizens without cause. They gave the state police a sour reputation and made Texans yearn for the return of the rangers under a more benevolent government.

The excesses of reconstruction embittered many basically honest men and prompted small individual rebellions in various parts of the state. The temper of the times made citizens resentful of the federal army, especially black soldiers sent with the express purpose of humiliating the defeated Confederates. Newly arrived opportunists took over local governments and cheated citizens out of their property through fraud and confiscatory taxation.

During this postwar period a new brand of banditry arose led by such notorious figures as Bill Longley and John Wesley Hardin. Many of these men were psychopathic and might have been outlaws even if there had been no war, no reconstruction. Others started out to avenge wrongs real or imagined and became hopelessly entangled in a life of violence. An embittered citizenry often looked upon these men as heroes, rebels still fighting a war long since lost.

The Texas government reorganized at the end of reconstruction. In 1874 it created two battalions of Texas Rangers, giving them at last an official name and their now-famous star-in-a-circle badge. They were better led and more efficient than before. By this time the Indian raids were almost over, and the rangers were able to concentrate on combatting outlawry. They had plenty of it to contend with, for Texas during reconstruction had become a haven for fugitives from all over. Unlike local lawmen, the Rangers were not constrained by county lines and concerns about jurisdiction. Telegraph lines and expanding railroad services gave them better communications and more mobility.

This was the beginning of the glory years, when these hard-riding horsemen and their admirers spawned the larger-than-life legends of the Texas Rangers. As the state’s great folklorist J. Frank Dobie said, if some of these stories were not true, they should have been.

CHAPTER

ONE

An old arrow wound in Rusty Shannon’s leg had been aching all day, but the sudden appearance of Indians made the pain fall away.