The Major Players

Before embarking on an account of the Rangers from 1921 to 1935, it might be useful to discuss the salient personalities the organization produced. It is important to note that these men were the product of a highly politicized organization. As had been the pattern for decades, there was a churning of Ranger personnel every time a new governor was inaugurated. The governor controlled the Rangers through the adjutant general, who administered both the Rangers and the National Guard, and naturally each governor wanted Rangers in whom he or she had confidence. In practice this meant that those hoping to become captains mustered all the political influence they could in hopes of being appointed; those who were already captains did likewise to keep their jobs. The same applied to the rank and file, for jobs were hard to come by. To a marked degree, the effectiveness of the Ranger Force depended on the caliber of its captains, who theoretically enlisted their own men and shaped their own companies. In a carryover from the old Frontier Battalion, the 1901 law establishing the Texas State Ranger Force still designated units as paramilitary companies, although in reality they more closely resembled squads.

FRANCIS AUGUSTUS HAMER

Frank Hamer was by far the most famous Ranger of his generation. He is the subject of admiring biographers who portray him as a larger-than-life character. He was born on March 17, 1884, in Fairview, Wilson County, Texas. Now a ghost town, Fairview produced a disproportionate number of Rangers. The Hamer family alone contributed Frank and his three brothers — Harrison Lester, Dennis Estill, and Flavious. As a young man Frank Hamer worked as a blacksmith and cowboy. His first enlistment in the Rangers was as a private in Company C from April 21, 1906, to December 1908, when he resigned to become city marshal of turbulent Navasota. He remained in that job until April 21, 1911, when he resigned to become a special officer in Houston, a member of a strong-arm squad Mayor H. Baldwin Rice assembled to clean up the city. Hamer reenlisted in the Rangers on March 29, 1915, as a private in Company C. He resigned again on November 8, 1915, to become a brand inspector at San Angelo for the Cattle Raisers Association of Texas. From November 8, 1915, to January 10, 1917, Hamer was also a Special Ranger attached to Company C. He reenlisted as a Regular Ranger on October 1, 1918, as a private in Company F and was promoted to sergeant eleven days later.

Hamer had enormous disdain for paperwork. Ranger Manuel T. "Lone Wolf" Gonzaullas "recalled that one day in 1921 he came in from a long scout and, finding that Hamer was not in camp, sat down and wrote out a detailed report. It was so thorough, he thought, 'I ought to get a medal for it.' When Hamer returned, he perused the report, then tore it to shreds and tossed it into the campfire." Despising paperwork was only one of the ways Hamer reflected a nineteenth-century approach to law enforcement. As biographer John Boessenecker points out, "His 'shoot first and ask questions later' ethic was entirely contrary to the law. Police, then and now, are constrained to use deadly force only when lives are endangered." On December 11, 1918, Hamer's heavy-handed approach to law enforcement plunged the Ranger Force into one of the gravest crises in its history. In what proved to be an extremely ill-advised move, he abused his authority by threatening to rough up state representative José T. Canales of Brownsville, a product of Jim Wells's corrupt political machine, which had controlled Webb County for years. Canales complained bitterly to the adjutant general about "this ruffian Haymer," but that official merely reprimanded Hamer instead of summarily firing him as Canales demanded.

The vengeful politician then advocated "a law requiring that the Rangers should be under the civil authorities of the counties and not to override them; or to abolish the Ranger force entirely as a menace to our democratic idea of local self-government." Canales, whom some considered merely a mouthpiece for Wells, mounted a full-scale attack on the Rangers, up to and including a demand that Adjutant General James A. Harley be fired. He introduced a bill that would have crippled the organization by slashing its numbers and leaving it under the control of local officials, and he was instrumental in establishing a joint legislative committee to investigate the Ranger Force. Canales acted as prosecutor during the investigation in 1919 that produced 1,605 typed pages of testimony containing a wealth of evidence, much of it hearsay, detrimental to the Rangers. During the investigation Hamer continued to play mind games with Canales to the point that the legislator was afraid to go to the capitol. Although Canales's vendetta against the Rangers was motivated by personal and political considerations, he did perform a valuable service by publicizing the dark side of the Ranger Force — racism, brutality, abuse of authority, drunkenness, summary executions, and political favoritism. Nevertheless, the legislative committee ultimately upheld the Rangers, with Adjutant General Harley announcing: "Committee report all we could ask for. Vindication complete." The House upheld the committee's recommendation by a vote of 87 to 10. A substitute bill eliminating most of Canales's proposals was adopted by a vote of 95 to 5 in the state house, and only one senator voted against it.

Despite the fact that they are a myth, one repeatedly reads about the vaunted "Canales reforms." An amended Ranger law was passed on March 31, 1919, and the Ranger Force was indeed reduced, but not because of Canales. Most of the reduction was the deactivating of Ranger companies added during World War I. As the adjutant general wrote, "Due to the fact that the war time emergency for Border protection no longer exists, it becomes necessary to reduce the State Ranger Force to meet existing conditions. Therefore the following changes are made."

However, the Canales affair did have serious repercussions for Hamer, who was placed on detached service in April 1919 in Brownsville. He later insisted that Harley and Captain William Hanson did this to get him killed. Hamer alleged that Hanson had ordered him to allow an arms shipment to be smuggled across to Mexico at Brownsville and Hamer had refused, hence Hanson's antipathy toward him.

The new Ranger law became effective on June 20, 1919, and canceled all Ranger commissions on June 19. Rangers had to reapply in order to remain on the force. Boessenecker writes that Captain Hanson and the politically ambitious Ranger quartermaster, Captain Roy W. Aldrich, conspired to get rid of Hamer. Instead of notifying him that he had to reenlist, Aldrich let the deadline pass, then informed Hamer that he had been automatically discharged on June 19.

There is an alternative view to this recital of chicanery by Hanson and Aldrich. As Hamer's biographer admits, "The testimony in the hearings largely supported the need for a law-enforcement body like the Rangers. After all, the force was not all bad, it just had a lot of bad eggs. And truth be told, Frank Hamer — at least on that December day in Brownsville — was one of them." Since Hamer had created the Canales mess, which had caused Adjutant General Harley untold grief, one can speculate that Harley wanted to get rid of Hamer, who, despite his unquestioned abilities, was a loose cannon. Accordingly, Aldrich was instructed not to inform Hamer that he had to reapply. After being dropped from the Rangers, Hamer became a rancher in Snyder, Scurry County.

His Ranger career was unexpectedly revived, however. In September 1919 Captain Hanson resigned to become the lead investigator for US Senator Albert Fall's subcommittee investigating Mexican affairs, and in October Adjutant General Harley resigned to enter private business. The new adjutant general, William D. Cope, approved Hamer's reenlistment. Hamer's third tour of duty began on November 25 as a private in Company B, and on December 15 he was promoted to sergeant. Honorably discharged again on May 11, 1920, he became a federal Prohibition agent in Austin and El Paso, a position he resigned on September 15, 1921. On September 1, 1921, he was appointed captain of Company C and was transferred as Headquarters Company captain on January 1, 1922, serving until June 30, 1925.

WILLIAM LEE WRIGHT

William Wright exemplifies the old-time Ranger captain. A member of the South Texas Tumlinson-Taylor-Wright clan that for generations produced peace officers, he was born on February 19, 1868, in Yorktown, DeWitt County. His father, L. B. Wright, had been sheriff of Karnes County and a Texas Ranger. In the clan's peace officer tradition, Wright's brother, two sons, father-in-law, and brother-in-law were also Regular Rangers, and another son served as a Special Ranger. As a youth Wright had worked as a cowboy. He began his law enforcement career as a Wilson County deputy sheriff from 1892 to 1898. He enlisted in the Frontier Battalion on January 1, 1899, as a private in Company E, being promoted to first lieutenant in 1900. When the new Ranger Force was created in 1901, he enlisted in Company D. He resigned on September 1, 1902, and became sheriff of Wilson County on November 4. He proved to be an outstanding sheriff, being elected as president of the Texas Sheriffs Association in 1914. Wright remained as sheriff until December 31, 1917. The next day he was commissioned as captain of Ranger Company K. He was transferred as captain of Company D on June 20, 1919, to cover the border from Laredo to Brownsville.

Wright had some narrow escapes in his law enforcement career. While he was sheriff of Wilson County, a condemned murderer on the scaffold stabbed him in the chest with a sharpened spoon handle. And while he was a Ranger captain, an intoxicated Mexican tried to stab him, but the blow just broke a sack of tobacco in Wright's left vest pocket. Wright shot his assailant in the leg, and when the attacker again lunged at him, Wright shot him in the head.

Wright developed an enviable reputation not only as a fearless officer who, unlike some other captains, led from the front, but also as one having a profound sense of duty. He refused to participate in the petty graft common among Ranger captains. "He was always proud of 'my boys' as he called the men in his company, contending that much of the reputation that was his rightfully belonged to them." One reason Wright's men respected him was because he took care of them. When Private Juan González's paycheck was late in arriving, Wright advanced him his salary ($90) out of his own pocket. He also put "his boys" through the mill, frequently conducting scouts through the brush for weeks. Precisely because he and his men spent so much time in the field, often as much as a month at a time, one of the captain's colleagues commented that "Captain Wright is much opposed to having married men in his company. I heard him say that he would never enlist another one. His men have to be out in the brush for weeks at a time, and a married man is bound to be discontented."

Wright was fiercely proud of "his boys," but occasionally one of them let him down. Once when he returned after a scout, he was informed that in his absence Private Sidney S. Hutchinson had confiscated three trunks full of liquor, opened one, and removed an unknown quantity of booze before he delivered the balance to a customs inspector. Hutchinson had proceeded to stay gloriously drunk for a couple of days. Wright immediately fired Hutchinson and ruefully informed the adjutant general, "I've learned that he's a smooth underground troublemaker among the men, and I've got to admit that he fooled me all the time."

Wright epitomizes the Rangers in their traditional role, making long horseback scouts through brush country and shooting it out with gangs of outlaws. And he was a man of integrity: "My whole mind was on my work trying to pay the State for what I was getting paid. I gave the State my whole time and brains. Of course I could have stayed in camp and done nothing and drew my pay like lots of others have — in other words drew a pension from the State and gave nothing in return, in other words lay around the Court House and went with Deputy Sheriffs and what they done sent in reports that I done it. I could have done that."

MANUEL TERRAZAS GONZAULLAS

Although not a captain until 1940, Gonzaullas deserves detailed mention because he played an increasingly important role, exemplifying the future of the Rangers as detectives, whereas many of his contemporaries played a more traditional role. Gonzaullas was honing his forensic skills as early as 1921, writing, "For the past six months I have been working diligently at studying the Bertillon fingerprint system and will graduate within the next month as a fingerprint expert. I would appreciate being of assistance if anything comes up in this line of work." Gonzaullas became a prominent — and colorful — Ranger.

What is fascinating about Gonzaullas is his background — or rather the lack of documentation about his background. One biographer, Brownson Malsch, gives his name as Manuel Trazazas Gonzaullas, "Trazazas" being a misreading of "Terrazas." A biographer who gets the name of his subject wrong necessarily inspires skepticism. Yet "Trazazas," which is not even a word, continues to appear in biographical sketches of Gonzaullas, an example of how misinformation gets perpetuated. And the very name "Gonzaullas" appears to be an Anglicization of "González."

According to Malsch, Gonzaullas was born on July 4, 1891, in Cádiz, Spain. His father, Manuel Gonzaullas, was of Spanish ancestry and his mother, Helen von Droff, of German ancestry; they were naturalized US citizens and visiting Cádiz at the time. Malsch states that Gonzaullas desired to join the Rangers because of his intense hatred for outlaws, having witnessed the murder of his two brothers and the wounding of his parents in a bandit raid on their border home when he was fifteen. Malsch states that at age twenty Gonzaullas was a major in the Mexican army. He then became an investigator in the US Treasury Department for five years "in and after World War I" in Washington and New York. Gonzaullas married Laura Scherer on April 12, 1920, in Riverside, California. He was a sharp dresser and partial to diamonds and fancy pistols. He collected weapons, was a Shriner, carried a New Testament, was a staunch Presbyterian, and was active in his church.

Gonzaullas's other biographer, Robert W. Stephens, just wrote down everything that Gonzaullas told him. Stephens relates that "Cap" Gonzaullas said he was born on July 4, 1891, while his parents were visiting in Spain. "On occasion he listed his birthplace as Port of Spain, Trinidad, but he often used generalities in reference to his background." He was named in honor of his father's friend General Luis Terrazas, a wealthy landowner in northern Mexico. The family then lived in Mexico, Cuba, Trinidad, and various places in South America. Gonzaullas claimed that he was orphaned at the age of nine when on September 8, 1900, a monstrous hurricane hit Galveston, killing his parents. He added that their bodies were never recovered. This version has also been perpetuated. He then lived with various families and grew up in El Paso. Stephens also tells us that Gonzaullas fought in the Mexican Revolution (1910–20) under an assumed name. Like Malsch, Stephens asserts that in 1915 or 1916 Gonzaullas entered the Treasury Department and spent considerable time in New York City and Washington, D.C. But Stephens has him being sent as an undercover agent to Latin America, particularly South America.

It was early in 1920 when, according to Stephens, Gonzaullas was in New York City in connection with a Treasury Department case when he met Laura Scherer, whom he married in Riverside, California. They moved to El Paso, where he entered the import-export business.

Gonzaullas was a master of obfuscation, and he merrily concocted his background as he went along. So he told one biographer that his parents had died in the 1900 Galveston hurricane when he was nine years old. But evidently they were miraculously resurrected, for he told the other biographer they were wounded in a bandit attack when he was fifteen. And an article in the El Paso Herald entitled "More Drivers Enter Fast Cars in Race to Phoenix" refers to "Manuel T. Gonzaullas, well known European racing driver, [who] entered his Locomobile after driving here from Atlantic City. This driver has 31 first places to his credit, mostly won in Europe."

Malsch did additional research after publishing Lone Wolf, and his findings bring to light several more inconsistencies. As for Texas Ranger documentation of his background, "Former Ranger Captain Manuel T. Gonzaullas was born in Spain on July 4, 1891. The personnel file indicates no history before entering the Texas Rangers."