running fight for miles McNally's men killed sixteen bandits, while only
one escaped. A young Ranger by the name of Smith was shot dead by
Cammelo Lerma as he dismounted to look at the dying bandit. The dead
bodies were piled in ox-carts and dumped in the public square at
Brownsville. McNally also captured King Fisher's band in an old log
house in Dimmit County, but they were not convicted.

Showing the nature of Ranger work, an incident which occurred to my
acquaintance, Captain Lea Hall, will illustrate. In De Witt County there
was a feud. One dark night sixteen masked men took a sick man, one Dr.
Brazel, and two of his boys, from their beds, and, despite the imploring
mother and daughter, hanged the doctor and one son to a tree. The other
boy escaped in the green corn. Nothing was done to punish the crime, as
the lynchers were men of property and influence in the country. No man
dared speak above his breath about the affair.

Captain Hall, by secret-service men, discovered the perpetrators, and
also that they were to be gathered at a wedding on a certain night. He
surrounded the house and demanded their surrender, at the same time
saying that he did not want to kill the women and children. Word
returned that they would kill him and all his Rangers. Hall told them to
allow their women and children to depart, which was done; then,
springing on the gallery of the house, he shouted, "Now, gentlemen, you
can go to killing Rangers; but if you don't surrender, the Rangers will
go to killing you." This was too frank a willingness for midnight
assassins, and they gave up.

Spies had informed him that robbers intended sacking Campbell's store in
Wolfe City. Hall and his men lay behind the counters to receive them on
the designated night. They were allowed to enter, when Hall's men,
rising, opened fire--the robbers replying. Smoke filled the room, which
was fairly illuminated by the flashes of the guns--but the robbers were
all killed, much to the disgust of the lawyers, no doubt, though I could
never hear that honest people mourned.

The man Hall was himself a gentleman of the romantic Southern soldier
type, and he entertained the highest ideals, with which it would be
extremely unsafe to trifle, if I may judge. Captain Shely, our other
visitor, was a herculean, black-eyed man, fairly fizzing with nervous
energy. He is also exceedingly shrewd, as befits the greater
concreteness of the modern Texas law, albeit he too has tr