Texas Ranger Tales: Stories That Need Telling

by Mike Cox

Book Overview

They were men who could not be stampeded, said the late Colonel Homer Garrison Jr. of the men who wore the badge of the Texas Rangers. Colonist Stephen F. Austin, during the earliest days of Anglo... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1556225377
• ISBN13: 9781556225376
• Release Date: April 1997
• Publisher: Taylor Trade Publishing
• Length: 336 Pages
• Weight: 0.92 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.5" x 8.4"

Customer Reviews

Not Stampeded

Stephen F Austin once wrote during the early days of the Anglo settlement in Texas that he would "employ ten men to act as 'rangers' for the common defense." Thus were the famous Texas Rangers born. The Rangers are an important part of the history of Texas. About them have endured and evolved numerous myths and traditions. One of which is that the Texas Rangers could not be stampeded according to the late Colonel Homer Garrison. Mike Cox tells folksy tales, the kind that we would all enjoy around a campfire. In the early 1870's Ranger Tedford and several other Rangers were scouting the headwaters of the Llano River. They were under strict orders not to shoot unless they came upon Indians. The order was mildly irritating to the Rangers until they crossed a hill and came upon a bear. What would they do? One Ranger suggested roping it. One can imagine what could have happened. Even the chapter where Cox tells about eating coyote is folksy. Comanches had attacked settlers in Coleman County in West Texas. The Rangers trailed the Indians across Runnels and Coke Counties into Nolan County. At that point the Rangers were running out of supplies and there was no game around except ... a coyote. Years later a Ranger named Rogers recalled that another Ranger named Elkins was so hungry he ate a half-quarter of the coyote. "Pass the coyote, please."

Very entertaining

From the personalities of pack mules like Old Monk that Rangers used on the scout to celloid cowboy Tom Mix's fraudulent claim to have been a Ranger, Mike Cox does a very entertaining job on these 27 stories of the legendary lawmen. We learn, for instance, why it often took only a few of them to arrest scores of armed men: "Saw our guns cocked, I reckon," said Ranger Capt. Roy Aldrich, and that their famous star-in-a-wheel badge is still cut from the soft silver of a Mexican cinco peso coin. Cox's reviews in the appendix of ten classic Ranger narratives, published between 1847 and 1928, alone are worth the price of the book. But the stories that need telling are also worth the telling, and worth the buying.