“Larry Beeson was governor and Gater was his man--and that meant that he had the State backing for anything he chose to do, murder included, provided he delivered the votes of the county. The first killing was on an election day, when ‘Buck’ Hamilton, one of Sarran’s gang, tried to vote a bunch of Mexicans solid that he’d brought across the river only that morning. He and I had words and he went after his gun. I was some fast in those days and I killed him. They couldn’t do a thing to me. It was self-defense and there were a lot of witnesses. But they had it in for me from that minute. I was a fool not to leave the county. But I was too stuffy.” “It took more than stuffiness to stay in Huevaca County after John Gater and Dick Sarran wanted a man out of it,” the Ranger said sympathetically. “So they laid for me, and inside of a year I had to kill two more of them.” Even the thought of it brought a harassed, haunted look into the man’s eyes. “I slept, those days, with a gun, not under my pillow, but actually in bed with me, under my hand. Sometimes, looking back on it, it seems as though I didn’t really sleep during that whole year. It was along in the early part of that time that the baby was born, and my wife died when it was four days old. And it seemed to me I didn’t much care whether they killed me or not. My wife’s sister here in San Antonio took the baby. “Then that gubernatorial campaign came along where Jeff Rich was running against Larry Beeson, and you remember there never was bloodier politics in Texas. I was for Jeff Rice, to the limit. And when he was licked, after a close election, it looked as if word went out that it was an open season on the fellows that had fought Beeson the hardest. Anyway, a lot of them got killed pretty soon, one way and another. Well, I wouldn’t leave the county, and my turn came. “That man Bristow, of Sarran’s gang, had a good reputation compared to most of the rest of them. He hadn’t ever killed a man--at least it never had been proved that he had--and maybe Gater and Sarran had that in their minds when they set him to get me. I suppose the scheme had been all worked out for some time, waiting for the cards to fall just right. Anyway, he and I met one evening along about dusk near the post office--and there wasn’t one single man in sight that didn’t belong body and soul to Gater. And Bristow said fighting words to me and went after his pistol and I beat him to it. Seems funny that I could beat fast gunmen to the draw in those days, when you think how slow I went after that pistol of mine just now, doesn’t it? But after twenty-two years without practice----