The fierce Carankawaes, once the terror of the coast and long believed to be cannibals, and the Kiowas, called the _red-eyed_, had melted before the coming of the pale-faces, as the snow melts under the April sun. But remnants of the warlike western tribes remained. The Comanches, the Apaches, and the Lipans still hovered like dark clouds about the frontier. They called themselves _Nianis_ (live Indians); and though they were taken away by the government from their hunting-grounds and penned up in a Reservation (that is, upon lands reserved or set apart for them), they continued every now and then to swoop down upon their old haunts, where every rock and bush and hillock was familiar to them. Even within the past twenty years the borderman dared not be too far from his rifle. But the Texas Indian was passing. His tribes were dying out, as the Mohicans, the Powhatans, and the Alabamas had died out before them. With the Red Man, another race, as wild, as noble, and as free as his, was as slowly drifting to its end. When La Salle sailed up a certain pleasant stream in 1685, he called it _Les Vaches_ (the cows), from the number of buffalos grazing on its banks. They roamed the vast prairies and the shaded timberland, from the utmost verge of the country on the north and west to the salt waters of the Gulf. The herds were so large that the thunder of their hoofs startled the air and their trampling shook the ground. As the Indian retreated westward, the shaggy buffalo followed his moccasined foot; as the savage warriors, who were as the sands of the seashore for numbers, dwindled away, so dwindled the buffalo herds. 4. THE TEXAS RANGER. The daring and ever-watchful foe of the Texas Indian, the dashing and ever-ready hunter of the Texas buffalo, was the Texas ranger. He, too, is passing away before the march of civilization, and fast becoming a memory only; but a memory which will live forever in song and story, with the brave, the generous, and the noble of all times. The first company of Texas rangers was formed in 1832; but it was not until the administration of President Burnet (1836) that this arm of the service was regularly organized and put into the field. They became at once a power, and they have since played an important part in the history of the state. Mounted upon a swift horse, with a _lariat_ (rope) coiled about the high pommel of his saddle and a blanket strapped behind him; with his long rifle resting in the hollow of his arm, and the bridle held loosely in his hand; erect and graceful, the brim of his slouch hat hiding the sparkle of his keen eyes,—the Texas ranger is a striking and picturesque figure. But he is more than that. For fifty years and more he has been the terror of Indian and intruding Mexican, of thief and desperado, of lawlessness and crime.