How Texas & Southwestern Cattle Raisers
Association Special Rangers shaped the Wild West.
By Elyssa Foshee Sanders
Cattle rustling — a criminal enterprise many might consider obsolete, along with the stagecoach robberies, quick draw duels and high noon shootouts of the frontier era — is still alive and well in the modern Southwest, plaguing cattle raisers and the special rangers who safeguard their livelihoods.
“The one question people ask me is, ‘They still do that?’” says Scott Williamson, executive director of law enforcement, brand and inspection services for Texas & Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association.
“Yes, absolutely. While the basic theft of livestock has remained the same, the level of technology, the anonymity of social media, the vastness of interstate commerce — so many things have changed.”
Retired Special Ranger Joe Roberts, whose tenure with Texas & Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association spanned nearly five decades, echoes these sentiments.
“I saw a lot of technology changes,” Roberts says. “First was the blood typing and DNA testing to identify cattle, but the hot iron is the best identification tool, as always. The basics for cattle theft investigation still rely on cow sense, common sense and relating well to the rancher, the thief and working well with other officers and agencies.”
A League of Their Own
Texas & Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association Special Rangers, who are commissioned by the Texas Department of Public Safety, or DPS, and the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation, must be well-versed in all facets of law enforcement, from narcotics to counterterrorism. Special rangers work closely with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Department of Homeland Security and the Texas Rangers to tackle agricultural and related crimes.
This is a far cry from the Wild West, when requirements to enter law enforcement were few, and when Butch Cassidy-esque gunfights between outlaws and lawmen on horseback were the norm.
“Prior to DPS, we would just hire somebody, there was no commission,” Williamson says. “You did it like you see on TV: ‘Here’s your badge, here’s your gun, let’s go.’ The Texas Rangers started in 1823 as a kind of battalion, a sworn brotherhood like you see in the movies — no paperwork, no anything. These were more battle-stricken type men until the late 1910s, when they began to hone their skills to turn into an investigative group.”
While special rangers and Texas Rangers often work together to investigate agricultural crimes, they are separate divisions of Texas law enforcement; special rangers focus on crimes against property, while Texas Rangers focus on crimes against persons.
“When you look at our intersecting histories, it can be difficult to differentiate between our organizations,” Williamson says. “Although we’re both commissioned by DPS, we’re not Texas Rangers, but our relationship has always been exceptionally close.”
Roberts worked alongside the Texas Rangers during the most violent case of his career, in which five thieves managed to steal horses, cows and mules across an eight-county area, from Abilene to Fort Worth, in the late ’80s. Roberts helped locate and arrest four of the thieves, but one remained unaccounted for.
“In my interview with one of the thieves, that crook told me, ‘You’ve helped me, I’m going to help you,’” Roberts recalls. “‘I’ll tell you what happened to the other crook.’ I said, ‘What’s that?’ And he said, ‘Johnny and Ross, they murdered him and dropped him in a well.’
“I pushed my chair back and said, ‘Whoa, wait a minute. This getting a little heavy for me.’ I walked across the hall to the sheriff’s office, where there was a Texas Ranger named Gene Key. I said, ‘Hey, Gene, you busy? I just stepped in a pile of crap.’
“I painted him a picture of this case I’d been working on, and we went back down the hall and did the interview and started a murder investigation right there.”
In their joint investigation, which spanned a year, Roberts and Key cleared 10 unsolved cases.
“This goes to show you how simple cattle theft can turn really serious,” Roberts says. “This case reminded me not to be complacent and to be alert to stay alive.”
Like their Texas Ranger counterparts, Texas & Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association Special Rangers are embedded in the fabric of history, their stories indelibly intertwined with those of the Wild West’s most notorious outlaws.
Have Gun — Will Travel
In 1880, with the Lincoln County War raging in the eastern Territory of New Mexico and cattle rustling gangs devastating ranching operations in the Panhandle, Canadian River Cattlemen’s Association — which would join the ranks of Texas & Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association — appointed buffalo hunter-turned-U.S. Deputy Marshal John W. Poe as stock detective and deputy to Lincoln County Sherrif Pat Garrett. Poe was tasked with stamping out the cattle rustling gangs led by Pat Coghlin — the King of Tularosa — and William H. Bonney, better known as Billy the Kid.
Before the year was over, Poe successfully had Coghlin indicted by a grand jury, bringing the reign of the King of Tularosa to an end, and Garrett captured and imprisoned Bonney in the Lincoln County Jail. After four months in custody, Bonney staged a bloody prison break and absconded to Fort Sumner, but Poe discovered his hideout, and Garrett allegedly ended the outlaw’s life with an impeccably aimed shot in the dark.
Almost a half-century later, as the bootleggers and organized crime syndicates of the coming Jazz Age began to overtake the horseback-riding, rifle-wielding desperados of the Wild West, Frank A. Hamer — an imposing, stern and devoutly religious man with a rigid sense of justice — left the Texas Rangers to become a field inspector for Texas Cattlemen’s Association, the latest iteration of what would become Texas & Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association.
Hamer’s tenure was short-lived, however, as he was discharged that same year following his involvement in a fatal shootout with his wife’s former in-laws at a Sweetwater gas station. After his dismissal in 1917, Hamer rejoined the Texas Rangers, where he eventually became senior captain and solidified his reputation as one of the most fearsome lawmen in the American West.
In 1934, two years after his retirement, Hamer was enlisted by the Texas Prison System to lead the manhunt against Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow. Hiding in the bushes alongside Louisiana State Highway 154, Hamer and his posse waited for the couple’s car to approach before opening fire, unloading more than 130 rounds of ammunition into the now-famous Ford V-8 and ending the two-year crime spree of Bonnie and Clyde.
While Poe and Hamer retired from public service and lived into their seventies — Poe succumbing to heart failure at 73 and Hamer passing in his sleep at 71 — the same cannot be said of two legendary field inspectors who were struck down while in the line of duty.
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
On Easter Sunday of 1923, a group of lawmen gathered at the Gaines Hotel in Seminole for an after-dinner smoke and discussion of the next day’s habeas corpus hearing against two notorious cattle thieves.
Among those crammed in the hotel’s small office were the county sheriff, two attorneys, the presiding judge and Horace “Hod” Roberson and Dave Allison, field inspectors for the Texas Cattlemen’s Association.
The cattle thieves in question were Milt Good of Brownfield, a world-champion steer roper turned outlaw, and Tom Ross, formerly known as Hill Loftis, a career criminal from Mississippi who had evaded justice for decades despite his distinctive appearance, which included “piercing black eyes” and a “peculiarly shaped head,” according to reward notices.
As the principal witnesses to Ross and Good’s cattle theft, Roberson and Allison were to testify against them the following morning — not a moment too soon for Roberson, who had publicly proclaimed his intention to kill Ross or send him to prison.
A 48-year-old Army veteran from Midland, Roberson had served as a Texas Ranger, a ranch foreman, a county deputy and a Deputy U.S. Marshall before joining the Texas Cattlemen’s Association in 1916. After his passing, bereaved friends described him as “without peer” and “the bravest of the brave,” praising his “hatred for a crook or a thief.”
According to some historical accounts, it was not unheard of for Roberson to serve as judge, jury and executioner on the spot in order to resolve disputes with expediency. His methods even earned him a murder conviction and 20-year prison sentence in 1915, but he was acquitted after a lengthy appeals process.
Roberson’s partner, Allison, was an equally formidable lawman of 63, known for becoming the youngest sheriff in Texas and ending the careers of many famous outlaws, including Three Finger Jack and the Owens brothers. George S. Patton described him as “the most noted gunman here in Texas.”
Like Roberson, he was a prolific gunslinger who didn’t shy away from deadly force; nevertheless, after his death, mourners described him as “a brave, fearless and upright man,” and proclaimed, “There never was a better man than Dave.”
Murder at the Gaines
Around 8:30 p.m. that fateful Sunday, the hotel doors burst open to reveal Good and Ross, armed with an automatic shotgun and a pistol, respectively.
As witnesses would later testify, the barrel of Good’s shotgun poked through the open door of the hotel’s office, pointing toward Roberson. Before anyone could react, two shots fired — one into Roberson’s head and another into Allison’s heart. Ross then unloaded several rounds into Roberson’s body — “I do not know how many times I shot him,” he allegedly said — piercing the ranger’s head, neck, heart and hip for good measure.
Disturbed by the commotion, Roberson’s wife, Martha, left the safety of her hotel room to discover Allison’s body on the floor and her deceased husband still upright in his chair. She pulled Roberson’s gun from its holster and, upon discovering the handle had been shattered, retrieved a backup gun from their hotel room. Still in her nightgown, she pursued the gunmen through the front door of the lobby and opened fire, grazing Good’s arm and hip and hitting Ross in his midsection.
Neither man was fatally wounded — Ross’s belt buckle had deflected Martha’s bullet — so the fugitives managed to flee the scene in a getaway car. But only a few hours later, Good and Ross called the sheriff to surrender; accounts differ as to whether they required medical attention or had simply run out of gasoline.
During their subsequent trials in Lubbock and Abilene throughout the following months, although Ross and Good claimed to have acted in self-defense, they were both convicted of murder and sentenced to more than 50 years each at the Texas State Prison in Huntsville. In 1925, they escaped from the prison hospital and fled the country — Ross to Canada and Good to South America.
After a year on the run, Good was apprehended in Oklahoma and returned to Huntsville to carry out his sentence. Seemingly undeterred by his failure, however, he escaped again the next year and was immediately recaptured. Despite his irrepressible wanderlust, after only 12 years in custody, Good was pardoned and released. He reunited with his wife and eight children and lived into his seventies, when he was crushed to death between his vehicle and a fence at his farm in Cotulla.
Ross suffered an even darker fate, remaining on the run for two years after his jailbreak and forsaking his family and name for a new alias: Charles Gannon. He would commit at least one more murder before his death in 1929. It’s unclear whether his last victim was a Montana foreman or a detective sent to apprehend him and bring him back to Huntsville.
But one part of the narrative remains consistent: that same night, Gannon penned a suicide note to his wife and daughter, put a gun to his head and ended his three-decade crime spree. He was 57 years old.
New Pastures
Some historians consider Allison and Roberson’s murders to be the end of the frontier era — a much-romanticized period of American history characterized not only by swinging saloon doors, boom towns and the promise of economic prosperity, but also by anarchy, vigilantism and gunsmoke justice.
“In the frontier era when Allison and Roberson were killed, it was just like the cowboy days,” Williamson says. “These were mean, tough old men, but they were doing their job. They caught the cattle thieves, and they were essentially assassinated because of that work. They gave the ultimate sacrifice for the livestock investigative industry.”
Throughout the last century, the agricultural law enforcement landscape has transformed immeasurably, and Texas & Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association Special Rangers have risen to the challenge, cementing their standing among the foremost civil service agencies in the Southwest.
“Now we need to have the deep investigative skills required to subpoena cell phone and GPS records, the forensic knowledge to analyze crime scenes, as well as the awareness of liability and familiarity with discovery laws,” Williamson explains. “The standards for our investigations, our ethics and our reporting today are significantly higher than they were even when I started as a brand inspector in ’87.”
Williamson recalls pecking away on a manual typewriter, driving around with a box of maps and phone books in his pickup, and using drive-through payphones to check in with Fort Worth headquarters.
“It’s just endless, the things that have changed over the course of my career,” he says. “But the dedication of those men who were so tough through our earlier years, in a time when justice looked so different, is what built us.”
“Allison and Roberson didn’t have the DNA or blood typing, much less cell phones to speed up an investigation,” Roberts says. “May we remember those officers killed in the line of duty who never got the chance to retire.”
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Elyssa Foshee Sanders is a freelance writer from Lubbock..
This story first appeared in the December 2024 issue of The Cattleman magazine.