“Durham’s account is modest and straightforward . . . has many lessons for anyone interested in the history of the Old West, leadership or law enforcement.” —American West Review Only an extraordinary Texas Ranger could have cleaned up bandit-plagued Southwest Texas, between the Nueces River and the Rio Grande, in the years following the Civil War. Thousands of raiders on horseback, some of them Anglo-Americans, regularly crossed the river from Mexico to pillage, murder, and rape. Their main objective? To steal cattle, which they herded back across the Rio Grande to sell. Honest citizens found it almost impossible to live in the Nueces Strip. In desperation, the governor of Texas called on an extraordinary man, Captain Leander M. McNelly, to take command of a Ranger company and stop these border bandits. One of McNelly’s recruits for this task was George Durham, a Georgia farm boy in his teens when he joined the “Little McNellys,” as the Captain’s band called themselves. More than half a century later, it was George Durham, the last surviving “McNelly Ranger,” who recounted the exciting tale of taming the Nueces Strip to San Antonio writer Clyde Wantland. In Durham’s account, those long-ago days are brought vividly back to life. Once again the daring McNelly leads his courageous band across Southwest Texas to victories against incredible odds. With a boldness that overcame their dismayingly small number, the McNellys succeeded in bringing law and order to the untamed Nueces Strip—succeeded so well that they antagonized certain “upright” citizens who had been pocketing surreptitious dollars from the bandits’ operations. “The reader seems to smell the acrid gunsmoke and to hear the creak of saddle leather.” —Southwestern Historical Quarterly

“Durham’s account is modest and straightforward . . . has many lessons for anyone interested in the history of the Old West, leadership or law enforcement.” —American West Review Only an extraordinary Texas Ranger could have cleaned up bandit-plagued Southwest Texas, between the Nueces River and the Rio Grande, in the years following the Civil War. Thousands of raiders on horseback, some of them Anglo-Americans, regularly crossed the river from Mexico to pillage, murder, and rape. Their main objective? To steal cattle, which they herded back across the Rio Grande to sell. Honest citizens found it almost impossible to live in the Nueces Strip. In desperation, the governor of Texas called on an extraordinary man, Captain Leander M. McNelly, to take command of a Ranger company and stop these border bandits. One of McNelly’s recruits for this task was George Durham, a Georgia farm boy in his teens when he joined the “Little McNellys,” as the Captain’s band called themselves. More than half a century later, it was George Durham, the last surviving “McNelly Ranger,” who recounted the exciting tale of taming the Nueces Strip to San Antonio writer Clyde Wantland. In Durham’s account, those long-ago days are brought vividly back to life. Once again the daring McNelly leads his courageous band across Southwest Texas to victories against incredible odds. With a boldness that overcame their dismayingly small number, the McNellys succeeded in bringing law and order to the untamed Nueces Strip—succeeded so well that they antagonized certain “upright” citizens who had been pocketing surreptitious dollars from the bandits’ operations. “The reader seems to smell the acrid gunsmoke and to hear the creak of saddle leather.” —Southwestern Historical Quarterly

The first authentic biography of one of the most famous of the nineteenth century Texas Rangers-Capt. Leander H. McNelly. No history of the murderous Sutton-Taylor Feud, or of the Texas State Police, or of the depredations of the Mexican Gen. Juan H. Cortina, or of the rancher Richard King, or of the infamous Nueces Strip can be written without major emphases on the influence of McNelly and the men who followed him so loyally. Chuck Parsons is a native of Iowa, spending most of his life as an educator in Minnesota and Wisconsin. He is the author of seven books and numerous articles, all concerning outlaws and lawmen of Texas and the West. For over six years he wrote a monthly column "The Answer Man" for True West magazine. Parsons currently resides in South Texas. Marianne E. Hall Little is a native Texan and a descendent of three Texas Rangers. She has written sixteen books, mostly stemming from her genealogical research. She has co-authored with Chuck Parsons and James S. Peterson, writing the biography of Mace Bowman Texas Feudist Western Lawman. Little lives in South Texas.

A retired Texas Ranger recalls a career that took him from shootouts in South Texas to film sets in Hollywood. When his picture appeared on the cover of Texas Monthly, Joaquin Jackson became the icon of the modern Texas Rangers. Nick Nolte modeled his character in the movie Extreme Prejudice on him. Jackson even had a speaking part of his own in The Good Old Boys with Tommy Lee Jones. But the role that Jackson has always played the best is that of the man who wears the silver badge cut from a Mexican cinco peso coin, a working Texas Ranger. Legend says that one Ranger is all it takes to put down lawlessness and restore the peace: one riot, one Ranger. In this adventure-filled memoir, Joaquin Jackson recalls what it was like to be the Ranger who responded when riots threatened, violence erupted, and criminals needed to be brought to justice across a wide swath of the Texas-Mexico border from 1966 to 1993. Jackson has dramatic stories to tell. Defying all stereotypes, he was the one Ranger who ensured a fair election—and an overwhelming win for La Raza Unida party candidates—in Zavala County in 1972. He followed legendary Ranger Captain Alfred Y. Allee Sr. into a shootout at the Carrizo Springs jail that ended a prison revolt and left him with nightmares. He captured “The See More Kid,” an elusive horse thief and burglar who left clean dishes and swept floors in the houses he robbed. He investigated the 1988 shootings in Big Bend’s Colorado Canyon and tried to understand the motives of the Mexican teenagers who terrorized three river rafters and killed one. He even helped train Afghan mujahedin warriors to fight the Soviet Union. Jackson’s tenure in the Texas Rangers began when older Rangers still believed that law need not get in the way of maintaining order, and concluded as younger Rangers were turning to computer technology to help solve crimes. Though he insists, “I am only one Ranger. There was only one story that belonged to me,” his story is part of the larger story of the Texas Rangers becoming a modern law enforcement agency that serves all the people of the state. It’s a story that’s as interesting as any of the legends. And yet, Jackson’s story confirms the legends, too. With just over a hundred Texas Rangers to cover a state with 267,399 square miles, any one may become the one Ranger who, like Joaquin Jackson in Zavala County in 1972, stops one riot. “A powerful, moving read . . . One Ranger is as fascinating as the memoirs of nineteenth-century Rangers James Gillett and George Durham, and the histories by Frederick Wilkins and Walter Prescott Webb—and equally as important.” —True West “A straight-shooting book that blow[s] a few holes in the Ranger myth while providing more ammunition for the myth’s continuation. . . . Reads more like a novel than [an] autobiography.” —Austin American-Statesman

John King Fisher - King of the Nueces Strip From a Stock Marshal to cattle rustler to Deputy Sheriff, King Fisher was the undisputed ruler of the rough border brasada inhabited by outlaws of every description known as the "Nueces Strip." Even the famed Texas Rangers were fearful of his grip: IT IS A REIGN OF TERROR FROM THE MEN WHO INFEST THIS REGION. ...THE WHITE CITIZENS ARE ALL FRIENDS OF KING FISHER. THERE IS A REGULARLY ORGANIZED BAND OF DESPERADOES FROM GOLIAD TO THE HEADWATERS OF THE NUECES. THIS BAND IS MADE UP OF MEN WHO HAVE COMMITTED CRIMES IN OTHER STATES AND FLED FOR REFUGE HERE, WHERE THEY GO TO ROBBING FOR A LIVING. Flamboyant, he was described as wearing "a tres piedras sombrero, with a solid gold coiled rattler for the band and gold tassels. His shirt was of that heavy Mexico City silk, opened at the throat; and a silk, red bandanna was knotted around his neck." His pistols were nickel-plated Colt .45's and he knew how to use them, killing over a dozen men during his life as a bandit chieftain, later turned lawman. Known as one of the best pistol fighters of his day, John King Fisher has remained an enigma in the chronicles of the Western Frontier. While other gun fighters have achieved notoriety through the stories told in the pulp magazines and newspapers of the day, John King Fisher has been largely ignored. Fisher was credited with killing a string of men during his lifetime and the mere mention of his name was usually enough to sober up a drunken opponent or cause a sober man to contemplate his own epitaph. Oddly enough, Fisher was not a cold-blooded murder, but rather stand-up gun fighter that faced his adversaries in a winner-take-all shootout. Thoroughly researched and documented, this is John King Fisher's astounding true story. Readers' Favorite - 5-star review

As Elmer Kelton notes in his afterword to this book, "Chuck Parsons' biography is a long-delayed and much-justified tribute to Armstrong's service to Texas." Parsons fills in the missing details of a Ranger and rancher's life, correcting some common misconceptions and adding to the record of a legendary group of lawmen and pioneers.