Old West Book Review: Riding Lucifer’s Line

Retired lawman and veteran writer of more than a dozen non-fiction books about Old West history, Bob Alexander again writes a hard-hitting book.  Riding Lucifer’s Line is a collection of 24 profiles about Texas Rangers who lost their lives on the Mexico-Texas border known as “Lucifer’s Line.”  The chosen time period covers the last quarter of the Nineteenth Century through the first quarter of the Twentieth Century.

Carefully researched including newspaper accounts, personal letters, courtroom papers and official Texas Ranger documents, Alexander shows how the hard riding, straight-shooting Rangers rode with boldness into mortal danger.  Their weapons of choice included Winchesters and the Colt’s .45 caliber six-shooters.  They relied on horses for transportation, and faced every weather condition while crisscrossing the vast and untamed land.  From choking dry desert and cactus-studded hills, to the swampy, mosquito infested marshes to the south, these men answered the call.

Alexander points out that Texas Rangers were sometimes hated and despised by the Hispanic population, even referred to as “devils”, by those who naturally resisted the new boundary after Texas split from Mexico.  And while not all of the Rangers were angels on horseback, they dealt with the harsh realities of an unforgiving adversary good at ambush and body mutilation.

Sonny Smith was the youngest Ranger killed in the line of duty.  At seventeen years he was shot down ambushed by a wounded desperado hiding in the weeds near a pond.  John McBride and Conrad Mortimer were caught in a crossfire, trapped inside a shack by a Mexican lynch mob.  Sam Frazier was killed by people he had threatened, and George R. “Red” Bingham was shot through the heart during a running gun battle with outlaws.  Frank Sieker’s death was the result of a “terrible mistake” when Rangers mistook two Mexicans as horse thieves who were really leading horses of their own that had escaped, but due to language differences, the fight was on.  Charles Fusselman was shot in the head during an ambush while chasing cattle thieves.  Grover Scott Russell was ambushed inside a grocery store by the mother of the man he was trying to arrest. The lady used an axe.

The list of murdered Texas Rangers goes on and on, as readers find out what happened to whom, who the killers were and if they were brought to justice.  These stories are real, and there are no happy endings when a young man in the prime of life is suddenly left dead riddled with bullet holes, or his skull crushed with an axe.

Two sections in the book provide photographs of many of these men and some others. A brief history of the Texas Rangers is explained in the book’s Foreword, and the Afterword gives yet another brief history lesson in what it took to be a Texas Ranger, details of their enlistment requirements and pay.  Bob Alexander also explains how life on the Texas-Mexico border continues to this day to be a dangerous proposition.  Horse and cattle rustling have now become mostly a war with drug cartels and human smugglers.

This book is a fast-paced, sentimental eye-opener into the lives of these twenty-four brave men who were determined to make Texas a safer place, but forfeited their own lives in the name of law and order.  The struggle continues to this day.

Bob Alexander’s vast experience in law enforcement, border issues, and his love of Texas history once again come through in this latest book. Get your copy HERE.

Editor’s Note:  The reviewer, Phyllis Morreale-de la Garza is the author of numerous books about the Old West including Silk and Sagebrush, Women of the Old West, published by Silk Label Books, P.O. Box 700, Unionville, New York 10988 www.silklabelbooks.com

*Courtesy of Chronicle of the Old West newspaper, for more click HERE.