Bob Alexander

Deputy Sheriff, Town Marshall, Deputy U.S. Marshall, Train Agent, Livestock Inspector, Dan Tucker was the quintessential lawman during the violent frontier period of southwest New Mexico. By his own deadpan account, he was "obliged to kill eight men" in Grant County alone -- not counting four other outlaws he personally dropped from the scaffold. Disinclined by nature to back down from anyone, Tucker was involved in some one dozen shooting scrapes, was shot four times, and he arrested Russian Bill and Sandy King. Yet Dangerous Dan Tucker is more than a gunman's story. Author Bob Alexander skillfully weaves in Tucker's nervy confrontations with criminals, with the quirky, everyday details of an underpaid lawman living on the edge. Prodigiously researched and documented, Alexander presents a significant Western character heretofore lost to history. His Dan Tucker is no Hollywood hero, but he is extremely competent and supremely dangerous -- if you're an outlaw.

Authors Bob Alexander and Donaly E. Brice grappled with several issues when deciding how to relate a general history of the Texas Rangers. Should emphasis be placed on their frontier defense against Indians, or focus more on their role as guardians of the peace and statewide law enforcers? What about the tumultuous Mexican Revolution period, 1910–1920? And how to deal with myths and legends such as One Riot, One Ranger?Texas Rangers: Lives, Legend, and Legacy is the authors’ answer to these questions, a one-volume history of the Texas Rangers. The authors begin with the earliest Rangers in the pre-Republic years in 1823 and take the story up through the Republic, Mexican War, and Civil War. Then, with the advent of the Frontier Battalion, the authors focus in detail on each company A through F, relating what was happening within each company concurrently. Thereafter, Alexander and Brice tell the famous episodes of the Rangers that forged their legend, and bring the story up through the twentieth century to the present day in the final chapters.

Tall Walls and High Fences is the first comprehensive history of Texas prisons, written by a former law enforcement officer and an officer of the Texas prisons. Bob Alexander and Richard K. Alford chronicle the significant events and transformation of the Texas prison system from its earliest times to the present day, paying special attention to the human side of the story. Within these pages are stories of prison breaks, bloodhounds chasing escapees, and gunfights. Inside the walls are deadly confrontations, human trafficking, rape, clandestine consensual trysts, and tricks turned against correctional officers.Famous people and episodes in Texas prison history receive their due, from Texas Rangers apprehending and placing outlaws in prison to the 1974 prison siege at Huntsville. Throughout this long history Alexander and Alford pay special tribute to the more than 75 correctional officers, lawmen, and civilians who lost their lives in the line of duty.

Award-winning author Bob Alexander presents a biography of 20th-century Ranger Captain Jack Dean, who holds the distinction of being one of only five men to serve in both the Officer's Corps of the Rangers and also as a President-appointed United States Marshal.Jack Dean's service in Texas Ranger history occurred at a time when the institution was undergoing a philosophical revamping and restructuring, all hastened by America's Civil Rights Movement, landmark decisions handed down by the United States Supreme Court, zooming advances in forensic technology, and focused efforts designed to diversify and professionalize the Rangers. His job choice caused him to circulate in the duplicitous underworld of dishonesty and criminality where twisted self-interest overrode compliance with societal norms. His biography is packed with true-crime calamities: double murders, single murders, negligent homicides, suicides, jailbreaks, manhunts, armed robberies and home invasions, kidnappings, public corruption, sexual assaults, illicit gambling, car-theft rings, dope smuggling, and arms trafficking.

A superbly researched biography of a town and county. Silver City and Old Grant County's history has not been told before in such fascinating and exciting detail. It's all here - Apaches such as Geronimo, Mangas Coloradas and Victorio, Billy the Kid, the Earps and Kit Joy. Tough lawmen walked Silver City's streets and chased down owlhoots. But the everyday folk are well represented as well: townspeople, miners, soldiers, school teachers and store owners. This corner of New Mexico Territory held all elements of humanity; reading its history is like holding up a mirror to the entire Western adventure.

With prodigious research of the Southwest Borderland, historian Bob Alexander has herein uncovered the lives of fifteen notable gunmen, most of them largely lost to history - until now. Some of them were tougher than Wyatt Earp, killed more people than Billy the Kid, stole more livestock than Butch Cassidy, and took more bullets than Harvey Logan. With a lively style, strict documentation, and a remarkable collection of old photographs, here are the lost gunfighters of the Old Southwest.

Authors Bob Alexander and Donaly E. Brice grappled with several issues when deciding how to relate a general history of the Texas Rangers. Should emphasis be placed on their frontier defense against Indians, or focus more on their role as guardians of the peace and statewide law enforcers? What about the tumultuous Mexican Revolution period, 1910–1920? And how to deal with myths and legends such as One Riot, One Ranger?Texas Rangers: Lives, Legend, and Legacy is the authors’ answer to these questions, a one-volume history of the Texas Rangers. The authors begin with the earliest Rangers in the pre-Republic years in 1823 and take the story up through the Republic, Mexican War, and Civil War. Then, with the advent of the Frontier Battalion, the authors focus in detail on each company A through F, relating what was happening within each company concurrently. Thereafter, Alexander and Brice tell the famous episodes of the Rangers that forged their legend, and bring the story up through the twentieth century to the present day in the final chapters.

Captain Frank Jones, a famed nineteenth-century Texas Ranger,said of his company’s top sergeant, Baz Outlaw (1854–1894),“A man of unusual courage and coolness and in a close placeis worth two or three ordinary men.” Another old-time TexasRanger declared that Baz Outlaw “was one of the worst and mostdangerous” because “he never knew what fear was.” But not allthought so highly of him. In Whiskey River Ranger, Bob Alexander tells for the first time the full story of this troubled Texas Ranger and his losing battle with alcoholism. In his career Baz Outlaw wore a badge as a Texas Rangerand also as a Deputy US Marshal. He could be a fearless andcrackerjack lawman, as well as an unmanageable manic. AlthoughBaz Outlaw’s badge-wearing career was sometimes heroicallycreditable, at other times his self-induced nightmarish imbrogliosteased and tested Texas Ranger management’s resoluteness. Baz Outlaw’s true-life story is jam-packed with fellows owningwell-known names, including Texas Rangers, city marshals,sheriffs, and steely-eyed mean-spirited miscreants. Baz Outlaw’stale is complete with horseback chases, explosive train robberies,vigilante justice (or injustice), nighttime ambushes andbushwhacking, and episodes of scorching six-shooter finality. Bazmet his end in a brothel brawl at the hands of John Selman, thesame gunfighter who killed John Wesley Hardin.

Many well-read students, historians, and loyal aficionados of Texas Ranger lore know the name of Texas Ranger Captain Frank Jones (1856-1893), who died on the Texas-Mexico border in a shootout with Mexican rustlers. In Six-Shooters and Shifting Sands, Bob Alexander has now penned the first full-length biography of this important nineteenth-century Texas Ranger.At an early age Frank Jones, a native Texan, would become a Frontier Battalion era Ranger. His enlistment with the Rangers coincided with their transition from Indian fighters to lawmen. While serving in the Frontier Battalion officers' corps of Company D, Frank Jones supervised three of the four “great” captains of that era: J. A. Brooks, John H. Rogers, and John R. Hughes. Besides Austin Ira Aten and his younger brothers Calvin Grant Aten and Edwin Dunlap Aten, Captain Jones also managed law enforcement activities of numerous other noteworthy Rangers, such as Philip Cuney “P. C.” Baird, Benjamin Dennis Lindsey, Bazzell Lamar “Baz” Outlaw, J. Walter Durbin, Jim King, Frank Schmid, and Charley Fusselman, to name just a few.Frank Jones's law enforcing life was anything but boring. Not only would he find himself dodging bullets and returning fire, but those Rangers under his supervision would also experience gunplay. Of all the Texas Ranger companies, Company D contributed the highest number of on-duty deaths within Texas Ranger ranks.

Bad Company and Burnt Powder is a collection of twelve stories of when things turned ""Western"" in the nineteenth-century Southwest. Each chapter deals with a different character or episode in the Wild West involving various lawmen, Texas Rangers, outlaws, feudists, vigilantes, lawyers, and judges. Covered herein are the stories of Cal Aten, John Hittson, the Millican boys, Gid Taylor and Jim and Tom Murphy, Alf Rushing, Bob Meldrum and Noah Wilkerson, P. C. Baird, Gus Chenowth, Jim Dunaway, John Kinney, Elbert Hanks and Boyd White, and Eddie Aten.Within these pages the reader will meet a nineteen-year-old Texas Ranger figuratively dying to shoot his gun. He does get to shoot at people, but soon realizes what he thought was a bargain exacted a steep price. Another tale is of an old-school cowman who shut down illicit traffic in stolen livestock that had existed for years on the Llano Estacado. He was tough, salty, and had no quarter for cow-thieves or sympathy for any mealy-mouthed politicians. He cleaned house, maybe not too nicely, but unarguably successful he was. Then there is the tale of an accomplished and unbeaten fugitive, well known and identified for murder of a Texas peace officer. But the Texas Rangers couldn't find him. County sheriffs wouldn't hold him. Slipping away from bounty hunters, he hit Owlhoot Trail.

The Texas-Mexico border is trouble. Haphazardly splashing across the meandering Rio Grande into Mexico is—or at least can be—risky business, hazardous to one’s health and well-being. Kirby W. Dendy, the Chief of Texas Rangers, corroborates the sobering reality: “As their predecessors for over one hundred forty years before them did, today’s Texas Rangers continue to battle violence and transnational criminals along the Texas-Mexico border.”In Riding Lucifer’s Line, Bob Alexander, in his characteristic storytelling style, surveys the personal tragedies of twenty-five Texas Rangers who made the ultimate sacrifice as they scouted and enforced laws throughout borderland counties adjacent to the Rio Grande. The timeframe commences in 1874 with formation of the Frontier Battalion, which is when the Texas Rangers were actually institutionalised as a law enforcing entity, and concludes with the last known Texas Ranger death along the border in 1921. Alexander also discusses the transition of the Rangers in two introductory sections: “The Frontier Battalion Era, 1874–1901” and “The Ranger Force Era, 1901–1935,” wherein he follows Texas Rangers moving from an epochal narrative of the Old West to more modern, technological times.Written absent a preprogrammed agenda, Riding Lucifer’s Line is legitimate history. Adhering to facts, the author is not hesitant to challenge and shatter stale Texas Ranger mythology. Likewise, Alexander confronts head-on many of those critical Texas Ranger histories relying on innuendo and gossip and anecdotal accounts, at the expense of sustainable evidence—writings often plagued with a deficiency of rational thinking and common sense.Riding Lucifer’s Line is illustrated with sixty remarkable old-time photographs. Relying heavily on archived Texas Ranger documents, the lively text is authenticated with more than one thousand comprehensive endnotes.

Ira Aten (1862-1953) was the epitome of a frontier lawman. When as a youth he heard of the killing by Rangers of the notorious outlaw Sam Bass at Round Rock, Aten's neighborhood, he altered his plans of being a cowboy and instead set his sights on becoming a Texas Ranger. At age twenty he enrolled in Company D during the transition of the Rangers from Indian fighters to topnotch peace officers. This unit-and Aten-would have a lively time making their mark in nineteenth-century Texas. The preponderance of Texas Ranger treatments center on the outfit as an institution or spotlight the narratives of specific captains. Bob Alexander aptly demonstrated in Winchester Warriors: Texas Rangers of Company D, 1874-1901 that there is merit in probing the lives of everyday working Rangers. Aten is an ideal example. The years Ira spent as a Ranger are jam-packed with adventure, border troubles, shoot-outs, solving major crimes-a quadruple homicide-and manhunts. Aten's role in these and epochal Texas events such as the racially insensitive Jaybird/Woodpecker Feud and the bloody Fence Cutting Wars earned Ira's spot in the Ranger Hall of Fame. His law enforcing deeds transcend days with the Rangers. Ira served two counties as sheriff, terms spiked with excitement. Afterward, for ten years on the XIT, he was tasked with clearing the ranch's Escarbada Division of cattle thieves. Aten's story spins on an axis of spine-tingling Texas history. Moving to California, Ira was active in transforming the Imperial Valley from raw desert into an agricultural oasis. Unmistakably he was public spirited and committed to community betterment. Relying on primary source documents to build a platform for this meticulously researched and comprehensive biography with 1000 endnotes and 100 remarkable old-time photographs, Alexander gives us Ira Aten in the round-evenhandedly-the true story of a Ranger tough as rawhide.

The Texas Rangers were institutionally birthed in 1874 with the formation of the Frontier Battalion. They were tasked with interdicting Indian incursions into the frontier settlements and dealing with the lawlessness running rampant throughout Texas. In an effort to put a human face on the rangers, Bob Alexander tells the story of one of the six companies of the Frontier Battalion, Company D. Readers follow the rangers of Company D as - over time - it transforms from a unit of adventurous boys into a reasonably well-oiled law enforcement machine staffed by career-oriented lawmen. Beginning with their start as Indian fighters against the Comanches and Kiowas, Alexander explores the history of Company D as they rounded up numerous Texas outlaws and cattle thieves, engaged in border skirmishes along the Rio Grande, and participated in notable episodes such as the fence cutter wars. Winchester Warriors is an evenhanded and impartial assessment of Company D and its colorful cadre of Texas Rangers. Their laudable deeds are explored in detail, but by the same token their shameful misadventures are not whitewashed. These Texas Rangers were simply people, good and bad - and sometimes indifferent. This new study, extensively researched in both primary and secondary sources, will appeal to scholars and aficionados of the Texas Rangers and western history.