Deconstructing myths and reconstructing realities, this
gritty, day-to-day portrayal, written by Private A. T.
Miller, Company B, Frontier Battalion, yields a complex
vision of the passing West and its lawmen.
A Private in the Texas Rangers takes the reader
on a tumultuous ride along the fading Texas-Oklahoma
frontier. Three diaries, excerpted and annotated by
Miller's great-grandson, John Miller Morris, provide the
grist of a remarkable story - a tale of true crime and
punishment set against the scenic backdrops of the Rolling
Plains, the Panhandle, and Old Greer empires.
With Company B's newest recruit, readers saddle up for
the wild Texas and Oklahoma trails, ride the new iron
rails crossing the Great Panhandle from Fort Worth to
Denver, watch meteor showers, flirt with the ladies, and
encounter some of Texas' most famous lawmen, ranchers,
and trail bosses.
Miller's Texas tolerated prostitutes in town but not guns,
and death by morphine suicide was often more likely than
death by gunfight. Contrary to the dominant legends of
sensational frontier violence and lawlessness, Miller's
daily journal entries bring to life law and order, decent
people and indecent towns, chases and arrests, and stabbings
and shootings, while highlighting the long periods of effort
and sometimes fruitless activity preceding the capture of an outlaw.
Historians, regional scholars, and anyone interested in
Texas and the Old West will enjoy this insider's view of
how Rangers worked together - building loyalty and trust,
their lives possibly forfeit if teamwork failed - and yet
endured the loneliness and frustration of life on the
American frontier.
_________________________________________________________
JOHN MILLER MORRIS is an associate professor at the
University of Texas at San Antonio. Author of the
award-winning El Llano Estacado: Exploration and Imagination
on the High Plains of Texas and New Mexico, 1536-1860,
Morris lectures widely on topics in geography and history.
Number Three: Canseco-Keck History Series
