A Man Of Two Centuries: The Hill Country Lawman Who Brought Down Bonnie And Clyde

As I pulled through the old stone entrance and drove into Austin Memorial Park, I immediately realized that the office was a part of the old stone entrance. I parked the car, walked up and pushed the office door open. Inside, in a very small room, a man was on the telephone. Listening to voice messages, and returning calls, he looked up and asked me how he could help me. Noticing how very busy he was, I quickly asked him where I could find the location of Frank A. Hamer’s grave. While still on the phone, he didn’t miss a beat as he swiveled in his chair, looked out the window, and pointed out a location a short distance away behind a crop of trees. From the time I entered the office, until the time I left, was no more than 20 seconds. Obviously, he had been asked this question many times before.

As I walked out to find the grave, it occurred to me that the man on the telephone, in the old stone building, was symbolic of Frank Hamer’s life. Using modern day technology, he was still seated in the past.

Frank Hamer was born in 1884, and grew up in San Saba County, in the Texas Hill Country. It is said, that in his early teens, he and one of his brothers began working for a local farmer. There are several stories as to why, but at some point, the farmer shot Frank with a shotgun. Helped to safety by his brother, he eventually recovered from his wounds. Then, at the age of 16, Frank went back to see the farmer who had shot him. When he left the farm, the farmer was dead. From that day forward, and for the rest of his life, Frank Hamer was uncompromising in his often violent pursuit of justice.

When he was 20 or 21, and working as a cowboy on a Texas ranch, he captured a horse thief. As a result, the local sheriff took note and encouraged him to join the Texas Rangers, which he did. Frank worked intermittently with the Texas Rangers over the years, leaving from time to time to pursue other positions in law enforcement, but then always coming back. His bravery was never questioned, and, in Sherman, Texas, in 1930, he almost singlehandedly tried to protect a prisoner from an angry lynch mob. Over the years he pursued horse thieves, killers, smugglers, bank robbers and bootleggers, but the people he despised the most were corrupt politicians, like the back-to-back husband and wife Texas governors, “Pa” and “Ma” Ferguson.

Hamer eventually retired from the Rangers in the early 1930’s, but was soon called back to serve Texas in leading the effort to track down and stop the Barrow Gang. Both Clyde Barrow, and Bonnie Parker, were both born and raised in Texas, and for a couple of years the gang killed lawmen, robbed banks, and outwitted law enforcement officials in several states, including Texas.

Forming a posse composed of law enforcement officials from a couple of states, Frank used his excellent tracking skills to locate Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker driving along a quiet rural road just outside Gibsland, Louisiana. Along with his posse, and with Frank wielding a .35 caliber Remington Model 8 semi-automatic rifle, Bonnie and Clyde were ambushed in May of 1934. Over 160 rounds were pumped into the car, and both Bonnie and Clyde were killed instantly in the hail of gunfire. In the aftermath of the ambush, Frank became a national hero, albeit, a humble one, refusing to ever tell the story of his participation in the downfall of Bonnie and Clyde. Even today, he is regarded by the Texas Rangers as one of the best the organization has ever produced.

Following the incident, Frank soon returned to private life and private industry, serving as a strike-breaker on behalf of companies in Texas. Following World War II, he was again called back to service with the Texas Rangers, in helping verify election returns in several Texas counties in 1948. After this brief interlude with his beloved Texas Rangers, Frank finally retired for the last time. Despite his violent career, he died peacefully in Austin in 1955.

Two of Frank’s brothers, including Harrison Hamer, the brother who dragged Frank to safety after he was shotgunned as a boy, went on to become Texas Rangers themselves. One of Frank’s sons, Billy Hamer, was killed in action on Iwo Jima as a young U.S. Marine in March 1945. Another son, Frank Hamer, Jr., also served in the Marine Corps as a pilot during World War II, and, after briefly serving in the Texas Rangers himself, spent most of the rest of his working career flying for the Texas Fish and Game Commission.Today, Frank rests quietly in Austin Memorial Park, next to his wife, Gladys, and his son, Billy, who died during the war. During his life, Frank took part in about 50 gunfights, killed many men, and was wounded many times. His life crossed the end of one century and passed into a new one, and while he began his career chasing criminals on a horse with a shotgun, by the end of his career he was pursuing them in a fast automobile with a high powered semi-automatic rifle.

When all is said and done, it seems that while Frank may have adapted to the changing times with respect to transportation and firearms, he never wavered in his single minded “Old West” focus to rid the world of those who committed crimes. He was shrewd and clever, and was completely intolerant of people who broke the law. Until the day he died, he never regretted killing a single person, because, in his view, the extreme violence was always justified in bringing criminals to some form of justice.

The Horrell-Higgins Feud

Today, Lampasas County Texas is a rather quiet and sleepy place, but there was a time when such was not the case. During the 1870’s, Lampasas County was on the frontier, and the scene of violence and murder, which ultimately culminated in the Horrell-Higgins feud.

The five Horrell brothers, a wild and lawless bunch, were involved in shootouts and killings in both Lampasas and New Mexico (where one brother was killed) before the famous feud even began. One shootout in particular, which involved the Horrell brothers, left four State Policemen dead in Jerry Scott’s Saloon in the city of Lampasas.

When the brothers started stealing cattle, however, they took on an enemy who sealed their fate. John Calhoun Pinckney Higgins, the man with the big mustache who everyone called, “Pink,” was born in Georgia, but grew up in Texas after his family moved west. Pink Higgins grew up tough, participating in the tracking down of Comanche warriors and weathering difficult cattle drives while still in his teens.

Although the Horrell and Higgins families were at one time friendly Lampasas County neighbors, the Horrell brothers and Pink Higgins eventually took different directions in life. As the Horrell brothers began rustling cattle, Pink Higgins pushed back on their criminal activity. It is said he shot a Horrell family employee for killing one of his animals, then shoved the dead man inside its carcass, and rode to town to report that a cow had given birth to a human.

As the cattle rustling continued, Pink walked into a saloon in Lampasas in January 1877, and gunned down and killed one of the Horrell brothers. Several months later, he ambushed two other Horrell brothers several miles east of Lampasas, and while not killing them, did wound both of them. And, some months after this incident, a gunfight between the Horrell brothers, and their cohorts, and Pink Higgins, and his friends, took place in the Lampasas town square, with even more deaths.

With the escalating violence, the Texas Rangers rode in and negotiated a “peace treaty,” of sorts, between the Horrell clan and Pink Higgins. While the Horrell-Higgins feud had seemingly come to an end, violence involving the Horrell brothers and Pink Higgins did not.

Of the five Horrell brothers, only three were still alive at the end of the feud. And two of the three, were not long for the world. After having been arrested for even more crimes, including murder, they were shot dead in their jail cells by a mob in Meridian, Texas, while awaiting trial. Although no proof has ever been uncovered, many people suspect Pink was involved.

Pink Higgins, who, for some reason, is not well-known in the annals of the “Old West,” was a prolific killer; with some saying he dispatched at least fourteen people. His last killing, took place in 1902, when he killed a rival in the Panhandle of Texas. After he shot the man, Higgins notified the county sheriff, but was told to go back and check to see if the man was indeed dead, and if not, make sure that he finished what he started. What a different world it was in Texas, back in those days.

Pink eventually died of a heart attack in 1913, but was outlived by the last survivor of the Horrell-Higgins feud, Sam Horrell, who died in California in 1936.