Frank And The Crazy Old Badger

Another Hill Country scene where young Frank spent most of 8 years living off the land:

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Howdy folks and greetings from the Great Plains of North Texas!

We're in a series about Frank Hamer, Texas Ranger, who was one of our greatest lawmen and some say THE greatest.

So far we've learned about his upbringing and his unorthodox lifestyle of living in the Hill Country by himself for weeks at a time while he studied nature and honed his hunting, tracking, and survival skills.

Today's story

When Frank was 16 years old his father moved the family to Regency, Texas which is about as close to the center of the state as you can get, the year was 1900:

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Regency was a tiny little place, a brand new town with just 200 people, a general store, a church, and a flour mill. It was there that Frank met a crazy old badger named McSween. McSween was a farmer with 340 acres and was known as a "hardcase" around town.

In other words, he was an S.O.B. that no one liked.

But the old guy needed help with his farming and Frank needed money and a job(he quit school after the 6th grade) so he agreed to farm the old butthead's land in exchange for half the crop at harvest time.

Frank the hitboy

Well, when he wasn't working the fields Frank sometimes practiced his shooting. When McSween saw that he was a dead shot with a pistol, rifle, and shotgun he asked if he would like to earn $150.

That would be the equivalent of about $5,000 in today's money so back then it was a lot.

Seems there was a local rancher that McSween had some kind of run-ins with and wanted him out of the way so he told Frank he would pay him to shoot him! Young Frank was in shock.

He told old grumpy that he was planning on being a preacher and didn't think he could be a preacher and go around killing people!

Unfazed

McSween wasn't deterred. He said "Well if you're on that kind of bent, I'll give you $200 to shoot him. Of course Frank told him "No way!" and not only that but said he was going to warn the rancher and tell him about McSween's proposal to have him shot.

That's where the conversation ended but while Frank stormed off McSween shouted after him that if he told a soul about this "he'd kill him!"

I think their friendship might be over but we'll see what happens in the next post.

Thanks for reading folks, God bless you all!
-jonboy
Texas

PS- Ready for some cool weather, we've had unseasonably hot weather here for weeks and that's on top of the normal hot weather. I just want a mountain cabin to escape to in the heat of the summer, is that too much to ask?

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