Frankie Is Forced Into His First Gunfight And It Ain't Purdy

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

This post is a continuation of a new series about the late great Frank Hamer, who was our most successful Texas Ranger from 1906 into the 1930's. I started his story at the beginning and we are still in his youth, he's a 16 yr old kid at this point.

Unfortunately there are no photos from his teenage years, we only have photos from when he was 22 yrs old after he joined the Rangers. Even then he looked like such a fresh faced kid. I can only imagine the baby face he must have been at 16.

Here he is at age 22. He's on the left:

source

I think I'll call him Frankie because he was such a kid at this point in the story. I think his Pappy probably called him that.

Even so, at 16 he was already an accomplished marksman, hunter, tracker, survivalist, naturalist and many other things, he was quite extraordinary.

Recap

In the last post we left off with Frankie going to work with a grouchy old farmer named McSween and he also took his younger brother, Harrison, along. Harrison was 12 at the time (and probably worked cheap).

Old Grouchy Pants had tried to hire Frankie to kill off another rancher that he didn't like and Frankie not only told him a big, fat NO! but also that he was going to tell the other rancher about McSween's assassination plans.

When Frankie stormed off he was warned not so say a word or he'd be killed.

Today's story

Well, that night Frankie and Harrison rode over to the neighbor rancher's place and warned him that McSween was plotting to have him killed. The rancher thanked them for the warning and said he'd keep his eye out for the crazy old badger.

A couple days went by and Frankie and Harrison were out plowing a field when McSween approached and told Harrison to get some tools from the barn and told Frankie to go to the house and grab some food.

It started out as a monotonous work day

Harrison was stopping the plowing operation and setting the plow against a tree and Frankie had come back from the house with some cans.

Harrison heard a noise and turned to see Frankie bending down to pick up some cans he'd dropped.

But sneaking up behind him was McSween with a double-barreled shotgun. Harrison shouted to Frankie "Look out!" and Frankie instinctively dove to one side just as McSween fired, the shot load whizzed past him as he took off running.

McSween fired the second barrel which slammed into Frankie's back and the left side of his head, knocking him to the ground.

Frankie was always armed

Frankie was carrying a pistol(of course, he was a Texan!) he pulled it out and started shooting, hitting McSween with one of the bullets, dropping him to the ground.

Harrison ran over to his brother and helped him walk into the woods and some cover while McSween staggered back to his house.

The boys found a ravine to hide in while Harrison tried to stop the bleeding because Frankie was grievously wounded.

Lookin to finish the job

Here comes McSween on a horse with a Buffalo rifle, searching for them. Frankie had his pistol out and was going to shoot but Harrison talked him out of it and McSween kept riding, he rode off looking for them.

The boys made it back to their wagon and Harrison drove Frankie home.

Saved by a stranger

A significant event took place before they got to the Hamer homestead though. Harrison ran into a black field worker who raced off to contact a doctor to get him over to the Hamer place.

The doc arrived in time and removed some of the buckshot but couldn't get all of them. He carried the others in him the rest of his life.

Frankie was in terrible shape. In fact, the doctor told his father "I hate to say it, but the boy is not going to make it, he's lost too much blood."

I've heard similar statements so many times in my life. Doctors deal in facts, but facts are not always the truth. Facts can change.

Frankie's story continues in the next post.

Thanks for reading folks!
-jonboy
Texas

PS- Last week I did a post about the amazing wire sculptor, Robin Wright who creates Fairies like this:

source

I've found some other interesting types of wire sculptures since and wanted to share one occasionally. This one is using a wire mesh instead of individual strands. A see-through person!

source