Customer Reviews

Taming the Nueces Strip: The Story of McNelly's Rangers

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
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1 star:		(0)

 

 

I first read this book when I was in 5th grade. I wanted to know more about my grandfather at that time as he died way before I was born. It was so interesting that I have reread it several times since. My grandfather led a colorful life and this book tells about the time he was a Texas Ranger with Leander McNelly. He wasn't with him for very long, but the memories stayed with him until the end. It starts when he is a teenager straight from Georgia after the civil war, finding Capt. McNelly (who, by this time is very ill and dying of tuberculosis) becoming a Texas Ranger and how he meets my grandmother, Caroline Chamberlain, who was Mr. & Mrs. King's niece and whom he loved. It tells of how wild and dangerous it was along the Nueces Strip (a line from Corpus Christi to the border)back then and about the different characters he met along the way such as King Fisher, John Wesley Hardin, Juan Nepomuncino Cortinas, the Taylors and Suttons... What it doesn't tell the reader is that they had 10 children and raised them all on the El Sauz division of the King Ranch...My family...and I am proud of them.

Great book on the Texas Rangers. The book is easy reading and tells the story of McNelly's rangers throught the eyes of a Young Ranger named Ed Durhm. Would make a good movie.

The book told the story of the Texas Rangers through the eyes of a young Ranger, George Durham. The story begins with George becoming one of "Capt. McNelly's" Rangers. The rangers are sent out to the battle of Palo Alto to the Taylor-Sutton fued and various other historical events. It ends with George marrying Caroline Chambers of the famed King Ranch. The book is a must for Texas history buffs.

Another great account of Capt. Lee McNelly's adventures as a Texas Ranger. This book is told from the perspective of an individual who actually rode with Capt McNelly. It provides historical insight and attests to the leadership of this great Ranger Captain. This work is very interesting and will be hard to put down for anyone interested in law enforcement, leadership, Texas history and/or the Texas Rangers.

In the 1930s, journalist Clyde Wantland was able to get an aging Texas Ranger, George Durham, to relate his experiences as a young man serving under controversial Texas Ranger captain Leander McNelly. Wantland later (1962) put the account in book form. It's considered a classic narrative of Texan history.

McNelly's Rangers were charged by the governor of Texas with restoring law and order to the Nueces Strip, an area of land just north of the Rio Grande border with Mexico north to the Nueces River. This land had seen lots of violence caused by its proximity to the Mexican border: (1) rustlers drove stolen cattle and horses across the border where they couldn't be recovered; (2) a complicated cultural/political situation juxtaposed recent immigrants to the area against Mexicans resulting in the local governments failing to maintain their own control.

I really enjoyed reading this book. The book is easy reading and goes fast. It took me about 4 hours, and I'm not that fast of a reader. It reads like a novel, written in first person as the story of George Durham. There's plenty of well-described action, characters, suspense, and humor. Most readers will identify with the narrator and tend to be sympathetic to his enthusiastic support for Leander McNelly and his methods.

Leander McNelly's approach to "taming the Nueces Strip" was to kill bad guys without much concern for legal niceties. This approach has often in history been attractive, but the hazards to justice and civilization are more serious than many of its supporters think. Not all its practitioners end up being good guys, so that often more killers are needed to deal with their predecessors, and so forth. OCCASIONALLY, it works out okay.

A couple of the most interesting incidents concern George Durham's temptations to cross over to the dark side. He's even present when one of his fellow Rangers abruptly commits unjustified murder, and has to spend the rest of his life as a fugitive in Mexico. At one point Durham commented that he had only really learned one thing in his first two years in Texas: to kill people.

In later life Durham became a noted and respected lawman who apparently learned to work with the law. Good thing. The rule of law really is better than the rule of violence, no matter how attractive the latter.

This book is enjoyable and gives a first-hand view of a lively chapter in Texas history. The book has its share of excitement, humor and grim reality. The one jarring note is that somewhere in its production there was a clumsy attempt to dramatise certain events by a writer using the expressions of a modern western novel. Thus we have Captain McNelly checking the loads in his gun and swinging shut the cylinder, as per the TV cowboys of the 1950s, at a time when swing-out cylinders had not been invented . Also there is a reference to a "thutty-thitty" nearly 20 years before the .30/30 cartridge became available. Ranger George Durham would not have made such errors. Fortunately these later additions do not detract from the main narrative and the book represents good value.
PJG

I enjoyed reading this book. The account of George Durham is as blunt and straight forward as the men he came to know and ride with. That is, he speaks of a life that was hard and brutal. He speaks to how poor he was prior to becoming a Ranger, and what it was like for a young man to become a part of a group of men who, while they were in the business of upholding the law, they were in fact similar in many ways to the lawbreakers they sought. Durham makes no excuses for the things the Rangers did (for instance, the fact that they took no prisoners). The Rangers acted as judge, jury and executioner, and to some, they were as low as the outlaws and badmen they went after. Durham's recollections of King Fisher, a well known rustler, rancher and later a lawman, was fascinating in describing how Fisher dressed, acted, and most importantly, how he consistently outsmarted those that sought to end his days.

A main character of the book is Ranger Captain Lee McNelly, who is acclaimed here and elsewhere as a brave and able leader. During his rather short life McNelly participated in some wild and woooly events, and it is our good fortune that Durham was along to witness some of it. It is apparent that Durham had a bit of the hero worship for McNelly, but considering Durham's young age when he joined the Rangers, and his lack of experience in the ways of the West, it is not unusual that Durham would be so inclined.

The reason that I didn't rate this book a five star was because of the near total recall by Durham of the conversations and spoken words attributed to others, many years after the actual events. In my own case it is sometimes hard to remember what someone said a mere month ago, so while I attribute a great deal of accuracy to the events described in the book, I have to wonder about the verbatim conversations. However, this does not unduly detract from the overall favorable experience of reading this book.

The book was great. It told the complete story as seen by someone that was there. I would suggest that anyone interested in a true western story read this.