Not everyone can shake the underworld running Borger loose from its wicked ways.  The Texas Governor believes Frank Hamer can.

Borger was a boomtown out of control.

Oil spilled across the Texas Panhandle.

Plenty of money.

Plenty of wildcatters.

Plenty of roughnecks and roustabouts.

They liked their town wild and out of control.

The governor didn’t.

He would send someone to tame it.

He sent Texas Ranger Frank Hamer.

He was a man slow to anger.

He was a man quick to react.

Years later, he would be known as the man who killed Bonnie and Clyde.

But first, he takes on Borger.

He and the town have one thing in common.

Neither one is afraid of the other.

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The Texas Governor sends Texas Ranger Frank Hamer, the captain of Company D, to the boomtown.

Hang around a few days.

 Find out what’s really going on in Borger.

I know boomtowns can be wild.

But Borger sounds like a hellhole.

 Can it really be as bad as they say it is?

Not everyone can shake the underworld running Borger loose from its wicked ways.  Frank Hamer can. There’s only one way to fight him. Stay out of his way. Hamer won’t explain the law, he will enforce it. You don’t want him drawing his pistol on you. If he pulls that Single Action, pearl-handled Colt 45 from its holster, he will use it. Don’t test him. Cemeteries are filled with the ones who did. Frank Hamer follows the unwritten Code of the West, the one that says men settle their differences with shotguns, rifles, and six-shooters.

He became a Texas Ranger at the age of twenty-two, and it did not take long before the legend of Frank Hamer took roots. A desperate killer had broken into a home, took up his vigil by a window, and swore he would not be taken alive. Hamer watched the gunfire spitting bullets from the open window. He calmly leveled his lever-action Winchester, took a deep breath, and fired. The bullet struck the gunman’s left jaw and lodged in the dying man’s heart.

Frank Hamer was only twenty-four years old when he resigned from the Rangers to accept the job as Marshal of Navasota, an early Texas boomtown.

It was a town without law.

Without order.

It was a town where the echoes of gunshots were expected day and night. Shootouts on Main Street were commonplace. Within two years, more than a hundred men had died. It was a town that smelled of smoke and spent gunpowder.

Navasota was incorrigible.  Lawmen came. Lawmen never lasted for long. They were intimidated. They sold out to the town’s criminals. Life was cheap. They took a dime or a dollar and found a quick way out of town.

Hamer wouldn’t last.

That’s what the bad men thought.

Look at him.

He ain’t nothing more than a kid.

He has no business wearing a badge.

The kid was lethal.

He whipped a band of train robbers.

He shot bandits.

He forbade the use of firearms.

Come to town armed?

Come to town ready to die.

The bad side of town feared him.

The good side respected him.

Manse Lipscomb was only twelve years old when he was hired to drive Hamer around the disreputable streets of Navasota. He was years away from becoming a singer of the blues, and he watched the Marshal deliver terror to the souls and minds of outlaws with his feet. Hamer would kick them all the way to the jail house. As Manse said, “His feet were always loaded.”

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