Roy Bean by C. L. Sonnichsen

Author:C. L. Sonnichsen [Sonnichsen, C. L.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, United States, State & Local, Southwest (AZ; NM; OK; TX)
ISBN: 9781932801354
Google: h4VOvgAACAAJ
Publisher: Mockingbird Books
Published: 2016-08-15T05:24:28+00:00

PUBLIC SERVANT

ROY BEAN got most of his leverage at Langtry from his official dignity as a justice. Shorn of that, he was shorn of his power and glory, and naturally he took all precautions to avoid the shears. At first it was easy; later it wasn’t. His original appointment in 1882 gave him two sweet years of authority and he had no difficulty in getting himself legally elected in 1884—partly, perhaps, because his house was the official voting place for the precinct. Then things began to happen. In 1885 the politicians formed a new county (Val Verde) in the Pecos and Devil’s River area, and Roy found himself with new horizons. His county seat was now Del Rio, and the great reaches to the westward were no longer part of his domain.

He had an uncomfortable feeling that civilization was moving in on him and that he was no longer “all the law west of the Pecos.” It was hard to take. In fact he didn’t take it without a struggle and tried his best to ignore such flimsy, man-made barriers as county lines.

A train wreck gave him a chance to show how he felt. It occurred at Eldridge, many miles west of Langtry and in Pecos County. Cause of the trouble was the carelessness of a brakeman who stepped off a freight train at Dryden and was somehow left behind. The engineer pulled on to Eldridge where he was supposed to side-track while a passenger train went by. The brakeman should have closed the switch but was not on hand to do his duty. The passenger train came along, plowed into the rear of the freight, and killed the passenger engineer.

Roy heard of the tragedy and hot-footed it up to Eldridge to hold an inquest (an inquest was worth five dollars to the official who performed it). After taking careful note of the evidence, he found the negligent brakeman guilty of murder for not closing the switch. Then, learning that the engineer of the passenger train had neglected to blow his whistle on approaching the siding, he found him an accessory after the fact to his own death.

It is not known whether or not he collected his five dollars for this masterly ruling.

The next rub in his official career was the election of 1886. In that year a man named John Gilcrease ran against him and won, twenty-five votes to seventeen. Gilcrease was a hardy West Texan who dug wells and did odd jobs for the railroad. He wasn’t serious about becoming an office holder at first—probably he just wanted to make old Roy sweat a little. Then when the votes began to pile up, he saw the advantages of being a judge. After the election he made his bond, hung out a shingle, and even performed an inquest on the body of one Vincent Gonzales, for which he collected the usual five dollars from the county commissioners.

No doubt Roy heard of that five dollars which should have been in his pocket.

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