"Your pay will be thirty-three dollars a month. You furnish the gun. The state will furnish the shells. You want it?" Captain McNelly eyed the recruit, bouncing his unlit cigar between his teeth.

"Yes, sir," George Durham answered. The boy became a man under McNelly's leadership-questionable as it may appear today.

McNelly and Durham were both deeply religious and believed a man could not die before his appointed time. He would die on God's timetable and nothing he could do would change that. This kind of faith made them reckless, courageous and extremely dangerous. Durham and McNelly's other recruits almost broke the Ten Commandments by practically worshipping their leader. McNelly never sent his men into a fight, waiting to hear if they survived. He always led by example. McNelly has been compared to a chicken hawk. He located his target and closed in for the kill. McNelly seldomreturnedwith living prisoners.

March 1875, Corpus Christi, Texas tired of being overrun with bandits, called in Captain McNelly and his men.

"How about Sharps?", the Captain asked the storekeeper showing him guns.

"Sharps? Sure, we always carry a small stock for the buffalo hunters. Maybe thirty or so..."

"I want them," the Captain replied."

"I thought you were going man hunting--not buffalo. If you miss a man-"

"I don't want men who miss," the Captain answered.

Young Durham looked down the barrel he thought large enough for a gopher. The bullet Durham loaded looked to him, the size of his thumb. If he didn't miss, the criminal would need no prison cell.

The other part of Captain's arsenal, and equally important, was the Book. And I'm not talking about the Bible. The Book held the names of wanted men. Big like a mail order catalog, the Book brought wholesale death to those whose names were inscribed inside. Criminals from all over the United States, whose last known address was Texas, filled the tome. Texas Democrats who had already run the carpetbaggers out of state and now controlled Austin printed the Book. Rumor had it that the governor insisted McNelly head the Rangers' clean up.

"If you have any trouble bringing in a man and have to leave his body, try to identify him from the Book and mark his name off ", McNelly said. He then handed each of his men a copy. The Book contained 228 pages, packed full of names and descriptions of wanted men. Large black type meant 'don't bring this one back alive'. Five thousand is a close count of the marked men they hunted. "These outlaws have run roughshod over decent folks", Captain explained. "They burn, raid, and murder. We got fighting to do. Any questions?"

Nueces Strip is where McNelly began his work. Outlaws had no restrictions. Neither did McNelly or his trainees. Outlaws didn't hesitate to kill innocent civilians. McNelly never thought twice about killing an outlaw. Outlaws took no prisoners. That same trait was McNelly's stock in trade.

One of McNelly's strangest was Jesus Sandoval. Shoulderlength red hair blended with his auburn beard to give him the look of a wild man. His intense light blue eyes put fear in many a man-- , as they rightly should. For Jesus lost his wife and daughter to bandits. Jesus' only reason to live now was to kill as many criminals as he could before he died, and McNelly gave him license. Jesus was McNelly's jailer and Jesus never lost a man turned over to him. He never returned with many alive either. Durham and the other recruits witnessed Jesus pistol whip captives, hang them with a noose 'til they talked, then take them over the hill. Jesus always returned alone. No one dared asked what happened to Jesus' prisoners.

Captain McNelly caught tuberculosis and coughed his life away--literally. But he left behind a group of men--more than Texas Rangers. These men proudly called themselves Little McNellys because they respected him so much. These Rangers became an execution squad with badges.

Source: Taming the Nueces Strip, George Durham, University of Texas Press, 1962