The Lone Star Ranger

To CAPTAIN JOHN HUGHES and his Texas Rangers.

It may seem strange to you that out of all the stories I heard on the Rio Grande I should choose as first that of Buck Duane--outlaw and gunman.

But, indeed, Ranger Coffee’s story of the last of the Duanes has haunted me, and I have given full rein to imagination and have retold it in my own way. It deals with the old law--the old border days--therefore it is better first. Soon, perchance, I shall have the pleasure of writing of the border of to-day, which in Joe Sitter’s laconic speech, “Shore is ‘most as bad an’ wild as ever!”