Not many people know very much about Erath County during the 1870s, mostly because nobody during that time dared say or write anything. If it were not for the careful research by James Pylant that period of lawlessness would still be unknown. Pylant is a local historian and prolific writer that has been able to track down stories from this period that had been long forgotten. The main problem with the 1870s was that official law enforcement was unable to function. After the Civil War the county was filling up with desperate Confederate veterans who were tempted by the only sources of wealth in Texas – land and the booming cattle business. Organized cattle rustling and casual murder and indictments without prosecutions drove the locals to take the law into their own hands. There were two competing vigilante organizations: The Keith boys around Dublin and the Turnbow family from around Stephenville. The number of people that they arrested and hanged was considerable. Some of the graves were so shallow that wolves were said to have dug them up, leading to the warning “feed the wolves” as a threat to anyone who spoke of the organizations. A minor dispute heated into a major confrontation between the two vigilante groups that met on both sides of Alarm Creek, with around one hundred on each side. These were Indian hunters and war veterans who would have butchered each other if it had not been for the dramatic intervention of well-known and respected Baptist preacher “Comanche Rube” Ross who dashed between the combatants with a white flag and worked out a compromise.

James Pylant. Sins of the Pioneers: Crimes and Scandals in a Small Texas Town, 2019.