I'm Calamity Kat, your hostess.

Put your boots up. I'll pour you a shot of redeye, and we can talk about the days of yesteryear, when men were men and six-guns almost never ran out of ammunition.

In the beginning...

Our first look at Company B of the Texas Rangers came 21 April 1965 in an episode of The Virginian titled "We've Lost a Train"--later used as the main part of the feature movie Backtrack. The episode was a playful Western adaptation of Alexandre Dumas père's The Three Musketeers. Top hand Trampas stopped off in Laredo, Texas, on his way to Mexico to purchase a bull for Shiloh Ranch. Within minutes of his arrival, he had offended three of the most dangerous men in the West--three Texas Rangers. Faced with appointments for three gunfights, Trampas--unlike d'Artagnan--wanted nothing more than to get out of town. Like d'Artagnan before him, however, in the course of a shared adventure he was accepted as a friend by the three men who originally wanted his blood.

As originally conceived, the Rangers were harder men than we were presented with in the series itself. The show's bible introduces us to the series characters as we never saw them again after "We've Lost a Train":

Ranger Reese Bennett (played by the late Neville Brand) was the son of El Paso's best sheriff. At twelve, he witnessed his father's murder. At eighteen, he became a deputy US marshal and set out to hunt down his father's killers. Two died resisting arrest, but he brought the third back for trial. He fought for the Union in the Civil War, then--already in his 40's--volunteered for the Rangers, where he was unpopular with many fellow Rangers because of his wartime service. This Reese Bennett was a hard and upright man with no sense of humor who followed his conscience and the letter of the law.

Viewers of the series will clearly recognize that, somewhere between conception and birth, our heroes underwent some considerable changes. By the time the series premiered with "Lazyfoot, Where Are You?" on September 16, 1965, life in Laredo, Texas, had become considerably lighter hearted.

Ranger Reese Bennett (played by the late Neville Brand) was still as tough a man as ever wore a badge, but ... well, he wasn't very bright. Reese's father was no longer a top lawman, but a moonshiner; his mother took in laundry. In his youth, Reese rode with a bad crowd and got into some trouble (an old friend said that Reese "could swipe an egg out from under a hen without making her cackle"), but when he went straight he went all the way to the Rangers. Noisy, quick-tempered, ill-educated, hard-drinking, patriotic, big-hearted, naive Reese was the butt of most of his buddies' jokes and pranks, and often took the blame with Captain Parmalee for their antics. When the going got rough, however, Reese was a man any Ranger would want by his side--he could ride and shoot and fight with the best of them, and his honesty and courage were unimpeachable. Reese rode a sorrel named Cactus.

Ranger Chad Cooper (played by Peter Brown) was no longer a Bostonian--in fact, he was from Louisiana! Chad's Southern accent only came out when he was wooing a lady, but then it came out thick. The men he lost on patrolling the border were never mentioned, though we did learn of a sidekick gunned down by a professional gunslick. Chad was a gallant lady's man with a lot of charm, but also a gambler and something of a con artist at heart. He had a gentleman's education (swordsmanship as well as scholarship) and could have chosen safer and more lucrative lines of work; when pressed, he admitted that he had a "calling" to be a lawman.

Ranger Joe Riley (played by William Smith) was still a hard-eyed man, or could be, but if he was wanted anywhere we never heard about it. And while he was an excellent gunman, it was established in the episodes that Chad was the best of the three in a quick-draw. Despite a generally-impassive exterior, he was a strong man with a kind soul who could always be depended upon by his buddies and people under his protection. Although he'd had parents who loved him when he was small, Joe spent some part of his youth among the Comanche and spoke of a chief named Big River as his "teacher". He may have been a half-breed--we were never told for sure in the series. Alongside Joe's skills as a horseman and a marksman were uncanny skill with a knife, the ability to move soundlessly, unparallelled skill at tracking, knowledge of Comanche customs, language and remedies, and the ability to sleep anywhere and any time (and yet somehow know, from beneath his hat, everything that's going on around him). He hadn't much formal schooling, but he's sly and has a great deal of common sense. Joe rode a handsome buckskin whom he generally mounted with a scissors mount.

Introduced in the second season, Ranger Erik Hunter (played by Robert Wolders) was a sophisticated European with an outrageous wardrobe featuring silk cummerbunds and coordinated hats and jackets in colors and patterns guaranteed to make him the center of attention and, one would have thought, an un-missable target. We were never told how he could afford these clothes on a Ranger's salary, but with Erik Hunter one could expect just about anything. Clearly intended to cash in on the popularity of the 007 movies, Hunter--like James Bond--skipped from boudoir to boudoir as he manipulated bad guys and fellow Rangers alike. No one was ever sure which side he was on. Prior to the hiring of Robert Wolders, the character's name was intended to be Cletus Hunter. Once they hired a Dutchman, the producers capitalized not only by giving the character an exotic European flair but by widely advertising the show as the first Western to give the audience a Dutch lawman. While Robert Wolders is both handsome and charming, the character was not a good fit to the show.

Your tab...

Thanks for visiting the Cactus Saloon. That'll be two bits for each shot of redeye. Let us know what you think of our service at: Calamity@Virginia.edu.

Still thirsty?

If you'd like to learn more about the real Texas Rangers, drop by
The Texas Ranger Hall of Fame and Museum.