STATES & CITIES: Kilgore Roundup

Where oil is struck, there is a boom. Where there is a boom there is easy money and to it flock swindlers, 'leggers, dope-sellers, gamblers, prostitutes and pimps. In eastern Texas last month oil began to gush out of Rusk and Gregg Counties (TIME, Feb. 2). Last week in Gregg County, the town of Kilgore and the nearby tent-town of "Little Juarez" had grown so rowdy, so full of wastrels and misconduct, that the Texas Rangers had to take a hand. Five Rangers came up from the Rio Grande, five more converged on Kilgore from other parts of the State. Within two hours they had rounded up some 300 suspects and bad characters. The ten Rangers herded the lot of them into the Baptist church, booked them from the pulpit. They were a measly collection. Upon them were found no guns, three tubes of opium, three pints of whiskey. Forty were cut out for detention, the rest were hustled out of town. Two of those detained were wanted for murder, three for bank robbery. Prized prisoners were placed in the choir stall, chained by the neck.

Although he remained in Austin and had no chance to use his new "Sunday gun"—a $300 six-shooter presented him by the citizens of Laredo—no one was prouder of this biggest Ranger roundup in two years than William ("Bill") Sterling. Last month he became commandant of the Rangers when Governor Ross D. Sterling (no kin) appointed him Adjutant General of the State. A lean six-footer, he is a graduate of Texas Agricultural & Mechanical College, was a lieutenant of infantry during the War but was kept from going overseas by powder-burned eyes. He has been a Ranger for four years, having commanded troopers in the border country. Sculptor Gutzon Borglum has selected him as the model for a proposed Ranger monument.