Dark Temptation (Dark Saints MC Book 2)(6)

They said Great Grandpa Davidson actually rode a horse to the towns he patrolled.

Those stories inspired Daddy to become a Texas Ranger. And me too. It almost seemed like becoming a super hero to me. But now that I was grown, the reality was setting in.

I was going to be standing at copy machines, not spurring a horse from town to town. Unless I took matters into my own hands.

I decided to start with Randolph Davidson. Where was he in all of these old records?

The Town had a newspaper then, so that’s where I looked first for a record of his heroism.

It took a bit of doing, but I found the editions from 1933. The papers were yellow: I was doing this in the nick of time. Port Az Library was not exactly a hermetically-sealed environment. It was hot and dusty.

I started at the beginning of 1933 and slowly thumbed through the front pages.

After two hours, the front page I’d been hoping to find appeared. A headline blared at me, and it was the first name that I’d recognized: Tommy Bass. He was the bad guy in my Daddy’s stories more than once. Bass. A name I’d grown to hate twice over.



TOMMY BASS ESCAPES

Notorious bank robber, Tommy Bass, has escaped the custody of Marshalls in Austin.

Bass, awaiting trial for the robbery of the Bank of the Dakotas, in which a security guard was killed, made his bold break from the law during his transfer to court for a preliminary hearing.

Deputy Charles Folgerty is currently hospitalized with a contusion to the head. He has been unable to provide authorities with details of the escape.

The FBI believes Bass will try to reach the Mexican border.

“That is the best option for him. All citizens need to be on the lookout and understand that Thomas Bass is a hardened and dangerous criminal. Call your local authorities if you suspect you see him. And do not engage in conversation,” warned Agent Bill Belton, field agent from the Austin office of the FBI.



Tommy Bass was a famous around Texas, like John Dillinger, or Bonnie and Clyde. In an era when criminals were like Kardashians, Tommy Bass had his moment in the spotlight.

And I knew what happened to him. It was the old story they’d told me. I was excited to read about it. It made things real for me. And it brought back my Daddy, in a way.

My Great Grandfather, Ranger Randolph Davidson, killed Tommy Bass. He hunted him down and stopped his violence. Because of that, Ranger Randolph Davidson was in the Ranger Hall of Fame, just like Ranger Frank Hamer.

Most people didn’t know the story like they knew Bonnie and Clyde; there wasn’t a movie or a beautiful girl. Just crime and punishment.

But I knew it and was proud of it. And so was my Dad.

I hunted through a lot of the old records to add details for the Ranger Randolph Davidson section of the history. I felt like I was making sure, in my own small way, that Ranger Randolph Davidson wasn’t forgotten.

Same with Daddy.

It was a lot easier to find things about my more recent history. The story of my Daddy’s death was only a decade old.

He was hailed a hero too.

I had a lot to live up to. But I was going to do it.

I was going to be a Ranger and I was going to bring down The Saints. Or at least I was going to try.

When I asked for this assignment, my boss, Paul Laraby, was relieved. I knew that he would be. He had told me to stop asking for challenging work.

The idea that I wanted to be a Trooper and then a Ranger still didn’t sit well with the men in charge. Paul saw my fresh-out-of-the-academy enthusiasm as a joke.

Texas sexism was alive and well. But I wasn’t going to stop. Daddy wouldn’t, and I am sure Great Grandpa Davidson wouldn’t either.

“You sure as hell don’t look like a Texas Lawman,” Paul had said over and over again.

That was supposed to be a compliment, except coming from my superior, it felt like a sexist remark.

My boss was determined to keep me in a subservient role. I wanted more. And I didn’t want to wait.

The State of Texas was digitizing the history of towns like Port Azrael Paul may not have thought I looked like lawman material, but he did like me as a secretary or even a librarian. So when I asked for the one-month assignment, he said yes.

I scanned in each item with care. I was saving Texas history, and my own family’s too.

There was nowhere I’d rather be.

I learned how to be careful with the items. And even though I wasn’t, technically, in law enforcement, I did feel like I was contributing more than when I was answering Paul’s phone.

The oldest documents were ones you had to wear gloves to touch. I gently put them on the glass and watched the machine record every detail of the parchment that was the oldest piece of paper in this tiny library.

With each document, I learned more about the connection I had to this town. I learned about my ancestors and what they did here.

I found myself immersed, one document at a time, in the way the town must have looked back then.

I learned about another Ranger, Davis Digby, whose story went back even before my Great Grandpa’s time to when Texas was born. It was fascinating and it was stuff that historians could use.

Davis Digby was one of the first people to provide any type of law enforcement in Port Azrael. He knew President Sam Houston. It was sort of amazing to decipher Digby’s role in helping Port Azrael become a town.

As I converted documents, I became engrossed in the stories of the founders of Port Azrael. It was a mix of Native Americas, Mexican settlers, white settlers, and oddly, Texas Rangers. All of them were here in a strange amalgam. I wondered if that was still true or if their descendants had moved on?