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By Root 2343 0

lazy days at the Methvin place, he and Bonnie took long walks into the pines. The area was impossibly isolated, with few paved roads, no large towns to speak of, and no police in sight. Few of the back-country shacks had running water or indoor plumbing, much less radios or telephones. Clyde told Bonnie he liked the feel of the area. There was a lake nearby with largemouth bass. Both Bonnie and Clyde were exhausted. Neither had slept in a bed since the shoot-out at Platte City eight months before. At some point, Clyde suggested that maybe they could find a shack of their own nearby. They could fix it up, use it as a vacation spot. Bonnie liked the idea of a little house in the woods, just the two of them. It seemed perfect.

It wasn’t perfect. What Bonnie and Clyde didn’t know, as they explored the woods of northern Louisiana, was that for the first time in two years they had attracted a professional pursuer, and he was already driving the Louisiana back roads looking for them.

He had been hired by Lee Simmons, the man who headed the Texas prison system. Simmons wanted revenge for the raid on his work camp, and if the FBI and the Dallas County Sheriff were too uninterested or inept to bring in Bonnie and Clyde, he was determined to do it himself. On February 1, fourteen days after the Eastham jailbreak, Simmons visited the governor’s mansion in Austin and explained his idea to the governor, Mildred “Ma” Ferguson. Beside the governor sat her husband, the former governor Jim Ferguson, whose impeachment on corruption charges two years earlier had led to his wife’s decision to run for office on the slogan “Two Governors for the Price of One.” Simmons told the Fergusons he wanted to hire someone to eradicate Clyde Barrow. When the governor asked who he had in mind, Simmons said, “Frank Hamer.”

He didn’t need to say much more. Everyone in Texas knew of Frank Hamer. Hamer was a Lone Star legend, a cantankerous forty-nine-year-old former Ranger who had spent much of his law-enforcement career chasing cattle rustlers and exchanging gunfire with Mexican bandits on the Rio Grande. A big man, six-foot-two, just over two hundred pounds, Hamer was seen as the walking embodiment of the “One Riot, One Ranger” ethos, a stereotypically quiet loner who bridled at authority, shot first, and asked questions later. Long a darling of the Texas press, he was the kind of celebrity lawman who befriended movie stars, in Hamer’s case the silent-film actor Tom Mix. He was also a friend and contemporary of several current and former FBI men, including the San Antonio SAC Gus Jones. After a series of minor controversies, including the dismissal of one case for an illegal search, Hamer left the Rangers in November 1932. Any number of reasons were given for his departure, but the Rangers had become increasingly politicized and ineffective, and Hamer was no fan of Ma Ferguson and her corrupt husband. He had reluctantly taken a security job with a Houston-based oil company.

Sitting in the governor’s office, Simmons was surprised to learn that whatever bad blood existed between Hamer and the governor, the Fergusons would not object to his hiring. “Frank is all right with us,” Mrs. Ferguson said. “We don’t hold anything against him.”13 Leaving the mansion with a sheaf of written authorizations in his briefcase, Simmons drove to Hamer’s Austin home and explained his proposal. Hamer would work alone, in secret. No one but Simmons and the governor would know what he was doing. Hamer’s sole objective would be to bring in Bonnie and Clyde, dead or alive. No politics, no bureaucracy, no one looking over his shoulder. “How long do you think it will take to do the job?” Hamer asked.

“That’s something no man could guess,” Simmons said. “It might be six months; it might be longer. Probably it will take you thirty days to get your feet on the ground before you start to work. No matter how long it takes, I will back you to the limit.”

“Well, if that’s the way you feel about it, I’ll take the job,” Hamer said.

Simmons made only one suggestion. “Captain,” he said,