With the state police abolished, the Texas legislature in 1874 authorized two ranger battalions, one combating the Indian menace west of Fort Worth, and the other insuring domestic tranquility. They would tangle with major Texas outlaws as well as Mexican bandits slipping north from the Rio Grande. Like the State Police, rangers had jurisdiction across county lines.

On May 30, twenty-two Comanche citizens petitioned Governor Richard Coke for assistance, complaining that their county was infested with murderers and thieves “headed by the notorious John Wesley Hardin and Jim Taylor.”  On the 25th day of May 1874 the said Hardin and Taylor came into the town of Comanche and wantonly murdered one Chas. Webb, the deputy sheriff of Brown County who was here peacefully and quietly attending to his private business.” The citizens claimed the outlaws were in “such large numbers [that they] invariably escape before a sufficient number of citizens can be armed and brought together.” John R. Waller and twenty to thirty rangers should be stationed in Comanche County and “charged with the capture of the said John Wesley Hardin and Jim Taylor.” The governor should also offer  “a reward commensurate with the crime of said Hardin and Taylor.”

Company A with fifty-five men, commanded by Captain John R. Waller, arrived at Comanche on the 27th of May, 1874.

Waller  had credentials. He was fifty-seven years old, a married farmer with six children who had served in the 31st Texas Calvary during the Civil War. Waller spent two years as sheriff of Erath County, Texas.

On  May 30. He wrote his first known report to Major John B. Jones, saying “ I have been in active service trying to arrest the John Wesley Hardin gang of murders who are preying on the lives of the citizens of this country.”

 Hardin, however, did not consider Waller so much a captain of Rangers as a captain “of a vigilante band…, [leading a] mob composed of the enemies of law and order.”  Hardin accused Waller of deputizing five hundred men to seek him out and lynch him.

 And Hardin’s opinion was partly correct. Waller’s sloppy record keeping, his failure to suppress lynch mobs and protect prisoners, is indicative that he cared little about the safety of manacled outlaws.  Mob killings, whether by bullet or rope, were never mentioned in Waller’s reports and neither regretted nor investigated.

 Captain Waller sent posses to scour the countryside although not in figures of five hundred men.  Still, to Hardin it must have seemed like that. Waller had set in motion the greatest manhunt in the history of Texas.

 In Comanche, Waller’s Rangers “arrested Rev. Hardin, his wife, Mrs. J. Hardin, Mrs. Barekman, Mrs. Joe Hardin, Miss Hardin [ evidently Mattie], Tom & Bud Dickson [Dixon], Dr. Brockes [Bockius], Jim Anderson & William Green and kept [them] under guard for a period of weeks…. Anderson and  Green were cowboys who worked with Doc Bockius.  The women and reverend Hardin were not jailed, but placed under house arrest.

 When Joe Hardin and the two Dixon boys returned to Comanche, the rangers detained them on May 27 to prevent their acting as spies.  The town had no jail, however.  Comanche authorities incarcerated Joe Hardin and the others in a two-story rock structure, in all probability the former dry goods store operated by David Carnes on the east side of the square.

 On May 30, five rangers clashed in the brush “with the notorious John W. Hardin and Jim Taylor.”  Hardin confirmed the skirmish, writing “I would never surrender alive and Jim [Taylor] and I agreed to die together.”

On another occasion, the rangers chased Hardin and Taylor to Brownwood and Comanche Road.  The fugatives pulled comfortably ahead during a drizzling rain until they collided with additional rangers led by Waller himself.  As Waller shouted for the outlaws to surrender, Hardin and Taylor turned and raced downhill toward their original pursuers, who were in the process of crossing a gulch.  Suddenly, Hardin and Taylor wheeled and charged uphill, catching Waller off balance.  In a wild melee, the two fugitives broke through, the rangers hesitating to fire for fear of hitting one another.  As Hardin and Taylor raced clear, only Waller continued the chase.  Hardin screamed for Jim to hold up while he [Hardin] stopped and cocked a shotgun.  A handkerchief kept the powder dry.  Just as Waller rode squarely into the sights, however, the wind gusted, flipped the rag around, and the hammer fell not on the caps but on the handkerchief.  Waller checked his horse and returned to his men.  In the free-for-all, a bullet wounded Hardin’s horse Frank in the hind leg. This account jibed (relatively well) with a story printed in the Austin Daily Democratic Statesman on June 17.  The editor reported that  Hardin  “and his party of seven or eight (including Jim Taylor) fought forty [rangers] all day.  Last Tuesday (June 9) ten miles from Comanche on Leon Bottom he had his horse killed from under him.  He is a fearless man and I [the editor] expect he will kill some more before he is taken.”

In camp, Hardin could not fathom the reasoning of his side kick cousins, Barekman and Anderson.  They wearied of living in the brush, and Barekman  in particular was homesick.  Against Hardin’s vigorous advice and warning, the overconfident and trustful Barekman and Anderson slipped off to the ranch, and safety, of William “Bill” Stone to hide. Stone, a fifty-seven-year old Alabaman , lived in a tangled area of scrub oaks, briars, and poison ivy close to Walnut and Bucksnort creeks. ( In Modern times, the site is near Proctor, fifteen miles northeast of Comanche.) Stone was a Freemason who sat on the Masonic Academy Board and hired the Reverend James Hardin as a teacher and manager.

Working on a tip early on the morning of June 1, Comanche Sheriff John Carnes and a squad of rangers located the Barekman  and Anderson horses.  The officers slipped deep onto the brush, and what happened next is conjecture.

The Corsicana Observor of June 17, opened its description of the battle with dark headlines “Two More Of The Hardin Gang Gone.”  The newspaper reported the sheriff’s party had surprised Ham Anderson and Alec Barekman while the fugatives were concealed in brush twelve miles North of Comanche.  “They discovered each other about the same time, and Barekman and Anderson opened fire among the posse, who returned it, killing both desperadoes.”  None of the lawmen were injured, and the “killing of these two men was purely an act of self defense, as they evidently made up their minds to die rather than surrender.”  A wagon hauled the bodies to Comanche where they were buried in a common, unmarked grave at Oakwood cemetery north of town.

Captain Waller claimed twenty rangers and the posse searched fifteen to twenty miles from Comanche on the first, second and third of June. According to Waller, “Barekman and Anderson, two of Hardin’s gang, fired on some of my men and several citizens. My men returned the fire, killing both Barekman and Anderson.”  In his monthly report for May, Waller wrote that “ the Notorous Ham Anderson was killed by Private Watson of Co. A.”

John Henry Taulor, a young ranger serving with Waller, wrote in a letter many years later, that Barekman and Anderson had prevailed upon (William) Stone to go into Comanche and find out what was happening. Instead, Stone talked to the lawmen about the fugitives. The rangers threw cold chuck into their saddle pockets, and rode hard into the thickets near the Stone log cabin. Late that night, by moonlight, they found tracts were two horses had gone in but not come out. The rangers spread out and cautiously entered on foot. Evan so they would have missed the outlaws had not one of the horses snorted. Barekman and Anderson leaped from their pallets, fired two rounds, then died instantly from a return fusillade.”