After almost three decades of frontier crime fighting, Capt. John Reynolds Hughes retired from the Texas Rangers on Jan. 31, 1915.

As a headstrong youth of 14, Hughes ran away from his Kansas home in 1869 and finished growing up in the Indian Territory. During his six years among the Choctaw, Osage and Comanche, he suffered a wound that partially paralyzed his right arm. He compensated for the disability by learning how to shoot with his left hand.

Hughes herded cattle on the Chisholm Trail until ...