Sweetwater Shoot-out
Frank & Gladys Hamer vs Gee McMeans & H.E. Phillips
Categories: Classic Gunfights
By: Bob Boze Bell 01/01/2008
OCTOBER 1, 1917
Frank Hamer wants to go home. The Texas Ranger has just testified at the Callahan County Courthouse in Baird, Texas, in a murder trial and the case has been continued. Two men, waiting by a drugstore, warn Frank not to pass through Sweetwater on his way home—men are waiting there to kill him.
Frank has no intention of changing his route, although he tells none of his car passengers about the threat. He does strap on an extra revolver, a .44 Smith & Wesson, to complement his .45 Colt.
Frank’s traveling companions are his wife Gladys (who is three months pregnant), his brother Harrison and a witness in the court case, Emmett Johnson. He points the car toward their home, Snyder.
As Frank drives by a second-story building in Abilene, he spots a lawyer friend of Gee McMeans (a former Texas Ranger and sheriff) staring down out of his office, smiling a smug smile.
At about 1:30 p.m., on the approach to Sweetwater, a tire on the Hamer car goes flat. Frank pulls into a garage located on the southeast corner of the town square.
Harrison and Emmett head across an alley to “see a man about a horse” (go to the bathroom). Gladys remains in the car.
Frank enters the empty garage. Finding no one inside, he starts to exit when Gee McMeans jumps out from behind a door and shoots Frank point-blank, yelling, “I’ve got you now, God damn you!”
The bullet drives Frank’s watch chain deep into his left shoulder, incapacitating his normal gun hand. He grapples with the gunman with his right hand, but McMeans gets off another shot, the second bullet tearing into Frank’s leg.
Gladys is in the car when she spots a man with a shotgun coming toward Frank on the street. She grabs a .32 pistol off the seat and fires at the shotgunner, but her shot misses. The man, H.E. Phillips, a known gun toter in Texas, squawks and ducks behind an automobile. Every time he tries to rise, Gladys sends another bullet his way, until she empties the magazine. As she ducks down in the seat to reload, the shotgunner runs toward Frank.
Frank is still wrestling with McMeans and starts slapping the shooter in the head with his open hand. From the corner of his eye, Frank sees the shotgun shooter approaching. McMeans breaks free, the shotgun roars and the concussion of the blast staggers Frank as he falls to his knees.
“I got him! I got him!” the shooter yells in triumph, only to see Frank lunge to his feet. (The blast, fired from two feet away, shredded Frank’s hat, missing his head by inches.)
McMeans and the shotgunner run toward a waiting car. Frank runs after them, stum-bling, but regaining his feet and pulling a gun with his right hand. He reaches the shooters’ getaway car just as McMeans fetches a pump shotgun from inside. As he turns, Frank puts a bullet through his heart, killing him.
Behind the vehicle, the shotgunner crouches beside McMeans’ body, the smoothbore still in his hands.
“Get up!” Frank yells. “Fight me like a man!”
The shotgunner scrambles to his feet and runs. “Turn around, damn you!” Frank screams.
His brother Harrison runs up, raising his rifle toward the fleeing man. Frank knocks the barrel skyward as Harrison squeezes off the shot. “Don’t shoot him in the back! Leave him!”
Gladys runs up and takes her husband around the waist, his blood oozing onto her dress. Several other men run toward the scene.
“Somebody get a doctor!” Gladys yells. “My husband’s been shot!”
The fight has only just begun for this Texas Ranger.
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