He never planned to become a Texas Ranger. He was just a horse farmer near Liberty Hill Texas who came home one day to find his horses stolen. Most men would have reported the theft and moved on. John Hughes was not most men. He spent nearly a year tracking those horse thieves across Texas and into New Mexico. Alone. On horseback. He got his horses back. Every single one of them. He got his neighbors horses back too. The Texas Rangers heard what he had done and asked him to join. He said he would stay a few months. He stayed 28 years. Hughes served along the brutal Texas-Mexico border at a time when that territory was as dangerous as anywhere on earth. When the sergeant above him was killed by bandits Hughes took his place. When his captain was killed by bandits in 1893 Hughes hunted down every single man responsible. Every one of them faced justice. In 28 years Captain John R. Hughes never lost a battle. Never lost a prisoner. Never lost a gunfight. He was so legendary that novelist Zane Grey dedicated his famous book The Lone Star Ranger to him. Some historians believe Hughes was one of the real inspirations for the Lone Ranger. He was a deeply religious man who taught Sunday school. He never married. He gave everything he had to Texas. In 1940 he became the very first Ranger ever awarded the Certificate of Valor. He was 92 years old when he died quietly in Austin in 1947 — the last of the great frontier Rangers. Texas will never see another one like him.