William Polk Rayner was a dandy. A tall man with jet-black eyes and hair, he cut a dashing figure in old El Paso in his black Prince Albert coat and gray pin-striped pants pulled over fancy Mexican boots. Wearing a broad-brimmed hat or a high silk topper, he was a familiar sight on the streets and in the gambling halls. ‘The best dressed badman in Texas was considered one of the handsomest men in El Paso. He sat a horse like a true equestrian and spent much of his time horseback riding with some of the finest ladies in El Paso society. He was affable, educated, entertaining, apparently affluent and generally respected.

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He was, after all, a man with the credentials of a gentleman. His father, Kenneth Rayner, was an eminent North Carolina planter with a distinguished record as both public servant and agriculturist. A man of undoubted ability, Kenneth Rayner entered politics in the 1820s as a Jacksonian Democrat. He served in the North Carolina legislature and spent six years in the U.S. Congress. His political interests moved him into the Whig Party, where he came very close to being nominated for vice president in 1848. But Rayner’s career in Congress was stormy. Although he rarely spoke on the floor of the House, when he did he commanded attention with his eloquence and fire. He had a volatile temper, was frequently embroiled in quarrels, and once got into a fistfight with a colleague from North Carolina in the House chamber.

At first a Unionist, he switched his loyalties in 1860 and supported secession. He was not happy with Jefferson Davis, however, and secretly became involved in a Southern peace movement in 1863. After the war ended, he supported Andrew Johnson and even wrote an anonymous biography of him in 1866. In 1869, he moved his family to Tennessee and four years later to Mississippi, where he owned plantations. An attorney by training, though he had never practiced law, he was nominated to the Mississippi Supreme Court the same year he arrived in the state, and the next year, despite Rayner’s opposition to Reconstruction, President U.S. Grant named him a judge of the CSS Alabama Claims Commission. In 1877, he became solicitor of the treasury and held that post until he died.

Kenneth Rayner enjoyed the reputation of a warm-hearted, capable and honorable man, but he remained volatile and impulsive to the point of instability in the minds of many. In these respects, at least, Will Rayner was a lot like his father. Family connections opened doors for the dapper newcomer to Texas and might well have ensured his success. His father’s political connections may have enabled Will Rayner to secure the position of customs collector at Clinton, Texas, where he remained for a time. But once on his own, the younger Rayner developed a taste for the rougher side of frontier life. He reportedly worked as a Texas Ranger and a peace officer elsewhere in Texas before he showed up in El Paso about 1882. Rumor had it he had killed a man in Fort Worth.

Whatever the truth about his peregrinations, Rayner was reputed to be an expert with both rifle and revolver. In 1882, he joined the El Paso police force under James B. Gillette and cultivated the friendship of Assistant Marshal Edward Scotten. Rayner’s brother Hamilton joined him for a while at El Paso. In March 1884, Judge Rayner died, and apparently the boys’ mother joined them in Texas. Later that spring, Ham Rayner took the marshal’s job in Hunnewell, Kan. Ed Scotten followed him to Hunnewell as assistant marshal, and when Scotten was killed and Ham Rayner wounded in a gunfight with cowboys there in August 1884, Will Rayner and Frank Scotten hurried to Hunnewell to take up the fight. Things were quiet by the time they arrived, and the Rayners soon returned to El Paso.

No longer a peace officer, Rayner tried his hand at gambling. He was a familiar sight on the El Paso sporting scene, eventually taking a job as a dealer at the Gem Saloon, an upscale gambling emporium and theater operated by George Look and J.J. Taylor. Off duty, he courted El Paso’s ladies and charmed a certain element that was impressed by his bravado and cocky good humor.

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