"Pages from a Worker's Life" by William Z. Foster in TEXAN AMENITIES:

"The most - hard boiled boss was 'Lige' Gardner, timekeeper and gunman. Gardner, slight of build and dark - complexioned, came of an old aristocratic Southern family. His people had owned many slaves and a big plantation, but they lost everything in the Civil War. Gardner could not forget this and deeply hated Northerners.
Gardner's evil disposition was worsened because he suffered from Bright's disease, and the doctors had given him only a couple of years to live. He used to say, "If I've got to cash - in I might as well take along some of my enemies". And as good, or bad, as his word, Gardner had killed two white men and several Negroes; he was saved from prosecution by his aristocratic connections. He treated us in the kitchen with artifical politeness but, gun in hand, he terrorized the Mexican laborers."

Foster knew Gardner while working for a Southern Pacific repair crew at Echo, Texas near Beaumont.

Foster noted Gardner as a gunfighter, as well as a "Southern aristocrat".