The Men Who War the Star: The Story of the Texas Rangers (32 page)

By contrast, he was pleased with Company F, where Capt. Neal Coldwell had relieved a private and broken the first sergeant to the ranks for insubordination. Jones dishonorably discharged the private and upheld the sergeant’s reduction. He also encouraged Lt. F. H. Nelson to resign from the service because the lieutenant apparently had no confidence among the men; he actually feared them, although Jones noted that Coldwell and the other lieutenant had no trouble controlling them.
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In short, the Texas Rangers were now subject to a discipline and organization that they never before had known. No longer were they citizen volunteers, minutemen coming together at their own need or convenience or that of their immediate friends and neighbors. Henceforth they would be professionals, obeying orders, serving where ordered and when ordered.

Despite his adherence to discipline, however, Jones would not allow procedure to interfere with efficiency. Considering it “unnecessary and indeed a waster of time and money” to assemble the Frontier Battalion as a unit, he ordered each company into the field as soon as it was ready. By June 1, five of the six companies were in service, and the sixth followed only ten days later.
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AS THE BATTALION
organized, the various companies were posted to base camps that often were located conveniently to nearby towns. The camps themselves became small communities as the Rangers worked to establish such amenities as were available on the frontier. Lou Conway, who married Capt. Dan Roberts, recalled arriving at her new home in the Company D base camp near Menard.

The Rangers required only a few days to prepare quarters for us. About fifty yards from their camp stood a portion of a camp house. It had a shingle roof and a rock floor. It was converted into a kitchen, size twenty feet by twenty feet. Gunny sacks were tacked upon the walls. For our bedroom the Rangers built a room of logs with walls three feet high, on top of which they put a tent. It was provided with a fireplace built of stone. The floor was carpeted with gunny sacks. The kitchen also served as a storeroom. It was all so cozy.
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Not everyone was impressed with the Rangers, however. H. H. McConnell, a federal cavalryman posted to Fort Richardson near Jacksboro, wrote:

These Rangers were tolerable Indian fighters, but most of their time was occupied in terrorizing the citizens and “taking in the town.” Shooting scrapes and rows between citizens, soldiers and Rangers in this year (1874) were so frequent that the long suffering citizens by their votes “incorporated.” . . .

The act of incorporation removed Jacksboro’s law enforcement from state responsibility, and a municipal marshal was appointed to police the town and—presumably—police the Rangers when they came in.
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This notwithstanding the fact that the vicinity around Jacksboro was the scene of some of the worst Indian depredations.

No doubt Rangers sometimes were a nuisance, but when commanded by a disciplinarian, they behaved well enough to attract the admiration of the communities. Citizens of nearby towns frequently visited, and if there was a military post nearby, the families of army officers exchanged courtesies with those of Ranger officers. The men kept pets, and those who played musical instruments often gave concerts. In some camps, the men laid out racetracks, because betting on horse races was permitted whereas cardplaying had to be done in secret. Some companies even had croquet sets.
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For all the amenities offered by local citizens, the Texas Ranger was first and foremost a law enforcement officer and an Indian fighter. A sampling of activities during the Frontier Battalion’s first three months of existence in 1874 illustrates some of its activities:

May 7
   Capt. E. F. Ikard Co. ‘C’frontier [
sic
] Battalion, with 6 men, attacked a party of 10 Indians, driving toward Indian nation a herd of some 150 head of cattle. Drove the Indians (fighting) about 15 miles. . . .

Company “D”
   July 29th. Capt. C. R. Perry’s command [Perry preceded Dan Roberts as company commander] assisted civil authorities in bringing Felix Mann and accomplices to justice. . . .

Company E
   May 10th. Capt. W. J. Maltby and Lt. J. G. Connell captured 2 horses, bridles, & saddles from horse thieves—Property returned to owners. . . .

Company “F”
   Augt 31st Capt. Neal Coldwell arrested Wm. Hobbs, burglar & thief from Wood County, turned him over to sheriff of Kerr County. . . .
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On scouting expeditions, the Rangers relied on knowledge of astronomy and terrain, not bothering with maps or compasses. “Their reckonings were made by the sun, and the North star, taking into consideration the main rivers that run through the state, from north to south and the relative distance between them,” Captain Roberts commented.
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“Due to the outdoor life we followed, we were seldom ill,” Ranger G. W. Ellington of Company E remembered. “Remedies resorted to by the men themselves were sometimes extremely crude but effective.” In one instance, Ellington returned to camp after riding all day in a heavy wind with a terrible toothache. “When I reached camp I was in a mood to try anything for relief.” No one had pliers to pull the tooth, but one man heated an awl red-hot and thrust it into the cavity of the tooth to kill the nerve. “It sizzled and burned, but cured the ache,” Ellington wrote.
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As always, the Rangers paid close attention to weapons. The legislation creating the battalion specified that the state would provide each officer and enlisted man with a breech-loading cavalry carbine, but that every Ranger was required to furnish for himself “one six-shooting pistol (army size),” specifically the Colt’s Model 1873 Single Action Army revolver. Apparently, however, individual Rangers had difficulty procuring the new handgun, because three months after the battalion was organized, the Rangers of Company E petitioned Captain Maltby “to procure for us Colt’s improved Breech Loading Pistol of the latest and best improved quality; For which we will pay cash price out of the first money we draw from the State for our services” (Rangers were paid quarterly). The Single Action Army, called the Peacemaker in its civilian form, was a cartridge weapon in various calibers and barrel lengths. Rangers seemed to prefer the version known as the Classic Peacemaker in .45 caliber with a seven-and-a-half-inch barrel.
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ALTHOUGH THE STATE
was plagued by banditry and vicious blood feuds were either brewing or already under way, the most immediate concern was the northwest frontier. Across the Red River in the Indian Territory of Oklahoma, the Southern Plains tribes were preparing for one last stand against the white tide, an outbreak known to history as the Red River War. Their grievances were many, but the symbol of the conflict became the buffalo, exterminated for their hides in answer to the Eastern demand for industrial leather—a slaughter that threatened the entire economic existence of Southern Plains tribes like the Comanches, Kiowas, Arapahos, and Southern Cheyennes. The war began in earnest on June 27, 1874, when massed warriors under Comanche leadership mounted a daylong siege against a group of buffalo hunters at Adobe Walls in the Texas Panhandle. Troops were mobilized from four states and federal territories, and the Indian agencies were placed under military rule while the army hunted down the Indian bands in the field.
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While the army waged a general war throughout the Southern Plains, the Rangers were charged by the state with protecting citizens within the boundaries of Texas. One of Jones’s first acts on taking command of the battalion was to make a tour of the northwest frontier. As they rode through the countryside, the Rangers saw hundreds of carcasses of buffalo. “There were so many that the wolves and buzzards could not eat them and they were left to rot and dry up,” one Ranger recalled. Jones, with an escort of about twenty-five men, arrived at the headquarters of Capt. G. W. Stevens’s Company B, at the old Ranger post of Fort Murrah, on June 10. The following day he ordered the entire company to move about ten miles east to Salt Creek, where the grass and water were better. There they received word that a band of Comanches had attacked and killed a cowboy named Heath at Oliver Loving’s corral, and tracks were plainly visible.

The next morning Jones sent a scouting detail consisting of two men from his own escort along with two from Stevens’s company under the command of Lt. Tom Wilson. They reported a large trail heading south-east, out toward the dangerous Salt Creek Prairie. Jones broke camp immediately, taking Stevens, Wilson, and thirty-three members of the battalion to follow the trail. The group also probably included several volunteers drawn from Loving’s cowboys. Unknown to the Rangers, however, this was not the trail of the Comanches who had hit Loving’s corral—it belonged to a much larger party of about fifty Kiowas, including some of that nation’s greatest warriors. It was a murder raid, organized by Paramount Chief Lone Wolf to avenge the deaths of his favorite son and nephew, both killed the year before in a fight with federal cavalry in south Texas. The party was led by Maman-ti, the wily and gifted medicine man responsible for the most successful Kiowa raids. Before leaving the Indian Territory, Maman-ti had consulted his oracles and predicted a successful expedition in which at least one white would die without any losses to the Kiowas. None of the warriors had any reason to doubt him.
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The Salt Creek Prairie, isolated but well traveled, had always been good raiding ground for the Kiowas. Almost as soon as they came out onto the prairie, they jumped four cowboys, but the cowboys, mounted on fresh horses, escaped; the Kiowa ponies, exhausted by the long trip from Oklahoma, were unable to keep up. The failure to take the cowboys, along with the incredible, windswept loneliness of the prairie, discouraged some of the younger warriors. Sitting on a hill overlooking the valley, they began muttering among themselves, and Lone Wolf gave them a dressing-down.

“Don’t be scared,” he commanded. “If any Texans come and chase us, don’t be afraid. Be brave. Let’s try and kill some of them. That’s what we came here for.”

At that moment, one warrior spotted the glint of the sun on metal off in the distance, a sign more whites were coming. Maman-ti led them along the ridge where they could get a better view and saw a large party of well-armed men, all wearing white hats.
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THE RANGERS HAD
already followed the trail some fifteen miles. Now it was very fresh, and they estimated at least fifty warriors. They found where the Indians had stopped to water their horses, and where they had killed and roasted some cattle. They rode past the rough monument that soldiers had erected over the mass grave of the teamsters massacred during Sherman’s 1871 visit, and but lost the trail as it led into rough and rocky ground approaching the hill. Some of the younger, more inexperienced men rode ahead to find it again.

As the Rangers continued into Lost Valley, expecting to see the Indians ahead on the open plain, the Kiowas backtracked, crossing the Ranger trail and circling around above them, keeping under the cover of the hills. Maman-ti had worked out a trap. He concealed most of the Kiowas in a gorge in the hills, then he and another warrior rode down into the valley and dismounted to lead their horses where they would be in plain view. Spotting them, Jones led his men straight into the snare as the other warriors charged out from among the boulders and mesquite thickets. The major held his men together as the Indians circled. Ranger Lee Corn received a gunshot wound that broke his shoulder and nearly took off his arm. Separated from the rest, he managed to crawl into the brush and hide. Another Ranger named Wheeler stayed with him and helped bandage the arm. Most of the Rangers were caught in the open, and Stevens told Jones, “Major, we will have to get tocover somewhere or all be killed.”

Jones ordered a charge that broke through the Indian line, and the Rangers managed to get into a thicket in a gully but were cut off from water. Several had lost their horses in the charge, and Ranger George Moore had a flesh wound in the lower leg. William “Billy” Glass was shot down and left for dead. The Indians, Jones noted, “are all well armed with improved breech loading guns (they used no arrows in the fight) all well mounted, and painted, and deck [
sic
] out in gay and fantastic style.” There was no question in his mind that they were out for blood.
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The two sides began sniping at each other, with Billy Glass lying out on the plain between them. Terrified of what would happen if he was captured alive, he called out, “Don’t let them get me. Won’t some of you fellows help?” The Rangers responded with a heavy covering fire while three men dashed out and brought him in.

The Indians were making trouble along a ridge to the rear, and Rangers William Lewis and Walter Robertson volunteered to hold that position while the others held the front. Jones took them to find the best spot, and as they settled down he told them, “Boys, stay here until they get you or until the fight is over.”

Later, during a lull in the shooting, Lieutenant Wilson went to see how they were doing. He was sitting under a tree fanning himself with his hat and describing the Kiowas in the strongest Anglo-Saxon terms when Lewis said, “Lieutenant you ought not to swear like that. Don’t you know that you might be killed at any minute?”

“That is just so, boys,” Wilson agreed and became quiet. A few minutes later, a Kiowa bullet cut a limb overhead, bringing it down on the lieutenant’s bare head. As the blood poured down, he momentarily thought he had been shot. A later examination of the tree showed it had been shot to pieces on the side facing the Indians.
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