The Men Who War the Star: The Story of the Texas Rangers (36 page)

“We could see with the naked eye the mounted men and the stock,” Durham remembered. “The country was open hardpan, except for a few clumps of dagger [yucca] and some salt cedar and marsh grass.”

The Rangers spurred their horses until they reached the edge of the marsh about five hundred yards from where the cattle thieves had dug in. Then McNelly gathered them together.

“Boys,” he said, “across this resaca are some outlaws that claim they’re bigger than the law—bigger than Washington law, bigger than Texas law. Right now we’ll find out if they’re right or if they’re wrong. This won’t be a standoff or a dog fall. We’ll either win completely, or we’ll lose completely.”
³⁵

The marsh was filled with about eighteen or twenty inches of mud and water. The bandits were behind a bank between four and five feet high. McNelly formed a skirmish line, placing his men five feet apart, and moved in. They were ordered to keep their carbines slung and pistols holstered, not to fire until ordered, and to fire directly ahead, not to the right or left. As soon as they moved into the morass, the bandits behind the bank opened fire, as did mounted members of the gang who had remained with the herd on the island to the left. The Rangers continued into the gunfire at a slow walk, their horses unable to move faster in the muck.

Firing grew heavier as the Rangers got halfway across, but the bandits’marksmanship was poor and they fired low. Still, McNelly pressed forward without firing a shot. “That must have spooked them,” Durham commented. “It sure spooked me.”

Cpl. William I. Rudd’s horse was wounded, and he jumped clear as the animal fell. Other horses went down, either wounded or stumbling in the mud. Finally, when the Rangers came within seventy-five or a hundred yards of the bank, most of the bandits jumped on their horses and began riding off. As soon as McNelly’s men got on hard ground, they spurred their horses and gave chase. When they were within pistol range, the bandits broke into a gallop. Most of the Rangers’ horses were too tired to keep up, so McNelly sent three men on the best mounts to head them off and force a stand. The bandits stood their ground until McNelly himself arrived with four or five additional men.
³⁶

Several of the bandits broke through the Ranger line and started toward the Rio Grande. “After that,” McNelly reported, “it was a succession of single hand fights for six miles before we got the last one.” All twelve bandits guarding the cattle were killed, and it was later determined the final death toll was fifteen. Looking back on it, McNelly couldn’t suppress a grudging admiration for the cattle thieves.

I have never seen men fight with such desperation. Many of them after being shot from their horses, and severely wounded three or four times would rise on their elbows and fire at my men as they passed.
³⁷

McNelly’s only casualty was eighteen-year-old L. B. “Berry” Smith, who remains the youngest Texas Ranger to die in the line of duty. They captured twelve horses with rifles, pistols, and saddles and recovered 265 head of cattle.

About that time, Cameron County sheriff James J. Brown arrived with a posse of
tejanos
. Riding hard, they had seen much of the fight, but their horses were too tired to get there in time. The bodies of the dead bandits were turned over to Brown, and members of his posse positively identified all of them as Cortina’s.
³⁸

Returning to Brownsville, the Rangers found the city in an uproar. The poorer residents, who were either Mexican or of Mexican descent, viewed Cortina as a hero and took the killing of his men as a personal affront. In Mexico itself, Cortina supporters were threatening to kill ten Americans for each of their people who died in the fight. The total garrison at Fort Brown was only 250 officers, soldiers, and servants, and McNelly doubted they would be able to prevent an incursion into Brownsville by the number of men Cortina could command.

Despite the weakness of the garrison, the soldiers turned out to bury Berry Smith with military honors. Among the mourners was his father, Ranger D. R. “Old Man” Smith, who was also a member of the company. Old Man Smith had been detailed as camp guard and had asked McNelly before the fight to leave his son, too, because he was an only child. McNelly agreed, but Berry had insisted on going along. Now an escort of soldiers and Rangers followed the coffin to the military cemetery at Fort Brown, where a rifle team fired a salute as the body was lowered into the ground.

The bodies of the dead bandits were stacked in the square in Brownsville. McNelly wanted them displayed as an example of what Rangers did with cattle thieves.
³⁹

WITH THE THREAT
of a Cortinista incursion, most people believed McNelly planned to strike the first blow with a raid into Mexico. Several Rangers announced they would not fight across the river and took their discharges, and McNelly, who did not tolerate dissent, practically drove them out of camp.
⁴⁰

As time passed, however, there was little activity on either side. Despite the threats, the Palo Alto fight had severely shaken Cortina’s people, and they tended to avoid the area. A major hindrance was removed when the Mexican government, bowing to U.S. diplomatic pressure and no doubt tired of unstable conditions on the border, summoned Cortina to Mexico City under arrest.

With Cortina under more or less permanent detention in the capital, his mantle of leadership passed on to lesser men. The cattle thieves shifted their operations upriver toward Camargo and operated on a smaller scale. After scouting the lower Rio Grande area through the summer, McNelly took his company up to Laredo in September, then, feeling ill, departed for his home in Brenham to recuperate. Pidge Robinson was left in charge during his absence. With little to do in Laredo, Pidge resumed his literary endeavors. He had stopped writing for the
Statesman
in December 1874, apparently after a falling-out with the editor. In October, however, the Pidge letters resumed, this time in the pages of the rival Austin
State Gazette
.
⁴¹

The first letter described Casuse Sandoval’s dexterity with a rope. “He is
so
kind and
so
considerate that it is almost a pleasure to be hanged by such a nice gentleman,” Pidge wrote. “Cortina, before his arrest, would have given his right arm to have caught Sandoval on the Mexican side . . . and even now it is as much as his life is worth if he should be seen in Matamoras [
sic
].”
⁴²

MCNELLY RETURNED TO
find bandit activities had resumed in the Brownsville area. Over two hundred head of cattle had been stolen, and driven across the river and on to Monterrey. At this point, he appears to have begun thinking seriously of an incursion into Mexico. He discussed the situation with Col. Joseph H. Potter, Twenty-fourth Infantry, at Fort Brown, who gave him the impression that General Ord might lend support. He also was encouraged by Capt. DeWitt Clinton Kells, commander of the U.S. gunboat
Rio Bravo,
which patrolled the Rio Grande. Kells, an adventurer who had been part of American filibuster William Walker’s ill-fated invasion of Nicaragua in the 1850s, seemed eager for an incident, and ready to provoke one himself if the Mexicans would not oblige.
⁴³

The army was ready to do its part within the legal constraints of an international boundary. On November 8, 1875, two detachments of the Eighth Cavalry were ordered out of Fort Brown, one under Lt. H. J. Farnsworth to Fort Ringgold, and the other commanded by Capt. James F. Randlett “with all the commissioned officers, and as many enlisted men of his company . . . as can be armed and mounted” to Edinburg. Randlett was specifically ordered to “scout the country after armed bands of
Mexican Cattle Thieves and Marauders
” and to make “the utmost endeavors” to recover stolen property and arrest the thieves.
⁴⁴

Randlett arrived in Edinburg on November 12, established his camp, and, the following day, began sending small details of troops to patrol the countryside, look for trails of cattle thieves, and become acquainted with the area and people. About dark on November 16, he learned that a party of about fifteen cattle thieves had crossed into Texas looking for cattle, and probably would return the following night. Presuming that they would return to Mexico at Las Cuevas crossing, about twenty miles upriver from Edinburg, he took thirty men to intercept them and sent a message to the adjutant at Fort Brown asking that a backup detail be sent from Ringgold.
⁴⁵

McNelly, meanwhile, arrived in Edinburg and on November 17 received word that the cattle thieves were definitely heading toward Las Cuevas. Assembling his company, he arrived at the crossing the following day, and learned that Randlett had found the thieves crossing the river with about 250 stolen cattle and opened fire. The Mexicans returned fire, holding off the troops long enough to eventually get all but about twenty-five head into Mexico. McNelly met with Maj. D. R. Clendennin, who had arrived with a backup detail from Ringgold and assumed command.
⁴⁶
The two men went over the options, and McNelly telegraphed Adjutant General Steele:

A party of raiders have crossed two hundred & fifty cattle at Los Cuevos [
sic
] they have been firing on Maj Clendennin[’]s men[.] he refuses to cross without further orders[.] I shall cross tonight if I can get any support.

LH McNelly
⁴⁷

Clendennin was opposed to the crossing, but apparently indicated (or so McNelly chose to believe) that he would support the Rangers if they got into trouble on the Mexican side. With that, McNelly again telegraphed to Steele:

I commence crossing at one oclock tonight[.] have thirtyone men[.] will try & recover our cattle[.] the U.S. troops promise to cover my return[.] Lt Robinson has just arrived making a march of fifty five miles in six hours.
⁴⁸

At 1
A.M.
, November 19, while the soldiers fired into Mexico to draw attention, the Rangers marched down the bank single-file, leading their horses. The men climbed into boats; the animals were to swim. All went well until the horses, exhausted from Pidge Robinson’s forced march, became mired in the mud and quicksands of the banks. “It was calculated that with the best of luck and no accident all of them could be safely landed on the Mexican bank by Christmas Eve,” Pidge told his readers. After struggling to get five animals across the river, McNelly decided the effort was useless and ordered the others left on the Texas side. The horses were unsaddled and turned loose. The Rangers would fight on foot.
⁴⁹

TODAY, LAS CUEVAS
is called Díaz Ordaz, and is a typical modern Mexican small town. It is reached either by highway from Camargo or by driving to Los Ebanos, Texas, and taking the hand-drawn ferry, preserved as the last of its kind on the boundary between the United States and a foreign country. In the 1870s, it was a large settlement, more of a village than a ranch, with a substantial population. McNelly believed the cattle were held there, defended by between 250 and 300 men. He hoped to surprise them by dashing in, taking the first house, and holding it until relieved by the U.S. troops he presumed would come to his aid. He was aware, as he later told Steele, that “[n]ot one of us could get back without the aid of their troops,” and said he had made that position clear to the army officers before crossing the river.

The Rangers walked two and a half miles until, about daylight, they came to a large picket fence cutting across the trail with houses beyond. This must be Las Cuevas, they thought. Casuse Sandoval moved along the perimeter and found a gate. McNelly formed up his men and gave his orders. Kill everyone but the old men, women, and children. Then he pulled open the bars of the gate.

“Stand to one side, boys. Casuse has not had a chance to breathe Mexican air or give a yell in Mexico for over twenty years. We’ll let Casuse wake them up.”

Sandoval, one of the five men with horses, shoved his hat back and took the other riders through the gate. Then he dug in his spurs and gave a Comanche yell, and the five charged among the picket huts, their pistols blazing. The others ran in from behind.

“If the angels of heaven had come down on that ranch the Mexicans would not have been more surprised,” Ranger Bill Callicott remembered. “We were the first Rangers they had seen since the Mexican War.”

Some of the men were gunned down as they cut wood for the morning’s cooking fires. “Every moving thing was a fair target,” Durham remarked.

Soon all was quiet. A woman who was questioned gave some unsettling information. This was not Las Cuevas. This was the ranch of Las Cachutas. Las Cuevas was half a mile farther up the trail. The Rangers had attacked the wrong settlement and, according to McNelly’s official report, killed four men. Pidge, however, estimated the toll as seven killed and nine wounded, probably a more accurate figure considering the indiscriminate gunplay.

McNelly was less concerned with the error (which he later tried to justify by claiming the men were pickets for the main force) than with the fact that all hope of surprise now was lost. Nevertheless, he moved onto Las Cuevas and, coming over a rise, saw it ahead. The village had two sides closed by a six-foot stockade. There were several groups of
jacales
—picket houses with thatched roofs—and a chapel in the middle of town.
⁵⁰

The Rangers moved in but were met by almost three hundred men, about a third of whom were mounted. To Pidge, it seemed like the column of horsemen stretched more than a hundred miles downriver, all the way to Matamoros. The others held the ground and corrals in front of the village. McNelly immediately saw that his hope of taking and holding one of the houses was futile. The nearest house was still a hundred yards away, and the Mexicans had the ground in between. Both sides began shooting. The Ranger fire took its toll, but the Mexicans quickly recovered, especially after a group of mounted men rode in from the direction of Camargo and their leader took control. “His trappings were all silver-garnished, and his horse was a blooded animal,” Durham remembered. McNelly recognized him as Gen. Juan Flores Salinas, who owned the ranch and controlled the surrounding area, a man who could organize the Mexicans into a coherent unit. Flores divided the mounted men, sending them around the Rangers on either side, to come in from behind.