The Reckoning: The Triumph of Order on the Texas Outlaw Frontier

12. The Chase

:: 127 :: 12 :: The Chase Moving out at a purposeful trail-eating trot, Corporal Rush Kimbell’s sixman squad rode away from Company D’s camp on the San Saba River before noon on September 25. His command included Privates N. J. Brown, Ed Dozier, W. H. “Hick” Dunman, J. V. Latham, “Mac” Smith, and R. C. Roberts, and a pack mule loaded with ten days’ rations and assorted gear.1 They headed south across the muddy divide toward old Fort Terrett, on the headwaters of the North Llano River (see map 7).2 Rancher Sam Merck, who had brought word of the horse thefts, led the way.3 The thieves already had at least a thirty-six-hour head start.4 Arriving in the narrow, cliff-bound valley of the North Llano by late afternoon on September 25, Merck and the Rangers scoured the muddy ground until they found the trail of the departing outlaws and their stolen horse herd. There Kimbell’s squad camped at dusk, making ready for an early start the next morning.5 On the Trail The Rangers headed out of the North Llano valley at first light, following the trail of the stolen horse herd south about ten miles to the head of Dry Llano Draw, and then struggled up steep, ledgy slopes onto the flat, uninhabited divide between the Llano, Nueces, and Devils Rivers. Here the fleeing outlaws would have made good time over the high-standing, thick-turfed live-oak savanna—but so could their pursuers, and the tracks of their quarry’s passing in the wet soil would have been readily visible. Kimbell would have posted outriders on either flank to look out for horse tracks, unwary outlaws, or an ambush by the renegades. Once on top of the plateau, the trail turned west, in the direction of Beaver Lake, at the headwaters of the Devils River. Kimbell pushed his squad hard until dark; then they made a dry camp on the divide on the night of September 26.6 Kimbell’s command was moving by dawn the next morning, alternating between a fast walk and a trot. The outlaws’ trail, clearly visible, stayed on top of the plateau for another twenty miles. Then it descended westerly across the gentle slopes of Buckley Draw, a broad, grassy, west-draining valley that the Rangers followed for another twenty miles to its intersection with the dry upper reaches of the Devils River drainage. There the trail, now becoming fainter with each mile, turned south down the flat alluvial bottom of the gray-cliffed Devils River can- Map 7. The route of Corporal Kimbell’s squad in pursuit of the Potter horse thieves, September 25–October 8, 1880. The chase is plotted on Erwin J. Raisz’s physiographic map of the United States (1957); used with permission. 129 :: The Chase yon. After about ten miles it came to Beaver Lake, a shallow pond fed by the headwater spring of the Devils River, and the first living water in more than eighty miles. About three miles downstream, beside another spring, were the ruins of the abandoned stage station that had been built to serve the old southern mail route, connecting San Antonio and El Paso.7 Kimbell’s squad probably camped there on the evening of September 27. And there it rained again, washing out the trail they had followed for the past eighty miles—as well as the trail that lay ahead to wherever it was that their quarry were headed.8 The Rangers remained impatiently at the Beaver Lake stage station all day on September 28, waiting for the flooded draws to recede, fearful that the outlaws were increasing their lead. With the trail of the stolen horse herd now washed out, Kimbell had to proceed by educated guesswork, anticipating that the outlaws were headed for the Pecos River, from whence they might take one of several routes. Wagons presently used the old stage road to Fort Lancaster, on the Pecos. This road left the Devils River valley at Beaver Lake and headed northwest for about forty miles, across rough dissected tablelands, to Howard’s Well, the next reliable waterhole on the route to the Pecos River.9 But Kimbell may have figured that the Potter horse thieves would have preferred another route, one that saw less traffic—meaning fewer people to observe their passage and warn any pursuing Rangers—and...