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:: 3 :: 1 :: Oasis of Outlaws The word was out: the U.S. Army was finally doing something about the Indian raiders who had for years plagued the western Hill Country of Texas. Comanche raids from the north and Mexican Indian raids from the southwest would be eliminated, or at least greatly curtailed. Now the wide apron of vacant, well-watered lands that bordered the vast, empty Edwards Plateau—west of the Hill Country counties that had organized before the Civil War—lay waiting , inviting, open for settlement. The new arrivals started trickling in during 1873 and 1874. Most were of southern origin and outlook: some battle-scarred Confederate veterans who had returned to their Texas homes and families, now grown accustomed to violence. Others came destitute from the war-ravaged Deep South, dispossessed by Reconstruction , looking to make a new start. Some were of rougher stripe—criminals, troublemakers, and ne’er-do-wells who had been run out of eastern Texas counties that were becoming civilized.1 They congregated along the North and South Llano Rivers, following those sparkling, clear-water streams and tributaries to their respective headwater springs, building cabins for their families and sheds for their livestock. Gradually, a community began to nucleate at the forks of the Llanos. Settlement of the Texas Hill Country was already well underway before the Civil War. U.S. Army posts, such as Fort Martin Scott in Gillespie County (established 1848), Fort Croghan in Burnet County (1849), Fort Mason in Mason County (1851), Fort McKavett in Menard County (1852), and Camp Verde in Kerr County (1855), served as marginally effective centers of protection for early settlers as well as the basis for an embryonic road network, which facilitated transportation , communication, and development of nascent communities.2 The nearest supply centers were San Antonio and Austin. Goods were shipped in wagons or carts drawn by mules or oxen, or carried by pack animals. Whenever army posts were established in the Hill Country, county governments were organized soon thereafter—Gillespie (1848), Burnet (1852), Llano, Kerr, and Bandera (1856), Mason and Blanco (1858)—usually around towns that would become county seats.3 Imperfect order was established. Agriculture and commerce took root. The rule of law began to take effect. The Reckoning :: 4 When the Civil War began, federal troops abandoned the frontier forts. Confederate Texas, short of recruits, did not regarrison the vacated posts during the war; makeshift squads of local militia occupied them only periodically. The western frontier in Texas retreated eastward under increased Indian forays. With Reconstruction , federal troops returned to the frontier forts; the Texas frontier recovered lost ground and began to resume its westward march.4 The western fringe of the Hill Country, merging with the eastern margins of the Edwards Plateau, was sparsely settled, populated by nomadic cattle drovers and widely scattered, courageous—or desperate—homesteaders. Before 1874 Indian raids were frequent, by Comanches and Kiowas from the north, and Kickapoos , Lipan Apaches, and Seminoles from Coahuila, Mexico. To try to control such raiders, an important new military post was established in 1867, Fort Concho, at the forks of the Concho River, just north of the northern edge of the Edwards Plateau . Many of the enlisted men were ex-slaves—“buffalo soldiers”—commanded by white officers.5 The presence of black troops did not sit well with many settlers. Menardville, located on the road connecting Forts Mason, McKavett, and Concho , sprang up in 1867. The next year the regular mail service connecting San Antonio and El Paso was routed through on the military road, and three years later the village became the county seat of Menard County, which was protected by Fort McKavett twenty miles to the west. Civil order was established—after a fashion —and the process of settlement and civilization began around Menardville.6 Kimble County lay south of Menard County, southwest of Mason County, west of Gillespie County, and northwest of Kerr County. It had been created from Bexar County in 1858 but remained unorganized until 1876, roughly twenty years after the adjoining counties had come into being. The first settlers had located in the eastern end of the county during the early 1860s. Following upon a short-lived settlement established by James Bradbury and his large extended family in the late 1860s, a village began to grow at the forks of the North and South Llano Rivers, which eventually became the county seat, Junction City.7 Kimble County was different, for reasons that were primarily...

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