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39 Chapter 3 “I’m shot, sure as hell” The morning of July 12, 1874, found Major John B. Jones and his permanently assigned escort detachment in the broken and hilly country northeast of old Fort Belknap, then abandoned, near present day Graham, Texas.1 Fortuitously they were not the only band of heavily armed horsemen in the sparsely settled frontier neighborhood. In fact, the region was literally crawling with competing cavalries. The Frontier Battalion commander had managed the arduous overland journey to look over the tactically placed encampment of Captain George W. Stevens’ Company B. The Texas Ranger camp was in reasonably close proximity to Fort Sill and the loosely superintended tribal reservations in Indian Territory. Known members of Major Jones’ escort detachment from Company D were John P. Holmes , D. Ross James, William W. Lewis, Horatio Grooms Lee, Walter M. Robertson, John V. Wheeler, and Edward B. “Ed” Carnal. Their ages averaged 22.8 years.2 Rangers Robertson and Carnal would later narrate in published accounts their experiences of what would become an adventurously harrowing and sad day. Supplementary commentary would be potted in unpublished ranger remembrances. Several other young Texas Rangers from Company D may have been along on this trip, although the assertion is but guesswork.3 Two days earlier, on the tenth, Comanches skipped an Agency headcount and jumped the reservation, dashing across the Red River into Texas. It wasn’t a social call. There they raided the Oliver Loving ranch, killing a cowhand, John Heath, and also making off with a band of white-eyed and badly frightened saddle-horses. The Indians left a plainly readable trail to follow. Iron horseshoe dints interspersed with unshod hoof prints in soft ground and plopping piles of manure make damn good clues.4 Wholly apart from the Comanche incursion, vengeance-minded Kiowas had cooked up a plan of their own. They, too, had bolted the reservation, racing for Texas. Lone Wolf (Gui-päh-go) a Kiowa chief, conservative faction leader, and member of the Tsetanma warrior society, had instigated a 40  Chapter 3 revenge raid. Culturally, it had to be! It was retribution for the death of his son Sitting-in-the-Saddle (Tau-ankia), and his fifteen-year-old nephew Heart-of-a-young-Wolf (Gui-tain). They had been killed by U. S. soldiers in the craggy border country of South Texas on December tenth the preceding year. While pillaging in Old Mexico the Kiowas killed fourteen peons, stole 150 horses and mules, and took two Mexican boys prisoner. On the way back during their run for finding sanctuary at Fort Sill, north of the border on the San Antonio/Laredo road the Indians murdered two ill-fated Americans. After learning of the raid, Lieutenant Charles L. Hudson, Fourth Cavalry, readjusted his patrol and went in search of the marauders. Eight miles east of South Kickapoo Springs he found them. After running the Indians to ground a pitched battle bloodied the rocky crest. Having an appreciation for their untenable positioning the Kiowas began giving way down the hill’s backside. What had started as a dodgy fight amended into a rout. During the flight seven warriors were dropped in their tracks, the trooper’s Springfield .45-70s inflicting wicked and mortal wounds. Due to an earlier gunshot wound in another Texas raid, Tau-ankia suffered a disabling limp. On this day it hindered his withdrawal . He lost ground as his fellows continued with their headlong retreat. Sensing the inevitability of Tau-ankia’s capture, Gui-tain heroically returned to help his slow moving cousin. It was daring, but it was disastrous. Overrunning the Kiowas at the gallop Lieutenant Hudson—with his Colt’s Army revolver—shot and killed Tau-ankia, while one of his enlisted men cut down Gui-tain. The final score was lopsided: nine for the soldiers, zero for the Kiowas. After rounding up 81 stolen horses the exultant Lt. Hudson returned to Fort Clark to make his after action report. The fleeing Indians secretly navigated their way back across Texas and slipped into the “city of refuge” at Fort Sill. They, too, made a report. Upon learning of the death of his son and nephew Lone Wolf “vowed revenge on all whites.”5 Lone Wolf’s timing had coincided perfectly with the Frontier Battalion’s Major Jones making an appearance on the northwest Texas frontier that July of 1874. The two chiefs were there at the same time, with a common...

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