Season of Terror: The Espinosas in Central Colorado, March–October 1863

14. “The Brightest Success Rewarded Them for Their Toils”: Tobin Brings in the Heads

265 14 DOI: 10.5876/9781607322375.c14 “The Brightest Success Rewarded Them for Their Toils” Tobin Brings in the Heads There are almost as many accounts of the delivery of the Espinosas’ heads to Colonel Tappan as there were people who participated in the event or claimed to have witnessed it. A point of general agreement, with one exception, was that Tom Tobin and Lieu­ tenant Baldwin’s reduced detachment1 returned to Fort Garland on the morning of Friday, October 16; Tobin himself, always befuddled about dates, says this happened on the eleventh of September.2 They arrived “just after guard mounting,”3 that is, about nine o’clock.4 Tobin, in relating his story later published in The Colorado Magazine, described what transpired; I rode up in front of the Commanding Officer’s quarters and called for Col. Tappan. I rolled the assassins [sic] heads out of the sack at Col. Tappan’s feet. I said, “Here, Col., I have accomplished what you wished. This head is Espinosa’s. This other is his companion’s head and there is no mistake made.” Lieut. Baldwin spoke, “Yes, Col., there is no mistake, for we have this diary and letters and papers to show that they were the assassins. The diary showed that they had killed twenty-two up to the date the first Espinosa was killed, not counting the Mexican Corporal, the first killed. . . . There was about thirty killed altogether.”5 “the brightest success rewarded them for their toils” 266 Given Tobin’s discomfort with the spoken word, the speech he gives himself in this version is unconvincing to say the least. His grandson, Kit Carson III, in his reminiscences, may have better preserved both the old scout’s terseness and the actual circumstances of the exposure of the grisly trophies: When grandpa got back to fort Garland he found that Colonel Tappan and some other officers were out horseback riding with their wives. He didn’t say anything; just stood around with his gunnysack, waiting. After a while the riding party came back and somebody told the colonel Tom Tobin was waiting to see him. So he sent for grandpa, and when he came into the room, he asked, “Any luck, Tom?” Grandpa said, “So-so,” and he held the gunnysack upside down and rolled the two heads out on the floor and the ladies screamed and grandpa said the colonel himself turned kind of green. For a good many years we lived at Fort Garland in the same room where Grandpa had rolled the heads out on the floor, but it didn’t bother anybody.6 Another eyewitness was Tom Burns, the young freighter who had concealed soldiers in his wagon in hopes of tempting the Espinosas to attack on the The post commandant’s headquarters, Fort Garland, where Tobin delivered the Espinosas’ heads to Colonel Tappan. (Author photo) “the brightest success rewarded them for their toils” 267 second day of the scout. In his 1897 letter to Tobin he recalled the scene: I was in Col Tappan’s office at the Fort. . . . [Y]ou came into the office with a flour sac [sic] in your hand and told Col Tappan “I have got them” he said got what, when you put your hand in the sack and pulled out the head of Espinosa. [I]t was a horrible sight . . . then you took out the head of the boy, he must have been about eighteen years old. Lt Baldwin and the men said that you had killed both of them, and I saw you take their heads out of the sack. Mr. C.F. Stallsteimer who was at Ft Garland at the time says he had the heads in his hands.7 At least by Burns’s account Baldwin was gracious enough in Tappan’s presence to give Tobin credit for bringing down both Espinosas, an accomplishment he denied the scout later that day when writing his report. As for his own description of the transfer of the heads, Baldwin’s, addressed to Tappan, is the briefest on record: “We delivered to you the heads of the two persons as soon as we arrived.”8 Perhaps the least plausible of the stories, though supposedly gained from Kit Carson III, says Tobin and Montoya arrived at dusk, without any soldiers, and found that Tappan was out walking with his wife—a highly unlikely prospect since Tappan was...