Chapter XVIII: An Exciting Indian Campaign

FIRST SERVICE AS RANGER CAPTAIN. BIGGEST INDIAN SCARE ON RECORD

It was in January, 1891, that Bill McDonald received his appointment as Ranger Captain, and his first official service was not long delayed. He arrived at Amarillo about midnight, and was received with congratulations, for the news had traveled ahead of him. He was tired, however, and the hour was late, so he presently slipped away to bed. He had hardly fallen asleep when he was rudely awakened and handed a telegram which stated that the Indians had made a raid across the border, and were killing and robbing in Hall County, near Salisbury.

Captain McDonald read the telegram and laughed. There had been no Indian troubles in Texas for a number of years. White renegades there were in plenty, but Indian outbreaks had long since ceased.

"I guess the boys are trying to have some fun with me on my first night," he said, and turned in once more to sleep. But a few minutes later another telegram came; and another; this time from the superintendent of the railroad company--a Mr. Good, whom McDonald knew as a man not given to practical joking.

The Ranger Captain dressed himself, hurried over to the telegraph office and got the operator there to talk over the wire to the operator where the scare had originated. He learned that it seemed to be genuine, and that everybody was leaving the neighborhood. The operator at Salisbury ended his information with "Good-by, I'm going now myself."

Captain Bill still could not believe it a genuine Indian incursion. Hall County was in the second tier from the Territory line, and the Indians would have had to cross Childress County to get to it. He did not believe that they would undertake to do this, or that they could have accomplished it without previous alarms. Still, it was his duty to investigate. He got a special train; loaded in men, horses and pack-mules, and set out on a hunt for Indians. It was about a hundred miles to Salisbury, and they reached there early in the day. Not a soul was in sight anywhere. The inhabitants were hidden, some in dug-outs, some in haystacks, some in the tall grass. Here and there, as the train pulled in, McDonald saw a head stick out from a sod house far out on the prairie, then suddenly disappear, like a prairie-dog dropping into his hole. He set out to interview some of these wary settlers, and learned that the Indian alarm had been given by a man--a new settler just arrived in the country--who had ridden his horse to death and lost one of his children--having left him far behind somewhere--in his wild eagerness to escape the savages who, he declared, were burning and scalping not far away. Captain Bill found this man, and after a little talk with him was convinced that what he had seen was nothing more nor less than some cowboys on a round-up, disporting themselves around their campfire at night, as cowboys will--dancing and capering in the mad manner of young plainsmen whose ideas of amusement are elemental, and whose opportunities for social diversions are few. The man and the neighborhood, however, remained unconvinced, so it was decided to visit the scene of the disturbance.

Horses, men and pack-mules unloaded themselves from the freight car, and went racing over the prairie; the pack-mules, as usual, plunging and braying with tail in air, their tinware clattering in a manner calculated to put a whole tribe of Indians into a panic and send them capering across the eastern horizon into their own domain. But there were no Indians. It was as Captain Bill had thought; a gang of cowboys, the evening before, had rounded up some cattle; killed a beef; carried it to their camp near by, where they had built a great fire and roasted it, doing a wild war-dance of celebration, and shooting off their six-shooters in their prodigal expression of joy. Viewed from a little distance, through a sort of mirage condition which had exaggerated the whole effect, the scene to the newcomers was a horrifying picture of savages about a burning home, with the inhabitants fleeing for their lives.

The man who had just moved in had stampeded for his own safety and started a general alarm, which did not subside even when the cowboys themselves came in and testified to the truth. The panic spread throughout that section of the country and other reports of Indian outbreaks were circulated, becoming magnified until it was believed that the Indians had broken out, and were making a general raid on the Pan-handle. The inhabitants of one town, south of Amarillo, threw up breastworks, got behind them, and put out pickets in preparation for the arrival of the Indians. Every man seen loping across the prairie was reported as an Indian; and all this happened as late as 1891, when there had been no Indian outbreaks for years, and when there was scarcely a possibility of anything of the sort. It was a big joke, of course, afterward, but it seemed no joke at the time, and it was Bill McDonald's initiation as Captain of Company B.