Chapter XI: The Salt Lake War and a Long Trek

At the foot of the Guadalupe Mountains, one hundred miles east of El Paso, Texas, are situated several large salt deposits known as the Salt Lakes. These deposits were on public state land. For a hundred years or more the residents along the Rio Grande in El Paso County and in northern Mexico had hauled salt from the lakes free of charge, for there was no one to pay, as the deposits were not claimed by any owner. All one had to do was to back his wagon to the edge of the lake and shovel it full of salt and drive off.

From San Elizario to the Salt Lakes was just ninety miles, and there was not a drop of water on the route. The road that had been traveled so long by big wagon trains was almost as straight as an arrow and in extra fine condition. The salt haulers would carry water in barrels to what was known as the Half-way Station, about forty-five miles from San Elizario. Here they would rest and water their horses and leave half their water for the return trip. The teamsters would then push on to the lakes, load their wagons, rest the teams a day or two, and on their return trip stop at the Half-way Station, water their animals, throw the empty barrels on top of the salt and, without again halting, continue to San Elizario on the Rio Grande.

Charley Howard, after his election as judge of the El Paso District, made his home at the old town of Franklin, now known as El Paso. He saw the possibilities of these salt lakes as a money-making proposition and, knowing they were on public land, wrote his father-in-law, George Zimpleman, at Austin, to buy some land certificates and send them to him so he could locate the land covering the salt deposits. As soon as the land was located Judge Howard forbade anyone to haul salt from the lakes without first securing his permission. The Mexicans along both sides of the Rio Grande adjacent to El Paso became highly indignant at this order. A sub-contractor on the overland mail route between El Paso and Fort Davis named Luis Cardis, supported the Mexicans and told them Howard had no right to stop them from hauling salt. Cardis was an Italian by birth, had come to El Paso County in 1860, married a Mexican wife, identified himself with the county, and become prominent as a political leader. He was a Republican, while Judge Howard was a Democrat. Cardis and Howard soon became bitter enemies, and in September, 1878, this conflict between them became so acute that Howard killed his opponent with a double-barreled shotgun in S. Shultz and Brothers' store in Franklin. This at once precipitated the contest known as the Salt Lake War, for grave threats were made against Howard by the Mexicans.

After killing Cardis, Judge Howard fled to New Mexico, and from his seclusion in that state he called on the governor of Texas to send rangers to El Paso to protect him and the courts over which he presided. At that time not a company of the Frontier Battalion was within five hundred miles of that town. El Paso was seven hundred and fifty miles by stage from San Antonio or Austin and the journey required about seven days and nights' travel over a dangerous route--an unusually hard trip on any passenger attempting it.

The governor of Texas, therefore, sent Major John B. Jones from Austin to Topeka, Kansas, by rail and thence as far west into New Mexico as the Santa Fe Railroad ran at that time, and thence by stage down to El Paso. Major Jones dropped into the old town of Franklin (now El Paso) unheralded and unknown. He sat about the hotel and gained the information he needed, then made himself known to the authorities and proceeded at once to organize and equip a company of twenty rangers. John B. Tays, brother to the Episcopal minister of that district, was made lieutenant of the new command, which was known as a detachment of Company "C" and stationed in the old town of San Elizario, twenty-five miles southeast of El Paso.

Soon after this detachment of rangers had been authorized, Judge Howard appeared at San Elizario and sought protection with it. No sooner had it become known that Judge Howard was back in Texas than the ranger company was surrounded by a cordon of armed Mexicans, two or three hundred in number, who demanded the body of the jurist. Lieutenant Tays refused to surrender Howard, and the fighting began, and was kept up two or three days at intervals. Sergeant Maltimore, in passing through the court yard of the buildings in which the rangers were quartered was shot down and killed by Mexican snipers located on top of some adobe buildings within range of the quarters. Then an American citizen, a Mr. Ellis, was killed near Company "C's" camp.

After several days of desultory fighting, the leaders of the mob, under flag of truce, sought an interview with Lieutenant Tays. The lieutenant finally agreed to meet two of the leaders, and while the parley was in progress armed Mexicans one at a time approached the peace party until forty or fifty had quietly surrounded Lieutenant Tays and put him at their mercy. The mob then boldly demanded the surrender of the ranger company, Judge Howard, and two other Americans, Adkinson and McBride, friends of the judge, that had sought protection with them.

There is no doubt that the Mexicans intimidated Lieutenant Tays after he was in their hands and probably threatened him with death unless their demands were granted. The lieutenant returned to the ranger camp with the mob and said, "Boys, it is all settled. You are to give up your arms and horses and you will be allowed to go free."

The rangers were furious at this surrender, but were powerless to help themselves, for the mob had swarmed in upon them from all sides. Billie Marsh, one of the youngest men in the company, was so indignant that he cried out to his commander, "The only difference between you and a skunk is that the skunk has a white streak down his back!"

Judge Howard, seeing the handwriting on the wall, began shaking hands and bidding his ranger friends goodbye. As soon as the Mexicans had gotten possession of the rangers' arms they threw ropes over the heads of Howard, McBride and Adkinson. Then, mounting fast running ponies, they dragged the unfortunate men to death in the streets of San Elizario and cast their mutilated bodies into pososas or shallow wells. The Mexicans then disappeared, most of them crossing the Rio Grande into Mexico.

Lieutenant Tays at once resigned as commander of the rangers, and Private Charles Ludwick was made first sergeant and placed in charge of the company until the governor of Texas could send a commissioned officer to take command of it. Had Lieutenant Tays held out twenty-four hours longer, a thing which he could easily have done, he would have escaped the disgrace and mortification of surrendering himself and his company to a mob of Mexicans, for within that time John Ford with a band of New Mexico cowboys swept into the Rio Grande valley to relieve the besieged rangers. On learning of the fates of Howard, McBride, Adkinson, Ellis, and Sergeant Maltimore, the rescue party raided up and down the valley from San Elizario to El Paso and killed several armed Mexicans accused of being part of the mob that had murdered the Americans. The present battalion of Texas Rangers was organized May 1, 1874, and in all their forty-six years of service this surrender of Lieutenant Tays was the only black mark ever chalked up against it.

Afterward, when I arrived in El Paso with Lieutenant Baylor I had many talks with Privates George Lloyd, Dr. Shivers, Bill Rutherford, and Santiago Cooper,--all members of Tays' company--and most of them believed Lieutenant Tays had a streak of yellow in him, while a few thought he made a mistake in agreeing to an interview with the mob, thereby allowing himself to be caught napping and forced to surrender.

Conditions in El Paso County were now so bad that Lieutenant Baylor was ordered into the country to take command of the ranger company. Before leaving to assume his command, Lieutenant Baylor was called to Austin from his home in San Antonio and had a lengthy interview with Governor Roberts. Baylor was instructed by his excellency to use all diplomacy possible to reconcile the two factions and settle the Salt Lake War peaceably. The governor held that both sides to the controversy were more or less to blame, and what had been done could not be undone, and the restoration of order was the prime requisite rather than a punitive expedition against the mob members.

On July 28, 1879, Private Henry Maltimore and myself reached San Antonio from Austin and presented our credentials to Lieutenant Baylor, who thereupon advised us that he had selected August 2nd as the day to begin his march from San Antonio to El Paso County. In his camp on the San Antonio River in the southern part of the city the lieutenant had mustered myself as sergeant, and Privates Henry Maltimore, Dick Head, Gus Small, Gus Krimkau, and George Harold.

Early on the morning of August 2, 1879, our tiny detachment left San Antonio on our long journey. One wagon carried a heavy, old-fashioned square piano, and on top of this was loaded the lieutenant's household goods. At the rear of the wagon was a coop of game chickens, four hens and a cock, for Lieutenant Baylor was fond of game chickens as a table delicacy, though he never fought them. His family consisted of Mrs. Baylor, two daughters--Helen, aged fourteen, and Mary, a child of four or five years--and Miss Kate Sydnor, sister of Mrs. Baylor. The children and ladies traveled in a large hack drawn by a pair of mules. Rations for men and horses were hauled in a two-mule wagon, while the rangers rode on horseback in advance of the hack and wagons. Two men traveling to New Mexico in a two-wheeled cart asked permission to travel with us for protection. Naturally we made slow progress with this unique combination. As well as I can remember, 1879 was a rather dry year, for not a drop of rain fell upon us during this seven hundred-mile journey. When we passed Fort Clark, in Kinney County, and reached Devil's River we were on the real frontier and liable to attack by Indians at any time. It was necessary, therefore, to keep a strong guard posted at all times.

Around our camp fires at night Lieutenant Baylor entertained us with accounts of early days on the frontier. He was born August 24, 1832, at old Fort Gibson in the Cherokee nation, now the State of Oklahoma. His father, John Walker Baylor, was a surgeon in the United States Army. Lieutenant Baylor was a soldier by training and by inheritance. In 1879 he was in his forty-seventh year and stood six feet two inches tall, a perfect specimen of a hardy frontiersman. He was highly educated, wrote much for papers and magazines, was a fluent speaker and a very interesting talker and story-teller. He was less reserved than any captain under whom I ever served. He had taken part in many Indian fights on the frontier of Texas, and his descriptions of some of his experiences were thrilling. Lieutenant Baylor was a high-toned Christian gentleman and had been a member of the Episcopal Church from childhood. In all the months I served with him I never heard him utter an oath or tell a smutty yarn. He neither drank whisky nor used tobacco. Had he written a history of his operations on the frontier and a biography of himself it would have been one of the strangest and most interesting books ever written.

I have not the power of language to describe Lieutenant Baylor's bravery, because he was as brave as it is possible for man to be. He thought everyone else should be the same. He did not see how a white man could be a coward, yet in a fierce battle fought with Apache Indians on October 5, 1879, I saw some of his rangers refuse to budge when called upon to charge up a mountainside and assault the redskins concealed above us in some rocks. George Harold, one of the attacking party, said, "Lieutenant, if we charge up that hill over open ground every one of us will be killed."

"Yes, I suppose you are right," declared Baylor, a contemptuous smile on his face. Then, pointing to some Mexicans hidden behind some boulders below us, he added, "You had better go back to them. That is where you belong."

Lieutenant Baylor was as tender hearted as a little child and would listen to any tale of woe. He frequently took men into the service, stood good for their equipment and often had to pay the bill out of his own pocket. All men looked alike to him and he would enlist anyone when there was a vacancy in the company. The result was that some of the worst San Simone Valley rustlers got into the command and gave us no end of trouble, nearly causing one or two killings in our camp.

Baylor cared nothing for discipline in the company. He allowed his men to march carelessly. A scout of ten or fifteen men would sometimes be strung out a mile or more on the march. I suppose to one who had commanded a regiment during the Civil War a detachment of Texas Rangers looked small and insignificant, so he let his men have pretty much their own way. To a man like myself, who had been schooled under such captains as Major Jones, Captain Coldwell, Captain Roberts, and Lieutenant Reynolds, commanders who were always careful of the disposition and conduct of their men, this method of Baylor's seemed suicidal. It just seemed inevitable that we would some time be taken by surprise and shot to pieces.

Another peculiarity of this wonderful man was his indifference to time. He would strike an Indian trail, take his time and follow it to the jumping off place. He would say, "There is no use to hurry, boys. We will catch them after a while." For instance, the stage driver and passenger killed in Quitman Canyon, January, 1880, had been dead two weeks before the lieutenant returned from a scout out in the Guadalupe Mountains. He at once directed me to make a detail of all except three men in camp, issue ten days' rations, and have the men ready to move early next morning. An orderly or first sergeant is hardly ever called upon to scout unless he so desires, but the lieutenant said, "You had better come along, Sergeant. You may get another chance to kill an Indian." It seemed unreasonable to think he could start two weeks behind a bunch of Indians, follow up and annihilate the whole band, but he did. Give Comanches or Kiowas two weeks' start and they would have been in Canada, but the Apaches were slow and a different proposition with which to deal.

Baylor was one of the very best shots with firearms I ever saw. He killed more game than almost the entire company put together. When we first went out to El Paso he used a Winchester rifle, but after the first Indian fight he concluded it was too light and discarded it for a Springfield sporting rifle 45-70. He always used what he called rest sticks; that is, two sticks about three feet long the size of one's little finger. These were tied together about four or five inches from one end with a buckskin thong. In shooting he would squat down, extend the sticks arm's length out in front of him with the longer ends spread out tripod-fashion on the ground. With his gun resting in the fork he had a perfect rest and could make close shots at long range. The lieutenant always carried these sticks in his hand and used them on his horse as a quirt. In those days I used to pride myself on my shooting with a Winchester, but I soon found that Lieutenant Baylor had me skinned a mile when it came to killing game at long distance. I never could use rest sticks, for I always forgot them and shot offhand.

I cannot close this description of Lieutenant Baylor without mentioning his most excellent wife, who made the long, tedious journey from San Antonio to El Paso County with us. She was Sallie Garland Sydnor, born February 11, 1842. Her father was a wholesale merchant at Galveston, and at one time mayor of that city. Mrs. Baylor was highly educated and a very refined woman and a skillful performer on the piano. Her bright, sunny disposition and kind heart won her friends among the rangers at once. How sad it is to reflect that of the twelve persons in that little party that marched out of San Antonio on August 2, 1879, only three are living: Gus Small, Miss Mary Baylor, and myself.

When we had passed Pecan Springs on Devil's River there was not another cattle, sheep or goat ranch until we reached Fort Stockton, two hundred miles to the west. It was just one vast uninhabited country. Today it is all fenced and thousands of as fine cattle, sheep and goats as can be found in any country roam those hills. The Old Spanish Trail traverses most of this section, and in traveling over it today one will meet hundreds of people in high powered automobiles where forty years ago it was dangerous for a small party of well armed men to journey. While ascending Devil's River I learned that Lieutenant Baylor was not only a good hunter, but a first class fisherman as well, for he kept the entire camp well supplied with fine bass and perch, some of the latter being as large as saucers.

Forty miles west of Beaver Lake we reached Howard's Well, situated in Howard's Draw, a tributary of the Pecos River. Here we saw the burned ruins of a wagon train that had been attacked by Indians a few months before. All the mules had been captured, the teamsters killed and the train of sixteen big wagons burned. Had the same Indians encountered our little party of ten men, two women and two children we would all have been massacred.

Finally we reached old Fort Lancaster, an abandoned government post, situated on the east bank of Live Oak Creek, just above the point where this beautiful stream empties into the Pecos. We camped here and rested under the shade of those big old live oak trees for several days. From this camp we turned north up the Pecos, one of the most curious rivers in Texas. At that time and before its waters were much used for irrigation in New Mexico, the Pecos ran bank full of muddy water almost the year round. Not more than thirty or forty feet wide, it was the most crooked stream in the world, and though only from four to ten feet deep, was so swift and treacherous that it was most difficult to ford. However, it had one real virtue; it was the best stream in Texas for both blue and yellow catfish that ranged in weight from five to forty pounds. We were some days traveling up this river to the pontoon crossing and we feasted on fish.

At Pontoon Crossing on the Pecos we intercepted the overland mail route leading from San Antonio to El Paso by way of Fredericksburg, Fort Mason, Menard, Fort McKavett, Fort Concho, Fort Stockton, and Fort Davis, thence west by Eagle Springs through Quitman Canyon, where more tragedies and foul murders have been committed by Indians than at any other point on the route. Ben Fricklin was the mail contractor. The stage stands were built of adobe and on the same unchanging plan. On each side of the entrance was a large room. The gateway opened into a passageway, which was roofed, and extended from one room to the other. In the rear of the rooms was the corral, the walls of which were six to eight feet high and two feet thick, also of sun dried brick. One room was used for cooking and eating and the other for sleeping quarters and storage. The stage company furnished the stage tender with supplies and he cooked for the passengers when there were such, charging them fifty cents per meal, which he was allowed to retain for his compensation.

When the stage rolled into the station the tender swung open the gates and the teams, small Spanish mules, dashed into the corral. The animals were gentle enough when once in the enclosure, but mean and as wild as deer when on the road. The stage company would buy these little mules in lots of fifty to a hundred in Mexico and distribute them along the route. The tiny animals were right off the range and real unbroken bronchos. The mules were tied up or tied down as the case might be and harnessed by force. When they had been hitched to the stage coach or buckboard the gates to the corral were opened and the team left on the run. The intelligent mules soon learned all they had to do was to run from one station to the next, and could not be stopped between posts no matter what happened. Whenever they saw a wagon or a man on horseback approaching along the road they would shy around the stranger, and the harder the driver held them the faster they ran.

On our way out our teams were pretty well fagged out, and often Lieutenant Baylor would camp within a few yards of the road. The Spanish stage mules would see our camp and go around us on the run while their drivers would curse and call us all the vile names they could lay their tongues to for camping in the road.

When we camped at a station it was amusing to me to watch the stage attendants harness those wary little animals. The stage or buckboard was always turned round in the corral and headed toward the next station and the passengers seated themselves before the mules were hitched. When all was ready and the team harnessed the driver would give the word, the station keeper threw open the gates and the stage was off on a dead run.

There should be a monument erected to the memory of those old stage drivers somewhere along this overland route, for they were certainly the bravest of the brave. It took a man with lots of nerve and strength to be a stage driver in the Indian days, and many, many of them were killed. The very last year, 1880, that the stage line was kept up several drivers were killed between Fort Davis and El Paso. Several of these men quit the stage company and joined Lieutenant Baylor's company, and every one of such ex-drivers made excellent rangers.

From Pontoon Crossing on the Pecos River we turned due west and traveled the stage route the remainder of the way to El Paso County. At Fort Stockton we secured supplies for ourselves and feed for our horses, the first place at which rations could be secured since leaving Fort Clark. Fort Stockton was a large military post and was quite lively, especially at night, when the saloons and gambling halls were crowded with soldiers and citizen contractors. At Leon Holes, ten miles west of Fort Stockton, we were delayed a week because of Mrs. Baylor becoming suddenly ill. Passing through Wild Rose Pass and up Limpia Canyon we suffered very much from the cold, though it was only the last of August. Coming from a lower to a higher altitude we felt the change at night keenly. That was the first cold weather I had experienced in the summer.

Finally, on the 12th day of September, 1879, we landed safe and sound in the old town of Ysleta, El Paso County, after forty-two days of travel from San Antonio. Here we met nine men, the remnant of Lieutenant Tays' Company "C" rangers. The first few days after our arrival were spent in securing quarters for Lieutenant Baylor's family and in reorganizing the company. Sergeant Ludwick was discharged at his own request, and I was made first sergeant, Tom Swilling second sergeant, John Seaborn first corporal, and George Lloyd second corporal. The company was now recruited up to its limit of twenty men. Before winter Lieutenant Baylor bought a fine home and fifteen or twenty acres of land from a Mr. Blanchard. The rangers were quartered comfortably in some adobe buildings with fine corrals nearby and within easy distance of the lieutenant's residence. We were now ready for adventure on the border.

When we arrived at Ysleta the Salt Lake War had quieted down and order had been restored. Although nearly a hundred Mexicans were indicted by the El Paso grand jury, no one was ever punished for the murder of Judge Howard and his companions. In going over the papers of Sergeant Ludwick I found warrants for the arrest of fifty or more of the mob members. Though most of the murderers had fled to Old Mexico immediately after the killing of the Americans, most of them had returned to the United States and their homes along the Rio Grande. I reported these warrants to Lieutenant Baylor and informed him that, with the assistance of a strong body of rangers I could probably capture most of the offenders in a swift raid down the valley. The lieutenant declared that he had received instructions from Governor Roberts to exercise extreme care not to precipitate more trouble over Howard's death, and, above all things, not incite a race war between the Mexican offenders and the white people of the country. He decided, therefore, that we had better not make any move at all in the now dead Salt Lake War. And of course I never again mentioned the matter to him.

Though the Salt Lake War was over, new and adventurous action was in store for us, and within less than a month after our arrival in Ysleta we had our first brush with the Apaches, a tribe of Indians I had never before met in battle.