Cletus Tucker 4 Chapter 4
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New Mexico Territory, September, 1876
Word of Custer's defeat at The Battle of The Little Big Horn swept the country. In most ways, it was more important, psychologically, to the Indians than to the Whites. The battle encouraged the Indians to fight and this proved very troublesome for all of the ranchers and townspeople west of the Mississippi River.
With the buffalo practically gone in many areas, the Indians turned to the cattle ranches as a substitute. Most of the trouble with the Indians might well not have happened if the Indian Agents on the reservations had been more honest in their treatment of their charges. Most agents saw their appointment as a way to get rich, thus they stole the money that the government had provided for the purchase of beef for the Indians.
This resulted in a lot of hungry Indians, and a hungry Indian was a dangerous Indian. Many men left the reservations, looking for food for their families. They naturally gravitated toward the ranches with the most cattle, and Tunstall owned a lot of cattle. This made problems for Cletus!
With cold weather coming on, Cletus planned to increase the number of patrols back to 4 per week. This would involve hiring a lot more men, but there were a lot of Mexicans looking for work, so the manpower was available. The Mexican vaqueros made excellent candidates for Cletus' force; they had no compunction about taking orders from a Negro and they followed those orders.
Cletus organized his men into 4 patrols of 12 men and a leader. He kept a reserve of 24 men to use as a relief and rescue force. Two patrols left the main ranch complex each week, on Monday and Thursday. The patrols were out for two weeks, since it took this long to do an adequate patrol of the entire ranch. The men not on patrol were used as guards for the supply wagons which met each patrol after it had been out for 7 days. This resulted in a steady flow of wagons and men across the ranch which also served to discourage cattle rustling. The men were kept busy with all this activity, plus the extra duty of occasionally guarding the wagon trains bringing in supplies for the general store in Lincoln. Cletus looked forward to a very busy winter season.
Ramon Velásquez was one of Cletus' more dependable patrol leaders, so it was well that it fell to him to meet the first Indian rustlers. There were about 15 Indians who were trying to rustle more stock than they could handle. The Indians were so inexperienced in driving cattle that Ramon's patrol was overcome by laughter when they first saw the Indians trying to herd the cattle. Ramon reminded his men that they were there to stop rustling, not enjoy comic entertainment.
With that admonition, the men returned to business. Ramon wisely realized he need a plan if he was to recover the cattle from this many Indians without losing some of his own men. He decided to let the Indians alone for now to tire themselves out with the cattle. He expected the Indians to camp for the night and he was sure that then would be the best time to attack the Indians. He had his men pull back well out of sight and sent two men to act as scouts. The scouts could spy on the Indians from a safe distance and report back when the Indians had finally camped for the night.
As darkness approached, one of the scouts returned with the news that the Indians had finally decided to abandon most of the cattle and take just one each as their spoils from the raid. Ramon decided that this was really a reasonable exchange, as he sympathized with the starving women and children back on the reservation. The patrol camped for the night and, the next morning, rounded up the wandering cattle and herded them back to their appointed place on the ranch. The rest of Ramon's patrol was uneventful and they returned to the ranch complex in a very good mood.
Cletus found that he could expect an Indian raid similar to the one experienced by Ramon's patrol every two or three weeks. So far, the ranch had been losing about one steer per Indian and Tunstall didn't begrudge the Indians that amount of thievery. He expected to lose more than that from accidents and the weather over the winter, so the loss of a few more cattle to the Indians was no great worry. In fact everybody at the ranch considered it sort of a Christmas present to the suffering Indian families.
This whole exercise of maintaining what amounted to a private militia tended to generate a certain esprit de corps felt even by those who were not actually part of the troops. Unfortunately, this caused a certain swagger to develop among the younger men and older boys on the ranch, which could lead to trouble when they encountered perceived rivals, such as The House gang.
The resulting saloon brawls and rare gun or knife duels were ignored by the authorities as long as outsiders were not dragged into the conflict. This level of engagement between the two groups continued through the winter and into the spring.
Then the situation began to turn ugly! Tunstall ordered Cletus to hire "tougher" men for his troops, now called the "Regulators." Several killers and other criminals were hired to "stiffen the backbone" of the Regulators, and these men became impossible for Cletus to control. Cletus finally quit his job at Tunstall's ranch rather than become involved with criminals. It was shortly after Cletus left that the Lincoln County War grew to a full blown fight.
Cletus wandered the territory for a while, but found that he could not get decent employment because of his skin color. People would hire him as just another gun hand, but Cletus was not satisfied with this. He had become used to responsibility in his working life and found that he was just not happy without it. Thus, he began to cast a wider search for employment. Cletus had been successful in his stint with the Mormon wagon train years before; perhaps he could find a wagon train where he could be the scout. Therefore, he headed to Santa Fe and took the Santa Fe Trail back toward Missouri.
Somewhere in the middle of Kansas, Cletus happened upon a small wagon train that was under attack from some Indians. The Indians didn't seem really interested in capturing the train or killing all the Whites; it looked like they were mostly having some fun and letting off steam. The wagons were not circled, but were still in line and spaced too far apart for mutual support. The Indians were riding around and around the train as fast as their horses could carry them and firing their rifles seemingly at random. Cletus saw that a little organization in the defense would have quickly driven off the Indians.
Cletus saw that there was a chance that he could break up the attack by suddenly approaching the Indians from an unexpected quarter. If he could down a few braves, the rest would probably abandon the attack as being no longer fun. Cletus had recently purchased two of the new Schofield cavalry model .45 caliber revolvers, so he was much better armed than any of the Indians. His horse was trained to move under knee pressure; the reins weren't required. Cletus held a revolver in each hand and charged at the Indians.
The Indians were so intent on the wagons that they didn't notice him joining their circus. As soon as he was close enough, Cletus shot the first Indian with the revolver in his left hand. He then rode down the line of Indians, shooting alternately with his right and left hands until he had used all ten rounds in his pistols. With eight dead Indians and two badly wounded, the remaining Indians decided that a tactical retreat was in order; in other words, they ran like Hell!
The shooting stopped when the Indians rode off, so Cletus quickly reloaded and holstered his guns. He rode up to one of the wagons and asked who was in charge. Cletus was directed to the first wagon in line where he found a man, a woman, and three children. Cletus tipped his hat to the woman and said to the man, "Good day, sir. My name is Cletus Tucker and I'm looking for the wagon master."
"Good day, Mr. Tucker. I'm Aaron Glueck and I'm in charge because we don't have anyone else. Thank you for saving us. I don't know what we would have done without you."
Cletus suggested that the wagon train move on about a mile to a good camping spot with plenty of water and grass. Meanwhile, he retrieved his pack horse and rode ahead to the recommended spot to wait for the train.
When they arrived, Cletus suggested that they "circle" the wagons into a square shape with three wagons on a side and picket the horses inside the wagons with the people. There was some objection by a few of the wagon folk about the poor sanitation conditions this would impose, but they did as Cletus suggested. Cletus agreed with the potential sanitation problem, but they had no choice if they wanted to protect their horses from the Indians.
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