The issue has evidently become racial. The colored detectives would be confronted frequently in the smaller towns where these men are living with a demand from colored men for information as to their business.
We have located over 130 of these ex-soldiers, and have been in thirty States in quest of information. The appendices give statements as to the results obtained. They indicate a general knowledge on the part of the ex-soldiers that the raid came from inside the fort, and that the soldiers of Company B were the guilty parties.
We earnestly urge that we be permitted to continue the investigation. Several detectives are still in the field, and within the coming week a number of affidavits will be forthcoming.
With some repetition of matter appearing later in the report, Boyd Conyers's story is given here in narrative form:
REPORT OF T.B. SKIDMORE.
"The rumors of trouble over the assignment of colored troops to Brownsville were circulated before the troops left Fort Niobrara, and preparations were made among the men to 'get even with the crackers,' so the whites were called. Some cartridges were held out at range practice, but more en route to Brownsville. Pretense was made that they were given away at stations along the road. Some were, but a large number were secreted.
"At inspection in Brownsville, Lieutenant Lawrason, Company B, threatened punishment to the men who were short of ammunition, but nothing was done about it, and the deficiency was supplied.
"The friction with citizens of Brownsville began at once. In Boyd Conyers's language, 'Whisky made all the trouble. If we hadn't been drinking we wouldn't have had the nerve to shoot up the town.'
"It was agreed, at a gathering of a few men in the saloon of Allison, the colored ex-soldier, on the afternoon of August 13, 1906, that the raid should take place that night at 12 o'clock. It seems to have been delayed a few minutes to let Tamayo, the Mexican scavenger, get away from the B barracks.