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.