In the latter part of the summer of 1881 Captain Baylor moved his company of rangers from Ysleta to a site three miles below El Paso. While camped there the captain was warned by the sheriff of Tombstone, Arizona, to be on the lookout for four San Simone Valley rustlers, supposed to be a part of Curley Bill's gang. The robbers' names were given as Charley and Frank Baker, Billie Morgan and a fourth person supposed to be Curley Bill himself. These outlaws had stolen sixteen big work mules and four horses at a wood camp some twelve miles from Tombstone. They had also robbed a store and, assaulting the proprietor with pistols, left him for dead. A $500 reward was offered for the capture of the desperadoes and the stolen stock. The robbers' trail led down into New Mexico and it was believed Curley Bill and his gang were headed for western Texas, where they would try to dispose of their stolen stock at some of the railroad grading camps near El Paso.
Captain Baylor at once ordered me to take seven men and five days' rations and scout up the Rio Grande to the line of New Mexico for the bandits' trail, and, if I found it, to follow it up. I worked up the river but found no trail. Neither could I learn anything about any strange men driving stock through the country. My time was nearly up and I concluded to return to camp through a gap in the Franklin Mountains, some thirty or forty miles north of El Paso. We left the Rio Grande late in the evening, passed out through the gap and made a dry camp on the plains east of the mountains.
Early the following morning we rode to a watering place known as Monday's Springs and stopped for breakfast. Here the boys discovered some horse and mule tracks. At first we thought nothing of this, supposing the trail had been made by some loose stock grazing near the water. From Monday's Springs a dim road led along the east side of the mountains to El Paso and we took this route home. Before we had traveled very far we noticed that some of the stock was traveling the same road, though even then I never suspected that these tracks might be the trail of the bandits for whom we were scouting. Finally we came to footprints made by some men as they adjusted their saddles or tightened their packs. It here dawned upon me that the tracks might have been made by the parties we wanted.
I thereupon followed the trail carefully and it led me through what is today the most beautiful residential portion of the city of El Paso. The tracks led to a big camp yard where now stands the $500,000 Federal building and postoffice. In the description of the stolen stock we were told one of the mules carried a small Swiss stock bell. As I neared the wagon yard I heard the tinkle of this bell and felt sure we had tracked our quarry. We dismounted, and with our Winchesters cocked and ready for action, our little party of rangers slipped quickly inside the large corral gate and within ten feet of it we came upon three heavily armed men bending over a fire cooking their breakfast. Their guns were leaning against the adobe fence near at hand, so the surprise was complete.
The outlaws rose to their feet and attempted to get their guns, but my men held their cocked Winchesters at their breasts. I told our captives that we were rangers ordered to arrest them and demanded their surrender. The robbers were undecided what to do; they were afraid to pull their pistols or seize their guns, yet they refused to hold up their hands. Finally one of the Baker brothers turned slightly toward me and said they would rather be shot down and killed than give up—surrender meant death anyway. I thereupon answered that we had no desire to hurt them, but declared that the least attempt to pull a gun would mean instant death to them all, and again ordered them to raise their hands. They slowly obeyed. I stepped up to them, unbuckled their belts and took their weapons.
In looking over their camp I found four saddles and Winchesters but I had captured only three men. I mentioned this fact to the prisoners and they laughingly said one of their number had stepped down town to get a package of coffee, had probably noticed our presence and lit out. The two Baker boys and Billie Morgan were the men captured, and I asked if the missing man was Curley Bill himself. They replied it was not, but refused to tell who the fourth member of their party was. As we had no description of him and he was on foot in a town full of armed men we had no means of identifying him and he was never captured.
From the captured robbers we learned that they had run out of provisions, and for this reason they had not camped at Monday Springs. They had risen early and come into El Paso for breakfast. They declared it was a good thing for us that they had built their camp fire so near the gate, for had they been thirty feet from it they would have put up a fight we should have remembered for a long time. I replied that the eight of us could have held our own no matter where they had camped.
These robbers were held in our camp some ten days or more until the proper extradition papers could be had from the State Capitol at Austin, as they refused to be taken back to Arizona without the proper authority. They owned horses, which they gave to some lawyers in El Paso to prevent their being taken back to the scene of their crimes. We secured all the stolen stock—sixteen mules and four horses. The owners came and claimed them and paid the rangers $200 and the Arizona sheriff paid a like amount for the capture of the rustlers.
Our rangers became well acquainted with these thieves while we held them in our camp. The robbers admitted they were going under assumed names and said they were Texans but refused to say from what part of the state they came. The three of them were taken back to Arizona, tried for assault to kill and the theft of the horses at Tombstone and sent to the prison at Yuma for twenty-five years. They frequently wrote to our boys from there and seemed to hold no grudge against us for capturing them. The scout to capture these men was the last one of importance I took part in, for my work with the rangers was now growing toward its close.
In the fall of 1881 Captain Baylor received word from Israel King of Cambray, New Mexico, that a band of thieves had stolen a bunch of cattle from him and at last reports were headed toward El Paso with them. With a detail of four men I was ordered to make a scout up the river and into the Canutillos to intercept the rustlers. After traveling some ten miles up the Rio Grande we crossed the river into New Mexico to get on more even ground. Some eighteen miles above El Paso we found the trail of the stolen stock and followed it back across the Rio Grande into Texas.