Ranger stories from the book, Texas Ranger Tales, Stories That Need Telling, by Mike Cox:
Back in Texas on September 9, 1843, after escaping from Mexican custody along with two other Texans-including the man who would one day deliver his eulogy-Walker soon signed up to ride with the legendary Ranger Captain John Coffee Hays. In the words of a contemporary writer, Texas was "then embroiled with the abrasions of the great Camanche [Comanche] race and the minor tribes strewn along her northern frontier." Mindful of these "abrasions," in January 1844 the Congress of the Republic of Texas authorized Hays to organize "a Company of Mounted Gun-men, to act as Rangers."
Hays recruited his men in February and March and went to work on the frontier. All the Rangers were armed with a new weapon, originally purchased by the Republic for its navy: a five-shot revolver manufactured by a Connecticut gunsmith named Samuel Colt. Walker and the other Rangers soon got a chance to use the new pistols.
On June 8, 1844, near a creek in the Pedernales River watershed, at a point Hays later described as about fifty miles north of Seguin (no other communities existed in the area at the time), the Rangers-including Walker-tangled with seventy to eighty Comanche and Waco Indians. Hays reported some Mexicans also were in the party.
This is how Hays described the fight in his official report:
After ascertaining that they could not decoy or lead me astray, they came out boldly, formed themselves, and dared us to fight. I then ordered a charge; and, after discharging our rifles, closed in with them, hand to hand, with my five-shooting pistols, which did good execution. Had it not been for them, I doubt what the consequences would have been. I cannot recommend these arms too highly.
The Rangers killed twenty-three of the hostiles, badly wounding another thirty. Hays lost one Ranger to Indian arrows with Walker, Robert Addison Gillespie, and another Ranger suffering wounds.
Walker later assessed the fight in this light:
Col. J. C. Hays with 15 men fought about 80 Comanche Indians, boldly attacking them upon their own ground, killing and wounding about half their number. Up to this time these daring Indians had always supposed themselves superior to us, man to man, on horse…the result of this engagement was such as to intimidate them and enable us to treat with them.
This battle changed the history of the West. It marked the first time Rangers had been able to fight the Comanches with an effective close range weapon that did not have to be reloaded after each shot. In firing an estimated 150 rounds, Hays and his men shot 53 Comanches in a running battle. The Rangers had the frontier equivalent of the atomic bomb on their side.
The Comanches, though clearly at a disadvantage in weaponry, still were extremely competent in using their bows and arrows and lances.
"In this encounter," Graham's Magazine reported only a few years later, "Walker was wounded by a lance, and left by his adversary pinned to the ground. After remaining in this position for a long time, he was rescued by his companions when the fight was over."
Walker was taken to San Antonio, where he recovered from his wounds. Despite his close call, Walker stayed with Hays until the Ranger company ran out of funding. In 1845 he served in another Ranger company, this one led by Gillespie. On March 28, 1846, Walker was honorably discharged from the "Texas Mounted Rangers." But more rangering lay ahead. |
