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Updated: September 26, 2025
Curiously, seven months later, in August, 1883, while on another ranch-hunting trip in Mexico, this time along the eastern slope of the Sierra Madre in northern Chihuahua at least five hundred miles distant from Musquiz, I learned the solution of our puzzle as to whether our last fight in Coahuila was with Lipans or Mexicans.
Before you scalp your man just catch him is a proverb that I would recommend to the Lipans. Now, Ned, suppose we eat a little, and brace ourselves for the arrival of the pursuit." They ate with a good appetite and then lay propped on their elbows, where they could look just over the logs at the circling forest. It was very quiet. Nothing stirred among the trees.
The Lipans did not utter another war cry, but settled down into a steady pursuit. "I think I'll try a shot, Obed," said Ned. "All right," said Obed, "but be sure that you hit something. Never waste a good bullet on empty air." Ned fired. He missed the Lipan at whom he aimed, but he killed the pony the warrior was riding.
Several times at night they saw points of fire on the horizon and they would pause to look at them. "That's the Texans signaling to one another," said "Deaf" Smith. "They're passing the word westward. They're calling in the buffalo hunters and those who went out to fight the Comanches and Lipans." Ned had alternations of hope and despondency. He saw anew how few the Texans were.
Three or four rode a long distance around the camp and scouted carefully. But, as they had expected, they saw no sign of the Lipans, who undoubtedly were still fleeing southward, carrying in their hearts a healthy fear of the long rifles of the Texans. After the scouts came back most of the men went to sleep, but Bowie and "Deaf" Smith watched all through the night.
"Well, you see, it was this way," she explained. "The smugglers broke camp long before dawn, and started south over the same trail by which you were approaching; they wanted to get over the summit before the Lipans or guards were likely to be stirring, for it was a point at which conductas were often attacked.
That night arrangements for our trip were concluded: the Captain consented to furnish me old Tomas Alvarez and a young soldier named Manuel, but only on condition that he himself should escort us, with fifty men of his troop, one day's march up the river, which would carry us beyond the recent range of the Lipans.
About mid-winter a party of hostile Lipans made a swoop around and skirting the garrison, killing a herder a discharged drummer-boy in sight of the flag-staff. Of course great excitement followed. Captain J. G. Walker, of the Mounted Rifles, immediately started with his company in pursuit of the Indians, and I was directed to accompany the command.
Ned began to understand now the deadly nature of the pursuit. These Lipans would follow not merely for hours, but into the night, and if he and Obed were lost to sight in the darkness they would pick up the trail the next day by the hoof prints on the plain. He felt with absolute certainty that chance had brought upon them one of the deadliest dangers they had yet encountered.
Neither Mexicans nor Lipans, neither prisons nor storms nor deserts had been able to stop him. After the triumphant leap of his blood the great peace possessed him entirely. His mind and body relaxed completely. His eyelids drooped and the flames danced before him. The figures of the men became dusky. Sometimes he saw them and sometimes he did not.
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