Chapter 19

We rode the emotional high of finally identifying ‘the Boss’ well into 1860. With everything we were monitoring though, it was only a matter of time before that emotional high was brought back down to earth. Still, it lasted almost through the first quarter of the year.

In late March, just as the spring planting activities went into full swing on the Estancia, we received a message from Frank. Tucson had finally boiled over. Small independent raids had started up again. Disconcertingly, they all came from multiple small ranches and without any involvement from the main leaders that our Scout/Snipers could see.

Two ranches had been caught by surprise and virtually wiped out while two other ranches had managed to fight off the raid, but not without losing people, cattle, and supplies. Frank, Lee, and Rodrigo were scrambling, trying to come up with a way to cover this new development. More importantly, they were all worried that these raids were just the pro-slavers letting off a little steam and not the major event they still expected.

Esteban sent a note a week later informing us that the raids we’d been expecting around Mesilla had finally started. The Mesilla information network had put together a pretty good picture of the pro-slavery groups in and around Mesilla, but they’d still been surprised when the first three raids, all in one week, were reported. Esteban asked for four Scout/Sniper teams to follow the middlemen for the various groups when they left Mesilla to see where they went and who they talked to. Again, all the Scout/Sniper teams volunteered, and Miguel sent the four he selected.

Robert Kelley didn’t seem to be a gang leader, but his inflammatory editorials and obvious reporting slant not only kept the pro-slavery groups enraged but flamed their anger to even higher levels. I knew that Lincoln would end up shutting down over three hundred newspapers and arresting their owners and editors for sedition despite there being no sedition laws, but I wasn’t the President and we weren’t at war yet. Still, as much as I abhorred the very thought, I was seriously beginning to contemplate some sort of vigilante action against both Kelley and his newspaper.

In April, three of our telegraphers were sent out to Socorro, Santa Fe, and Mesilla. They would install the telegraphy machines in the Marshal’s network. While they were waiting for depots to be completed, they would teach my Deputies telegraphy while manning the machines in the Marshal’s network.

Meanwhile, the Judge had let us know that the middleman had been identified as Ed Fleming, the Territorial Governor’s secretary. The bad news was that ‘the Boss’ had apparently decided to ramp up the attacks between Santa Fe and Socorro.

The Judge wrote that, despite their best efforts, it wasn’t possible to keep track of either ‘the Boss’ or the middleman one hundred percent of the time. The watchers, including the Scout/Snipers, would lose both men somewhere in Santa Fe while following them at night at least forty percent of the time.

The Judge had started marking the routes both men took, on a city map in his office, in the hope that he could identify through analysis where and how ‘the Boss’ and the middleman were losing their watchers. Again, it was more wait, watch, and learn.

Giuseppe and Heinrich also left, leading a few masons along with Juan’s men back near Sierra Blanca to continue building the Tribal town of Mescalero.

After many long hours of discussion, we also decided to make one more run to the La Paz goldfield. This time though, I wouldn’t be going with them. Jorge would join Mr. Mendoza, Martin, Juan, George, Tom, and Kit on this last trip. Martin took Jorge out for two weeks of intensive training in driving a sixteen-in-hand tandem wagon. By the time the group left the first week in May, Jorge was comfortable enough to look almost natural in the driver’s seat, but Mr. Mendoza and Martin were still concerned enough to put Jorge in the middle of the wagon train.

I rode with them, accompanied by four teams, as far as Las Cruces, before I gave them a farewell and turned off for Mesilla with the four teams, while they continued on to the freight ford, further downriver. The four teams pulled up at our favorite Mesilla cantina to wait for me to come back from my visit with Esteban and Ed.

Even after almost nine months, not much had changed in Mesilla despite the inflow of people the territory had been experiencing. Things seemed quiet as I rode the few blocks to the office, but I knew looks could be deceiving.

When I walked into the office, I found Esteban going over the latest batch of wanted posters and warrants, while Ed was working on adding new information from the network to the relationship diagrams. The telegrapher was sitting in a chair in the far corner, next to the small table his telegraphy machine was sitting on, reading the Mesilla Times and shaking his head.

Curious, I exchanged quick greetings with Esteban and Ed before turning to the telegrapher. “Is it up?” I asked.

“Yes Sir, Marshal. The entire network, as of ten this morning. Did you want to send a message?”

“No, no message, just curious was all,” I replied, watching the man’s face turn to disappointment as he sat back down and picked up the paper. “How are these two doing?” I asked in an attempt to bring his spirits back up.

Looking over at my two Deputies, he scratched the top of his head for a moment. “They’re doing pretty good, Marshal,” he finally answered. “Another few days practice on sending and they’ll be ready to start on receiving.”

“Good, keep them at it,” I replied smiling at my Deputies. “Let’s go out to the courtyard and talk some business gentlemen. Bring the map and your relationship diagrams. All of them.”

Moving quickly, Esteban lifted the map off the wall, while Ed gathered up the papers scattered across his desk and led me down the hall to the courtyard. Rosa, their housekeeper, looked up from the table, where she was embroidering what looked like a pillowcase, quickly gathered her things and returned to the house.

She returned as Esteban leaned the map against the table, bringing a coffee service out and setting it on the table, giving me a quick smile, before returning to the kitchen.

“I brought four more teams to help. They’re waiting at the cantina,” I said in Apache. “Use Apache while we’re out here. Now, let’s figure out the best places to use them. Show me where the raids were.”

Ed took the coffee service off the table and put it on a small side table, while Esteban picked up the map and laid it on the table.

“The yellow pins show where the raids were, five of them so far, starting in the north and then swinging in an arc to the west and south,” Ed said pointing at each of the yellow pins in the order that happened.

“What did the Army say about the raids?” I asked.

Ed gave a snort of disgust. “They hadn’t heard about them and since we told them they weren’t Indian raids they really weren’t interested. That new Major, Lynde is his name, is afraid of his own shadow and hasn’t let his troops out of the fort since he got here two months ago. All the troops do is practice field drills. God help us if we ever have to rely on them.”

“Lynde? I thought he was at Fort McLane.”

“He was,” the much more diplomatic Esteban answered. “But they were having too many problems up there. They blamed it all on the fact that they had nothing but green troops, so they swapped out the two forts since things here have been so quiet, Apache wise anyway.”

“All right,” I sighed, “Let’s take them out of the equation, if they aren’t patrolling, they aren’t of much value to us, either for information or support.” I stared at the map for a few moments. “How many of these farms or ranches were anti-slavers?”

“None of them are anti-slavery, Paul,” Ed replied disgustedly. “Then again, none of them could be considered pro-slavery either. Hell, every one of these places are small little places, most barely making ends meet.”

I nodded my understanding, then asked, “Were all raids on Hispanos or Anglos?”

“No, it’s a mix of both,” Esteban replied, adding, “Three Hispano and two Anglo.”

“So why these five places?” I asked, confused by the placement, the size, and the mix.

“The only thing we can figure out is that all have good water and are near roads leading to El Paso and Pinos Altos,” Esteban replied. “If someone controlled those five points, they could control entry and exit to the entire valley.”

Now that made sense, at least in the long-term. These raids weren’t just about land, they were about long-term control of the entire valley.

“But none of the raids succeeded in driving the owners out or killing them?”

“Four of them were completely unsuccessful with no real damage and reports of three dead raiders between them,” Esteban replied. “The raids were all just too small and timed to happen just after nightfall when everyone was in their houses. The other raid, this one,” he said pointing at the middle pin, “wasn’t successful either, but the rancher had finally had enough and sold out to a land speculator yesterday.”

“Before you ask,” Ed piped in. “The land speculator is pro-slavery and very active with one of the pro-slavery gangs we’ve identified.”

“Where are the two teams and the four Scout/Sniper teams I sent you and what are they doing?”

“At the moment, the two teams are riding patrol. One team started in the north and is riding south, just inside the arc of the attacks. The other team started in the south and is riding north, two miles inside the arc. The Scout/Sniper teams are also out, each with an assigned wedge of land centered on Mesilla, but they are more or less meandering around their wedge, just looking around. All of them, the teams and the Scout/Snipers have been out for almost two weeks and should be back in town in two or three days.”

“Okay, let’s look at your relationship diagrams and see if we can draw any conclusions between them and the locations of the raids. When we’re done with that, we can figure out how to distribute all six teams you have now and the Scout/Sniper teams as well.”

Over the next hour, we reviewed what they had, and it soon became apparent that they’d been focusing their efforts almost exclusively on Mesilla, with very little thought for the surrounding countryside. The four small pro-slavery groups were fairly well documented but only from the aspect of their activities in town.

They had the town pretty well blanketed but there really wasn’t much overt violent activity going on in town. Much like Tucson, the town’s pro-slavery element provided support to the gangs in the countryside. Also, like Tucson, the town’s pro-slavers were led by the newspaper owner/editor.

The plan we came up with was very similar to what Frank and Lee were doing in Tucson. First, the Scout/Snipers would be redeployed so that one team was watching each of the four pro-slavery ranches suspected as being the headquarters for their particular gang.

Second, two teams each would be assigned to the four remaining original raid sites. They were to lay low and simply monitor the farm or ranch without letting anyone know they were there. They would ambush any raiders if possible, if not, they were to assist the farmer or rancher in defending against the raiders and follow them back to their headquarters if possible.

Finally, the last two teams would remain at the office with Esteban and Ed to act as a fast response force. They’d spend their days familiarizing themselves with and updating the relationship diagrams of the countryside gangs. They’d also take advantage of the opportunity provided by the telegrapher’s presence to learn to send and receive telegraph messages.

Plans made, we met up with the new teams at the cantina for lunch, after which they were given their assignments and rode off. I rode back to Las Cruces to spend the night with the Mendozas before heading back to the Hacienda the next morning.

With the Marshal network active, we were able to receive updates from both Santa Fe and Mesilla as soon as they knew them. Yolanda’s keen analytical mind came to the fore once again. She spent most of her time in the command center, updating maps with raid locations, dates, and times. Many days, George or Jim or both, were with her, answering her questions about military strategy and tactics.

By the middle of June, she was able to start predicting not only where the attacks on the northern rail beds were going to occur, but when as well. They weren’t pinpoint accurate predictions but more along the lines of, the next attack will be along a two-mile stretch of rail bed sometime between next Tuesday and Thursday.

After her first four predictions proved accurate, we started sending them to Santa Fe where, predictably, they also waited for the next few predictions to be proven before they started acting on them.

On the Mesilla front, she wasn’t much help. There weren’t enough raids yet for her to evaluate even though small raids continued at the rate of one every two weeks or so. We kept our teams at the four original sites, convinced those were the real objectives and the more current raids were simply diversions. We did return the two response teams to active patrolling though just in case.

In the first week of June, we received the news that the Las Cruces Depot complex had been completed. The final finishing touches were being done to the interior of the depot, restaurant, and hotel but everything was operational. The demand for ice, ice boxes, and air conditioning were much higher than what Socorro had experienced, but then Las Cruces was now much bigger than Socorro and had the added benefit of the fertile valley and nearby mines.

Mrs. Mendoza and Donna had started a training frenzy in the restaurant and hotel despite having to work around the finish craftsmen.

In late June we received a long telegraph message from Steve over the Marshal’s network. The last of the engines and cars had arrived along with engineers, assemblers, and finish carpenters from Baldwin, Pullman, and Junction Car Works. Assembly was just beginning on one complete train consisting of an engine, coal/water car, first-class car, two second class cars, two freight cars, two cattle cars, and one Deluxe Touring Pullman. Based on everything Steve had from the various supervisors, the first train would be ready for testing in early October.

We celebrated two things that night, the commencement of the first train assembly and the formal engagement of Tom’s father and Prudence Kennedy. I’d been trying to keep watch over the Kennedy twins, but with everything else going on, I hadn’t been very successful. Their reaction to the news was predictably positive. I was struck, however, by their cheerful countenance and positive words even before the announcement.

I finally asked Anna about them that night as we were getting ready for bed.

“Mi Pablo, they are their normal selves, that’s all,” was her infuriatingly simple reply.

“Anna, my love, you know I’m just a simple man, you’re going to have to explain to me how two women who showed up here as either man-haters or gold diggers, depending on the time of day, changed to pleasant, positive young women in such a short time and why you now say they’re just being their normal selves.”

“You are most definitely a man, Pablo, but you aren’t simple by any stretch of the imagination,” Anna giggled. “No, not simple. Not very bright when it comes to women perhaps but not simple.”

“Anna,” I said in a mock warning tone.

“You aren’t simple, but the answer is. You have to try and put yourself in their shoes, Pablo. They were uprooted, with little warning, from their well-ordered lives, in a town where they were well respected, with lots of beaus, and a bright future.

“For the next year, or most of one anyway, they suffered through the unexpected hardships and deprivations of wagon travel, leaving the land they knew, a land of forests and fields, to a land of dirt, sand, rock, and cactus. A land where everything they see can either hurt or kill them if they aren’t careful. A hard, unforgiving land that is reflected by the people they see, men and women alike.

“When they finally arrive in their new home, they find women their age, who look twenty or thirty years older, too busy trying to survive to have time to socialize as they are used to. They find men too focused on surviving to give them more than the basic pleasantries they are used to. They don’t see the softer side of these men and women expressed behind closed doors in their own homes.

“They find few people who have use for their profession. A profession they are justifiably proud of and spent years learning. Making enough money to just survive is tough; forget having any of the little luxuries they are used too. They don’t understand that people want their children to have a better life, to be well educated, but they can’t afford to pay teachers, so they do it themselves in the evenings.

“The only real jobs they see on offer are in saloons and brothels, where they are wanted only for their bodies. After two years of hard travel, constant disappointment, and struggling to survive, they grow jaded. Their dreams of the future, perhaps silly dreams, perhaps not, have been shattered. How would you react in their shoes?

“They reacted by deciding if they had to be here, were forced into marriage to survive, then they would only make themselves available to the best they could find. The man who got each of them would have to have money and something more than the small modicum of social graces they saw around them. The better educated a man was, the better the chances as far as the twins were concerned.

“Then their mother meets Tom’s father and betrays them for him. To add insult to injury, you and Tom come along, already married, and drag them further out into the wilderness where everyone wears a weapon and knows how to use it. Where Indians and bandits attack at will.

“When they finally get here, they find a place they never thought existed. Like that mystical Shangri-La, I read about in that book of yours in the RV. A place where education is given the highest priority, where languages are valued, where social niceties are everyday occurrences, and where cultural activities like music are not only offered but encouraged. A place that offers them a future.

“At first they thought we were all playing some sort of elaborate trick on them. This all had to be some devious and nefarious plot to get them into a saloon or brothel. They viewed everything they saw or heard with a heavy dose of skepticism if not outright disbelief.

“It took time for them to see that it wasn’t all a sham or a dream, Pablo. It took time for them to believe again. Believe in themselves, believe in others, believe in their dreams, but it did happen.”

“Well, I’ll be damned,” I replied wonderingly.

“Oh, I hope not,” Anna responded with a giggle. “The Land of Ever Summer wouldn’t be the same without you,” she said holding out her arms. “Now come to bed, we still have some exploring to do.”

Pleasant distractions aside, we continued to worry about every little thing, and there were more than enough little things, not to mention big things, to worry about. We were well past the stage of second-guessing our decisions. At this point we were doing our best to just hang on to the seemingly living, breathing, animal our plans had morphed into.

In late July we were informed that the last depot complex, the one in Albuquerque, was now complete and ready for operations. A week later, we received an elegant hand-engraved invitation from the Las Cruces Thunderbird House inviting us to a dinner celebrating their ground opening.

Tom, Kit, and George returned on schedule in late August. They’d encountered no real problems in their trip back and forth, but the number of people on the road north of Arizona City had increased significantly and it had taken two days to get off the road unseen, and another day to get back on the road unseen.

Two weeks later, shortly after the gold team had returned, I accompanied Anna, Tom, Yolanda, Kit, Josefa, George, Celia, Jim, and Louisa to a very elegant eight-course dinner hosted by Mrs. Mendoza in the restaurant’s ballroom. The guests, the cream of Mesilla Valley’s social class, were all dressed in finery, the food was magnificent, and the service was impeccable. Manuel and his little orchestra provided dining and dancing music throughout the evening.

The hit of the whole evening though was the drinks. Not alcoholic drinks, but ice cream sodas and phosphates, particularly wild cherry phosphates, stole the show. Mrs. Mendoza proudly showed us where the ice cream parlor Jorge was designing, was going to go in the first modification to all the restaurants. Until then, every restaurant would serve ice cream, ice cream sodas, and phosphates at the counter in the regular dining area.

The night wasn’t all food and dancing though as Steve had telegraphed that I should look for Manuel Nevarez sometime during the evening and talk to him. Steve had met him in Santa Fe a few months earlier where Mr. Nevarez was the senior Doña Ana County representative to the Territorial Legislature. More importantly, he was a prominent Mesilla Valley lawyer highly sought after in Las Cruces.

When I asked Mrs. Mendoza and Mrs. Amador about him, they had nothing but good things to say. It turned out that Mr. Nevarez was one of the first members of the two Las Cruces development trusts we’d set up five years ago. Mrs. Mendoza had turned over leadership of the trust she’d been heading to Mr. Nevarez before she left on the trip back east the previous year.

I finally tracked him down in the smoking-room after dinner. We had a pleasant conversation over our cigars and scotch. It didn’t take long for me to confirm everything I’d been told about him. By the time we were done, I’d invited him to the Estancia to discuss representing us as outside counsel in legal matters throughout the southern portion of the territory.

Four days later, the Nevarez family visited us for three days while Manuel talked with me, Anna, Tom, Yolanda, George, Celia, and Jim about the types of legal activities he would do for us. His story was quite interesting.

He’d left his home in Mexico during his early teens in 1849 for California at the start of the gold rush. He acknowledged that he’d been one of the lucky ones. He’d not only found more than just a little gold but had managed to keep it as well. After a few years, he returned home, married his sweetheart and moved to El Paso where he studied law and later moved to Las Cruces to begin his practice.

He was quite surprised to learn that Steve was our in-house counsel and the extent of our activities, both trusts and otherwise. When he and his family returned to Las Cruces it was as our outside counsel.

Later that afternoon we received the telegraph message we’d been waiting for. The last spike had been driven and the rail line between Las Cruces and Santa Fe was complete. With the first train assembly nearing completion, Jim and the Mendozas went into full work mode.

The telegraphers were moved from the Marshals’ offices to the depots, the now trained restaurant and hotel staff were moved to their depots and began unloading the boxes of supplies that had been gathering in warehouses in Santa Fe, Albuquerque, Socorro. Patrols along the rail bed from Santa Fe to Socorro and from Las Cruces to Socorro were increased.

Anna, Tom, Yolanda, Kit, Josefa, Jim, and Louisa, along with all the kids headed for Santa Fe two days later. We were all determined to be the first passengers to arrive in Las Cruces by train. Of course, we also had a score to settle with ‘the Boss’ and we knew the major attack against the railroad would come somewhere near Santa Fe. We were well escorted by twenty teams and ten Scout/Sniper teams.

We arrived just in time to watch the first engine rollout of the maintenance building the second week in October. Unfortunately, it was rolled back a few hours later when the boiler wouldn’t hold pressure. The resulting two-week delay was well received by the workers as they scrambled to complete setting up the depots.

The day of the roll-out of the first engine had been well-known in Santa Fe so we weren’t all that surprised to find that it was also the day for the pro-slavery groups in Mesilla and Tucson to begin their major assaults.

That afternoon, we received word from Esteban in Mesilla, via the Marshal network, that the Mesilla pro-slavery group were gathering to wipe out the four original targets. Ed had gone out to gather four teams and set up an ambush at the first target. Esteban and four more teams would be waiting at the second target just in case.

Apparently, the Scout/Sniper team currently assigned to watch and follow Robert Kelley had followed him to all four of the pro-slavery, ranch based, headquarters, for visits of less than two hours, over the last two nights. They had been able to get right up against one of the ranch houses, under a window, and had heard Kelley relay the detailed plans to the ranch owner.

None of us slept much that night as we waited for morning, hoping to get a telegraph message with positive news. The fact that Tucson was probably experiencing the same thing wasn’t lost on any of us either, since they were without the benefit of a telegraph, there was little we could do to warn or help them.

We were really beginning to worry when we hadn’t had any word at ten o’clock. Pacing back and forth in the Judge’s office, I was really worried about my men. They weren’t just Estancia employees, they were our friends, they were our family.

The late morning silence of the Judge’s office, marred only by the sounds of my boot heels as I paced back and forth, was shattered just before lunch by the clackety-clack of the telegraph. It was going so fast I couldn’t make heads nor tails of the message, but the Judge’s clerk was more up for the task, picking up his pencil and writing furiously after sending the acknowledgment to start transmitting.

The message was rather lengthy but the growing smile on the clerk’s face let us all know it was good news. Finally, he handed the paper to the Judge who read it aloud.

“Forty-two raiders ambushed as they attacked the first target just before midnight. Eighteen killed, eight seriously wounded and not expected to survive the day. Five lightly wounded, treated and now in county jail with the remaining eleven raiders. Arrests of Mesilla based support group begun upon return to Mesilla just after ten this morning. Eight members of the support group killed, including Robert Kelley. Five more surrendered peacefully and now in jail. No members of Marshal’s force killed. Four received minor wounds and have been treated. How do you want to proceed?”

“Do you want to try them here or in Mesilla,” I asked the Judge, a big smile of relief on my face.

“I’d like to try them in Mesilla,” he said thoughtfully. “We need to make a statement down there, not up here. It’s too late in the year for traveling though so it’s going to be a few months before I can get down there.”

A broad smile across my face, I couldn’t resist teasing him a little. “It’s never too late in the year Judge. Not anymore. Things are changing and you need to change with them.” Seeing the anger beginning to cloud his face, I held up my hands. “Judge, the train can take you down there in a day. All we have to do is get it working and tested. You can join us on the inaugural trip to Las Cruces.”

The Judge, wearing his own smile now, turned to the clerk. “You heard the Marshal, tell them to hold the prisoners for my arrival and trial. Dates to follow when travel arrangements are known.”

The clerk turned back to start sending the message when I interrupted him. “Also tell them to assist the Sheriff in guarding the prisoners and send two teams at all possible speed to Tucson to check on Deputy Marshal’s Burnham and Lee.”

Getting a nod from the Judge, the clerk thought for a few moments, composing the message in his head, before reaching for the telegraph key and sending the message. The rest of us filed out of the Judge’s office and returned to the hotel for lunch, then an afternoon siesta before dinner at the club that night with the entire Santa Fe crew.

The next weeks were stressful for all of us as we waited for word from Tucson. Word that we knew would take at least three weeks to get to Mesilla before we could possibly get a telegraph message. Even more stressful was waiting for the information network to give us the pieces of information we needed to figure out what ‘the Boss’ had planned for the railroad. Every one of us knew that the attack was coming but we desperately needed to know when and where if we were going to stand a chance of surviving the attack and beating ‘the Boss’.

While we’d all caught glimpses of TJ Hayes out on the street, we’d all stayed as far away from his business as possible. He was indeed a slim, blonde-haired, dapper man with a penchant for wearing a small round hat. We later learned it was the newest type of hat from England, known as a bowler. We also continued to refer to him as ‘the Boss’ in case we were overheard talking about him.