Chapter 12

New Mexico Territory, April, 1876

Cattle rustling was getting to be a real problem. Cletus found himself and his Mexican vaqueros permanently assigned to riding patrol around the ranch. All of Cletus' men were bachelors so the long intervals away from the main ranch complex were not a burden. Some of the other patrols started having trouble when the married men were kept away from their wives for a long time. Finally, the foreman resorted to assigning only bachelors to the job of riding patrol.

Some of the other patrols had run into pitched battles with rustlers with mixed results. The foreman considered increasing the size of the patrols to 10 or 12 men plus the patrol leader, but there was a problem finding enough men. Only Cletus was able to field 12 vaqueros, in fact, he had to turn some men away because he already had his 12 men. The Mexicans all preferred to ride with Cletus because everybody was treated as an equal, not like the patrols led by Anglos. Tunstall, himself, finally had to threaten to fire one of the patrol leaders to settle things down.

Cletus left with his patrol, as usual, on a Monday morning. They had been out three days when they found sign of a large cattle drive leading away from the Tunstall ranch. They turned to follow the trail and soon found the cattle being driven by 9 riders. Cletus sent a scout to look at the herd and the man reported that they were, indeed, Tunstall cattle. By now, it was late in the afternoon, so Cletus assumed that the rustlers would soon stop for the night.

The rustlers made camp and, foolishly, failed to put out an adequate guard. Except for two men with the cattle, all the rustlers had gone to sleep. Cletus decided to capture, rather than kill, the rustlers on the off chance they might gain some useful information from these men.

Cletus had his men dismount and creep into the rustlers' camp. They were unnoticed by the two men with the cattle as they overpowered and captured all of the sleeping men. By convention, the guard changed every four hours, so Cletus knew that he could expect the two guards to ride into camp wondering "where the Hell" their replacements were. Cletus planned to capture them at this point. This was what happened and the whole operation went smoothly.

The next morning, the rustlers were tied to their horses and three men were detailed to take them to the foreman for disposal and the rest of Cletus' men drove the cattle back to where they had been rustled from. Cletus' patrol returned to making its rounds and the three detached men caught up in a few days. Cletus' patrol returned to the ranch complex on schedule, not having met any more rustlers.

The following Monday, Tunstall called a meeting of all the patrols before they left on their rounds. He announced, "I have had enough of this stupid talk of not taking orders from a nigger. Mr Tucker has proved his abilities in leading his patrol and I want him to be in charge whenever there is need to combine patrols into larger groups. Anyone who cannot live with that can collect his wages, now, and leave." Several men did quit, but most stayed and the patrols left for their rounds. All those that quit went to work for The House.

When they returned from patrol, Cletus suggested to the foreman that he reorganize the patrols to provide for a reserve force. They now had 3 patrols of 12 and 1 patrol of 10 men. He thought that they really didn't need 4 patrols. Cletus thought that 2 regular patrols, one leaving on Monday of one week and the other leaving on Monday of the next week could cover the ranch adequately. The remaining men should be used as a reserve to aid either of the patrols who ran into more than they could handle. The men could be rotated between active patrol and reserve to keep all of them sharp, yet not too tired. The foreman said that he would discuss this with Mr. Tunstall and let Cletus know the outcome.

Tunstall liked Cletus' suggestions so much that he ordered the immediate change and put Cletus in overall command. The other phases of the ranch operation had grown so big that the foreman really had too much to do. Tunstall thought to take some of the burden from the foreman by assigning the "military" operations to Cletus, who would report to the foreman. The two of them would work out any problems and go to Tunstall only in special cases. Cletus and the foreman thought that this would work well and were both happy with the arrangement.

Four more men quit when the change in organization was announced, but neither the foreman nor Cletus were particularly concerned. These four had never fit into the Tunstall ranch's operations very well, anyway, so it was a relief to be rid of them.

Cletus began the rotation plan immediately by putting one of the other patrol leaders in charge of his group while Cletus spent the week in getting everything fully organized. He made up a roster of who was going on which patrol and who was assigned to the reserve for each week. This assignment list was posted where everybody could see it and it was read to those who could not read English. The men were very happy with this new way of working and glad for the periodic break from active patrol. The reserve also gave the foreman a pool of men to call on when he had unusual manpower requirements.

The one big problem in all of this how to signal the main ranch complex that the reserve was needed. One of the ranch hands had been in the Union Signal Corps during the war, so he was familiar with using mirrors to signal distant troops. He showed the idea to Cletus, who embraced the concept with both arms. The two of them worked out a simple set of signals that anyone could remember and use to signal that a patrol was in trouble and needed help.

Cletus got enough small shaving mirrors to insure that every man had one and started a training program so that trained signalers would be available for the next week's patrols. Each man who was rotated off patrol into the reserve would be trained in the use of the signaling mirrors so that everyone would be properly trained in a short time.

The flat roof of the tallest building on the ranch was designated as the lookout post and two-man shifts were arranged so that a constant watch would be kept for the flashing of signal mirrors. To make sure that every patrol was monitored, Cletus had each one send in a status report at the noon meal break. This was to keep everyone alert without making it too much of a burden.

After three weeks, Cletus took out a patrol. Everything was going well and they did not see any rustlers for the first few days. However, as they were riding through a cut between two hills, they were shot at from both sides. Cletus knew that it would be sure death to stop where they were, so he ordered his men to ride as fast as they could out of the cut toward a low hill about 300 yards away. The hill was mostly bare, except for some dense brush near the top.

This was an unusual arrangement for vegetation, so there must be some water source at or near the top of the hill. Cletus wanted to reach that in case they were besieged. Their attackers came swarming after them as they reached the hill. Cletus ordered his men to take their horses as far into the brush as they could penetrate and then come back to the edge of the brush to fight. His men acted hastily, but they did as he ordered. Cletus spaced them around the perimeter of the brush and the enemy charged on horseback up the hill.

The defenders began to fire at the attackers with reasonable success, shooting horses as well as men. This is something Cletus had drilled into his men while they were in the reserve: kill a running horse and you kill the rider, too. Some of the men could still not bring themselves to shoot a horse, but enough could that it was an effective tactic. Cletus was a bit surprised to see that the attackers were Indians, not Anglos or Mexicans. As he looked closer, he saw that they were Apaches, which was not really important, just an interesting footnote to the battle. Of much greater importance was the fact that there were about 50 of the attackers against his 13. If they could not get help, they were in serious trouble.