Pecos River fight, 25 April 1875

The battle, stage by stage

1. 25 April 1875, early afternoon

   The fresh trail

   Nine days out of Fort Clark, Lieutenant John L. Bullis and three Black Seminole scouts — Sergeant John Ward, Private Pompey Factor and Trumpeter Isaac Payne — have tracked raiders more than 170 miles across the canyon country of the lower Pecos. That morning they crossed the Pecos about a mile above its mouth; in the afternoon, about three miles east of Seminole Spring, they cut a fresh trail of some 75 horses heading north-west from the settlements around Del Rio, and follow it for about an hour through broken canyon country to the rim of the Pecos canyon. Below — at a crossing whose 1875 channel now lies under Amistad Reservoir — 25 to 30 raiders — Bullis took them for Comanches out of Mexico — are trying to get the herd across to the west bank. One later account says about forty. The site shown is an estimate: no monument marks it.

2. Afternoon

   Down the ridgeline

   Four against twenty-five or more. The scouts tie their horses in the brush, use an uprooted bush as cover, and creep down the ridgeline along a steep, narrow trail toward the canyon floor. The Val Verde County Historical Commission's study places the fight on a prominent east–west ridgeline leading down to the traditional crossing near the mouth of the Pecos; many accounts, the National Park Service's among them, call it 'Eagle's Nest Crossing', but Bullis used that name for a shallow ford of the Rio Grande at present Langtry.

3. Afternoon — about 45 minutes

   Seventy-five yards

   Unseen, they get within about 75 yards of the raiders and open fire with their seven-shot Spencer carbines — by one account each man shifting position so four rifles sound like many more. For some three-quarters of an hour they pin the raiders at the water's edge. Bullis reported three raiders killed and a fourth wounded, and twice the scouts nearly scattered the stolen herd.

4. Later in the afternoon

   The raiders do the math

   The raiders work out how few men are on the ridge, spread out and come round the scouts' flank, firing Winchester repeaters. With far more men and more cartridges between reloads, they threaten to cut the four off from their horses, and the scouts fall back up the ridgeline toward the brush where the horses are tied.

5. Late afternoon

   The horse that left

   Ward, Factor and Payne reach their mounts; Bullis reaches his, and the horse bolts before he can get into the saddle, leaving the lieutenant on foot on the ridge with the raiders closing in. Factor and Payne turn back into the rocks and boulders and lay down covering fire while Ward rides back toward the raiders to reach him. Positions here are schematic.

6. Late afternoon

   Two men, one horse

   Bullis swings up behind Ward and the two ride out double-mounted, Factor and Payne following. As they go, by the VVCHC's account of Bullis's report, one bullet shatters the stock of Ward's carbine and another passes through its sling. Nobody is killed; the herd is lost. 'They just saved my hair,' Bullis said of his scouts.

7. 25 April – 28 May 1875

   Fifty-six miles

   The four ride 12 miles to Paint Creek and camp on good grass and water — 56 miles that day — and by mid-afternoon on 26 April are back at Fort Clark. Bullis wrote that his men were 'brave and trustworthy, and each worthy of a medal'; on 28 May 1875 Ward, Factor and Payne received the Medal of Honor, each cited for 'a charge against 25 hostiles while on a scouting patrol'. General Edward Ord published the report to the department as an example of 'what an officer can do who means business'.