January 16, 1860; Baird, Texas: After the 1859 campaigns in Indian Territory, elements of the Second Cavalry pulled back to various posts in Texas. Capt. Kirby Smith, with about 60 men and 150 horses, went to Camp Colorado, on Jim Ned Creek in present-day Coleman County. There they found comfortable quarters along with water and good grass for the horses. At midnight on 14 January 1860, a settler rode into the post to report that Comanches were stealing horses and mules about sixteen miles away. Lt. Fitzhugh Lee, recently arrived from Austin, volunteered to take a patrol out in pursuit. With twenty-two men of Smith's Company B, Lee rode out into the night against a howling norther.
At daybreak the soldiers arrived at the ranch where the stock had been stolen. Lee found the Indians' trail, which headed north, and was able to follow it despite the drifting snow. The cavalrymen doggedly kept riding, spending the night without campfires, eating hardtack and frozen pork. By dawn, some of the troopers were so stiff with cold that their comrades had to lift them up onto their horses. During the day, the sun appeared, raising the temperature and melting some of the snow. In the midafternoon of 16 January, the patrol caught up with the Indians, who were herding the stolen stock up Pecan Bayou, south of present-day Baird. Lee ordered his men to draw their pistols and charge.
The surprised Comanches scattered into the trees. The two slowest ones were spotted at the rear of the herd. A trooper shot one, while the other loosed arrows at Lee and his bugler, Jack Hayes, then rode off. Lee chased the warrior as he dodged among the trees. The Comanche dashed into some thicker cedars and dismounted, sending his horse in one direction and running off in another. Unfooled, Lee and five other troopers tracked the warrior for a few miles through the snow-covered, wooded hills. The Indian then tried another ruse, laying his red blanket out where his pursuers would see it and concealing himself above a rock ledge several yards away.
Lee found the blanket, but, wise to battlefield tricks, he immediately spotted the Indian and leapt over the ledge to face his opponent. The Comanche shot an arrow that struck the stock of Lee's carbine. Lee dropped the weapon, and the two began wrestling. While the warrior jabbed his knife into the lieutenant's thick overcoat, Lee hit the Indian with his revolver. Both men eventually lost their weapons. Finally, Lee was able to pin his adversary tight against the ground. "Here was I on top," he recalled, "holding down, breast to breast, a live Camanche, and a very slippery one, with nothing to kill him!"
Just then, the bugler Hayes arrived and helped restrain the warrior while Lee grabbed Hayes's revolver and shot the Indian twice. When he checked himself for wounds, Lee found his outer garments slashed to ribbons but he was otherwise unharmed. He gathered up the warrior's shield, headdress, and weapons, which he later displayed with great pride. The soldiers had killed two Comanches and recovered twenty-five horses.
