Ben McCulloch led twenty-four men to Big Hill, where he joined forced with Zumwalt's bunch. Together, they found the Comanche trail. The mail rider hadn't been exaggerating by much. The hostiles were headed south and east and there were a lot of them. McCulloch calculated three or four hundred at least.
The next morning they were joined by another posse, this one from DeWitt County, led by the noted Indian fighter John J. Tumlinson of Cuero. Captain Tumlinson now took command of a force numbering over one hundred riders.
"If they keep to their present course," said Tumlinson, "they will run smack into Victoria."
"They wouldn't attack a town that size," said Zumwalt. "Would they?"
McCulloch was already in the saddle. "We'd better go make sure." He was grim, realizing that the Comanches were a day ahead of them, and that if the hostiles did intend to strike Victoria there was nothing he and the rest of Tumlinson's Texans could do about it.
The Comanches killed thirteen people at Victoria, including seven Negroes, a Mexican, and a German traveler. They would have added a Frenchman to that tally had he not climbed an old oak tree and hidden himself in the Spanish moss that festooned the branches. The Indians roared through Victoria like a whirlwind of death and destruction and continued southward, toward the Gulf. Along the way they took a Mrs. Crosby and her infant daughter captive. It was said that Mrs. Crosby was Daniel Boone's grand-daughter. Boone's daughters had been captured by Shawnee Indians in Kentucky, and the frontiersman had fallen into Indian hands once or twice himself. Bad luck with Indians seemed to run in that family.
The following morning the Comanches appeared on the Victoria Road on the outskirts of the seaside village of Linnville. Like well-drilled cavalry the warriors fell into a half-moon formation and rode at full gallop into the settlement, with the wings of the formation encircling the village on both sides. There was no escape except by sea, and many of Linnville's terrified inhabitants leaped into lighters and other small craft and found refuge in the bay, where they helplessly watched the systematic looting and destruction of their homes.
The Comanches took their sweet time, lingering in Linnville for hours, burning one house at a time. Cattle and pigs were slaughtered in wholesale lots. Only horses and mules were spared—by this time the Indians had a herd of more than six hundred stolen ponies and knobheads. Some of the horses were laden with plunder, some of which was of no practical use to the Comanches—clothing, quilts, china, silverware, mirrors, rugs, spittoons, boots, stovepipe hats, and much more. Some of the warriors donned white man's clothing; the adorned their own horses with bright ribbons and calicoes taken from stores and residences. In the process they killed five men: three whites and two slaves.
Gray Wolf, war chief of the Quohadis, remained aloof from this orgy of destruction and looting. He was not pleased with the way things were going. This was not what he had envisioned, and when Yellow Hand, the Penateka chief, and several other Comanche leaders, came to him with their decision to end the raid, he was angered.
"We have killed many Texans," said Yellow Hand smugly. "We have stolen hundreds of their horses and destroyed two of their villages. The murder of our chiefs in Bexar has been avenged. It is time to go home."
"Yellow Hand is wrong," was Gray Wolf's blunt response. "We have accomplished nothing. All this will not stop the Texans from invading our land. We must fight and win a battle."
Yellow Hand shook his head. "The Penatekas are going home."
"If you go," said Gray Wolf, "the Quohadis will not be going with you. Our raid is not finished."
"Do what you will. The Penatekas are turning back."
"Do not return by the way we have come," advised Gray Wolf. "Separate into small groups and scatter to the west."
"We will stay together," said Yellow Hand. He was not inclined to take the advice of a Quohadi. Besides, there was greater security in numbers.
Gray Wolf shook his head and rode away. He located Red Eagle and Tall Horses and called them to his side to inform them of what had happened.
"Yellow Hand is a fool," he added. "The Texans will expect us to return the way we have come. They will be waiting. So far we have moved too quickly for them to catch us, but when Yellow Hand and the others turn north they will find many Texans in their path."
"Then there will be a great battle," reasoned Red Eagle, "and we should take part in it."
"No. This is what we must do. Send the women and some of the men due west from here with the stolen horses. The rest of us will strike north along the Brazos River. We will hit hard and fast. The Texans will be gathering to stop Yellow Hand and the others. By the time they move against us we will have reached the Cross Timbers. There we will be safe and can turn for home."
Tall Horses nodded enthusiastically. "This is a good plan."
Red Eagle frowned. Like Gray Wolf he was a young war chief, and he saw Gray Wolf as his principal rival. He knew that the warriors tended to look more to Gray Wolf for leadership than they did him; they knew Gray Wolf was more levelheaded and had proven himself a better strategist in raids against the Utes. Besides, they believed Gray Wolf had been spared at the Council House by the Great Spirit for some special purpose. So Red Eagle swallowed his pride and agreed with Gray Wolf's plan.
And so, when the Comanche horde turned north, retracing their steps, leaving a ruined, smoldering Linnville behind, it was without the Quohadis, who slipped away to the northeast, a hundred strong after dispatching their women and about thirty warriors westward with the stolen stock and plunder.
As Gray Wolf had suspected, the Texans were gathering. Lafayette Ward and twenty-two men from Lavaca met Captain Matthew Caldwell and thirty-seven men at Gonzales. Together they rode on to Seguin and joined forces with another party of twenty men. Here they received their first reliable intelligence concerning the Comanches. The hostiles were following their old trail north. Caldwell decided to cut them off at Plum Creek. The Texans marched all day across prairie scorched by a grass fire, through a cloud of ashes that blinded and choked men and horses.
That night, Captain James Bird and thirty more riders joined them. Ben McCulloch and a handful of men also rode into camp; they had quit Tumlinson's group in disgust after Tumlinson lost his nerve and let slip an opportunity to strike at the Indians in the vicinity of Victoria.
Early the next morning General Felix Huston, late of the Texas Army, showed up, and Caldwell graciously surrendered command to him. This displeased many of the Texans, who knew Caldwell—Old Paint, they affectionately called him—had proven himself as an Indian fighter. Still, no one quit over it. Just before dawn, scouts rode in to report the Comanches three miles south and coming on. Almost simultaneously, a rider galloped in to announce the imminent arrival of Colonel Edward Burleson with eighty-seven Texans and thirteen Tonawas.
Felix Huston's command, now numbering nearly a hundred men, waited in the trees and thickets along Plum Creek as the new day dawned. They wondered who would be the first on the scene—the Comanches or Burleson. They did not have long to speculate. An hour later the Comanches appeared with their huge horse herd, on the open prairie west of Plum Creek. They paused to let their ponies drink from the creek hardly more than a half mile upstream from where the Texans lurked, undiscovered, in a thicket.
Deciding they could wait no longer for Burleson's force to arrive, the Texans mounted up and rode out into the open. The Comanche warriors formed a barrier, intent on delaying the Texans until their women and the horse herd could escape. The warriors' faces were painted red. Many of them wore buffalo headdresses. Their buffalo-hide shields were daubed with colorful symbols. The manes and tails of their war ponies were painted carmine red. The Texans could not fail to notice that some of the hostiles wore plundered white man's clothing—a stovepipe here, a clawhammer coat there. Nor did they fail to note the scalps dangling from some of the long red lances.