by H. H. Knibbs
Ben found that the white man had been going to school, so to speak, with the Indian as teacher. He was learning again the primitive way of living off the land from nature’s own great storehouse of materials usable as food, clothing, shelter, and medicines. Powder and shot were scarce. Many of the residents were returning to the bow and arrow and spear, and to the art of laying traps, in order to get their fill of meat from the abundant antelope, bear, buffalo, cottontail, peccary, and possum.
Playing cards, a basic necessity in Ben’s field of endeavor, had become a luxury. People generally used crude pasteboard squares, cut and painted at home. This was no place for Ben the gambling man. The carefree, easy-spending life of the soldier camp called again. There had been enough of the stark, drab, pioneer life in his childhood, enough of abnegation and unfulfilled longings. He had had his fill of the unceasing taunt, silent or spoken, from those who could buy things when and where they wanted, those who did not have to skimp and save and hoard to put together a tiny reserve.
From some of the wounded men of the Rio Grande army, Ben heard stories of the abundance along the Mexican border. Lush living had come there with the Civil War blockades, and the day and night traffic across the Rio Grande. It was no longer a boundary river, but an avenue of commerce which knew no law or controls other than supply and demand, either in commercial order form, or at pistol point.
Besides, the times were getting too tense and unsettled in Austin. Talk of slave insurrections spread everywhere, and seemed to be carried even on the shrill song of the mockingbird. Volunteer guards patrolled the town nightly, and people who strayed out after dark had many questions to answer. This was hardly a suitable setting for a career in the sporting world.
And the war was far from over. There was still need for men with a will to fight. A Yankee fleet was moving toward the southern tip of the Texas coast, to Brazos Santiago Pass and Point Isabel. There they would land a force to push inland, aiming to choke off the Confederate trade with Europe by way of Matamoros and the mushrooming, wild, lawless, roistering port of Bagdad, built overnight on piling in a sandbar, and known as Hell on Stilts.
Ben decided to re-enlist. But his regiment had been dismounted and reorganized as infantry, a type of service not compatible with Ben’s injured leg. He and Billy applied for a transfer to the Rio Grande. In September, 1863, the two brothers—Ben on a pinto pony, and Billy on a blue roan—pointed their horses’ noses toward Brownsville on the Rio Grande. There, General H. P. Bee had taken over the command of the Confederate forces from Colonel P. N. Luckett and Colonel John S. (Rip) Ford, famous Texas Ranger and Indian fighter.
CHAPTER 10
All hell was breaking loose in Fort Brown as Ben Thompson and his brother Billy approached the town of Brownsville. Among the Confederates there, many had enlisted after deserting from one of the armies in Mexico. Now, about fifty or so of these men had broken out in a mass desertion from the Confederate army, and were trying to flee back to Mexico. Some had already succeeded in crossing the Rio Grande, after killing Jeff Barthelow, a former sheriff, Frank Dashiel, and Antonio Cruz at Brownsville. Most of the others were in hiding in the thickets along the boundary river, waiting for a chance to make the other bank. They were all armed with rifles and pistols.
The two brothers, unaware of the excitement, had swung eastward to the marshlands, and now had cut back westward and southerly to hit the Point Isabel Road. The sun was low on the horizon, and they roweled their ponies to a fast trot, skirting Palo Alto battlefield. Then they rode across the Resaca de la Palma zacahuiste grass prairie where Zachary Taylor’s men in 1846 had sent a Mexican army retreating almost along the same route the two brothers now rode. Ben and Billy followed the bends of the resaca, a lagoon which was once part of the Rio Grande, until they met the Alice Road, into which they turned to reach Brownsville.
The men galloped toward the setting sun and hit the western edge of town. There they slowed their mounts to a walk that stirred cloudlets of sandy dust across Elizabeth Street, Levee, St. Francis, and swung southeast to approach the Rio Grande at Fronton Street. They reined up over a low bridge overlooking Freeport, the American bank landing for the rowboat and mule-drawn barge ferry from Santa Cruz point on the Mexican side. They observed hundreds of bales of cotton, stacked under wattle roofs of adobe and log lean-tos, and strewn in careless clumps of three and four bales each-for a hundred yards or more in the clearing on the edge of the mesquite and chaparral thicket.
Ben Thompson looked across the yellow swirling waters, brimming with debris from a recent sudden rise: tree trunks, fence-posts, cartwheels, wagon-beds. Occasionally a bloated cow carcass floated past, eye-sockets left empty by the first buzzards’ feeding.
On the opposite bank Ben saw a line of uniformed pickets armed with long rifles, reminders of another war going on over there. France had landed troops allied with the Imperialists of Mexico, who wanted the Austrian archduke, Maximilian, as emperor. Liberal and reform forces, champions of a Republic, were led by Benito Juarez and Porfirio Diaz.
To their left, around a big bend, the Texans saw the flag of the Confederacy catching the level rays of the setting sun in its rippling folds. They were elated at the sight, knowing that they had reached the destination of their long trek. As they turned their horses in that direction, Ben could no longer restrain his exuberance, and it found an outlet in typical manner. On the surface of the river, Ben saw a half-submerged log. On the log sat a large turtle, outlined against the spray of the churning stream. Ben drew his pistol, pointed it at the perfect moving target, and pressed the trigger.
The six-shooter spat a jet of flame and smoke. The bullet blasted the turtle’s shell. Cracked and splintered, the shell skittered across the froth of the swollen river. The roar of the pistol, reverberating against the banks, aroused the patrol on the Mexican side, and a volley rang out in reply from the rifles there. But in the next instant Ben and Billy were aware of other bullets whistling about them like a swarm of angry yellow-jackets. This new firing did not come from across the river. It was close at hand, from the trees and brush on their side of the Rio Grande.
Slipping from their creaking saddles, the two men looped rein-leather around a handy forked mesquite limb. They slid down into a hollow on the bank, deep in sticky mud from the river’s rise. Here they had shelter from the American side of the river, where the firing persisted. Ben sighted along the cocked pistol in his hand, pointing to a trail that edged the thicket on the river’s bank, and saw the gun-metal glint of a rifle barrel poking out from the side of a tree trunk. It was about fifty yards ahead of him, almost on the same path they had been taking toward Fort Brown.
In the trench-like cut on the bank, Ben found a branch, and on it he placed his gray campaign hat, then he raised the stick overhead. Peering through a patch of reeds, he saw four flashes of gunfire, from as many trees. His hat sailed across low brush, then splashed into shallow water and sank. Ben’s pistol flared in the gathering darkness. Billy fired almost at the same time. The lead chewed bark off the tree trunks in long angry grooves, but the human targets were well protected.
After a few more exchanges, both sides paused. In a moment, a heavy rustling of branches and the clop of horses’ hooves on fallen leaves and twigs warned of riders approaching from the direction of Fort Brown. The four riflemen dashed from the trees, across the trail, and dived headlong into the tall reeds on the low bluff overhanging the muddy river bank a few feet below. The dive saved them from the fusillade that screamed through the tall grass, as the brothers cut loose.
Now, the four men had slid down the slimy clay and were stringing out along the bank below. Ben noticed a flat-bottomed skiff tied nearby, on the water’s edge, and he saw, for the first time, that the men all wore Confederate uniforms. Six men on horseback came through the thicket to the river trail, and they, too, wore the gray of the Confederacy. Ben was baffled by this chase of Confederates by Confederates. His
first thought was that they might possibly be Yankee spies. Not having even an inkling of the outbreak at Fort Brown, he did not know that the fugitives were deserters, and that the men on horseback were part of a patrol sent in pursuit.
The first cavalryman of the patrol in the clear drew the fire of the four men on the bank below. He slumped in the saddle, clinging to the horse’s neck. This diversion of fire gave the Thompson brothers a chance to set their pistol notches on the men who had shot at them.
Ben’s .45 blazed. The first two bullets smashed the rifle stock and the trigger hand of one who had raised his gun to aim at the next horseman. He dropped the shattered weapon, and dashed toward the skiff. The other three turned their fire on Ben and Billy, who were now blasting steadily, Ben with his six-shooter, Billy with two pistols. At the same time, the five other cavalrymen dismounted. They advanced, discharging their carbines as they moved toward the river.
In the crossfire, the three men fell mortally wounded. The fourth had stopped at the boat. He raised his arms overhead, holding his broken right wrist in his left hand. He was trying to choke back the blood that spouted down on his hat, and trickled in small crimson beads to the very edge of the brim.
A cavalryman signaled to the Thompsons to hold their fire. He walked toward them, while three others covered the wounded man with carbines. A fourth was binding the man’s arm with a kerchief twisted into a tourniquet. The trooper approaching the Thompsons wore sergeant’s chevrons. He shook hands with Ben and Billy, thanked them, and told them of what had happened at Fort Brown.
Ben and Billy remounted their horses, and followed the troopers along the winding river trail to the Fort.
CHAPTER 11
As Ben and Billy Thompson signed in at Fort Brown, the Confederate forces there were preparing for a general retreat. News had come that a fleet, with a Union army of seven thousand men was approaching Santiago Pass, about thirty miles east of Brownsville. The Confederate units in the border garrisons totaled twelve hundred men. A day or two after the Thompsons arrived, General Bee began a systematic evacuation of Fort Brown. The Fort was put to the torch and the fire spread to the city. In the turmoil, rumors flew to the effect that the soldiers would be free to loot. The soldiers were gone, but bands of outlaws that hid out in the upriver brush-land, swarmed into town. A mad round of plunder and pillage got under way. All of this Ben Thompson learned later from families who had fled from Brownsville in a small wagon train. They overtook the withdrawing Confederates’ column where it had established temporary headquarters at Santa Gertrudis, about eighty-five miles to the north.
From Santa Gertrudis, near the Gulf coast, the Confederates fanned out their forces across the plains cut by the Nueces River, and westward toward the Rio Grande. They broke up into a series of roving outposts in the brush-lands south of San Antonio. A strategic campaign was mapped for containing the Federals along the border area. Also, the Confederates had to keep open their lines of communications still unaffected by the blockades.
From Brownsville, the Federal forces sent relatively small detachments to man the various border outpost stations: Fort Duncan at Eagle Pass, Fort McIntosh at Laredo, and Ring-gold Barracks at Davis Landing (Rio Grande City). Their main line of communications was the Military Telegraph Road, which followed the course of the Rio Grande. It was laid out during the War with Mexico a score of years before. North of this trail the land was almost solid mesquite, chaparral, and cactus thickets—or great expanses of sand, still giving signs of having been covered by the sea in recent geological eras. Through all this virgin land, trails wove haphazardly, marked out by lone horsemen or wandering files of longhorns. The Alice Road was the main stagecoach and wagon-train route between Brownsville and San Antonio.
As a former ranger, Colonel Ford knew the brush country like a book. He organized a program of guerrilla tactics to harass the Federals, selecting troopers who were able and willing to take on this kind of backwoods fighting. Among them were men who had grown up in the saddle, hardened brush-poppers, and former peace officers, who had served perhaps in a city up North or back East. Also men whose former activities had included vocations not condoned by the written law. Their defiance of law-enforcers had made of every encounter a quick trial in the court of Judge Colt. One thing they all had in common: an intimate association with firearms, and a facility and accuracy in putting them to use. Among those who served with Rip Ford in South Texas were Ben Thompson and Billy Thompson.
In small bands, the Confederates roamed over the border country. They lived off the land, and did not stay long in one place. In most respects they could hardly be distinguished from the freebooters, the pirates of the land expanses, and the depredating Indians. These took advantage of the disturbed conditions on both sides of the Rio Grande. They raided and looted and highjacked. They stole cattle and horses and drove them over the Rio Grande to buyers who did not insist on bills of sale.
Inside of a few months, by the spring of 1864, Colonel Ford had forced the Federal detachment to withdraw from Fort Duncan at Eagle Pass. This was the westernmost crossing of the Rio Grande below El Paso, some four hundred miles farther away. Soon after that, Ford’s men got into position to assault Ringgold Barracks. That would put them back again within a hundred miles of Fort Brown. The first step in this campaign was the recapture of Fort McIntosh at Laredo.
CHAPTER 12
At Laredo, Ben Thompson picked up many fine pointers on card dealing. He got a real insight about the game of monte from the experts at Nuevo Laredo, the Mexican town across the river from Laredo.
From the Mexican casinos, the game of monte had spread to bars and gambling rooms which were part of frontier life everywhere. The Mexican cowboys who moved northward with the first cattle drives used up many hours and many pesos over the monte layouts. Their game was taken up all over the Southwest. It was carried to the Pacific coast by the forty-niners, and by the second wave of that migration, which included the sporting boys and girls, dedicated wholeheartedly to separating, as gently as possible, the prospectors from the fruits of their diggings.
Ben Thompson had dabbled in monte during his formative years as an aficionado of the gaming tables. He had learned enough to know that an honest monte game required no skill at all. It was straight gambling, a lottery that depended for its winnings and losings strictly on the turn of a card. But he had also learned that a skillful dealer, sometimes with prepared cards, could turn the balance of odds highly in favor of the banker. This sleight-of-hand dexterity not infrequently led to flashing exchanges of lethal lead pellets.
The simplicity of monte was one of its big attractions as a popular game. Unlike faro, a kind of first cousin to the Mexican game, monte required no dealing boxes or other mechanical contrivances. A pack of Mexican cards and a moderate bit of cash was all a man needed to go into business as a monte banker. The monte deck consisted of forty cards, in four suits: Espadas or swords, similar to the familiar spades of the decks better known in this country; Bastos, literally clubs, but instead of the stylized trefoil these bore illustrations of knotted war clubs; Oro, which is gold, and marked by yellow disks indicating coins of that precious metal; and Copas, the drinking goblets. Each suit contained cards numbered from one (the ace) to seven, plus three face cards, a total of ten.
Although there are numerous variations of the game, the monte played in Mexico and out West disregarded the suits. It was based entirely on matching up the numerical rank or denomination of cards. The dealer opened the game by holding the shuffled and cut pack face down in one hand. With his other hand he removed the two top cards and laid them face up, side by side, on the table. These two cards formed what was known as the “top layout.”
Each player could now place a wager on either of the cards, betting that his card would be paired by one from the deck before the other card on the table was paired. After the bets were all down, the dealer took the two bottom cards from the deck and
placed them, side by side, face up, on the table. This was the “bottom layout.”
If either layout happened to be a pair, a new deal was ordered.
If all four cards were of different denomination, the player could then bet that either card in each layout would be paired by an identical ranking one from the pack before the other card in the same layout was paired. That is, he could bet in the top layout only, or in the bottom layout only, or in both, backing his card against the other in each case. Or he could bet any one of the four cards against the other three in the combined layouts. A winner in such an arrangement paid higher odds.
For a faster game, most border gamblers preferred a single layout game, just two cards, one from the top and one from the bottom placed face up on the table. Then, after the bets were placed, as in the more complex game the dealer continued drawing one card at a time, from the bottom of the deck until the bets were settled by the matching of one table card with an equal-ranking one in the deck. When a card was thus paired by another from the deck, the dealer paid off the bets on that one, and collected the bets off the other ending the deal. During the course of the deal, as the banker drew one card at a time from the deck, players were permitted to continue betting. As fewer cards were left, a player’s chances of winning rose, a situation which was not permitted to develop by the more skillful dealers.
While at Laredo, Ben and Billy got together a fund of a couple of hundred dollars. One night, they blithely entered a saloon and announced the opening of a monte game. They stacked their cash on the table, the rule being that whatever money the banker showed was the amount he was risking in the game, and that was the limit of the betting also.
The name monte was said to have derived from this practice, the Spanish word meaning “mount” or “mountain” or “pile.” But it also means brush-land or uncleared land in general, which offered an alternate theory as to the terminology. That one suggested the player sought the lucky card in the pack as a hunter might seek game in the woods, knowing it was there and not too sure what would turn up, or when. Still another theory derived the game from the early Spanish miners, whose operations in Mexico date back to the sixteenth century. This version places the procedure of the game on a parallel with prospecting for gold or silver, usually in the uninhabited hill or mountain country—hence “el monte.”