Welcome to the Engines of Texanity. Episode 4, The Peacemaker. I'm Brandon C.

On June 8, 1844, two scouts came galloping into camp where 13 other Texas Rangers were resting.

One of the resting rangers was a gangly 27-year-old who had only been in Texas for three years,

but who'd already participated in one of its most famous historical episodes,

the Black Bean Affair following the failed Mere Mir expedition, which was beat back by our friend

Antonio Canales from season four. After surviving this first misadventure on the Texas frontier,

Samuel Walker had enlisted in Captain Jack Hayes' Ranger Company in San Antonio, and just a few

months later, found himself on the trail here of a band of Comanchees led by a chief named Yellow Wolf.

No sooner had the two returning scouts come into view, then Walker and the other rangers realized that Yellow Wolf had actually been on their trail.

70 or 80 or maybe it was just 40 or maybe it was as many as 200 Comanchees appeared suddenly on a nearby brush line.

The Rangers would never agree on the number so surprised were they and so frantic were they to mount up and prepare to fight or to flee.

But the Comanchees at first didn't attack. Actually, they instead melted back into the brush.

Captain Jack Hayes was familiar with this old Comanche fake retreat, however.

They used it to lure lumbering ranger units out into the open,

where their single-shot carbines left them fairly defenseless against mounted warriors

capable of unleashing 20 arrows per minute.

When Captain Hayes and his Rangers at first failed to follow them, the Comanches reappeared from the brush, hooting and hollering this time, baiting the Rangers and daring them to come into the trap.

Hayes ordered his men to advance forward, but to hold their fire, and to advance slowly, under control.

More Comanchees now materialized, shouting insults in Spanish at the Rangers, which even newcomers like Samuel Walker understood.

And yet still, the advancing Rangers didn't fire.

Seeing that their tactic wasn't working, Yellow Wolf's

Comanches pulled back to a nearby hilltop, deciding I suppose that if they were going to have

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