In the spring of 1840, on the bank of Chicoete Creek northeast of Victoria, Texas, Jeff Turner sat alone by his campfire. Sleep offered no relief. When he stayed awake, he was tormented by his memories; when he drifted off, he relived them in nightmares. He gripped the handle of his knife and stared into the flames, his thoughts fixed on a farmstead sixty miles away on the Guadalupe River.
Turner had come to Texas from Kentucky in the 1830s. Born and raised in the Bluegrass State, he had married a young woman from his hometown and built a small but thriving farm. The couple had three young sons, and life was comfortable. Then a stranger stopped by the farm one day, asking for a hot meal and a night’s lodging.
During dinner, the traveler spoke of his destination: a land of open country, rich farmland, abundant game, and rivers teeming with fish. He was headed to Texas. Turner could not shake the thought. His family lived comfortably, but meagerly, and he saw little hope of amassing enough wealth to secure his children’s future.
He spent months convincing his reluctant wife to leave their reliable life. She knew, as everyone knew, that Texas was dangerous. Though the Republic of Texas claimed vast lands, the country had belonged to the Comanche for a century and a half. The stories of Comanche raids were horrifying: entire families and villages wiped out, men killed, women carried off into slavery and concubinage.
Yet settlers, driven by dreams of fortune, continued to pour in. Turner sold the farm for a decent profit, and the family headed south. After a few weeks near San Antonio, they settled along a tributary of the Guadalupe River near present-day Seguin. Turner, with the help of his two eldest sons, built a small cabin and began clearing land for crops.
Mrs. Turner, once reluctant, warmed to their new home. The land was rich, the creek was beautiful, and Turner kept the family well-fed on wild game. It seemed the arduous journey had been worth it.
Then, one morning early in May, Turner set out with his rifle to hunt. He paused to take in the scene: his three sons, all under ten, playing near the stream with wooden hoops; his wife tending the vegetable garden, singing as she worked. She cheerfully bid him farewell. Turner’s heart was full as he walked down the creek, around a bend, and into a timbered thicket about a mile from home.
The peace was shattered by the retort of what sounded like a dozen rifles. Turner was washed in cold terror. He ran toward the homestead, and then he heard the screams: triumphant war cries mixed with the shrieks of his family. By the time he reached the bend, only the war cries remained.
The cabin was a scene of devastation. Inside, Turner found the bodies of his wife and youngest son, the child clasped in his mother’s arms. Near the back door lay his two older sons, covered in blood and freshly scalped, having fought to the last despite their youth. As Turner took in the horror, the Comanche returned, dismounting and walking idly toward the cabin, unaware of his presence.
Blind with rage and grief, and no longer fearing for his own life, Turner sprang from the door. His rifle ball struck one warrior in the heart, killing him instantly. Then, drawing his large hunting knife, he rushed upon the rest. The warriors were caught in momentary disarray, and Turner inflicted mortal wounds on several as they fled toward their mounts.
The minutes that followed were a blur. He slashed at any moving body until a volley of rifle fire brought him down. He lay in the dirt, yards from his family, his own blood draining into the ground. The warriors, uncertain whether more Texians would return, took what provisions they could and disappeared into the hills.
Turner lay unconscious in the cabin, slipping in and out of awareness. That afternoon, a passing neighbor noticed the unusual quiet around the farm and investigated. According to the neighbor’s later account, Turner was found lying across the body of one of his attackers, his hands around the warrior’s throat, his knife driven between the man’s ribs to the hilt. Three more warriors lay nearby, all bearing terrible wounds from that same knife.
The neighbor saw faint signs of life in Turner, pulled him from the cabin, draped him over his horse, and brought him home. For weeks, Turner was plagued by fever and pain. With great care, he recovered physically, but his mind had been forever scarred. He could not bear the memories, could not endure long interaction with others.
He abandoned family and farming, took to living alone in the wilds of central Texas, and devoted himself to a single purpose: revenge. For years, Turner tracked parties of Comanche deep into their own territory, carrying on a one-man campaign of terror. His exploits built a formidable and frightening reputation among settlers, who regarded him with a mixture of gratitude, pity, and fear. Every night, he pondered the same question: was it better to fall asleep or to be kept awake by the memories?
Several years later, at his camp on Chicoete Creek, he still had no answer. The next day, he made his way to a nearby settlement for supplies. When he arrived, the settlement was abuzz. A group of Texas Rangers had just walked into town on foot; Comanche raiders had stolen all their horses that morning.
The Rangers were angry and embarrassed, determined to procure new mounts and exact revenge. A local rancher offered them any horse they liked from his herd, and after fifteen minutes of cautiously saddling the barely broken animals, they set off on the trail of the raiding party. Among them was twenty-three-year-old William Alexander Anderson Wallace, better known to history as Bigfoot Wallace. Though he would go on to a legendary career with the Rangers, at this time he was a nervous rookie, all too aware of the dangers of chasing Comanche with almost no experience.
As he considered the task ahead, he heard the sound of a rider approaching. The Rangers braced for an attack, then holstered their weapons and exchanged uneasy glances as a figure emerged on a raw-boned, ill-tempered horse. It was Jeff Turner. Wallace later described him as a tall, spare-built man dressed in buckskin hunting shirt and leggings, a skin cap on his head, a long old-fashioned flint-and-steel Kentucky rifle on his shoulder, and a tomahawk and scalping knife stuck in his belt.
His hair was matted and hung around his neck in great uncombed swaths, and his eyes peered out from among it as bright as a couple of mesquite coals. Wallace had seen the eyes of panthers, wolves, catamounts, and Mexican lions, but never eyes that glittered and flashed like those. Wallace asked if Turner was a stranger in these parts. Turner answered that he knew every watering hole between their location and the Rio Grande.
When Wallace asked if he was not afraid to travel alone through such dangerous territory, Turner grinned a sickly smile, his fingers clutching the handle of his tomahawk, his eyes dancing. No, he answered. The Indians are more afraid of me than I am of them. If they knew I was waylaying a particular trail, they would go forty miles out of their way to give me a wide berth.
But the trouble is, they never know where to find me. And besides, the best horse this side of the Brazos can’t come along old Pepper Pod when I want him to work in the lead. With that, Turner spurred his mount, causing the animal to rear in a maneuver that would have thrown all but the most skillful horseman. He told the Rangers that his family had been murdered by the Comanche years earlier and that he now spent his time in pursuit of perpetual retribution.
As he recalled the murder of his wife and children, his eyes grew wilder, his hands began to shake, and his manner became agitated. He said he had forty-six Comanche scalps hanging from the walls of his lodge on Chicoete Creek, and he intended to add far more. Turner offered his services to the novice Rangers in tracking and killing the raiding party. Many were unnerved by his mannerisms, but they agreed his skill and experience could prove vital.
And so the man known as Jeff Turner, the Indian hater, came to ride with the young Ranger who would become a legend, Bigfoot Wallace. The party headed west, with Turner’s tracking skills proving invaluable in the days that followed. After much hard riding, they came upon the camp of the raiding Comanche. There, many of the Rangers saw their first combat, and Jeff Turner forever solidified his reputation as a vicious fighter and a deeply troubled man.
Wallace would go on to an illustrious career with the Rangers. Turner would eventually meet his fate at the hands of his hated enemy, dying a hard death in a hard land. But that night, those were other stories for other times.