In the fall of 1840, on the bank of Chicoete Creek in South Texas, a large, bearded man sat alone by a small campfire. He could not sleep. He stared into the flames, gripping his knife, wondering which was worse: staying awake to relive his memories, or falling asleep to revisit them in nightmares. His name was Jeff Turner, and he had come from Kentucky in the 1830s with his wife and three young sons to build a new life in the Republic of Texas.
The decision to leave Kentucky had not come quickly. A stranger had once stopped at the Turner farm for a meal and a night’s lodging, and during the visit he spoke of Texas as a land of open country, rich farmland, and abundant game, free for any settler bold enough to claim it. Jeff Turner could not shake that idea. His family lived comfortably but meagerly, and he saw little hope of leaving his children any real wealth.
Texas, though, was known for more than prosperity. Everyone understood that the land did not truly belong to the Texians, nor to the Mexicans before them, nor the Spanish before that. For the better part of a century and a half, Texas had belonged to the Comanche. Reports of Comanche raids described families and entire villages wiped out, men killed, children taken or slain, and women carried off into slavery.
Despite the horror of these accounts, settlers kept pouring into the territory, driven by dreams of fortune and legacy. After months of persuasion, Turner convinced his reluctant wife that the risk was worth the reward. He sold the farm, and the family made the long journey south. After a few weeks near San Antonio, the Turners followed the Guadalupe River to a tributary not far from present-day Seguin, where they staked their claim.
Turner and his two eldest sons built a small cabin, and by early spring they had begun clearing brush to plant crops. Mrs. Turner, initially hesitant, warmed to their new home. The land was rich, the game plentiful, and the nearby creek beautiful.
It seemed the risk had been worth it. The Turner family had found their home in Texas, and they were happy. Then, one morning early in May, Jeff Turner set out with his rifle to hunt. Before leaving, he took in the scene: his three sons, all under ten, played near the stream with wooden hoops, and his wife worked in the vegetable garden, singing as she pruned the plants.
She cheerily bid him farewell. Turner’s heart was full as he walked down the creek and around a bend into a timbered thicket, a mile from home. The morning was quiet. Then the stillness was shattered by the percussive retort of a dozen or more rifles.
Turner broke into a dead run toward the homestead. Seconds later, he heard screams, a mix of triumphant war cries and the shrieks of his family. By the time he reached the bend, the screams had stopped, and only the war cries remained. Coming through the front door, he saw the bodies of his wife and youngest son, pale from loss of blood, the child clasped in his mother’s arms as she had tried to protect him.
Near the back door lay his two older sons, covered in blood and freshly scalped, having fought to the last despite their youth. Then the Comanche returned, dismounting and walking idly toward the cabin, seemingly unaware that Turner had come back. Blind with rage and grief, caring nothing for his own life, Turner sprang from the door and put a lead ball from his hunting rifle into the heart of one warrior, killing him instantly. Drawing his large hunting knife, he rushed upon the rest.
Caught off guard by the sudden death of their companion, the warriors fell into momentary disarray, which gave Turner time to wound several of them as they fled toward their mounts. The next minutes, by his own later account, were a blur. He slashed at any moving body until he was felled by a volley of Comanche rifle fire. He lay on the ground, his blood draining into the dirt while the warriors, unsure whether more Texians might return, gathered what they could and vanished into the hills.
A neighbor passing by that afternoon noticed the farm was uncharacteristically quiet. Investigating, he found a scene of devastation, with several mutilated bodies now including Comanche warriors. Turner was found lying across one of his attackers, his hands around the warrior’s throat and his knife driven between the man’s ribs to the hilt. Three other warriors lay nearby, all bearing horrific knife wounds.
The neighbor saw faint signs of life in Turner, managed to pull him from the cabin, drape him across his horse, and carry him to safety. There, his family and other neighbors tended to Turner’s wounds. Most thought he would die. He did not.
For weeks he suffered fever and pain, but slowly he recovered his physical health. His mind, however, was permanently scarred. Turner abandoned all notions of family and farming. He took to living alone in the wilds of central Texas, and the sole purpose of his life became revenge.
For years, he tracked parties of Comanche deep into their own territories, waging a one-man campaign of terror that built his fearsome reputation among settlers. Still, even those grateful for his actions regarded him with pity and fear. He was clearly traumatized and openly homicidal. Every night since he had regained consciousness, he pondered the same question he pondered now on the bank of Chicoete Creek: was it better to fall asleep or to be kept awake by the memories?
He still had no answer. The next day, Turner made his way to a nearby settlement for supplies, dreading the distance and the necessary interactions. But the settlement was in a stir. A group of Texas Rangers had just walked into town on foot, because that morning all their horses had been stolen by a raiding Comanche party.
They were angry and embarrassed, intent on procuring new mounts and giving chase. A local rancher had just brought in a fresh remuda of horses and told the rangers they could take whatever they needed. After fifteen minutes of cautiously saddling barely broken animals, the rangers were on the trail. Among them was twenty-three-year-old rookie 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 relative newcomer to combat with the Comanche, nervous and unsure. As the party rode, he noticed a rider trailing them. The rangers braced for an attack, then exchanged uneasy glances as Jeff Turner approached on his raw-boned horse. The young men had seen many colorful frontier characters, but none like this.
Wallace later recorded his impression: a tall, spare man in buckskin hunting shirt and leggings, with a skinning cap, a long Kentucky rifle on his shoulder, a tomahawk and scalping knife in his belt. His hair was matted and hung around his neck in uncombed swaths, and his eyes peered out bright as coals. Wallace asked if he was a stranger in those parts. Turner said he was not, and claimed to know every watering hole between there and the Rio Grande.
Asked if he was not afraid to travel alone through such dangerous country, Turner grinned a sickly smile, his fingers clutching his tomahawk, and answered that the Indians were more afraid of him than he was of them. If they knew he was laying a trail, they would go forty miles out of their way to avoid him. The trouble, he said, was that they never knew where to find him. Then he put spurs to his horse, rearing the animal in a maneuver that Wallace believed would have thrown all but the most skillful horsemen.
Turner 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 on the walls of his lodge on Chicoete Creek. Despite their unease, the rangers agreed that his skills and experience could prove vital in tracking the raiding party.
And so it was that the man known as Jeff Turner, the Indian hater, came to ride with Wallace and his men. The party headed west, with Turner’s tracking proving invaluable. After hard riding, they came upon the camp of the raiding Comanche. There, many of the young rangers saw their first combat, and Jeff Turner forever solidified his reputation as a vicious fighter and a deeply troubled man.
Wallace went on to an illustrious career with the Rangers, while Turner eventually met his fate at the hands of his hated enemy, dying a hard death in a hard land.