Three of the four MoH winners in that little cemetery, won them in the same action. They used to award Medals of Honor more liberally back then. For a period of time the White Officer in charge of the Black Seminoles was a twice-wounded Battle of Gettysburg veteran named Lt. John Latham Bullis, a lot more famous back then, they even named Camp Bullis after him.
Bullis and three scouts were out on patrol when they located a camp of twenty-five Comanches returning from Mexico with a herd of stolen horses.
Bullis decided to try and bluff them into running off so as to recover the horses, the four of them opening fire from a hillside above the camp. However the Comanches, well armed, quickly realize the ruse and began to flank them.
Bullis and the scouts fled back to their horses to escape, but in the confusion Bullis lost his horse, being left behind afoot. The scouts turned and charged back under heavy fire, the one lifting Bullis up behind him on his horse having the stock of his carbine shattered and a rein cut by gunfire.
The fourth Medal of Honor winner was a different fish entirely; Adam Payne, tall and outspoken, went to war in a buffalo headdress. Ranald McKenzie awarded Payne a MoH for “habitual boldness” and for “invaluable service” during the Palo Duro campaign.
One time Payne and some Creek scouts were out ahead of McKenzies’ column tracking a Comanche band until after dark. First light revealed the Comanches had likewise made a cold camp not far away, said Comanches charging upon the scouts.
One Creek scout lost his horse, Payne gave him his own and then knocked one Comanche horse down with the butt of his rifle, shot another Comanche off his horse and made his escape on that horse.
Payne left the service, got in a brawl in a Brownsville saloon and killed a soldier with a knife. The Sheriff of Brackettsville (outside of Ft Clark) and a deputy, Clarence Windus, attempted to arrest Payne in a Brackettsville saloon but backed down despite the two against one odds as Payne was armed with a revolver and had his rifle on the bar, Payne brazenly challenging them to either “have a drink or give him the door”.
Windus shot and killed Payne in the early hours of the morning New Year’s Day 1877,stepped out of the darkness at a New Year’s celebration and gave him both barrels of a shotgun point blank in the back, Payne being considered too formidable an adversary to apprehend any other way.
Payne was the cousin and close companion of the sergeant who had lifted Bullis onto his horse during that earlier skirmish, they are buried right next to each other in that cemetery.
Clarence Windus had previously been awarded a MoH serving with the cavalry against the Kiowa.
The shooting of Adam Payne was the only time in our history that one MoH winner killed another.
