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Now puzzling out the time frame:

Robert Hall, out looking for the Comanches in the early morning hours of the 12th, states that he found them at first light, already on the march, seven miles south of Plum Creek. At which time we can confidently presume that he and his companion hurried back to report just as fast as their horses could carry them.

Again, perhaps someone better versed with the performance of horses will chime in, but I'm gonna ballpark at least thirty minutes for those two horses, probably already ridden hard over the previous days, to bear their riders seven miles. Indeed, of the condition of the horses in Matthew Caldwell's force the evening prior to this fight John Henry Brown has written...

Men and horses were greatly jaded, but the horses had to eat while the men slept.

My own guess is that the condition of the Texans' mounts that morning would have a major effect on the subsequent events of the fight.

Robert Hall wrote that Burleson's force was already present on the field when he reported back. Moore (the author of the "Savage Frontier" series on which my narrative is mostly based) has it that Burleson was still " within three or four miles" at this point. Here's Moore's narrative of the point when Huston was just about to attack.

Another stroke of luck arrived in the form of two advance riders from another Texan volunteer party... with the news that Colonel Edward Burleson was right behind them. He had gathered
eighty-seven volunteers and thirteen Tonkawa Indians... Burleson's men were within three or four miles, adavancing at a gallop.

What the experience of Burleson's men had been overnight is recounted by one John Holland Jenkins, a youth of seventeen at the time....

Every now and then we met runners, who were sent to bid Burleson to come on. We rode until midnight, then halted to rest our horses. Very early the next morning we were again on the warpath, still meeting runners at regular intervals beseching us to hurry.

From which it may be inferred that the horses of Burleson's party were also fairly played out by the time they finally made it to Plum Creek.

Anyhow... a couple of pics. First the present Colorado at Bastrop, the location of the historic crossing point, looking here from the east bank, from which four years prior to these events the Texan rear guard had spied Santa Anna's forces advancing during the runaway scrape. Bastrop is where Burleson mashalled his force before setting out for Plum Creek.




And this from modern FM 20 along the thirty-mile stretch between Bastrop and Isham Good's cabin, this ten miles above Plum Creek, perhaps Burleson's force rested briefly on the trail somewhere near here. I believe those medium-sized trees out in the field are post oaks. You can ID winter trees by their shape pretty easy, I just dont live in a post oak zone to know for sure.



Back to the time line. Thirty minutes or so after first light Robert Hall and John Baker got back to report to Caldwell. By that time we may presume that at least a few of Burleson's men were present but that Huston had elected to wait.

I'm gonna float a guess that the advance guard of the Comanches had covered half of the seven miles out that they had been when Hall and Baker first saw them. Perhaps three or four miles out as Hall was reporting his find.

Hall is dispatched again with five companions, presumably riding more or less south in the direction of the Comanches. I'm gonna estimate that the Comanches were probably less than two miles out when Hall found them again, saw the killing of a Texan private from another small group of Texans, and warned his own party to stay out at rifle distance from the Comanches. The advance guard may have been right on Plum Creek by that time.

How long Huston remained in place waiting for Burleson to come up is unknown. Long enough for Hall to ride back south, find the Comanches again and then screen them for two miles before Huston's combined force came on. I'm going to guess at least thirty minutes was lost before Burleson's force was in place on the field and dispositions of forces had been made, perhaps longer.

During that interval the Comanche main force, hurring from left to right across their front, crossed Plum Creek proper and hurried up the Clear Fork, the screening force of warriors coming within sight of those waiting for Burleson to come up. Of this interval, John Henry Brown (who had arrived the nght before with Caldwell) writes...

During this delay we had a full view of the Indians passing diagonally across our front, about a mile distant. They were singing and gyrating in various grotesque ways, evidencing their great triumph, and utterly oblivious of danger. Up to this time they had lost but one warrior, at the Casa Blanca.

What I'm guessing here is that the large party of Comanche warriors "singing and gyrating in various grotesque ways" were purposefully hamming it up, acting as decoys to hold the Texan's attention, laying down a visual smokescreen while the majority of the women, children, horses and laden mules hurried by in THEIR rear, unseen by the main body of Texans.

As for their losing "but one warrior, at the Casa Blanca", those Texans actually AT that intitial skirmish east of Victoria three days earlier reported shooting a number of Comanches out of their saddles. Certainly these particular Comanches were no stranger to the capabilities of Texans with rifles, having also experienced them when attempting a second attack on Victoria on the seventh.

In a more general sense, skilled marksmen from among the Eastern tribes had by 1840 been using rifles all across the Plains for decades, and we know that there were also riflemen among the Comanches at Plum Creek (whether Comanche, some other tribe, or Mexican we cannot tell, doesn't really matter in this context).

Certainly their respect for the capability of the rifle was such that they never paused to annihalate or otherwise drive away Tumlinson's hundred riflemen who had been hovering behind them for the previous three days.

In any event, by the time Huston moved out the Comanches were already ahead of them, the golden opportunity to catch them head-on had slipped by, and the Texans would be reduced to pursuing a retreating foe, a foe that was for the most part better-mounted.

Birdwatcher