Well, dang, I've come across reference to Kit Carson and his men using Colt Paterson revolvers against an Indian attack on a wagon train on the Santa Fe trail in 1841, three years before Jack Hay's famous Sister's Creek fight, I'll see what I can google up.
Segueing back to the Rangers after posting at length on slavery, seems apt to refer to this, in Mike Cox's "Wearing the Cinco Peso"; this particular episode occurring in and around San Antonio in 1838, twenty years before Olmstead's (the guy quoted in previous posts) visit.
That Rangers captured runaway slaves seeking freedom in Mexico did not get remembered in most of the recollections from the 1840s. But slave owners usually paid bounties for their runaway property, San Antonio was the gateway to Mexico, and rangers excelled at tracking...
The following taken by the author (Cox) from a book by one Charles Webber, a writer who rode with the Rangers on and off from 1838 through 1842 (a concept sounding eerily reminiscent of Hunter S. Thompson's "The Hell's Angels").
Travelling from East Texas to San Antonio, Webber had thrown in with a Brazos River planter on his way to reclaim his chattel, a young black male who had been arrested "by the vigilant rangers" and "thrown into chains".
And now a description of the Rangers themselves. Considering there was already around 30,000 White folks in Texas by that time, the handful that rode with Hays on several of his missions mission were a tiny bunch indeed.
Not the only Rangers in Texas of course, but perhaps the "wildest" or "most aggressive" or whatever you want to call it.
Some time back in this thread there was a guy who had been at Plum Creek and one other affray with Comanches (I'll look him up again later). THAT guy went on to a career of ranching along the Nueces Strip, one of the most hazardous places on earth at that time.
The point being that even THAT guy, after Plum Creek, pronounced that he had been in all the fights he cared to be in and hoped it never happened again.
Hays' men OTOH, were the sort who undoubtedly went far out of their way to put themselves into deadly combat against long odds, and when not out seeking fights apparently spent an inordinate amount of time (from accounts) carousing in exceedingly rough cantinas, the kind of places where one could get gutted with a big knife in a heartbeat over a dispute at cards fer example.
Prob'ly should add here too that then, as now, San Antonio was noted for an abundance of pretty senoritas. In short; not a bad place for a young man burning the candle at both ends to hang out.
By the lights of the time, it weren't cheap to join Hay's group; a good horse, knife and good rifle being the bare-minimum prerequisites, equivalent to several month's pay for a basic laborer, the loss or ruin of some or all of this equipment being among the least of the expected hazards (John Caperton, a Ranger and a longtime associate of Hays, had it that the mortaility rate among the Rangers was about 50%).
In short, riding with Hays was both dangerous and expensive. Hays hisself came from wealthy, politically connected stock in Tenessee (he was Andrew Jackson's nephew), and ten years later in California he invested in real estate and rapidly became a very wealthy man. Hard to escape the impression that in his Texas period he was basically slumming it, sowing his wild oats as it were, in dangerous company.
Turns out that he was a natural at it, and commanded the alliegance and cooperation of some exceedingly rough and capable men, men who had already prevailed in deadly combat against other such men, and including representatives of all three races; Mexican, Indian and White.
What these sort of guys would be doing today is an interesting point to ponder: Spec Ops maybe, or maybe Outlaw Bikers, or more likely some of both, I dunno. The point being they weren't ordinary men, and no implied suggestion meant at all here that being an ordinary man was a bad or cowardly thing.
Noah Smithwick fer example; who rode with different Rangers on a number of occasions, and took to the field against Comanches in company with other sorts of Indians more than once, but who didn't SEEK combat for its own sake; in his memoirs he openly admits to being unsure if he ever actually killed anybody, "not even an Indian".
Back to Webber's account...
the two men retired to an inn on the market square. Inside they found eight or ten young men clad in a combination of Mexican and "ordinary American" dress". They wore sombreros, smoked Mexican cigarittas, and had pistols and knives tucked into their waistbands....
Webber and his new comrades-in-arms talked and drank until two o'clock in the morning...someone began pounding on the door of the inn. During the night, a messenger reported, the slave had escaped, making off with clothing, a rifle, food, a good horse, and a silver mounted saddle.
When the slave owner offered $50 for the return of thhe slave, and the merchant said he would throw in another $50 for thhe horse and saddle, two of Hays's rangers eagerly took the trail....
A this point Webber has Hays and his companions idling away a late morning, at one point Hays shooting one of Webber's own pistols at a crowing rooster, taking its head off at a range of thirty paces, a difficult feat even today with one's own pistol, so I dunno how much exaggeration was involved here.
Continuing....
...one of the rangers who had ridden out that morning came galloping back to town... he rode stiffly in the saddle, blood smearing the side of his buckskin jacket. Almost incoherent at first, he finally reported that he and the other ranger, hot on the slave's trail, had ridden into an ambush.
After taking the bullet in his side, he had become separated from his partner and did not know what had happened to him. Hays ordered his men to saddle up.
Gotta get ready for work, I'll finish up this episode later.
Birdwatcher
