When not on the trail with Captain Franchard and his Rangers, Pritchard lived a uniquely Spartan life. He kept to himself, took his meals alone in a small café, and slept in the loft above Fort Worth’s main livery stable. He eschewed the whiskey, gambling, and nightlife favored by his fellow Rangers when billeted in town. He practiced religiously with his revolvers each day, and during what little leisure time he found, took long, solo rides in the country on his faithful Morgan, Rusty.

The ten thousand dollars he’d planned to use to buy his bride a home, he deposited in the Wells Fargo Bank of Fort Worth, along with the several thousand dollars he’d accrued in reward money. Most of the bounties were of the dead-or-alive variety, with very few of Pritchard’s collections arriving in the alive category.

All of Pritchard’s fellow Rangers respected him, some feared him, and most understood and accepted his desire to be left alone. Though he avoided socializing, and repeatedly turned down offers to promote to the rank of sergeant, they nonetheless recognized him as their brother at arms. They also noticed the paternal manner with which Captain Franchard regarded his top Ranger.

When special orders were telegraphed from the capital in Austin, and Franchard began to select Rangers for a long-range, and particularly hazardous, assignment, there was no doubt in anyone’s mind that Smokin’ Joe Atherton would be the first man chosen.

Franchard and his Ranger detachment were destined for the New Mexico Territory, on orders direct from Governor Davis. They were to assist the territorial governor there, a useless Connecticut Yankee named Marsh Giddings, in the tracking and apprehension of one of the most violent bands of outlaws the increasingly lawless region had ever seen: the Stiles Gang.

Major Dalton Stiles was a Missourian, like Pritchard. Also, like Pritchard, he’d been a partisan guerrilla fighting on the side of the Confederacy as a member of a different company of Shelby’s Missouri Iron Brigade. That’s where their similarities ended.

Whereas Pritchard took life only when his own or others’ were threatened, Major Stiles and the freelance group of partisan rangers he commanded killed at whim. And like many such far-ranging guerrilla outfits during the war, acting alone and without restraint by lawful authority or a chain of command, they killed not only Union soldiers, but men, women, and children on both sides as the mood suited them.

They also robbed, raped, and burned. After the surrender, even against the murderously inhuman standards set during the Civil War, Stiles and his partisan rangers were considered bloodthirsty renegades by both the Union, and what was left of the Confederate, authorities. When Stiles and his men tried to rejoin General Shelby after he refused to surrender on his final, defiant, march into Mexico, they were turned away at gunpoint.