Down below, at the creek, he counted over thirty armed men. The group was composed of a mix of white outlaws, Mexican bandits, and Comanche warriors. He noted a couple of Henry rifles and a few Spencer repeaters, but most were armed with single-shot, trapdoor Springfields left over from the war.

Pritchard knew the odds he and his fellow Rangers faced were fair, at best. He was with a company of seventeen other Texas Rangers, each one armed with a Henry repeating rifle and at least two revolvers. They had the sun at their backs, and for now, at least, the element of surprise. He wasn’t overly concerned. Pritchard had faced worse odds, many times before.

Pritchard and the Clemson brothers left Kansas in late November 1863, bound for Texas. They brought with them a string of fifty-three top-quality Confederate horses, formerly belonging to B Company, 5th Regiment, of Shelby’s Iron Brigade. They also had over two thousand dollars in Union cash and gold taken from the bodies of Captain Witherspoon and his partisan guerrillas.

They sold the animals in Fort Worth, in January of 1864, to a horse buyer for the Union army, for $160 per head. By Texas standards, that made them rich. They then rode west in search of available ranch land, and found it near a lake in Taylor County, just south of what would someday become Abilene. Pritchard, Ditch, and Paul Clemson bought twenty thousand acres of Texas dirt for five thousand dollars. They called the property the SD&P Ranch.

They spent the remainder of the winter and the spring of 1864 building a ranch house, erecting a corral, digging a well, and preparing for the coming summer. When it arrived, they rode into Fort Worth and bought four hundred head of cattle. It took Pritchard, Ditch, and Paul almost two weeks to herd them back to the ranch.

By summer’s end, rustlers and the Comanche had depleted their herd by a third. The SD&P’s cattle were too spread out for only three watchmen, and the thieves too persistent. Despite their constant patrols and endless vigilance, their livestock continued to dwindle.

It was on a hot September afternoon when Pritchard and Paul finally met up with one of the crews of cattle thieves who’d been plaguing them. The rustlers had become so brazen, since facing no challenge, that they’d moved to within only a few miles of the ranch house to ply their illicit trade.

Ditch had remained at the house to do chores, and Pritchard and Paul had ridden out to check the stock. They smelled smoke and followed the scent. When they crested a shallow rise, they found five men over a campfire altering the SD&P brand on some of their cows to BB&B.

The rustlers went for their pistols. Pritchard spurred Rusty and charged. He shot two of them down with his own pistols before Paul even got his carbine clear of its saddle scabbard.