DUANE
Duane's take
Here's my telling of what the official marker says about the Onion Creek Indian Fight, out of McCulloch County, Texas. Now, some stories sound like they ought to be made up. This one's real.
One night in 1866, five men rode out from Richland Springs — about twenty-five miles northeast of where you're sittin' right now — and they came here, to Onion Creek, with a purpose. Somewhere nearby, a camp of Indians had horses that didn't belong to them. And those five men had come to take them back.
They did it. Got the horses. But nothing about that night was clean or easy.
Because somewhere in that darkness, a metal arrow found a man named Lafferty. And here's where the story gets the kind of specific that makes you slow down and listen: that arrow hit him, and it slid — halfway around his skull. Halfway.
Around. His skull. Now, there was no hospital out on Onion Creek in 1866.
There was no surgeon riding up on a white horse. What there was, was a pocket knife. And somebody — steady-handed as anybody had a right to be under those circumstances — cut that arrow out.
And Lafferty survived. The marker doesn't dwell on that, just states it plain, the way Texans sometimes do with the most extraordinary things. Man got a metal arrow halfway around his skull, somebody cut it out with a pocket knife, and he lived to tell it.
About thirty yards north of this marker, there's a grave. An Indian casualty from that same night. The fight had consequences on both sides, and the ground here holds at least one of them still.
Five men. One night. Stolen horses recovered.
One man with an arrow halfway around his skull and a pocket knife for a surgeon. And somewhere just north of here, a grave that's been waiting in the soil since 1866. Some nights out on the Texas plains leave a mark on the land itself.
This one did.
What the marker says
One night in 1866, five men from Richland Springs (about 25 mi. NE) recovered stolen horses from Indians camped near here. A metal arrow hit a Mr. Lafferty, slid halfway around his skull, was cut out with a pocket knife, and Lafferty survived. The grave of an Indian casualty is about 30 yards north. (1973)