DUANE
Duane's take
The official marker tells it plain, but let me give it the road it deserves. Ten miles southwest of where you're sitting right now — just off in that flat gray-sky country — something happened on November 8, 1874, that people have been talking about ever since. Lieutenant Frank D.
Baldwin was commanding two companies of United States troops, moving through Cheyenne territory, when he attacked a large band of Cheyenne Indians. And when the dust settled, two white girl captives had been rescued. That's the whole story in one breath.
But brother, that country out there doesn't let you breathe easy, and neither does that date — November in the Texas Panhandle, two companies of soldiers, one lieutenant with a name worth carving in stone, and somewhere in the middle of all that wind and grass and consequence, two girls who went home. November 8, 1874. Ten miles southwest.
The land remembers even when the road doesn't slow down to ask.
What the marker says
Ten miles southwest of here Lieutenant Frank D. Baldwin commanding two companies of United States troops attacked a large band of Cheyenne Indians and rescued two white girl captives, November 8, 1874.