DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the marker tells it, and I'm gonna do it justice. December of 1874. West Texas.
And Colonel Ranald S. Mackenzie is out here in Lynn County with two companies of United States 4th Cavalry, hunting for straggling Indians during the last weeks of a campaign to confine tribes to reservations. Now, that campaign had already been hard.
But the land, and the sky — they weren't done with these men yet. On December 4th, right around this very spot where you're standing or rolling past, a snowstorm overtook them. Not the kind you see coming and maybe get ahead of.
Overtook them. That word is doing real work. They were caught.
And when the storm had its say, Mackenzie's men had no wood. No water. No grass for the horses.
Nothing but cold and dark and the sound of the wind doing what West Texas wind does when it has a point to prove. They spent the night here. Right here.
And the men who lived through it — soldiers who had ridden hard country all across the Southwest — they called it the most miserable night of their duty in that entire region. Not one night among many hard ones. The most miserable.
From men who would know. Several horses froze to death before morning. Now, here's the thing about December 5th.
The sun came back up, the way it does regardless of what you've been through, and Mackenzie pushed his troops forward. They reached Tahoka Lake, where they found shelter under a cliff. One day.
One day between the most miserable night of their lives and solid ground beneath a bluff. The marker doesn't editorialize much beyond that, and honestly, it doesn't need to. Some nights just are what they are.
And this ground right here remembers one of them.
What the marker says
At or near this spot, Colonel Ranald S. Mackenzie, with two companies of United States 4th Cavalry, was overtaken on Dec. 4, 1874, by a snowstorm. Forced to spend the night here without wood or water, or grass for the horses, troops called this the most miserable night of their duty in the Southwest. Several horses froze to death. MacKenzie was hunting here for straggling Indians, during last weeks of 1874 campaign to confine tribes to reservations. On Dec. 5 his troops reached Tahoka Lake, where they found shelter under a cliff. (1967)