DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. It was Christmas Eve, 1876 — the kind of night that ought to be quiet, ought to be warm with firelight and family. Sam Speer was out driving in horses near what is now Highway 290 in Kimble County, about eight-tenths of a mile west and two hundred yards south of where you're probably rolling right now.
Sam was seventeen years old. And a band of Indians found him there. They killed him.
That's the plain truth of it, and it deserves to be said plainly. His brother was close enough to matter — had a 50-caliber gun in hand — and that gun failed to fire. Failed to fire.
On Christmas Eve, 1876, in Kimble County, Texas, that was the difference between everything and nothing. The marker tells us this was the last Indian murder in Kimble County. Last one.
Which means that out on that cold December ground, with horses scattered and a brother standing there holding a gun that wouldn't speak, something ended. Not just a life — though Lord knows that's enough — but an era of that particular violence in that particular county. Sam Speer was seventeen years old, and he is buried in the North Llano Cemetery.
You ride past a lot of markers on a Texas road trip. Some of them, you want to slow down for.
What the marker says
(8/10 mi. W., Hwy. 290; and 200 yds. S.) On Dec. 24, 1876, a band of Indians killed Sam Speer, only 17 years of age, who was driving in horses near here. A 50-caliber gun his brother was using failed to fire. This was the last Indian murder in Kimble County. Speer is buried in the North Llano Cemetery. (1967)