The overland stage company kept a station at this abandoned frontier post, situated on the north bank of the Rio Grande, eighty or ninety miles east of El Paso, Texas. On August 9, 1880, Ed Walde, the stage driver, started out on his drive with General Byrnes occupying the rear seat of the stage coach. The stage, drawn by two fast running little Spanish mules, passed down the valley and entered the canyon, a very box-like pass with high mountains on either side,--an ideal place for an Indian ambuscade. Walde had driven partly through this pass when, around a short bend in the road, he came suddenly upon old Victorio and his band of one hundred warriors. The Indian advance guard fired on the coach immediately, and at the first volley General Byrnes was fatally wounded, a large caliber bullet striking him in the breast and a second passing through his thigh. Walde turned his team as quickly as he could and made a lightning run back to the stage stand with the general's body hanging partly out of the stage. The Apaches followed the stage for four or five miles trying to get ahead of it, but the little mules made time and beat them into the shelter of the station's adobe walls. It was a miracle that Walde, sitting on the front seat, escaped without a scratch and both of the mules unharmed. At old Fort Quitman I examined the little canvas-topped stage and found it literally shot to pieces. I noticed where a bullet had glanced along the white canvas, leaving a blue mark a foot long before it passed through the top. Three of the spokes of the wheels were shot in two and, as well as I remember, there were fifteen or twenty bullet marks on and through the stage. Lieutenant Baylor and his rangers buried General Byrnes near old Fort Quitman and fired a volley over his grave. Subsequently Walde joined Lieutenant Baylor's command and made an excellent ranger. It was from him that I obtained the particulars of the fight that resulted in the general's death. En route the Apaches raided Jesus Cota's ranch, killed his herder and drove off one hundred and forty head of cattle. In crossing the river forty of the animals mired in the quicksands. The heartless Indians thereupon pounced upon the unfortunate cattle and cut chunks of flesh out of their living bodies. Many of the mutilated animals were still alive when we found them. The redskins, with a freakish sense of humor, perpetrated a grim joke on the murdered herder. He was rendering out some tallow when surprised and killed, so the murderers rammed his head into the melted tallow to make him a greaser! After the fight at Quitman, Victorio and his band crossed into Mexico and there found temporary safety, as the United States troops were not permitted to enter that country in pursuit of Indians, though negotiations to permit such pursuit of Indians were even then pending between the two governments. Alone, we were no match for Victorio's hundred braves, so we returned to our camp.