The last guard would call the camp early, so we generally had breakfast and were ready to move southward by daylight. We did not stop a single time for dinner on this return trip, just traveled at a steady gait all day long without dinner until nearly night. We all wondered why we marched the live-long day without dinner, but it was not until many years afterward when I became a Mason that I learned the reason for our forced marches. Major Jones was in line to be made Most Worshipful Grand Master of Masons in Texas and he had to be in Houston on the first Tuesday in December for the annual meeting of the Most Worshipful Grand Lodge of Texas. If there were other Masons in the company besides Major Jones I never knew it. At this time we had for commander of the escort, Lieutenant Benton. He was in bad health and rode most of the way back in one of the wagons. On arriving at the end of the line he tendered his resignation and was succeeded by Captain Neal Coldwell. The company camped for the winter on Elm Creek, three miles southwest of Old Frio Town. Captain Neal Coldwell was born in Dade County, Missouri, in May, 1844, and served gallantly throughout the Civil War in the Thirty-second Regiment, Texas Cavalry, commanded by Col. W.P. Woods. At the organization of the Frontier Battalion in 1874, Neal Coldwell was commissioned captain of Company "F." It is difficult, in a single sketch, to do Captain Coldwell justice or convey any correct idea of what he accomplished as a Texas Ranger. The station of Company "F," the southernmost company of the line, was the most unfavorable that could well be given him. His scouting grounds were the head of the Guadalupe, Nueces, Llanos, and Devil's Rivers--the roughest and most difficult part of South Texas in which to pursue Indians, yet he held them in check and finally drove them out of that part of the state. CHAPTER VII THE HORRELL-HIGGINS FEUD By the end of the year 1876 the Indians had been pretty well pushed back off the frontier, so that there were very few fights with the redskins after 1877. From the spring of 1877 onward the rangers were transformed into what might properly be called mounted state police, and accordingly turned their attention to ridding the frontier of the outlaws that infested nearly every part of Texas. During the winter of 1876-77 Captain Neal Coldwell broke up a band of thieves that was operating in the northwestern part of Atascosa County. I remember helping him capture a man named Wolf. He was wanted for murder, and we made several scouts after him before we succeeded in landing him safely in irons.