As more regiments were formed, a growing scarcity of firearms caused grave concern. A few units solved this difficulty by demanding that the enlistees secure weapons on their own initiative. By using this system Captain Strobel’s Company of Terry’s Texas Rangers could boast that each of its men carried a double barrel shotgun, a six-shooter, and an issued “Texas tooth-pick.” This last item was described as a “two edged pointed knife, 24 inches long, and weighing about three pounds, and a man using it could cut another man’s head off and not half try.” Most companies, however, relied on the state to furnish arms. By summer, 1861, Texas had issued almost all of the weapons that it owned.[23] Because of the increasing scarcity of guns, Governor Clark adopted a policy of keeping the remaining state-owned weapons within the confines of Texas. Future troops mustered into Confederate service would have to draw arms from the Richmond government. Clark also sent agents to Mexico, Cuba, and Europe in a near fruitless effort to make contracts for the purchase of foreign guns. The state likewise encouraged the establishment of local arms factories and powder plants.[24] Such things as military clothing, blankets, and messing equipment would have to come from the penitentiary cloth mills at Huntsville, from private donations through county soldiers’ relief agencies, through trade with Mexico, or from Confederate supply depots.[25] By fall, 1861, the security of Texas was being jeopardized by Indian depredations along the frontier, by danger of invasions from the north or by way of the coast, and by the possibility of violence along the Mexican border. Repeated dispatches received in Austin reported fierce Indian raids centering in the Brown-Gillespie County area. Also, rumors had it that the Union was preparing a force in Missouri that would momentarily undertake an invasion into Texas. Proof of the United States forces having overrun Missouri was seen when pro-secessionist Governor C. F. Jackson and Lieutenant Governor T. C. Reynolds arrived with the Seal of the State of Missouri and set up a temporary government at Marshall, Texas. Governor Clark took so seriously the threat of a Union thrust into Texas that he expressed his concern to President Jefferson Davis and declared that his state stood ready to assemble 4,000 cavalrymen if it became necessary to block such a move on the part of the enemy. In the same letter to Richmond, Clark indicated a fear that West Texas might be faced with a Union column coming through New Mexico. To defend this approach and to safeguard the frontier from further Indian raids, legislative approval was secured to organize a Frontier Regiment of ten companies.[26]