b'o u rh i s t o r yearth tactic taken on Fort Brown left much of the city in rubble, after four tonswas that the Yankees would not harm Kings family if he were not present.of ammunition exploded. According to that most romantic Western storyteller, Tom Lea, the first light General Banks mission to stop the Confederate cotton trade through Southof daybreak the following morning brought clattering hooves and distant yells, Texas, the entire purpose of the Battle of Brownsville, included killing twofollowed by a gunshot that splintered a wooden wall and whined through the men: Confederate Major Santos Benavides, who was in charge of crossing theroom. The unarmed Francisco Alvarado threw the door open and shouted to cotton into Mexico, and Captain Richard King, who was receiving, storing andthe invaders, Dont fire on this house. There is family here! Having barely transporting the rebel contraband through the Wild Horse Desert. Union forc- uttered his last syllable, a ball smashed into him, and he fell dead on the es who dispatched up river were frustrated and failed at locating and killingboards of the porch floor. They then realized they had killed the wrong man.Major Benavides, the terrain as difficult to navigate as the predominant lan- The Union Armys raid on the Santa Gertrudis Ranchwas, first, an unbri-guage of the locals was to comprehend. The search for Captain Kings ranch ondled attempt to execute Captain Richard King without arrest, charges or trial. Santa Gertrudis Creek, however, was far less a challenge. The faithful Francisco Alvarado paid the ultimate price for his loyalty, and Three days before Christmas 1863, a lone rider showed up at the gate of thethe invaders took out their anger on the property itself, ransacking the ranch Kings Santa Gertrudis Ranch with a message from allies in Brownsvillethehouse inside and out. The soldiers stole everything from clothes and linens to Yankees are coming! horses and mules, but on Christmas Eve, after holding the ranch and its res-Richard King had to make one of the fateful decisions of his life. If he stayedidents for two days, they suddenly packed up and left. With the whereabouts on the ranch, he would be arrested and almost certainly executed. If he at- of Captain King unknown, Henrietta King, her four children and her father, tempted an evacuation with his wife and children, they would likely meetHiram Chamberlain, loaded into a coach on Christmas Day, 1863, and headed their deaths in the desert at the hands of Union forces or natives. Kings armednorth under the protection of four outriders.posse that he had assembled to provide security on the ranch was away han- Having sought refuge at the home of friends near the town of San Patricio, and dling another matteralthough armed resistance against the U.S. Army wouldwith her husband still on the run from the Union Army, Henriette King gave only end in their own deaths, anyway. birth to her fifth child, a son she named Robert E. Lee King, in honor of their King asked his most faithful ranch hand, Francisco Alvarado, one of the orig- family friend who was embroiled in the last battles of the rebellion. Captain inal vaqueros from Cruillas who had help build the camp a decade earlier, toKing carried on a nomadic existence along the Rio Grande and over the vast stay in the main house with his wife and children, in his absenceprotectingplains of the Wild Horse Desert, where he continued to transport bales of Con-his family as he would his own. Captain King and three riflemen loaded ra- federate cotton across South Texas and to market through Mexico.tions, guns and gold onto their mounts, and headed for unknown western des- After the war ended in April 1865, still a wanted man by the United States gov-tinations until the immediate threat from the Union subsided. The calculationernment, Richard King was living in exile in Matamoros, fully prepared and 82THE COASTAL BEND GUIDE TheCoastalBend.com'