July 24 and 26, 1857; Iraan, Texas: Regularly scheduled mail and passenger service between San Antonio, Texas, and San Diego, California, began in March 1857. First George H. Giddings, then James E. Birch received contracts to carry the mail. Both used the route called the Lower Military Road, which ran between Fort Lancaster and Fort Davis. The monthly express at this time consisted of an ambulance and a wagon, escorted by a detail from each of the two forts. From Fort Davis, Sgt. Ernest Schroeder led six men of the Eighth Infantry, and a Sergeant Libby headed a detail of six men of the First Infantry from Fort Lancaster.
On the evening of 24 July, the party was about twenty-five miles west of Lancaster, near Pecos Station, when about sixty Mescaleros appeared. The two sergeants ordered the teams to be unhitched and the men to take cover. Some Indians approached with a white flag, calling out in Spanish, but other warriors were hovering in a nearby arroyo. As Libby stepped forward, Schroeder warned him: "Look out, sergeant, for the sons of bitches--they will get the advantage of you if they can, and don't put yourself in danger."
At that moment, a bullet tore into Schroeder's chest and killed him. Libby assumed command and ordered the party to retreat to Fort Lancaster, leaving Schroeder's body behind. The soldiers fired as they fell back, keeping the Indians at bay, but the going was slow and treacherous. At nightfall the Indians gave up the fight, and the tired men trudged on to the fort, finally stumbling in at three o'clock in the morning.
At Fort Lancaster, Lt. Alexander M. Haskell, First Infantry, quickly organized a punitive expedition. Lt. Edward Hartz, who happened to be at Lancaster with forty-six men of the Eighth Infantry, by seniority took command. All told, eighty men, including some from Companies H and K, First Infantry, and Companies C, D, F, and H, Eighth Infantry, climbed aboard several wagons. The canvas wagon covers were drawn closed to disguise the expedition as a provision train. This ruse was one of the few strategies the infantry could use to lure mounted Indians in close enough for foot soldiers to fire on them. The penurious U.S. Congress deemed cavalry too expensive to fully fund, so frontier officers had to make the best of a bad situation.
The expedition set out immediately. About forty-five miles west of Fort Lancaster, about forty warriors swooped in for an attack, but upon seeing a commotion inside the wagons, they quickly pulled back out of range. Hartz ordered half of the men out of the wagons to advance as skirmishers. But when the Apaches set the prairie grass on fire in an attempt to burn the wagons, Hartz recalled the soldiers and pulled his vehicles back to a bare depression. The advancing flames split and bypassed the dip on each side. After the fire passed, Hartz ordered his men forward, but by that time the Apaches were gone.
No soldiers were killed in the encounter; Hartz reported killing two Indians. In his report, the lieutenant decried the army's lack of mounted troops in the region, claiming that "the Indians are in virtual possession of the road."
