Las Cuevas War

Battle

On November 20, McNelly and his rangers crossed into Mexico. They crept on foot through brush and scrub oak toward the Rincon de Cucharras outpost on the Las Cuevas ranch, where Juan Flores Salinas, the local rural guard leader, held his stronghold. A firefight broke out between the rangers and roughly four hundred of Salinas’s men. Greatly outnumbered and worried that mounted Mexicans would cut off his escape, McNelly pulled his men back to the river to hold their ground.

On the Texas side, about half of the U.S. Army’s 24th Infantry and 8th Cavalry, led by Lieutenant Colonel James F. Randlett, had taken position. During the chaotic fight that followed, the army opened fire with a Gatling gun, killing Juan Salinas, the Alcalde of Camargo, along with eighty of his bandits on the riverbank. After Salinas fell, the militia fell back to regroup, but McNelly refused to give up his demand for the stolen cattle. Later that afternoon, Major A. J. Alexander arrived from Fort Ringgold carrying a message from Colonel Potter at Fort Brown.

The message ordered McNelly to return to the U.S. side and warned that he would receive no support while on Mexican soil. McNelly’s reply was short: “The answer is no.” At sunset, another order came, this time from the Secretary of War, again demanding McNelly return and denying him any aid. Within a minute, McNelly wrote his famous response: “I shall remain in Mexico with my rangers and cross back at my discretion. Give my compliments to the Secretary of War and tell him and his United States soldiers to go to hell.”