Bill O’Neal
Elfrego Baca was an Hispanic New Mexican teenager who, in 1884, tired of prejudice, pinned on a mail order deputy’s badge and “arrested” a cowboy racist. There ensued the “miracle of the jacal” gunfight, whereby Baca single-handedly fought 80 cowboys for thirty-three hours.
October 1884. Frisco. New Mexico. A cowboy named McCarty was shooting up the town, concentrating his drunken efforts upon making the Mexican populace “dance” by firing at their feet. The nineteen-year-old Baca cockily pinned on his mail-order badge, pulled out his guns, and “arrested” McCarty. He then marched McCarty to the Middle Plaza, intending to leave at daylight for the county seat at Socorro, but several punchers led by McCarty’s foreman, a man named Perham, confronted him and demanded that he release their friend. Baca waved his revolvers and retorted that he would give them until the count of three to leave town. He quickly counted. “One, two, three,” and began firing. One cowboy took a slug in the knee, and Perham’s horse reared and fell, fatally injuring the foreman.
In the morning a group of citizens led by J. H. Cook approached Baca and persuaded him to turn over his “prisoner” to the local justice of the peace. The justice fined McCarty five dollars, and a satisfied Baca turned to leave. But outside he was met by eighty cowboys led by Tom Slaughter, owner of the ranch for which Perham and McCarty worked. A shot was fired, and Baca ducked into an alley. He sprinted into a nearby jacal, a tiny building inhabited by a woman and two children, and pushed them outside just as rancher Jim Herne rushed the dwelling on foot, brandishing a rifle. Baca pumped two bullets into Herne, and the rancher collapsed, mortally wounded.
Herne’s body was dragged away, and the cowboys began to pour systematic volleys into the jacal. The flimsy building was constructed only of posts and mud, but the floor was dug out about eighteen inches below ground level, and Baca crouched low as bullets whipped over his head. From time to time he managed to shoot back, and his aim was so deadly that his adversaries tied ropes between nearby buildings and draped blankets over them so that they could walk about in comparative safety. Baca placed a plaster replica of a saint in a window and dropped his hat on top of it to provide an alternate target.
About dusk a volley succeeded in collapsing part of the roof, and Baca was buried under the rubble, managing to dig himself out only after two hours of effort. At midnight a stick of dynamite demolished half the building, but Baca survived in a far corner. At dawn he coolly began to cook breakfast, to the delight of a large group of Mexicans who had arrived to cheer him. One cowboy managed to close in behind a cast-iron shield made from a cookstove, but Baca sent him scampering away by grazing him on the skull.
It was claimed that more than four thousand bullets were fired into the little jacal, that the door had 367 holes in it, and that a broom handle had been hit eight times. But Baca fought grimly on, finally killing four men and wounding several others. At last Cook, followed by a deputy sheriff named Ross and Francisquito Naranjo approached the ruined jacal and persuaded Baca to come out. He emerged at 6:00 P.M. after thirty-three hours under siege, having agreed to let the cowboys take him under custody to Socorro, but insisting that he be allowed to keep his guns. When they set out, the cowboys rode in the lead, followed by a buckboard, driven by Ross, in the rear of which Baca was seated with his guns alertly trained on his captors. Baca was tried twice for murder, but won acquittal on both occasions.