working to free his son who had been enslaved by two Cherokee brothers on Cherokee land within Indian Territory.) While Duval was gone with Barnet, John Horse speedily concluded a pact with his old friend Coacoochee (disaffected because of his failure to be selected to replace Micanopy) and the two of them led an exodus from Wewoka, and Indian Territory in general, in the dead of night. They led over a hundred blacks including men, women and children, and at least as many fleeing Seminole, out of the lands they had been placed on by the government, heading south across the Red River into Texas. There they began a dash across that vast state which would take them nearly a year, eventually incurring pursuit by Duval's slavers (dispatched after he had returned and discovered their flight) and the Texas Rangers who had been authorized by the Texas governor to recapture and return them to their Seminole owners (and to Duval who had placed a bounty on each man, woman and child). From October 1849 until the summer of 1850, Horse and Coacoochee led the migration south, picking up a troop of disgruntled Kickapoo Indians along the way, and facing the war arrows of the Comanche who considered Coacoochee's presence in their territory an affront. The Comanche may have known of an agreement Coacoochee had concluded with representatives of the Mexican government to gain land on which to live once in Mexico in exchange for his service on the border repelling Texan and Comanche raiders. Racing to the border After a pitched battle with the Comanche, the fleeing party had to cross a desert region, meeting up with an old adversary, Major John T. Sprague, at the springs of Las Moras just north of the Mexican border. That encounter is described in Sprague's own journals which he compiled to document an expedition of supply wagons he led across southern Texas to resupply the outpost at today's El Paso (then the town of Franklin). Sprague had been a young captain back in Florida and had known both John Horse and Wild Cat there, having been involved in the latter's initial and then his final surrender. The three men sat into the night reminiscing and drinking from a bottle of liquor Sprague had supplied. But some time in the early morning hours the Indians learned that someone from the army camp had secretly