gone to a nearby town to alert the Texas Rangers of their presence. Whether Sprague, himself, was implicated remains unknown. In the pre-dawn hours John Horse and Coacoochee woke their people and secretly departed the camp at Las Moras to make a last desperate dash to the Rio Grande. There they built makeshift rafts to ferry their people across. They were still hard at it, only midway across the river, when the Rangers and their allies abruptly arrived. But it was too late and the Seminole and their black allies, with the Kickapoo who had joined them, got across and made contact with officials in the Mexican state of Coahuila. There, in return for a pledge to fight all invaders and raiding parties from Texas, they were given land for their people and captaincies in the Mexican army on or about July 12, 1850. Later life John Horse liked to drink and at one point after crossing back into Texas he allowed himself to get too drunk and was taken captive by some local whites who may have known him or had a grudge against him. They offered to ransom him back to his people and Coacoochee collected the gold they demanded and sent it to them for John's life. When they opened the bag they found the gold soaked with blood. It was Coacoochee's message to them and they fled. For several years John Horse and Coacoochee rode side by side in fulfillment of their contract with the Mexican government but Coacoochee soon died from smallpox and most of the Seminole and Kickapoo who had followed him drifted away. John Horse remained with his people and became the settlement's de facto leader. After the American Civil War and United States emancipation of slaves, the US Army recruited many of the Black Seminoles from Mexico to serve in the border states as scouts. John Horse was getting too old for that kind of active service although he remained titular leader of his people, still captaining their fights against the various raiding parties which descended on Mexico from the north. In one famous incident he returned with his men to find that a large Indian raiding party had attacked his settlement and captured many of his people in retaliation for his actions against them in his capacity of providing border security. Leading all the able bodied men he could find (about