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 Some of her neighbors suspected that she was (gasp) a horse thief, and did
the dastardly deed of stealing stock from her friends. Her method
allegedly began with a friendly visit and, while
Sally talked amiably with
her host, her vaqueros were casing the ranch, cutting barbed wire and
running the neighbor's horses off.
Indians took the fall for this
treachery. Some even said bands of Comanche were on Sally's payroll, so
she got the stolen horses every which way she could, and they were
promptly given her Bow and Arrow brand, though some sources have her brand
as Circle S. It was also said that her brands might not stand close
inspection. However, entered in the Records of Marks and Brands of
DeWitt's Colony at Gonzales on September 25, 1833, we find the following:
Sarah Newman wife of Jesse Robinson requests to have her stock mark and
brand recorded which she says is as follows, Ear mark a swallowfork in the
left and an underslope in the right and her brand the letters, J N which
she declares to be her true mark and brand and that she hath no other.
Sarah (herXmark) Newman [Records of Marks and Brands in the District of
Gonzales for 1829, DeWitt's Colony" (County Clerk's Office). Gonzales,
Texas, p. 51.]
(The instrument makes clear that the brand is hers and appears on her
livestock. Since her father died only two-and-a-half years before that
time, it is obvious that the brand, her father's initials, as well as the
cattle which bore it, was hers by inheritance).
Sally
began to make the dangerous journey across the border into Mexico for
horses. Usually alone, carrying large sums of gold in a nosebag hanging
over her saddle horn, she bought herds of wild mustangs, which she
frequently sold in New Orleans.
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Most women would not have dared to do anything so fraught with peril, but
Sally was not most women. She encountered a problem only once, in the
territory of Cortina, when a
bandit and self-proclaimed governor jailed her for a few days.
Sally
seemed to regard it as a sort of vacation and just sat and waited for her
vaqueros to arrive.
When the
Civil War broke out,
Sally saw a surefire way to make even more
money:
Texas cotton, sorely needed by European manufacturers, through
Mexico to Europe and, on the way back, arms and other military supplies
from Europe through Mexico to the south by rail. The Camino Real north
from Matamoros to Alleyton where the Houston railroad line ended, formed
what became known as The Cotton Road. Banquete was the midway point.
When Sally was traversing The Cotton Road with her teamsters, her favorite
outfit was a buckskin shirt, jacket and chibarros, long rawhide or coarse
cotton bloomers tied at the ankles with drawstrings. During winter, she
often wore chibarros of bright red flannel. Her grandchildren later
remembered that she sometimes "sported a fancy wrap-around riding skirt.
Her two ever-present French pistols were always hidden in her skirt when
she wasn't sporting her holstered six-shooters."
Unlike Lottie Deno, Sally was no fashion figure. Old newspapers report her
as dressing solely in rawhide bloomers, making it easier for her to ride
astride Redbuck, like a man. Others say she rode sidesaddle and wore a
long skirt or dress and a bonnet. John Warren Hunter wrote "I met Sally at
Rancho Las Animas near Brownsville ... Superbly mounted, wearing a black
dress and sunbonnet, sitting as erect as a cavalry officer, with a
six-shooter hanging at her belt, complexion once fair but now swarthy from
exposure to the sun and weather, with steel-blue eyes that seemed to
penetrate the innermost recesses of the soul -- this in brief is a hasty
outline of my visitor -- Sally Skull!"
 Sally spoke fluent Spanish, had a fondness for Mexicans, and hired them to
work in her business of freighting cotton by wagon train to Mexico in
exchange for guns, ammunition, medicines, coffee, shoes, clothing, and
other goods vital to the Confederacy. She had a reputation of ruthlessness
and of ruling the armed trail hands with the crack of her whip, fueled by
a hasty and nasty temper. Nonetheless, the trail hands (teamsters)
developed a healthy respect for such a woman who knew so many cuss words,
the type of words that would "scald the hide off a dog." They were also
impressed with her prowess with pistols. Her expert cussing also impressed
a preacher Sally met on the trail.
Sally was hauling freight to Mexico when she came upon the preacher who
had inadvertently mired himself and his two-horse buggy down in the muddy
road. All he could do was shake the lines up and down on the horses'
backs, to no avail. They refused to pull. Suddenly
Sally rode forward and
yelled loudly as only she could, "Get the hell out of there you sons of
bitches!!! Get the hell out!!!" whereupon the horses bolted, freeing
themselves, the buggy and the preacher. They were seen running on down the
road. The preacher managed to get himself and the buggy entrapped in the
muck a second time, ran back to get Sally, and said, "Lady, will you
please come and speak to my horses again?"
Sally's magnificent Spanish pony named Redbuck, was almost as famous as
she was. Gifted with legendary endurance, a necessary quality for a horse
who wanted to please his tempestuous owner, Redbuck was blanketed in
bright colors and ridden under a fine Mexican silver-trimmed saddle. Sally
failed to understand that she had passed on her affection for Redbuck to
her daughter, who felt the same way about a pet dog. Nancy had been sent
off to New Orleans to become a lady, and it was said that Nancy became so
refined that she valued her dog above people. One day when Sally was
visiting, she became enraged when the dog tried to bite her, drew her gun
and blew him to smithereens. Nancy never spoke to her mother again.
Sally was at her "peak of notoriety" when she met and married husband #5,
a man half her age named Christoph Hordsdorff, nicknamed "Horse Trough."
One old-timer who knew 21-year-old Horse Trough described him as being
"... not much good, mostly just stood around."
As the story goes, Horse Trough and
Sally rode out of town together one
day. Only one rode back.
Horse Trough returned alone to Banquete. "She simply disappeared," was all
he said, which probably aroused more gossip than if he had admitted
outright that he plugged her. Speculation abounded that he "blew off the
top of her head with a shotgun" for the gold in her saddlebag. Let's face
it though, if he was 21 to her 43, and good-looking enough to just have to
"stand around," chances are she would've willingly handed the gold over.
A drifter later reported that as he was traveling over the prairie, he
came across the body of a woman buried in a shallow grave. He first
spotted it when he saw a boot sticking out of the ground, with only
circling buzzards marking the spot. There was no evidence that the boot
was on a foot connected to the body of
Sally Skull. Presumably, Horse
Trough inherited her entire estate.
What if he didn't do old Sally in after all? Records indicate that she
faced perjury charges and was defendant in a lawsuit brought by Jose Maria
Garcia. Even though the San Patricio County Courthouse burned down and
official reports on the case were lost forever, one form relating to the
lawsuit survived. Written across the bottom was the mysterious notation
"death of Defendant suggested."
The infamous Sally Skull was portrayed in the 1989 mini-series, "Lonesome
Dove" by O-Lan Jones.
In 1964 a historical marker in her honor was erected two miles north of
Refugio,
Texas, at the intersection of U.S. Highway 138 and State Highway
202. It reads:
SALLY
SCULL
Woman rancher, horse
trader, champion "Cusser." Ranched NW of here. In
Civil War
Texas, Sally Scull (or Skull) freight wagons took cotton to
Mexico to swap for guns, ammunition,
medicines, coffee, shoes, clothing and other goods vital to the
Confederacy.
Dressed in trousers, Mrs. Scull bossed armed employees. Was sure shot with
the rifle, carried on her saddle or the two pistols strapped to her waist.
Of good family, she had children cared for in New Orleans school. Often
visited them. Loved dancing. Yet during the war, did extremely hazardous
"man's work." |
