It was a beautiful spring afternoon, the nineteenth day of April, 1881. After the noon time meal, Mrs. McLaurin decided to have the boy working for them on their ranch on the Frio River, sixteen year old Allen Lease from Uvalde, do some planting in their garden. Her husband had left early that morning on horseback to go to the general store in Rio Frio to get supplies and medicine.

Their ranch home was up high enough to be out of the river bed so it wouldn’t be flooded. The garden was down a little ways toward the river.

Working in the garden, she had her three young children with her. The oldest being a girl named Maud. She was five years old. The names and ages of the two little boys are not known.

After a short while they heard a something going on at the ranch house. She thought it was wild hogs getting into the house. She asked Allen to go to the house and run the hogs off. Just as he reached the yard gate, a shot rang out and he fell. He was shot through the head.

Mrs. McLaurin ran to the gate in the fence around the garden. She was then shot through the hip. She told Maud to take her two little brothers and run into the woods. While she was trying to stand up to help Maud get her brothers over the fence, she was shot again knocking her down. Again she tried to help her children escape and was shot three more times. Shot five times she could no longer move, but she was still alive. Soon she told Maud that she was very thirsty.

Maud went to their house, which was being ransacked by a band of Indians, and got a dipper of water and took it to her mother. Surprisingly, the Indians did not kill her too. Her mother told her she had to go to the Fisher ranch down the river and tell them what had happened. Before leaving Maud went back to the house and got a pillow for her mother. She got the two little boys to lie down next to her mother and she left to go down the river to the Fisher Ranch.

She found the Fishers fishing in the river and told them what had happened. Mr. Fisher saddled his horse and left to spread the word of the Indian attack.

After destroying the house and everything in it, the Indians eventually left. All afternoon Mrs. McLaurin lay there in the garden with five burning bullet holes in her. Just after sundown, Mr. McLaurin returned home and found her in the garden with the two little boys snuggled up against her. She lived just long enough to tell him what had happened and to tell him good-bye.  

This painting is my first oil landscape painting that I have done since about 1972 or 1973. The scene is of the Frio River not very far from where the McLaurins lived.

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