AMBUSHED ON THE PECOS - THE COURAGEOUS LIFE AND DEATH OF OLIVER LOVING.

In 1867, beneath a bluff a few miles from Carlsbad, New Mexico, two Texas cattlemen—one of them a trail-hardened 52-year-old, the other a 23-year-old roughneck—were fighting for their lives, surrounded by a marauding party of Comanches. If recorded at all, such an event would have been no more than a blip on the historical calendar of the American West, but this one—and its aftermath—turned out to be one of the most amazing examples of courage, loyalty and sheer grit in all the annals of the frontier.

- FREDERICK W. NOLAN

Oliver Loving spent 10 years on the trail, first driving cattle up the Shawnee Trail, then to Confederate forces along the Mississippi River in the Civil War and finally up his Goodnight-Loving Trail, which followed the Butterfield Overland Mail route, turning north at the Pecos, leading to Fort Sumner, New Mexico, and on to Denver, Colorado.- Courtesy Frederick Nolan

Kentucky-born Oliver Loving was a remarkable cattleman-entrepreneur who, in 1858, partnered with John Durkee in taking a herd from Palo Pinto County in Texas to Chicago, Illinois, the very first such drive on the historical record. In 1859, he blazed another trail to Denver via Pueblo, Colorado, and throughout the Civil War, he supplied the Confederacy with beef. In 1866, he teamed up with a 30-year-old cattleman named Charles Goodnight, well over 20 years his junior.

They put together a herd of 2,000 and blazed a new trail up the Pecos River into New Mexico and on to Denver, Colorado. The following year, they started another herd west over the same route, striking the Pecos during the latter part of June. About 100 miles upriver, Loving traveled ahead of the herd on horseback in order to bid on the contracts, which were to be let in July.

Because Loving was impatient, even reckless, Goodnight not only insisted he be accompanied by one of Goodnight’s top men, Arkansas-born herder Bill Wilson, who had already lost an arm sometime during his 20-odd years, but also made Loving promise to ride only by night. After only two nights, however, Loving—who detested night riding—talked Wilson into changing tactics so they could proceed by daylight.