Celia Hayes – The Accidental Texan

Special frosted shortbread cookies from the Bear Moon Bakery in Boerne

We spent all day Sunday at the Sisterdale Dance Hall and Opera House, where the Kendall County Historical Commission had set up an event to observe the 170th anniversary of Jack Hays’ big fight near where the old trail between San Antonio and the deserted San Saba presidio and mission crosses the Guadalupe. This was an event gone down in song and story, for Jack Hays and his fourteen Rangers were matched against sixty to eighty Comanche warriors looking for glory, scalps and the odd bit of good horseflesh. The Rangers were armed with Colt’s patent revolving pistols, so what would have been a very one-sided fight turned into a vicious slugging match to the Ranger’s clear advantage. With a few years of that fight, Sisterdale was settled by Germans brought over by the Mainzer Adelsverein, and within a few years after that, the line of the frontier had moved north and west … and within a few more years after that, the remnant of the fighting Comanche had moved to a reservation in Oklahoma, and the Hill Country eventually became the charming, and bucolically Texan cross between Napa-Sonoma-Mendicino and the English Lake Country that it is now.

Tipi displayed on the banks of the creek

Although, as we were driving up on Sunday morning, and it began to pour simply buckets between Boerne and Sisterdale, I did have my doubts that it would actually happen. It would be a bust and a misery, and we would sit in a wet tent, looking at the rain falling down, hoping that some intrepid visitor with water-wings or maybe a small kayak would come drifting by. Really, I was that worried. But we set up the pink and zebra-striped pavilion and made ourselves at home … and the rain went to a drizzle, the clouds thinned, and more and more people appeared, and oh, my – was there a crowd, by noon. I think there must have been cars parked by the roadside halfway to Luckenbach.

Reenactor Rangers – Ranger on the left is dressed as Ad Gillespie would have been

And the Dance Hall and Opera House and the little row of rooms that are part of a B&B are quite charming a venue, all shaded with oak trees, and nicely landscaped. It seems to be a pretty popular venue for weddings, which would explain why the ladies restroom is palatial beyond all belief. There were Ranger reenactors, veteran for-realsies Rangers, historians and collectors, and displays of books and weapons and relics … and people keen for books. I actually sold the last copy I had of The Gathering in German to a stray German visitor and Karl May fan, who was so tickled that he insisted on taking a picture of me autographing his copy.

Replica of a 1903 Oldsmobile Ranger paddy-wagon

We talked to some of the other writers, discovered some mutual author and historian acquaintances, sold a LOT of books – definitely well-worth the drive—and made some interesting contacts. I am supposed to check in with the Genealogical Society in Boerne, for the president of that charming organization is interested in them selling my books. I forgot to bring my copy of Empire of the Summer Moon, so never got a chance to ask S.C. Gwynne to autograph it for me. He was doing his talk at 3:00, just about when the crowd cleared out of the author area, and we looked around and discovered that well … many of the other exhibitors and authors were folding their tents or pop-up canopies and slipping away.

Weapons of the time – Colt Paterson and Walker model revolvers

An excellent and hopefully profitable day in the long-term as well as in the short term; with luck I’ll have a chance to do other events in Kendall County. So that was my weekend – yours?