Carlyle Springs Ten-Cent Shoot-Out

The Carlyle Springs Ten-Cent Shoot-Out transforms a roadside ambush into a desperate defense by Jefferson Kyle Kidd and Johanna Leonberger. Outnumbered and exposed beside their wagon, they face Almay and his Caddo companions from opposing positions in a ravine; Johanna’s resourcefulness and Kidd’s improvised ammunition eventually reverse the attackers’ advantage. The fight ends with the assailants fleeing and Johanna poised to pursue them, while its later name travels ahead of the pair through a region with little telegraph service.

The Ambush and Its Positions

In the increasing light of an early-March morning, Kidd glimpsed what might have been a horse’s tail and climbed onto the wagon seat to see better. The quiet broke when the little stove erupted: its pipe and coals scattered, the skillet lid sailed away, and another blast sent bacon and coffee into the air. The girl ducked beneath the wagon almost instantly. Kidd fell sideways from the seat and scrambled after her as a bullet struck the sideboards overhead, spraying splinters. From their cover among rocks and spiny agarita, he recognized that the shots were coming up from the ravine and that the attackers had rifles. The wagon and its occupants were caught in a narrow space between armed men and the higher, wooded ground behind them.

Kidd had expected pursuit to bring threats, bluster, or perhaps an offer of silver; he had not expected an attempt to murder them. The attackers’ violence therefore caught him by surprise, while Johanna listened beneath the wagon without showing astonishment. She braided her long hair and tied it with a strip torn from her skirt. Kidd remained behind the caprock, where the stone offered protection, and waited to locate the shooters. Almay and his Caddo companions were approaching from below, and the wagon was barely exposed. The attackers had the advantage of rifles with greater range than Kidd’s revolver, forcing him to conserve ammunition and watch for a clear target rather than answer every shot.

The pattern of fire gradually disclosed their arrangement. Kidd identified two riflemen and a third man using a revolver, all advancing up one side of the ravine. Then a Caddo carrying a rifle crossed between the red-stone buttresses, revealing an effort to catch Kidd between lines of fire. A heavy glove on the man’s left hand confirmed Kidd’s recognition of the attackers’ Henry rifles, whose hot barrels and magazine tubes required handling with a glove. Kidd fired at the crossing man, then shot toward a rifle flash on his left; a yell followed, and the rifle flew from its owner’s hands and lodged among the rocks. The weapon was out of reach, but its owner was still alive and might try to recover it.

Johanna's Counterattack

While Kidd watched the riflemen, Johanna began working along the caprock, slipping between broad slabs of red sandstone. She was barefoot, gripping the rough rock with her hands, and had hitched her skirt between her legs so she could move freely. With the stove-lid lifter she levered at the base of a flat slab until it tipped, rolled downhill, broke against a boulder, and crashed down on a man hidden below. The shout and fall revealed the attacker’s position; Johanna had turned the landscape itself into a weapon.

Kidd praised her, then fired again at the exposed man, but could not hit him before he disappeared. Johanna returned to the fight without pausing over the praise. A rifle round shattered stone in front of Kidd, and a flying fragment cut him above the right eye. Blood temporarily blurred his vision. His immediate fear was not only that he might be killed, but that the attackers would then take Johanna. He considered escape on horseback, but their best horse was slow and prone to stumble, and the wounded attackers remained close; flight offered no certain safety.

The turning point came when Johanna held out one of the shotgun shells. It was loaded with dimes. Kidd recognized that she had used the powder charger’s thumb lever to measure four twenty-grain charges, making an eighty-grain load—heavy for his old twelve-gauge. The coins fitted the paper hull, and their weight, driven by the enlarged powder charge, could carry them much farther than ordinary shot. What had looked like an improvised handful of money was now a possible long-range weapon, giving Kidd a way to answer rifle fire beyond the reach of his revolver.

The Ten-Cent Counterattack

Kidd aimed carefully at the V of Almay’s open shirt collar, uncertain what the coins and unusually heavy powder charge would do. The dimes left the twelve-gauge at six hundred feet per second, with a two-foot muzzle blast; the recoil slammed the stock against his shoulder hard enough to nearly dislocate it. The coins struck Almay in the forehead, turning the impact into a row of bloody marks, and he fell backward down the slope. The improvised load had converted a supply of money into a weapon that could reach the men beyond the effective range of Kidd’s revolver.

Kidd reloaded with another dime-filled shell, cushioning the shotgun’s stock against his shoulder with his hat. The next blast sent coins ricocheting down the ravine: they struck a wounded Caddo, tore through shirtsleeves, perforated hats, clipped branches, and chipped a man’s skull. Kidd estimated the shot had carried about two hundred and fifty yards. The men who had used the ravine to trap him were now scrambling away from the same terrain under a barrage of flying silver.

As the Caddos fled, Johanna stood straight, raised her face to the sun, and sang a Kiowa triumph chant with a butcher knife lifted over her head. She declared, “We are hard and strong, the Kiowa!” The chant carried down the ravine; the fleeing men did not stop even to refill their canteens where the ravine opened onto the Brazos. Johanna then climbed over the rock lip and started after Almay, intent on scalping him. Kidd caught her skirt and stopped her, telling her that they did not do that. The fight’s reversal was complete, but the difference between Johanna’s Kiowa understanding of victory and Kidd’s restraint remained sharply visible.

The Shoot-Out's Aftermath

Two days later, the name of the Great Brazos Ten-Cent Shoot-Out had not reached a group of mounted men who encountered Jefferson Kyle Kidd and Johanna Leonberger. They rode easily around the wagon, leaving their revolvers and carbines untouched, and asked Kidd whether he supported Davis or Hamilton. Their ignorance showed how slowly news traveled: there was almost no telegraph service across much of Texas, and the men apparently stayed within their immediate area. Kidd understood that the fight’s story had not preceded them—and that a public reading of the news in Durand could bring danger. The defense had saved the travelers, but it had also consumed their means: they had shot themselves into poverty, with a long road still ahead. Selling the wagon and continuing on horseback seemed possible, yet Kidd’s weakened back and increasingly painful hip joints made that alternative costly too.