May 14, 1878; Jas. J. Dolan & Co. Cattle Camp, Seven Rivers, Lincoln County, New Mexico Territory---Eighteen Regulators, under the new leadership of Deputy Doc Scurlock, have been on the road for three days, having left Lincoln on May 11. They left Lincoln with the goal of going down to Seven Rivers to the cattle camp owned by Jas. J. Dolan & Co., where horses belonging to the recently killed Regulator Frank MacNab, Ab Saunders, and John Tunstall were taken after being stolen by the Seven Rivers Warriors a few days earlier. Anticipating some trouble, the Regulators are all heavily armed.
Arriving at the cattle camp, the Regulators are surprised (and maybe a little disappointed) to find that instead of members of the Jessie Evans Gang or Seven Rivers Warriors guarding the camp, there are only a couple noncombatant herders. The Regs pull their guns and quickly scare off all the herders and, allegedly, slightly wound two of them. They also discover that Manuel "Indian" Segovia is hiding at the camp. Segovia is a well-known member of the Jessie Evans Gang and of the sub-posse that killed Tunstall. It's also known that he was most recently in the group that killed MacNab and wounded Saunders, and there are rumors going around that Segovia himself fired the fatal shot into MacNab. Fearing the Regulators vengeance, he fled to the cattle camp, hoping he would be safe there. Unfortunately for him, the Regulators realize that to arrest him would be pointless. If they were to take him back to Lincoln as a prisoner, he would quickly be freed by other members of the Jessie Evans Gang or released by Judge Bristol. A few quick pistol shots (allegedly fired by Billy Bonney and Jose Chavez y Chavez or Frank Coe) solve the dilemma, and Segovia's body is left where it falls.
The Regulators, wasting no time after gunning down Segovia, quickly open the gates to all the corrals of the camp. They scatter away all the cattle and round up twenty-seven horses, which probably include the one owned by MacNab, the one owned by Saunders, and the six owned by Tunstall. Believing they have just struck another blow to Dolan & Co., while at the same time dealing some retribution for the murder of MacNab, the Regulators begin herding the horses up to Lincoln.
Apparently unbeknownst to the Regulators, the cattle camp no longer belongs to Dolan & Co. Dolan and Riley closed down their business on May 1 due to all their unpaid debts and declining business, and since the entire Company had been mortgaged to the 1st National Bank of Santa Fe and its president, Tom Catron, everything Dolan & Co. once owned Catron now owned. This means that the cattle and horses the Regulators just scattered and stole weren't owned by Dolan, but were owned by Catron, head of the Santa Fe Ring and one of, if not the most powerful men in the territory. The Regulators ignorance of this pivitol fact will have dire consequences for them in the future.
Regulators involved
Murphy-Dolan-Riley men involved
