Whenever Malinda Caudle got peeved at her family, "she'd threaten to run off and go back to the Indians," says her great-grandson, Damon Benson. "She said if she just knew a good Indian tribe somewhere, she'd go to them."

That wasn't an idle threat, for Caudle had spent six months in a Comanche village in 1868. Kidnapped in Llano County's Legion Valley, eight-year-old Malinda Caudle was one of several child captives who quickly adjusted to the native people's way of life and took part in all their activities. Her unusual life story is told for the first time in Scott Zesch's new book The Captured: A True Story of Abduction by Indians on the Texas Frontier (St. Martin's Press). CBS News anchor Dan Rather describes The Captured as "a well researched and wonderfully written book."

The author will make appearances in both Llano and Burnet Counties. On Monday, November 8, Zesch will speak about his research on Indian captives and sign copies of his new book at the Marble Falls Public Library at 10:30 A.M. The Llano County Library will also host a lecture and book signing at 12:00 noon on Thursday, November 18.

The Legion Valley raid was one of the most gruesome Indian attacks in Llano County's history. Three young women and two infants were killed and mutilated. A fourth woman survived being shot with two arrows and scalped. Malinda Caudle was taken captive along with her seven-year-old playmate, Temple Friend. He wasn't recovered from the Comanches for nearly five years.

Still, Malinda Caudle "would not hear a word against the Indians," according to her great-granddaughter, Neoma Benson Cain. In one interview, Caudle recalled that her adoptive Comanche mother "was very kind to me" and "always treated me as her own child." The Comanche women "wouldn't let the Indian men bother her in any way," says a grandson, Frank Modgling. Shunning attention over her Comanche experience, Caudle died in obscurity in Marble Falls, where her grave is marked simply "M. ...

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