Baker regained consciousness at a friend's house. The experience seemed to sober him up and he tried to stay on the straight and narrow path. In January, 1854 he married Jane Petty. But only eight months later he was back drinking with his friends. One day he got into an altercation with a young man named Stallcup. He whipped the boy until he was nearly dead. There were several witnesses. Soon he was brought up on charges.
A man named Wesley Bailey was one of the chief witnesses against him. Baker accosted him at his home. He shot Bailey in the legs with a buckshot, "to teach him a lesson." A few days later Bailey died. When Baker heard about it he rode to Arkansas where he stayed with an uncle. In 1856 he returned to Texas to get his wife, and took her to the uncle's house. While there, she gave birth to a baby girl, Loula, on May 24, 1857. Jane died on July 2, 1860. Baker took the child back to Texas to live with his in-laws.
He stayed out of sight for awhile. He married Martha Foster in July 1862. Then he joined the Confederate army. Not long after he joined he was sent from Arkansas back to Texas with some army horses. While there, Baker noticed that the women and children were largely unprotected. He was gone so long, trying to help them, that the army labeled him a deserter. The army kept coming after the deserters because they were so desperate for men. One day a group called the "Independent Rangers" captured him. But they were a group of deserters and outcasts. He fit right in with these men. They began raiding the defenseless homes of the countryside.
