Something caught the corner of my eye. Glancing to my right, I was surprised to see an olive canvas duffel bag. Astounded, I cautiously hefted the object and noted slight signs of insect activity beneath it before gently lowering it back into its original resting place.
I scanned the nearby drought stunted trees, then beyond to the horizon. I wondered where the person to whom this belonged might be? In my mind, nothing could have been more completely out of place.
After passing through eight gates after leaving Highway 16 between Freer and Tilden, Texas, finally, you were on the ranch. Three of those gates were always kept locked. I noted on this trip that all three had been damaged. The gravel and caliche roads in had been bladed and the shoulders graded, so I figured the gates had fallen victim to a careless equipment operator.
My purpose on this outing was to do a bit of scouting preceding an upcoming bird hunt. I wanted to make sure the bunkhouses and camp area were in good shape and ready for guests that would be coming in shortly for the annual event. Beyond that, I just loved being on the ranch. It is rugged, extremely remote, and the only material comforts are those you bring in with you. It is a great place to release distractions and re-focus on the basics.
This pasture in McMullen County has been in my wife Bonnie's family since her great-grandfather, a Confederate veteran, came to view it with his sons in a mule-drawn wagon back in 1912. The story is that he brought a bottle of whisky because the seller liked it and a revolver because Mexican revolutionaries, or bandits, like Pancho Villa were still making excursions into "The Wild Horse Desert" or "The Nueces Strip" as the area was known. The plan was to create a town and sell off lots when the railroad came through. That never happened, but the ranch has remained in the family some 96 years now. It is still untamed, remote and beautiful country.
The camphouses seemed to be in good enough shape after months of neglect. No sign existed that anyone had tampered with them. However, something had me feeling vaguely uneasy. The dried hide from a freshly skinned javelina had been hung like a wet towel from a nail near the corner of one of the bunkhouses. It had dried and stiffened in the arid heat. Where had it come from?
Leaving the camp behind, I drove deeper into the ranch. Summer rains had been unusually bountiful and the brush was lush. The two tanks in the center of the pasture stood brim-full of water, shimmering in the afternoon sunlight. The wings of a grey heron billowed outward and lifted it gracefully into the heat of a clear blue sky. I moved on along the main ruts of the sendero leading to the northwest corner of the land.
Passing the stand at the "Big Tree" I saw that it had been reduced to a pile of rubble. It was strange that it had fallen to the southeast, as prevailing winds come from the opposite direction this time of the year.
I noticed that corn had been planted in a neighboring field just beyond our land. It would provide a source of food for birds and wildlife in the fall and winter to come. The crop stand was just right. Plentiful enough for feed, yet too sparse to combine.
Rounding the northwest corner of the ranch, I eased up the incline of the "Rocky Hill" to hunt for arrowheads. Stopping in what had proven to be a productive sendero, or right of way, I had stepped from my pickup truck into the stifling afternoon heat to search for points when I found the duffel bag.
Frowning, I set the bag on my tailgate and leaned over to unzip and then study its contents. It contained a puzzling array of items; two dark blue jump suits, a wooden box holding 15 to 20 heavy metal rock eight-track cassette tapes, about a six-week supply of beef jerky, vitamin supplements, a coil of hemp cord, black military laceup boots, a small survival flashlight, face mask and snorkel with diving instructions, a Pentax 35mm camera with four exposures taken, various items of underwear, two unopened cans of Bud Light beer and what appeared to be a backgammon set.
I cautiously pried open the lid of the backgammon set. A handful of papers were snatched up and strewn across the sendero in a brisk southeasterly breeze. The afternoon heat was oppressive as I quickly chased them down. It surprised me to see that in addition to gasoline sales receipts, two of the papers were traffic citations.
The first name of the individual cited was Dan. He had originally been from Portland, Oregon, but had been cited twice for reckless driving in Portsmouth, Virginia. This, within a span of eighteen minutes. The series of events had begun on June 8, and gasoline receipts had traced his progress from Virginia to Shreveport, Louisiana, by June 11th.
How had his possessions come here, to a remote, brush-covered rock hill on a ranch in the middle of nowhere? Who and where was this man, Dan? Was this a crime that had gone wrong? Was it still unfolding? Had there been a kidnapping or even worse, a murder? Were drugs involved? Had he parachuted in to this spot? I felt the hair rise on the nape of my neck as I tossed the bag and its contents into the bed of my truck before crawling back into the cab.
I started the engine, shoved a sweat stained felt hat back on my head and jerked the truck into gear. I pulled slowly forward toward the crest of the hill and another sendero that bisected it, running east and west. As I rolled onto this set of ruts, I noted that some 350 yards distant, down and away to the east, at the base of the hill rested what remained of another pickup truck. Its hood was up and both doors were swinging open. I pulled a set of binoculars into focus and realized that flames had consumed the vehicle entirely. Who or what lay below me in that charred wreckage?
Thinking the better of driving directly to the site, I decided that it might prove an advantage to keep myself between what lay below and the only gate allowing access to the ranch. I circled back around and approached the ruined truck from the opposite direction, hoping there was not a body and knowing that the sheriff's department would need the numbers off the license plates to identify the vehicle.
My truck eased to a stop some fifty yards from the ruins. The flames had been so intense that the windshield had melted out of its frame. There appeared to be no license plates on the vehicle. A variety of tools had been scattered in and around the truck. It seemed to be resting on its frame. Well defined footprints of varying sizes dotted the muddy creekbed.
Having secured a pistol, I slowly approached the burned out truck with knuckles bordering on becoming white knots of tension . . . (to be continued)
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