The Free Republic of Texas 2015 (18 page)

On this Friday we got a call from the Gun Shop that Ranger Bill was there and wanted to come in to the ranch proper, Jody told the young man on the phone that Bill had full permission to come and go as he wished and to pass the word.

Shortly Bill and Joan drove in where we greeted them in the front parking area, Ellen and Jade came out and took over Joan and disappeared, Bill joined the rest of us on the porch and shortly the ladies brought out some snacks and a bucket of iced beer then sat down with us, we made small talk for a while then Bill cleared his throat and said Boy’s we got our place sold, did real well on it too, and we need a home, got any ideas?

Jody smiled and said Bill, Joan; you’re as welcome here as can be, if you want to build here fine, if you want to just take an apartment in the married dorm for a while or for as long as you want that’s fine too, whatever we can do for you we will.

Bill said well Jody we kinda figured you’d say that and we thank you but right now I think my job might be a problem at least until I retire, it could be misconstrued.

Jade spoke up and said you know Mr. Ely’s place isn’t even as bad as he said it was and with a bit of work it could be a very nice place also it would put friends on that side of the property. Damn she was cute when she got all business like but I wisely kept my mouth shut on that. But she did have a good idea, so with several hours of good light left we headed over there, I had only driven past the place one time when Jody and I took a tour with Ely, and we didn’t go in the house, it was still filled with his life so to speak but Jade and Sally had ask him if they could go see it and he said honey it’s yours do as you wish and that he would get some boys to help move his stuff to the dump pretty soon.

We got there and Jade had the key and opened the place up and I was very surprised, it was much nicer then he had let on and after an hour of looking Bill and Joan said it would be perfect for them if Ely wanted to sell it, Jody said well I’ll bet you can get a good deal on it if you want to buy it, but why not lease it long term and use your sale money to fix it up the way you want it?

After we returned home we sat on the porch and talked about the place, Joan loved it as it was built in the early 1900’s and was stone with a fairly new metal roof. Bill asked how to get in touch with the owner and Jody said well let me talk to him and see what he will do, get some rest here tonight and I’ll go see him in the morning. Bill and Joan agreed and we settled down to a fun night of just relaxing.

In the morning Jody took Bill and Joan to the café to meet Ellie and Ely where it was explained who owned the place and how it came to be.

Jody said he was will to deed the house and as much land as Bill and Joan wanted back to Ely who could sell it to them for an agreed on price, leaving the ranch out of it and no conflict of interest. All agreed and a price was settled on that was agreeable by all and Ely said he would finance it! For 10 % down and $500.00 a month until both he and Ellie were dead. Then he could leave it in his will to whoever he wished right?

All agreed that it was a smoking deal for Bill and Joan so it was done with a hand shake and a check for 10 % down, and the deed papers would be drawn up that week, Ely said he and Ellie would go through the place and see what they wanted , the rest was the new owners to keep or dump, Joan said Ely there are some very beautiful old antiques in that house and he laughed and said well Missy me an Ellie are  antiques so I guess we don’t need more.

That deal was done and handled to everybody’s satisfaction and we all headed home to the ranch, Bill and Joan were very happy and so were we, the far side of our place was now covered by a Ranger and patrolled by the clan which made Bill very happy because it was very alone out there and when he was gone at night he worried, after meeting several of the Clan’s hunters who were moving into a new village complex near to the house and two of the girls had already asked to work in the house which Joan thought would be ok, she said she wasn’t used to having hired help and was told she still didn’t , that all the expenses of the ranch operation was paid for by the LLC so therefore the young ladies pay was paid by the ranch which cause Bill to shake his head, he said I have got to be careful about things like that, if audited I need to show I paid fair wages to them, so that’s how it was done. The girls didn’t care as long as they got paid!!  It takes money to buy pigs for a girl’s dowry.

That’s a joke son…

One thing we didn’t tell anybody but the committee and a few of the clan about the hidden bunker and its contents, that was our surprise and if and when we had to break out that stuff there wouldn’t be anybody to care.

For the most part we had done all we could to off set the end of days as we saw it and of the most part just settled down to living our lives.

We had about 20 young folks living in the dorms, most worked in the stores and the rest taking care of the ranch chores, the green houses were mostly setting ready to be put into use as the gardens cared for by the clan women were giving us more then we could use or can, so we built a road side open sided shed by the road at the mall and the Clan girls who wanted to work outside the village  were in charge of handling the gathering, cleaning and selling of the produce, they got half the money and the rest went to the village for anything they wanted or needed that we didn’t have or produce, I never had any idea what they might need because anything they wanted the ranch provided on request. But if it made them happy then so be it. And we had a very happy place on the ranch, nobody killed themselves working to hard and yet one could stay busy doing something.

Ellen had her clinic, Jade spent a few hours a day with the village women just being one of the clan, Sally had the store but had asked about setting up classes for the clan children, that was a good idea so she spent a few hours in the afternoon being a teacher to a class of the most well behaved kids ever seen, all wanted to learn, all wanted to be there and all were fast learners.

I guess not having stupid video games to stare at all day had its points, they spend the mornings learning about being a productive member of the clan and the afternoons learning to fit in with the rest of us. Even the youngest  boys were taken into the woods to learn to hunt with their small crossbows made by  their fathers, the local Squirrel  population was taking a beating but the clan loved squirrel fixed any way they could so the ladies were happy, the fathers were proud of their sons, it still  made me smile to see a 5 year old boy slip out of the woods with his small crossbow and a  bunch of whatever got in front of the arrows, anything was ok for the big stew pot in the village fire pit until one of the youngsters came in with a skunk, he was sent to the river with a bar of  soap and his prize to bury, from that day on all the boys knew about skunks.

Some evenings we sat in the village at the central fire and listened to the old men talk about being in their native mountains, Jade and Jody translated for Ellen and me.

I knew I would never understand the language but Jade had taken to talking to me in it and as strange as it seemed I was getting some of it so maybe some day.

The stories were fun for the most part, sometimes they talked of the times when the bad men came to the mountains and the fights and the clansmen lost in the battles, but also how the bad men would run away because it’s hard to fight a spirit in the forest, and because a cross bow bolt makes no sound and nobody could tell where to shoot so they sprayed the whole forest before running away, in time the men were all armed with AK’s taken from the dead.

But they still used the cross bows to fight with, they were saving the guns and ammo for the day when they would need to fight a bigger bunch of the bad men as they called the Viets, all viets were the enemy, North, South or in between, to them anybody not of the hill tribes was the enemy, which at times caused a lot of trouble since they would shoot the ARVN troops as fast as a VC.. And laugh all the way home!!

All in all we had a very good life even knowing one day it would change, and we all knew one day it would change.

At midnight of Dec /Jan 2010 as America and most of the rest of the world, celebrated the New Year, on the Border between Mexico and the U.S. border town Chocó Az. a convoy of vehicles, some painted as Mexican Military rolled across the border and right thru the small border crossing check point, the two US Customs officers on duty didn’t know it, they had been dead for 10 minutes, next to run afoul of these intruders was a  car with 2 couples of teenagers who chose that time to drive to the border because one of the Girls dad was on duty and she wanted to wish him a happy new year, she was too late, for both of them, the young man driving the car never saw the oncoming truck as it’s lights were out and it was moving fast, with only a few seconds he did swerve and was only clipped by the heavy bumper of  the truck but it was enough to flip the car, the truck just kept going as did the five behind it, the last vehicle was a large 4x4 SUV, it pulled over and 2  men jumped out running to the car, all of the kids were hurt and crying in pain which lasted only a few more seconds as the 2 men shot each in the head, then ran to their vehicle where the driver waited , then hit the gas, in moments there was only quiet in the desert again.

The convoy moved fast on down the road then into the small town, where the entire police force was sitting in their car, complaining about missing the party’s going on, both were very surprised to hear then see 6 big trucks followed by a black Suburban race past them.

Charley Cain grabbed the mike to call the county Sheriff’s dispatcher as Ben Hardy hit the gas and the red lights, Charley had just got the message across to the Dispatcher when they saw the Suburban stop in the road with no break lights, as Ben hit the brakes the two men in the road opened fire with AK-47’s on full auto and chopped the car to bits, neither Officer knew what hit them. One of the shooters ran to the now smoking car and tossed in an object that within seconds burst into white hot fire, another 10 seconds and the car was a raging inferno.

Eight Americans were now dead in the opening 20 minutes of the opening stages of a whole new border war and almost nobody knew anything about it, except for a now wide awake dispatcher who was calling her patrol car and getting no answer.

She then called the Border Patrol station in the next town 10 miles up the road, by the time she explained what her Deputy had told her the convoy was almost to the BP station, as it passed the Suburban pulled over and this time 4 men got out and opened fire on the building blowing out all the windows, one of the shooters ran forward and tossed two grenades in a window followed by another Thermite grenade, they then loaded up and took off..

Shortly the trucks found and turned onto a dirt road and followed it for several  miles where the lead driver turned off into a deserted ranch yard, there the men parked the trucks in and behind an old barn and waited a few minutes, soon another vehicle pulled into the yard and 4 men got out of it, one of them carried a large case and handed it to one of the men from the suburban , not a word was exchanged, all the Mexican men got into the SUV and it rolled away at a quick pace, as the dust settled more vehicles could be heard heading to the old ranch, soon 2 SUV’s pulled in and several men got out.

They were pointed to the barn and in moments the trucks rolled out and following one SUV and followed by the other the new convoy headed out.

The first crew wasn’t done yet, they headed toward another town sitting on another crossing , as they pulled into town they could see the activity around the local police dept. where officers were piling out of the building ready to roll out, as the SUV pass the station it slowed and from the passengers side windows came a massive burst of full auto fire taking down all the men in the street, then the fire was aimed into the building windows with a repeat of the earlier attack and the Thermite blew with the same results as before, except this time people were still alive inside, for a short time.

Rolling out of town the SUV headed for the border crossing where it was met with a blast of gun fire from the Customs guards and a two man border Patrol unit that had just checked in, the SUV rolled to a stop short of the border and a very hot fire fight followed for the next 5minutes.

Just when they thought they had won the Border guards heard an oncoming vehicle from the Mexican side, it was a Jeep with paint and markings of the Mexican Army on it, and it had a belt fed machinegun mounted in the back which to the horror of the Americans opened fire on them!

It was over in seconds, the SUV survivors ran for the Jeep and it roared away, leaving 3 dead Mexicans and 3 dead Americans, one of the Border Patrolmen had his vest on and had been hit hard by sub gun fire just before the big gun on the jeep raked his area, had he been on his feet he would have died along with the other 3 men.

In the days after it was found that some of the dead were in fact members of the Mexican Army, this did not go over well with the locals who swore there would be blood for blood revenge for the murders of their friends and family members.

It wasn’t  long in coming, 4 days later a patrol of Mexican troops in an open truck were ambushed when they crossed a few feet into the US, leaving 6 dead, and now the Mexican Army was vowing to get their revenge.

Soon there was an all out war between the Americans on one side and the Mexicans on the other, the drug gangs and other groups were ready and happy to fight the hated “Gringos” and the Americans were just as ready to spill “Greaser blood”, soon even with the border Patrol doing it’s best the two sides were shooting at each other from across the line, what started out as an apparent drug deal had turned into a war.