1

INTRODUCTION

There is a certain smug disdain among many

political leaders concerning environmental issues. The
sides are clearly divided between two camps, those that
want more fossil fuel fired power plants and those that want
HYDRATE severe restrictions. Because of political alliances,
alternatives are given only passing lip service, with only
token funding for experimental projects for other ways of
A Novel providing the world’s energy needs. The politicians depend
By on people not taking the time to do the math. They depend
David Allen Wayne on people trusting them when they say, “We care about the
environment. We care about the future of mankind and the
plants and animals on our planet.” The truth is that what
they really care about is maintaining and enhancing their
political positions.
Here are some facts. It cost about half a million
dollars per megawatt of capacity to build a natural gas fired
power plant. It cost quite a bit more per megawatt of
capacity for a coal fired power plant, but coal is so cheap,
the extra cost is recouped in fuel cost savings. A solar
energy power plant can cost five million dollars per
megawatt of capacity. Wow! From a business perspective,
solar energy simply doesn’t have the cost payback needed
for a commercial venture, right?
That’s right. Solar energy plants, (does not include
our plants, because our plants will be the competition)
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cannot compete with conventional power plants today. But
here is the deal. Where is it written that they must compete
on a financial basis only. There are other competitive
aspects that should enter into the equation. How about
long-term costs? How about energy independence? How
about preservation of the environment? How about
providing more jobs in the private sector to manufacture,
construct, operate and maintain solar energy power plants?
Let’s do some math. The budget of the United
States is over a trillion dollars a year. We could easily
spend one hundred billion dollars per year on solar energy
plants. This would deliver twenty thousand (20,000)
megawatts of electrical power each year into the power
grids around the country. Currently, the power supply in
the United States is - seven hundred and eighty thousand
(780,000) megawatts. However, as we have proven so
many times in the past, when mass production starts, prices
drop and efficiencies go up. Realistically, the output would
be double or more. With this sort of effort, all our future
energy needs could be met with renewable energy, and the
benefits would accumulate across the decades.
There is a statement in the Preamble of the
Constitution that mentions promoting the general welfare
for ourselves and our posterity. Clearly, a massive solar
energy program funded with our tax dollars would promote
the general welfare enormously in every respect. However,
it would not promote the financial welfare of those who
hold the coal, oil and natural gas. It is in their best interest
to keep our country and the world dependent on these fuels
for as long as possible and they pay to keep it that way.
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When one takes a truly objective look at the
situation, in many areas covering a host of issues, one
inevitably arrives at the conclusion that politicians in
general are among the worst citizens of our planet. They
always have been. Business magnates and the news media
in degree of revolting citizenship follow them closely. Of
the latter two, the news media have to be considered the
worst because they have become nothing more than
extensions of liberal politicians. They could do the math
for you. They could show the possibilities and the realities,
but instead, they choose to show things like the slow-
motion chase of a celebrated former super star athlete
through the streets of Los Angeles and then focus all their
attention on the trial that followed. The modern American
news media focuses on the sensational and the political,
and their bias is so clear while their ineptness at ferreting
out the true issues and bringing the facts of those issues to
the people couldn’t be worse. The news media of this
country has a huge political agenda, attending to which
prevents them form executing the trust inherent with their
constitutionally guaranteed positions. Their duty is clear,
and almost sacred and because they choose to serve politics
ahead of the people, they approach the level of traitors.
In all of this, we cannot hope to change many of the
shortfalls that have developed in our society. However, in
the area of energy, we can. We have a new technology and
it is awesome in its ability to convert heat energy into
electrical energy. It will proliferate to the dismay of those
holding the fossil fuel deposits, because it is what you want
and it is what is right. The cost of our solar energy power
plants is on a par with natural gas power plants. This
means that for that same one hundred billion dollars, we
could have two hundred thousand (200,000) megawatts of
electrical power production in place. This means that our
technology is commercially viable. But we won’t be
getting massive amounts of your tax dollars to build our
plants with, you can bet on that, because even though they
are your tax dollars, you don’t have ditty to say about how
they are spent. Instead, as our technology begins to make
inroads in the existing electrical power generation industry,
pressure will be brought by lobbyist to re-regulate the
industry in a manner that the politicians and their allies, the
news media, put forth as being in the best interest of the
country. It will be a gross lie, but it is something they are
so very good at and have gotten away with so many times
there will be no hesitation on their parts to go ahead with it.
Their motto is that you will believe what they tell you to
believe. So, they will try to stop us.
The only thing that can prevent this is the people.
Therefore, we turn to you. We have several goals that direct
our efforts. We want to build our power plants with your
help. We want to provide you with accurate information
that is not offered elsewhere. We want to provide different
perspectives designed to show there are alternatives to
promoting the general welfare other than what we are
currently doing. And we want to provide you with value
for your support, not only in the form of utterly clean and
cheap electrical power, but in the form of thought
provoking entertainment as well. That’s why we are
publishing this book and offering it to you over the internet.
In it you will be exposed to new information that is
based in scientific fact. You will be exposed possibilities
4
that are real in both their existence as well as their threat to
us. These are things no one else has told you about. You
will also be exposed to the technology that we have
developed. Eventually, it will be revealed completely and
you too will be among the many who are already saying
“Why didn’t I think of that?” This revelation will be timed
to coincide with the issuance of our patents.
Methane hydrate is real and it covers our ocean
floors. Methane is many times more potent as a
greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. What’s frightening
about it is that the conditions needed to cause a massive
release of the methane from the hydrate is not that difficult
to achieve. To prove it to yourself, just type ‘Methane
Hydrate’ in a good search engine on the internet and
research it for yourself.
In our book, ‘HYDRATE’, is based on what could
happen if global warming continues unchecked. Additional
heat in the atmosphere from global warming could spawn a
giant hurricane that could cause a massive release of
methane from its hydrated state, which could, in turn, cause
a rapid escalation in global warming. The truth is that the
fundamentals this book is based upon are well within the
realm of scientific possibility. As for the scientific
probability is concerned, who can say. However, we have
experienced some truly huge hurricanes in the recent past,
like Allen. If global warming continues, it is more than
likely that a hurricane that makes Allen look like a baby
will come along. Could such a hurricane move
‘HYDRATE’ from the realm of science fiction into the
realm of historical fact? We think it’s a good idea to try
not to find out.
 To that end, our work begins. We want to build
power plants that use our technology. We want to build
them all over the world. The vast majority of carbon
dioxide gases emitted into the atmosphere come from
power plants burning fossil fuel. Automobile emissions are
a very distant second place. Electrical energy is the most
useful form of energy there is. It plays one of the most
important roles there are in modern society and it will for
as far into the future as we can see. The only thing
standing between us and a wonderful future world of clean
and abundant electrical power is our own determination to
do now what it will take to get there. We have the answers.
The only other ingredient we need is your support.
Let the adventure begin.

5

HYDRATE
The old man sat in the shade of a great boulder atop
the mesa where he made his home. He was watching two
people walking toward him across the burning flat lands
below. His wife, who had been ill for a long time, had
quickly succumbed to the rising heat when it hit so many
years ago. He had two sons and a daughter that he had not
seen since then either. Grandchildren too. He had tried to
get them to go with him to the West Texas mountains to
ride out the heat surge that he knew was coming, but they
wouldn’t go. They eventually told him they thought he was
a little off his rocker since their mom had passed away.
They even encouraged him to enter a psychological nursing
home to “get better”. After many attempts to convince
them otherwise, he had finally given up. After having a
family supper one evening, he simply drove away in his
pick-up truck, towing a trailer he had built himself, in
which he had packed everything he thought he would ever
need. Without his children knowing, he had sold his home
and cashed in all his other assets, which he had used to
stock up a small ranch in southwest Texas that he had
bought a few years earlier.
He remembered discovering this little ranch years
earlier through a good friend, whose family owned it. The
remarkable thing about this little ranch was the cavern that
lay beneath it. It had been carved out eons ago by run-off
water accumulating atop the mesa. The mesa had a little
valley at its center, which had funneled the water to the
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center of the mesa for millions of years. Finally, the water
had broken through to the water table below. Dan Corona,
whose family had owned the mesa as part of their ranch
since they had come over from Spain in the mid 1500’s,
had discovered the cavern but never revealed its existence
to any but the very closest of friends. Dan had inherited the
ranch, but was forced to sell it when his wife had been
stricken with liver disease. It happened to be at the very
time that Leatherwood was ready to buy the place, which
he had done, five years before the big event.
Of course when he had bought it, Leatherwood did
not know the big event was going to happen. It was just
something he wanted to do for a friend. He had intended to
sell it back to Dan when and if Dan ever got back on his
feet, but that never happened. Dan’s wife had received a
liver transplant, using the money from selling the ranch to
Leatherwood, and everything had gone well for a few
years, but she finally rejected the new liver, and in the
space of a few weeks she had died. Not long after that,
Dan had died from grief.
When the big event occurred, Leatherwood knew
that global warming would intensify rapidly. He had been
amazed that the scientific community had denied the big
event had even happened. In all the world, Leatherwood
had stood alone in his position that the big western Atlantic
earthquake, coupled with the biggest, most violent
hurricane in history, had caused the release of thousands of
cubic miles of methane hydrate from the ocean floor.
Leatherwood remembered a time many years earlier
when he and some coworkers had gone deep-sea fishing off
the Carolinas. Leatherwood had just donned his scuba gear
to go for a dive, while everyone else fished from the boat.
Suddenly, the ocean all around them began to bubble, then
foam, and in only a moment, the fishing boat was sinking,
the foamy water no longer dense enough to support it.
Leatherwood had put his mouthpiece in and was able to
breath, but the others were drowning. Instinct had told
Leatherwood to hang on to the boat. Two of his friends
had pushed upward in panic, trying to reach the surface.
Leatherwood saw them disappear in the foam. His third
companion, Pete, had been below deck when the boat sank,
and came frantically through the cabin door, bent on trying
to reach the surface the way the other two had done.
Somehow, Leatherwood had known that doing that would
mean certain death, so he grabbed his panic-stricken friend
and forced the scuba tank’s mouthpiece into his mouth. At
first, Pete had struggled, but Leatherwood was a very
powerful man and had managed to subdue his friend. After
a moment, Pete settled down and began taking huge breaths
from the mouthpiece.
Leatherwood had not known what was causing the
bubbles, but he knew that the boat they were on was a foam
sandwich design that would not normally sink, even if it
was broken to pieces, the pieces would float, eventually.
He knew their best chance lay in staying with the boat, for
if the bubbles quit, the boat would float back up to the
surface. As it was, Leatherwood had noticed that the boat
seemed to have reached a depth where it had stabilized.
The bubbles at this depth were smaller due to the greater
pressure. However, as the bubbles got closer to the surface,
they expanded and turned the sea to foam, making the
water more like a gas than a liquid. From the amount of
7
light that he could see coming from above, Leatherwood
figured they were about sixty to seventy feet down.
Leatherwood was able to communicate to his friend
that they needed to get the other scuba gear. Together, they
worked their way to the bottle rack and connected
regulators and hoses to two more tanks. One, his friend
began breathing from. The other they kept in reserve.
There were a total of eight tanks of air, enough to last
almost four hours each if they remained calm.
After what seemed like hours, the bubbles began to
lessen, and the boat inched toward the surface. But in fact,
they were still breathing from the first two tanks when the
boat neared the surface. This meant they had been
submerged for less than an hour.
Suddenly, the bubbles were gone and the boat broke
the surface. After they broke the surface, Pete was about to
take the mouthpiece from his mouth when Leatherwood
stopped him. Leatherwood was a self-made chemical
engineer. He knew that whatever those bubbles were
composed of, chances were it wasn’t something good to
breath and chances were also very high that the air was
filled with it still. As Leatherwood looked around, his fears
were confirmed when he spotted the floating carcasses of
several seagulls.
He and his friend continued to breath from the
scuba tanks for over two hours when they saw a lone
seagull winging toward them, about fifty feet above the
water. Intently, they watched as the gull drew nearer. While
still several hundred yards away, the gull suddenly went
limp in the air and plunged to the surface, dead from
breathing the deadly fumes that still lingered. Even though
the gas was invisible, Leatherwood knew it was still there
all around them.
Leatherwood noted the wind was from the
southwest. He knew the current was flowing generally to
the north. He figured that combination meant they were
drifting along in the vapor. He managed to communicate to
his friend the need to move the boat in a southwesterly
direction to hasten their exit from the deadly vapor cloud.
Leatherwood, after checking the boat over, tried to
start the engines, but the vapors were devoid of enough
oxygen for them to start.
The boat was equipped with very large deep-cycle
marine batteries, sealed in a waterproof housing, and they
were still fully charged. The boat was also equipped with a
heavy-duty electric trolling motor. Leatherwood checked
the trolling motor. It had quickly dried out, and worked
perfectly. He lowered it into the water and engaged it. The
boat began moving briskly to the southwest. Several more
times during the next two hours, they saw gulls in the
distance abruptly go limp and fall into the water.
Leatherwood knew that it was possible they were
heading in the wrong direction, but logic told him it was the
surest way out. If they had been on the northeast edge of
the gas release, they would have to travel its entire length
before they got out of it, and that might be many miles.
Several times, Leatherwood stopped the boat so he could
check the wind direction. It was generally from the south,
switching between southeasterly to southwesterly. He
continued to the southwest.
The two men were on the last two tanks of air when
they spotted several gulls winging toward them. They
8
almost quit breathing as they watched the birds approach.
Finally, the birds arrived overhead and began circling the
boat, looking for food. Leatherwood resisted the
temptation to remove the scuba mouthpiece and take a
breath of air. The gulls were well above the boat, and he
knew it was possible that the vapors were heavier than air.
The gulls could be flying in clean air while he and his
friend were still in the suffocating vapors.
Leatherwood remembered the live well, with
several fish in it that they had caught. Quickly, he opened
the lid on the well and took out a fish. With his diving
knife, he cut the fish up and threw several pieces into the
water. Immediately the gulls swooped down to the surface,
and almost as quickly died from the vapors.
Cursing into the mouthpiece, they continued to the
southwest. Each time they encountered gulls, Leatherwood
would toss a piece of fish overboard, and the gull would
swoop down and die.
Finally, the warning bell on his regulator began
clanging, signaling five minutes of air supply remaining.
In desperation, Leatherwood tried the main engines again.
They sputtered and died, but this was enough to encourage
leatherwood that there was hope so he kept trying. Finally,
one engine sputtered to life, then the other. The air was
still rich with suffocating vapors, but there was just enough
oxygen to allow them run, all be it, just barely.
Then Leatherwood remembered the small gas
welding kit he had seen below deck. It had a small oxygen
cylinder. He signaled his friend to take over the steering
and he went below to return with the oxygen bottle. He
placed the nozzle of the gas torch close to the air intake of
one of the engines and gingerly began opening the valve.
Instantly, that engine increased performance and the boat
lurched ahead, knocking Leatherwood off balance. He
cursed again, realizing that he should have been ready for
that.
Regaining his balance, he tried again. This time, he
was ready as the boat surged ahead. He didn’t know how
long the cylinder would last, but it was clear they were
nearing the edge of the vapor cloud, and with his air almost
out, every foot of progress counted.
The boat picked up speed and was running almost
25 miles per hour. Minute after minute ticked by with
Leatherwood trying his best to keep the torch nozzle close
to the air intake of the starboard engine to keep it running
fast and strong. The port engine continued to run, but just
barely. It wasn’t contributing at all to the boat’s
momentum, indicating the vapors were still very heavy.
Finally, the little oxygen bottle began to run low,
and the starboard engine also began to sputter again, little
better than the port engine. To make matters worse,
Leatherwood’s air tank went dry also. Quickly, he returned
to the cockpit where his friend was steering the boat.
Leatherwood indicated to his friend that he was out of air
and they needed to share the air that was left in his friend’s
tank, but his friend refused.
Without hesitation, Leatherwood clipped his
friend’s chin with a blurred right fist. His friend went limp
for just a second, allowing Leatherwood to take the
mouthpiece and take a couple of breaths of air before
handing it back to his friend.
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Quickly, Leatherwood switched his regulator to one
of the tanks they had used earlier. They had switched to
another tank as soon as the warning bell had sounded on
the tank they were using. That meant there was about five
minutes of air in each tank, theoretically. Looking at the
pressure gage on his friend’s tank, Jim figured there was
about fifteen minutes of air left in that tank, plus five
minutes of air in each of the other six tanks. That was a
total of forty-five minutes of air in seven tanks. Divided by
two, it meant they had just over twenty minutes of air left.
Leatherwood was on his third, five-minute, tank
when his friend’s tank went empty. Quickly, they switched
him to another tank. They were down to three tanks, each
with about five minutes of air. Things were beginning to
look pretty grim.
Leatherwood’s tank ran out and he switched to
another. Shortly after that, his friend had to switch. They
had one tank left.
Several times during this tank-switching period,
Leatherwood had put the engines in gear to see if they had
enough power to move the boat forward faster, but each
time he did this, they would die. However, even though
they were running rough, their alternators were keeping the
deep-cycle batteries charged up so the trolling motor kept
them moving to the southwest.
Leatherwood switched to the last tank, with his
friend looking on. There was desperation on his friend’s
face, and Leatherwood knew that his friend was very much
afraid of dying.
Finally, Leatherwood’s friend ran out of air in his
tank and he signaled that he needed a breath of air from
Leatherwood’s mouthpiece. Without hesitation,
Leatherwood passed the mouthpiece over to his friend. The
two men shared the last few breaths of air left in the tank.
When Leatherwood calculated that they had less
than a minute of air left, he thought he noted a different
sound in the pitch coming from the motors. Yes! They
seemed to be running better, with just slightly more power.
For a second, Leatherwood hesitated to put the engines in
gear, then realized there was no reason to hesitate. If the
engines died, then he and his friend would too. With this in
mind, he looked for a second in his friend’s eyes, smiled a
little smile and gingerly put the engines in gear. They
didn’t die, and although they were far from running strong
the boat picked up speed.
Leatherwood took one more breath from the
mouthpiece and handed it back to his friend. He intended
to let Pete have the rest of the air.
Slowly, with each second, the engines gained in
power, propelling the boat ahead faster and faster.
Leatherwood had been holding his breath for over a minute
when the engines roared into life, shooting the boat ahead
at full speed.
When he couldn’t hold his breath any longer,
Leatherwood blew it out and forced himself to take in only
a very small breath from the air. It had a distinctive taste,
but it didn’t seem to be doing him any harm, so he took
another breath, this time a little larger. Still, there were no
obvious ill effects. Soon, he was breathing normally and he
was still alive and alert. Soon his friend ran out of air and
he was breathing normally too. Somehow, they had made
it.
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In looking back at the incident, Leatherwood had
often pondered his stroke of luck at deciding to go scuba
diving only moments before the release began.
There had been a big investigation into the incident.
The authorities made it clear that they didn’t believe the
story the two men were telling. Then, two days later, the
bodies of their two friends were found and autopsies were
performed. The coroner found seawater and quite a bit of
methane gas in the lungs of the two dead men. This lent
just enough plausibility to their story that the authorities let
the men go. This, plus several other recovered bodies of
people who were passengers or crewmen on other boats
that were missing. Their autopsies too revealed methane
gas in their lungs.
When Leatherwood got back home, he began
looking for an explanation for what had happened to them.
After much searching, he found his answer from two main
sources. First, an old seaman told him about what he called
devil gas that could come up and swallow an entire ship up
and pull it to the bottom. The old seaman had several
specific tales to back up his claim and Leatherwood was
able to confirm these stories in as much as the ships had
been reported to have suddenly sunk without warning in
calm seas. There had also been reports from a few seamen
who had survived these incidents.
Taken alone, any of these stories would be easy to
dismiss as the product of a panicked imagination, but
collectively, they sounded all too familiar to Leatherwood.
He got a more scientific explanation from a couple
of old time marine geologists who explained the
phenomena of methane hydrate in the sediment on the sea
floor being disturbed somehow, causing the methane to
break out forming massive bubble eruptions that could, and
had engulfed entire ships, sending them to the bottom with
all hands before they had any idea of what was happening.
They too had specifics that Leatherwood followed up on.
By the time he was finished, he knew a great deal about
methane hydrate. He learned that it was a natural thing that
could be found in many parts of the world.
He also learned that it was not too difficult to
disturb the sediment beds that contained the methane
hydrate as many offshore drilling operations had
discovered.
Leatherwood found all this disturbing, for the
amount of methane hydrate in the sediment of many parts
of the ocean floor was quite large. The release that had
killed two of his friends and several others was not all that
big compared to what it could be.
As the years had passed, Leatherwood continued to
study the methane hydrate phenomena. He noted several
instances in various places when boats or entire ships
simply disappeared without a trace. Some of them
happened near the place he and his friends had encountered
the release.
Still, for some reason, the authorities and the media
never embraced these incidents as being caused by releases
of methane hydrate.
Then, that fateful summer, the year of which
Leatherwood could no longer remember, that giant
hurricane had formed off the coast of Africa and slowly
spun its way across the Atlantic, straight toward South
Carolina. It had become a monster before it had reached
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the halfway point, with hurricane force winds reaching out
more than three hundred miles from the eye and one
hundred mile per hour winds over a hundred miles from the
eye. Its name was Xavier. Twelve days later, hurricane
force winds were whipping the eastern coast of the United
States while the eye of the monster was still over six
hundred miles away. Wind speeds at the eye were
estimated from satellite images to be well over two hundred
miles per hour, with cloud tops near one hundred thousand
feet.
It was at this time that the first of the earthquake
tremors was detected off the coast near the eye. The
pressure at the eye was less than 600 mille bars, by far the
lowest pressure ever recorded in a hurricane. Radar
imaging compiled from both satellite and earth based radar
units measured wave heights at over 300 feet within fifty
miles of the eye.
Xavier had turned south while still over six hundred
miles east of the eastern seaboard. For five days it drifted
to the south at about eight miles per hour, then stopped
before slowly heading back to the north, almost retracing
its path back to the north. All the while, sensitive
seismograph instruments detected tremors almost
continuously near the eye. Then, on its twenty-ninth day as
a named hurricane, located six hundred and sixty miles
northeast of Jacksonville Florida. A massive earthquake,
estimated at a magnitude of 8.3, shook the entire eastern
seaboard of the United States, causing considerable damage
even though it was very far from land.
Xavier had a hurricane life span of 42 days, with
maximum wind speeds estimated near three hundred miles
per hour. It finally died away in the North Atlantic, with
the eye of the storm having never made landfall. It left
behind ocean currents that ran higher than twenty knots for
almost three weeks in many places in the western Atlantic.
It had completely redirected the Gulf Stream and disrupted
the shipping lanes for months. And although the eye never
made landfall, every state on the east coast was lashed by
hurricane force winds, some for over a week.
Xavier had taken the lives of more than 21,000
people and had done the greatest amount of property
damage ever recorded for any natural disaster of any kind.
It had spawned more than 1,000 tornados and that number
included only those detected and recorded on Doppler
radar. From the damage in many locations, it appeared that
there were actually many more tornados than that, perhaps
ten times as many experts agreed.
And even though the eye never got closer than three
hundred miles from shore, Xavier’s storm surge was the
worst ever recorded, reaching 26 feet in places. Authorities
agreed that the loss of life, all things considered, was
incredibly low. They credited the slow and predictable
movement of the storm for allowing coastal residents
enough time to evacuate inland as the only reason more
lives were not lost.
Overall, authorities were saying the country was
very fortunate to have gotten off so lightly from such a
huge storm. They explained that if the storm had actually
come ashore, or had even approached a hundred miles
closer to shore, the damage and loss of life would have
been much greater.
12
While authorities were breathing sighs of relief that
the terrible ordeal was finally over, there was one man who
feared the worst effect of Xavier was yet to be experienced.
James W. Leatherwood was that man. His studies of
methane hydrate accumulation along the eastern seaboard
had made him realize that the possibility the storm had
caused a truly massive release was very high. He believed
the earthquakes detected near the eye of the storm was
really caused by the upheaval of these hydrates suddenly
being released. He also suspected the big earthquake had
been triggered by the tremendous differential pressures
caused by the hurricane.
There were other signs that massive amounts of
methane hydrate had been released by the storm. Many of
those who had died during the storm were reported to have
severe respiratory distress, and many times that number had
respiratory distress but had recovered.
Leatherwood had made inquiries of hospitals all
over the eastern United States and found that there had
been a massive increase of hospitalizations due to
respiratory problems during and immediately after the
hurricane.
The final key piece of evidence that Leatherwood
needed to assure himself that the release of methane
hydrates had been real and massive was the number of gas
alarms in petroleum refineries that had gone off during and
after the storm, many of them hundreds of miles from the
high winds.
These gas alarms were standard equipment in oil
refineries. They were required by Environmental
Protection regulations. Every oil refinery in the country
was required to have these detectors and alarms
strategically located within the refineries and around their
perimeters.
Because of his contacts in the petroleum refining
industry, Leatherwood had no trouble getting the
information he needed. In several instances, he had been
able to track a mass of the methane gas across the country
by noting when the alarms went off at one refinery and then
at another one downwind. Checking the prevailing winds
and speed at the time allowed him to predict which
refineries had been in the path of the gas mass and how
long it should have taken to travel from one refinery to the
next one downwind. The alarm sequence had been
precisely predictable.
Leatherwood thought that he had amassed an
irrefutable case for his theory that the hurricane had caused
a massive release of methane into the atmosphere, perhaps
in excess of a trillion tons, but the authorities ignored him.
They were too busy with recovery efforts to pay attention
to some kook with more warnings of gloom and doom.
Leatherwood had written a paper revealing his theory,
along with all the supporting evidence he had gathered and
he had sent copies to every important government office he
could think of. He got no responses. Finally, he gave up
and started focusing his efforts on preparing himself and
his family for the global warming surge that he knew would
come soon.
By this time, even his family had begun to question
his sanity, refusing to even listen to his pleas for them to
prepare to come with him to the sanctuary he had prepared
for them.
13
When he became convinced that they thought him
crazy and might have him committed to a mental
institution, he had left, making sure that they knew how to
get to the ranch if they ever changed their minds. That had
been more than twenty years earlier.
He had driven to the ranch and began moving all his
provisions to the top of the mesa and then into the cavern,
using his four-wheel drive pick-up to do the work. He had
amassed tons of provisions, enough to last five families
more than a decade. Living alone, the provisions would
last him more than a lifetime.
He had spent the first year at the ranch house below
the mesa. It was positioned so that he could see anyone
approaching while they were still miles away. The old dirt
road leading to the house was very rough, having been
washed out in several places by heavy rains over the past
few years. Even in a good four-wheel drive vehicle, the
going was rough and slow at best. Leatherwood didn’t
even use that road. Instead, he had found a dry gulch with
a gravel and sand bed that was much smoother going. The
main road to the ranch came from the northeast, while the
dry gulch led to the within a few hundred yards of the ranch
house from the southeast. Dan Corona had shown it to him
years before on one of their trips to the ranch.
Every day, a dozen times or more, Leatherwood
would look across the expanse along the tiny thread that
was the ranch road stretching across the arid plains, hoping
to see a plume of dust that would signal someone
approaching. It never came.
The next summer was a little hotter than normal, but
not exceptionally so. Leatherwood was beginning to doubt
the accuracy of his predictions. It had been two years since
Xavier, and there had been no signs of the warming surge
he had predicted. Leatherwood had satellite television and
an array of photovoltaic cells to power it with, so he was
able to keep tabs on the weather patterns.
The following winter was very mild with above
normal rainfall and the following spring arrived much
earlier than normal. Leatherwood kept track of his own
local conditions with a small weather station he had
installed atop the mesa. On March the 2nd of the third year
after Xavier, the thermometer hit one hundred and eleven
degrees. The warming surge had arrived with a vengeance.
In a matter of weeks, the country was brought to its
knees by the intense heat. By the end of April, all-time
high temperatures were being recorded all over the nation.
The same was true in Western Europe. Mechanical failures
began to sweep the country and in fact, the entire northern
hemisphere, while the southern hemisphere was
experiencing record amounts of precipitation. Even the
power generating plants began shutting down, mainly
because employees could not get to work to keep them
operating, their vehicles overheating and leaving them
stranded in the heat.
Leatherwood gained no satisfaction in the fact that
he had been right. His heart went out to the people of the
world who had been caught unaware by the relentless
onslaught of heat. People were dying by the millions. He
had sobbed openly when he thought of his children and
grandchildren. How had they fared, he wondered.
The relentless heat had driven him inside the cavern
where it was always cool. He came out only at night, long
14
after the sun went down, for the temperature during the day
was unbearable. On a few occasions, he would emerge
from the cavern before dawn and watch the sunrise, always
looking for signs of life on the plains below, knowing he
would see none.
The next four years were brutal, with unbearable
heat in the summers and winters that produced wild swings
in both temperatures and precipitation.
During the winters, Leatherwood ventured out. On
several occasions he had driven into Pecos and Fort
Stockton, but no one was ever there. They were completely
deserted. There were automobiles left abandoned
everywhere. Leatherwood had gone inside many of the
buildings and had found the withered bodies of many
people in some of them. He also went into some of the
homes and found the same thing.
He found the diesel and gasoline tanks at many gas
stations to still have plenty of fuel in them, which he could
pump out with a pump that operated from the battery of his
truck. With the toolbox fuel tank, the regular fuel tank and
two fifty-five gallon drums of diesel, Leatherwood had
enough fuel to travel completely across the country several
times.
In Pecos, Leatherwood found brand new heavy
equipment at the Caterpillar dealership. In Fort Stockton,
he had found an abandoned White-Freightliner tractor and a
lowboy trailer. With these, he moved the heavy equipment
he needed out to his ranch.
At a Honda Motorcycle dealership, he helped
himself to a couple of four-wheelers and dirt bikes. He also
took three portable generators.
 Before he had ever moved out to the ranch, he had
installed a gasoline and a diesel storage tank of two
thousand gallons each below ground near the ranch house.
He had filled these using his pick-up truck and eight fifty-
five gallon drums, making trips to different gas stations in
the area over a period of time. Now, he realized that all
that work had not been necessary, because there was more
fuel in the underground tanks at abandoned gas stations
than he would be able to use in a lifetime.
Leatherwood found it interesting that all the pistols,
rifles, shotguns and ammunition from all the department
stores and sporting goods stores that he went in had been
taken. That caused him to pause for thought. It indicated
that people had become very desperate and desperate
people do and prepare to do, desperate things. He
determined that he must use extreme caution and be very
vigilant when moving about.
He happened to find a basement with a big gun safe
hidden behind a secret door in a closet. He had managed to
break in and had found a veritable arsenal inside. These, he
loaded into his truck and took to his cavern. From that
point on, he was always armed when he left the ranch.
During the winter of the eighth year following
Xavier, he came out of an old convenience store carrying a
case of motor oil. Just as he stepped outside, a movement
to his right caught the corner of his eye. Cooley, without
giving himself away, he looked about indirectly. He saw a
man with a shotgun crouched behind some boxes. The man
was aiming the shotgun straight at Leatherwood.
Casually, as though it was what he intended to do
all along, Leatherwood sat the oil down on the walkway in
15
front of the store and went back inside as though he
intended to fetch other things from inside. Quickly, he
went to the back door and looked out the small, head high
window in it. He didn’t see anyone else. He opened the
door and scurried out, using the available cover. Quickly
he worked himself around until he was directly behind the
gunman. From this vantage point, Leatherwood saw
several other men, all armed and all watching the front door
of the store from behind a garbage bin.
Leatherwood had no problem sneaking up on the
man with the shotgun. The man never knew he was there.
Leatherwood delivered a precise blow to the back of the
man’s neck. Instantly, the man was unconscious.
In moments, Leatherwood had worked his way
behind the others without being seen. He had taken the
shotgun from the man he had knocked out. When he made
his presence known he did so with a calm and confident
tone of voice.
“If any of you gentlemen look like your even
thinking about turning around, I’m going to blow the back
of your head off.” The men were all startled but not so
much so that Leatherwood’s words didn’t get through.
They froze, the hair on the backs of their necks standing up
and tingling.
“Just drop those guns inside the dumpster.”
Leatherwood ordered. Instantly the men had complied.
Now turn around. Again the men complied.
They were a hard looking lot, desperados if
Leatherwood had ever seen one. “I ought to blow all of
you to hell. You deserve it.” He said, as though trying to
make up his mind.
 “We wasn’t going to shoot you mister, honest.”
One of the men said.
Leatherwood smiled a condescending smile at the
man that said clearly he didn’t believe the words.
“Who are you mister? Are you from around these
parts?” Another asked with a quiver in his voice.
“Let’s get something straight. I ask the questions.
You give the answers.” Leatherwood instructed.
“Who are you guys, where are you coming from
and where are you going?” Leatherwood asked.
“We’re just a group of men trying to make our
way.” One of them answered. “We came from San
Antonio along Interstate 10, heading for the Rockies. We
have a gang in San Antonio. We spotted you and was afraid
you might cause trouble for us, so we decided to make sure
before we moved on.”
“You know friend, I’ve known some people in my
life that couldn’t lie well, but I do believe you take the
cake. I think I’ll just blow your head off for insulting my
intelligence that way.” Leatherwood said, bringing the
shotgun to bear on the man’s chest.
“Okay, okay!” The man yelled, flinging out his
hands and dropping to his knees. “I’m sorry. I lied. I
won’t do it again. I promise. Please don’t shoot me.”
“Well you better get started telling the truth, bud,
and you better make it count cause you won’t get another
chance.” Leatherwood commanded.
The man began blurting out their story. They were
members of a gang whose headquarters was Santa Fe, New
Mexico. They were on a search mission. They pillaged
whatever they wanted, food, cloths, guns and women.
16
They had a camp outside of town where half a dozen of
their comrades were guarding two young girls they had
taken from a church basement in a little town to the north.
“How did you know I was lying?” The man asked.
Leatherwood looked at the man for a moment with
unflinching eyes, thinking quickly. He didn’t want these
guys to have any idea he lived nearby. “Because I come
from San Antonio, and I’m a member of a gang there. We
have that place corralled. If you had been from there, I
would have known it.”
“How so?” The man asked.
“Because I gave the sign and you didn’t give the
counter.” Leatherwood lied.
“What sign? I didn’t see no sign.” The man said.
“If you had come from San Antonio you would
have seen it.” Leatherwood bluffed. That seemed to
satisfy the men and they shut up.
The information about the little girls was very
disturbing to Leatherwood. He cringed when he thought
about what lay in store for them at the hands of these
outlaws. He knew instantly that he would never be able to
live with himself if he didn’t get those little girls away from
those men.
Leatherwood made the men tell him where their
camp was, then he took the men to the town jail, not only
locking them in separate cells, but handcuffing each man to
the bars of his cell as well.
As he was about to leave he turned to the men and
asked if there was anything else he needed to know about
their friends and their camp layout before he left. The men
said nothing.
 Leatherwood smiled at the silent men and then said.
“You know, if you’re leaving out anything that would be
useful in keeping me from getting killed, it would be in
your best interest to tell me now. You see, I put together a
little insurance package. You see that box that I brought in
a while ago?” He pointed at the wooden box against the
wall across from their cells. “That box has a couple of
dozen sticks of dynamite in it connected to a timer set to go
off in six hours. If someone doesn’t get back here by then
to stop it, you boys are going to find out what hell looks
like.”
Leatherwood paused for a long minute, smiling a
knowing smile at the men, watching the scowls grow on
their faces as they thought about what he said and the
meaning sank in.
“This is your last chance, boys. If I don’t come
back in six hours, pieces of you are going to be falling out
of the sky for the biggest part of a day.” Leatherwood said
with mock regret.
After another moment Leatherwood turned toward
the door. He said in one last verbal barb. “All right then,
boys. When you get to hell, tell Satan that I sent you.”
Just as he was closing the door behind him he heard
the men yelling for him to come back. He reentered the
cell room. “You boys decided you forgot to tell me
something?” He asked.
“How do we know there is even any dynamite in
that box?” One of them asked.
“Is that all you wanted?” Leatherwood asked in
disgust. “Well, you won’t have to wait very long to find
out, will you?” He snapped and turned back to the door.
17
“Okay, okay.” The men yelled. “We’ll tell you
everything.”
Leatherwood turned again to face the men and said.
“You better make this worth my time, cause if you don’t
I’m going to set that timer for fifteen minutes instead of six
hours.”
“Okay. We promise to tell you everything.” One of
them said, and he began describing the campsite in great
detail, including where a lookout would be posted.
Just to make sure they were telling the truth,
Leatherwood repeated some of what they told him,
intentionally making mistakes in the process to see if they
would correct him. They did, with a great deal of urgency.
They had come to believe completely that the only way
they would survive was if they cooperated with
Leatherwood without reservation.
Leatherwood knew the place where the outlaws had
set up their camp. The camp was about five miles
southeast of town. He was able to drive his truck to within
half a mile of it without being seen. The weather had been
wet recently and there was no dust stirred up by his
passing. Soon he had positioned himself to see the camp
without being seen. It was exactly the way his captives had
described it to him, including where the lookout was
posted.
Leatherwood sneered when he spotted the man at
the lookout post. He was leaning against a big rock, sound
asleep. Leatherwood had no trouble sneaking up on the
man and knocking him senseless.
The camp was located at an old roadside rest stop. It
had a pavilion with separate restrooms for men and women
facing one another across a covered breezeway. The rest of
the men and the two girls were there. Leatherwood was
able to work his way down to the old pavilion without
being seen, after all, the men really didn’t think anyone was
around.
Leatherwood was able to position himself so he
could see everyone. None of the men appeared to be
armed, their weapons leaning against the wall with pistol
belts hanging down from the ends of the barrels of the two
shotguns and four rifles.
Capturing those men proved to be one of the easiest
things Leatherwood had ever done. He simply stepped out
into the breezeway between the men and their weapons.
“If you make a move it will be the last thing you
ever do.” He said loudly, waving his shotgun menacingly.
He threw a white canvass bag at the feet of the men.
In the bag was a dozen pairs of handcuffs he had taken
from the jail in town. “Now you boys cuff yourselves
together.” He told them.
“Hey, man.” One of them started protesting.
“Shut your mouth.” Leatherwood interjected with
venom in his voice.
The men could see the hate in Leatherwood’s eyes
and on his face and they knew he was just looking for an
excuse to start blasting with his shotgun. Quickly they
cuffed themselves together. About that time, the lookout
came stumbling in, holding his head and groaning. In a
few seconds he was cuffed to the rest of them.
When the men were safely cuffed together,
Leatherwood turned his attention to the two girls, who were
18
not as small as he had thought. They appeared to be in their
mid teens. “You girls all right?” He asked them.
They glanced at one another, obviously not
knowing who Leatherwood was or what he intended.
“It’s all right, girls. I’m not here to hurt you, and
you don’t have to worry about this scum hurting you
either.” Leatherwood said, gesturing at the cuffed men.
As though a heavy weight was lifted from them, the
two girls scurried to his side. Something they saw and
heard in him made them trust him instantly. They began to
cry and sobbed out the story of how the outlaws had come
into their little community and found them and their father
in the basement of the church where they had been staying
for several days. They had been on the run from Santa Fe,
fleeing these very men, trying to reach St. Louis where they
hoped they still had family. They told him how the men
had beaten their father until he was lifeless. Then they told
him how the men had taken turns raping them day after
day.
Leatherwood did his best to sooth the girls and
reassure them that everything would be okay. Finally, he
led the girls and his new captors to his truck, which was a
crew cab. He put the girls in the back seat and made the
cuffed men get in the truck bed.
He drove back to town and put these men in jail
with the others. He took the girls to a clothing store that
still had some cloths left in the back room. The girls
perked up at the idea of new cloths and busied themselves
picking out what they wanted. Leatherwood found a
comfortable chair and relaxed, enjoying the sound of their
giggles and squeals as they found things they liked.
 As he sat there, Leatherwood thought about the men
he had in jail and what he should do with them. He had no
doubts at all that these men were horrible in what they had
done, and they deserved to be punished severely. Of that
he was sure. The only question was how guilty they were,
and of what crimes. He thought about the days of the old
West when such men were dealt with quickly and finally,
dangling from a rope, often for offenses of a much lower
order than these men had committed. He imagined them,
all ten of them, hanging by their necks from ropes that he
put around their necks. He knew that this was something
that he would never be able to do. Still, he felt a strong
need to see the men punished somehow.
Even though it was uncomfortable for them, as well
as for himself, Leatherwood questioned the girls about
what the men had done to them. He asked them then to
describe any markings or other distinguishing features
about each man. The girls had said that all of the men had
ravaged them many times each since taking them captive,
forcing them to perform all sorts of sordid acts. The girls
had no difficulty in providing detailed descriptions of each
man’s private anatomy. Also the girls showed
Leatherwood the marks the men had made on their necks,
breasts and other private areas. Leatherwood was
disgusted.
Leatherwood took the information the girls gave
him and forced the men to strip in private so he could see if
the girls had been truthful. They had. It was proof beyond
a doubt that what the girls claimed held enough truth to
justify severe punishment for the men.
19
Leatherwood and the girls stayed in rooms in the
hotel just down the street from the jail that night. The next
morning he took his prisoners some food and water and
then set about the job of figuring out what to do with them.
That evening, Leatherwood took the girls into the
cell room at the jail. The men had been talking among
themselves, but grew silent when Leatherwood and the
girls entered the room.
Leatherwood looked hard at each man in turn and
each of them shrank from the intensity of his gaze. After
several moments of complete silence, Leatherwood spoke.
“Every one of you stands gravely accused. What do you
have to say? Speak now or never.”
There was silence. None of them had the will to try
to lie to Leatherwood. They feared him enormously, and
they knew that he knew they were guilty.
Leatherwood gave the men plenty of time to speak
but none said a word. Finally he said. “Then it’s done.
Your silence is the final confirmation. Guilty.”
“Just hold on there.” One of them said. “Who
made you the judge and jury? You got no right to judge
us.”
A stabbing glance from Leatherwood instantly
silenced the man, for he feared what this man Leatherwood
might do if incited.
“Tomorrow morning you will be sentenced and the
sentence will be carried out at once. If you so much as
whimper between now and then, I’ll kill you where you
stand and leave your carcass to the roaches. God knows
you deserve it.” Leatherwood said with a ring of promise
in his voice.
 That night the men in the cells slept fitfully, if at all.
Some of them wept. Oh, how they feared this man
Leatherwood.
The next morning dawned crisp and clear.
Leatherwood was sitting on the veranda of the hotel long
before the first gray of dawn began giving shape to the
countryside. Leatherwood did not relish what the morning
held in store, but knew it must be done. He realized the
country had completely broken down when the heat surge
came. For that matter, so had the entire world. Anarchy
was the rule, and the thing about anarchy was that it was
like a terrible disease, it tended to hold on and spread. If
history taught no other lesson, it was that tyranny and
lawlessness had to be dealt with swiftly and severely.
As the sun cleared the horizon, Leatherwood went
to the jail and escorted the prisoners into an adjoining room
and pronounced the sentence. He told them that they
deserved death, but he wasn’t going to take it upon himself
to take their lives. That would have to be done by a real
judge and jury. But he did feel comfortable with seeing
them thrashed severely for their crimes.
So it was that Leatherwood passed sentence on the
men to be one stripe with a whip for each time they had
violated the girls. In his mind, this amounted to about sixty
lashes each. Leatherwood spent the entire morning
carrying out the sentence.
He had found a couple of old bullwhips in one of
barns on the outskirts of town on one of his excursions in
the past and for some reason he had taken them. He had
used some saddle soap on them and worked them back to a
state of good condition.
20
Leatherwood was very deliberate in the use of the
whip on the men. He knew that if he chose, he could lay
them open and bleed them to death with the whip. But all
he wanted was severe pain and pure anguish for these men.
He stripped them naked and stretched them between
two posts, then administered the sixty lashes. From the
nape of their necks to the calves of their legs, he striped
them with huge welts that oozed blood, sixty times each.
When the last man had undergone the ordeal,
Leatherwood stood before them and said. “For what you
men did, you deserve to die. I’m sure of that and so are
you. Now you’ve got marks on your backsides that will
stay there until you do die. But those marks will heal and
the time might even come when you won’t even think
about them very much. But I’ll tell you something you
won’t ever forget. From this day on, every time you think
about doing something that you know is wrong, something
that hurts someone else, you’ll remember this day. You’ll
remember that even though you might get away with
whatever evil deed you are contemplating, you are still
running the risk that someone who won’t abide such things
is going to catch up to you and make you pay. You’re still
alive and your marks will heal.
The marks you left on the souls of those little girls
will never heal and for that you deserve to burn in hell. I
want you to know that right this minute I am having to
exercise all my will power to keep from sending straight
there right now.
I’m leaving now with the two little girls. I’m taking
them home with me to San Antonio. We’ll be there
tonight. I’ll be back here by tomorrow afternoon. I’ll be
bringing a judge and jury with me. If you are still in this
part of the country, we’ll find you, we’ll try you and we’ll
hang you, and what you got here today won’t make a bit of
difference.
That’s all I’ve got to say except this one last thing.
If you manage to get clear of here before we get back, if
you manage to keep us from hanging you, you had better
hope that you never see me again unless you have some
really good upstanding people ready to stand up on your
behalf. Otherwise I’ll cut you down where I find you.”
Leatherwood herded the girls into the truck and they
roared away to the east. After they were about two miles
out of town, he turned off the main highway and headed
south, and then doubled back toward town on a back road.
He stopped and took out his binoculars. He climbed about
fifty feet up an old radio tower and looked toward town.
He saw the outlaws, dressed now, climb into an old Ford
van and head out toward their campsite. Satisfied that they
were not going to try to follow him and the girls,
Leatherwood climbed down and headed for the ranch.
He looked at the girls occasionally in his rear-view
mirror and smiled reassuringly each time he saw them
looking back. For several miles none of them talked, then
the oldest of the girls, almost in a whisper, said. “Thank
you”. There was a look on her face that caused a lump to
form in Leatherwood’s throat. He couldn’t talk. All he
could do was smile and nod his great shaggy head in
acknowledgement.
When the lump finally went away, he thought he
should try to lighten things up a little, so he just started
talking. He spoke of the ranch and all the good food he had
21
stored up. He talked about how the weather seemed to be
cooling a little from one year to the next, which meant the
heat surge was beginning to wind down a little. He didn’t
know exactly when, but somewhere during his rambling,
the girls dropped off to sleep.
As he continued driving toward the ranch he could
not keep from thinking about what the two girls had been
through and what damage it had caused to their tender
minds. He vowed to try to make it up to them, to try to help
them get past the ordeal in body and spirit.
When they finally arrived at the ranch house both
girls were in a deep sleep. Leatherwood left the truck
running and went inside the ranch house to get the girls’
rooms ready. The ranch house itself was a true Spanish
hacienda design, built as a large rectangle with all the
rooms opening onto a central courtyard. There were
fourteen of these rooms around the courtyard, each one
about twenty feet square. The building itself was made of
fine adobe brick with a layer of stucco over it. The walls
were almost three feet thick.
The front section of the house contained the great
room and the entry way in the center. On the North end of
this section was the kitchen and dining room. On the south
end was the master bedroom. This section of the house was
forty-six feet deep between the outside of the front wall of
the house and the back wall that opened onto the large
courtyard. It was eighty-six feet long. The other three sides
of the rectangle were about twenty-six feet wide and
eighty-six feet long.
The beds and furniture in all the spare rooms were
covered with drop cloths and none had sheets or blankets.
It only took Leatherwood a few minutes to get two of the
rooms ready. Then he went outside to get the girls. They
were still fast asleep, probably for the first time in months.
Leatherwood gently shook the shoulder of the older
girl, Kathryn, but she did not awaken, so he gently lifted
her in his arms and carried her to her room and placed her
on the bed. He covered her with a soft, thick blanket. For
just a second the girl stirred, tensed and opened her eyes
and saw Leatherwood’s smiling face. Instantly, she relaxed
and was back to sleep. In moments, the younger girl,
Audrey, was also fast asleep in her new bed.
And so it was that Leatherwood, after more than
eight years alone, found himself with a family again. When
he found them, Kathryn was fourteen and Audrey was
twelve, just about the same ages his grandsons would be if
they were still alive.
For a long while, the girls had bad dreams and were
tense and uneasy a good bit of the time. But gradually,
they settled in and became very comfortable and relaxed.
Together, they made a life, spending the winters at the
ranch house and the summers in the cavern.
The weather was harsh, especially in the summer,
when temperatures would often soar above 140 degrees,
sometimes staying above the century mark for days at a
time. The winters were an unpredictable mix of torrential
rainstorms and frigid temperatures to blast furnace heat.
Early spring was the best time of the year. The weather
seemed to calm and become pleasant, sometimes for a few
weeks, before the baking heat would set in for the summer.
Leatherwood was very protective of the girls, and
never took them with him on an excursion unless he had
22
checked the area for intruders first. There were several
high places in the area that he would drive to and use his
binoculars to look for signs of people. He rarely ever saw
any such signs, but when he did, it was usually smoke from
a campfire. On a few occasions, after working his way
near enough to see the travelers clearly and seeing women
and children, he would hail their camp and meet with the
people.
Five times over the years he met with such groups
and he and the girls would visit with them, sometimes for
several days before the groups would move on. These were
very special times for Leatherwood and the girls. The
people they met with always had lots of information about
how things were going in other parts of the country. The
news was hardly ever good. It seemed that most survivors
of the western hemisphere had moved north into Canada
and Alaska, or to the southern part of South America.
Virtually every government in the world had collapsed
during the first few weeks of the initial heat surge because
all the power plants had failed. The electric power grids
simply quit working.
People in the large metropolitan areas had been the
hardest hit. In New York City, people had moved into the
subway tunnels to escape the horrendous heat, but disease
had broken out and they had died by the tens of thousands
every day. Many people had died when they became
stranded trying to escape to the north or some other place
where they hoped to find shelter from the heat. Many
others were murdered for what they had or because they
were seen as a threat. Deep caves were havens that
thousands flocked to, those arriving too late to become
members of the clans that formed to hold the caves found
themselves facing death if they tried to enter, for those who
occupied the caves defended them brutally. Some of the
clans were well organized and deadly efficient in the raids
they conducted on others. The winter months were months
of terror for people all over the country, for it was the only
time of the year people could venture out in the daytime, so
winter was the time when different clans went raiding.
During the very early days of the heat surge, the
government tried to keep things in order, but even they had
to withdraw from the heat. It was said that a lot of
government officials had gone underground in various
locations that had been built to protect them in case of
nuclear war. The problem was that there was no enemy
they could fight and the nuclear winter these places were
provisioned against would have been of shorter duration
than the heat surge would last. So, even though the
government had some pretty good locations prepared for
themselves, they did not have enough food. When the food
ran out, they had to come out and face a world that had no
crops, no manufacturing, no industry and no one who had
any allegiance for the governments that existed before the
heat surge.
The only factions of the military anywhere that had
remained operational for any length of time had been the
nuclear submarine fleets, and in time, without effective
support at home, they dissolved also.
The polar ice caps and the large glaciers around the
world had begun melting very rapidly when the heat surge
hit. The sea level rose more than twenty feet in two years.
After that, no one kept track.
23
Huge sections of the forests around the world had
simply died in the withering heat. During the summer of
the second year, there had been hundreds of forest fires
around the world. The smoke from these fires choked the
atmosphere until the winter rains came and washed the
skies clean.
In each hemisphere, from late fall till early spring,
mighty storms ravaged the earth, dumping the huge
quantities of water the atmosphere was absorbing along the
tropics. During the winters, the polar regions received
huge amounts of snowfall that would melt in the summer.
Huge rivers would form, carving new pathways to the seas.
Many species of wildlife had succumb. The Earth had
become a much harsher place in which to live.
It was said that by the fourth year of the heat surge,
over half the people in the world had died. Some said the
true number was much higher. Scattered around the planet
were a few ham radio operators who had managed to
survive and somehow find the means to power their radios
for short periods. In this way, the extent and degree of the
devastation had been communicated. Some of the reports
were simply horrible. In equatorial regions, there had
simply been no escape. The safety held forth toward the
poles was simply too far away for the masses to reach.
People had perished by the millions.
The northern and southern extremes were also very
difficult places to live. The summers, though not as hot as
in the summer, were still very hot, often experiencing
deadly hot temperatures that forced people below ground.
The winters in these locations were unimaginably difficult,
with snowfall amounts often ten times as much as normal
before the heat surge. The relentless heat in the tropics
evaporated sea water at rates vastly greater than before the
heat surge, and the old adage of what goes up must come
down proved to be correct in the case of moisture in the air.
When the hot, moist air masses reached the cooler regions
of the planet, the result was precipitation, with single snow
storms dumping as much as thirty feet of snow in a period
of a few days in places that previously didn’t get that much
snow in a year. Entire cities of the north and south
latitudes had been completely washed away by the huge
floods that took place from early spring until early summer.
Any dwelling in low lying areas of the north and
south were completely obliterated by the end of the second
winter after the heat surge began. The spring run-off was
so great that new valleys and gorges were being carved out
of the earth at incredible rates by the relentless flow of
water. Even the caves in these regions were miserable
during the thaws, for the infiltrating water was cold and
unrelenting. People who had fled north and south from the
heat learned quickly that they had escaped one deadly
circumstance for another and they too succumbed by the
millions in the first few years.

24
 A SURVIVOR’S WAY
Leatherwood, due to his unique experience with a
methane hydrate release, was one of the few people in the
world that had truly grasped what had happened. Being an
innovator and thinker, he had sat down and thought things
through. His scientific background in chemical engineering
and other disciplines provided him with a deep
understanding of the mechanisms that had been set into
motion by hurricane Xavier.
He realized that Xavier’s size and strength had been
the product of global warming. Even so, Leatherwood
realized it had been a freak of nature, the sort of mix that
happened once in a hundred thousand years. Add the extra
energy of global warming to this mix, and the result was
even more potent.
For several years before Xavier, Leatherwood had
spent most of his time off from work at the ranch, fixing
things up especially in the cavern. There was something
about the cavern that drew him back, kept his interest
peaked, made him think of the possibilities. Years after
Xavier, Leatherwood often wondered if this high interest
had been due to some premonition about things to come,
and his subconscious mind had responded to it. At any
rate, Leatherwood had been fascinated by the cavern and
had planned and then carried out many projects within the
cavern.
The cavern itself was extensive and much of it had
never been explored. It had many chambers and halls that
branched out. One passage wound down to a depth of
several hundred feet below the mesa, ending in an
25
underground lake chamber that covered more than three
acres.
Leatherwood had measured the height of the mesa
at its highest point as being 986 feet above the plains
below. Using a barometer that he had devised, he had
calculated the level of the lake’s surface to be 378 feet
beneath the level of the plains. This meant that the lake was
1,364 feet or so below the top of the mesa. The portion of
the cavern that he had selected as living quarters was over
700 feet below the top of the mesa. It consisted of nine
separate chambers that connected to the main chamber. All
together, he estimated these chambers occupied just over
two acres, with the main chamber over half that size.
At a level about 100 feet below the level of the
plains, water seeps entering the main passage to the lake
chamber had collectively become a strong flowing stream
of perhaps 180 gallons per minute. Leatherwood had
managed to snake about 250 feet of ten inch diameter PVC
piping down the passage. He had constructed a dam of
waterproof cement to make the water pool up at a level
about 270 feet above the lake. When he closed the gate on
the dam, it would cause the pool to fill and overflow into
the pipe. At the bottom of the pipe, he had installed a small
water turbine connected to a small generator. At full
opening, the generator could produce more than twenty
horsepower worth of electricity. When filled to
overflowing, the pool could hold almost 400,000 gallons of
water, which was enough to power the turbine at full bore
for almost ten hours before the flow of water to the turbine
would drop to match the incoming flow, which could
produce over 4 horsepower continuously.
 The generator produced 440 volts of 3-phase
electricity. The valve that controlled the amount of water
flowing to the turbine worked on a governor that controlled
the turbine’s speed. If there was only a small electrical
load on the generator only a small flow of water was
needed to keep the turbine spinning at the design speed of
600 RPM. However, when the electrical demand on the
generator was high, the flow valve would have to open up
more in order to achieve the design speed. The generator
was connected to an electrical system that included
transformers, circuit breakers and an array of storage
batteries. Wiring ran all through the caverns and to the
Ranch house and barn as well. Thus, Leatherwood had a
very reliable and efficient power generation station that
needed very little attention and could provide many times
more power than he normally needed.
In one of the larger chambers separate from the
living quarters, Leatherwood had set up a workshop. In it
he had set up milling machines, a drill press, a couple of
lathes and an assortment of other tools. He had a similar
shop set up in the large barn that guarded the entrance to
the notch in the mesa where the ranch house was located.
During the early days of his exploration of the
cavern, Leatherwood discovered one passageway that came
very close to the notch in the mesa’s northeast wall where
the ranch house was nestled. Leatherwood had bored a
hole in the mesa wall and had hit the passage inside the
mesa exactly where he had calculated it would be. In only
a few months, he had succeeded in developing the hole into
a passageway that emerged just behind the ranch house.
He had camouflaged the opening in a way that it was
26
invisible to an onlooker from a distance of more than a few
feet. Through this passage, Leatherwood had created a
shortcut to the cavern internals.
He had installed an electric lift car that traveled the
steep passage on rails that he had fabricated. With it, he had
been able to easily move a lot of heavy furnishings and
equipment into the cavern that he could have never done
otherwise.
In one very large series of chambers near the top of
the mesa, Leatherwood had established a small farming
operation. Using fiber optic cables that he had gotten from
a deserted warehouse after Xavier, he had managed to
construct collectors that channeled sunlight through the
cables and into the cavern below. He augmented this light
with florescent plant lights that he had found in an
abandoned nursery. Over time he had hauled in bags of
topsoil and peat moss from nurseries in the area as well as
dirt from some of the local farms. At the southwest edge of
the mesa there was another cave not connected to his
cavern system. Bats had live in this cave for centuries and
the floor of the cave was covered with their droppings, and
this was some of the best fertilizer in the world. Together,
they formed a potent growing environment.
By the time the girls came to live with him,
Leatherwood had almost one and a half acres of some of
the most productive farmland ever. He had collected
enough seed of various sorts to plant several crops a year
for several hundred years. With the girls helping, they
expanded this to more than seven acres over time. The
farm produced far more food than they needed, so they
canned most of it, using Mason canning jars that they
collected from abandoned stores and farms all over the
countryside. Many of the crops, like the different varieties
of beans, wheat, corn and the like, they dried and stored in
large plastic bags. They also had food stored in several
large deep freezes that Leatherwood had gotten from an
appliance store in Pecos.
To all this, they added crayfish and catfish.
Leatherwood had discovered them in a seep pool at the
base of the mesa under a large overhang. In an experiment,
he had captured a bunch of them and had moved them into
a pool inside the cavern. The pool had a sandy bottom,
which Leatherwood augmented with a little mud from their
original pool. He strung some lights over the pool and
operated them on a timer. From abandoned supermarkets
and pet stores, Leatherwood had collected enough dried
fish food to feed them for years. The crayfish and catfish
thrived in the cave pool, multiplying well and providing he
and the girls with a tasty treat from time to time.
Amazingly, one of the few species that somehow
managed to deal with the heat was wild rabbits.
Leatherwood put out a little food for them near the seep
pool where he had gotten the crayfish and catfish. He had
dammed up the seep pool close to the mesa so it would not
run out from under the protective overhang. In the
summertime, it was often the last water hole the animals
had for miles in any direction. The water, coupled with the
little bits of food that he put out made it easy to snare them
whenever he wanted.
Although it involved a good deal of work, the three
of them managed a very comfortable life. From the various
abandoned stores and homes they had collected a giant
27
screen television, VCR, DVD player, CD player stereo
receiver, computers, software, hundreds of movies on DVD
and VHS tape and virtually every song ever recorded on
cassette and CD. Leatherwood had even moved a baby
grand piano into the great room of the cavern living
quarters. Both girls had taken lessons relentlessly before
Xavier and played beautifully. Kathryn was especially
musically gifted. She could play several other musical
instruments besides the piano and she could sing like a
nightingale. Leatherwood had collected other musical
instruments along the way, including an authentic
Stradivarius violin, which Kathryn could play so
beautifully it would bring tears to Leatherwood’s eyes.
They had also amassed a gigantic library of books,
taken for the most part from the public and school libraries
that they visited.
They all grew to love each other deeply. For the
first few years they were together, Leatherwood was
completely dedicated to protecting them and preparing
them for a future without him, for he knew he was growing
older and no one lived forever. He found the girls to be
quick studies and more than competent physically. The
work hardened their young bodies and they were truly
beautiful. He tried not to overlook any aspect of their
education, including how to shoot the various weapons they
had accumulated over time. Both girls had become deadly
shots, especially Audrey. She was a regular Annie Oakley,
complete with an amazingly fast draw with a western style
pistol that she wore any time they were away from the
ranch.
 It came to pass that Leatherwood began to wonder
who was doing the protecting and who was being protected.
One time, after being gone for several days, Leatherwood
had returned home bruised and bloodied. He had
encountered a gang who had become bent on killing him.
They had had a running shootout, but there were too many
of them. Leatherwood had found himself just one step
away from being shot as he had scrambled across the
countryside, his old lungs gasping for air. His good aim
had clipped a couple of them and had invoked just enough
respect for his shooting skill that it had made them proceed
with their hunt with a little more care. Still they were
relentless.
They drove him over the side of an arroyo and had
him pinned down inside a small washout. They had shot
down into his hiding place from time to time, hoping to hit
him with a lucky shot, but none found their mark. It had
been a rough tumble down the side of the arroyo and this is
how Leatherwood had gotten so banged up.
After almost two hours of waiting with no response
from Leatherwood, the outlaws decided they must have hit
him. They had been yelling down at him, trying to get him
to respond, but Leatherwood was too smart for that. He
knew that their bullets could not reach him unless they too
climbed down to the bottom of the arroyo, and if they did
that, he’d make them wish they hadn’t.
Two of the outlaws went down the draw a little
ways to the East and found a way to climb down. They
tried to be stealthy, but the walls of the arroyo funneled the
sound of their approach to Leatherwood well before he saw
them. When they finally came into view, peering warily
28
into the darkness where he had been laying, Leatherwood
had already moved down the washout a dozen yards in the
direction the men had come from. They were moving past
him when he opened fire. The men were sneaking along,
side by side, and one bullet wounded both of them through
the legs. His Glock 10mm at such close range did quite a
bit of damage. Instantly, the two men fell to the gravely
bed of the arroyo in great pain, clasping their wounds,
which were spewing blood. In the next instant a hail of
shots rang out from the rim of the arroyo as the men still up
there opened fire, not certain where Leatherwood’s shots
had come from.
Leatherwood simply crouched down behind the
sandstone washout, knowing he was completely safe from
their bullets. Amidst the roar of the gunshots, the cries and
moans of the two wounded men could be heard.
For two days, the standoff continued. The two
wounded men had managed to crawl down the arroyo far
enough that their comrades felt safe in rescuing them, but
no one else tried to sneak up on Leatherwood. They would
occasionally fire a shot into the blackness that was his
haven, but none were a threat to the big man.
Leatherwood always carried a canteen of water and
some rations with him whenever he was out foraging, so he
had not been suffering very much while he was pinned
down, and the place was not all that uncomfortable. It had
a deep layer of sand that he found very comfortable to lie
on, and he was out of the elements. Still, he knew that the
men up above could last a lot longer than he could.
Late the night of the second day, Leatherwood
sneaked away down the arroyo, going very slowly, being
extremely careful not to make a sound. It took him over
two hours to cover a hundred yards where the arroyo took a
sharp turn to the south. From that point he felt safer in
moving a little faster, but he was still very careful to go
quietly.
After another quarter mile, he found a good place to
climb out. He made his way back to the place he had left
his truck, hoping the men pursuing him had not discovered
its whereabouts. They hadn’t.
From behind the back seat, Leatherwood took out a
Remington Model 1100 twelve-gage automatic shotgun and
an M-1 carbine with four 30 round banana clips. He also
got two more Glock 10mm automatic pistols and extra
loaded clips.
Taking a deep breath, Leatherwood resolved
himself to the task that lay before him and set off in the
direction of the outlaw campsite. He knew there were eight
men all together and two of them were out of the fracas.
That left six for him to deal with.
When he got to the outlaw campsite, he lay quietly
behind a mound of sandstone observing the men in the
camp. He had heard the men fire their guns several times
after he had snuck away. He figured they had been firing
into his former hideout, just to let him know they were still
there, waiting for him. He had accounted for the two
wounded men and five of the others and when a shot rang
out from the direction of the arroyo, he knew where the last
man was.
A few minutes later, the eighth man entered the
campfire light explaining that he had not been able to detect
any sign of the man they had pinned down in the arroyo.
29
The men settled down around the fire, some of them
sipping on cups filled with some sort of hot liquid. It was
not coffee, Leatherwood knew because his position was
downwind of the camp and he would have smelled it.
Leatherwood listened to their talk for a while. One
of the men they called Squirm asked. “Why are we
pressing this fellow so hard? Why don’t we just pull out of
here?”
“For two reasons.” The one called Mike said. “You
know that if The Barber ever found out we had a shootout
with one man and we turned tail and ran, he would skin us
all alive with a dull razor and the way you are always
running off at the mouth, Squirm, he would be sure to find
out. No, we have to take The Barber this man’s ears or
we’ll loose our own”
“Okay. So what’s the second reason?” Squirm
asked.
“The second reason is because I said so.” Mike
answered. Rubbing a bandage on his forearm he continued.
“The son-of-a-bitch creased me, and I owe him.”
“Well what did you expect him to do? You was
shooting at him with everything you had. Hell, Mike, you
would have done the same thing.” The one called Tuck
said.
“That don’t make no difference.” Mike spat. “We
are the New Comancheros. Nobody shoots at a New
Comancheros and lives to tell about it.”
The one called Tuck nodded his head in agreement.
Leatherwood waited another half hour, then moved.
He stepped cleanly into the camp with his shotgun blazing.
He was shooting to kill. Five blasts in rapid succession and
five men were dead. The two wounded men could only lay
where they were, weak from loss of blood. The eighth man
was laying spread eagled on the ground, pleading not to be
shot. It was Squirm. He was lucky the Remington only
held five shots.
“Get up.” Leatherwood ordered the man, who
complied instantly.
“Tell me everything about this New Comancheros
bunch and this fellow you call The Barber and keep this in
mind while you’re talking. I can smell a lie like a bear can
smell blood. If I get just the tiniest hint that you are lying
to me about anything, I’m going to blow you half in two.
Understand?” Leatherwood said with a menacing thrust of
his shotgun for emphasis.
“Yes, okay. I’ll tell you everything. Just please
don’t shoot me.” Squirm pleaded.
“Get to talking, then.” Leatherwood ordered.
Squirm began a non-stop tirade of information,
telling everything he could remember as fast as it came into
his mind. He told Leatherwood that the New Comancheros
numbered about two hundred and that a big, very mean
man they called The Barber was in command. They were
headquartered in Santa Fe and they controlled the entire
southwest region of the country pillaging and exacting tolls
from people all over the area who had survived.
“Well, your numbers have dropped by five and
judging from the looks of those two hombres under the
blankets there, the numbers are apt to drop by two more
before too much longer if they don’t get help.”
Leatherwood said.
30
“Another thing wrong with your story is that your
outfit controls the entire southwest region of the country.
You don’t control anything in Texas, mister. You don’t
have enough men to even think about it.” Leatherwood
said.
“You mean you’ve got more men than the we do?”
Squirm asked, his mind conjuring up visions of a great
force of men far superior to the New Comancheros.
“I’d say the difference in our numbers is about two
hundred to one.” Leatherwood said, continuing to allow
the man to draw his own erroneous conclusions.
Leatherwood could see that Squirm was doing the
math in his head. After a moment, Squirm’s eyebrows
arched up as he finally grasped the fruit of his mental math.
“You’ve got four thousand men! Are they all armed as
well as you? Are they as tough as you? Can they shoot
like you?” Squirm blurted out, not even trying to hide how
impressed he was.
“Every man in this outfit is armed exactly like me,
every one of them shoots exactly like me and every one is
just as tough as me.” Leatherwood said, again allowing the
outlaw to come to his own erroneous conclusions. Squirm
never realized that Leatherwood had not told a single lie
and that his own mind had deducted completely false
answers.
“What do you call yourselves?” Squirm asked, as
though having a name to pass on was a very important
point.
Leatherwood looked the man squarely in the eye for
a long moment and then said with utter sincerity. “I’m a
Ranger.” This was true. Leatherwood had been a Ranger
in the U.S. Army and had fought in the Viet Nam war a
lifetime ago as a young officer. The code of the Rangers
was ‘Once a Ranger, always a Ranger’, so Leatherwood
was and always would be a Ranger.
“Oh my God!” Squirm said in a hoarse whisper.
“You’re a Texas Ranger! I can’t believe it! I’ve actually
met a Texas Ranger. No wonder we couldn’t take you! I
didn’t know there was any of you guys left. Geeze, I
should have known.”
Leatherwood was amazed at how easily Squirm
could jump to conclusions. He had trouble suppressing a
smile.
“You know, I used to read a lot of stories about the
Texas Rangers. They were the toughest of the tough and
the best of the best.” Squirm went on. “I once wanted to
be a Texas Ranger, but I couldn’t pass all the tests. What
are you going to do with us, Ranger?”
Leatherwood took a long minute before he
answered, all the while, looking hard at Squirm, and seeing
first hand how the man got his nickname. Finally,
Leatherwood spoke, mustering his most serious and stern
posture. “There’s no doubt that I ought to take you in for
trial and hanging. That’s what you deserve, but it would be
my word against yours, which would probably be enough
these days. Still, I’ve got work to do north of here and I’ve
wasted enough time on your sorry hide. So, I’m going to
let you take these carcasses back to Santa Fe. But if I ever
see you in Texas again, you better be shooting, cause that’s
what I’ll be doing.”
“Yes sir, I mean I won’t ever come back to Texas
again, Mr. Ranger.” Squirm promised. “Only, I don’t know
31
what I’m going to tell The Barber. He ain’t going to like us
getting all shot up like this. What do you think I should tell
him, Ranger?”
“I don’t much care what you tell him to keep him
from taking your hide off, but you can tell him this from
me. If I ever see or even hear about any of you New
Comancheros coming into Texas again, I’m coming for
him with as many men as will ride with me, and you know
what that means.” Leatherwood said with a note of
promise in his voice.
Squirm’s eyes were big as his mind conjured a
picture of a thousand Texas Rangers storming Santa Fe
behind a hailstorm of deadly bullets. “Yes.” Squirm said in
a hoarse whisper. “I know what that means.”
To Squirm, a Texas Ranger was about the most
special kind of man there was. The way he saw it, getting
killed by a Texas Ranger was all God needed to know to
send a man straight to hell.
“I’ll tell you something else, Squirm.”
Leatherwood continued. “We might be too busy getting
things straightened out here in Texas for now to worry with
you folks in New Mexico, but it won’t always be that way.
We’re going to get caught up some day before too much
longer and when that day comes, we’re going to pay you
folks a visit in Santa Fe. A Ranger can’t stand by and abide
lawlessness, wherever it might be. You know that. You
boys have got till then to get things on the straight and
narrow. We’ve been hearing a lot of bad things out of New
Mexico. If we don’t start hearing some good things pretty
soon, when we come calling, it won’t be cause we plan to
be sociable. Do you understand me?”
 “Yes sir, Mr. Ranger.” Squirm answered with a
sense of determined duty in his voice. “I’ll tell The
Barber.”
Leatherwood collected all their weapons and put
them in his truck telling Squirm he’d better get out of
Texas quick. With that, Leatherwood drove back to the
ranch, never realizing that he had just renewed and
rekindled a legend from the past that would have a great
impact on the future, that the Texas Rangers had reformed
and were restoring law and order across Texas with other
states soon to follow.
By the time he arrived in Santa Fe, Squirm and his
two wounded companions had worked the story up so
much that it sounded like the Ranger that they went up
against was ten feet tall and bullet proof. And the really
scary part, Squirm told The Barber, was that there were
four thousand more just like him planning to pay a visit to
Santa Fe real soon if they didn’t get things straightened out.
Amazingly, the story took hold and spread like wildfire.
Even more amazingly, it made people straighten up.
Mean while, back at the ranch, the girls were
pampering, nursing, scolding and spoiling Leatherwood all
at the same time. They declared that he wasn’t to ever go
out alone again. One or both of the girls would always go
with him from then on. Leatherwood smiled and said “Yes
ma’am” in the most little boyish, complaining voice he
could muster, which was so out of character for him that it
was funny.
A few days later, just for the heck of it Leatherwood
began making Texas Ranger badges in the work shop. He
had about thirty pounds of nickel-silver bar stock and a
32
small smelter. He also had an old Texas Ranger badge that
he had picked up somewhere. Using it, he made a plaster
mold in two pieces, the front and the back. When he
sandwiched them together, they made a perfect hollow of a
Texas Ranger star. Into the mold he injected casting foam.
A few minutes later, the foam would harden and he could
take the mold apart. This gave him a perfect replica of the
original star made of foam.
After making about a dozen such foam casts,
Leatherwood fired up the smelter and melted enough
nickel-silver to pour casts of the stars. While the metal was
heating to its melting point, Leatherwood carefully buried
the stars edge-ways in the fine casting sand. Each star had
an entrance and an exit hole in the sand.
The objective would be to pour the melted metal
into one hole. It would enter the cavity formed by the
foam, which would vaporize and be forced out of the exit
hole. In this way, the liquid metal would simply displace
the foam. When it cooled it would be an exact replica of
the Ranger star. It worked beautifully.
Leatherwood had no special purpose for making the
stars. He simply wanted to get in some practice at using
the smelter and the foam casting method. You never knew
when you might need to make something from scratch.
He polished the stars on his buffing wheel, satisfied
that he would be able to make metal castings of just about
anything needed. Casually, he put the stars in a drawer.
They wouldn’t stay there long.
 RANGERS
In a few weeks, Leatherwood was almost back to
normal following his run-in with the outlaws from Santa
Fe. It was winter, and the weather had turned pleasant. He
and the girls had started going out to the different towns,
looking for things they might need in the future. These
ventures always had a purpose of not only providing for
their personal and immediate needs, but also in trying to
salvage and preserve things from the past that would be
valuable in rebuilding the future once the heat quieted.
They had amassed quite an inventory that covered a
wide spectrum of things. Most of these things they stored
in warehouses in the area, but a lot of things, like plant
seeds and other things that might perish easily, they took
back to the cavern.
One day, while searching through the town of Fort
Stockton, they spotted some vehicles coming from the west
at high speed on Interstate 10. Audrey was the first to spot
them. She had gone to the roof of one of the taller
buildings in town just for the purpose of taking a good look
around. She signaled Kathryn and Leatherwood and then
joined them on the ground.
She told them there were four pick-up trucks
heading toward them and it looked like puffs of gunshot
smoke was coming from a couple of the trucks, the one in
the lead and the one right behind it. She said she thought
the one in the lead might be running from the other three.
In only a few minutes, the four vehicles came
roaring into town, with the sound of gunshots arriving well
before that. Leatherwood and the girls had taken cover in
33
an old store across from the town square. The lead car
came careening around the corner entering the town square
from the west. It was going too fast to make the sharp turn,
and jumped the curb of the courthouse lawn and slammed
into a tree. A woman and kids could be heard screaming.
In only a second, the other three vehicles came
sliding into the square. The men in the trucks bailed out
with drawn pistols and rushed the first truck, jerking open
the doors and dragging out the woman, two children and a
man that were inside. The man was obviously dazed from
the crash, his forehead bleeding from a deep gash. The
woman and children, though shaken, seemed to be okay.
Three of the pursuers who had dragged the man out
threw him to the ground and began kicking him while the
other three men began tearing the cloths off the woman,
their intent clear.
Suddenly, before Kathryn and Leatherwood knew
it, Audrey was standing in front of the store, part way
across the street. She yelled “Hey” in a loud clear voice.
All the men turned toward her.
One of them broke into a big, evil grin and said.
“Well, what have we got here? It looks like this day is
going to turn out to be more fun than we thought.”
“Think again.” Audrey said with venom in her
voice.
What happened next was something Leatherwood
would never have believed if he hadn’t seen it with his own
eyes. In an invisible motion, Audrey’s six-gun was blazing
away in her hand. The startled men never even got off a
shot. Audrey fired six shots and six bullets ripped through
six hearts, all in the space of two seconds.
 Kathryn and Leatherwood came bursting out onto
the street. Kathryn was looking at her little sister in
complete awe. Audrey just stood there looking with hatred
at the fallen men. Then she looked at Kathryn and saw the
amazed look on her face.
Without a word, Audrey walked over to the closest
fallen man, drawing her sheath knife as she went. The man
had fallen face down. Audrey slit the man’s shirt open
down the back from collar to belt and peeled it to either
side. His back was covered with old scars as from a whip.
Audrey stood up and looked at her sister. “These
were the men that hurt us.” She said, pointing to the scars
on the man’s back left there by Leatherwoods whip years
earlier. “I recognized them right away. They were about to
do the same thing to this lady and probably to her little girl
as well. I couldn’t let that happen.”
Leatherwood knew from experience that being a
good target shooter and a good shooter in a fire fight
against other people were two very different things. Most
often, a good target shooter was nothing special at all when
it came down to the real thing. With Audrey, it was a
completely different story. She was an exceptional target
shooter who became even better when it was for real.
There was no doubt about it, with a pistol in her hand,
Audrey Kimble was a very dangerous person.
After shaking off the shock of what he had just
witnessed, Leatherwood rushed over to see about the man
the outlaws were beating. He was bruised up a little and
the cut on his forehead was pretty nasty, but he wasn’t
severely injured.
34
Kathryn appeared suddenly with a first aid kit and
began tending the man’s wound. Audrey and Leatherwood
were trying to calm the woman, who was sobbing
hysterically. Her two children, Samuel Jr., who was five
and Samantha, who was eight, were also crying fearfully
for the safety of their parents and themselves. The man,
Samuel Walker, when he regained his senses, told what had
happened.
They were from Carlsbad, New Mexico where they
had been living in the caverns there since the heat surge
had hit. They had gotten married there and had their two
children there. Kimberly, his wife, was a very beautiful
woman, and because of her beauty, they had been careful to
keep any of the New Comancheros from seeing her, but
just a few days earlier, one of the Comancheros had spotted
her and had spread the word to the others. Sam said he
knew they would be back for her like they had for every
other pretty woman they had found in the caverns, so he
laid a plan. He had heard that the Texas Rangers had
reformed here in Texas, so he figured if he could steal one
of their vehicles, he would make a run for it with his family
to try to find the Rangers and ask for their protection.
Standing up abruptly, Audrey reached inside her
carry pouch and came out holding several of the Texas
Ranger badges that Leatherwood had made. She handed
one to Leatherwood and one to Kathryn. The other she
pinned onto her own shirt front. Looking Sam squarely in
the eye, she said. “Well, you did find the Rangers, and you
do have their protection.”
Sam smiled a condescending smile as though to
show that, in spite of a bad situation, he still had a sense of
humor. Audrey saw that he was patronizing what he
considered to be a very young woman with a very vivid
imagination. Then his wife, Kimberly, spoke.
“Sam, she is the one who shot those awful men.”
Sam looked as though he must have misunderstood
what his wife had said.
“That’s right, Sam.” Kimberly urged. “This young
lady suddenly appeared in the street, called to them, and
started shooting so fast it almost sounded like one shot.
I’ve never seen anything like it. We owe her our lives.”
It looked like Sam was still having a hard time
believing what his wife was saying, but his thoughts were
interrupted by the sound of another approaching vehicle.
“Quick, everyone get inside the store.”
Leatherwood ordered. Quickly they scrambled inside the
building and crouched down, everyone except Audrey.
Audrey knew that the approaching vehicle could
only mean more men from New Mexico who were just
arriving, and she was in no mood for hiding. The Ranger’s
star on the front of her shirt glinted brightly in the sunlight.
Deliberately, she ejected the spent shells from her six-gun
and reloaded. She was standing ready in the street when
the pick-up with three men inside pulled into the town
square.
When the driver saw Audrey he slammed on the
brakes. He and the other two men just sat there. “If you
get out of that truck with anything but air in your hands,
you’ll be dead before you hit the ground.” Audrey shouted.
“Now, get out of that truck.”
The driver stuck his head out the window and
replied. “Ma’am, we are from Carlsbad, New Mexico. We
35
ain’t looking for trouble. It’s just that some of our own are
in trouble and we’ve come to help.”
“That’s Ben Clayton.” Sam exclaimed, rushing out
the door and into the street. “These men are our friends.”
Sam shouted. “They live in the caverns at Carlsbad with
us.”
Audrey, who was as tight as a coiled rattler, relaxed
and said. “Okay.” It was only then that she realized that
Leatherwood and Kathryn had been standing to either side
of her as the men had come to a stop. She noticed that both
of them were wearing the Ranger stars on their shirts too.
It made her smile.
Ben Clayton and the other two men got out of the
truck and came over to where Leatherwood and the two
girls were standing. “Are you a Texas Ranger?” Clayton
asked Leatherwood.
“He is.” Audrey said. “And so are we.” Indicating
that she meant Kathryn and herself as well.
Clayton got that same sort of smirky grin on his
face that Sam had had only a few minutes earlier. Sam
leaned over and whispered something into Ben Clayton’s
ear. Clayton leaned away and turned so he could look Sam
in the eye, his smirk replaced with an expression of
disbelief and questioning. Sam could see that Clayton was
asking him without speaking if he was telling the truth.
Sam nodded his head at then wagged a thumb towards the
dead outlaws. Clayton looked at them for several long
seconds, then turned back to face Audrey.
“Ma’am, I didn’t mean any disrespect. It’s just a
little hard to believe that a woman, especially one as young
as you, would ever be a Texas Ranger. But Sam says you
are, and that’s good enough for me. I’m Ben Clayton and
I’m mighty pleased to meet you Ma’am.” He said as he
extended his hand.
“This is Billy Murphy and this other fellow is my
little brother, Mathew.” Ben Clayton introduced the other
two men. They all shook hands. There was something
strong about that meeting. The three new men as well as
Sam Walker were strong men with clear honest eyes and
sincerity in their smiles.
Turning his attention to Leatherwood, Ben began
again. “Look Mr. Leatherwood, we’ve been hearing about
how the Texas Rangers had formed back up again and were
bringing law and order back to Texas. We heard they are
more than twenty thousand men strong and growing every
day. We figure with that many good men, Texas will be a
place of law and order again. Me and Billy and Matt all
lost our women and kids some time back when the heat
came on. We only stayed in Carlsbad because it gave us
protection from the heat and we didn’t have any other place
to go. Then we heard about you Rangers and we decided
we wanted to join up. When we saw Sam and his family
heading east with the Comancheros hot after them, we
figured then was as good a time as any to cut out of there.
We brained the three Comancheros driving that truck we
came here in and we set out in it to see if we could help the
Walkers, and here we are. That’s our story Mr.
Leatherwood. We want to join the Rangers. What do you
think?”
Ben and the other two were holding their old ragged
hats in their hand in front of them. Leatherwood
36
remembered when removing ones hat was a sign of respect
and it was plain to see that it still was with these three.
Leatherwood looked long and hard at the three men,
his mind racing ahead, wondering how eager these staunch
candidates for the Rangers would be when they found out
that the entire force of Texas Rangers, as far as he knew,
was standing right there in front of them, and two of them
young girls to boot.
The three men, all in their late twenties or early
thirties, figured Leatherwood’s silence meant he was sizing
them up. Unconsciously, they stood more erect, chests out
and feet together.
After a long period of silence and growing
uneasiness, Leatherwood finally began speaking. “So you
want to be Texas Rangers, huh? You just drive up and say,
hey, we’re good guys and we want to be Rangers. You ask
me what I think about it. Well, here’s what I think. I don’t
know you men. I don’t know about your families. I don’t
know about your courage, your honor or your loyalty. I
don’t know if you’re smart or stupid. I don’t know if you’ll
be cool or crazy under fire, and make no mistake, if you’re
a Ranger you will be under fire, maybe lots of times. To
top it all off, I don’t even know if you can shoot.”
“Oh, yes sir, Mr. Leatherwood. We’re all crack
shots. We were in the ROTC in high school and we got
plenty of practice.”
“Well let’s just see how good you can shoot.”
Leatherwood said, handing one of his Glock’s to Ben.
Down the street was the old sheriff’s office. Hanging from
a post out front was a metal sign with a large sheriff’s
badge painted on it. “See how many times you can hit the
middle of the badge on that sheriff’s office sign.”
Ben took the gun, and aiming carefully, squeezed
off all fourteen rounds in the pistol. He managed to hit the
sign twelve times, but none of the hits were near the center.
Ben returned the Glock to Leatherwood and asked. “What
do you think?”
The sign was about forty yards away. Leatherwood
smiled and said. “Well, I guess you did all right for
someone who is a might rusty, but you’re going to have to
do a lot better than that if you want to be a Ranger. Show
him Audrey.”
Audrey glanced at the men to be sure they were
watching, then she whirled around to face the sign, drawing
her six-gun at the same time and ripped six bullets through
it, all within a two inch diameter area, all in two seconds.
In another ten seconds, Audrey had reloaded.
“That’s more what I had in mind, boys. You might
not have to ever get that good, but you gotta come close or
you can’t be Rangers.”
The men, including Sam this time, were dumbstruck
by what they had seen. For long moments, they looked
first at the sign, then at Audrey, then at each other, and then
they would start all over.
Finally Ben said with a note of dejection and
painful honesty in his voice. “Mr. Leatherwood, I didn’t
know anyone could shoot like that, and I doubt if any of us
ever will. All I can say is that we will try our hardest to get
to be as good as we can and hope that’s good enough to suit
you, sir.” Then he turned to Audrey and said. “Ma’am,
that was about the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen.”
37
All eyes turned to Leatherwood. He stood there for
a minute, trying to look at things from every perspective.
His good sense told him to forget the whole thing. The
Texas Rangers had been one hell of an outfit, but that
wasn’t enough reason to let these men keep thinking the
Rangers existed again at least not the way they had heard it.
He cursed the day he had told that outlaw that he was a
Ranger. He had only been trying to provide a little
incentive for that New Mexico bunch to stay away from his
neck of the woods. He had never dreamed this would be
the result.
He decided he needed more time to think things
through. He couldn’t just turn them away, but he couldn’t
let them keep thinking there was an army of Rangers bent
on bringing justice back to the country again either.
Finally he said simply. “We’ll see.” With that, he
motioned to the girls to step to the side with him for a little
talk. They discussed the situation with Leatherwood
starting off. “Well, girls, it looks like things are getting a
mite out of hand with all this Texas Ranger business.”
“I don’t think so, Uncle Leath.” Audrey injected.
She and Kathryn had taken to calling Leatherwood Leath
long ago. It sounded like someone with a bad lisp trying to
say ‘less’. “The country is crying for justice and law and
order. You may have meant it only as a scare tactic when
you told that outlaw you were a Ranger, but it didn’t turn
out that way. No sir, what it really was, was a hope tactic,
and people are grabbing on to it like a drowning man grabs
a life line. Unless I’m sadly mistaken, this is only the
beginning.” She finished, nodding her head toward the four
new men.
 “What do you think, Sis?” Leatherwood asked
Kathryn.
Kathryn was the true thinker among them, at least
as far as people situations were concerned. She had read
every book, watched every documentary and every movie
ever made about people and what’s important to them. She
puckered her plump, perfect lips and furrowed her pure,
smooth brow, a sure sign that she was in deep thought.
Leatherwood knew she would soon begin to issue forth
with a flowing explanation of her thoughts, and he had no
doubt it would be convincing.
Finally, Kathryn said. “I believe Audrey’s right.”
After waiting for a few seconds, Leatherwood asked
incredulously, “Is that it? Aren’t you going to recite
something out of one of those books you read all the time,
or at least give us something that resembles a speech?”
“No”. Kathryn said curtly.
“Well, I’ll be. I think that’s a first, don’t you
Audrey?” Leatherwood poked fun.
Kathryn raised her upper lip in a mock sneer.
“That’s something that must be earned.” She replied
haughtily in her best Mae West imitation, with a lift of her
perfect chin for emphasis.
Audrey and Leatherwood broke into laughter.
Kathryn’s Mae West imitation was superb.
After the laughter subsided, Audrey asked. “What
are we going to do about all these people, Uncle Leath? Do
you suppose we should take them to the cavern?”
“I don’t think so. Not just yet, any way.”
Leatherwood responded. “They all seem like good folks,
but I’d rather get to know them a little better before we give
38
them the keys to the store. The weather is pleasant right
now, and there is no reason we can’t stay here in town for
awhile.”
“What about food and water?”
“I’m thinking you two girls can go to the ranch and
load up about a week’s supply in the truck and be back
before sundown. Head out to the east then cut over at the
washout. Stop at the top of the flat knoll and take a good
look around before you make the turn to the ranch. I’ll be
watching for you from here.”
“We know the routine, Uncle Leath.” Audrey
assured him. “We’ll be very careful.”
“I know you will, and I don’t mean to sound like
you don’t know what you are doing. It’s just, well..” And
his words trailed off.
“I know what it is.” Kathryn said in an excited
whisper as though she had just come to a profound
revelation.
“What?” Audrey asked, going along with her older
sister’s act.
“Well. Well. It’s a mother thing.” Kathryn said,
this time using her best Haley Mills imitation, complete
with big round eyes and an impish smile.
The two girls burst out in laughter again, while
Leatherwood managed a mock look of scolding tolerance.
Then he said. “You girls better get going before I’m forced
to find a switch.”
They giggled and headed for the old building where
they had parked the truck. A few minutes later,
Leatherwood heard the Ford Power Stroke fire up and the
girls driving away. Ten minutes later, he spotted the truck
climbing the flat knoll. If he hadn’t known exactly where
to look, he would have never seen them. Satisfied the girls
were okay, Leatherwood decided to have a little talk with
the new folks and help settle them in.
None of the newcomers had anything except the
cloths they were wearing and the guns they had taken from
the three outlaws they had jumped back in Carlsbad. The
men had scruffy untrimmed beards and they were all in
need of a bath. The dress that Kimberly was wearing was
tattered and dirty, and so thread-bear in places her pale skin
shown through. Altogether, they were a pitiful looking
bunch.
Leatherwood went inside the store where they were
all sitting. He decided to get the men busy getting rid of
the bodies of the six outlaws. He supervised the loading of
the bodies into the back of one of the pick-ups and led the
way to the old cemetery. Then he went to the abandoned
John-Deere dealership and started up one of the back-hoe
tractors that he had been keeping in running condition all
these years. In a few minutes he had dug a deep grave big
enough to receive all six bodies. The men lowered the
bodies into the grave gently, which showed Leatherwood
they were men of respect, even though these dead men
didn’t deserve any. In just a short while, the job was
completed and the tractor returned to its place.
When they got back to the store, they found
Kimberly and her two children huddled in a corner.
Kimberly was sobbing deeply, holding the children close.
They were trying to sooth her unsuccessfully. Sam rushed
over to her side and he too tried to calm her down, but she
39
just shook her head in a way that said clearly she didn’t
believe anything they were telling her.
“Damn.” Sam said, scolding himself. “I never
should have left you alone. Please, Kim, its going to be all
right.” Kimberly just shook her head.
Finally, she spoke, her body shaking with great
sobs. “It’s no good, Sam. We’ve got no place to go.
We’ve got no food. Before long the heat will return and
we’ll just wither and die. You should have just let them
take me. At least you and the kids would have been okay.
Now look at us.”
Leatherwood watched closely. He forced himself to
be cool and to assess what he saw. He knew desperate
people could do some pretty desperate things, especially if
they had weaknesses in their moral fiber to begin with. If
he was going to let these people come into their lives and
share their sanctuary, he must first make sure what they
were made of. He saw the frustration and the manly anger
flash across Sam’s face at being so helpless to answer his
wife’s questions. Leatherwood remembered that feeling
from years ago when his dear wife lay dying and he had no
power to save her or to even lessen her pain as she went.
Leatherwood looked at the other men, who were
also looking on, helplessly. Their eyes were all teary.
There were no cold hearts in that room.
Leatherwood could also see that the woman was
very tired. No telling how long it’s been since she had a
good night’s sleep, he speculated to himself. A person gets
that tired and over stressed and she is more apt to fall to
pieces as not, men too, for that matter. It looked like they
could all use a good dose of sleep and a few good hot
meals.
Leatherwood finally spoke. “Sam. Would you and
the other boys mind taking the kids outside for a few
minutes. I’d like to have a few words with your wife, if it’s
all right with you.”
Sam looked tensely at Leatherwood, his eyes
reflecting his suspicious thoughts. “Just do as I ask, son.”
Leatherwood urged. “It’ll be all right. You’ve got my
word.”
After a moment Sam gathered up his children and
he and the other men went outside. Leatherwood went over
to the corner where Kimberly sat on the floor and he too sat
down on the floor in front of her, Indian style.
“Oh boy.” Sam moaned as he lowered himself to
the floor. “I sure hope this won’t take too long, Ma’am,
cause I don’t think these old bones of mine will be able to
stand it.”
“Some how, I find that hard to believe, Mr.
Leatherwood.”
“Please, Ma’am, call me Leath.” Leatherwood said.
Kimberly looked at Leatherwood through her red
and swollen eyes for a moment. She looked deeply into his
eyes, trying to see the truth of the man on the inside. After
a moment she said. “All right Mr. Leatherwood, but you
must call me Kim.”
“It’s a deal.” Leatherwood said, holding out his
hand to her to seal the bargain.
Without the least hesitation, she took it and felt the
sinewy power in the big man’s hand. She seemed in no
40
hurry to let it go, so Leatherwood obliged her with a warm,
reassuring squeeze.
Unflinchingly, Leatherwood returned the beautiful
woman’s open gaze, smiling a very reassuring smile all the
while.
“Now then, Kim.” He began. “I know how tired
you are, but if you are up to it, I would like to ask you a
question.”
“Very well, Mr., I mean, Leath.” They both smiled
at her mid-sentence correction.
“Is your husband a good man?” Leatherwood
asked. “I know it’s not the sort of question you normally
answer from a complete stranger, but in this case, I need
your answer.”
As he asked her the question, Leatherwood was
looking intently into Kim’s eyes for a telltale indication
that Sam was somehow a disappointment to her. There was
none. Instead, her eyes softened and a smile came to her
face as memories flashed in her mind of her life with him.
Leatherwood could see that the man, Sam Walker, was no
disappointment to her.
“Leath, these past years, living in the caverns in the
summer and foraging for provisions during the winter have
been harder than I ever imagined life could be. I have seen
so many people give up and just die because their despair
was so great. I’m that sort of person, as you have seen, but
Sam would never let me give up. He was always so strong
for all of us. He was relentless in his efforts to provide for
us and others as well. He was not the oldest man in the
caverns, but he was looked upon by everyone as a steadfast
leader that could be trusted. As I look back on all the
horrors of life since the heat started, I know it is not how I
had hoped to live, but if I had a choice of doing it again or
living without Sam, I would do it again.”
Leatherwood looked into Kim’s beautiful, if red,
eyes for another moment, going over in his mind what she
had said and how she had said it. There were no lies or
deceptions in what she had said, he was sure of that.
“What about the other three?” Leatherwood asked.
“Oh my goodness, those three. What would we
have ever done without them? They were a Godsend to the
entire cavern population. How they did some of the things
they did, I’ll never know. And the Comancheros feared
those men. We all knew it. Once the Comancheros came
to the caverns several years ago. There was a young girl
among us who was just turning into a woman, a very
beautiful and shapely woman. Her name was Cindy. Her
parents and many others tried to warn her about staying out
of sight, but she was a head strong girl and went outside
one winter day when the weather was pleasant and the
Comancheros saw her. There were four of them. They
took her and raped her, but those three men outside there”.
She indicated Billy, Ben and Matt. “Heard what was going
on, and they went to where the Comancheros had taken the
girl and they killed all three of them with their bare hands.
They never told anyone that they had done anything, but it
was obvious from that day forward that Cindy treated them
like Gods. After that all her parents had to do when she
started getting a little too head strong again was say
something like “Why don’t we see what Ben, or Billy, or
Matt has to say about it?” She worshipped those men and
still does. We knew she had been terribly abused by the
41
Comancheros because she was bloodied and there was
seamen running down her legs when Billy, Ben and Matt
brought her back. I remember, as we cleaned her up, asking
who had hurt her. She said the Comancheros. We asked
her what had happened to the Comancheros and she said.
‘We won’t ever have to worry about them again.’ That’s
all she would say about it, but it wasn’t hard to figure out.
Yes indeed, Leath. I could go on and on about those men.
I truly don’t think half of us who are still alive now would
be alive if those men hadn’t been there.”
Leatherwood had listened intently to her story and
watched her every motion and expression. Leatherwood
was a skilled interviewer and this lady had just given the
best recommendation any man could ever be given. There
had been respect for those men in her voice and in her eyes,
respect, devotion, loyalty and love. Leatherwood knew
deep inside himself that these people were good and worthy
and deserving. He was satisfied that things could be worked
out with such people so a life could be made and shared.
He heard the sound of his pick-up truck pulling up
outside. The girls had made it back with the supplies.
Taking them aside, he told the girls that he had been
assessing the newcomers and he found them to be good
people and he was leaning strongly toward taking them in.
“But I don’t want to make any decisions about this
without you girls having a say-so.” He finished. “Try to
get to know them a little better and see what you think.”
“I already know what I think.” Audrey said. “I
think they are good people, too, and I say take them in.”
Kathryn said. “Me too.”
 Leatherwood looked whimsically at Kathryn and
said. “I just can’t get over how mouthy you’ve gotten
lately, just talk, talk, talk.”
Audrey said. “Don’t press it, Uncle Leath.
Something tells me we’d better enjoy the silence while we
can, cause it won’t last.”
Kathryn said. “You two are really asking for it, you
know.” They all laughed.
Leatherwood pointed the conversation back to the
situation at hand. “Okay, then it’s settled. But I want to set
some things down with these folks before we get too far
along. I didn’t get all this gray hair and creaky old bones
for nothing. There’s a thing or two I picked up along the
way about rules and people getting along together that I
want to make clear before we extend our invitation and
they accept. It works better that way.”
“Okay.” The girls said in unison. “We’ll follow
your lead.”

42
 A FAMILY IS FORGED
Leatherwood had everyone move down to the hotel
where they would be more comfortable and where the girls
could prepare supper. While the girls were cooking,
Leatherwood asked everyone to gather in the parlor of the
hotel because he had something to say.
“Everyone knows that this world has suffered a
great disaster.” He began. “From all accounts that we have
heard through the years, billions of people have perished
and more are being added to that number every day. The
world’s population is dwindling because we haven’t
learned how to deal with the summer heat except by going
underground. Governments are almost non-existent, there
are no more crops and things generally look pretty bleak for
the human species. Add to that the lawlessness that has run
rampant and the problem is even worse. That sort of thing
makes it almost impossible for people to get organized to
fight this thing, to figure out ways to deal with it so we all
stand a better chance of surviving until all this heat finally
starts to dissipate.
The way I see it, if we don’t get order restored, we
won’t stand a chance. That being the case, law and order
has got to be our first target. We have to secure at least a
part of the country where people have a chance to see their
efforts bear fruit without a bunch of outlaws busting in and
taking any and everything they want. Well, we’ve made a
start on that right here in South West Texas. You’ve seen it
for yourselves. We deal fast and hard with those that take
by force. We won’t abide it, and we have the skills to
make it stick. In this neck of the woods, people are still
43
going to have those certain unalienable rights, among
which are life, liberty and pursuit of happiness.
By the same token, we want this place to be a haven
for good people. We want it to be a place where families
can take root and grow and be productive. To have that,
and to keep it once we do have it means we have to be
ready, willing and able to stand off those who will come
and try to take it away from us, and they will surely come.”
There was a general nodding of heads around the room.
“Not only do we have to protect those people, and
what they build, we have to be sure they are the right kind
of people. I know it sounds harsh, but we have to be
selective or we will be over run with refugees before we’re
ready to take them in. By the same token, we can’t dally in
making our preparations, either. Too much is riding on us
getting done what needs to be done as fast as we can. If we
pick the right people in the beginning, it can make a big
difference for everyone in the long run.” Again there was a
nodding of heads. Leatherwood looked each man in the
eye in turn. There was a glint of hope in those eyes and a
willingness to participate that was unmistakable.
“Today you folks came on the scene with a bunch
of outlaws hot on your trail. You know what I’m talking
about when I say the right kind of people. Those hombres
were not the right kind of people. Those are the kind of
people who only take and destroy what other people build.
The problem is that there are a lot of that sort out there. If
you stay here, there will more than likely be times when
you’ll be facing odds a lot stiffer than you faced today.
That means there is a good chance you’ll be shot at on
numerous occasions and a good chance that sooner or later
one of those bullets will find its target.
Now understand this.” Leatherwood said sternly,
pausing for emphasis. “I’m not saying to never run. I’m
not saying to jeopardize your life foolishly, but I am saying
never be a coward. I ran, not so long ago, from a bunch
that had me outnumbered and out maneuvered, but when it
was over, they were all dead or wounded except for one.
When it comes time to take a stand or surrender, we take a
stand and if we have to die, we’ll take as many of them
with us as we can before we get our ticket punched.
By the same token, human life is something that is
very precious to us, if for no other reason than it has
become something scarce and threatened with extinction.
That being the case, the last thing we ever want to be guilty
of is shooting first and asking questions later, as the saying
goes. We’ll learn how to read people and how to make
sure of their intentions before we start any shooting. On
the other hand, when the shooting starts, we shoot to kill.
We’re going to build a reputation that will make its way to
all the outlaws that if they come here, then here is probably
where they will end their days.
That’s not all. That’s only a part of what we might
call our police duties. There are other areas that we will
work just as hard at. We’re going to learn to whip this heat
so we can plant and harvest crops in the summer. It won’t
be easy, but it is something we can do. From this, we will
be able to feed more people. We are also going to make it
possible to live above ground again, year round. The
technology to do this will be the same as that we’ll use for
44
the farms we’ll build. In time, you’ll understand how we
are going to do this.
As we expand our capabilities, we’ll recruit more
people. We’ll have to work out exactly how we’re going to
do this, but it is something we will do.
All of this and a lot more will be integral parts of a
complete plan. Everyone will know the plan in all its
details and everyone will be expected to make those details
manifest when their time comes. There is no room for
laggards in this life now. Everyone has to do his or her part
or we risk failure and failure these days means death.
When it comes to living together, people have got to
respect one another. They have to be ready to help one
another. They have to respect and obey the rules.
Transgressions can bring on severe consequences. We
have to avoid being selfish with everything we’ve got.
That old saying of ‘All for one and one for all’ has never
meant as much than it does right now. There must be
honor among us, great honor. Without honor, there can be
no unity, and without unity, we will not grow. If we do not
grow, then we will perish.
As we grow, there will be children among us, and
they must be educated and educated well. In this, we will
all share responsibility.
Now that’s the gist of it. It will be tough, but where
can one go these days where it isn’t tough?
Now, I need to hear each and everyone of you say
on your honor and in the name of the Almighty, that you
understand, accept, and will support all these things I’ve
said without exception.
 Sam Walker was the first to step forward. He raised
his right hand and said. “I swear on my honor that I
understand, accept and will support to the best of my ability
all the things you spoke of here tonight, so help me God.”
The rest of them did the same in turn, even the kids.
There was a spontaneous cheer in the room and an
excitement that comes from a desperate people finding
hope and promise where there was none before.
Audrey and Kathryn were standing in the doorway
listening as Leatherwood spoke.
“Then, by the authority that is mine as the founder
of the New Texas Rangers, I declare each of you to be
accepted into our ranks.” Leatherwood said. Turning to
Audrey he whispered. “The badges.”
Audrey didn’t miss the queue. As though it had
been rehearsed many times, she stepped forward taking a
badge out of her pack and pinning it to the shirt of each
man, shaking his hand and saying “Congratulations”.
The men all beamed, admiring their new badges,
deriving a great pleasure from the thought of being a part of
something truly worthy.
Audrey and Kathryn flitted between the kitchen to
tend to the cooking and the parlor to be part of the thrill
that filled the room, for this represented a new beginning
for them as well, and it was something they wanted very
much. A strong bond was being forged in that room that
evening among and between the people there. Barriers and
reservations that can keep people from experiencing the
wonder and the power of friendship and love were being
dissolved in that room.
45
When the food was ready, they all moved into the
dining area where the girls had set a beautiful table. It was
a feast such as the newcomers had not seen since before the
heat surge. They were speechless.
They took their places at the table with everyone
instinctively leaving the end chair for Leatherwood, the
place of honor and leadership.
“The girls and I always begin our meals with a
prayer, so if you don’t mind, I’d like to do that now.”
Leatherwood said. There was a mumbling of agreement.
Leatherwood spoke a simple but profound blessing that
moved everyone at the table to near tears. When he
finished, they all began eating and it was wonderful.
The good food lifted their spirits even higher if that
was possible. Kimberly was glowing. After everyone had
eaten their fill, Leatherwood leaned back in his chair and
spoke again.
“There’s a few more things you folks need to
know.”
All eyes shifted to him, and after a moment he
began. “When we were talking earlier today, you
mentioned that you had heard the Rangers were twenty
thousand strong. Well that’s not true. I’m not sure there
are even twenty thousand people still alive in Texas, much
less twenty thousand Rangers”
Ben asked. “How many are there, sir.”
Leatherwood paused for a second, pondering the
question. Then he asked. “You mean including you four
men?”
Ben smiled and said. “Yes sir. Including us.”
 “Well, I’d say there are about seven, including you
four men.”
“Seven thousand men, wow! That’s still a lot.”
“I didn’t say seven thousand, Ben. I said seven.
With Audrey, Kathryn, myself and you four, there are
seven Texas Rangers in this outfit.”
A look of dejection came over the faces of the men.
This was a terrible blow. For a long moment, they just sat
there, the four men shaking their heads in dismay.
Then Kimberly, with her small clenched fist, struck
a blow to the table and said with great determination.
“Eight”.
“What?” Sam asked, looking at her quizzically.
“I said eight. There are eight of us. You’re not
leaving me out of this. Now you men get those sordid
looks off your faces. Everything has a beginning and
doesn’t always start off big. Well, this is the beginning and
I say it will grow. You all know how much excitement was
stirred up back in the caverns when we heard about the
Texas Rangers reforming. Every man and woman in the
place took hope that some day the Rangers would come
riding up with a new life of law and order in the offing.
Look at us. We didn’t know if it was true or not, but the
hope was enough to give us the courage to make a run for
it, and here we are. Don’t you see what that means? We’re
only the first. There will be others. They will come. They
will come because they can’t stay forever in whatever hole
in the ground they have been forced to live in. They will
come because they will remember what life used to be like
and they will want to try to make it that way again. They
will come because they will hear about this place, and not
46
knowing for sure if what they have heard is true or not,
they will decide to come anyway, because at least by
coming they can have a hope that it is real and that hope
will be more powerful than they will be able to resist. Yes
indeed, they will surely come, and we have got to be ready
for them. Mr. Leatherwood has a plan. I don’t know how
he is going to make all those things happen that he spoke
of, but I believe he knows, and I believe he can teach us
what we need to know and together, we can make it
happen. We must make it happen. We have no other
choice that we can live with. I know that this all sounds so
melodramatic, but its not. It is serious. Survival is always
serious.”
There was a long silence as everyone let Kim’s
words sink in. Finally Sam said simply. “She’s right. My
wife is right. What other choice is there? We have to make
it work. We have to.”
“Now that that’s settled.” Leatherwood took over.
“There’s more.”
All eyes turned to the big man with a mixture of
feelings, hoping there would not be another shocking
revelation like the previous one.
“We have a home near here. From now on it will
be your home too. I hope you’ll like it. I think you will.”
 THERE’S NO PLACE LIKE HOME
The weather was more like late spring used to be
before the heat surge than mid-winter, with cool pleasant
evenings and warm days. But they all knew it would not
stay that way for long. Even in the middle of the winter, it
was not unusual for the temperatures to break the one
hundred degree mark.
After they finished the evening meal, the men went
outside on the veranda of the hotel. They talked casually
about things in general for a while, but then the
conversation turned more serious.
“Mr. Leatherwood, can you and Kathryn shoot as
good as Audrey?”
Leatherwood smiled and answered. “Son, I don’t
know if anyone can shoot as good as her. She’s what you
might call a natural. I started teaching those two how to
shoot not long after they came to live with me. I took them
away from some pretty bad fellows that had done some
pretty awful things to them. There was ten of them. I
horse whipped all of them and sent them on their way. I
should have killed them. I’ll never make that mistake
again.” Leatherwood said.
“How do you know it was a mistake to let them go,
Mr. Leatherwood?” Billy asked.
“Cause we buried six of the bastards today.”
Leatherwood responded. “Audrey recognized them long
before me and Kathryn did, and what they was fixing to do
to Kim and the beating they were giving you, Sam, was
more than she could take. She stepped out and called them
down. They were of a mind to ravage her too, and that was
47
the straw that broke the camel’s back, so to speak. You
know the rest of it.”
“Yes.” Billy said. “Six holes in six hearts. I’ll bet
they never knew what hit them.”
“Oh, I think they did.” Leatherwood said. “For just
a couple of seconds as the life was leaving them, they
knew. At least I hope they did.”
“How are we going to go about doing all those
things you were talking about in there, Sir?” Matt asked.
“Well, the first thing we’re going to do is to get you
folks settled in, nice and comfortable. Then we are going
to show you around. The girls and I have stayed pretty
busy through the years, and for several years before they
came along, I did a lot of things by myself, along with my
good friends John-Deere and Henry Ford.”
“Who are those fellows?” Billy asked.
Leatherwood grinned, realizing these boys had
forgotten the great farm implement manufacturer and the
founder of Ford Motor Company, if they had ever known.
“Well, that was a John-Deere tractor that we used to bury
those men today, and it’s a Ford pick-up truck that you
drove here in from New Mexico. The pick-up truck that I
drive is also a Ford, an F-350. I guess things have changed
a lot.”
“At any rate.” Leatherwood continued. “It’s not
like we’re having to start from scratch.
They went on talking till well past sundown.
Somewhere along the way, the women came out and joined
them. There were a lot of questions, mostly directed at
Leatherwood and mostly about the days before the heat
surge. The girls chimed in and told everyone how
Leatherwood had tried to warn everyone the heat surge was
about to hit, but no one would pay any attention to him.
The girls urged him to tell the story of his experience with
the methane hydrate release. When he had finished,
everyone was sitting in awe.
“Wow.” Sam said. “I don’t believe I have ever
heard anything to compare with that. And that explains
everything. The one thing we don’t know is how long will
it take to dissipate?”
“That’s a good question, Sam.” Leatherwood
acknowledged. The fact is that I had it figured to be over
with already. I’ve puzzled over it and I think there is only
one answer, the oceans are much warmer and the
hurricanes are much bigger than they used to be. I think
there have been more giant hurricanes that have churned up
the sediment layers on the bottom of the oceans again and
again. Xavier was only the first hurricane to cause a
massive methane release. I think there have been others
since then and the result has been a continuation of the
greenhouse effect.”
“Well, I guess the next question is how long could it
last?” Sam said after they had all pondered Leatherwoods
previous comments.
“That’s the scary part of the whole thing.”
Leatherwood answered. “The studies that I did on the
methane hydrate in the ocean floor sediment was far from
complete, but it did cover a good cross section of the globe.
I got most of the information from off shore oil drilling
operations. I used to work in that industry and I had a lot
of friends. What I found was methane hydrate just about
everywhere I looked. The sediment layers in places is
48
several miles deep. In others, its only a few feet deep. The
fact is that if all that hydrated methane was to be released at
one time, it would be enough to kill every living thing on
the planet. What’s more is it would be enough to exceed
the LEL.”
“What does that mean?” Billy asked.
“Every flammable mixture has what is called a
lower explosive limit. That means that in a given amount
of air, a material like methane has to reach a certain
concentration before it will sustain burning. What I’m
saying is that there is enough hydrated methane out there
that it could reach concentrations high enough to burn in
the atmosphere. If that happened, we would never know it
because we would already be dead from asphyxiation.”
“Do you think there’s a chance of that happening?”
Sam asked.
“I don’t think so.” Leatherwood answered. “There
would have to be a lot of very big storms in a lot of places
in one season for that to happen.”
“But smaller releases like the one caused by Xavier
could happen again and again for a long time?” Sam asked.
“It looks that way to me.” Leatherwood answered.
“Then we are wasting our time trying to survive,
aren’t we?” Matt asked.
“No, not at all.” Leatherwood answered. “We are
going to attack this thing in two ways. First we are going
to make it so the heat is not a threat to us. Second, we are
going to attack this global warming thing on a global scale.
We’re going to beat it back and we’re going to nurse the
earth back to health again. Now get this straight. There’s
nothing vague or wishful in my plan. It’s based on solid
technology that I developed years ago. It’s proven and it is
exactly what we need. We’ve got a lot of work ahead of us
and we’re going to need a lot of help. That’s all you need
to know for now. The rest of it gets pretty technical pretty
fast, and I’m not teaching school tonight. Soon, but not
tonight.”
THE GATHERING
They talked for a while longer and then they all
turned in. Leatherwood and the girls each took a turn at the
lookout post on top of the hotel. All was quiet till just
before daybreak. Leatherwood was on watch. Way off in
the distance, perhaps a hundred miles away, he thought he
saw the headlights of a car. Knowing that the roads had
deteriorated over the years, Leatherwood knew if the
vehicle he saw drove straight through to here, it would take
more than two hours to arrive. That would be just enough
time to get everyone up and away from there.
Leatherwood went downstairs and started waking
everyone up. Quickly he told them what he had seen and
that he figured whoever they were, they could be here in
just over two hours, maybe sooner. He couldn’t be sure
how far away they were.
They had the vehicles packed in only a few minutes.
They spent the next twenty minutes making the place look
as though no one had been there for a very long time. Then
they drove away to the ranch.
When they went in and Leatherwood turned on the
lights, Kimberly started crying. She hadn’t seen an electric
light in years except for those on a vehicle. She couldn’t
49
get over how neat, clean and well decorated the place was.
She just loved it.
Audrey and Kathryn took pleasure in showing Kim
around and watching her expression as she marveled at first
one thing and then the other. When they got to the kitchen,
Kim almost broke down again, for there was a refrigerator,
an electric range, a deep freeze, and a microwave oven.
She thought she would never see such things again.
In the great room behind folding doors, was the
entertainment center. Here was a Sony giant screen
television and all the other entertainment equipment. To
either side of the television was shelf after shelf of movies,
and CDs, thousands of them. When Kathryn opened the
folding doors to reveal all this, it was as though she had
opened the doors to a treasure vault. All the newcomers
were completely taken by this extraordinary and
completely unexpected blessing. Leatherwood found
himself a little disappointed that the men too, were so
completely absorbed in looking at all the movies on DVD
and VHS. He allowed everyone to browse the library of
movies and music for a few minutes, before he brought
them all back to reality.
“Folks. I know that all this must seem like a dream
come true for you, and I’m glad of it. There is a lot of
enjoyment on those shelves and we will all get to share in
that enjoyment many times in the months and maybe even
in the years ahead. But not right now. There are things
that need doing. One of the rules we will live by in this
place is that entertainment and relaxation come only when
we’ve finished the work that needs doing. It just can’t be
any other way.” Leatherwood said. “It’s winter time now,
and that is the time of year, short as it is, that we can get the
most work done. For us men especially, during the winter
months there will be times our heads won’t touch a pillow
for days at a time. It’ll be almost that bad for the women. I
know it’s hard to think about denying ourselves all this
pleasure when it’s there for the having, but if we don’t set
this rule now and live by it, then we are going to fail.”
There was a mumbling of “He’s right” as everyone
began replacing the movie cassettes and CDs they were
holding and admiring back on the shelves.
“Now, let’s get everyone settled into a room.
Kathryn and Audrey will show you folks where all the bed
cloths are stored down in the basement. We have enough
rooms so everyone will have a room to themselves. In
every closet in every room is a false wall that opens to a
ladder that descends into a passageway that leads to the
basement. The girls will show you where the doors are and
how they work. There is a secret passage that leads from
the basement away from the house and comes out close to
the face of the mesa behind the house close to the secret
entrance to the cavern where we spend the summer months.
If there is ever any trouble, we have a plan to go into the
basement, out the secret passage and into the cavern. Now,
this entrance to the cavern can’t be seen unless you’re right
on top of it, and once we’re inside, we can seal it up tight.
Before the day is done, I want everyone to be completely
familiar with the emergency routine for using these
passages to get to the cavern.” There was a nodding of
heads.
In the basement, there is a hidden room that is
equipped with closed circuit television. The girls and I
50
have installed eight cameras at strategic locations that let us
see for miles in every direction. Four of them are on top of
the mesa. They have a two hundred to one zoom capability
and they have big lenses. They gather a lot of light. On a
dark night they can see a rabbit ten miles away. Several
times a day, we take a good look around the countryside
with these cameras. Right now, I want us men to go down
into the camera room and look to the west to see if anyone
is coming. If I did actually see head lights this morning,
and they were heading our way, we ought to be able to see
them clearly with two of the cameras on top of the mesa.”
Leatherwood said, leading the way down into the basement.
In only seconds after sitting down at the camera
controls, Leatherwood found what he was looking for.
There were three vehicles approaching town from the west,
one van and two pick-ups. They were all stopped on the
side of the road while a flat tire was being changed on the
van. They were still about ten miles from town.
“Hey.” Sam exclaimed. “That’s Marsha Steffen
standing by that van. I would recognize that hair anywhere,
and it looks like Al McIver changing the tire. The black
guy there is Charlie Spenser and the one standing on the
running board of the pick-up is Marvin Pope. Those are all
folks from the cavern. Good folks. They must have
decided to follow after us too. What do you know about
that?” Sam beamed.
Just as a matter of routine, Leatherwood panned the
camera back to the west to check the highway further back.
To his surprise, there were four more vehicles coming at a
fairly high rate of speed about twenty-five miles further out
than the first group. He zoomed the camera in to maximum
magnification. The picture wasn’t very clear, but it was
good enough for the other men to declare with certainty
that the occupants of the four vehicles were Comancheros.
“Damn.” Matt spat. “Those four trucks are full of
Comancheros.”
“Are you sure?” Leatherwood asked.
“I’m positive.” Matt said. “I can’t make out any
faces, but those orange bandannas that some of them are
wearing is plain enough. The Comancheros wear those
when they plan on a fight so they don’t shoot one another
by mistake.”
“Then we better get going if we’re going to help
your friends.” Leatherwood said. Then he reached over
the desk and flipped a switch and spoke loudly into a
microphone. “Kathryn and Audrey, come down to the
basement now. We’ve got trouble coming.”
“On our way.” Came an instant reply. Seconds
later Kathryn and Audrey came bursting into the room.
“What’s the trouble, Uncle Leath?” Kathryn asked.
Quickly, Leatherwood brought them up to speed.
Then he laid out a plan of action. “Which of you men is
good with a rifle?” Leatherwood asked.
“I know I wasn’t much with the pistol yesterday,
but I was a deadly shot with a rifle in ROTC, and after I
graduated high school I joined the Army Reserves and they
sent me to sniper school.” Ben said.
“That’s perfect.” Leatherwood said. “Kathryn, I
want you and Ben to take the four-wheelers and ride to the
top of this knoll.” He panned the camera to show where he
meant. “The rest of us will drive as fast as we can to here.”
Again he panned the camera and pointed to the location he
51
meant, which was about a quarter of a mile from where the
good folks were parked. “Take two radios with you. We’ll
let you know when we are in position cause you will get to
your places before we get to ours. The way I figure it,
we’ll get to our spots just about the time the Comancheros
drive up on our friends. I don’t know how things will go,
but after we get to our places, you take the first good shot
you get. That’s when we’ll make our move.”
“Got it.” Kathryn said, as she opened a door against
the wall and took out two very large fifty-caliber sniper
rifles and ammunition. Handing one to Ben, she said.
“Let’s get going. I hope you can drive a four-wheeler.”
“I can.” Ben said, and they hurried out of the room.
Leatherwood handed the other three men a thirty-
caliber carbine and a two full clips each. Kimberly came
into the room then. Leatherwood quickly showed
Kimberly how to operate the cameras and the radio and told
her what was going on and what they planned to do. He
asked her to monitor everything and to keep them posted
about the situation until they got to a position that they
would be able to see for themselves.
The men piled into Leatherwood’s truck and sped
away in a cloud of dust. Leatherwood did not use the
roads. Instead, he headed straight across country, dodging
obstructions as best he could.
Kim kept everyone informed on the progress of the
outlaws. The run-a ways heard the outlaws approaching,
and abandoned their efforts to change the flat tire on the
van, which had turned out to be a very difficult task. They
climbed into the two trucks and were just starting to move
when the outlaws pulled around them and blocked their
escape. The outlaws piled out of their vehicles brandishing
their guns. The run-a ways were trapped.
Leatherwood and the other three men made it to
their position and Leatherwood said into the two-way radio.
“We’re in position.”
They all heard Kathryn say over the radio. “Firing
in five seconds.”
Leatherwood said. “Get ready boys. You’ll see the
bullets hit before you hear the shot. When that happens we
go in shooting to kill. Be careful not to hit your friends.”
Suddenly three of the outlaws, who were
unfortunate enough to be standing in line with Kathryn’s
bullet flight, seemed to explode, the big fifty-caliber bullet
ripping through them with violent results. A split second
later, two more dropped in the same manner. Instantly,
Leatherwood, Matt and Billy opened fire themselves. Then
came the distant boom of the fifty-calibers. An instant
later, two more of the outlaws were ripped apart by the big
bore bullets as Kathryn and Ben fired their second shots.
Now at close range, Leatherwood and the other three men
fired rapidly at the outlaws who were taken completely by
surprise. In seconds, it was all over. Fourteen outlaws lay
dead or dying. None of them had escaped. The outlaws
had only been able to fire a few shots and none of them had
found a mark.
The run-a ways had never gotten out of their
vehicles. They hadn’t had time. One moment the outlaws
were closing in, waving their guns and shouting all sorts of
profanities, and the next moment they were all dead.
When the run-a ways saw Leatherwood leading
Matt, Billy and Sam out of the brush with rifles still
52
smoking, they were amazed and elated. They came
pouring out of the two trucks. A very happy and boisterous
reunion was underway in seconds. Marsha Steffen ran to
Matt and threw her arms around him and kissed him hard
on the mouth. Billy got the same treatment from a girl
named Colleen Wallache. A third girl, Elizabeth Conrad
stood looking about forlornly for Ben. Sam said to her.
“Don’t worry. Ben is okay. He is up there on top of that
knoll.” The girl’s frown turned into a smile.
The happy laughter ended when Kimberly said over
the radio. “More trucks approaching from the west. It
looks like more bad guys, Uncle Leath. They are only a
mile away and coming in fast.”
“Okay, sweetie, we’ll be ready for them.”
Leatherwood replied over the radio. Then he gave
instructions for the new men to pick up the weapons the
dead outlaws had and stand ready to fight. Two more pick-
up truck loads of outlaws suddenly rounded the bend in the
road a thousand yards away from Leatherwood and his new
fighting team. The trucks came on for a few hundred yards
more before they realized the group that was standing with
brandished weapons was not their fellow outlaws. Then
they saw that their fellow outlaws were all dead on the
ground. They slammed on the brakes, just out of gunshot
range of the group, but not out of range of Kathryn and
Ben.
Kathryn’s voice came over the radio. “Firing in
five seconds.”
“Watch this boys.” Leatherwood said, indicating
the two pick-up trucks now stopped in the road five
hundred yards away.
 Suddenly the windshields on the driver’s side of
each pick-up exploded as a fifty-caliber round ripped
through it and into the chest of each of the drivers. Then,
only a split second later, two more rounds ripped into the
pick-up trucks. This time, it was the men riding in the
backs of the trucks that were the targets. Four men were
killed by those two shots. Almost in unison, the two
driver’s side doors were flung open and the two dead
bodies of the drivers were unceremoniously shoved out
onto the road. Both pick-up trucks made hard turns in the
road and headed back the way they came. Two more shots
from the big fifties ripped into the trucks as they drove
away, killing one more.
Then a big slug from Ben’s rifle took out the engine
in the lead truck. The engine compartment seemed to
explode. The steering mechanism sustained severe damage
as well, because the front wheels suddenly turned hard to
the left and the truck was suddenly rolling and flipping
down the road. The driver of the second truck must have
had his attention on what was behind him, because he
plowed into the first truck at full speed. There was an
explosion and both trucks were totally engulfed in flames.
No one escaped.
“All clear.” Came Kim’s voice over the radio.
There was a sigh of relief that went through the
bunch. Leatherwood looked at the group of newcomers.
There were twelve of them, seven men and five women.
There was now a total of twenty-two of them, not counting
the two kids.
53
Leatherwood could not shake the thought in his
head, ‘God works in Mysterious ways.’ “He sure does.”
Leatherwood muttered aloud.
“What was that, Mr. Leatherwood?” Sam asked.
“Nothing Sam.” Leatherwood said. “Just thinking
out loud.”
“Oh. What should we do about this bunch?” Sam
asked.
Leatherwood paused for a few minutes thinking it
over. Finally he said to Sam.
“There’s a crossroads about twenty miles west of
here where the cross road passes over the Interstate. I want
you and some of your friends here to take these bodies to
that overpass and I want you to hang them by their necks
from that overpass so no one coming here from the west
will fail to see them. There is a big sign fastened to that
overpass. I want you to paint these words on that sign.
“Justice has been served.” Sign it at the bottom, “Texas
Rangers”.
“And Sam.” Leatherwood said as Sam was turning
away.
“Yes, Sir?” Sam answered.
Leatherwood tossed him the radio he was carrying.
“Make sure you check with Kim before you leave. Tell her
what you’re going to do and have her keep watch for you.
Make sure she knows that your radio won’t transmit to her
from that distance but you will still be able to hear her.
This hand held radio transmits at only 3 watts. Her base
station transmits at 100 watts. If she sees anything on the
monitor she can warn you.”
“Yes, Sir.” Sam answered.
 Leatherwood told them where they could get all the
rope and paint they would need to do the grizzly job and
Sam and several other of the men set out to get it done.
As it turned out, Charlie Spenser had been a sign
painter before the heat surge, and while the others noosed
the dead men over the side of the overpass, he painted the
words on the sign just as Leatherwood had instructed.
From her vantage point in the basement of the ranch
house, some thirty miles away, Kim watched the whole
thing. She spoke to the men a couple of times while they
were at work and they waved to signal that they heard her.
Two hours later they returned to the place where the
battle had taken place. Everyone was gone. Sam called on
the radio and admitted he did not know how to get back to
the ranch. A few minutes later, Kathryn and Ben came
riding up on the four-wheelers and led the men back to the
ranch.
The women fixed a large breakfast for everyone and
while they were doing that, Leatherwood repeated his
speech from the night before for the newcomers with the
same results. Each one of them was utterly impressed with
the big man’s words and his command of the situation.
There was an instant trust in him and a faith that he could
lead them to success with his plan.
They all had a hardy breakfast. Sleeping quarters
were assigned, the rooms were prepared, and then the men
set about the rest of the day’s work.

54
 THIS CAVERN IS MINE
Leatherwood began explaining his work plan to the
men. He began with an overview and proceeded to the
more technical details. The men were utterly impressed.
Not only was he an excellent commander for the Texas
Rangers, it was obvious that he was one hell of an engineer.
The plan called for air conditioning the notch in the
mesa where the ranch house was located. Huge evaporator
coils would be placed on top of the mesa. The heat from
the compression cycle would be used to heat a process that
would turn the heat into electricity. The theoretical heat
transfer and conversion into electricity would be several
times greater than the energy required to spin the
compressors that would power the system. Leatherwood
took the men to a large warehouse in which he had stored
most of the needed equipment for the project. He pointed
out the locations near the top of the mesa where he had
already drilled holes deep into the rock of the mesa from
which a support structure would be attached to hold the
evaporator coils in place. The cooled air would become
denser and would descend into the notch. In addition,
moisture in the heavy hot air would condense at the rate of
almost 430 gallons per minute and would collect in a basin.
A large pipe attached to the basin would direct the water
from the basin to the inlet of a water turbine similar to the
one Leatherwood had set up in the cavern, only bigger.
The water flowing down this pipe would have 750 feet of
head pressure, or more than 300 pounds of pressure per
square inch at the lower end of the pipe. It would be
55
enough to produce more than 30 horsepower continuously.
However, the important feature of the water system was not
the electrical power it produced, but the water itself.
The air during the summer could exceed 140
degrees and 90% relative humidity. The system that
Leatherwood had designed would produce up to six
megawatts of electricity, which is equal to almost nine
thousand horsepower.
This part of the system would be working in
conjunction with a solar collector which, when fully
completed, would provide an additional nine megawatts of
electrical power.
A high-voltage electric power transmission line ran
close to the mesa. It originated in El Paso and served the
entire southwest part of Texas. Leatherwood’s plan called
for using that line to transfer power from the plant they
were going to build into Pecos. The men were amazed at
how much he had already done, working alone or with the
help of the girls, but he pointed out to them that he had had
many years to get to where they were at. From this point
on, he hoped the work would go faster.
“There’s one area where we might be in trouble.”
Leatherwood told them. “My background is in chemical
engineering and process operation. What I know about
generating, transporting and controlling electricity can be
written on a piece of paper and stuffed into a thimble. I can
build and operate a process that can create a large volume
of vapors that can make a turbine spin like crazy and the
turbine can drive the generator. But from that point on, I’m
a rookie. Unless one of you boys has a lot of experience in
the electrical generation and distribution field, we’re going
to need some help.”
They all shook their heads in the negative. Then
one of them said. “There is a fellow back at the caverns
named Jim Griffith that use to be an electrical engineer, I
believe.” Marvin Pope declared. “If we could get back to
the cavern we might be able to sneak him and his wife out
of there.”
“How hard would it be to do that?” Leatherwood
asked.
“It depends on whether the Comancheros are
guarding the place or not. Used to be they didn’t worry
about posting guards. Nobody had any other place to go.
Now, I don’t know. With as many people breaking out of
there the past couple of days, they might have the place
surrounded with guards. Who can say?”
“All right.” Leatherwood said. “Here’s what we’ll
do.”
Leatherwood laid out a basic plan and then, with the
detailed information about the lay of the land around the
cavern furnished by the other men, they fleshed in the
details. They spent the rest of that day and part of the night
preparing for their sortie into the territory of their enemy,
the New Comancheros. They loaded ten four-wheelers and
two dirt bikes onto two trailers and hitched the trailers to
two of the big F-350 pick-ups. They would approach
Carlsbad from the southwest, since their experience told
them there would be no Comancheros in that direction.
When they neared the cavern, scouts on the dirt bikes
would go ahead and report their findings to the others via
radio. If it was clear, the others would simply drive to the
56
caverns and get the electrical engineer, Jim Griffith. If
there were Comancheros around, the scouts would radio
their exact locations to the others who would maneuver into
position to take them out.
The group would have a total of four of the fifty-
caliber sniper rifles. These would be manned by Kathryn,
Ben, Sam and one of the newest members of the group
Mark Gaines. They would be firing from high ground in a
manner designed to drive the Comancheros toward the rest
of the Ranger squad, who would be waiting in ambush near
the large parking area that used to serve the cavern.
They all rested the next day until about two o’clock,
then they set out towards Carlsbad. There was an
exhilaration they all felt about the mission. This was more
than just defending what they had. It was more than just
the prospects of a fight. It was an act of justice, actually
striking out preemptively for what was right, taking an
unmistakable stand for the future with courage and
determination to face whatever the odds might be.
They drove non-stop for four hours. When they did
stop, Carlsbad Caverns was only three more hours away.
Lookouts were posted and they prepared a hot meal.
Carefully, they went over the plan again that would escalate
and unfold according to what they found when they got to
their destination.
The four-wheelers and the motorcycles had been
equipped with mufflers that made them whisper quiet.
Thanks to the pilfering that Leatherwood had done through
the years, they all had night-vision goggles or binoculars.
It would be a dark, overcast night. They would be able to
see without being seen.
The group rested until nine o’clock before getting
underway again. At midnight, the scouts were dispatched.
Half an hour later they began reporting back over the
radios. It seemed that at least half of the outlaw band, over
a hundred, was camped out in the parking lot. They had
four women tied spread eagled on a makeshift pallet where
any gang member that wanted to could have his way
whichever one they wanted.
Leatherwood could not see Audrey’s face when the
report came in, but his mind’s eye had no problem seeing
the flash of anger and hatred that he knew would be there.
He knew the outlaws would receive no mercy from Audrey
this night, and since she was armed to the teeth, that meant
a lot of outlaws would die by her hand beginning very
soon.
The other scouts reported only four guards at the
entrance of the cavern itself. All the rest were in the
parking area. This was going to be too easy, Leatherwood
was thinking to himself. He instructed one of the scouts,
Darrin Scott, to join Charlie Spenser, who was the scout at
the mouth of the cavern. They were to keep an eye on the
four guards and take them out if the opportunity presented
itself. Everyone else was to take up positions in a semi-
circle around the outlaws. This would include the four
fifty-caliber sniper rifles. Leatherwood knew these
powerful guns could take out ten men in a single shot if
they were standing in line, and as many men as there was
clustered around the women, watching the other men
violate them, it could mean that one shot from each of the
fifties could take out almost half the outlaw force. With
57
everyone firing on fully automatic, the outlaw band would
be ripped to pieces before they knew what hit them.
The outlaws had a large fire burning near where the
women were staked out. They had no one watching the
perimeter, and with the fire as large and bright as it was, the
outlaws couldn’t see the Rangers advancing on them.
Leatherwood was thinking as his team was walking
across the parking lot toward the outlaws that it was a
terrible thing they were about to do. That these men were
fellow countrymen taken astray by a world turned upside
down, yet there was no other way, all things considered.
They were now bad men of the worst sort and there was no
room in this life for the likes of them. That no matter how
hard the good survivors worked, a bunch like this could and
would ruin everything they worked for. No, there was no
other choice. They had to be taken out, every last one of
them.
The Rangers advanced until they were within fifty
feet of the outlaw mob. They were ten feet apart. At
Leatherwood’s command, they all knelt and took aim.
Leatherwood paused for a brief moment longer and gave
the order. “Fire.”
Instantly the four fifties spoke with a deafening
boom drowning out the lesser bark of the M-1 carbines,
which were, never the less, exacting a swift and final toll of
their own. Twice more the four fifties boomed before
Leatherwood ordered “Cease fire.”
In less than ten seconds, one hundred and twenty-
three outlaws lay dead or dying. The moans and cries of
the dying filled the night air while the blood of the outlaw
gang spread over the parking lot, finding the way to the
storm drain.
There was a flash of lightening and a loud boom of
thunder and it suddenly began to rain, as though the sight
below was too disgusting for nature to allow it to go
uncleansed.
Audrey and Kathryn rushed to the women and cut
them free, helping them to cover up with the blankets they
had been lying naked on. Quickly, they took the women
inside the building at the other side of the parking area that
used to be the visitor’s center. As they approached the
building, four men darted out, firing rifles as they fled. Not
taking time to aim with their weapons was a grievous
mistake, for none of their bullets found their intended
targets. There was an almost instantaneous eruption of
bullets from a Glock 10mm that almost took the heads off
the four fleeing men. It was Kathryn this time who had
unleashed the hot death. She wasn’t as good as Audrey,
but a casual onlooker would have a hard time
distinguishing the difference, and to the four dead men,
there was no difference at all.
In a group, the men marched to the entrance of the
cavern. Over the radio, Charlie Spenser had informed them
that he and Mark had killed three of the guards when the
shooting first started. The fourth one had run into the
cavern.
When leatherwood and his men arrived, Charlie and
Mark had climbed down from their perch and were waiting
for them. “You want we should go get him, Mr.
Leatherwood?” Charlie asked. “He had a pistol and a rifle,
but I think I can take him.”
58
“We’ll see, Charlie. But let’s try something else
first.” Leatherwood said. Then he shouted into the cave.
“Hey. You outlaw in the cave. We’ve killed all
your outlaw buddies. You are the last one. If you come
out now, you won’t die, but if we have to come in after
you, we’ll come shooting.”
There was nothing but silence.
Then Leatherwood said in a loud authoritative
voice. “This is Captain James W. Leatherwood of the
Texas Rangers and this is your last warning. Come out and
give yourself up or we’re coming in.”
There was a few seconds of silence, and then a
strange sound emerged from within the cavern. It was a
clamoring roar of many voices and it was getting louder,
nearer.
Suddenly, a throng of humanity came bursting out
of the cave toward the Rangers. They were carrying
something above their heads on outstretched arms. As they
emerged into the light outside the cave, provided by three
of the four-wheelers that had been driven there, the Rangers
could see that the object was the bloodied body of the last
outlaw. When they heard Leatherwood shout into the
cavern that he was a Ranger, it had ignited a flame of anger
and hatred that overcame their fear of the gunman.
Someone had thrown a stone at the outlaw, hitting him in
the head. Before he could recover, they were upon him,
bludgeoning him with clubs and fists. In seconds he was
dead and they had hoisted him overhead and ran from the
cavern with him, like a trophy for display.
For long minutes, there was a clamoring celebration
among the people. They were overjoyed that this moment
had finally arrived, that they had finally been freed from
the tyranny of the Comancheros and their ruthless leader
who was called The Barber.
Leatherwood’s mind was hard at work going over
all that had just happened. When the shooting had ended in
the parking area, he had walked among the dead and dying
outlaws. He had heard a hoarse whisper calling. “Ranger.
Ranger.” He walked over to where the voice came from,
and lying on the ground, bleeding from three wounds to the
abdomen was the outlaw Squirm.
“Ranger.” Squirm said as Leatherwood bent down
close to him. “I tried to tell them what you said. I tried to
tell them not send anybody after those run a ways, but they
wouldn’t listen. I tried to tell them you would come, but
they wouldn’t listen. They thought old Squirm was just
telling tales. I’ll bet they listen the next time I tell them
something.”
Leatherwood looked around at all the dead men,
then back to Squirm. “Yes, Squirm. Next time I’m sure
they’ll listen.”
Squirm reached up and took hold of Leatherwood’s
jacket lapel, pulling himself up a little closer to
Leatherwood’s face. “You know, Ranger, we wasn’t all
bad. A lot of us just got caught up and couldn’t find no
way out. We wasn’t all bad, Ranger.” Then the life faded
from his eyes and he slipped back to the ground still
holding onto Leatherwood’s lapel.
Leatherwood pried the dead man’s fingers loose and
laid his hand at his side. Then he and the others had started
their walk to the cavern entrance in response to Charlie’s
radio call.
59
He was going over these things in his mind as the
crowd clamored all around him. Suddenly, he heard the
loud vibrant voice of sweet Kathryn calling out to the
crowd for silence. Slowly the crowd quieted.
Kathryn spoke to them then, and what she said took
Leatherwood completely by surprise. She said. “Captain
Leatherwood has something to say. Please give him your
attention. It’s important.”
Leatherwood looked at Kathryn with an “I’ll get
even with you for this” look, and Kathryn had to suppress a
smile. “Uncle Leath.” She said. “These folks need to hear
you talk about the future just like you did with the others.
If you don’t, it will just leave them dangling. You know
what to say, so say it. Get up on that rock there and say
what needs to be said.”
Leatherwood looked at her and finally said. “All
right, I’ll do it but I won’t like it.”
“Sure you will.” Kathryn could not resist the
opportunity. “Everyone knows you’re a ham at heart.” As
she spoke, she shifted her eyebrows up and down and
pretended to be flicking the ashes from an imaginary cigar
the way she had seen Grocho Marx do in some of the old
movies they had watched together. As always, she was
able to bring a grin to Leatherwoods face, and that was
something she treasured.
Obediently, Leatherwood climbed up onto the large
rock that Kathryn had pointed to. He stood there for a few
moments, looking at the pitiful throng of humanity that
stood in utter silence below him, waiting, yearning for him
to speak words they so desperately wanted to hear.
 Finally, Leatherwood began. “Long ago our
forefathers rose up against tyranny and gave us a great
country to live in. Their courage, both men and women,
was immeasurable. Their wisdom and their vision guided
by the hand of God. They gave us one nation, under God,
indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. We squandered
it. We became a thoughtless nation of people in search of
wealth and leisure and we cared not about the
consequences of what we did until it was too late. We were
despicable in our disregard. For this, we have been smote a
mighty blow that has left us few in number. Those of us
that are left walk everyday in the shadow of death.”
Leatherwood did not know where those words were
coming from. It was as though some power had taken over
his mind and his mouth and was using him to deliver a
message. He continued.
“Here amidst this time of great cleansing we have
taken a stand. It is a stand for justice in all its forms, justice
for the good people and justice for the good land. It must be
so, for without justice, we cannot stand together and if we
do not stand together, we will not survive.” There was a
roar of approval from the crowd and a round of applause.
Leatherwood continued. “Today, the harsh heel of
tyranny has been removed from upon your necks and
liberty is once again yours. What you do with it is your
choice. It is not our purpose to replace those who met their
just ends today. But it is our purpose to free you and tell
you that we have a plan to win against the heat and to make
the land productive once again. If you so choose, we will
leave you here in this land to forge whatever lives you can.
We will not hinder you. But you may also choose to join
60
with us, separate but united, protectors and protected,
builders of a new life where there is justice for the good
people and the good land.”
There was another upwelling cheer and loud
clapping of the hands.
“We are poised precariously as a people on the edge
of a precipice. Even with our best efforts, we may still be
doomed to die a slow and tortuous death in a world that is
now bent on allowing life to thrive no more. However it
may happen, I am certain of this; together, in true unity,
there is hope, but separate, standing alone, the hope grows
ever smaller and our time will end.
Where we came from this day, we have made a
beginning. Where we stand now, there can also be such a
beginning. But before you choose, you must know there
are conditions. Life has turned harsh and we no longer
have the luxury of being lenient with transgressors, for
transgressors, set free, come back to transgress again. It is
a lesson we have learned and it has cost us all a dear price.
It is a price we will not blindly and willingly pay again.
Our land, east of here, is a land for the good. There
one will find good people who care about good people.
There one will find good people working to make the land
good once again. There one will find people who find joy
and richness in the toils of the day. There one will find
love and compassion for all things good. And there, one
will find good people ready and able to face the bad and to
destroy them or be destroyed.
Today, we have come to you and fought for you and
killed for you, because some of you have now joined with
us, because these outlaws were a threat to us, but mostly
because you were not free and this land was not yours but
those who made you their subjects and slaves. This we
could not abide well in our sleep. Now their threat to us is
small and we will enjoy the benefit in that. But make no
mistake, the greatest benefit that we have received from the
grizzly work that we did today is to know that from this day
forward, you can all stand here and shout to the world,
“This Cavern Is Mine”.
There was a tremendous roar from the crowd.
Though none of them knew this man, his words rang true to
them. He had led those who had vanquished their terrible
enemies and he offered them hope such as they believed
they would never experience again. In him they recognized
the character and the vision of a true leader.
An older man stepped forth and turning to the
crowd with his hands up said. “My friends. Many times I
have stood in high places these past years and thought
seriously of jumping to my death to end the misery. But I
didn’t because I did not wish to increase the despair among
you, especially the young among you. It has been a
tortuous life. But now, there is true hope and I would never
consider taking my own life in the face of this hope. I for
one, say let us join these good people that the strength in
our numbers will add to theirs. What do you say?”
There was an instant roar of approval. The decision
had been made. They would face the struggles that were
ahead of them as a united people.
That night guards were posted around the area in
high places, only this time they were there to protect the
people, not to enslave them.

61
 THE SANTA FE REDEMPTION
Early the next morning, Leatherwood called
a meeting of his Rangers. There had been something on his
mind and he wanted his men to help him make a decision.
As the men gathered close around him he began.
“Last night, our numbers grew greatly. So did our
territory and our responsibility to defend it. I am told that
only about half the outlaws were here in Carlsbad last
night. The other half are in Santa Fe. They are too big a
force for us to ignore. We must prepare to deal with them.
To that end, I want to devise a plan. You that lived here
know best what to expect. Please give us the benefit of
your experience and your thoughts.”
After a period of silence, the older man, Thomas
King, who had addressed the people the night before said.
“Every few days during the winter, a bunch from Santa Fe
comes down to relieve those that have been here. They
always come riding in about three in the afternoon. I’d say
we could expect them in no more than two days, maybe as
early as tomorrow.”
There was a buzz of agreement among the men.
They discussed the details and it was agreed that the best
way to deal with the outlaws was to lay in ambush for them
as they approached the cavern. Positions were selected.
Advanced lookouts were posted with radios. As a backup
to the radios, the lookouts took poles with white flags tied
to them that could be seen from miles away. Lookouts near
the ambush site would be able to see the advance lookouts
waving the flags and warn the others in plenty of time for
them to get ready.
62
The next afternoon, at almost exactly three o’clock,
the radio call came from the advance lookouts that a
convoy of vehicles was approaching from the north. The
alarm was sounded and the men scrambled into position. It
was almost half an hour before the outlaws came into view.
The Rangers had taken one of the vehicles the
outlaws at the parking area had been driving and had rolled
it off the road down an embankment. It had rolled over
several times and had settled on its top. Several of the dead
bodies of the outlaws from the previous night’s fight had
been laid out on the ground near the vehicle. When the
outlaw gang came into sight, gasoline and diesel fuel was
poured on the vehicle and it was set afire.
Just as expected, the approaching outlaws all
stopped and got out of their vehicle to look at what they
thought was an accident scene involving some of their
comrades. There were about seventy men in the group, all
standing together looking down the steep embankment
when Leatherwood gave the order to open fire.
Instantly the four fifty-caliber rifles boomed from
positions along the road, two ahead of the outlaws and two
that the outlaws had driven right past. The big-bore bullets
ripped through a dozen men at each end of the line. A
staccato of rifle fire ripped through the outlaws from above
and from either end. Before they knew what was
happening, the outlaws were all dead, most of them killed
by the big fifties.
They took the dead bodies of those men, plus those
of the men killed the night before and buried them in a
great hole that had once been the garbage dump for the
town of Carlsbad.
 The men rested that night and set out for Santa Fe
the next day. There had been talk of waiting for men to
come from Santa Fe and ambushing them too, but
Leatherwood thought better of it. He figured the next
bunch that came would be very wary because none of their
companions had returned from Carlsbad. Taking seventy
men by surprise was one thing, but that many men or more,
coming warily with scouts ahead would be quite a different
matter. Leatherwood felt it would be better to hit them in
Santa Fe before they began to miss the return of their
comrades and become suspicious. Everyone agreed.
They found an old map of New Mexico and one of
Santa Fe. Some of the men remembered hearing the
outlaws talk from time to time about their headquarters in
Santa Fe over the years in casual conversation. They also
remembered the more recent talk of the defensive positions
they had installed when Squirm had returned with his story
that the Rangers would be coming. The men said that The
Barber made his headquarters in the old Fine Arts Museum
in the old Plaza district during the winters. During the
summer months they stayed in various caves back up in the
mountains, with a bunch of them staying in the caverns at
Carlsbad. One of them said he had heard talk on several
different occasions about the outlaws finding an
underground military complex near Santa Fe where most of
the outlaws spent the summers.
Leatherwood knew that they could not make a
detailed plan of action with the information they had, but
the element of surprise was on their side. The one thing
they did know was that The Barber would be in the
museum because it had a generator they had been able to
63
keep running and he liked the layout of the building for
defense purposes.
Late that afternoon, they left for Santa Fe. They
arrived outside of town several hours later, well after dark.
From their high position, could see the town clearly. With
their powerful military binoculars they surveyed the places
where lights were shining. One of them was the museum
where hoped to find The Barber. After more than two hours
of searching the town, they were confident that they had
located all the posted guards on their side of town. They
also determined that most of the activity was centered in
the Old Plaza district.
Quickly, they altered their plan. The first order was
to take out the four guards between themselves and the
Plaza. This job was assigned to Kathryn. She had a .243
varmint rifle with a silencer and a huge night scope. If she
could get within four hundred yards of the guards, she
could take them out without them ever knowing they were
dead.
She and Ben set out to get the job done. They
found a location on the flat roof of an old business building
that allowed them to clearly see the two center guards.
Seconds later the two men were dead, shot through the
brain. Fifteen minutes after that, the other guards were dead
as well.
Up on the high ground, Leatherwood and the others
had watched the executions with their powerful binoculars.
The men got in their vehicles and without lights, drove into
Santa Fe. It was after two in the morning. They parked the
vehicles in concealed places more than a mile away from
the Plaza, proceeding from there on the quiet four-wheelers
and dirt bikes.
The outlaws were asleep. In no time, the Rangers
had collected the weapons from where the outlaws slept.
Then they had awakened them and under threat of instant
death from the host of fully automatic weapons trained on
them, they were herded into the Santa Fe jail and locked
up. There were one hundred and twelve, not counting The
Barber and any outlaws he might have with him in the
museum.
When Leatherwood left a few men in the jail to
keep the outlaws quiet while he and the other rangers
advanced to the museum. They entered easily and found
five other men asleep in different rooms. Their weapons
were taken and the men were quietly taken to the jail to join
their captured comrades.
In a very large room upstairs, on an elevated
platform asleep on the largest bed Leatherwood had ever
seen, was the sleeping man they called The Barber. He was
a big man, well over six feet tall and weighing close to
three hundred pounds. He was snoring loudly.
Leatherwood and several of his men stepped up
onto the platform, making it creak and moan under their
weight. Leatherwood figured the bed, with all its ornate
carvings and inlaid mother of pearl must have been the bed
of someone famous from the past and had been on display
in the museum. There was a pitcher of water and a glass on
the nightstand next to the bed. Leatherwood took the
pitcher and, holding the spout poised over the sleeping
man’s mouth, waited until the big man was about to take in
64
another loud breath then poured the water generously into
the man’s gaping maw.
The Barber came up spitting and sputtering and
very angry. His eyes locked with Leatherwood’s. He
started wrestling his way toward the edge of the bed with
the intentions of caving in the head of the stupid imbecile
who had poured water in his face. But before he reached
the side of the bed, something in those eyes made him
falter, then subside altogether. Those eyes had an evil plea
in them, practically begging him to continue, to keep
coming. The man knew that he was looking into the face
of death and he knew he was helpless against it.
Then his eyes caught the glint of the star on
Leatherwood’s lapel and they went wide. “You’re the one.
I thought Squirm was full of it, but you’re the one, aren’t
you?”
“You should have listened to old Squirm. He gave
you good advice. Now you’re going to die. The question
is how slow. How much pain.”
“You can’t do that. I know my rights. I get a trial
and a lawyer. You’re no judge.”
“There’s more than two hundred of your men who
would testify otherwise if they could.” Leatherwood
returned.
“What do you mean, if they could?” The Barber
asked.
“They can’t talk any more.” Leatherwood said.
“They have gone to solve the great mystery.”
“Yea? What mystery would that be?” The big man
asked.
 “Whether there’s life after death.” Leatherwood
answered after a long pause.
For the first time since being awakened, the big man
experienced fear. He felt like he was a deer trapped in a
blind canyon and there was a huge deadly lion closing in on
him, and behind him were other lions.
“What do you want from me?” He asked.
“Mostly, to watch you die.” Leatherwood
answered, just the hint of a satisfied grin tugging at the
corners of his mouth. “The more important question is what
do you want? “
“What do you mean?” The Barber asked.
“We want to know a few things. You tell us what
we want to know and we’ll hang you by the neck quick and
clean. If you don’t tell us what we want to know, we’ll
hang you by your thumbs and watch you die slow and
hard.” Leatherwood said.
“You can’t bluff me, Ranger. You’ve got to follow
the law and the law won’t allow you to do anything like
that, so you can stuff it.”
“All right, have it your way. Take him down to the
jail men. The man wants to hang by his thumbs for a few
days.” Leatherwood instructed. “He’s all confused about
the old law and the new. He doesn’t understand that they
are not the same thing any more. Well, when those thumb
screws bite in, I’ll bet realization will suddenly strike.”
One of the men had rigged a halter out of a length
of rope, which he put on the big outlaw. It consisted of a
tight loop around the man’s neck, the loose end then
running down his back and securing his arms together high
up behind his back. The big outlaw winced in pain and
65
kicked out at the men cursing and threatening. For this, he
got a gun butt delivered briskly to his mouth and nose area.
Blood came spurting out of the man’ nose and mouth and
one of his front teeth was now broken. The big man
subsided and was instantly dragged from the bed and stood
upright in front of Leatherwood.
“Under the old law, clubbing a man with a gun butt
while he’s tied up wasn’t allowed.” Leatherwood said
nodding his head at the man’s face. “Under the new law,
you got off lucky, real lucky.”
Leatherwood nodded his head toward the door, and
his men roughly shoved the big outlaw out of the room and
to the jail.
Leatherwood did not relish the idea of torturing a
man, but he also knew that in the absence of a true legal
system that he and his men would have to serve as both
judge and jury, as well as police. Things were considerably
different now. In the old days, the bad guys would commit
a crime and the police had to gather the evidence against
them, apprehend them, and present the evidence to a judge
and jury. The outlaws did not have to cooperate in these
efforts at all. The entire responsibility rested with the
system. Now, there were no courts. There were no spare
men or women to serve as investigators to gather evidence
and there were no lawyers to present arguments to the
court. In all this, time was not something that could be
trifled with, for the winter months were very short, and the
work that had to be done during those months couldn’t be
put off.
Neither was there a penal system in which to
separate outlaws from society. Keeping prisoners housed
and fed in such an effort would be a huge drain on the
limited resources the working people struggled so hard to
turn into food and shelter and a little more time alive.
Justice, therefore must run a very swift course, very swift
and final, because it was clear that outlaws, set free, would
always come back somewhere and do damage to the efforts
of good hard working people. Perhaps someday such
luxuries could be afforded by society once again, but for
now, thieves, rapist, murders, enslavers, and takers in
general could expect only one end.
These things Leatherwood and the other men had
discussed at length while waiting together at the ambush
sight and again while waiting outside Santa Fe for Kathryn
to take out the guards with her swift death. There was no
other way that they could see which did not have in it a
future threat, if not to themselves, then to someone else.
Too, there was the consequence factor. Such swift and
final reckoning was enough to sober any man into the
realization that the outlaw way was much more difficult
and bore much greater risks than a life of work and
righteous support of the good values.
Leatherwood, with his skill at interviewing people
developed years before when he was charged with selecting
new employees for the company he worked for, was able to
quickly discover the rank order among the outlaws from
The Barber down. He focused his efforts the first day on
questioning the ranks just below The Barber, and gained a
lot of useful information bout their operations, their
strongholds and their caches.
When it came time to interview The Barber,
Leatherwood was ready. Several of the Rangers brought
66
the big man in and stood him in front of the small desk at
which Leatherwood was standing. The big man was still
trussed up tightly. The noose around his neck and arms
pulled high behind his back had not been loosened.
Leatherwood said nothing. He just looked at the big
outlaw, employing an old negotiation tactic he had learned
long ago which called for making the other side talk first.
After several long minutes, the big man blurted out.
“You can’t do this to me, Ranger. I know my
rights.”
“Are you still harping on that old tune?”
Leatherwood asked gruffly. “When are you going to
understand that the only rights you have left is deciding if
you will die quickly and humanely or if you suffer a long,
hard, slow dying?”
“Bring in that chair pad, men.” Leatherwood
instructed his men.
When the pad was brought in, Leatherwood had the
men place it face down on the floor. “You probably know
what this is, don’t you?” Leatherwood asked the big
outlaw.
“Yea, I know what it is.” The outlaw replied. “It’s
a plastic pad that sits at a desk so you can roll your office
chair around easier.”
“That’s right.” Leatherwood said. “And all those
little cleats on the bottom keep it in place on the carpet.
Have you ever accidentally stepped on one of those things
with your bare feet when it is face down?” He asked.
“Can’t say that I have.” The big man sneered.
“Well, you are in for new experience.”
Leatherwood nodded his head, and several of the Rangers
pushed the big man onto the upside down chair pad.
Instantly he was screaming in pain as his soft, bare feet
were assailed by the penetrating cleats. He bulled his way
off the pad and onto the smooth floor, his feet still feeling
the stabbing pain.
The Rangers started to grab him and force him back
onto the mat when Leatherwood stopped them. “That’s all
right, men. Leave him be for now. You know, fat man.”
Leatherwood said to the big outlaw. “That was just a little
taste of what’s in store for you if you don’t get busy telling
us what we want to know.”
The big outlaw looked at Leatherwood for a long
time, weighing things in his mind. He remembered, and
still felt the terrible pain of the cleats on the chair pad
digging into his tender feet. For the first time, he let his
imagination work, remembering some of the things he had
done to men when he had wanted to make them suffer. He
saw himself undergoing those same tortures. As he looked
at this man, Leatherwood, he saw a resolve that spoke
clearly of a willingness to follow through with his threats.
The big man knew that these men, these Rangers, had a
power he did not have, would never have. He knew that
behind them, giving them sanctity for their actions, even
giving them a sense of responsibility and duty, was this
thing called justice. Justice, he knew, could rise to
whatever level of brutality was needed to exact itself.
“What do you want to know?”
I want to know the combination to the big vault in
the underground military installation back up in the
mountains. I want to know where you keep the pretty
women you have taken and use as your private harem. I
67
want to know where it is, and I want to know about these
alliances you have stuck with the other two outlaw gangs.
This was information he had gotten from the other outlaws
he had interviewed.
There was a look of entrapment on the big outlaw’s
face. He had intended to use that information as bargaining
points to get himself freed, especially the information about
the women. His options were running out fast. He was
beginning to see what the big Ranger intended him to see,
death, quick and clean or slow and hard. Still, he was not
ready to give up.
“Well, that’s all right.” Leatherwood said. “We’ll
find the women. It’s only a matter of time. And we’ll get
the vault open. It might take a couple of weeks, but we’ll
do it. As far as those other outlaw gangs go, we already
know where they are and how many there are. They won’t
stand a chance against us, just like your gang didn’t. And
there’s a few other things on my list here that I want
answers for. But here’s the thing, fat boy.” There was a
certain venom in Leatherwood’s voice that made the big
outlaw cringe. “I don’t have to have any of these answers
from you in order to succeed. It will only make our work a
little easier on us and a lot easier on you, if you speak up
now. Otherwise, you are going to get the full treatment.
You’re going to cry like a baby. You are going to beg for it
to end. You are going to loose a hundred pounds of
blubber, sweat and blood and I promise you, your visions
of hell will look sweet to you before we send you there to
find out for yourself.”
The big outlaw swallowed hard, the images the big
Ranger put in his head making him dizzy and weak.
 “All right.” He said. “I’ll talk. I’ll tell you
everything, but you’ve got to promise to turn me loose.”
“Never.” Leatherwood said, like an iron door
closing in its finality.
“Look. I’ve got a lot more information that you can
use. It can make you a big man. I guarantee it.”
“It’s like this, chubby.” Leatherwood answered.
“I’m already bigger than I dreamed I would be. Bigger
than I ever wanted to be. I took this job on because it
needed to be done and I was there. I have no interest what
so ever in getting any bigger, and that’s a fact.”
“You’re lying.” The big outlaw charged.
“Everyone wants to be a big shot. Everybody wants
power.”
“Worm eaten.” Leatherwood said.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” The outlaw asked
squinting his eyes, suspicious of his own question.
After a long pause, Leatherwood responded. “It
means that not everyone wants those things, fat boy. It
means that some people, no, most people want something
completely different out of life. They want to have wives
that they love and that love them back. They want kids
they can raise and watch grow into fine men and women
with true values that dictate to them how they should live.
They want grandchildren they can hold close and love like
there’s no tomorrow. They want to be a part of a society
that respects and preserves the things that let a society
survive and even prosper. And last but certainly not least,
they want to serve the God that they know, as surely as
there is life, lives and watches and cares and breaths life
68
and the good values into all of us from the instant we are
conceived.”
The big outlaw pondered the things the big Ranger
spoke of. Then he finally asked. “What’s that got to do
with worms?”
“Simply this. People like you grow to see things
based solely on your own thinking and perception. You
think that everyone thinks and feels the same as you and
just because you want to be a big man that everyone else
does too. People like you are missing the biggest part of
what makes a complete human being. You’re like a tree
that looks like any other tree from the outside, but on the
inside, it’s hollow and weak because the worms have eaten
its heart and sole away. You’re left with an emptiness that
you can’t stand, so you grab onto things that you think, you
hope will fill that emptiness, things like power and riches
and women. But the truth is that those things don’t fill the
emptiness, they only feed the worms.”
The big outlaw could only stand there. It was as
though the ranger had a window that let him look inside a
man, seeing things that no one else could see, knowing
things that no one else could know. Worse than that, the
Ranger had a way of making someone see those things
clearly in themselves. Suddenly, the big outlaw realized
that he had gone through life as a man who had never seen
his own reflection in a mirror. A man who believed, even
insisted to himself and others that he was a great and
dashing figure of a man, only to learn, when he finally sees
himself clearly that he is ugly and horrid. A sense of
futility and realization came over the big outlaw. Suddenly
he knew that he had wasted his entire life. Suddenly he
could see how he had focused on things in life that were
superficial, and that his belief that he had kept these things
hidden from others was false.
Leatherwood watched the man’s demeanor change
before his eyes. First the big outlaw drew his lips tight in
an effort to keep the quiver that he felt building in them
from taking over, but it was a useless effort. The force that
was driving the quiver to his lips and the trembling into his
heart was too strong. He couldn’t fight it back. He strained
with all his might against it, but something was coming
over him, a force that was too powerful and too intense for
him to resist. Finally, with a gush of air past his tight but
quivering lips, the big outlaw broke down. He dropped to
his knees and with his hands on his thighs and his head bent
low, he cried.
Leatherwood left him there with his men watching
over the broken outlaw, saying to his men as he left. “See
what you can get him to tell you when he regains his
composure. When you are done, send for me. I’ll want to
talk to him again.”
“Yes Sir, Captain.” Came the curt response.
Somehow, the men had started calling him Captain
after he had yelled that he was Captain James Leatherwood
of the Texas New Mexico Rangers back at Carlsbad when
he was trying to get the last outlaw to come out of the cave.
He had only been trying to sound official, thinking that it
might be just enough to get the man to come out. Instead,
it had been just enough to get the crowd to tear miserable
bastard to pieces. At any rate, he was now Captain
Leatherwood, supreme commander of the Texas New
Mexico Rangers, whether he wanted it that way or not.
69
Leatherwood was dog-tired and hungry. He found
the girls, and they had already prepared a hot meal of wheat
flour bread and some re-hydrated peach preserves they had
found. It wasn’t the best or most complete meal that
Leatherwood ever had, but he didn’t leave much for the
ants.
It was almost five in the morning when
Leatherwood finished the meal. He went over to a large
sofa and sat down, just to rest for a minute. However,
when that minute was up, Leatherwood was in a deep sleep.
He had slept very little in the past three days, and now that
the outlaw situation was well in hand, sleep engulfed him
like a warm blanket on a cold day. The big man slept
soundly for four hours and then slowly awakened to the
wonderful smell of freshly brewed coffee. Leatherwood
had always loved a good cup of coffee. He had found a
large sack of roasted coffee beans about two years after
Xavier and he had made it last for several years, having no
more than one cup a day, but it had run out several year
ago.
At first, the big man thought he was having some
sort of cruel dream, which he feared he would awaken from
and be disappointed that it had only been a dream. So, at
first, he refused to open his eyes and give in to the
tantalizing aroma that his dream had somehow conjured up.
No, he would just stay asleep until some other, less tortuous
dream replaced the one he was having. Perhaps then, he
would wake up and he wouldn’t remember anything about
this dream. But the dream persisted and the aroma grew
stronger and his taste buds were practically screaming for
him to open his eyes. Finally, the big man relented and to
his amazement, there stood his sweet Kathryn, holding a
very large mug of steaming hot coffee in front of him, an
evil little smile on her face.
Leaning down as she was, her dark hair framed her
lovely face. Could there possibly be a more beautiful
creature? Leatherwood asked himself. She had been
turning into a woman when he had found her, and now she
was a woman. He couldn’t have loved her more if she had
really been his daughter, or more aptly, his grand daughter.
He felt the same thing about Audrey. He couldn’t imagine
life without them.
Leatherwood said. “A man could get spoiled to
this. Waking up to two of the most wonderful things in
God’s creation, a beautiful face and beautiful beverage.
My oh my!”
Kathryn beamed and bending down, kissed
Leatherwood lovingly on the forehead. “You deserve it.”
She said simply.
Leatherwood savored the coffee, calculating in his
mind how fast he should drink it, torn between making it
last as long as he could, but not so long that it would grow
cold.
Leatherwood was just finishing up the last swallow
when there was a knock at the door. Matt stuck his head in
when Kathryn said “Come in.” “Excuse me. Captain, the
outlaw boss is asking to speak with you. He’s told us
everything, Captain. He hasn’t shut up since you left. He
says he will be ready for you to hang him as soon as he
says what he wants to say to you. He wouldn’t tell us what
he wants to say. He said he’ll tell you only.”
70
“All right.” Leatherwood said. “But first I’ve got
to check the plumbing.”
As Leatherwood left the room Matt said. “Yes sir,
Captain.” And stepped into the room to wait.
Audrey and Kathryn walked over to Matt, both of
them curious about the very large degree of respect that he
seemed to have for Leatherwood.
“Where did this ‘Captain’ business come from?
Why do you call him that?” Kathryn asked pointedly.
“Because that’s what he is, Ma’am. He’s the
Commander of the Texas New Mexico Rangers.”
“Does he know this?” Audrey asked.
This perplexed Matt for a minute. Then he said.
“Gee, Ma’am, I’m not sure about that. But I can tell you
one thing. Everyone else is sure of it and there’s not a one
of us who would have it any other way. He’s a real special
man Ma’am, and we are all very lucky we have him. You
should have seen what he did to the outlaw boss, the one
they call The Barber.”
“What did he do to him?” The girls demanded.
“He just talked to him Ma’am, I swear. That’s all
he did.” Mat said quickly, detecting that the girls were
ready to defend Leatherwood against any character
assaults. “He just talked to that great big man and in a few
minutes he had the guy on his hands and knees crying like a
baby. I never saw anything like it. The Captain just
reached inside this guy with words and stripped his sole
bare. I never would have believed such a thing could
happen if I hadn’t watched the whole thing myself.”
 Leatherwood came back into the room, and seeing burning gates of hell. Why, you are the very air he
the three of them huddled near the door, he was prompted breaths.”
to ask. “Is there something wrong?” “I think that’s how he feels about you.” Audrey
Kathryn, quick witted as she was, said in her Mae said.
West imitation. “Well, Captain, we were having a “I think he feels that way about both of us, little
wonderful time talking about you until you came in and sister.” Kathryn replied.
spoiled it. Now we’ll have to change the subject.” “You’re right. How did we ever get so lucky?”
Matt joined in the laughter that followed, even Audrey asked.
though he wasn’t sure why it was so funny. He had never “I don’t know sweetie. I’m just so very grateful
heard of Mae West and the vernacular was lost on him. that we are.” Kathryn said.
Still, there was something special about these three people “Me too.” Audrey replied.
and just seeing them laugh was reason enough to join in.
Matt and the ‘Captain’ left, heading for the jail.
Audrey, her eyes looking past the door as though she could
see the men walking away, said. “Oh, how I wish I could
do that.”
Kathryn asked. “Do what, sweetie?”
“Make him laugh the way you can.” She replied, a
little sorrowfully. “It’s wonderful to hear him laugh and
see him happy. It’s a wonderful gift you have. I only wish
I could do something like that.”
“Oh, but you do little sister.” Kathryn said to
Audrey. “Don’t you know? He thinks you are about the
most special thing God ever put on earth.”
Audrey’s eyes locked onto those of her big sister,
looking intently into them to see if Kathryn was telling the
truth or just being cunning. “Do you really think so?” She
asked.
“Oh, I know so, sweetie.” Kathryn said with utter
sincerity. “He would defend you to the death and beyond.
He would defend you if it took him right through the

71
 A CLEANSING OF THE SPIRIT
When Leatherwood arrived at the jail The
Barber was waiting, impatiently, eagerly, as though he was
afraid his courage and resolve would not last. He was
sitting in a straight-back chair at a little table in the same
room where he and Leatherwood had talked before. This
time, he seemed very different. Leatherwood eyed him
hard as he entered the room. The rope was still around his
neck and his arms were still high up behind his back. His
hands were numb.
Leatherwood sat down at the table and after a
moment said. “You got something you want to say to me?”
“Yes, Ranger. I do.” The big outlaw said. “I told
your men everything they wanted to know. But there are a
few things that I know that they didn’t ask about. I want to
tell these things to you, because I have some conditions and
you are the only one that can grant those conditions.”
The outlaw could see in the Ranger’s eyes that he
would make no bargains, so the outlaw was quick to
expand his meaning. “I’m not going to ask you to let me or
my men go, Ranger, nothing like that. What you said
earlier is true. Me and the rest of this scum got no business
here in this world any more. All we do is take. That’s all
we know how to do. The problem is that there’s not
enough to go around. Good folks that know how to build
and make good things out of nothing might have a chance
if there aren’t so many takers among them. I know that.
I’ve known that for a good while now.
The way I see it, if something isn’t done pretty
soon, we’re all going to die a slow death anyway. So, I
72
figure it’s time that me and all the rest of these worthless
thieves get out of the way so you folks that want to build
the world back will have a fighting chance of doing it.”
“That’s very noble of you.” Leatherwood said
dryly, still not convinced the outlaw boss didn’t have some
sort of con planned.
“Look, Ranger.” The outlaw said. “I’m not trying
to pull anything over on you. I meant everything I said,
and what I want from you will not compromise your
principals or make you look bad in front of your men. I’m
just going to level with you and trust you to do what you
think is right.”
“Sounds fair enough.” Leatherwood responded,
still the skeptic.
The outlaw nodded his head as though to confirm
his resolve and then began. “Not everyone in the jail here
is a part of my gang. Two of them, a fellow from
Columbia by the name of Fernando Rodriguez and one by
the name of Mike Chandler, have never been members of
my outfit. They work for us because we’ve got their
families, or another outfit has their families up in Colorado.
The deal was that if they worked hard and did what we
asked, we kept their families safe and we let them visit a
few days every winter. Those are good men, Ranger. They
can fix anything. Rodriguez is the smartest man I’ve ever
known. He knows lots of things about almost everything.
And he works like a Turk. I swear, I’ve never seen him
look tired. He doesn’t deserve what me and the rest of my
outfit deserve. The same thing goes for Chandler. He is
not in the same league with Rodriguez, but when it comes
to electronics and stuff like that, the man knows everything.
 The way I see it, you need men like that. They’re
both good and honest and worth more than the rest of us
put together. I swear it’s the truth Ranger. You need to get
those men out of here and you need to help them get their
families back, and that’s where the rest of my information
comes in.” The outlaw finished.
Leatherwood pondered what the outlaw boss had
told him for a few minutes. He reviewed everything,
looking for some sort of trap or con, but could find none. It
appeared, on the surface at least, that the outlaw was just
trying to do the right thing, maybe for the first time in his
adult life. At any rate, the last thing he wanted to do was
hang innocent men, regardless of what they may or may not
have in the way of valuable skills. If they were innocent, if
they were there amidst the outlaws through no will of their
own, he would free them.
“Matt. Find Sam and ask him to come in here,
would you?” Leatherwood asked.
“Yes, Sir.” Matt answered, and went hurriedly out
the door to do the Ranger’s bidding.
Matt arrived only minutes later and leatherwood
said. “Matt, our outlaw friend here says we have a couple
of good guys locked up with the rest of his gang. He says
they don’t belong there and they don’t deserve to hang like
the rest of them will. I want you to interview those two and
take careful notes about what they say. I want specifics.
Interview them separately. When you are done with them,
I want you to pick a couple of other prisoners at random
and interview them to see how much of the information
about Rodriguez and Chandler they confirm. When you are
finished, I want two things. I want to see Rodriguez and
73
Chandler over in my quarters so I can interview them
myself using your notes. Then, I want you and me and Ben
to meet. I’ll want to know your recommendations about
this matter. Here are some notes that I’ve taken down from
my talk with this man.” He said, handing Sam a piece of
paper. “Hope you can make out my scribbling.
While you are doing that, I’m going to finish my
talk with our outlaw friend here. It seems he has a few
other things he wants to tell us.”
“Yes, sir.” Sam said and left the room, reading
Leatherwood’s almost flawless writing as he went.
“All right then, Mr. Outlaw. What’s the rest of the
story?” Leatherwood asked.
“My real name is Curtis, Curtis Crisp.” The outlaw
said. “I’d appreciate it if you would call me Curtis.”
“I don’t know.” Leatherwood said after a pause.
“That makes you human, and things start getting a little
personal. Might make it harder on me to hang you.”
“Yea, I see what you mean.” Curtis responded, the
disappointment clear on his face.
Then the outlaw’s shoulder and back started a
painful cramping with violent spasms. The pain was
obvious, but the outlaw was determined not to complain.
“Matt, take the ropes off this prisoner. He’s earned
it.” Leatherwood instructed, drawing his pistol to cover the
lad as he untied Crisp. “You understand that if you make a
wrong move I’ll gut shoot you and let you die slow?”
“I understand, Ranger. You won’t have any more
trouble from me. You’ve got my word on that.”
Something in the big man’s demeanor said to Leatherwood
that he meant it.
 “Okay then, Curtis. I’m all ears.” Leatherwood
said.
The big outlaw began telling Leatherwood all about
the other outlaw gangs that he had alliances with. He told
everything in great detail. He even drew some sketches.
The man turned out to be a very good artist. Leatherwood
found something ironic in that.
Before they were through, Leatherwood had such a
detailed understanding of the other outlaws and their
strongholds that a plan of action had begun to take shape.
Crisp seemed to get a lot of satisfaction in doing his part.
His sketches were very realistic and detailed. He even
sketched the faces of several of the key men in the other
outlaw gangs. He was particularly detailed in sketching the
face of a man named George Ulsterman, the king of all the
outlaw gangs.
Crisp spent a lot of time talking about how
Ulsterman had taken over the territory. He told of how
Ulsterman had amassed hundreds of men and intimidated
everyone else into being his cronies. “He came riding into
Santa Fe one day a few years back with at least 500 men,
and they were armed to the teeth.” Crisp said. “I had less
than two hundred men and all we had was hunting rifles
and shotguns. He had a dozen fifty-caliber machine guns
and a couple of recoilless rifles mounted on military jeeps.
All the rest of his men had automatic weapons, grenades
and grenade launchers. It was plain to see that if it came
down to a fight we wouldn’t last ten minutes, so we gave in
real peaceful like.
For a couple of years he kept his second in
command here to run things and I answered to him. His
74
name was Bill Miller, and he was just about the meanest,
cold bloodiest killer I ever saw, except for Ulsterman,
maybe. Any way, Miller wanted the whole thing for
himself and he made a plot to kill Ulsterman. But
Ulsterman found out about it and laid a counter plot of his
own, and he won out. He managed to take Miller alive, and
Ulsterman spent the next six weeks skinning the man alive.
They say it would have lasted even longer, but Miller got
infected and died. At any rate, Ranger, you’re going to
really have your hands full when you take on this hombre.
They don’t come any worse.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.” Leatherwood said.
“Any way, Ulsterman never got around to replacing
Miller, and that left me to run things here. Ulsterman
would send someone down from time to time with
instructions of one kind or another. And he traded his men
out here pretty often. I know they were reporting to him
about how I was running things and how I was carrying out
his instructions.
Mostly, we did what he said. I know, we could
have fought like you and your men have, but then what?
Your men tell me you’ve got a plan, that you’ve figured a
way to survive in the heat and grow crops and stuff like
that. I don’t see how that’s possible, but your men sure
believe it, and that’s something really special. I hope you
understand how special that really is, Ranger.
We didn’t have any thoughts of doing anything like
that. Hell, we didn’t know how to think about things like
that. From where we sat, it was simply a matter of who
could hold out the longest.
 I guess when we found out the people in the caverns
were growing mushrooms, we should have seen the
possibility for other things as well, but we didn’t. We did
what Ulsterman said. We would go in and take the
mushrooms from the people. We would take what he said
we could have and we sent the rest to him.
Ulsterman had a vision of a lot of little Ulsterman’s
populating the world, and he had ideas of what to look for
in a woman to have his kids. He took a lot of women out of
the caverns over the years. I did too, but not for myself.
Ulsterman allowed me to keep women if I wanted them.
He thought that was good. It fit his plan. He wanted
offspring with other suitable genes to blend with his own
down the line. Well, Ranger, there’s a bunch of kids
running around over at what’s come to be known as my
harem, but none of them ore mine. I never touched any of
those women. I would have their men brought up here
under the pretext of some work I wanted them to do, but
the real objective was to let them be with their women, at
least for a time. You can verify that Ranger, not that it
makes any difference. My reason for taking the women
was to keep them away from Ulsterman. It was one thing I
could do without him minding.
“Look Ranger, I’m not trying to make out that we
were a bunch of angles before Ulsterman came along, but
the truth is we didn’t treat the people like he started treating
them after he took over. We never raped no women or
killed anyone, and we never took so much from the people
in the caverns that they starved or anything. In fact, we
even gave them some of the rations that we found inside
the underground military installation. And most of the men
75
you killed in Carlsbad were his men. Only a handful of
them were out of my bunch. Now, most of the men here in
jail are my men. There are seven of Ulsterman’s men here.
All four of the guards you took out were his men.
Out of my men, there’s about a dozen that I have a
lot of trust in. Under other circumstances, they probably
would have been pretty good citizens, but now, things are
different. Me and these men had a plan worked out that
gave the appearance of being in complete accord with
Ulsterman, but the truth is, we were not nearly as brutal as
we made it look.” Crisp said.
“What about the beatings?” Leatherwood asked.
“The people in the caverns tell us that your men
administered some brutal beatings to them over the years.”
“We did, Ranger.” Crisp answered. “Only, those
beatings were not nearly as brutal as they looked. One of
my men is a guy by the name of Benjamin Hill. He was a
prizefighter before the heat came, and he was really good.
He had one hell of a record and I think he would have been
champion. Well, Benny has had several run-ins over the
years with some of Ulsterman’s toughest men, and Benny
whipped those men to within an inch of their lives, and he
made it look easy. So, everyone knew that Benny was a
vicious fighter. So Benny is sort of my official beater.”
“So, it’s true. You did have good men beaten half
to death?”
“Not hardly, Ranger.” Crisp said. “Benny was so
good, he could make it look like he was beating someone to
death when he was really pulling his punches. Oh, he
would split their lips and bloody their noses, and even
administer a black eye, but these injuries were only
superficial. They looked bad, but they really weren’t. He
could also clip a man on the chin an put him out cold
without really hurting him. If you look at the truth,
Ulsterman’s men that Benny beat up took weeks to heal
because Benny would smash in their faces and break their
ribs. He hurt those men really bad. None of the men from
the cavern suffered anything like that. In fact, once they
were out of sight of Ulsterman’s men, they were fine. We
always got those men away from Ulsterman’s men after a
so called beating so they would never see that it wasn’t
really a beating at all, at least not what they called a
beating.” Crisp said.
“There was a man named Ken Bosley who came
from the caverns. He was up here doing some work and
one of Ulsterman’s men got mad at him for some reason
and beat the man to death. There were several other
occasions when men almost died from beatings
Ulsterman’s men handed out. That’s when I came up with
my plan to administer all the beatings here in Santa Fe. I
knew it had to look bad to keep suspicions down, so I had a
talk with Benny and he agreed to do it. The people in the
caverns believe me and Benny are about the most terrible
men that ever lived. It had to be that way, Ranger. We
worked to create that image, that reputation. It was
important for people to believe it was true. But the truth is
that we have saved a lot of pain and suffering and probably
a few lives in the bargain.”
Leatherwood had taken extensive notes during the
talks. If everything that Crisp had said was true, then he
and his men were more of a buffer between Ulsterman and
76
the people in the cavern than they were a threat.
Leatherwood determined to find out the truth.
Leatherwood asked. “Is there anything else?”
Crisp paused for a moment, a peculiar look on his
face. Leatherwood could see that the big man was
struggling to find the words he wanted to speak.
Leatherwood didn’t press.
Finally, Crisp began. “You know, Ranger, you said
some things last night that, well, they really hit close to
home. I think everything you said was true, especially
about me being hollow and worm eaten inside. It was just
like you said, I was looking for wealth and power to make
me feel like I was special, but I’ve known for a long time
now that those things are hollow by themselves. When you
started talking about families and husbands and wives and
grand kids, it was like I saw those things clearly for the first
time, I mean, I saw how truly important they are. Then you
said something about people wanting to serve God, and that
really hit a spot inside me. I mean, I look at you and I can
see why your men think you are so special. I can see why
they trust you so much. You’re big and strong and smart
and you stand up to things in the right kind of way. I see in
you the kind of man that doesn’t need anybody, yet you
talked about God as though you really believe that God is
real, and not just something that people dream up to make
themselves feel better. I’d like to, well, I’d like to…” The
big man’s words trailed off.
Leatherwood looked at Crisp for a minute. He was
reflecting on what crisp had said and what he had tried to
say, but couldn’t get the words to come out. Finally
Leatherwood said. “You want to talk about God. You
want to know what I think and feel and believe. Is that it,
Crisp?”
After a long pause Crisp said. “Yea, Ranger.
That’s it. You see, I grew up with drunks for a father and
mother. They both did a lot of jail time when I was
growing up, sometimes at the same time. I was in foster
care or living with aunts and uncles who were drunks too
for the most part. Nobody ever talked about God or went to
church or things like that, except for my Aunt Anna. I only
got to stay with her and her husband one time during all
those years and then for only about two weeks. My mother
told me she was a crazy bible thumper and she didn’t want
me staying with her. Mother said Aunt Anna was a
superstitious zealot that couldn’t talk about anything but the
bible. Only, that’s not the way I remember her and her
husband, Uncle Jake. They were nice, and they had a real
nice home. They ate every day at about the same times,
and Uncle Jake went to work every day. They took baths
most every day, and Aunt Anna made sure I had clean
cloths to wear every day. She made me wash my face and
hands before we ate and she checked to see if my
fingernails were clean. She always told me to scrub behind
my ears, too. She always gave me a big hug and a kiss
before I went to bed. Sometimes I think she was the only
person in the whole world that really cared about me. I
never thought she was crazy. I thought she was about the
nicest person I ever knew.
I remember the last thing she said to me when my
mother came to pick me up and take me back home after
she got out of jail was that someday, when I got to be a
77
man, that I should look to God. I never knew what she
meant, Ranger, but I always wanted to.
I got in trouble with the law the first time when I
was thirteen. I got caught stealing some cigarettes for my
mom. Mom had sent me to do that a lot of times before,
but I never got caught. The store manager caught me red
handed and called the police. They took me home and my
mom made out like she had tried everything to keep on the
straight and narrow. When the cops left, she beat me for
getting caught and taking a chance on getting her into
trouble again. I was in and out of trouble after that, mostly
for stealing things that my mom wanted.
Then, my aunt Anna died and we went to her
funeral. Aunt Anna was my Mom’s oldest sister. I had
been to other funerals with my Mom before for people we
had known, but Mom had always liked those people when
they were alive. She had never liked Aunt Anna, and had
never said anything good about her. I was about eighteen
then. I couldn’t understand why we were going to Aunt
Anna’s funeral, seeing how much my mother hated her.
Then something else happened that I sure didn’t
understand. During the funeral, my mother started crying
like I had never seen her do before. She broke down
completely, Ranger, and just sobbed her heart out. Then,
when everybody lines up to pass by the coffin for the last
time, she broke down again and started talking to Aunt
Anna as though she wasn’t dead and could understand
everything my Mom was saying. She started telling Aunt
Anna that she loved her, and that she was so sorry for the
way she had treated her and she begged Aunt Anna to
forgive her.
 My Mom never drank another drop of liquor again
after that. She went to Aunt Anna’s grave a lot and put
flowers on it and she would talk as though aunt Anna could
hear her. And she would say things like “Aunt Anna is in a
better place now” and things like that.
It was all very confusing for me. For years my
Mom had talked terribly about Aunt Anna and then, after
Aunt Anna died, she talked completely the other way. I
tried to talk to her about it once, but it made her very
uncomfortable and she told me that I would just have to
figure things out for myself. But I never was able to,
Ranger.
Now, you’re going to hang me pretty soon and I
figure if I ever am going to find out for myself, I better get
started. So, I thought maybe, you could tell me a thing or
two that might help. Would you do that for me, Ranger? Is
that something I should ask someone like you?”
After a moment, Leatherwood said. “I’ll talk to you
about it, Crisp. What do you want to know?”
“Well.” He started to speak, then paused a long
moment. Finally he asked. Ranger, is there a God?”
Leatherwood looked at the big man. There was
only a pained yearning in the man’s eyes. It was a question
that came from deep inside, not something that could be
faked or acted. Convinced that Crisp was completely
serious, Leatherwood tried to find the words he needed, but
none were adequate. Finally, he simply said. “Yes.”
There was a play of emotions on the big man’s face
that Leatherwood could almost read. There was a fleeting
look of relief that such a thing was true and that men were
not the pinnacle of the universe, that there was something
78
with a greater purpose and ability than man. Then there
was a look of regret and sadness that so many years had
gone by in which he had not known this and had not
conducted his life differently because of this. Finally, there
returned a look of doubt on his face that this could be true,
all these long years, without him knowing it for certain of
his own cognizance. This prompted him to ask
Leatherwood. “How do you know? I mean, just because
somebody wrote it down a long time ago doesn’t mean it’s
true. How do you know?”
Leatherwood could see that the big man was in a lot
of discomfort from his bindings, and he signaled the guards
to untie him. “Thanks, Ranger. It makes it a little easier to
think. I was getting pretty uncomfortable.” Leatherwood
nodded from across the table. The guards resumed their
positions, keeping their weapons trained on the big outlaw
boss.
Leatherwood thought a moment then said. “From
where I sit, the world and the universe are chock full of all
the evidence you need. Just look around. Where did all
this come from? How can anyone possibly think that all
this is the result of random protoplasm evolving into people
who can sit here and ask if there is a God? And if thinking
that we evolved from nothing, why is it so much harder to
think that God may have done the same thing before time
existed? We know the universe is very old, while mankind
is very young. Just think of what people might be with a
few billion years to develop. What might God be like with
an infinitely long time to become what He is and do what
he has done? Too, there is a certain order to the universe
that is perfect. From a scientific perspective, a system, left
to itself, will atrophy, yet we see evidence of renewal
everywhere. There is an energy input into life that we can’t
explain and we miss this energy the second it leaves
something alive. And when that magical thing that we call
life leaves, the physical properties that held that life begins
to disappear in spite of our best efforts to preserve it.
Where does this energy come from? More importantly,
where does it go when it leaves? We can’t measure it, we
can’t see it, yet it is in each of us and it is this that makes us
what we are.
Then there are the other sorts of evidences that we
encounter that we cannot explain except by admitting the
existence of some intervening force.” Leatherwood said.
“Like what?” Crisp asked.
“Like things that happen to people.” Leatherwood
said. “Once when I was a young boy, about ten years old, I
climbed up on an old oil derrick across the street from my
neighborhood. People sitting outside on their porches saw
me climbing up and called to me to come down or I’d fall,
but I wouldn’t listen. I had it in my head to climb to the top
of that old derrick. I got over half way up, when the old
ladder I was climbing gave way under my feet an I fell. I
was more than fifty feet up that old derrick when I fell. For
a second, I was really scared, but then something came over
me and I wasn’t scared anymore. I knew I was going to be
okay. The ground was hard and dry as a bone, not much
softer than concrete. Falling from that high, I should have
died on impact, or been injured for life at the very least, but
I didn’t have a scratch on me. It hadn’t even knocked the
wind out of me. People who saw it said I hit awfully hard,
but to me, it was softer than if I had been sitting on my bed
79
and just laid back. One of the neighbors had gone to get
my parents as soon as they saw me climbing the ladder.
They were no more than fifty yards away when I fell and
they saw the whole thing.
When they got there, my mother was about
hysterical, just knowing that I had to be dead. She couldn’t
believe that I wasn’t. My Dad was really relieved for a few
seconds, then he got really mad and took off his belt to give
me a thrashing. He grabbed me by my left arm with his left
hand a drew that big old belt back to let me have it, but my
mother grabbed his arm and got right in his face and said.
‘Oh no you don’t. God didn’t save that boy just so you
could beat him for it. Now you think about it. Why isn’t he
dead? Why isn’t he bleeding? Why?’
Well, this took the wind right out of my Dad, and he
dropped down to his knees and started crying. I walked
over to him and put my arm around him and told him I was
sorry and that I wouldn’t ever climb up anything like that
again. He grabbed me up and held onto me and liked to
have crushed me, but it felt good just the same. Right then
I knew two things, that my Dad really did love me and so
did God.”
Crisp sat quietly and mulled over what
Leatherwood had said, then he said. “So, just because you
got lucky and wasn’t hurt bad in that fall, that means that
God saved you?”
“Well, there was a little more to it than that.”
Leatherwood said. “First of all, I wasn’t saved just from
being bad hurt, I was saved from being hurt at all. Second,
I fell from a height that no one can survive from unless they
land on something soft, and I didn’t. The ground I landed
on was hard as a rock. And last, I felt something take hold
of me even while I was falling, and it washed my fear right
out of me.”
“You felt something, huh?’ Crisp asked. “How do
you know you didn’t imagine it?”
Leatherwood thought for a minute then he said to
Crisp. “Lay your hand down flat against the table there and
close your eyes. Keep them closed until I tell you to open
them.”
Crisp did as he was asked. When his hand was flat
on the table, Leatherwood briefly touched the exposed back
of the man’s hand. Then he said to Crisp. “What just
happened?”
Crisp responded. “You touched me on the back of
the hand.”
Leatherwood said. “You can open your eyes now.”
Then he said to Crisp. “You say that I touched you on the
back of your hand. How do you know?”
“Because I felt it.” Crisp said, as though the answer
were so self-evident.
“You mean that just because you felt something,
you think I touched you?”
“That’s right.” Crisp answered.
“How do you know it wasn’t you imagination?”
Leatherwood asked. “How do you really know it happened
at all?”
“Come on. Because I felt it.” Crisp declared.
“So, when you feel something it’s real and
indisputable, but if someone else feels something, it is to be
questioned and doubted?”
80
The big man was touching the back of his hand
where Leatherwood had touched it, his brow furrowed in
deep thought.
“You mean it felt that real to you?” Crisp finally
asked.
“It felt that real to me.” Leatherwood answered.
“How is it that nothing like that ever happened to
me?” Crisp asked.
“What makes you so sure it hasn’t?” Leatherwood
asked.
“Well, wouldn’t I remember?” Crisp asked.
“Not necessarily.” Leatherwood answered.
“Sometimes it’s not so obvious, and even if it is, there’s
nothing that says a person won’t charge it off to luck or
coincidence and forget about it. But if you stop and think
about it, if you really remember the circumstances around a
lot of events in your life, you’ll start to realize that there
seems to be an awful lot of coincidences piling up. It starts
to get hard to ignore. Why don’t you give it a try. See
what you come up with. I think you’ll be surprised.”
“Hmm.” Crisp responded, considering what
Leatherwood had said. Then he asked. “What else,
Ranger? What other evidence can you tell me about?”
“Well, that would be the spiritual things.”
Leatherwood said. “To most people, this one is a little hard
to reason out on their own, and it takes an awful lot of
reading the Good Book and other works before it starts to
come clear to a man. I’m not sure I can explain it so you’ll
understand what I’m trying to say.”
“Well, give it a try anyway, Ranger. Will you? I
mean, you’ve done real good so far. You’ve made a lot of
sense of things that seemed pretty tough to me at first. I
sure would be obliged if you would.” Crisp said, being
completely sincere.
Leatherwood thought about the subject for awhile,
looking, once more, for words to tell his meaning, and
fearing there would be none. Finally he said. “Okay,
Crisp. I’ll give it a try, but I’m not making any promises.”
“Fair enough.” Crisp said, with a little smile of
gratitude. It was plain to see that what the Ranger had said
so far had made an impression on him, and he was hungry
for more. After all, he didn’t have a lot of time left to
learn.
“First, one has to make an assumption that God is
real and that all things that exist come from him. He made
things in two basic categories, things that have life and
things that don’t. The things that have life, get that life
from Him. It’s like He breaks off a tiny little piece of
Himself, His essence, and puts it into everything that lives.
That’s the only part of any of us that never dies. It’s our
spirit, our sole. It’s that thing that we call life when the
spirit resides inside our bodies, and death when it leaves.”
“Okay. I’m with you.” Crisp said.
“Now, even though the spirit in us is separate from God, it
is still connected in a lot of ways, and it has some innate
qualities that everyone else’s spirit has as well. These
qualities are the essence of God in each of us. When we
are young, as children, our bodies and minds are not yet
complete and we are not very aware of the presence of our
spirits. But as we get older, we begin to see and experience
things on a higher level. Our minds become more acutely
aware that there are things beyond the physical world that
81
we don’t fully see or understand and that there is something
inside each of us that is more than just a physical body and
brain. It is at this time that some folks begin the long task
of trying to understand these things at a deeper level. Some
of them succeed to a greater degree than others, but many
never undertake this task at all. They just go through life
letting things happen without really looking or questioning.
Their spirits are neglected, covered up with the intensity of
the human mind’s preoccupation with the physical world.
The spirit, just like the body and the mind, is
capable of growing and developing and becoming stronger
and more active in the human life. People who have
worked really hard at understanding the spiritual aspects of
life are very different from folks who haven’t. Like your
Aunt Anna as compared to the rest of your family. It
sounds to me like she was very much in touch with her own
spirit, and through this, she was much more in touch with
God. She behaved very differently, and the things she
labored for in her life were things that served her spirit.
Like I said, when this happens, the spirit plays a
much more active role in the person’s life, and the person’s
life is very different because of it. You see, the spirit is a
very picky thing. It comes forth and participates when
things are right and it withdraws when they are not.
Sometimes, conditions are so compelling that the spirit
comes forth and takes over almost completely, exerting so
much force upon our consciousness that we are powerless
to resist the directions it gives us.”
“You lost me there, Ranger.” Curtis interjected. “I
have no idea what that means.”
 “Yea, I know. It’s like I said. This is a really tough
thing to explain to someone.” Leatherwood said. “Let me
see if I can come up with an example.”
Leatherwood thought for a while, then he began
again. “First, I think we need to establish that the spirit
stands for some things and stands against other things in all
of us. Things that we generally term as good are the things
the spirit stands for. Things we term as bad, the spirit
stands against. It’s when we are pursuing the good things
that our activities appeal the most to our spirits and our
spirits get involved more. When this happens we can feel
it.”
Leatherwood paused, seeing that Crisp needed time
to think about what had been said. It was apparent to
Leatherwood that Crisp had a strong mind and was
digesting the information well.
“I think I know what you are saying. It’s like when
I manage to get one of the men from the cavern together
with his wife and kids up here without Ulsterman or his
men knowing about it. It makes me feel good to see a
family like that coming together after a long absence. It
makes me feel like I’ve accomplished something worth
while.”
“Now your closing in on what I mean.”
Leatherwood said. “That’s one of the ways our spirits talk
to us. When something like this happens, there is a kind of
harmony that emerges within us. It’s a pleasing and
satisfying experience.”
“Okay.” Crisp said. “I understand that part, but I
still don’t understand what you said earlier about the spirit
82
coming forth and taking over almost completely
sometimes.”
“Well, it’s along the same line as what we already
covered only more intense. You see, there are some things
that call out to the spirit so strongly that it responds
whether we want it to or not. When this happens our minds
are not always willing, but usually they are.” Leatherwood
explained.
“I still don’t understand.” Crisp said, shaking his
head.
“Did you ever hear about the man that ran into a
burning house to save a child, knowing he would be badly
burned. Children are special, and a child in dire need is
something that our spirits find hard to resist. That’s one
example.” Leatherwood answered. “There are a lot of
others.”
“Can you tell me about some of them?” Crisp
asked.
“This can get pretty deep and involved.”
Leatherwood said. “We could spend a week talking about
it and still not get there. So, here’s what I’ll do. I’ll give
you an example and you can think about it. Then we’ll talk
more about it when you’re ready.”
“Okay.” Crisp replied, wondering how much time
he would have to think about it before his end came at the
end of a rope.
“You have to try to visualize what I’m going to tell
you. You have to put yourself there with the power of your
mind. You have to see the sights and smell the smells, so
to speak.” Crisp nodded his head, and Leatherwood began.
 “It’s a very long time ago, in the days of sailing
ships and muskets. You are on a ship at sea. There are two
other ships in your tiny little ill equipped fleet. The
commander of your fleet is a brazen young captain. You
are about sixty miles of the southern coast of England. You
encounter a fleet of forty-one British ships, all very well
armed and all staffed by professional seamen and sailors
trained in sea combat.
Your Captain orders your tiny fleet to engage the
British fleet in combat. The captain sails your ship up
alongside the flagship of the British fleet and lashes on. In
only moments, the firepower of the British ships has
inflicted mortal damage to your ships and killed many of
your shipmates.
The British Admiral on the enemy flagship sees
how dire your circumstances are and he shouts across the
scant feet that lie between himself and your captain. “Sir,
will you strike your colors?”
And without the slightest hesitation, your captain
shouts back. “Strike my colors? Sir, I have only just begun
to fight.”
The battle raged on, and three hours later, your
captain shouts across to the British Admiral. “Sir, will you
strike your colors?” And the British Admiral replies. “Yes
I will.”
Leatherwood paused.
Crisp said. “I know that story. That guy, the
Captain of the three ships, he was an American. His name
was, ah, John Paul Jones, wasn’t it?”
“Yes it was.” Leatherwood answered.
83
“I don’t understand the connection.” Crisp said.
“What’s this story got to do with spirit?”
“Only everything.” Leatherwood said. “In order to
understand it you have to answer some questions. First,
what was it that allowed Jones and his men to fight such a
fight, refusing to surrender even in the face of certain
death? And second, what was it that allowed the British
admiral to surrender when he was not nearly so severely
damaged as Jones and his ships?”
“So, if I figure out the answer to those two
questions, then I’ll understand?” Crisp asked.
“That’s right.” Leatherwood answered.
“Are the answers hard?” Crisp asked.
“I guess they are for a lot of folks.” Leatherwood
answered.
“What about me? Do you think they’ll be hard for
me?” Crisp asked.
“I think you’ve got a chance.” Leatherwood
answered.
“Okay. I’ll work on it.” Crisp answered. “But,
Ranger, could I ask you a favor?”
“You can ask, but that don’t mean you’ll get it.”
Leatherwood answered.
“If it comes time to hang me and I still haven’t
figured out the answers, will you tell me what they are?”
Crisp ask.
This brought a solemn smile to Leatherwood’s face
as he pondered the big man’s request. Funny how things
change in their importance when a man nears his end, he
thought. “Yes. I can do that.”
 “Thanks, Ranger. I appreciate it. And thanks for
talking with me like this. I only wish I’d had this kind of
talk with someone a long time ago. It makes a man see
things a whole lot different.” Crisp said, extending his
hand toward Leatherwood.
Instantly, Matt and the other two guards cocked
their weapons and took aim on the big outlaw, interpreting
his gesture as a threat to Leatherwood.
Leatherwood looked over at the guards and then
back to Crisp. “You might be a tad more careful in how
you move, Crisp. You came close to finding out what it’s
like to die from a gut shot.”
“Yea.” Crisp, beads of sweat breaking out on his
shaggy forehead. “I see what you mean.” And withdrew
his extended hand.
Leatherwood stood up to leave and Crisp asked.
“Ranger? I know you probably have a lot of things to do,
but if you get a chance, do you suppose you might come
back so we can talk some more? I mean, if it’s not too
much trouble.”
Leatherwood looked at the man. It was obvious that
he was sincere. There was an eagerness in the man’s
request. It was like he had finally found something that
made sense in this life, and he couldn’t get enough of it.
“Maybe.” Leatherwood answered. “We’ll see.”
Crisp nodded his head knowingly.
Leatherwood, Matt and the other two men who had
stood guard during the talk, left the room, locking the iron
door behind them. Leatherwood sent for Sam and a couple
of the other, more senior men in his group to meet him at
his quarters. When they arrived he brought them up to
84
speed on his talk with Crisp. Then he asked the men to tell
him what they thought about the situation.
Two of the men made it clear that they didn’t care
what sort of story Crisp had told. He and his entire bunch
were outlaws that had caused a lot of damage and they all
deserved to hang. But Sam and an older fellow named
Kenneth Bosworth had different thoughts.
Bosworth, who was older even than Leatherwood
began. “I remember the stories and the pictures of the Nazi
labor camps. I remember how those people were treated. I
remember how a lot of them starved to death in those
camps. I also remember reading accounts of how some of
the German soldiers had snuck food into those starving
Jews on a number of occasions at great personal risk. Now
those men were on the wrong side as far as which uniform
they wore, but when it came down to which side they were
on in regards to right and wrong, they were on the right
side. It was only fate, or circumstances that caused them to
be born German and to have to wear that uniform, but was
it not a fortunate thing for the starving Jews that those men
were where they were, wearing those uniforms, which is
what gave them the ability to sneak food in? I think, in
some respects, our situation in the caverns is similar to that
of the Jews in the Nazi labor camps. Similarly, I think that
Crisp and many of his men are like those soldiers. I know
from my personal experience that what he said about
Benny administering the beatings is true. I was up here a
few years ago and was cleaning one of the buildings. I
threw a bucket of mop water out the back door just as one
of Ulsterman’s men was walking by. The man grabbed me
and hit me several times savagely, but Crisp stopped him
and turned me over to Benny. From the way the man went
at me, I thought I was a dead man, but I realized that his
blows, though uncomfortable, were nothing compared to
what Ulsterman’s man had done to me. In fact, the only
places that I had sustained any real damage were from
those first blows from Ulsterman’s man. So, I say there is
credence in Crisp’s story, and it behooves us, in the name
of being right in our judgments and actions, to look closer
and to temper our decision with what we learn.”
Sam had been listening to the talk and added this.
“Several times during the past few years, we were warned
in advance when Ulsterman’s men were coming. We never
knew who the warnings came from, but they were always
right. We weren’t always warned, either, but when we
were, we were grateful. Several men had pretty wives, like
my Kimberly, and we were always grateful for the
warnings, because we could get them back into the deepest
parts of the cavern until the threat was over. For a long
time, we thought all the men were Crisp’s, but we began to
notice a difference among them. Ulsterman’s men stuck to
themselves, and they were a lot meaner when they were on
duty. The other men, whom we came to know as Crisp’s
men were a lot kinder and more lenient. There were other
things as well, like when one of Ulsterman’s men spotted
Kimberly. I believe it was one of Crisp’s men who told us
to make a run for it and where to run too. It was pitch dark
and I couldn’t see who it was, but what he said was plain
enough. ‘If you want to save your woman from Ulsterman,
you better make a run for it.’ Then he told me how he
would do it if it was him making the run. You know the
rest, Captain.”
85
Leatherwood nodded in acknowledgement. Then
he went on to say. “Bitterness is something that bad times
always brings with it, bitterness and hatred. The problem
with those feelings is that it is a very difficult thing to make
sure they stay focused where they belong. When men find
themselves as leaders, they have to steel themselves against
letting unfocused bitterness spill over into places it
shouldn’t be and have impacts that it shouldn’t have. We
all know what we are faced with today. We have a plan to
build things that will let people survive into the future.
This plan is going to involve a lot of tough hard work.
Now there is no doubt that we’ve killed a lot of men who
deserved to die, but we may have killed some that didn’t
deserve to die. It’s true that this world, and our vision of
building it back into a place where people have a real
chance, can’t abide the influence of outlaws. By the same
token, there are now so few of us that we really can’t afford
to loose a single good man if we can help it.
In the two times that we have killed together, we
didn’t have control of the situation. We could not stop to
hold hearings to be sure of who deserved killing and who
didn’t. What we did know was that those men were armed
and represented a very real and final threat to our future.
We did what had to be done, and if some of those men
didn’t deserve to die, I’m sorry for it, but it couldn’t be
avoided.
This time is different. We do have control of the
situation and we can take the time to find out. It sounds
more and more to me that Crisp and his men, while no
angles, are not in the same league with Ulsterman and his
gang. It sounds to me like Crisp and his bunch were more
interested in surviving the best way they knew how, and
they stepped on a few toes along the way, but they helped
too. I’m not for killing them until we are convinced they
deserve it.” Leatherwood finished.
All the men nodded their agreement. Leatherwood
had made a powerful case and had made the difference
between their previous actions and this situation very clear.
Sam broke the silence. “What do you think we
should do, Captain?”
“I’ve gathered a lot of notes from my talks with
Crisp. You’ve already confirmed some of what he said. I
want us to break these notes down into categories and get
really familiar with them, then I want to begin interviewing
all the other prisoners. We should be able to put twenty
men to work on this. When we’re done, we’ll have a real
good feel for what’s the truth and then we can make up our
minds about what to do.
Quickly Sam took over the organizing effort and in
no time, he had twenty men prepared to question the
prisoners. That afternoon, the process got underway.
By the next afternoon, all the prisoners had been
interviewed at least four times by different men, and some
of them had been interviewed several times more than that,
depending on what they had to say. Sam supervised the
entire proceeding and sat in on many of the more
interesting interviews, taking notes from time to time.
That evening, they held a sort of tribunal with
Leatherwood as the head judge and Sam orchestrating the
talks. When the presentation was finished, the group of
men had chosen seven men for definite hanging. The rest,
in their opinion did not deserve death for what they had
86
done, and were mostly just men who had been trying to
survive.
Leatherwood called in his girls, who he had
instructed to conduct similar interviews with the
imprisoned women. They too had determined there were
seven men in the jail who deserved to hang, while the rest
did not.
Leatherwood asked for the lists of names from the
two separate interview efforts. Then he addressed the
group. “You have all worked hard and diligently to learn
what is the truth. I commend your efforts and I honor your
judgment. Here are two lists that contain your judgments.
I also have a list of names that I developed from my
interview with Crisp and the two men we have already
released, Rodriguez and Chandler. Combined, they
represent the truth as closely as we can achieve it. Do we
all agree on this?”
“Yes” was the unanimous answer.
“Then we have but one final decision to make. A
man’s life becomes forfeit when his name appears on any
list, any two list, or any three of the lists. Which do we
choose?”
After some debate, it was determined that any man
whose name appeared on all three lists was doomed to
hang. While any man whose name appeared on less than
three lists would benefit from additional information
gathering efforts. If this second effort did not remove him
from all lists, then he would hang as well.
With this settled, the lists were posted. All seven
names were on all three lists. It was settled. Seven men
would hang tomorrow.
 It was seven in the morning, and the sun was just
beginning to brighten the gray dawn. It was the middle of
winter, yet the day began with a warm rain. The night
before, seven hangman’s nooses were formed in seven
different ropes. The seven condemned men were taken
from their cells to the jail courtyard, and one at a time,
made to stand on a scaffold with a trap door on the floor.
Leatherwood read the charges against each man, one at a
time, asked if they had any last words, and then ordered
them hanged. Suddenly, it was over.
Leatherwood turned to all the other people gathered
in the courtyard that had witnessed the hanging, including
all the other prisoners who were still shackled. He was
standing on a short platform, the rain pouring from the brim
of his hat. All eyes were on him.
“I don’t know how well justice was served here this
morning. None of us do. But there can be no mistake that
what we have done this morning was the result of good
men and women seeking justice to the best of our ability.
We must not dwell on this work that we have done here,
but neither must we forget it. We must not forget that in
what we did, there was a strong basis in justice as there
must always be lest we become like them.” He said,
pointing to the executed men.
“In this search, we determined that seven vile men
must forfeit their lives.” Leatherwood transferred his
attention to the other prisoners. “You who remain were not
deemed to deserve death. So there remains the question of
what should this new society of men and women, who
stand ready to sacrifice endlessly for the purpose of
securing a better life for themselves and their posterity, do
87
in regards to you who stand shackled amidst us. In
deciding this, we must weigh the consequences our
decision might have on our purpose of doing what must be
done to build this better life and better world.
You were all brought out here to see that justice in
this new society that we are building can be very swift and
final. Now, as you return to your cells, I tell you to ponder
the finality that you saw here and remember that it is real.
And know that this judgment that you witnessed can be
earned quickly by anyone standing in this courtyard if he or
she forgets their duty and responsibility in this new society
and transgresses against it. By the same token, everyone
should know that being a vital part of an effort of fellow
human beings in pursuit of a worthy purpose can be one of
the most satisfying and rewarding experiences in life. It is
this that we wish to make our legacy. It is this that we
intend to be our challenge, and it is in this that we intend to
win victory.”
There was a cheer from the crowd, including from
the prisoners.
“I have been asked why God did this to us. I can
only say this in reply. I do not believe God did this to us. I
believe we did it to ourselves. We became a world of
careless and even reckless nations of people, competing
against one another to be the biggest, the wealthiest, the
ones with the most. In spite of our better judgment telling
us across the decades that we were heading for a point
when the earth would not bear the pressure we were
exerting on her. In spite of the clear need for all people to
come together to exercise discipline and restraint and to
pursue better, less destructive ways, we did not. For this
failure, the earth rose up and smote mankind a mighty blow
and almost ended our days as a species in this vast
universe, and as it stands this moment, may have succeeded
in doing sot regardless of the efforts we mount, regardless
of how closely we come together to stave off this end, no
matter how valiantly we fight, our days might still end.
In this I have one belief and therefore I swear one
oath to my God and before you as my witnesses. My belief
is this; that we are here today in a world grown more harsh
than we ever imagined it would, not because God caused
it, but because he saved we few from it, for surely we
should all be dead by now. I believe that in his mercy and
grace, he has intervened, and thus, given us one more
chance. Therefore, here is my oath; That from this day
forward, in the lives we lead, in the values we embrace, and
in the things we achieve there shall always be our
underlying pledge to the Father that this time, we will do it
right.”
Again there came a cheer from the gathering, for his
words were their words and his pledge, theirs. Leatherwood
paused and the cheering and applause went on and on.
Finally, with outstretched hands motioning for quiet, he
continued.
“We stand here with two great duties before us. In
one, lies a horrible enemy who is exacting a horrible toll
upon the people he has subjugated and enslaved. These are
our people. They are our brothers and sisters and we shall
not turn our backs on their need.”
Again there was a great cheering and clapping of
hands. “But in this, there is great danger to us all, for this
enemy is very strong and is prepared to do battle against us.
88
If we challenge him now, the risk is great that too many of
us will perish in the effort and there will not be enough of
us left to do the other work that lies waiting for us to do,
the work of rebuilding our lives and making the world a
place where men and women can, once again, raise families
in peace and prosperity.
Our numbers have grown and the need is great and
urgent that we finish the preparations needed to allow all of
us to survive the heat that will soon come with the
approaching summer. Thus we have a second duty, to
survive another summer.
In weighing these two duties, it becomes clear that
to engage this enemy now, even if we win, could make
surviving the summer impossible for too many of us, too
many women and too many children. The thought of
paying such a price for the sake of striking out at a hated
enemy now is a price that could be too great for any of us
to bear.”
There was a murmur from the gathering, as they
considered the big man’s words. They could all see the
wisdom in what he said and they were grateful they had
such a leader who could put things so clearly into
perspective for them. After a moment, Leatherwood began
again.
“So it is that we must turn aside from our war plans
now, for the moment, and turn our efforts to using the
winter time left to us to make the preparations we must
make for the sake of all that make up our new society now.
As we do this, we must remember that our enemy
has no reason to delay. Soon, he will know that something
has happened in Santa Fe, and he will come. We must be
prepared for this too, when it comes. Therefore, we must
convene a counsel at once to lay all our plans.
Return the prisoners to their cells and let us begin
our work.” Leatherwood finished.
The disappointment the prisoners felt was plain for
all to see. It was clear that the picture that Leatherwood
had painted in their minds about the future had great appeal
to them as well as everyone else. They wanted, very much,
to be a part of the effort to turn those pictures that they had
seen in their minds into reality. Leatherwood, more than
anyone else, was aware of this. Their reaction was
something he had planned to observe. From it he divined a
great deal.
After the prisoners were taken back to their cells,
there was a meeting in the museum that now served as
headquarters. They discussed the many needs and tasks
that lay before them and outlined them. Once again, Sam
was the facilitator for these efforts. He was gifted in this
way and was able to move things along quickly.
Then the conversation turned to the prisoners.
Leatherwood pointed out that the decision had been made
not to execute them, so they had only two choices left.
They could banish the men, who would have no choice but
to go to Ulsterman and join his forces, which would make
Ulsterman even more difficult to deal with. Or, the
prisoners could be accepted into their numbers as citizens
of the new society. It was plain to everyone that, of the two
choices, the latter would be best if it could be done in a way
that would ensure the loyalty of the prisoners to the rest of
the group and to the efforts that lay ahead.
89
Someone in the group suggested that the decision be
left with Leatherwood, and there was unanimous support
for this suggestion.
So it was that Leatherwood returned to the jail late
that morning with the power and authority to allow the
prisoners to be a part of the new society or to cast them out.
When he arrived at the jail, Leatherwood first went
to see Crisp. It was obvious that the big man was glad to
see Leatherwood.
“Thanks for coming to see me again.” Crisp said.
“I appreciate it.”
Leatherwood nodded in response. The two men sat
down in the same place they had occupied during their last
meeting. After a long pause, just as the first time, Crisp
was the first to break the silence.
“That was some speech you gave this morning,
Ranger. It sure did stir folks up. Me too.” He said.
Again, Leatherwood only nodded his head in
acknowledgement. Crisp was more than a little uneasy at
Leatherwood’s silence, for he did not know what the
silence was covering. Instinctively, he knew that
Leatherwood and the others had come to some sort of
decision about himself and his men, and even though he
wanted desperately to know what that decision was, at the
same time, he was desperately afraid of what it might be.
So, he chose to take the conversation in a different
direction, thus avoiding for at least a little while the words
that he feared Leatherwood would speak.
“Say, I’ve been thinking a lot about the answers to
those two questions. I was really having a tough time too, I
don’t mind saying. But I think I know the answers. It
came to me while you were talking to everyone this
morning after the hanging.” Crisp said.
“Well, let’s hear what you came up with.”
Leatherwood answered.
“The way I see it, Jones and his men had a better
reason for fighting than the British had, so they were more
willing to fight, more determined to fight. Am I right?”
Crisp asked.
“Yes.” Leatherwood said. “But what was at the
root of this better reason and where did it come from?”
Leatherwood asked.
Crisp thought for a minute and then admitted that he
had no idea. Then he said. “Will you tell me, Ranger?”
“All right.” Leatherwood said. “You see, Crisp,
back in those days the King of England and his men ruled
the colonies and subjected them in vile ways. The King
took what he wanted with impunity and his men did the
same thing in the name of the King with equal impunity.
Young boys were taken from their families and pressed into
service for the King. Goods produced by the colonists
were taxed at the King’s whim. Add to this the difficulty
of hacking out an existence in a harsh wilderness and one
can see that the colonist were a foul treated lot with no end
in sight unless they did something about it, and this they
did. They started the Revolutionary War, of which, John
Paul Jones and his sailors were a part.”
”Okay. I’m with you so far.” Crisp said.
“There you have the background. Now, to put it all
together so it makes sense.” Leatherwood explained.
“Amidst these trying times, leaders came together to
discuss and argue the points of their subjugation and
90
arrived at the conclusion that they would not endure it any
longer. During these arguments and discussions, many
things of importance were clearly defined for the first time.
These important decisions were passed among the people
and the people saw that they were good. Finally, a formal
Declaration of Independence was written and it was
published and passed around the colonies for all to read. In
it, and in other writings, people found a vision of a future
that was so luring, so filled with the precious qualities they
wanted, they were willing to make great sacrifices in order
to pursue and achieve that vision. The vision gave purpose
to their actions, for each action, successfully completed,
was one step closer to realizing the vision. The vision was
in their hearts and in their minds and it gave them power
and courage and determination.
Some of the words written by the leaders were
enormously powerful in their ability to call forth the spirit
of men and women to participate in this glorious effort to
make the vision come true. Perhaps you remember some of
those words?” Leatherwood asked Crisp.
“I’m sorry, Ranger, but I’m afraid I don’t. I didn’t
pay much attention when I was in school. Maybe that’s
why I didn’t turn out so well.” Crisp answered sheepishly.
“Well, here are some of the more memorable ones.”
Leatherwood said, and began to recite. “We hold these
truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal and
endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights,
and among them are life, liberty and the pursuit of
happiness.”
Crisp looked as though he were dumbstruck. His
jaw had dropped, because the power of those words had
found their way into the big man’s spirit, just as they had
found their way into the spirits of the colonists more than
two hundred years earlier and the colonists had revolted
against the King. Leatherwood could see the realization
dawning in the big man’s eyes. It was clear that Crisp felt
the profoundness of those words, felt how they had applied
to the people then, and how appropriate they were even
today in their present situation.
Leatherwood continued. “There were other words
the leaders wrote and shared with the colonist. These
words defined even more clearly why the effort to rebel
against the King was justifiable, words that conjured
visions in the minds of the people. These words spoke of
forming a more perfect union, establishing justice,
promoting the general welfare, securing the blessings of
liberty and many other things that would eventually
become part of the written law of the land. The people
were moved by these things to the point that they did rebel
and a new nation was the final result.”
Leatherwood paused to let his words soak in. Then
he asked what he considered to be the most important
question of them all.
“Now then, Crisp. With all that said, the one
question remaining is why were those words able to prompt
so many people into risking everything? Where did the
power of those words come from?”
Crisp began a mental wrestling match.
Leatherwood could see it raging inside the man by the
expressions that played across his face. Leatherwood could
see that the battle inside the big man was intense.
Leatherwood was content to watch.
91
After several long minutes, Crisp began to emerge
from his intense thought, having arrived at an answer that
he was trying to find word for. Finally he offered.
“From God?”
Leatherwood smiled at the big man and answered.
“Where else? The universe and all that’s in it came from
Him, including what is right and wrong at a fundamental
level. Any time people put into words a vision that is in
keeping with this constancy of right created by God, the
spirit inside people respond to a degree corresponding to
the difference between where they currently are and where
they would be if the vision were achieved. In other words,
if people have already secured the blessings of liberty, the
prospect of working hard to secure the blessings of liberty
has no great appeal to the spirit. On the other hand, people
completely deprived of liberty will find the prospects of
doing something that holds forth a real promise of
achieving liberty to be very compelling. By the same token,
the importance of liberty is not lost on those who already
have it, for men have willingly gone to war to defend it
against those who would take it. And so it is with all things
that are right. Right is one of God’s constants.
So, we have come full circle in your question, is
there a God. There is much more than we have covered
that a man can ponder for his entire life. I have spent much
time doing so myself at many levels. Always I come back
to the undeniable conclusion that there is indeed a God and
he is mightier than I can imagine.”
There was a long silence. Finally, Crisp said. “I
didn’t know that a man could think so deeply or so
completely about something so difficult. Everything you
said made such perfect sense when you said it. I only hope
that I will be able to hang on to it. I want to thank you,
Ranger. You don’t know how much this has meant to me.”
Leatherwood smiled and said. “I’m not going to
hang you, Crisp. You don’t have to keep laying it on so
thick anymore.”
Crisp looked at Leatherwood and realized the
Ranger was just gigging him a little. This brought a smile
to Crisp’s face as well. It felt good. He hadn’t had
anything to smile about in a very long time. Then a
thought occurred to Crisp that made the smile fade away.
Quizzically, he asked. “If you’re not going to hang me,
does that mean you are not going to hang the rest of my
men either?” Crisp ask, a feeling of fear welling up inside
him at what the answer might be.
“That’s right.” Leatherwood responded.
There was an audible sigh of relief from the big
man. “If you don’t mind me asking, Ranger, have you
decided what you are going to do to us?”
“That depends.” Leatherwood replied.
Crisp began feeling that antsy feeling again. “What
doe it depend on, Ranger?”
“I’ll have to let you know about that.” Leatherwood
replied. “Right now, I’d like for you to return a favor for
me, seeing as how I’ve spent so much time and effort
answering your questions.”
“Just name it, Ranger. I’ll do it if there’s any way I
can.” Crisp replied, eagerness filling his words.
“Since you are somewhat removed from this whole
situation concerning me and this outfit trying to build
ourselves a new future, maybe you can give me a little
92
objective feedback about what I said this morning after the
hanging. Tell me what you think about it, and I’d
appreciate it if you level with me.” Leatherwood said.
“Geez, Ranger. I don’t think I ever heard anything
that sounded so wonderful. It makes more sense to me now
than it did this morning, though. I mean, now I understand
how something you don’t have right now can make the
possibility of getting it worth working for, harder than
you’ve ever worked in your life, maybe even worth dying
for. And the things you talked about, well, Ranger, I guess
those things must be dead in the middle of that constancy
you talked about a while ago, you know, God’s constancy
of right. Well, Ranger, all of what you said just now
happened to me this morning while you were talking.
Thinking back on it, I could feel my own spirit welling up
inside me and trying to take over. I never felt anything like
that before. It was amazing.”
“How do you think your men took it?”
Leatherwood asked.
“Are you kidding?” Crisp answered. “They
cheered louder than anybody. Didn’t you see them? I
swear, Ranger, some of them were crying, they were so
moved by what you said. I’d say there’s not a one of them
who wouldn’t give his right arm to be a part of what you
folks are going to try to do.”
“How about you?” Leatherwood asked the big
man. “What would you give to be a part of tackling this
vision and all the back-breaking work it’s going to take to
make it real?”
“Me?” Crisp asked. “Me?” He repeated, the very
thought sending emotional waves through his big body.
“Why, Ranger, I believe that I would give just about
anything, my arm or my leg or both to be a part of what
you are going to do. What you talked about out there this
morning is just about the only thing I’ve heard in years that
makes prospects of life in this place worth living. I’d give
anything, Ranger.” Crisp concluded with an intense
determination in his voice and on his face.
“Would you give your pledge, your word, on your
honor as a man?” Leatherwood asked.
“Yes, in a heartbeat, Ranger. I would pledge my
life.”
“What about your men? You think they’ll do the
same?” Leatherwood asked.
“Yes I do?” Crisp answered. “You know Ranger,
we’ve been a little selective ourselves over the years as to
who we allowed to be a part of our group. We’ve turned
away some pretty bad hombres and we’ve had to kill more
than a few over the years, too. They were all worse than
rattlesnakes, Ranger. They were men who could not be
trusted under any circumstances, and they were very
dangerous to us and to everyone else around them. Those
that are in my bunch, if given a real choice, would choose
the good way every time. I can promise you that.”
“Would you be willing to be responsible for them?”
Leatherwood asked.
After a long pause, during which Crisp was
obviously reviewing every one of his men in his mind, he
finally said. “Yes, Ranger. I’ll vouch for every one of
them and I’ll take responsibility for them for as long as you
say.”
93
Leatherwood thought for a minute and then said.
“What you’ve said counts a lot, Crisp. It’s a good start at
finding a real solution, and I like the sound of it, but I’m
not making any promises yet. I want to talk to each of your
men myself before I make up my mind about what I’m
going to do about them.”
“I trust your judgment, Ranger. If I can help you in
any way, just say the word.” Crisp replied.
Leatherwood nodded his head and left the room.
Crisp was almost jubilant.
One by one, Leatherwood spent time alone with
each of Crisp’s men, and he found them to be pretty much
as crisp had described them. Each of them displayed the
same sort of almost spiritual regard for what Leatherwood
had said that morning, and each of them had, at the end of
the interview, pledged on his honor to support the pursuit
of the vision with all his might for as long as it took.
When Leatherwood had spoken with the last man, it
was very late that night, and he was dog-tired. As he
returned to his quarters, his mind was almost made up, but
as tires as he was, he knew that it would be better to put off
the decision until he had slept.
As he made his way from the jail to his quarters, he
passed men with rifles on patrol. They all spoke, saying
things like “Good evening, Captain”, or “That was a great
talk you gave this morning, Captain.”
When he arrived, he found a hot bath and clean
cloths waiting for him along with a tasty snack the girls had
put together for him. He thought about forgoing the bath,
but he knew how good it would feel, and he also knew that
he was starting to smell a little ripe.
 He wasn’t really hungry, he thought, until he started
eating and then he found he was ravenous. He gobbled the
food down and was surprised when he found that he could
have eaten even more if it had been there. He smiled. The
girls didn’t want him to loose his cute figure, he thought to
himself. Then he took off his cloths and climbed into the
steaming tub. He lay there for a minute, allowing the
rejuvenating water to work its miracle on his tired aching
muscles. After a minute of soaking, he grabbed the soap
and lathered up. As he scrubbed behind his ears, a little
smile came to his face as he remembered the soft
expression that he had seen in Crisp’s eyes when he had
spoken of how his Aunt Anna had made him scrub behind
his ears as a young boy.
As leatherwood dried and got into his night cloths,
he thought to himself what a good day it had been. With
the exception of the seven executions that morning, it had
been an excellent day. It was days like this that futures
were built upon.
There was a knock on the door of his room, and
Kathryn’s voice from the other side of the door asked.
“Are you decent?”
“Come in.” He called back, and the two girls
entered. As always, seeing them, even after a short
absence, was like taking good medicine for an ailment.
They scurried over to him and hugged him close, giving
him a kiss on the cheek that all said how much they loved
him.
“You sure put in a long day today, Uncle Leath.”
Audrey said.
94
“It wasn’t that bad.” Leatherwood said. “Besides,
after that good food and that hot bath, I think I’m ready to
go again.”
In her best Mae West impersonation, Kathryn said.
“And go you will, big boy, right between the fresh clean
sheets of this bed.” She drew back the covers and pointed
toward the bed with a feigned look of stern expectation.
Leatherwood managed a look of reluctant obedience
and said. “Oh, all right, but it’s not what I really want to do,
you know. I’m just trying to be cooperative, you
understand.”
They all laughed and in seconds Leatherwood was
snuggled down in the soft warm bed and the girls were
tucking him in. The haze of sleep was tugging hard at his
eyelids as his head touched the pillow. He was barely
aware of the warm kiss and soft caress each of the girls
gave him before he was in a deep unmoving sleep. It was
an experience that, in spite of the sleep closing in so fast,
seemed familiar. Just before sleep engulfed him
completely he remembered what was so familiar about this,
it was almost like when he was a small, tired little boy and
his mother used to tuck him in. He smiled a little smile and
was gone.
It was past sunup when Leatherwood awakened to
the smell of freshly brewed coffee again, and if his nose
wasn’t playing tricks on him, there was biscuits and that
other smell could only be bacon and eggs. Quickly he got
dressed and went into the kitchen, where the marvelous
aromas were coming from. His nose had not been playing
tricks on him. It was all there, picture perfect like the
pictures of the food on a Denny’s menu before the heat
came. It was wonderful. It had been more years than he
cared to remember since he had had a meal like that. It was
wonderful.
“Where on earth did you girls find such food?”
Leatherwood asked. “Mr. Crisp sent word over from the
jail that these Army rations were in a big vault on the
second basement level. We went down and found the
vault. It had a lot of these dehydrated and irradiated food
packs. We picked this one for your breakfast and followed
the directions on the package for cooking.” Audrey said.
The girls, who were always bubbling with the
energy and enthusiasm of youth, seemed doubly so this
morning. It was enough to make Leatherwood suspicious.
Finally, he was convinced that there was something afoot
and said, in a voice with certain accusation. “What are you
girls up to?”
The two girls looked at one another and giggling
uncontrollably, said in unison. “Nothing, Uncle Leath.”
“Why am I having such a hard time believing that?”
He asked them.
Kathryn, in her sultry Mae West voice said.
“Because that’s the sort of man you are, darlin. Always so
full of suspicion about everything.” They all broke out in
laughter, and so did Matt, who was standing guard outside
the door. He still didn’t know what was so funny, but there
was something special about these folks and whenever they
were laughing it was always enough to make him laugh as
well.
Then Kathryn turned more serious and said. “Uncle
Leath, how did you get to know so much about things?”
95
Leatherwood looked at her quizzically and asked.
“Know so much about what things?”
“Well, the whole camp is buzzing about things you
said to Crisp over at the jail. Things about God and certain
unalienable rights. Things about the spirit of God in each
person and God’s constancy of right. Things about
securing the blessings of liberty and promoting the general
welfare and how purpose and vision can call out the spirit
in all of us. I tell you, the place is just alive with such talk.
What’s it all about, Uncle Leath?” Audrey asked.
Leatherwood was a little embarrassed. He should
have known the men standing guard over he and Crisp
while they were talking could hear everything that was
said. He was a little embarrassed by the idea of everyone
in the outfit knowing what had been said.
“Well, it started off with me honoring the request of
a man we were planning to hang at the time.” Leatherwood
explained. “He asked some questions and I gave him the
answers as best I could. I guess some of the men were
listening and they decided to have a little fun with it.”
“Oh no!” Kathryn was quick to correct. “That’s
not what they are doing at all. What the talk is all about is
how utterly profound you were when you were talking
about these things and how everyone is so terribly happy
that you are here with all this knowledge and wisdom to
lead them at such a time of great need. They say that you
are a Godsend. I think so too.” Kathryn finished, her love
for him clear in her words and manner.
“Well, what do you know about that?” Was all that
leatherwood could think of to say.
 During the years after Leatherwood had rescued
them, the girls had always thought that he was a pretty
special kind of man and that they were very fortunate to
have been rescued and then raised by him. But they never
had the benefit of knowing what other people might
thought of their father figure until now, and it gave them
cause to be joyful to see how strongly others reflected their
own opinion of him.
Leatherwood left for the jail, asking Matt to have all
the men meet him there. In minutes, all but those standing
guard duty were in the courtyard of the jail. Leatherwood
spoke. “You all gave me the responsibility of deciding
what to do with the rest of these men that we are holding
prisoner. I wanted to tell you what my decision is and give
you an opportunity to say what you think about it before we
do it. You might change my mind.”
“Whatever you have decided is good enough for us
Captain.” Someone shouted from the crowd of men.
“That’s right, Captain” came echoing in from all directions.
“We trust your judgment in this matter, Captain.” Sam
Walker said, speaking for everyone. “There’s no one here
that’s going to second guess you on this matter. We’re
behind you all the way.”
Leatherwood looked around at the different faces
and as his eyes met the eyes of each of them, they nodded
their heads, indicating what Sam had said was true.
“All right, then. Bring out the prisoners.”
In minutes, the shackled prisoners were in the
courtyard. Leatherwood spoke.
“These are might tough times we face today. In
tough times, men sometimes have to do things they never
96
have to face doing otherwise. Fifteen years ago, none of us
would have believed we would ever do some of the things
we have been forced to do over the past several years. And
there are none of us here that others could not judge harshly
if we were the prisoners and they the judges. You men
haven’t been perfect in what you have done, but we cannot
find justification in judging and condemning you for your
behavior during these times of anarchy. However, we can
absolve you of it and give you a clean slate among us who
are committed to moving into a new future together.
I spoke at length with each one of you yesterday
and last night. Each of you told me with great earnest that
you would pledge to faithfully support the efforts of the
men and women who have come together for the purpose
of building a new future if you were given the chance.
Now I want you to make that same pledge to everyone else
standing in this courtyard, but before you do, know this.
These will still be harsh times. There will be many
opportunities for tempers to flare. These will be the times
when your metal and your resolve will be tested the most.
So not loose your tempers. Do not do harm to a fellow
citizen. Instead, we must all pledge to protect one another
always, including from ourselves. This must be the abiding
premise from which we all work and live or there can be no
future for us. Punishment for breaking this law will be
severe and swift. That’s the way it must be for all of us.
Remove the shackles from the prisoners.” Leatherwood
instructed.
“Now, each of you know what we intend to do and
you know the rules that this body of men and women will
live by. You are free men now, and as free men, you may
choose. Pledge to everyone else here to live and abide by
these rules and you are invited to stay with us. Otherwise
you are invited to leave and make your way as best you
can.”
“I give you my pledge.” Crisp was the first to
speak. “I want to stay and be a part of this, Ranger.”
Quickly, the others did likewise.
Following this, there was a time of men milling
around and speaking to one another. They shook hands and
the beginnings of strong bonds that would reach far into the
future were formed. Leatherwood led in setting an example
for the others. He extended his hand to each of the former
prisoners and bid him welcome into the new society they
were building. When he came to Crisp, the big man’s hand
shake was firm and held an intensity, a promise that
Leatherwood understood and respected. The big man’s
“Thank you” was sincere and came from deep inside.
Leatherwood smiled warmly at the man and said,
“Glad to have you aboard.”
Later that morning, the men that had become
leaders among them met and laid out a plan of action. It
was in this meeting that Crisp offered up some new
information that changed the direction they had chosen
previously.
Crisp said. “I know the caves that Ulsterman is
using in the summertime to get out of the heat. It is an old
mining system. I used to work in those mines, and I know
every inch of them. The way it is set up, there is only one
way in or out, but I know something that Ulsterman doesn’t
know. There is an adjacent mining system that originates
on the other side of the mountain. No one is in that system.
97
But there are tunnels from the two systems in one location
that are only a couple of feet apart. This place is in the
very deepest parts of the mines and no one goes there, it’s
too far back. If we wanted to, we go into the second mine
and dig into Ulsterman’s mine and sneak the people out
before he ever knows they are gone. Coming in on the
backside of the mountain to get to the other mine will be a
little rough, but we won’t be seen. When we get the people
out, we can collapse the mineshaft behind us. We can
transport the people to Santa Fe and Carlsbad and put up
defenses that will hold Ulsterman off indefinitely.
The men thought it was a good plan. If it worked,
instead of having to face Ulsterman on his own ground,
they could face him on theirs. The men agreed to give it a
try. They designed their defensive positions in Santa Fe
and Carlsbad. Leatherwood dispatched men to the old
Army base near El Paso where he knew there was still
weapons and ammunition. In only three days, the defenses
were coming together.
Crisp led a band of twenty-five men to make the
rescue attempt on the fourth day. The men made good
time, and by the evening of the forth day, they were
digging in the tunnels where Crisp showed them. In less
than an hour, they broke through to the other system of
tunnels.
Crisp knew the mine tunnels well. He had timed
their break through to coincide with the late afternoon
when everyone would be returning from their outdoor
activities, which consisted mostly of gathering what little
edible food they could find. There were guards at the
entrance and others scattered here and there outside the
tunnels, but none inside. The guards counted heads and
looked at what the people had gathered, taking what they
wanted. Once inside the tunnels, the people were never
bothered by the guards again until the next morning when
the day’s work would begin again.
As the people came into the tunnels, Crisp and his
men met them, told who they were and why they were
there. The people all agreed to go willingly. In less than
two hours, all the people were in the adjacent tunnel system
well on their way to freedom. As planned, Crisp collapsed
the tunnel so there could be no pursuit from that direction
for days.
Though the people were tired from their long day of
work, the eagerly made their way to the place Crisp had
parked the vehicles. Each truck had a trailer hooked to it,
and the people piled onto these trailers and into the backs
of the trucks. The trailers all had side boards and makeshift
covers that gave the people some protection from the
elements, which was good, for a cold rain had begun
falling. There were fourteen trucks and trailers to transport
over four hundred people. It was a tight fit, but no one was
left behind.
Through the night, they rolled toward Santa Fe,
stopping about half way to refuel from drums of diesel fuel
they had stashed on the way up. The twenty-five men that
Crisp had taken with him took turns driving or riding
shotgun, keeping a close eye out for any sign of Ulsterman.
Though long, the trip was uneventful and the new mass of
humanity rolled into Santa Fe just at sunup.
The lookouts had spotted the procession long before
they arrived and passed the word that they were coming.
98
All of Leatherwood’s new clan turned out to meet the new
arrivals jubilantly.
The tunnel people didn’t quite know what to think
about their reception. It had been a very long time since
they had been treated with such warmth and welcome. The
women of the clan, relying on success, had begun cooking
a big breakfast long before the sun came up. The new
arrivals met their first day of freedom with full bellies and a
sense of security and hope. Things they had not
experienced in years. As the truth of their new situation
began to set in, many of them began to weep with relief and
joy, both the women and the men.
They were a tattered and dirty lot and they felt
ashamed about this, but the people of Leatherwood’s clan
had foreseen their needs and there were hot baths and new
cloths waiting for everyone.
Leatherwood and the other men met that afternoon
and discussed the situation. With six hundred eighty-one
people from Carlsbad and four hundred seventeen people
from the mine tunnels in Colorado, they now numbered
over one thousand one hundred people. Over half were
men over the age of eighteen. They had less than six weeks
of winter left, and even before then, there would be days
too hot for men to work above ground.
The stronghold in the Santa Fe area would be the
underground military installation, which could
accommodate several hundred people over the summer. It
was decided that a contingency of two hundred men would
spend the summer there. The rest would return to Carlsbad
and Pecos. Enough stores would be taken from
Leatherwood’s cavern near Pecos to get everyone through
the summer.
During the weeks until summer, most of the
remaining men would work in Pecos on the project to make
the ranch house notch livable even during the summer.
Leatherwood knew it would be difficult to get this done
before the hot weather arrived in earnest, but he had
everything they needed stored in and around Pecos.
There was communications equipment in the
military installation at Santa Fe, and Fernando Rodriguez
was able to get it working. There was a tall antenna atop a
high peak near the installation that Fernando was able to
connect to. This gave the radio a very long reach. Similar
radio equipment was installed at Carlsbad and atop the
cavern mesa near Pecos. In only days, the three locations,
separated by hundreds of miles, could communicate easily.
The strike from Ulsterman never came, although he
did send out a scouting party, which quickly turned back
when the bullets from a couple of the big sniper rifles hit
too close for comfort and from a distance and location they
couldn’t determine.
Just as they had at the mesa, cameras were mounted
at strategic locations near Santa Fe and at Carlsbad which
provided a commanding view for many miles in all
directions.
At the mesa dozens of men were at work around the
clock installing the equipment that Leatherwood had put
together. Giant coils of copper tubing were set in place
inside large vertical ducts, with the coils near the top of the
ducts. Nitrogen under high pressure would flow to theses
coils, passing through piston engines, which converted the
99
pressure of the nitrogen into kinetic energy, that is, rotating
energy, which in turn drove generators. The exhaust from
the engines was cold, just above the freezing point of water.
This cold exhaust gas, Nitrogen, would enter the large
copper coils near the top of the ducts. Ambient air in the
ducts would be dramatically cooled by the nitrogen inside
the coils and would become denser. The moisture in the air
would condense on the coils and flow downward into a
collection pan. The cooled air would flow out the bottom
of the duct and down into the notch. Across the notch
along the lip of the mesa, cables were stretched from
anchor point drilled deep into the mesa. These provided a
roof support layer, which was covered with insulated and
highly sheet metal. Upon this layer of sheet metal, coils of
high temperature black plastic piping was laid and covered
with thin layers of clear solar plastic which had been
developed originally as bag material for cooking entire
meals inside a conventional oven. This created a very large
solar collector, which also served as a roof over the notch
to protect the ground below from the sun and also to funnel
the cool air from the ducts down the notch.
This would provide thirty-seven acres of covered
and cooled land within the notch. The giant compressors to
compress the nitrogen would run from electrical current
provided by the generation system Leatherwood had
designed. The heat of compression created by the large
compressors, would be absorbed in heat exchangers, which
had water flowing through them. The heat exchangers
were taken from a chemical plant near Odessa. The system
worked on the basis of the gas laws. P1/P2 = T1/T2.
Simply stated, the starting pressure, measured in
atmospheres, divided by the ending pressure was equal to
the starting temperature, in degreed Kelvin, divided by the
ending temperature. So, if the starting pressure was three
atmospheres entering the compressors, the discharge
pressure from the compressors was six atmospheres and the
starting temperature entering the compressors was fifty
degrees Celsius or three hundred twenty-three degrees
Kelvin then the ending, or discharge temperature of the
compressor would be; 3/6 = 323/”X”. Solving for “X”
gives the discharge temperature, which, in this case, would
be 646 degrees Kelvin, or 373 degrees Celsius.
With Leatherwood’s process, this heat of
compression, plus the heat from the solar collectors entered
a reaction chamber and resulted in a huge expanded volume
of gas at one hundred twenty-eight pounds per square inch
of pressure and three hundred seventy-five degrees Celsius
entering turbines, which converter the pressure and
temperature into rotation and drove large generators.
As it turned out, the men and women working on
the project had a variety of skills form the past that
matched the needs of the project perfectly. Working
tirelessly among them, from one place to another, providing
detailed drawings and plans, was Fernando Rodriguez and
Mike Chandler. They turned out to be everything Crisp
had said they would be. They were virtual storehouses of
knowledge and bright, quick minds that saw problems
ahead of everyone else, offering solutions that often
seemed miraculous.
Leatherwood regretted that Fernando’s family had
not been among those they had rescued from the mine
tunnels. The little Columbian was a non-intrusive sort of
100
man whose efforts were always tempered with kindness
and consideration for others. He had an amazing talent for
bringing up trouble points without ruffling anyone’s
feathers, and often making it sound as though the solutions
he came up with were the product of a team effort.
Leatherwood could see clearly that Fernando was making a
significant difference in the smoothness and speed that the
project was moving at. Overnight, he had become
indispensable.
Inside the cavern, other men and women worked the
crops and others worked to widen entryways into other
chambers of the cavern that had never been used. This was
something they had a great deal of experience at doing.
Soon the cavern internals could house over a thousand
people in comfort.
As crops were harvested, the women would set up
canning and drying operations. On the outside, men were
working all over the mesa, while others went in trucks as
far as El Paso to collect things for all the different projects.
Men were working to expand the crayfish and
catfish pond and to build others that would catch the water
that would flow from the huge cooling coils. Irrigation
pumps and interconnecting piping were installed which
would pump the water from the collection ponds onto the
crops that would be grown beneath the stretched cable roof
that covered the notch. Altogether, the cropland, both
inside and outside the cavern would be almost forty acres,
which would produce three crops a year, sometimes four.
Down from the notch at a level almost a hundred
feet lower, men were hard at work digging out a huge
trench just over two hundred feet wide and over a thousand
feet long. The trench was almost fifty feet deep. Along the
walls every four feet, a giant I-beam was stood
vertically and anchored in concrete. From these, roof
beams were placed, which met in the middle, supported by
other vertical I-beams in the center and fifty feet inform the
walls. All the I-beams were massive. Across the roof
beams a lattice work of channel iron was laid and secured
in place with bolts, and across these was laid a layer of
heavy sheet metal, followed by several layers of
construction felt paper and finally a layer of hot liquid
asphalt and gravel. There was a slight pitch to the roof.
The walls of the underground building were constructed of
heavy concrete blocks, several layers thick and filled with
reinforcing steel and then with concrete.
When all the concrete had cured, the men covered
the whole thing up. The layer of dirt and rock that covered
the roof was just over ten feet thick. The building was
wired so that hundreds of florescent plant lights would
shine on shelf after shelf of starter plants, which would be
transferred to the crop fields in the notch and in the cavern
when they were big enough. In this manner, they hoped to
almost double their crop production.
Leatherwood, from a high point atop the mesa
couldn’t help but think the entire operation looked very
much like an anthill. He had never seen such industrious
people in his life.

101
 POWER OF THE FUTURE
Before the full heat of spring was upon them, the
power plant project was complete. The word spread
through the compound and everyone, as though on cue,
stopped what they were doing and migrated to the plant
control area, which had been located in a recess along a
wall of the notch.
The solar collector coils had been inventoried with
distilled water and had been gathering the heat from the sun
all morning. The temperature of the water was nearing two
hundred degrees Celsius.
“Engage the circulation pumps and flow water at
fifty gallons per minute.” Leatherwood instructed.
The water from the solar coils began to flow into
the top of the reaction chamber. Temperature probes inside
the reactor began to climb as the reactor internals began to
be heated by the incoming water. Slowly, the temperature
climbed inside the reactor.
“Engage the pumps for the reactant and flow
reactant fluid at ten pounds per minute.” Leatherwood
instructed when the top of the reactor reached one hundred
fifty degrees Celsius.
Instantly, the reactor experience a surge in pressure
as the reactant fluid was heated by the water. When the
pressure reached one hundred pounds per square inch,
Leatherwood instructed. “Engage the reaction promoter
pumps and flow one pound per minute.
Almost immediately the pressure inside the reactor
surged upward again. When the pressure reached one
102
hundred seventy-five pounds, Leatherwood ordered.
“Rotate the turbines. Make 3,600 revolutions per minute.
In only a few seconds, the first giant turbine was
whining up to speed. When it reached 3,600 revolutions
per minute, Leatherwood ordered. “Energize the
generator.”
There was a loud metallic clang as the electrical
switch gear engaged. Suddenly, the lights beneath the
notch roof lit up, and the underside of the roof was almost
as bright as day. There was a roar from the crowd that was
deafening in the confines of the notch.
The big turbine was barely working at all under the
load required to power the lights. It was capable of much
more than this. But before the load could be increased, the
demand had to increase, and not everything was ready yet
for this. Hurriedly, everyone went back to work to finish
the connections.
Within hours, the underground greenhouse lights
were connected and ready to light up. In addition, the
transmission cable into Pecos was connected and ready to
deliver electrical power into the town.
When this was done, Leatherwood ordered the flow
from other sections of the solar collector to be engaged.
The reactor pressure increased, the turbine speed increased
and the generator output increased. Leatherwood ordered
the first small compressor to be engaged. Instantly, the two
hundred horsepower electric motor began to suck down the
power as it spun up to speed, then the amp load dropped
dramatically.
Water flow to the discharge cooler of the
compressor was started, and in a few minutes, the crowd
beneath the notch roof felt the first caress of cool air
emerging from the duct that housed the coil for the small
compressor circuit. The temperature beneath the canopy
was almost 100 degrees Fahrenheit and the small puff of
cool air felt very good to the observers.
The heat from the discharge of the first compressor
added significantly to the total heat being added to the
reactor, and its pressure began to climb again.
Leatherwood ordered the second compressor to be started.
This one had a soft start system in it, which rotated the big
one thousand horsepower motor up slowly over a period of
several minutes. The big turbine was finally beginning to
work a little harder, but it still had plenty of muscle left.
As the big compressor came up to speed, the heat of
compression from this compressor began to increase the
pressure on the reactor which made the turbine spin faster
and made the generator output increase. Leatherwood
ordered the lights in the underground greenhouse engaged.
Suddenly, the greenhouse was as bright as day.
Suddenly, the cool draft coming from the duct of
the second cooling coil made its way to where the people
were standing, and there was a general “ahh” of approval
from them.
Then someone shouted. “We’ve got water flow!”
And indeed, they did. The crowd rushed over to the
cement-lined trench meant to direct the water flow from the
big coils into the reservoirs the men had built for that
purpose. At first, it was only a trickle, but as the seconds
ticked by, the flow of water became stronger and stronger.
The people dipped their hands into the water and were
pleasantly surprised to discover that the water was icy cold.
103
By late that afternoon, there was electric power in
the west Texas town of Pecos for the first time in many
years. All of the giant compressors were running, although
not at full speed. The mesa notch beneath the new roof was
growing very cool. Leatherwood estimated that even on
the hottest summer day, the notch would be cool and
comfortable. The water from the huge cooling coils was
flowing briskly, and the first reservoir was almost a foot
deep by sundown.
Leatherwood felt enormous relief as his power
system came on line and worked flawlessly, producing
huge amounts of electrical energy, large quantities of cool
clean water and cool air. He knew now that his plan would
work. People could beat the heat, taking a great deal of the
energy needed for this right out of the air itself.
No one among all the people had really understood
how Leatherwood’s process worked. Out of all the people,
Leatherwood was the only chemical engineer with a
commanding knowledge of thermal dynamics. Still, the
people had trusted him because, in every other category, he
had been their infallible leader. His wisdom and insight
had guided them along a path of hope that was based on
doing something positive and real. His intervention and
leadership had extracted them from beneath the heel of
Ulsterman’s boot. Even if his power plant technology had
not worked, he would have still been their unquestionable
leader, but since had worked, did work, he was more than a
leader. He was their hero, and they worshiped the ground
he walked.
Leatherwood and Sam had walked out the morning
after the plant start up to look at the beautiful sight of the
water accumulating in the basins the men had built. “You
know, Captain?” Sam said. “There’s something that’s
been troubling me.”
“What’s that, Sam?” Leatherwood asked.
“I can’t understand why you were not able to get
this system going before the heat surge. If it had been in
operation then, maybe things wouldn’t have turned out so
bad. Didn’t you try to do something with it back then?”
Leatherwood pondered Sam’s words for a few
minutes. He had often thought back to those days before
the heat surge when he had first discovered the phenomena
that his power plant employed. He had often chastised
himself for not trying harder to develop it and take it to
market. Finally the big man turned to Sam and answered
simply. “Because I was too scared.”
“Too scared!” Sam replied incredulously.
“Captain, I find that a might hard to believe. I would have
guessed a lot of other reasons before I would have guessed
that one.”
“Well, it’s true just the same, Sam.” Leatherwood
answered.
Sam didn’t press the issue, but Leatherwood could
see in Sam’s expression that he wished the Captain would
explain.
“You see, Sam.” Leatherwood continued. Back in
those days, my wife was still alive, and fighting hard to
stay that way. She was pretty sick. It was one of those
long-term illnesses that drag you down slow. She was in
the hospital a lot, and it was plenty expensive, but I had
good insurance through the company I worked for. It paid
most of the medical bills, but even so, it was a struggle to
104
make ends meet. I’ve known a lot of really good people in
my time, Sam, but my wife was just about the most special,
perfect woman God ever made. We were married for
thirty-five years, and we would still be married today if she
was still alive. I loved her so much, so very, very much,
that I couldn’t bear the thought of living without her. If the
insurance was to stop, most of her treatments would have
stopped as well.
I built a small plant, just like the one up there in the
notch. It was a long chore to work my way through all the
dead ends, but I finally figured just what made the thing
work, an it was humming out the electricity. I was
planning to try to do something with it, but when my
company found out about my plans, I was called in to the
president’s office and they made it clear that if I didn’t drop
it and promise never to take it up again, they would fire me
on some trumped up grounds and I would loose my
insurance coverage. But if I would agree not to pursue it,
they would not only make sure I kept my job and my
insurance, they would make it even easier on my medical
bills and give me twice as much yearly vacation so I could
spend more time with my wife.
It didn’t take long for me to make up my mind. I
knew that if I didn’t have the insurance, she wouldn’t last
long and just thinking about it was more than I could stand.
I tore the plant down and I took all my drawings and notes
to the president of the company. He burned them right
there in his office. He said the threat my new technology
had for the oil and coal business was just too great, that if it
ever got into production the price of oil and coal would go
to the bottom and so would all the companies in those
industries.
I remember when my sweet wife asked me why I
had torn the plant down and wasn’t working on it any more.
I lied to her. I told her that I learned there were some
serious problems with it that I just couldn’t overcome, that
maybe in time I would figure out a way. I think she knew I
was lying, but she never said anything.
We went on, making out pretty well for a few more
years, but it finally got to be too much for her. She died,
and I thought it felt like I had too. Some how, I got through
it and kept on living.
After Xavier hit and I knew about the methane
release, I tried to get people interested, but it seemed like
the whole world was deaf. A lot of the folks I tried to talk
to treated me like I was a lunatic or something. Others just
didn’t want to be bothered. It seemed the harder I tried, the
worse it got. I finally gave up trying and concentrated on
getting this place ready for the heat surge I figured was
coming. At any rate, after the heat came and everything
fell apart, I didn’t figure my promise to the company meant
anything anymore, so I started collecting the things needed
to build this plant here in the notch. One good thing about
it was I didn’t need any money. It was all just sitting there,
waiting for me to come get it.
So, I didn’t pursue this technology way back then
because I was too scared. It boils down to that.”
Leatherwood finished.
“But it wasn’t because you were afraid for yourself.
It wasn’t because you were a coward.” Sam said.
105
“Sure I was.” Leatherwood said. “At least, partly.
I was afraid of what living would be like without her.
That’s fear for myself. Sure, I was afraid for her too. I
didn’t want her to suffer. I didn’t want her to feel the pain
of her illness. I didn’t want her to be turned into a
complete invalid when modern medicine and treatment
could stave off those things for who knew how long. But
in all of that, I was afraid for myself too.
The thing that bothers me the most is that if she had
really known the truth about why I stopped working on this
technology, she would have tanned my hide and made me
go after it, and damned the consequences to herself. That’s
because she was so much braver than me. She had more
courage in her little finger than any ten men I had ever
known.
I think that’s one of the biggest reasons I managed
to go on living after she died. I felt like her spirit was still
there and she knew everything. When all I wanted to do
was curl up somewhere and die myself, she would scold me
and tell me what a great and selfish coward I being.
Pleasing her, making her happy and content had been such
an important thing to me while she was alive, that it just
kept going after she died. I promised her I would never be
a selfish coward again.” Leatherwood finished.
In a hoarse whisper, Sam said. “She must have
been quite a lady. It sounds to me like we all owe her a lot,
because of what her memory did to you.”
Leatherwood looked at Sam, pondering what he had
said. It was hard for him to believe that so much had
happened the way it had, and he couldn’t deny that his
wife’s memory had indeed played such a powerful role in
the things he had done.
“You know Captain, I remember a lot about the
times before the heat came. I remember how life seemed to
be so hectic and demanding for everyone. I remember how
people started acting crazy and doing a lot of horrendous
things. I remember kids going on killing sprees in their
schools. I remember people blowing up buildings. I
remember how many times known scoundrels were elected
to office because the people didn’t care. I remember how
women started getting breast implants by the hundreds of
thousands. I remember how pornography seemed to be
everywhere. I remember how rampant the heroin and the
cocaine and the alcohol abuse became. I even remember a
church that some guy founded for people on the go. He
conducted fifteen-minute services all day on Sundays and
on Wednesday evenings. They say he got rich.” Sam said.
“I remember all those things and a lot more.”
Leatherwood replied. “What are you getting at?”
“Well, do you suppose that mankind got so corrupt,
so off course that God took a hand and made all this
happen?” Sam asked.
“Sort of.” Leatherwood answered.
“How do you mean?” Sam asked.
“Well, I believe it’s like this.” Leatherwood
continued. “Everything is held together, prevented from
unraveling, so to speak, only because God is constantly
intervening, making corrections to things. I think when
people became too foul in their thoughts and deeds that
God just backed off a little and we did the rest to ourselves.
106
When I was a boy, I didn’t know another kid whose
mom worked. Mothers stayed at home, made the home,
and made families great in those days. Moms were one of
the greatest forces the world had ever seen on the side of
good and right, and most kids came out of families like that
with a great set of values they held close and true. But by
the time the heat surge hit, it wasn’t unusual for a lot of
moms to have two or even three jobs, but it was unusual to
find a mother who didn’t work. It had a tragic effect on our
society. Women’s movements came about to try to get
women more equality with men but, somehow, that grew
into a sort of dogma for women who didn’t want to work.
Being a home-maker instead of a career woman came to be
considered a terrible thing in our society turning a woman
who was a home-maker into a third-class citizen. That was
one of the biggest mistakes our society made, and from
there, it was a downhill skid.”
“You think women in the home was that important,
Captain?” Sam asked.
“Yes I do.” Leatherwood answered. “Women are
very special creatures that God gave powers to that men
don’t have. They see and feel things that men can’t see or
feel, at least not in the same way that women can. And
they can do things that men can’t do, too. The thing is that
these powers that women have were useful in places
besides the home. When women had to start working to
help out the family budget, they didn’t have much trouble
getting the work done and done well. That made women,
especially in some jobs, very valuable assets to companies,
and companies went to great lengths to lure women out of
the home and into the work place for as low a price as they
could get away with paying. Companies were the leading
culprits in creating the myth that only by pursuing a career
could women realize their true potential. The result was
that the power a woman has to make a home and family
something special started disappearing. Women in the
home should have been kept as one of the most important
positions in our society. They deserved it because of the
results they got. I don’t mean to say that everything would
have been perfect if this had happened, but I don’t think we
would be here in this situation now if it had been that way.
Women were the conscience of society, the gate keepers of
right and wrong behind the scenes and they wielded their
power almost without detection.” Leatherwood finished.
“I don’t understand completely, Captain.” Sam
said.
“Well, I’ll give you one example that’s pretty
straight forward.” Leatherwood said. “When I was a small
boy, I got into trouble with great regularity, and my mother
almost always found out about it. I took an apple from a
fruit stand one time and thought I had gotten away with it
until I got home. Another mother had seen me take the
apple and she called my mother and told her about it. My
mother made me take my little coin bank and go down to
the same fruit stand and spend all my money buying apples.
She made me pay for the apple I took and made me
apologize to the man who owned the fruit stand, too. When
we got back home, she made me go to my room and think
about why taking the apple had been wrong and she told
me not to come out again until I was prepared to explain it
to her. It took me a while, but I finally figured it out and I
told it to my mother. She said she was sad that I had stolen
107
the apple, but she was pleased that I had learned a valuable
lesson.
That night, after supper, we had homemade apple
pie and ice cream for desert. I remember sneaking a look at
my mother as we all began to dig in. She smiled a secret
smile at me and I smiled back. If that had been the end of
it, I would have come away from that experience feeling
like stealing that apple was worth it, but it didn’t end there.
My mom made me go to that fruit stand owner every day
and tell him one reason at a time why my stealing his apple
had been wrong. Somewhere along the way, I really began
to realize the truth in what I was saying. They weren’t just
words that I made up any more.” Leatherwood finished.
“Sorry, Captain, but I still don’t get it.” Sam said.
“It’s pretty simple, Sam.” Leatherwood said.
“When I was a kid, mothers were all home-makers. They
were everywhere, keeping an eye on things like you
wouldn’t believe. They didn’t miss anything, and they
networked. They had pacts to support one another in
keeping track of all the kids. Mothers could remember
hundreds of names and put them with the right faces and
the right parents. If my mother and the mother that saw me
take the apple had been working, I would have gotten away
with stealing the apple, no one would have been the wiser,
and I might not have ever learned the lesson that I did.
That’s the way it was in those days, and that’s only one
facet of it. By the time the heat surge hit, most kids had
spent most of their lives seeing their parents in the evenings
and on the weekends. In the mean time, kids were just as
devilish as I was with no mother to straighten them out. It
had a really big effect on our society.”
 “Now I understand, Captain.” Sam said, his
respect for Leatherwood climbing another notch. “Do you
think anything like that will ever happen to us here?”
“Not for a very long time, Sam.” Leatherwood said
after some thought. “We all have to work together too hard
to stay alive. The only excesses we have are in the form of
hard work. There is not a great deal of leisure time for
anyone, including the kids. Something else we don’t have
here in our society is money. When the heat surge hit, too
many kids had too much money and too much time to
spend it on the wrong things. I think it will be a very long
time before we find ourselves with those problems, and if
we do a good job of learning from the mistakes of the past,
maybe we can avoid those pitfalls all together.”
“How will we do that, Captain? How will we avoid
all those pitfalls?” Sam asked.
“By carefully planning things today. By making
commitments today to things of value that will help us ride
through those times, like making sure mothers are never
held in contempt by society for not being career women.
By learning that the consequences of not doing things the
right way can wipe us all out. You know, when things boil
down to survival and everyone can see clearly how much
we depend on one another, those issues never come up. It’s
only when we become people of excess again that those
problems will come back to haunt us if we don’t prepare
for them well. When is the last time you saw a fat woman?
There aren’t any, not a single one, not for a very long time
now. Why? Because it’s been all we can do just to keep
from starving. Most of the people from Carlsbad were as
gaunt as ghosts when we rescued them. Even you were
108
about thirty pounds lighter then. You’ve put on weight, but
not fat. Hard work and good food has brought you to your
natural, optimum condition. The same is true of everyone
here.
Now, back before the heat surge, women and men
had a lot of leisure time and excess money. They ate too
much of the wrong kinds of food and it turned into fat, so
they bought expensive memberships to spas and health
clubs so they could loose weight. A huge industry rose up
just to treat our excesses. Take a look at our women. Is
there a single one of them that needs to go to a health spa to
loose weight? No there is not. Why? Because we have no
excesses here to overindulge in. It is written in the Bible
that ‘He who will not work, let him also not eat’.
It is values like these that are based in fundamental
truth and right that we must adopt and hold close as a
society if we want to survive the next time we achieve a
state where overindulging is an easy thing to do.”
Leatherwood finished.
Sam looked as though all the information
Leatherwood had shared with him was overwhelming as his
mind took him across the years into the future.
“What’s the matter, Sam?” Leatherwood asked,
noticing Sam’s expression.
“Oh, nothing, Captain. It just occurred to me that I
sure hope you live to be a really old man.”
Leatherwood smiled a little smile of knowing. He
knew that the wisdom he had about things came at the price
of a lot of years and a lot of gray hair, but he was pleased
that Sam was taking such an interest in becoming wise
himself.
 The men resumed their inspection of the basins, the
flow of the cool clear water from the giant coils somehow
lifting their spirits. Sam came away from their talk feeling
closer and more dedicated to Leatherwood than ever.
As the days grew longer and hotter, the load was
increased on the compressors to provide the needed
cooling, which in turn, generated even more electricity. It
remained comfortable beneath the notch roof, even cool at
times, even though the temperature outside was over one
hundred and thirty degrees Fahrenheit. In fact, it was so
cool that the crops were slow to grow. In addressing the
problem, Fernando made an observation. He had been
tracking the temperature of the notch and had noticed that it
went down several degrees within a few hours after the
crops were irrigated and remained low for many more
hours before making an upward turn to stabilize for a few
days until the next irrigation cycle. It was a point that
Leatherwood had failed to take into consideration. The
water from the giant cooling coils was very cold. When the
crops were irrigated, the low temperature retarded plant
growth, and the evaporation of the water into the air caused
the temperature inside the notch to drop until the
evaporation rate declined as the soil dried out. Fernando
suggested that the chilled water could be used to provide
even more cooling of additional facilities and be returned to
one of the basins much warmer. This would eliminate the
retarding effect that the cold water had on crop growth and
at the same time, it would prevent the temperature from
dropping so drastically inside the notch. The evaporation
rate would increase a little, but excess water was already
109
running out onto the plains for a short distance before it
was evaporated any way.
Everyone thought it was a grand idea and they
quickly made plans to begin this work next winter.
Fernando, in his heavy Columbian accent, said. “Please
forgive me, but I do not think we can afford to wait until
then. Many people can be fed from the crops that we grow
here, but first we must grow them. At our present rate, we
will be lucky to have two crops this year, much less the
three or four that we know we will need.”
“But Fernando, at six o’clock this morning it was
one hundred and six degrees outside. By mid-afternoon,
it’s pushing one hundred and forty. Men can’t work in that
heat. It would kill them.” Sam said.
“Only if they get that hot.” Fernando said. With
that, he took a plastic rain suit out of a bag and held it up.
“With this, I think a man can work in the daytime outside
for many hours.”
“How so?” Sam said. That’s just a plastic rain suit.
“A man wearing that outside would burn up just that much
faster.”
“Not in this rain suit, sir.” Fernando said. “This
rain suit has been modified. It has a place for water from
the reservoirs to be pumped into it. Inside is a thick terry-
cloth towel that absorbs the water and dispenses it all over
the skin. The water enters at the head, which needs the
most cooling, and at the shoulders. A valve at each
location lets a man regulate the flow of water as he needs
too. I think it is possible for a man to even become very
cold in this suit on a very hot day. I have made two more
suits like this and I have made the connections for the water
from the reservoir pumps. It is all set to try out tomorrow if
anyone would like to.”
After a moment Sam said. “I’ve got to hand it to
you Fernando, I think this is a great idea.
The next day, when the sun was blazing down,
Fernando, Sam and Big Will Foster donned the rain suits
and stepped outside to put them to the test. After more than
two hours in the sun, the men came back inside, telling
everyone that the suits worked beautifully. Little puddles
of water, which quickly dried up in the heat, marked the
steps the men took, for the suits were designed for the
water to exit the suit at the bottom, wetting the feet in the
process.
By the next day, there were a total of twenty more
suits ready for work. Fernando developed a battery
operated pump model that could be worn away from the
main water supply by using a small reservoir. Using it, a
man could work without being connected to the main water
supply for up to a half hour. Using these suits, the outdoor
work continued. Progress was slower, but it was steady,
and with an entire long summer ahead, it meant the plan
would advance year around. It would make a vast
difference.
The days went by without notice, one flowing into
the next. Men, women and children worked hard everyday.
Inside the cavern, there was little to distinguish between
night and day, and people divided the work among
themselves in shifts. The progress they made was
remarkable.
110
Lower levels of the cavern that Leatherwood had
never had the opportunity to explore himself, were
explored by others, and it turned out the cavern was much
larger than anyone had imagined. The additional room was
needed, too, for the crop harvests produced a great deal of
food which had to be stored.
Fernando, with Leatherwood’s engineering
expertise, was trying to develop a more rapid reaction for
the power technology. It was hoped that it could be
reduced in size enough so that one could be put in a big
truck, thus powering the truck primarily from the heat in
the air and the light from the sun.
The experimentation was relentless. Fernando was
like a terrier. Often, Leatherwood would leave at the end
of a long day for a few hours of sleep with Fernando still at
work. When he would return a few hours later, Fernando
would still be at work. Leatherwood was beginning to
really become worried about him. No one could sustain
that level of intensity for that long without paying a price in
his health.
One day, Leatherwood decided that it had gone on
long enough. The Columbian was definitely showing signs
of failing health. Leatherwood said to the man he had
grown so much to admire and respect. “That’s enough,
Fernando. Your out on you feet. I want you to go to your
quarters and get some rest before you kill yourself. That’s
an order.” It was the first time Leatherwood had given
anyone an order, but in this case, he felt he was compelled
to force Fernando to rest.
“Forgive me, Sir, but I cannot. I must not. I must
finish. I must.” Fernando said, strong emotions showing in
his voice for the first time since Leatherwood had known
him. “Please do not make me quit.”
“Why, Fernando?” Leatherwood asked. “Why
can’t you stop for just a little while to sleep? If you don’t it
will kill you.”
“It is important that I finish, Sir. Besides, no one
has ever died from lack of sleep.” Fernando replied.
“Well, my friend, that’s where you are wrong. Lack
of sleep is a definite killer, and it happens much faster than
most people think. A man can do without water for a few
days and without food for much longer. But a good healthy
man would be doing good to be alive without sleep for
more than about eight days. Your body just shuts down
and you die. Sleep is critical, Fernando. I mean it literally
when I say you are killing yourself.”
“You are telling me the truth, Sir?” Fernando
asked.
“I am telling you the truth, my friend. If you don’t
go to sleep soon, you will die suddenly.” Leatherwood
answered.
“But I must finish this work, Sir.”
“Okay, but it can wait long enough for you to get
some sleep.” Leatherwood insisted.
“No sir. I can sleep on the way.” Fernando said.
“On the way to where?” Leatherwood asked.
“On the way to get my wife and children, Sir. I had
a very bad dream a few days ago about what is happening
to my family, or will happen to them, and it was real.
There is a history of sleep visions in my family where
dreams come true. It has happened to me before. I know
how to recognize when it happens. This dream was such a
111
sleep vision of my wife and children that will happen if I do
not get to them in time. I must finish this work so it can
power a truck and be driven in the summer heat to where
they are.”
Leatherwood looked at the man and knew that he
was completely serious. After all Fernando had done, it
didn’t matter to Leatherwood if his dream was prophetic or
not, from this moment on, the community’s debt to him
was going to be called in. Leatherwood got on the radio
that he carried and called loud and clear. “Men, this is
Captain Leatherwood and we have a situation here. A
friend needs our help to build a truck that can travel in the
summer heat, and we are going to see that it gets done. I
need all able bodied men with machine-shop experience to
report to the cavern machine shop now.”
In only seconds, there was a rumble of rapidly
moving feet coming toward the two men in the cavern
machine shop. Soon, the place was crowed. Leatherwood
turned to the men and told them that Fernando has had a
vision of his wife and children in great need of him and of
them. “It makes no difference if any of us believe its real
or not, because our friend has been terribly disturbed by it
to the point that he is about to kill himself to build the
thing. I’m sending him off to bed before he kills over. The
rest of us are going to finish this thing and we’re not going
to stop until we do. He has been our great friend. Now, we
will be his.”
“Aye, Captain” and “You got it, Captain” could be
heard from a hundred voices. The men began gently
shoving Fernando toward the exit, squeezing his hands and
putting their hands on his shoulders in a gentle and loving
manner, reassuring him that they would not let him down.
The girls, having heard Leatherwood’s call on the
radio, had come to see things for themselves. Leatherwood
spotted them and said. “Girls, please see to it that
Fernando gets a hot bath and goes straight to bed. Don’t let
him up in less than ten hours.”
“You got it, Uncle Leath.” The girls escorted
Fernando out of the machine shop with tears streaming
down his face. He did not want to quit.
The girls drew a hot bath for Fernando and he went
willingly. The bath felt wonderful, and in spite of his
fatigue, it had a rejuvenating effect on him. He was
tempted to get back into his work cloths and return to the
shop after he had finished his bath, but he would not
disobey the Captain. Reluctantly, he pulled on his pajamas
and went to his bed. Kathryn had mixed an herbal tea that
she had been hoarding for a very long time and gave it to
Fernando ordering him to drink up. He obliged.
Kathryn could see that he was not going to give in
to sleep easily, so she began to speak to him in soothing
tones. Then Fernando asked if she would sing for him.
Kathryn smiled and began a soft love song that
began “Adios amigo, goodbye my friend.” Kathryn sang
on, with a sweet softness as though it was a baby she was
singing to. Her beautiful voice echoed through the cavern
and a hush came over everyone, straining to here her sweet
voice. Even in the machine shop, the men had stopped to
listen. By the time she had finished the song, half the
people in the cavern were asleep, including the indomitable
Fernando.
112
Leatherwood broke the revere saying. “Man, that’s
a dirty trick.”
“What’ a dirty trick, Captain?” One of the nearby
men asked.
“The way she just gangs up on a tired man with that
voice of hers. Puts him to sleep like turning off a light
switch. A man’s got no defense against it. He can’t even
pretend to be tough and manly. I tell you it’s a really dirty
trick that girl plays on a tired man.” Leatherwood said with
mock condemnation.
Everyone laughed and got to work. Leatherwood
brought everyone up to speed on the heat engine and what
they had learned from the experiments to date. “What we
are trying to do is increase the rate of reaction so the reactor
can sit in the back of a big truck. The way our big system
works the reactor vessel is big enough that it allows plenty
of residence time for the reaction to take place. In order to
duplicate the same thing on a smaller scale we have to
speed up and intensify the rate of intimate contact between
the reactant components about two hundred times faster to
produce the same vapor ratio to heat input.”
One of the men said. “Tesla Turbine. That will do
it.”
“A what?” One of the men asked.
“A Tesla Turbine. Nicola Tesla is the man who
invented the bladeless turbine way back in the early 1900s.
He invented alternating current and the modern electric
motor as well. He invented over a hundred different things
that got patents issued in the U.S. His bladeless turbine
design will mix all the components quickly, providing a lot
of surface area to promote the contact. I built one once
when my daughter had a bad respiratory infection and
needed the air to be moist and medicated. Conventional
humidifiers did not work well enough, so I built a small
fifty blade Tesla turbine and it mixed the water and
medicine and air much better than the other humidifiers we
tried. It made a big difference in my daughter’s infection
too. I think we can do the same thing here. Let me show
you how it works.”
In no time, the Tesla turbine was finished and
assembled. Then water was heated and directed inside the
reactor where the turbine was spinning away. Instantly, as
the hot water and the reactant components mixed, there was
a huge surge in vapors and the pressure in the reactor shot
up, almost reaching critical before the inlet to the turbine
was opened. Instantly, the turbine began to speed up with a
purpose. The generator was engaged and an electrical load
was placed on the generator. The heat and water flow into
the reactor had to be cut back to prevent over speeding the
turbine or burning up the generator. The Tesla Turbine
functioned extraordinarily well as a reactor mixing element.
The heat engine was a success. It wasn’t perfect. It could
stand quite a bit of refinement, but the reaction was
advanced enormously by the design so that the vapor
expansion was over 60% efficient. The little reactor/engine
produced over three hundred net horsepower. It was far
more powerful than would be required to move a big truck
and trailer across the country.
The Tesla Bladeless Turbine was such a simple
design that it took only a few hours to build it in the well-
equipped machine shop. Leatherwood and Fernando had
already done most of the other work needed to tie the
113
engine to the truck’s power train. The compressors had
already been installed, along with their associated coils.
By the time Fernando awoke, having slept for almost
fourteen hours, the truck was ready for its first test run.
When he awoke, it was to a wonderful breakfast and the
cheery smiles and talk of Kathryn and Audrey. At first, he
was determined to get back to the machine shop without
eating breakfast, but the girls were very persuasive and he
had no choice but to sit down and eat. He began
reluctantly, but as he proceeded, his body woke up to the
fact that he was very hungry, and he ate like he couldn’t
remember ever eating before. He was amazed at the
amount of food he had consumed. While he was eating,
Kathryn said to him. “Fernando, you are a wonderful
person, and we are all so very fortunate that you are with
us, but I want to tell you something and I don’t want you to
ever forget it. You have friends here who care about you
very much. They are willing to help you in your efforts.
What’s more, is they are very capable and resourceful and
any time you do not turn to them for help, you are hurting
yourself. Remember that.”
Finally, his hunger satisfied, the girls let him go to
the machine shop. When he arrived, he could not believe
his eyes. The truck was running at idle speed. It was ready
for a test run.
It was decided that Sam, who had experience at
driving big trucks, and Fernando, who knew the control
system for the engine better than anyone, would be the test
drivers. They climbed into the big truck, taking two of the
rain suits and four reservoirs of cold water with them, just
in case, and they rolled the big truck out the shop door and
into the blazing heat of the mid summer day.
Within seconds, the additional heat being absorbed
by the cooling coils made the reactor pressure climb by
several pounds. The turbine sped up correspondingly, and
the big truck increased its forward speed slightly in
response. The entire system was smooth and quiet. Instead
of the roar of a big diesel engine, there was the whoosh of
air blowing over the coils, mixing with the muffled whine
of the turbine.
Since cold air was a by-product of the process, a
good portion of it was channeled into the cab of the truck,
which kept it cool and comfortable. The windows of the
truck condensed a great deal of water from the hot, humid
air, forcing the use of the windshield wipers, even though it
was not raining.
Sam headed the truck toward the highway, going
slow over the rough ground. The engine delivered smooth
power. There was a short lag-time from when Fernando
would make an adjustment until it affected the reactor and
the turbine. Soon, they were on the highway and
everything worked perfectly. The men maintained contact
with those in the machine shop via C.B. radios. Up and
down the highway they went, over and over again, each
time, increasing the horsepower and the speed of the
turbine. They found that they could easily achieve speeds
over eighty miles per hour. After more than six hours of
testing, they drove the truck back to the machine shop and
went through the shutdown process.
When the big truck finally sat quiet and lifeless, the
men got out of the cab to the cheers of the others. It had
114
been an unqualified success. They had a vehicle that not
only ran using the energy from the hot air, they had one
that could be driven on the hottest day with complete
safety, and it didn’t use any fuel except to get it started. It
was a wonderful new application for Leatherwood’s
technology that had many implications.
Now, small systems could be constructed that could
provide cooling and energy for above ground buildings that
would make them habitable even in the middle of summer.
The technology was really simple and effective. A
compressor requiring one hundred horsepower could
intensify over four hundred horsepower of heat from out of
the air. This intensified heat, released in the reactor, could
produce over two hundred horsepower of mechanical
energy, one hundred horsepower of which, was consumed
by the compressor, making one hundred horsepower
available for other purposes, be it driving generators or any
other rotating machinery. The implications were enormous.
SUMMER STRIKE
With their new capability of traveling and working
in the heat of the summer, the entire game plan changed. In
short order, two more trucks were fitted with the new heat
engine system. The box van trailers attached to them were
given extra insulation and plenty of cooling air from the
cooling coils could be directed inside them for perfect
temperature control. The trailers were modified to hold
people on two levels inside.
 The plan was simple. During the summer months,
no guards were needed to keep the people confined to the
caves and mine tunnels. The heat took care of that.
Ulsterman and his cronies spent the summer in
underground chambers in the Denver area, leaving the
people to fend for themselves in the various other caves and
tunnel systems that they occupied. Altogether, Crisp
figured that there were two thousand more people in those
tunnels and caves that could be rescued without Ulsterman
ever knowing it if it was done in the summer time.
With three trucks pulling three modified box van
trailers, they could transport nine hundred people at a time,
three hundred per trailer. It would be crowded inside the
trailers, but within a few hours, the people could be living
new lives with those already rescued.
It was well before sunup when they left the ranch
headed for the caves and mines that Crisp had identified on
a map. The three trucks would branch off to three separate
locations, pick up the people and head back for Pecos and
the mesa caverns. The plan worked flawlessly. The people
in the caves and mines were amazed and a little frightened
at first, but the friendly rescuers convinced them that they
would be heading for new lives where they would have real
futures. The trucks met at the designated location and
headed back to the ranch, arriving with over a thousand
people aboard.
Once again, there was jubilant celebration. The
new arrivals were welcomed with open arms. There were
many tears of joy as the people realized that their ordeal of
many years was at an end, and such a wonderful end it was.
115
The trucks made two more trips to the mountains
collecting people here and there. When it was finally done,
the total number of newly rescued totaled just over two
thousand men, women and children. Among them were
Fernando’s wife, Miriam and his two children, Ryan and
Casey. It was a very happy reunion.
Work got underway immediately to create new
accommodations for them. The stores of food, instead of
growing, began to decline, but new cropland was being
developed underground at a rapid pace, and new crops of
all sorts were planted.
The men had captured many rabbits and they were
being bread and raised in large numbers. The crayfish and
catfish ponds were also being expanded. Men were sent on
gathering expeditions to cities all over and returned with
truckloads of useful items, including fish food. Below the
mesa, dozens of new underground facilities were
constructed, some for living purposes, some for farming
and some for food storage.
The underground farmland was made fertile with
the droppings from the bat caves and from old chicken
farms the men found. The soil was rich, the light was
perfect and the water was plentiful. By the end of the
summer, over three hundred acres of new farmland had
been planted in the underground chambers.
A new civilization of almost four thousand people
had established a foothold in a savage land, learning to live
with the heat and how to make it work for their purposes.
Leatherwood, who was the undeniable father of this new
civilization, was content mostly to allow the people to grow
and develop the society with little additional input from
him. The things he had already said and had done had left
a mark forever on the new culture that was being forged.
However, out of respect and deference to what he had done
and to his undeniable wisdom, they sought his counsel
regularly.
Leatherwood turned to other things to occupy his
time. One of the things he liked to do, when it wasn’t too
hot, was to climb up on the side of the mesa in the shade of
a big boulder and use his binoculars to look out upon the
plains below. He didn’t know why he found this to be so
interesting, but somehow it was. The binoculars he used
were big Celestron astronomical binoculars with 90mm
objective lenses and thirty power. These let him observe the
things on the plains below in great detail and clarity. He
knew he could have used the closed circuit cameras in the
basement of the ranch house or in the cavern, but
something about being outside and seeing for himself kept
him coming back.
So it was that he happened to spot two people
walking across the plains in his direction while they were
still many miles away. He could see that they were
suffering badly in the heat. It was late autumn and the
weather had started cooling quite a bit from the summer
time highs, but it still got quite hot, too hot for people to be
walking across the open country.
Leatherwood marked the location of the two people
and hurried down to the garage and started his F-350,
which had been modified with the new engine. In only
minutes, he was headed across the countryside toward the
two struggling people. He had to make several passes in
the general area that he had last seen them, but finally he
116
crossed the trail of footprints they were leaving and
managed to find them.
They were two boys about the ages of Kathryn and
Audrey. They were a little gaunt, and obviously about to
succumb to the heat when Leatherwood found them. Both
boys were passed out in the shade of a rock outcropping.
Leatherwood loaded them quickly into his truck and began
sponging their heads with some of the cool water he had
brought with him. Soon, they revived and they drank
deeply from the water bottles he gave them.
“Thanks mister.” The oldest one said. “We were
just about done for. If you hadn’t come along, I don’t think
we would have lasted much longer.”
“Well, you’re lucky I spotted you. What’s your
name and what brings you out here like this?”
Leatherwood asked.
“I’m James and this is my little brother Justin.
We’re out here looking for our grandpa. Truth is we don’t
even know if he is still alive or not, but things have turned
so bad back at the caverns that me and Justin figured we
didn’t have anything to loose by trying, so we headed out.”
“What caverns are you talking about, son?”
Leatherwood asked.
“It’s called Natural Bridge Caverns, over close to
San Antonio.” James began. “There is almost two hundred
of us that have been living in the cavern ever since we were
little. We were making out all right too, till this bunch of
thugs from over in Colorado busted in on us a few weeks
back. They started shooting at us. Said if we didn’t give
up to them they would kill us all. But my Dad and my
Uncle Doug wasn’t going to have any part of that. They
had rifles too, and those thugs learned real fast not to stick
their head up. Anyway, me and Justin here could see that
there wasn’t going to be enough food to last too much
longer, so we left a note to our folks and we snuck out of
there and headed here. Neither one of us had ever driven
before, but we learned real fast. My Dad had shown us on
a map a lot of times where our Grandpa was supposed to be
holed up in his own caverns somewhere out near here. We
just headed the way we remembered on the map. The truck
we were driving must have run out of gas, cause it just
stopped out in the middle of nowhere. That was two days
ago. Me and Justin struck out walking and was about done
for when you found us.” James finished.
With a voice that had suddenly grown so thick and
husky that he could hardly speak at all, Leatherwood asked.
“What’s your Dad’s name son?”
“His name is David, Sir.” James said.
Leatherwood’s heart leaped inside as though it had
received an electric shock.
“What’s your last name young man?” He asked,
fighting hard to seem calm and casual.
“Our last name is Leatherwood, Sir.” James said.
It was almost a full minute later before
Leatherwood could speak again. He finally choked the
lump in his throat back from where it had come and said.
“So, there’s you two, your Dad, and your Uncle Doug. Is
that all the family you have?”
“No, Sir.” James said. There’s my aunt Christi,
she’s my Uncle Doug’s wife, there’s Dillon, their son,
there’s our Mom, and there’s Aunt Lisa and her daughter,
Whitney.”
117
“And they are all okay?” Leatherwood asked.
“They were when we left, Sir.”
“Well, that’s good to know. What do you say we
get some good men together and go get them?”
Leatherwood asked.
“That sounds real good to me, Sir.” James said.
All during the conversation, Justin Leatherwood
had been looking intently at the old man who had saved
him and his brother. He never took his eyes off him.
Finally, when Leatherwood had said they were going to go
get his folks, he turned to his older brother and said in a
loud whisper “Jimmy, I think he is our Grandpa.”
“Of course he is, dummy. I knew it the second I set
my eyes on him.” James replied. Leatherwood could only
smile. What an incredible turn of events, two of his
grandsons sitting in the cab of his truck after all these years
and times so hard that most of the people in the world had
died. How could anybody ever say that God did not work
in mysterious ways?
In minutes they were inside the compound where it
was cool and peaceful. The boys were amazed.
Leatherwood took them to his quarters where Kathryn and
Audrey were busy canning vegetables. Leatherwood
cleared his throat and asked the girls to come into the living
room because he had someone he wanted them to meet.
“Boys, this is Kathryn and Audrey. They have been
living with me since they were in their teens. Girls, this
young man is James and this one is Justin. Their last name
is Leatherwood and they are my grandsons.” Leatherwood
barely got the last few words out before he choked up
completely.
 “Told ya.” Justin said, poking his older brother in
the ribs with his elbow.
“Yea, but I knew it before you.” James replied.
“Did not.” Justin replied.
“Okay, whatever you say.” James said.
Leatherwood, with a huge grin, hugged the two
boys around the shoulders close to him. All he could say in
a creaking voice overflowing with emotion was. “I’m glad
to see you boys again.”
“Us too Grandpa.” The boys replied.
They were both as tall as he was, but Justin was
more muscular.
After a moment of reflection, Leatherwood came to
his senses and asked the girls to fix the boys a hearty meal
while he went to talk to the men.
Leatherwood spread the word that he was calling
the men to an emergency meeting. In minutes, the other
men came pouring into the covered notch. When they had
gathered, Leatherwood began.
“Men, I just came in from out on the plains where I
picked up two young men walking this way. It turns out
they are my grandsons on a mission to find me because
their families and other folks have been pinned down in the
caverns they have been living in. It sounds to me like
Ulsterman’s bunch. I’m going to set out today to rescue
them. I just wanted to let you know where I’m going. I
know it’s not on the agenda, but I could use some help in
this. If you decide you don’t want to come with me, I’ll
understand and there won’t be any hard feelings, but I’m
going, and I won’t be back without my kids.”
118
“You gotta be kidding, Captain.” Sam said.
“We’re behind you a hundred percent.” A loud cheer rose
up from the crowd. They all wanted to go.
“Wait a minute men. We can’t all go. We don’t
have that many trucks.” Sam said. “This is what I want
you to do. I want the militia commanders to pick one third
of the men from their squads to go. The other two thirds
will stay here and keep things going. We’ll take five big
trucks and box vans and five pick-up trucks. Take enough
food and water for four days and enough extra for the
people we rescue. Now get cracking and we will all meet
at the big garage in one hour.”
Quickly the men dispersed, meeting at the big
garage as planned one hour later. There was a buzz through
out the complex as word spread about Leatherwood’s good
fortune. The garage was packed with the men who had
been selected to go as well as most of the other people who
were there to see them off. The boys were amazed. They
couldn’t remember ever seeing so many people at one time
in their lives.
In another hour, everything and everyone was
loaded and the convoy set out toward San Antonio. Chip
Maddox was in the lead in a big F-350 that was really fast.
He ranged far ahead, with he and the men in his truck
staying in radio contact with those coming behind. They
made good time, pushing the heat engines hard. The road
was good and they averaged better than sixty miles per
hour. The hours rolled by.
Finally, they rolled up to a location only a few miles
from Natural Bridge Caverns where Maddox and his men
were waiting. It was past midnight by then. Maddox and
his men had set up a powerful military night scope and had
been carefully glassing the surrounding countryside. They
had spotted two campsites near the caverns. Altogether,
there appeared to be about two hundred men in the two
groups.
Looking at the situation, it was plain that the only
threat the outlaws had been concerned about was the threat
of gunfire from the caverns. They hadn’t even posted
guards to watch the perimeter. It would be like shooting
ducks in a barrel.
Quickly the men laid out a plan of attack. It was
still more than five hours before sunup. They would have
plenty of time to get into position. By the time the sun
came up and it was light enough to see, Leatherwood’s men
were in place, targets already selected and in the sights. On
cue, there was one burst of fire, followed by a few
additional rounds. All the outlaws were dead, killed by
shooters they never saw and shots they never heard. Only
the women among them were spared.
Quickly, the men examined all the outlaws and
found they were all dead. Leatherwood and some of his
men advanced on the cavern entrance. Sam, ever
thoughtful, had brought a bullhorn along. He handed it
toward Leatherwood. Leatherwood looked at it for a
second and then took it in his big powerful hand and smiled
at Sam. “Go ahead, Captain. Call your kids.” Sam said.
Leatherwood swallowed hard to fight the rising
lump that was trying to grow in his throat and then he said
into the bullhorn. “Hello in the cavern. Listen up. We have
killed all the outlaws who had you pinned down. You are
safe now.”
119
There was only silence. Leatherwood looked at
Sam and Sam nodded his head as encouragement to speak
again.
“Listen up folks. This is the Texas Rangers. There
is no one left out here to hurt you. You are free to come
out.”
Inside the cavern, Doug Leatherwood had just
relieved his little brother David as watch at the cavern
entrance when they heard the loud burst of gunfire from
outside. They had both ducked, thinking the gunfire was
directed at them, but there were no bullets hitting anywhere
near them. Then the voice over the bullhorn came to them
telling them they were safe. Doug and David looked at one
another quizzically, skepticism furrowing their brows.
Then came the voice over the bullhorn the second time.
They heard a rush of footsteps from behind them
inside the cavern. They turned just in time to see their
sister, Lisa, moving as fast as she could toward them. They
had no idea why their sister was in such a rush. She was
huffing and puffing and moaning “Oh, oh” as she came
toward them.
The boys tried to stop her as she neared them, but
she would have none of it, tearing herself away from them,
she lunged for the cave entrance. David made a dive and
grabbed her by the ankle and stopped her, his bear like grip
too strong for her to break free of.
“Let me go.” Lisa screamed at her little brother.
“That’s my Daddy. Let me go.”
With a hard kick, she broke free of David’s grip and
was exiting the cave, screaming at the top of her lungs
“Daddy, Daddy, Daddy” as she ran towards the sound of
the bullhorn.
Leatherwood could not stay still. He too broke out
from behind his cover and ran toward his daughter. From
the entrance of the cave, Doug had the big man in his sights
and was about to squeeze off a shot, but something made
him stop. In that instant, Lisa had reached the man she was
calling Daddy, and they were in a tight embrace, the big
man lifting her feet clear of the ground. Lisa was sobbing
openly.
Leatherwood swept his daughter up in his big arms
and started walking toward the cavern entrance. Suddenly,
the two boys came to the realization that the man
approaching them with their sister in his arms was indeed
their father. Doug said. “David, that is Dad.” And the two
of them also ran from the cavern toward the father they had
not seen in twenty years.
There was a joyful reunion, with the four of them in
a family hug. Then David’s two run away sons walked, up
as did Christi and Pat, Doug and David’s wives. Last to
emerge from the cavern was shy little Whitney, now almost
twenty-five years old.
David and Pat were overjoyed to see their two boys
were okay. Leatherwood could see his youngest son’s face
cloud up as anger that they had left without permission
swept over him. Leatherwood said in a commanding voice.
“I want you folks to meet my two big old grandsons. This
is James W. Leatherwood the second, and this one is Justin
W. Leatherwood the first. It was these two boys that saved
your bacon. They took on a man-sized job and they did it
well. They are men now, and I couldn’t be more proud of
120
them. David, you and Pat did a fine job of raising these
boys. I’m proud of both of you.”
These words took the sting completely away from
what David was about to say to his two boys. “Dad’s right.
You boys are men now. What you did scared the hell out
your mom and me, but if you hadn’t, we wouldn’t have
been able to hold out much longer.”
Leatherwood then asked. “Where’s Dillon? Where
is my other grandson?”
This made Doug choke up and Christi broke into
tears. Then Doug said, his voice choked and husky. “They
took him Dad. He and several other people were down by
the stream about half a mile from here when we got
jumped. We haven’t seen them since then.”
Sam jumped into action, assigning men to search
specific areas to try to find the missing people, including
Dillon. Some of the men stayed behind and began
preparing a very large meal, for there were almost eight
hundred mouths to feed, six hundred of which were the
men who had come with Leatherwood for the rescue. By
the time the meal was ready, the searchers started reporting
back. There was no sign of Dillon or the other missing
people.
When everyone had reported in, it was obvious that
the people had been taken away by some of the outlaws,
and Leatherwood had a pretty good idea where they were
taken to. “Sam, get a radio man up to high ground and see
if you can reach home. Tell them to relay to Carlsbad that
good folks have been taken from here and we think it was
Ulsterman’s men that did it. We don’t know how long ago
they left from here, but there is a chance that it hasn’t been
that long ago. Get the folks in Carlsbad to make a pass up
country to see if they can spot a convoy cutting across
northwest Texas into southeastern Colorado. I’d like to
know where they are being taken for certain if we can find
out.”
An hour later, Sam was back. “We got lucky. The
atmosphere was perfect for radio contact and we were able
to talk to Pecos and Carlsbad. They’ve got people moving
on it now. The men from Pecos are going straight up old
highway 385 and the men from Carlsbad are heading up the
east side of the Rockies. There is only a couple of ways
they can go and we are going to try to cover them all.”
“Okay. That’s great work. Sam. Thanks.”
Leatherwood said. “When everyone gets through eating
breakfast, let’s load up and head back to Pecos with these
folks. By the time we get there, the scouting parties will be
reporting back in. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”
An hour later, they were rolling for Pecos. The road
was smooth and fast and the convoy made the trip without
incident, stopping twice to let everyone rest. Once again,
everyone in the complex turned out to greet the returning
men and the new folks they had rescued. They were
especially eager to see Leatherwood’s family.
Just as Leatherwood had hoped, the Carlsbad scouts
had seen the convoy of captives as it neared Denver. The
scouts were able to see exactly where the captives had been
taken.
Leatherwood ordered a war counsel immediately.
Quickly they laid their plans. Ulsterman was trying to find
people to replace all those he had lost when Leatherwood’s
men had slipped in during the summer months and taken
121
them away. Ulsterman had never known what had
happened to all those people, but he figured they must have
had some help from somewhere. The only place he knew
of where his men had run into more trouble than they could
handle had been in Southwest Texas, so he decided to stay
away from there, but central Texas was a different story.
They had raided there a few times in the past and had never
encountered any trouble. That was where he intended to
get his replacement work force.
By their best count, the newcomers figured that
Ulsterman’s men had taken twenty-six of their cave mates,
including Dillon.
By sunup the next morning, a new convoy was
rolling north, only this time, there were more than eighteen
hundred of them and they meant business. They drove to
within fifty miles of Denver and set up a temporary camp.
Scouts with night vision glasses were once again sent
ahead. They were all back by two A.M. The scouts
marked the exact location of all the guards. Men were
assigned the task of silently taking them out at a precise
time one hour before sunup.
The entire contingency of men moved into Denver
on silent wheels, with no lights of any kind. The drivers
used night vision glasses to see with. The skies were
completely overcast and there had been no streetlights lit in
Denver for almost twenty years.
By five A.M. everyone was in position. At five
thirty, eleven guards suddenly died, never knowing what hit
them. Leatherwood and his men moved in to Ulsterman’s
compound. They were well inside when the shooting
began, but Leatherwood’s force was much stronger. Also,
he had fifteen men in strategic high locations with fifty-
caliber sniper rifles taking a terrible toll on Ulsterman’s
forces, driving them back deep inside the compound.
One of Ulsterman’s men was desperately trying to
unlock a heavy steel door to a room off the main hallway in
the compound when a bullet clipped his spine. The key
was still in the door partially turned. Ulsterman and his
men had tried to provide covering fire for the man, but the
hail of bullets buzzing around them like angry hornets,
made them realize clearly that to stay would be certain
death. They resumed their retreat.
At the farthest depths of the compound was a large
room. It was the last semblance of refuge for the outlaws.
Inside the room was abundant cover that even the fifty-
caliber bullets could not penetrate. Ulsterman arranged his
men behind this cover, and from there, they were able to
easily defend the one doorway into the room. It was a
standoff.
Some of Leatherwood’s men had been checking all
the other rooms in the compound as the firefight had
progress deeper inside the compound. They encountered a
few of Ulsterman’s men, who had tried to put up a fight,
but Leatherwood’s men were armed with automatic
weapons and Ulsterman’s men were not. The fights didn’t
last more than a few minutes and all ended with
Ulsterman’s men dead.
The large steel door that the outlaws had tried to get
open turned out to be the room the captives had been
locked up in. They were freed and taken to the surface
while the underground battle continued to rage.
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Leatherwood considered withdrawing and allowing
the outlaws that remained to live, but he knew they would
only regroup and bring tragedy and despair to the lives of
other good people. For all their atrocities of the past and all
that would be in their future, Leatherwood knew that it was
their responsibility to end it then and there. He ordered the
30mm recoilless rifle brought down to their location. He
ordered his men to fabricate a heavy steel shield on wheels
with an opening large enough for the barrel of the 30mm
weapon to fit through. He ordered the big rifle to be loaded
with incendiary rounds.
When this was all done, they rolled the big rifle into
position, impervious to the hail of bullets that the outlaws
poured through the open doorway.
“Captain, do you think this will do any good?” Sam
asked.
“Well, it’s like this, Sam.” Leatherwood responded.
“Unless that room in there is about as big as a football
field, we won’t have to hit anyone and they will all die
anyway. We’ve got two thousand rounds of incendiary
ammunition for this thing. That means there will be two
thousand very hot little fires inside that room in just a few
minutes, and those fires can’t be put out. If they stay
inside, they will die from the heat and the fumes, if they
come out, I want them cut down when they come out the
door. Understand?”
“Aye, Captain.” Sam replied.
The big rifle was ready. Leatherwood felt
compelled to make a statement to the men inside the room
before they died, not for their benefit, but for the benefit of
his men, now and in the future. Leatherwood believed that
there was a fundamental force that flowed within people
that defined good and caused most of them to try to live
their lives within the boundaries set by that good force.
When people moved outside that good, the stage was set
for a reckoning, sooner or later and that people armed with
the good were enabled by it to pursue that reckoning with
the bad with a level of intensity the bad simply could not
match. Leatherwood began.
“You men in there. In a few minutes you will all be
dead, and there is nothing you can do to stop it. You have
committed atrocities against people and against God that
cannot be and will not be forgiven, not in this lifetime.
People like you across time have always encountered a day
of reckoning at the hands of those who will not abide the
kind of things that you have done. That reckoning is
always harsh and final. Yours will be no different. No one
out here will derive any pleasure from your death or take
any satisfaction in the way of your death, but it something
you have earned. You did not have to do the things you
have done. You had a choice. We, who are about to
execute you all are proof that you had a choice. You chose
wrong and you are about to pay for it with your lives.
We are going to allow you five minutes. Use it any
way you please, but my advise is that you spend it trying to
get the Creator to forgive you for what you have done. If
any of you try to come out, you will be shot. If any of you
try to surrender, you will be shot. That is all.”
There was a long silence. Then from inside the
room, the muffled sounds of men crying and perhaps
praying, made their way out into the concrete hallway
where leatherwood and his men waited.
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Then, in his deep baritone voice, Ulsterman himself
said. “You out there. You cannot hurt us in here. We
know that and you know that. This is a standoff. We have
plenty of food and water in here. We can last a very long
time, but that would be such a waste. It would be better if
we worked out some bargain. We could pool our forces.
We could completely dominate this part of the world. You
would be foolish not to consider this. Most people are
stupid and must be herded along like cows. You cannot
change this, and neither can I, but we can use it to our
advantage. Don’t be foolish. Let us strike a bargain.”
After a few seconds of silence, Leatherwood
responded. “Save your breath Ulsterman. You are wasting
your time and what you are saying makes me sick.”
“Come, now, my friend.” Ulsterman persisted.
You know that what I say is the truth. How can you
possibly deny it?”
“Ulsterman, I’ve never heard anything that’s further
from the truth than what you are saying. But it explains a
lot. People like you can’t see any truth but the one you
dream up to justify doing the things you do. The real truth
is this; you are backed into a hole in the ground with a lot
of men who chose to be there with you. You led them
there. We are out here about to end your days on this earth.
If you are so right in what you say, then tell me why you
are where you are and we are where we are? The answer is
simple. We are on the right side and you are not. For an
intelligent man, you sure are stupid.”
Ulsterman was in the midst of forming some sort of
response when the five-minute period ended. Leatherwood
shouted into the room, cutting Ulsterman off in mid
sentence.
“Your time is up. You have lived as long as you are
going to. May God have mercy on you souls.”
Leatherwood ordered the men manning the 30mm rifle to
open fire.
The sound of the big bore rifle was deafening inside
the enclosed underground complex. Each magazine held
fifty rounds of the deadly incendiary ammunition, which
exploded into a white-hot shower of burning metal. The
force of impact was many times greater than the fifty
caliber rounds could produce, and where they had failed to
inflict much damage, the 30mm rounds were ripping the
inside of the room to pieces.
The big rifle spat white-hot death into the room.
Suddenly, Ulsterman and all his men realized that
Leatherwood had meant every word he had said. They
knew they were dying.
Long before a thousand rounds had been fired from
the big rifle, the inside of the room was a white-hot oven
and Leatherwood ordered his men to cease fire. The heat
was so intense that the thick metal frame around the
doorway of the room began to melt. The hallway was filled
with acrid gun smoke, and Leatherwood ordered his men to
withdraw. In minutes, they were on the outside, and the
war with Ulsterman was at an end forever.
Leatherwood’s men had finally sustained casualties.
Twenty-one men were wounded, four seriously, and three
men were dead. It was a heavy price to pay to rid the world
and their future of Ulsterman and all his men, but
Leatherwood knew that it was nothing compared to the
124
price that would have been exacted by Ulsterman over the
years if he had not been stopped. It was a bittersweet day.
It was a bittersweet victory.
Leatherwood ordered his men to make a sweep of
the entire countryside. He instructed his men to shoot to
kill if they encountered any more of Ulsterman’s men and
to escort any survivors back there, if they wanted to come.
By late afternoon, Leatherwood’s men had found
over a hundred survivors that had been slaves to Ulsterman,
as well as the forty-one women that he kept locked away in
his private harem quarters. All the women were young and
beautiful. None of them were pregnant.
The women told of how they had all agreed to never
have a child by Ulsterman. They told of how they
administered abortions to one another at the first signs of
pregnancy, disposing of the evidence. They told of how
they started a rumor that Ulsterman was sterile and how
that was the reason none of the women ever had children.
They told of how they wanted to make sure that his
seed would end with him, even if it meant doing great harm
to themselves in the process.
There were many stories of atrocities that
Ulsterman and his men had committed over the years.
Some of them were terrible stories. In all of this, there was
a sense of great relief that Ulsterman was no more.
They decided to stay for a few more days to allow
for the search for more survivors and for any more of
Ulsterman’s men before heading back to Pecos. People
found rooms with beds scattered about the area, and after
eating a good meal that evening, most of the men and the
survivors turned in for the night.
 Sam posted guards and cautioned them to be
watchful, for there could still be some of Ulsterman’s men
in the area who might try to escape during the night, and
these men would obviously be dangerous.
It was just after midnight when a silent alarm signal
was sent through the ranks of Leatherwood’s army.
Intruders had been spotted. Like a hive of angry bees, a
thousand men turned out and silently and quickly, under the
radio directions of the high lookouts, positioned themselves
to intercept the men who were trying to escape.
There were three of them, slinking from one
building to another, never knowing that men with night-
vision binoculars were watching their every move and
radioing this information to other men on the ground who
were racing ahead to cut the enemy off.
The three men, having made it over half a mile
without incident, were beginning to move more rapidly,
thinking they had already passed thru most of the enemy
positions. They rounded the corner of a building running,
headed for a place where they had vehicles hidden. As they
came around the corner, the butts of several rifles were
planted firmly between their eyes by some of
Leatherwood’s men, knocking the outlaws unconscious.
Their weapons were stripped from them and they were
shackled.
The men were taken before Leatherwood. A crowd
began to form, and one of the women yelled with hate in
her voice and a pointing finger. “Ulsterman. That one is
Ulsterman.”
Lights were brought to bear on the three prisoners
and several of the people recognized them as Ulsterman
125
and two of his captains. It turned out that Ulsterman and
these two men had retreated into two other rooms at the
back of the large room that had received the fire from the
30mm rifle. They had survived the heat until it had
subsided and, seeing an opportunity, made their escape.
They were the only survivors.
Ulsterman began to speak, trying to talk his way out
of the situation he found himself in, but Leatherwood cut
him off short. “You’ve got nothing to say that anyone here
wants to listen to.”
Ulsterman refused to give up, and continued to talk.
Leatherwood ordered him gagged. The three men were
placed inside the same room the captives had been locked
in inside the underground complex.
The next morning, without ceremony or many
words, Ulsterman and his two cronies were hanged. They
were left there with signs pinned to their chests. The signs
read. “Justice has been served.” At the bottom of the sign
it was the signature, “Texas Rangers”.
The next day several more survivors were found
and joined the troop, and the search continued. A few more
survivors were found, but none of Ulsterman’s men. Some
of the survivors from one location reported that a few of
Ulsterman’s men had driven up and spoken hurriedly to the
men standing guard there, and that all of them had left,
heading west at a high rate of speed. So it appeared that
some of Ulsterman’s men had escaped their just due.
Leatherwood reflected. Perhaps there was a purpose for
their escape. Perhaps.
Dillon Leatherwood had been among those rescued
from the locked room in the underground complex. He had
been badly beaten by Ulsterman’s men, but in time, he
would recover. He had been unconscious when
Leatherwood’s men had rescued them for the locked room,
but the next day, he began to revive.
Doug was at his bedside when the big young man
finally opened his swollen eyes. Doug had been a
paramedic in the days before the heat surge, and he had
monitored his son closely from the minute he had been
rescued.
“Hey there. Welcome back.” Doug said.
“Hi Dad.” Dillon managed to say through his
swollen lips. “What’s going on?”
“The bad guys took you and everyone who was
with you down by the stream. Do you remember?”
“Oh yea.” Dillon said groggily. “I tried to fight
them off, but one of them clubbed me with something and I
don’t remember anything after that. Where are we?”
“You won’t believe it, but we are in Denver
Colorado. That’s where the bad guys took you. We got
here yesterday and took you back. The bad guys are all
gone.”
“How’d you do that?” Dillon asked. “There were
so many of them.”
“We got a lot of help from a lot of good people and
from this man here.” Doug said, pointing to Leatherwood
standing by his side.
“Who is he, Dad? He looks familiar.” Dillon asked.
“Well, he should look familiar, but its been a long
time since you saw him last. You were just a little boy
then.” Doug said.
126
After a long minute, Dillon broke into a big, if
painful grin. “I know who you are.” He declared. “You
are my grandpa.”
Leatherwood smiled down at the swollen and
bruised face of his grandson. “That’s right. I’m your
grandpa, and I’m really glad to see you again.”
Dillon smiled and said. “Me too, grandpa. Are we
going to be okay, now?”
“You bet we are, son.” Leatherwood replied.
“From here on out, everything is going to be just fine. You
just take it easy and don’t worry about a thing. We’re
about to head for home, and I promise, you’ll like it there
just fine.”
“Okay, grandpa.” Dillon answered. Then as his
grandfather turned to leave, he said. “Grandpa?”
Leatherwood turned back and answered. “Yes.”
“Thanks for coming to get me, Grandpa.” Dillon
said.
“Nothing could have kept me from it, son, nothing
on this earth.”
Dillon smiled and drifted off to sleep.
The next morning, the troop rolled out of Denver,
heading for home in the mesa country of west Texas.
There was joy and a vibrant sense of a new beginning that
pervaded the entire troop.
Together, they moved to start a new life and to
make a new world, facing the enormous challenges of
survival together, but that’s another story.