The Spectral Line Rider

The old barbed-wire fence enclosing a portion of the remote West Texas ranch is long gone, the posts weathered away and the wire rusted to nothing more than red specks. The little cemetery is still there, but the hand-made gravestones and crosses are mostly on their sides laying amongst the rocks where roadrunners hunt lizards for supper. It's hard to get to and nobody much ever does. The ranch itself nothing more than inhospitable wide open spaces that even the Mexicans avoid after crossing the Rio Grande on their way to work the big farms up north during the picking seasons. The ranch house is long abandoned, all the great-great grandchildren of the original land owners living miles away in one big city or another. No, it's not like it used to be. But let me tell you a story about this place, a story from long ago you may find hard to believe.

Juan Delgado, a vaquero who had just hired on, was out alone looking for some lost cattle in this part of the ranch. On the evening of his very first day, he was caught by a sudden thunderstorm. With dark rapidly coming on, even though he didn't relish spending the storm-filled night next to a cemetery, he took the only shelter there was for miles around, the sagging, little church. For Juan, it was to be a long, fitful night as the lightning flashes turned the tumbled gravestones into dark, threatening forms and the rumbling thunder reminded him how alone he was. But he was a proud cowboy and so he hunkered in his poncho and waited out the night.

The early morning light only brought more gray gloom and unrelenting rain. Juan kept to his shelter and ate his breakfast of beef jerky and the last of the coffee he had made the night before. Determined to wait out the rain, mid-morning found him standing in the doorway of the little church watching the rivulets of water swirling by when he was surprised to see a rider trailing along the close-by fence. The horseman was sitting astride a big bay, his face concealed by a broad brimmed black hat pulled low. The man slowly rode closer, his eyes staring fixedly at the ground, his clothes covered by a long black coat. Juan thought only a fool would ride in rain like this so he called out to the man to come share his shelter. The mysterious rider didn't answer or even look up. Perhaps the thunder and noise of the rain on his hat prevented him from hearing Juan's greeting. When he arrived directly across from the doorway, within just a few feet of where he stood, Juan called out again, louder this time, "Come in out of the rain, compadre," but still, the rider acted as if he didn't hear and kept riding, his eyes remained fixed on the ground beside the fence. It was obvious he was riding line, but what was wrong with a man who would not acknowledge a friendly greeting?

Suddenly, the rain ceased falling and except for little gurgling sounds of water draining to low spots, there was silence. It was only then that Juan realized the strange rider's passage was entirely without sound. No hoof beat, no creak of a leather saddle, nothing. The vaquero's hand involuntarily went to the gun in his holster, but the rider was drawing away. Still following the fence line, he passed the cemetery and eventually over a little hill and out of sight. Convincing himself that it was a crazy gringo so dumb he wouldn't even come in out of the rain, Juan tried to put his unease behind him as he gathered his things and prepared to leave.

It had not been an hour later when Juan was ready to resume his search for the lost cows, but before he could mount his horse, he saw the mysterious rider coming back toward him, slowly and deliberately, his eyes fixed on the ground just as before. Had he not found a break in the fence? There hadn't been enough time to repair a break, so why was he coming back already? And then the rider turned from the fence riding toward the little cemetery just below the top of the hill a short distance from Juan. He listened closely, but even in the near silence, neither the rider nor his horse made a sound. This time, Juan did not call a greeting. This time, Juan's gun hand deliberately went to his holster. For what seemed a long time, Juan stared beyond the rim of the hill, but the rider did not reappear. What was going on? There was no fence in that direction; the ranch house was not in that direction. The only thing there was the cemetery. A little voice inside his head told Juan he should leave this place. Quickly. To heck with those missing cows, Juan thought, they can find their own way home. He mounted up and urged his horse at a gallop toward the ranch house miles away.

 Several hours later when Juan reached the house, he rode up to find the foreman and several other hands standing on the porch discussing what chores needed to be done that day. "What the hell kind of fence rider do you have working for you?" "What are you talking about," asked the foreman, "I haven't had anybody riding fence for over a week." "Well I ran into one mighty strange one this morning," Juan replied and then went on to describe his appearance. "Where exactly did you see him?" came the foreman's sharp reply. "At the little church by that old cemetery. I called to him not 20 feet away, but he never even gave me a nod." "Which way did he ride?" the foreman wanted to know. Juan told him which way and that within an hour he had returned.

With that, the foreman turned to the cowboys on the porch and said, "Boys, get your guns. Let's go! Juan, there's food inside. Wait for us here until we get back." The men instantly jumped to the ground and ran to the bunkhouse to get their weapons and then the corral to get their horses. They left riding hard to where Juan told them he had seen the line rider.

It was just after dark when they returned. One of them had been shot in the arm, but they had two men with them who had their hands tied to their saddlehorns. The foreman announced, "We caught these men stealing our cattle and buried two other rustlers. These two will meet their fate at the hanging tree in town tomorrow."

After the two dead-men-walking had been hog-tied and securely locked up for the night in the potato bin, the foreman had a cup of coffee on the porch with Juan. "You saw our fence rider, all right," he told the vaquero. "He was one of the best I've ever known. Always had a gut feel for when there'd been fence cutting. All we had to know was which direction he rode and how long before he got back. Knowing that, it was easy to pick up the rustler's tracks." Juan nodded, but there were questions in his eyes. "He's dead," the foreman said matter-of-factly, "10 years now. He jumped a gang of rustlers, but there were to many of them. He's buried in that little cemetery on the hillside where you stayed. In front of it is exactly where he was killed. Now, every time our fences are cut," the foreman said quietly, "he rides the line until he finds where. Then he goes back to his hillside. Comprende?"

Juan could only nod. The foreman bid him goodnight and walked back into the house leaving the shaken vaquero standing on the porch in the dark. Early the next morning, Juan Delgado saddled his horse, packed his meager belongings and left that ranch. He didn't want anything to do with working alongside a ghost rider.

There were few that believed his story, but it was of no importance to one who had seen such a thing as he had. You may not believe it either and that's ok. The little forlorn cemetery is quietly crumbling, the fence and wooden church gone, the land empty and forgotten. There's no need for a solitary man to ride a lonely string of fence now. If you were to make camp where Juan spent that long, disturbing night, there where the graveyard and church lie hidden, there's probably little chance of your sleep being disturbed by a lone, lack-clad rider.
 

The Headless Boy of Little Geronimo

Little Geronimo is today a peaceful little town in central Texas just north of the larger town of Seguin. In the early 1900's, it was a collection of a few business buildings surrounded by hard-working German farmers and one old house where nobody lived for long.

There were stories about the big old house sitting on the south edge of town. Only uninformed newcomers would move into it and they all left within a few months, usually in the middle of the night with no warning, not even taking the time to pack all of their belongings. None ever returned to tell what had driven them from the house. The stories told of "someone else" who lived in the place, an evil someone who had so frightened a big, strapping teenage boy whose family had moved in that one night he had fired his hunting rifle at it. The shot went through his locked bedroom door and wounded his little brother asleep in the room across the hall.

Not long after "the war to end all wars" was finished,Ludwig Neumann emigrated to America with his family and eventually moved to Geronimo and the big house on the south edge of the town. Like their neighbors, the Neumanns were farmers and they toiled from daylight to daydark. All was well that spring and summer with an abundant crop and new friends made. Ludwig did wonder why everyone seemed inordinately interested in their home, but he chalked it up to curious neighbors just being interested in a house bigger than theirs. 

One dark September night, Ada, one of Ludwig's daughters, left the rest of her family talking in the kitchen and walked to the other side of the house to sit on the porch and wait for a friend who was coming to visit. In the middle of the dark living room, a sudden chill enveloped her and what felt like an ice-cold hand brushed across her cheek! Frightened, she ran through the room to the porch, but it was pitch black outside and she was too scared to stay there. Ada steeled herself to run back across the living room to get to her family. Sure enough, she felt the chill in the middle of the room and then that ice-cold hand touched her face again, this time fingers pulled at her hair as she ran past! She made it back to her family and the light in the kitchen. Knowing her sisters would surely make fun of her, she said nothing of her frightening encounter.

The very next night, the youngest daughter came running back into the house after emptying the dishwater off the porch, her eyes wide with fear. No amount of coaxing however, could get her to tell what had scared her so. 

For several days and nights, all was normal until one evening when just after the supper dishes had been put away and the moon was rising, the two middle girls were outside bringing down the clean clothes from the drying line. They had placed a lamp atop the milk safe on the porch to provide light for them to work by.   Suddenly they heard what sounded like someone walking through the brush out by the windmill just beyond the reach of the feeble lamplight. Knowing the rest of the family was in the house, they worked faster. Then they saw it. From behind the windmill it came out of the darkness, a white, luminous, indistinct form that seemed to float just above the ground. As the girls stared in horror, it turned to face them. When it started coming toward them,they ran screaming toward the house. As the first opened the door, the second dared a look behind and saw the thing, formless and close enough to touch them! Both girls crashed safely inside and slammed the door shut.

"What in the world is the matter with you two?" an alarmed Ludwig asked. They couldn't describe it exactly; how could they when they had ran as fast as they could? Before it came for them, it seemed kind of small, like a little boy, but not. It moved so fast, much faster than anyone could run and it got close, so close! As they cried and told in halting sentences what had happened, the other two girls spoke up and told what they had also experienced. Ludwig, a stern, no nonsense kind of man, admonished the girls for such a story and for leaving a lit lamp out on the porch. He would retrieve it and the girls should go straight to bed. The children begged him to take his gun, but he didn't need a gun against what was nothing but a fanciful story.

Ludwig did return with the lamp, but there was a look on his face and in his eyes that the girls had never seen before. There was a pair of double doors at the end of the house leading out to the far end of the porch. Those doors had been stuck closed and no matter how hard the strong Ludwig had tried, he had been unable to get them open. While he had been on one end of the porch retrieving the lamp, he had glimpsed a misty shape at the other end and heard a loud screeching noise. The double doors were standing wide open. They knew what this meant - it was inside now!

As a group, the whole family went from room to room throughout the house lighting all the lamps, turning them up high so they would provide as much light as possible. Ludwig cleaned his gun and they all spent the long night together in the living room. Nothing happened and in the morning, the back door which had been securely locked was found to be standing open. Evidently the thing had returned outside.

A week later, the oldest of the Neumann girls, Bertha, who was married and lived in San Antonio, came for a visit. When her sisters told her of "the thing," Bertha, a pious, God-fearing woman, shamed them for having over-active imaginations. Good Christians do not see ghosts, she said, and she wanted to hear nothing more of that nonsense. 

A very methodical young woman, Bertha spent each day working and doing chores as proper ladies should. At the end of each day's work though, she enjoyed cooling herself on the porch with her feet being soothed in a pan of cold water. While sitting all alone enjoying this small act of indulgence late one evening several days after arriving for her visit, she clearly saw the buggy house door slowly open seemingly all by itself. The buggy house was only a few yards from the big house with nothing in between so it was impossible not to see the door opening wide, the interior blacker than the night. Suddenly, out of that blackness, a hazy, white mist came forth and right before Bertha's wide-open eyes, began to take the shape of a small boy. Much to her surprise and confusion, she noticed the misty figure was wearing very large, glowing shoes, shoes that were much too big for a little boy. She then tore her eyes from those huge shoes and was astounded to see the figure had no head! "It" seemed to be looking at the woodpile beside the buggy house, but how could it? It had no head! As it turned toward her, Bertha broke from her trance to run into the house screaming, "It has no head! It has no head!"

Again, the family went from room to room, turning up every lamp in the house, making sure all the windows and doors were securely locked. Without anyone prompting this time, Ludwig loaded his gun. Once again, a long, restless night was passed by the family all gathered together in the living room. The Neumanns were relieved to see no doors standing open in the morning. It had not gotten inside.

Several weeks went by with no appearance by the headless thing and the family began hoping it had simply gone somewhere else. The German families occupying the nearby farms had a love for singing the old songs of their homeland and a number of them had formed a choir. The Nuemanns were no exception and having the largest house in the area, volunteered their home for choir practice. One evening, about 30 singers had gathered in the large room near the back hallway. Ludwig's wife sat nearest the door to the room so she could join the singing and still get snacks for their guests. It was she who saw it first.

When the family had found the double doors standing open that previous night of terror, Ludwig had wedged them shut and nailed a large board across both doors. Over the singing, Mrs. Nuemann heard the sound of someone coming up the stairs and walking across the porch toward those doors. As she looked down the hall, there was a loud noise as nails and the cross-board flew across the room! At the crashing sound, the singers fell silent and as Mrs. Nuemann looked on, both doors slowly opened wide.

As she watched in horror, the misty form of a boy entered the room. He turned and straight down the hallway he came, not exactly walking, just silently moving. As it got close, Mrs. Nuemann screamed and ran further into the room. As more than 30 people watched, the form floated right into the room and before their horrified gaze, kept going across the room and up the steps to the 2nd floor. Several of the women fainted dead away and more than a few of the men took quick steps toward the back of the room. All noted later "the headless boy" carried something in his arms, perhaps a pillow? Or at least something wrapped in a pillowcase. Some swore whatever it was, it had the shape of a head.

Ludwig gathered his wits just a few seconds after the headless boy had floated up the stairs and, followed by several brave men in the choir, rushed up to the 2nd floor. Every room was searched and found empty. It was noted all windows were locked shut and the people who remained behind were sure nobody, or nothing, had come back down the stairs. The choir practice quickly ended.

Less than a week later, the Neumann family, like so many others, moved away. Later, Bertha received a letter from her father saying they left because he was getting too old to farm. Perhaps that really was the reason.