Chapter 11: Intruders Intercepted

“Buck, I’ve got some sightings you might be interested in. Two of my administrative people told me today that they’ve heard of three Latino men, strangers, asking around about an old woman and some young girls who’d possibly come here. Thanks to their friends in local stores and offices my gals were able to pick up on it. Of course the fact that they were outsiders asking probing questions put the spotlight on them,” Sheriff Nelson said.

“Great! Well, not so great, really. It’s great to get the warnin’ but I’m afraid our fears are confirmed. They’re huntin’ us. Okay, if you hear anything more, let us know. We’re puttin’ up our defenses now. The cameras are runnin’ and the chain’s across the entrance. Reese and I have rigged some non-lethal deterrents to mark and discourage intruders.”

Reese had taken the concept of a deadly anti-personnel weapon, the claymore mine, which when tripped sprays a directed mass of shrapnel at intruders. Instead of shrapnel, he and Buck had crafted a device that uses a small explosive charge to forcibly eject a combined spray of fluorescent dye and trappers’ scent.

It was simple to make: an empty pint-size tin can, thin aluminum foil, a spark gap igniter, a snap-crystal spark generator, a packet of gunpowder, and a trip-cord trigger. Gunpowder with the spark igniter was packed in a foil packet taped inside to the back of the can. River sand saturated with dye and liquid trappers’ scent filled the remaining space, held behind a foil cover taped over the can’s mouth. The can body directed the spray pattern.

It took Buck a few days to round up the materials and make and test a couple of samples, and another two days to make several dozen “stinky dye” devices. He spray-painted them a forest color and mounted them on trees at waist-height bordering likely paths and game trails around the property. He rigged traps and trip lines to catch intruders sneaking in or out.

“Oh, but that is purely diabolical!” Diane protested after one of her boys accidentally — forgetting the warning — wandered down a forest path and tripped one of Buck’s spray traps. “I can’t even let him in the house! He’s brilliant orange from the side of his face all down to his knees and he REEKS of skunk, only worse!” she complained. “How do I get him clean? You created this ... this horrible thing! she yelled. “So FIX it, NOW!”

It took several wipe-downs of Stoddard mineral spirits to remove most of the dye, followed by a body wash to remove the solvent and a bath in tomato juice to neutralize the stench to a bearable level. As for the boy’s clothes, they were taken on the end of a long stick to a fire ring, splashed with diesel, and burned.

It was days before Buck could look at Diane without being met with her angry glare of I know where you sleep, so you’d best keep one eye open!

Reese teased him unmercifully. “Hey, look on the bright side. We know that it works far, far better than we’d hoped!”

Buck made up a sketch map of the paths with “X’s” to show the spray-bomb locations and posted it in the classroom so adults and kids would know where not to wander. Considering how densely he’d posted the traps, it was better that everyone stay off the forest paths altogether.

He added a light spray of predator scent on tree trunks near the traps to discourage game animals from tripping them. If a predator, a bear or mountain lion came stalking along and ignored the scent then too bad for it, he guessed. Game camera video of an orange bear fleeing in panic down the trail might make a great blog post for the home school kids. Or maybe not, he thought.

It was only two weeks after all the traps were installed. Buck answered the phone. It was a moment before whoever was on the calling end could stop what sounded like gasping, hysterical laughter to say anything.

“It must be awful funny, but I haven’t heard the joke yet, so who the hell is this?” Buck demanded.

Sounding weak and breathless, his friend Sheriff Nelson answered with a question, “Hey, Buck, have you two geniuses been down to your road gate today?”

“No, there’s been no reason. And nobody’s called to say they needed to come through the gate, so ... no. We haven’t. Is there any reason for askin’?”

“Okay. That makes sense,” Nelson laughed. “Now answer me this: just how deep did you guys bury those upright logs you call gate posts?”

“Umm ... it was a long time ago. Lemme think. Near on to fifteen years, I guess. Reese helped me put ‘em in. I remember him whinin’ about the stinkin’ preservative we painted on their butts, and how deep we dug the holes, and how it took several wheel-barrow loads of ready-mix concrete to set each of ‘em. Why are you askin’, anyway? What’s it got to do with anything?”

“No reason, really,” Fred laughed. “Except if you’d gone down there early this morning you’d have found the front axle and wheels of a Land Rover sitting next to that logging chain you got hung between the posts. And you’d have found the body of that Land Rover sitting a dozen feet out in the main road where it coasted to a stop!”

“What?” Buck snorted. “How in the world! What caused that?”

“My shop mechanic from the garage we contract our vehicle work to, tells me that the would-be intruders tried to jerk that chain off the posts. So they hooked a cable to the ferry hooks on the front rails of the Land Rover frame. They’d looped the cable around the chain to jerk it loose.”

“So they tried to tear out our gate rather than cut the lock?” Buck said.

“Well, yeah! I looked at that lock. It would take the same cutting torch to cut through the lock that it would take to burn through that ship’s anchor chain. Jeez, Buck. Don’t you guys ever do anything just ‘good enough?’ Must everything you guys build be a case study in overkill?

“My guy studied the scene and judging from the tire spin marks at the drive entrance, they had tried several times to pull the chain and posts loose. And they must have gotten really frustrated. They couldn’t get enough force with a steady tug so it looks like their driver finally nosed the vehicle right up against the chain and putting the transmission in reverse, he raced the engine and popped the clutch.

“The first attempt, the shock of jerking it ripped the ferry hooks off the frame rails. So then the ignorant idiots re-fastened the cable. They took both ends and fed them underneath to make wraps around the ends of the front axle and connected the cable ends together in the middle,” Fred explained.

“I saw that happen once. Some kids I knew pulled a prank on a town marshal, except it was the rear axle of the marshal’s vehicle they hooked to when they snuck in on the guy. He’d parked and set up a speed trap. They wrapped the log chain to a tree and left a lot of slack. Then they sent a buddy to go speeding past. They were caught, of course, and it took all of them and their parents a year to pay for the damage and the fines and the stitches to the cop’s face and nose!” Buck said.

“You forget. I was there and I knew about it, too. It was that jackass Jerry Edwards and his buddies who pulled that stunt.

“Anyway, before dawn this morning the idiot driver repeated his ‘race the engine, pop the clutch’ stunt. When the vehicle hit the end of the slack, the cable snapped tight and jerked the front suspension, wheels and all, out from under the Land Rover, and the front drive line fell out. The driver was slammed back and bounced forward. In their hurry they most likely didn’t hook up their seat belts and it’s probable that he was so stunned that his foot stayed jammed down on the gas pedal. There was blood smeared on the steering wheel and the seat. Our mechanic said the engine and the transfer case were destroyed, probably from over-racing. Anyway, the rest of the Land Rover bounced and scraped out onto the road where it stopped. Its front axle, springs and wheels and all, lay beside your gate with the cable still looped around the chain,” Fred explained.

“Buck, damned near all my deputies, half my office and jail staff, and every Fish & Game and Forest Service person who could get free have been up there to take pictures. Nobody’d believe it ‘til they saw it for themselves. And the pictures are flooding the internet. My kid said it’s gone ‘viral,’ whatever the hell that means.”