Chapter 1

April 3rd, 1995, found a twenty-four-year-old, Travis Steele sitting in a Charro saddle watching calves move around one of the portable corrals on the (RS) Rusted Steele ranch. The RS, all 20,122 acres, sits north and west of a bit of McAllen, Texas. There is a more notable ranch in that area, so notable that even the Ford Motor Company would later start a line of trucks named after that particular ranch.

The land that the RS sat on was taken possession of by Travis’ great, great grandfather Rusty Steele shortly after the war between the states. Rusty himself had up and went north where he joined the Union Army, all men should be free and equal was his belief. Not an overly popular stance with a lot of the nation at the time.

Captain Rusty Steele had been headed back home after the civil war, when he and two Union Army friends, Sergeant Malcolm York, and Sergeant Major Patrick O’Conner, came riding upon a burned-out wagon. In their estimation, the wagon probably had been set upon by thieves for looting. Only God himself knew what happened to the wagon owners.

A search of the area had produced not a soul, living or otherwise, so the three friends rummaged around the scattered contents. Rusty found a battered wooden trunk about one hundred yards from the burned-out wagon. From the drag marks, he assumed it had been drug by horse and rope.

Stepping off his horse, he kicked the trunk over to find what he expected, an empty trunk. Shutting the lid he heard what sounded like something drop inside the chest. Popping the trunk’s lid back open he discovered the top had a false roof. Closing the lid had been all it took, after the abuse it had suffered, to cause the hidden top to open. Rusty took the folded leather folio he found, Carefully opening it he found a Spanish land grant. That grant having no claimer present became his. The twenty thousand acres of the land grant were taken possession of by Rusty. He added one hundred and twenty-two more acres a few years later so there would be better water on the land.

Travis had spent every summer since he was seven years old with his grandparents, Jacob, and Martha Steele, on that ranch. Growing up in East Texas with his parents was a different lifestyle than that of the Southwest Texas ranch. Travis’s father Donald hated growing up on the RS, had hated cattle and horses.

Donald was drafted into the Army at eighteen years old and spent two tours in Vietnam. Starting in an Infantry platoon and then joining a Special Forces Alpha Detachment. Donald very seldom talked of the war in depth but when he did a young Travis was all ears.

After leaving the service Don met June, Travis’ mother. She was a young nurse he had bumped into in a bar one night and swept her off of her feet. Don at just over 6’4”, with broad strong shoulders, narrow at the hip, cinnamon eyes his mom called them, and Don still had rock-hard abs at his age now. Fact is Travis is the spitting image of Don at 6’4” himself. Don worked a few years in the oilfields saving money and opened a gun shop and gun range. June had remained a nurse taking time off during her pregnancy and the first formative years of Travis’s life then later quit nursing when the gun shop became a big success. June had taken over the books for Don’s business.

Jacob and Martha were there the days that Travis was born bringing, according to June, half the ranch with him. Travis had been the first grandson and that was a big deal to Jacob. Jacob believed in family heritage. Growing up Travis was an exceptionally good student and a great baseball player, so much so that he received a full-ride baseball scholarship to U.C.L.A. where he also acquired a degree in business.

Everyone in Travis’s life had been a role model, including his mother’s love, and dedication. His father taught him to shoot long before any other young kid held a weapon. His father, along with his father’s friends were avid outdoors men. They taught him to fish, use a bow, hunt, and stalk prey. How and when to take an animal and what animals to take, thus ensuring the survival of the species.

Many of his dad’s friends had been in the war, either with him or veterans of that war. Travis learned many things that most kids will never learn. How to move silently through any terrain. How to kill with a knife. How to survive without anything but that knife.

Martin Long-Feather, a Sioux Native American, who had served with Don in Special Forces, treated Travis like his own son. He taught a young Travis how to live off the land, and how to track animals, especially the most dangerous animal. Man. Many of Don’s friends swore they were alive this day because Martin could read the North Vietnamese movement. Some even claimed he could read ‘sign’, as they called it, in water.

Martin would take Travis to the Piney Woods and have the men move and hide in the woods and teach Travis to find them quietly. Martin was also the master of concealment and had shown a young Travis how to make a Ghillie suit.

On Travis’s twelfth birthday, he was taken hunting by Don. Don placed him in a spot with a lever-action .30-30, his buck knife, and a canteen of water. Don told Travis he was moving to another spot, splitting up gave them the greatest chance to kill a deer.

When the sun was getting lower in the sky, Travis knew his father was late coming to pick him up on his way back out of the woods. With the sun going down quickly and the night chill coming Travis found a large cedar tree and begin gathering makings of a small fire for the night under that tree.

The next morning produced no father figure to take him home. Travis had to make a choice. Either look for his father and find a way out or do exactly what his father had instructed him to do anytime they went in the woods. ‘Son if you get lost, stay where you are. I will find you.’ He chose the latter and followed his father’s advice and stayed where he was.

Travis took little trips into the surrounding areas marking trees with his knife to find his way back. He kept the shelter of the huge cedar tree as his base point. On one short trip, he found a small creek, so he knew that water was close by. On another trek, he found a small game trail. With his knife and a bootlace, he started making a snare. Fifteen minutes later he had a snare attached to a bent sapling and it anchored properly. He found a large flat rock he could lift barely and made a drop trap, using a piece of the granola bar he had as bait. The honey-flavored bar could yield plenty of food if used as bait.