During the 1880s cattle drives, “The herds followed the old Shawnee Trail by way of San Antonio, Austin, and Waco, where the trails split. The Chisholm Trail continued on to Fort Worth, then passed east of Decatur to the crossing at Red River Station.”*
One hundred years later I had my encounter with cattle on the Chisholm Trail.
Internal thefts were plaguing one of my Dallas business client’s in his Decatur, Texas branch. As a citified private investigator, in early 1980s, I was wearing, that fall day, a dark blue wool three-piece suit, white shirt and red silk tie, with pair of plain toe Cole Haan oxfords on my feet. I should have been wearing my Wranglers, beat-up Carhartt jacket, my old Tex Robin boots and my black 10X beaver cowboy hat.
However, the only adventuresome terrain I planned on walking was from the client’s parking lot into the shop’s branch warehouse office.
I was going to interview several employees in Decatur, that I suspected of being involved in thefts of company property. This would necessitate my drive to their shop in Decatur.
On behalf of my client, it was my job to ferret out the who. I knew the what, when, where, how and why of these thefts. And, if any of the ‘who’s’ confessed, I was authorized to fire him, her, or them.
It was a weekday, in late fall. I needed to leave my home in Dallas early enough to make the 66 mile, one hour and twenty minute drive and be at their shop in Decatur when it opened at 8am.
Leaving home at 6:00am, I figured, that would give me a margin for error of around forty minutes.
When I backed out of my garage it was dark. The temperature was in the upper 50’s, no wind to speak of.
Traffic heading north on I-35E was not heavy once I was past Louisville.
When I arrived at the turn off at West University in Denton, I turned left under the underpass and onto US. Hwy 80 West. It was ten minutes of seven when I turned west. The sky in the east was still black as ink . A survey in all directions revealed not a single star was visible. I was simply following my headlights west on the old two lane highway.
About fifteen to twenty minutes after turning west, I still had about another twenty minute drive ahead of me. It was a seemingly long, boring, dark straight stretch roadway, running due west. I had not passed any cars since leaving Denton, nor had any cars approached me from the rear.
In front of me, the far horizon to the south, the north, and the west was still a blank, black canvas. You could not deferential between earth and sky.
The way ahead was only pierced by my car’s headlights.
Unexpectedly my car’s interior filled with red light!
I glanced up at my rearview mirror, expecting a DPS squad car, though I knew I had not been speeding… I was in no hurry.
It was as if the world behind me had burst into flame! I checked my sideview mirrors and found the same end-of-the-world flames. The color was so overwhelming I pulled off the road, turned off my lights and put on my hazard blinkers.
When I stepped out of my car in the blackness and faced the east I was mesmerized. I stood in awe for several moments as the blanket of clouds in the eastern sky was purple from the suns rays before the sun had even appeared above the horizon.
I immediately chided myself for not bringing my camera, as I figured this investigation didn’t need photographic documentation.
I backed up to my car’s trunk, leaned against and watched the sun paint the sky with bands of deep purple, magenta, rose, orange and finally yellow gold… and still the sun had not breached the horizon.
Moaning I didn’t have a camera (in the days of beepers, before cell phones and cell phones with cameras) I thought, no… maybe? I turned put my ignition key in the trunk and opened it and voilà, I saw my camera kit.
I flipped the latches on the metal case and lifted its lid. In their foam cutouts lay my Minolta SLR camera, a 140mm telephoto lense and a single roll of Kodak 400ASA color film.
With the sky continuing to change it’s colors I loaded the film.
There were no cars on the road, but I didn’t want to just stand there snapping photos down the highway at this beautiful phantasm of a sunrise.
I looked to the north… in the darkness I could make out the highlighted strands of a three strand barbedwire fence. Beyond the fence, the backs, heads, and horns of a number of cattle were also highlighted with a tinge color. Then I saw on the ground the rosy glowing edge of a round watertank and farther to my right something sticking up in the still darkness.
Forgeting my mission, to get to Decature, I walked across the bar ditch toward the fence. Taking care to not snag my expenisve suite on barbs of the fence, I bent forward and stepped beneath the top strand and the middle strand I was holding down.
Safely on the other side, I started walking through the cattl that slowly moved out of my way. And yes, given my fancy-dan-city-slicker leather shoes, I wondered if I was going to step into something ‘fresh’.
I kept walking out into the field and as I looked east I saw what the tall object was. It was a tall Aermotor windmill standing mute, shiloetted against this, perhaps, once-in-a-lifetime sunrise. Next to it a shorter raised platform topped with vertical metal cistern to capture well water and provide gravity for water flow.
I becan to shoot pictures with, all be it a ‘fast’ film, totally unsure if using the f-stop and shutterspeed I was forced to shoot at would produce any worthwhile images. I kept shooting until I came to the end of the roll… I worked my way back through the cattle, back through the fence, lucky that my suit and shoes made it unscathed.
I reamined unsure of what I may have captured on film, if anything.
Yes I made to my appointment. And yes, I eliminated two of my persons of interest in the on going thefts of property from my client’s warehouse. My third person of interest thought he was a good liar when answering my questions. After I caught him in his first lie, I said ‘that’s strike one’. You know how to play baseball… three strikes and you’re out?”
He nodded.
I said, “If you lie to me again…I can probably still help you, but lie a third time… you’re out and your going to jail.
At his next lie I said, “That’s strike two!”
He winced, but kept his story going. When his next lie popped up. I called his third strike and said, “Sorry buddy, but that was strike three, you’re out… then he confessed.”
He keep repeating, “But… but… but,” as the local police carted him off to jail.
The sun was up and full in my face as I headed east back toward Denton at a little after 10:00am on my way back to Dallas.
A week or so later, I had left the film to be develped, I picked up a handful of 4x6 prints. I was amazed at the colors of the sky in the prints…and as beautiful as they were they did not compare to seeing that sunrise over the Chisolm Trail it in person.
This is one example of the result of seeing my Chisholm Trail Sunrise:
Great story, Robert, and an absolutely beautiful picture. Thanks for sharing this with your fans.