Last weekend, I picked up a copy of Microsoft Flight Simulator. The best way I can describe it is jaw-dropping. There are some problems, especially when looking at natural wonders. Take for example Devils Tower. I’ll let you make your own Close Encounters jokes.

However, it is still great for visiting places you haven’t been in decades.

Sometimes, it’s finding a small farm in the middle of nowhere that is most impressive.

That farm may only be significant to a few people, but it is that level of detail and the knowledge that it covers the entire world is the most impressive.

“Joe better hire a food taster,” Richochet [sic] editor-in-chief Jon Gabriel quipped.

Kamala Harris seems unwilling to let Dr. Jill play the role of Edith Wilson or Eleanor Roosevelt.

If you travel north out of Texas on present-day US 285, you will pass through the western edge of the village of Loving, New Mexico. You might also notice that the road takes a slight bend toward the northwest as it aims itself at Carlsbad which lays another 12 miles up the highway. Half-way to Carlsbad is Otis. If you have traveled that road before and failed to notice Otis, you are not in the minority. But there was a time when it was home to enough souls to support a post office (from 1893 to 1901), well over a century past.

From Otis, if you strike a path roughly east by northeast you will be pointed toward a bend in the meandering Pecos River. As you head that way you will probably notice (being a keen observer and constantly aware Indian scout) that you left the rugged and seemingly broken landscape that bored your eye from the lower reaches of the Pecos. Here is the first really wide open country where you can be literally seen for miles. To the west is the outline of what seems to be mountains. After 2 ½ miles, the open plain suddenly drops 35 feet to form a reddish bluff that fronts the Pecos River less than 200 feet away. The feature stretches for a mile northward along the winding, brackish waters. It is here that Oliver Loving and “One-Armed” Bill Wilson made a desperate stand against more than 100 Comanche warriors.

The Goodnight/Loving herd was still well below the New Mexico line when Oliver Loving had become anxious. It was late July 1867 and the contracts they had been promised to supply Fort Sumner and Bosque Redondo were to be confirmed in August. Remembering the bureaucratic hassle the cowmen had gone through the fall before, Loving wanted to ride ahead to Sumner and then Santa Fe if necessary to be certain of their outlet for the beef steers.

Goodnight wanted him to not leave until they had passed the dangerous region of the Guadalupes but finally gave in if his partner would only travel at night and hide-out during the day. Goodnight later described Loving as “a man of religious instincts and one of the coolest and bravest men I have ever known”. And then he added, “but devoid of caution”. At 54, Oliver Loving might well have been the most experienced trail driver in the Southwest. But the 30-year-old Goodnight had spent most of the last 15 years either avoiding or tracking the Comanche and Kiowa. Few people better understood these nomad warriors or the wild country they thrived in. Goodnight selected “the clearest headed man in the outfit” to accompany his partner, “One-Armed” Bill Wilson. Between them, the two men carried five pistols and each had a rifle. Loving had a new Henry which unlike the handguns and Goodnight’s six-shot revolving rifle carried by Wilson used metal cartridges. Before the pair rode off, Goodnight pulled his mount up beside Loving and reminded of the importance of “caution” and the two men jogged their horses past the point and aimed for Pope’s Crossing, just below the New Mexico border.

They rode that night and two more before camping along the area where the stream then known as Black River drained into the Pecos from the west. But Loving hated riding at night and wanted to make more time. They rested their horses for three or four hours and then struck out with the sun up in the east. So later that day they were crossing the most open and exposing ground they had been on so far and in broad daylight.

They were about four miles from the Pecos and that high red bluff when the horizon to the southwest filled with horseback Comanches. In later years, Wilson recalled there were well over 100 of the “rascals” and always assumed they had been hunting south of the river and were on their way back to “their old ground”.

The two white men made a race for the river in the hope of finding a place to fort up and got there ahead for their pursuers. Drainage coming off of the bluff was eating out a small gully that made for a good “hole-up” spot for the pair. They had a full view of the area from all sides except for one small spot where the brush and carrca (Spanish cane) had grown thick. Loving guarded the brushy “backdoor” while Wilson who was considered a dead-shot despite his “handicap” covered the rest.

Toward the end of the day the two white men were called to in Spanish from above. Wilson positioned himself to stay protected but still answer the call. An Indian raising above the rim of the bluff fired a shot and Wilson killed him at once. But the Comanche’s shot had hit Loving, passing through his wrist and deep into his side. Wilson made a fight of it and then took his companion deeper into the brush to conceal them both.

The Comanche shot arrows all through the brush and weeds trying to make the pair give themselves away but failed. At one point, a single warrior was making his way through the cane using this lance to separate the vegetation ahead of him while crawling toward the river. He did not realize he was only a few yards from the white men and Wilson was making ready to shoot if he made a few more feet.

But besides its twists and turns and its brackish water, the Pecos was also known for its abundance of rattlesnakes. On the first drive up the Pecos, the year before cross-eyed cowboy Nate Brauner had made it a mission to collect as many rattlers off the snakes as possible. Nate was not the best shot in the world and at one point Goodnight made sure he was burning up his own powder and ball and not the “company’s”. But despite his eyes and lack of marksmanship, Brauner rode into Fort Sumner with 72 of the trophies which he sent back to relatives in Kentucky to show the home folks just how wooly things were out on the wild frontier.

As Wilson was preparing to shoot, knowing that one more advance would expose him to the Indian, the Comanche scared up a big rattlesnake which hissed and coiled slightly more than an arm’s length from Wilson (his good arm, not the stub!). The warrior slowly backed out.

As dark fell, Wilson took one of Loving’s boots and crawled to the river where he filled it with water to take back to its suffering owner. Loving began to plead with Wilson to leave him and make for Goodnight. He was sure that he was done for and wanted to make sure that his family would know his fate and that his partner would complete the drive.

Wilson finally agreed to make the attempt. They laid out all of the guns and Loving would keep them all except for his Henry which they felt would be more useful in the water because of its metal cartridges. The five pistols and the revolving rifle were all percussion cap and ball weapons.

When the moon had gone down, Wilson told the older trail driver good-bye and worked his way down to the river where he could easily into the water. He striped to his long underwear and hid his clothes where he felt they could be found later. He then hid his pocket knife in another location and began his try at escape.

The water was running about 4 feet deep and he soon discovered there was a mounted Comanche warrior in the river beyond the bend to prevent either of the men from getting away to the south. Wilson would later describe how he watched the warrior sitting horseback in the stream with his feet in the river and how he was playfully splashing the water as he sat on his pony.

Wilson was indeed “the clearest headed man in the outfit”. After coolly watching the Comanche, he began to silently make an attempt to swim past along the darker, far bank. He tried three times and each time failed while he was holding the Henry in his one good arm. He finally hid the rifle by sticking the muzzle into the mud below the bank and then pushing the stock below the water, so that the Indians wouldn’t find it. He also abandoned his boots. He then swam into the current and let it take him down steam to begin his “get-away”.

Downriver, he exited into a cane break and made up as much ground as he could before hiding during the daylight. That night he made it over the gravel hills that follow the Pecos up out of Texas. But it wasn’t an easy trip. He found an old, broken lodgepole from a tepee to use as a walking stick, later it would serve another purpose.

But Goodnight and the herd had stopped while still on the Texas side to lay over a day and a half, so instead of having about 50 miles to meet them, it was more like 80. But the one-armed warrior pressed on through prickly pear, mesquite, anything else that grew thrones, rocks, and the sun of the Trans-Pecos in July. The last night of his tract some wolves followed him all night and each time he stopped to rest they would circle until he moved them away with the broken lodgepole. By morning he had reached a landmark he remembered from last year’s drive.

The cattle were being driven on the eastern side of the river. There is a stretch of over 200 miles in which there is not a tributary stream emptying into it from that direction and so it makes for easier trailing. Goodnight and Wilson’s brother were riding point when over the next rise they could make out a cave they had found on the first drive the year before. A figure appeared at the mouth of the cave and at first they both thought it was an Indian. Goodnight was telling the other Wilson brother to bulk the herd and get ready for a fight when they both saw the stub arm. It was “One-Armed” Bill.

Wilson was saved but hardly well off. His feet were bloody raw and swollen. His underwear was saturated with the red sediment from the Pecos and he had not eaten in over three days. He had to be cared for before he was able to relay much useful information to Goodnight but when he did, it was exact. Not only did he direct them to where he had left Loving but was detailed enough that they found all his clothes and even the pocket knife and rifle where they had all been hidden.

But they didn’t find Oliver Loving

He lasted two days and nights holding off the Comanche and then decided that perhaps help would never come. He was suffering from the shattered wrist as well as hunger and fever. So on the third night he had crawled into the river and went upstream, not down. He was hoping to find a crossing about 6 miles in that direction. He made the crossing then known as Wildcat Bluff (now known as Loving’s Bend) where he hoped someone would find him. They did but it took another two days.

Three Mexicans and a German boy were in a cart pulled by two yoke of oxen with plans of going to Texas stopped to camp. The boy found Loving while looking for firewood and from there the party took the cowman back to Fort Sumner.

Jim Burleson had ridden ahead to Sumner and he was the one who took back the word to Goodnight. It is from that point that the well-known story begins about the removal of Loving’s arm and the promises made to him by his partner to not only take care of his family but to not let him be buried “in a foreign land”.

Oliver Loving rests in the old Greenwood Cemetery in Weatherford, Texas where his final burial was with Masonic honors. Not that far away lies Bose Ikard under a headstone with an inscription written by Charles Goodnight. The ex-slave and trusted companion had lived out his last days in Parker County. Loving’s body had arrived a half-century before Bose was put to rest, brought back to its home ground by Goodnight. But another major player in that drama was a tough, determined one-armed warrior with a clear mind and an undefeated heart.

*Note: If you like original sources, accounts by both Goodnight and Wilson can be found in The Trail Drivers of Texas, collected and edited by J. Marvin Hunter. It is a treasure of narratives but its weakness is a lack of an index. The two accounts began roughly at page 380.

But in my mind, the final word in such matters will always lay with J. Evetts Haley, scholar, cowman and probably the best historical writer of his time

When Charles Goodnight and Oliver Loving started their herd of beef steers out in the summer of 1867, it was actually the third drive, not second, for the partnership along the route from the headwaters of the Middle Concho to the Pecos and then northward. The first drive had been fortunate to have found a surprise market for their steers at the Bosque Redondo where the federal government had begun what was to be yet another failed experiment. The government needed to feed the Navaho and the Mescalero Apaches who had been foolishly herded there to share space. The “Redondo” was not only ill-suited for it but the fact that the Navaho and Mescalero were traditional enemies and hated each other seemed to have escaped the government planners.

But as a result of the government being in a fix of its own making, the Texas partners were able to pocket about 8 cents a pound on the hoof for the steers in gold (twice the price in Denver and almost four times the price in Texas). But they had driven a “mixed” herd up the Pecos so they still had the cow and calf pairs to sell. Loving took the “stock cattle” north toward Las Vegas and then through the Raton Range to strike Arkansas and then to Denver where he sold the herd out to John W. Iliff.

Goodnight took the gold, three reliable hands, and went back to Texas to gather or buy a new herd, hire hands and make one more trip before winter prevented it. After bringing in that new bunch of beeves, the partners had trouble selling them to the army at Fort Sumner because of a newly invented policy of not buying directly from former rebels. Goodnight had scouted in the ranger service during the war on the frontier and was not technically a Confederate. Loving, now 54, had not served in any army since the Mexican War but had sold herds to the CSA (which was mostly why he was broke, having been paid in Confederate script to the tune of 150,000 uncollectable dollars). The pair took their case a step higher to the commander in Santa Fe, got their money, and a promise of contracts for 1867.

So in the early spring 1867, the Texas partners trailed the 500 head they still had in New Mexico northeast and left them to summer graze on the Capulin Vega to the west of the volcanic crater of the same name. James Foster was left in charge of the cattle and according to Goodnight had “the entire country to himself”. The cowmen then headed back toward the Elm Fork country of Texas to purchase and gather for “heavier drives than before”.

The Comanche had been avoided on the first 1866 drive, which was the purpose of that southern route which forded at Horsehead Crossing. But there are few good crossing along the Pecos, especially south of the New Mexican border. And Horsehead had long been a favorite crossing for Comanche raiding parties returning for the interior of Mexico. In fact, the crossing’s very name was supposedly due to the skulls of stolen horses which reached the bitter waters of the Pecos too weak to withstand the brine and alkali in their first drink in days.

The Lords of the Plains now knew there was plunder to be had, even before Goodnight made his first trip back. In fact, J.D. Hoy lost three different herds to Comanche raiders trying to copy Goodnight/Loving before the pair even started their 1867 drive.

The famous drive did not start until July. It had been a dry May and June on the western side of the Concho country and migrating buffalo had picked it bear to the point of starving themselves. But the eastern side toward the Brazos had fared better and provided plenty of grazing. So the gather was strengthened for the drive there while the rains which finally came at the end of June freshened the ground along the Middle and Western Concho.

Years later Goodnight would reflect on how the 1867 drive was rough and difficult from the very beginning. “The signs just wasn’t right”, he told J. Evetts Haley.

The drive had not yet started when the Comanche attacked and stampeded the herd during the night while it was being held on the Clear Fork of the Brazos near Old Camp Cooper. The next morning while tracking on wet ground Goodnight saw where a large party of warriors had taken to the brush in the Clear Fork bottoms. He took this to mean another attack during the coming night. He sent back word for Loving to move the remainder of the herd to more open ground and expect an attack. He then trailed the lost cattle north, found them, and took them back about 15 miles from camp.

The Goodnight party didn’t get back to the main herd until well after dark and its exhausted leader caught some sleep with his tired horse still saddled. The Indians attacked again just before the morning light. A Comanche arrow was deflected by the edge of Goodnight’s buffalo robe which was upright having hung on some tall grass or he would have been killed in the first moment of the attack. After finding is pistols in the dark, the trail boss led a group to save the horse herd from being stampeded but a part of the beef herd had been scattered.

Although no one was killed in the attack, Long Joe Loving did have an arrow in his head, stuck in the bone behind the ear. Long Joe wasn’t related to the Loving family who owned a share of this herd but he did have the same name as Oliver’s son. Being a fairly tall feller, he had been tagged as “Long Joe” to distinguish him from the other Joe Loving.

Since the plains tribes had first begun to trade with Europeans most arrowheads used by them were metal, beaten out of some metal object either traded for or taken. This one was made from the hoop-iron of a wagon wheel and not steel. That meant it had to be taken out before it began to corrode. The sinew holding it to the shaft was removed so that just the metal was left. The only “instrument” that Goodnight could find to remove the object was a pair of old shoe pinchers. Two big men were assigned to holding down the cowboy while Goodnight took as good a hold as he could with the “instrument”. The cowman pulled hard enough to raise all three men off the ground and the arrowhead came free. The wound was packed with wet mud and the victim sent to the Keechi to be nursed by Goodnight’s mother. It is not recorded if the wet mud had any effect on Long Joe’s brain, just beyond the open wound in his skull.

The day was spent rounding up scattered cattle and it was determined that about 160 head were missing. It was decided they would leave that night after grazing the herd as much as time allowed and feeding the men.

That first night was an omen of things to come throughout the drive. Goodnight had placed “two first-class men” in the rear “at the corners” and he and “One-Armed” Wilson were at the point as they headed west in the darkness.

They had not gone far before they endured one of the strangest stampedes Goodnight was to ever experience. Half of the herd began to run and came up one side of the herd. Wilson and then Goodnight got to the front and turned them back into the other cattle. But instead of being the start of a “mill” where they mix into the herd and run themselves down, they simply ran down the other side. The men “at the corners” turned them back into the other cattle again. The stampeders simply continued to run a circle around the other cattle until “their tongues were out”. The other cattle had merely kept moving along quietly while their more excitable cousins ran rings around them. Goodnight remembered that he and Wilson were on two good horses but “it took all we could get out of them with quirts and spurs to head those cattle.”

Later that night it began to storm with rain heavy enough to chase out what little light was provided by moon and stars. As was his custom when driving at night, Goodnight had belled work oxen toward the front of the herd and toward the back so the sound of the bells could tell him when the herd was split or too strung out.

Once cattle began to stampede on such a drive, they can become a nervous bundle of energy that might run night after night, each time to exhaustion. This became such a trip with runs started by weather, Comanche, and who knew what.

They had passed through Buffalo Gap (in the area where Abilene, Texas is now) when they seemed to be having a better evening. Goodnight and Bose Ikard had the last guard and the animals seemed to be quiet. With daylight coming soon, Goodnight went back to camp to wake the cook and some of the men. He tied his horse to the wheel of the chuck wagon and left enough slack in his “get down rope” for the mount to graze some.

It was while he was waking the men that the cattle broke. They were heading for the edge of camp and it seemed some of the men might be trampled. Goodnight grabbed a blanket out of one of the bedrolls to wave in an attempt to turn the cattle and some of the men did the same. Most of the camp was saved but Goodnight’s horse was knocked down and the cattle were jumping over him as he tried time and again to get up. As the last steer cleared Charlie (the strong and fast night horse) the other Charlie (Goodnight) jumped on his neck, cut the lead rope with his belt knife, and was in the saddle when the horse Charlie came to his feet.

From there both Charlies raced together toward the front of the herd. Goodnight was surprised to find Ikard racing along with the front of the herd. But when he got close enough for Bose to see him clearly the ex-slave’s horse broke like lighting to turn the cattle.

After the run was over and the cattle quieted, Goodnight asked Ikard why he had not begun to turn the cattle any sooner. With a grin, Bose told him that until he identified Goodnight and his horse he wasn’t sure if they still had the herd or the Comanches had it.

Goodnight had learned on the first drive of ’66 to simply drive the cattle around the clock across the last, waterless 80 miles before the Pecos. He also had the herd “squeezed down”, closing the flanks of the herd constantly to force the cattle toward the back to tighten and push the whole group to a higher pace. They just were not allowed to trot. After the last push through Castle Gap and then across the next 10 miles to Horseback, they watered the herd and drifted them a few hundred years from the river and bedded.

That night another storm came blowing in. Of course, the cattle ran. When the tally was made, there was about 200 head missing. Goodnight and Loving began a circle of about 5 miles since most of the trail had been wiped out by the rain. During this time, they ran across Jim Burleson and his crew who had lost control of around 2000 head they were driving north as well. Goodnight broke off with some men to help.

“One-Armed” Wilson was sent to search for the 200 head and was given Yankee Bill and young, fearless John Kutch as help. The three cowboys caught sign of the cattle and followed it along the eastern side of the river for about 25 miles.

The Pecos is hardly a straight flowing river. In fact, one old-timer called it the “crookest river this side of hell”. So there are plenty of bends in it with normally the lower side of each bend as the best place to reach the water’s edge. About mid-afternoon, Wilson and his party spotted the cattle several hundred yards ahead. But they were being held by a large band of Comanche and it was clear that recovering the cattle was not going to be as important as keeping their scalps.

Always cool in a fix, Wilson didn’t turn and make a panicked ran for it. “One-Armed” Bill directed his party into a bend of the river where the mesquite was high and thick. The Indians had made a dash for the hill to cut the drovers off but didn’t discover their mistake until it was too late and Wilson had his crew were out the opposite side and with a fair start. The only thing that slowed the cowboys down on their return was the mule that Yankee Bill was riding. But with help from quirt and spur as well as some sharp-edged encouragement from the other two drovers both Yankee Bill and his steed arrived back in camp at Horsehead only slightly behind the pace. Years later, Wilson recalled simply, “seeing we were greatly outnumbered, and as it was about sundown, we decided to turn back and go to our camp, which we did.”

When the two owners decided that the herd was settled enough to drive, they began the push up the Pecos. The herd now seemed broken to the trail and it was fairly quiet for 100 miles toward the New Mexican border. Then Oliver Loving became impatient and made a fateful decision.

*Note: Having again spent too many words getting this far along, I will beg indulgence, take a break, pour three more fingers, and promise to get Wilson and Loving to that battle under the bluff of the Pecos!

*Another Note: Although there is some question about the picture in the previous piece about Wilson, the one here is the only completely verified one – taken in the 1920s as he approached 80 years of age.

Black Lives Matter (BLM) has spent the past few months burning cities, stealing whatever they can find from businesses they destroy, beating up people they suspect might disagree with them about something, and threatening even greater violence if they don’t get exactly what they want. Since BLM tends to emphasize the horrific violence more than they emphasize exactly what they want, most bystanders tend to do the same thing.

I find this ongoing charade to be unhelpful to democracy. So you can imagine my surprise when Black Lives Matter offered to help me engage in our democratic process! Their unsolicited generosity to me might have something to do with the fact that my cell phone number before it was mine, belonged to a black man named Kevin. I still get calls and texts for him, from time to time. It’s possible that the following text exchange was intended for Kevin, rather than me. But I like to think that BLM just wanted to help me out. Which I really do appreciate. I’ll put our conversation below, in a short series of screenshots:

As you can see, I first heard from my new friend Janie at Black Voters Matter yesterday. I didn’t respond until today when I got bored. I hesitated to misrepresent who I was, but I somehow suspected that Janie might not actually be named Janie, either. So what the heck. What’s a little fraud and deceitfulness among friends, like Janie and me?

Incidentally, the link ‘Janie’ had in her text sent me here:

My response was too long to fit in the conversation screen, so I’ll screenshot that separately:

My friend Janie’s response was more polite than I expected, so I responded politely as well:

As you might imagine, my preferred response would have been something like: “If you ain’t votin’ for me, you ain’t black. – Joe Biden.  Just keep doin’ what the white man says, Janie. Maybe things will get better for us. Eventually.”

But again, she was polite, so I returned the favor. And I was uncomfortable lying about who I was anyway, so I was happy to stop the conversation.

But still, this conversation left me with a few questions:

1. Who, exactly, is paying for Black Voters Matter? I presume it’s Black Lives Matter, but I guess I’m not sure.
2. What is their budget? I’m guessing close to unlimited. But again, I’m not sure.
3. Is there a Janie? Or was I conversing with a computer algorithm?
4. How did they get Kevin’s number, and how did they know he is black?
5. I wonder how many responses like mine ‘Janie’ receives?
6. If Kevin registered on the site she sent, I wonder if his vote would have been cast on his behalf regardless of whether he showed up or not? And I wonder who he would have voted for, if he had not voted? That’s a very cynical thought. But I can’t help but wonder…
7. Is this just typical election year shoe-leather campaigning? Or is this an unusual response to an unusual election? Do the Democrats have polling numbers that have them trying stuff like this?

Anybody who thinks that Black Lives Matter has anything to do with Black Lives is being willfully blind. They’re just another part of the Democrat Party machine, which has oppressed blacks in one form or another for 200 years.

BLM isn’t even being hypocritical or deceitful. They’re very open about the fact that the only Black Lives that Matter to them are the ones that can be used to get Democrat votes.

I felt dirty when I put my phone down. Partially because I’d been dishonest about my identity in my conversation with ‘Janie.’ Or, possibly, with a computer somewhere.

But I also felt like I had just shaken hands with a despicable criminal. One who glorifies rapists and murderers, while attempting to destroy all that is good about America.

I wonder why I felt that way?

You should be ashamed of yourself, Janie. You don’t care who Kevin is, or what he thinks about anything. You don’t even care if he votes.

All you care about is harvesting more Democrat votes. And you call it Black Voters Matter.

No, they don’t. Not to you. Unless they vote Democrat.

This has nothing to do with race.

You’re just another Democrat hustler.

You should be ashamed of yourself.

Being who I am, I tend to avoid many personal items. But I will take a line or two to tip my hat to a young man who I kind of coached, but didn’t. He was in my oldest daughter’s graduating class. Since I made it a point to never work where my kids went to school, Seth Stinton was never on a team I coached, but I worked with him over the years. I recruited him but was too far from home for him so he went to SMU where he started at safety for three years. We talk often, mostly about football. But also about what a young man should be when he leaves the game to begin “his life’s work.” He is the Head Coach and Athletic Director at Melissa High School in Texas, a school that has only had a football program since 2004. In the 11 seasons Seth has been the head coach there they have had 10 playoff teams including a state championship.

I have taken some pride in Seth in the past. But this Friday, September 1, in the home opening game every senior player for Melissa carried an American flag onto the field to the song “God Bless the USA.” I have seen or been aware of most of the highlights in Coach Stinton’s athletic efforts since he was 9 years old. This was better than the afternoon he picked three passes against Texas A&M. This better than the evening he won a state championship. He was a young man who in many ways had to raise himself and he did a pretty good job. And is extending that into the lives of other young men in a way that should remind us of the role competitive sports can and should have in the full development of an active citizen. During a period of time when something that has been a major part of my life has tended to leave me with a feeling of betrayal, this was a fresh breath and a reminder from someone whom I have always had pride in.

Elizabeth Holmes, indicted CEO of now-defunct Theranos, is apparently to going to mount an insanity defense in her federal fraud trial. Crazy clever, no? The standard she must meet is, as described by Noah Feldman, is

whether the defendant knew what she was doing, and whether she knew it was wrong.

Unlike some states, federal law does not permit irresistible impulse or substantial capacity defenses. It focuses solely on awareness of one’s act and whether those acts were known to be wrong. According to Feldman:

What would make this defense so difficult to prove is that, at least based on public reports, there appears to be plenty of evidence that Holmes sought to conceal not only the fact that the company’s devices didn’t work, but also the fact that she was lying about that. Ordinarily, prosecutors can show the jury that a defendant wasn’t insane under the federal definition by demonstrating consciousness of guilt. A defendant who has tried to hide her crimes must’ve known that she did something wrong. And if she knew she was doing something wrong, she wasn’t legally insane under the federal standard.

And herein lies an important point: even if you don’t see it as wrong to do something, you are not insane if you understand that most other people do. And that is the reason that psychopaths don’t have a “get out of jail free” card. A psychopath is a person who can easily flout social convention for their own preferences in ways that harm others to various degrees without hesitation or guilt–

The triarchic model^[1] suggests that different conceptions of psychopathy emphasize three observable characteristics to various degrees. Analyses have been made with respect to the applicability of measurement tools such as the Psychopathy Checklist (PCL, PCL-R) and Psychopathic Personality Inventory (PPI) to this model.^[1][4]

• Boldness. Low fear including stress-tolerance, toleration of unfamiliarity and danger, and high self-confidence and social assertiveness. The PCL-R measures this relatively poorly and mainly through Facet 1 of Factor 1. Similar to PPI Fearless dominance. May correspond to differences in the amygdala and other neurological systems associated with fear.^[1][4]
• Disinhibition. Poor impulse control including problems with planning and foresight, lacking affect and urge control, demand for immediate gratification, and poor behavioral restraints. Similar to PCL-R Factor 2 and PPI Impulsive antisociality. May correspond to impairments in frontal lobesystems that are involved in such control.^[1][4]
• Meanness. Lacking empathy and close attachments with others, disdain of close attachments, use of cruelty to gain empowerment, exploitative tendencies, defiance of authority, and destructive excitement seeking. The PCL-R in general is related to this but in particular some elements in Factor 1. Similar to PPI, but also includes elements of subscales in Impulsive antisociality.^[1][4]

Not all psychopaths are criminals, but many of our most devastating criminals are psychopaths.

I am not a psychiatrist or a psychologist (but I did stay at a Holiday Inn at least once). But I am prepared to state that Elizabeth Holmes is a psychopath. And because I am not a psychiatrist or a psychologist there is no consequence for me diagnosing her from afar. It will become evident to the jury that Ms. Holmes is a psychopath, but it will apparently be asserted she was made so and has some mental damage that excuses her from punishment.

And if the jury is comprised of a bunch of Karens fearing COVID-19 more than “mere economic damage,” she just might get away with it. I hope the prosecution features some of those retirees that invested in her company to their great harm. “It’s only money” is a great slogan unless it was your bank account that was drained.

Remember psychopathy is different from delusional. Psychopaths don’t feel bad about what they are doing, but they know what they are doing and, when the possibility exists that they will be stopped from doing it, they take action to assure that they can continue to do it. That’s not insane, it’s evil.

There are is an almost endless collection of stories comparing the Goodnight-Loving trail drives of the 1860s to the Lonesome Dove book and movie. I have passed on more than a few of them and some can be found in past offerings here. As highly as I regard Gus and Call, I still consider the real events (and people) more compelling.

One of those people is Oliver Loving’s companion on his fatal trip up the Pecos that ended with the loss of an arm for the veteran trail driver, and eventually his life. In the novel, this companion is the slow thinking but loyal Pea-Eye. In reality, this man was a skilled cowman, first-class fighting man, someone known for his cool head in any situation and not only a highly trusted Goodnight hand but one of the most skilled despite only having one arm. There was a reason that “One-Armed” Bill Wilson was selected to make that dangerous tract with Loving.

The Wilson family had come from Arkansas to the brutal edge of the Texas frontier along the Cross Timbers in 1857 and settled along Keechi Creek. The great historian/cowman J. Evetts Haley noted that it was tradition that the Wilsons were “born for trouble, and they never belied their birthright”.

Bill was the second of eight children born to James Wilson and his first wife. When that first wife died James was left with eight children, half of them comprised of two sets of young twins, to raise. In the mid-1850s, he married a young widow with two children of her own and headed for Texas. That union would produce five more Wilsons before the second wife died in the Comanche raids of 1869. James Wilson ran stock over parts of Texas, Colorado and what became Oklahoma for a quarter-century, lost two herds to hoof and mouth disease, and constantly rebuilt with a will common to those who came to the plains and became a part of them.

Bill Wilson lived into the 1920s to recall his life on the trail for the original Frontier Times magazine and for that historical treasure The Trail Drivers of Texas, collected and edited by J. Marvin Hunter. But he never left a record of how he came to lose an arm. There are a few accounts left by unknown tellers of tales and most are clearly not true. Two of those include suggestions that he lost it to a threshing machine when 8 years old or to a hay bailer about the same time. That would have been about 1849 and anyone who knows much about farm equipment can easily see that as a historical impossibility. Another account has him losing the arm to a savage horse bite around the age of 4. The best guess is that it was a birth defect. If he ever spoke of it, it is not recorded.

In Texas, young Bill Wilson quickly became the best cowman of a clan who took to the wild cow plains like hogs to mud. He helped the family keep the Carruthers stock on shares and worked regularly for Charles Goodnight and his stepbrother and business partner Wes Sheek, taking his pay in cattle. In the late summer of 1865, Bill had a small herd of his own that he prepared to drive to Old Mexico for sale.

At the same time, Goodnight was gathering a herd to drive to New Mexico and Colorado. The Civil War was just ended and constant Indian trouble, the uncertainties of Reconstruction and an abundance of thieving neighbors had convinced him there were greener pastures to be found and he didn’t trust the Yankee markets to the northeast.

In early September, Indians stampeded the Goodnight herd while it was being held in Young County. Goodnight followed with 14 men for about 30 miles and found where the Indians had crossed the Brazos and joined with yet another raiding party. Determining that there were too many of “them” and not enough of “us”, Goodnight turned back to protect what was left of his herd. But still, it was already late in the year, the chances for gathering another herd for a 1865 drive were over. The stage was set for what would be a history-making drive in 1866 as soon as spring’s fresh grass appeared.

Spring saw Goodnight gather only about 1000 head of beeves and fresh cows for a drive due to losses to both Indians and whites. But he was determined to drive toward the mining fields of the Rockies and avoid the Yankee markets to the east. He bought the gear from a government wagon, had the wooden axles replaced with iron, rebuilt it with the tough wood of the bois d’arc tree, and had the first-ever “chuck box” mounted on the back. After securing the horses he needed, he was ready to sign on his hands. The first was Bill Wilson.

But getting started on the drive was not a smooth affair for the young Wilson. In the meantime, he had invested in a few barrels of whiskey and planned to haul them to Jacksboro to make a profit. Goodnight advised him against it since there was a federal garrison at Jacksboro filled with out-of-state Unionists who had no use for Texans. But the young man smelled a quick profit and made the haul to Jacksboro where he was cheated by a man named Fox. One dark night, shots were fired and Mr. Fox was left dead. A detachment of soldiers arrested Wilson and was holding him in the guardhouse pending taking him to Decatur for trial.

Goodnight sent his best horse for Wilson to ride on the Decatur trip along with about 7 dollars and advised the young drover to have plenty of whiskey for the trip. Along the way, Wilson followed his employer’s advice and pretended to be drinking while sharing the whiskey with his guards. At the right time as they were crossing the Trinity Bottoms, he sank spur to his mount and made a dash for the brush. All shots fired at him missed and he rode ahead to join Goodnight, who had formed a partnership with Oliver Loving who had over 1000 head of his own ready to drive, after his herd left the Belknap area. At the time, Loving had probably trailed more cattle than anyone in the southwest but like most in Texas “cow-poor” and in debt.

Goodnight related to J. Evetts Haley that the two men he most wanted either breaking “point” with him or riding beside him in a stampede were Bose Ikard and Bill Wilson. Wilson was there through the first drive across the Pecos and into New Mexico as well as the next two. It was Wilson who Goodnight took with him to reclaim some of his cattle that were being killed by a butcher in the Raton Range in 1868. The two men took back the cattle and when challenged announced “Send over any sons-of-a-bitches you don’t want to see again” before driving the bovines off.

If you are saying to yourself, “he skipped over the eventful year of 1867”, you are right. That drive deserves a space of its own and not just for the fight Wilson and Loving put up on that bluff on the Pecos. I will try and do justice to it with the next “installment”. But it is good to develop a feel for the man who will play such a central part.

Wilson and his brothers struck out on their own by 1868, went into the Rockies, and settled around Spanish Peaks. In February of 1872, the brothers had ridden into Trinidad and George Wilson ran into a streak of bad luck gambling in the Exchange Saloon. George left the saloon while declaring loudly he had been robbed. He returned shortly with his brother Fayette and another cowboy named Axtell to demand his money back. Sheriff Juan Tafolla tried to quiet Wilson down and in the exchange, there was a scuffle and both pulled guns. George shot Tafolla in the stomach and the sheriff’s gun discharged into the barroom floor.

Frank Bloom had a store at the site which became the First National Bank. He was standing in front of it and talking with one of his cowboys when George and his brother ran up. George had lost his hat in the action back at the Exchange and grabbed the hat off the cowboy’s head and called to Bill who was nearby. They ran east past the Thatcher Store toward an arroyo which at that time had a small footbridge across it. On the other side was the United States Livery Stable where the Wilson horses had been left. A mob of about twenty were hot on their heels. But when everyone in the Wilson party had crossed over, Bill turned and threw his rifle across his stub arm and informed the followers that “the first man on that bridge is dead”.

Years later when Goodnight was recalling the event to J. Evetts Haley, he remarked that he thought the members of the mob were Mexicans and speculated that even if they didn’t understand much gringo they fully understood completely the rifle and the type of man holding it. The Wilson party then mounted their horses and according to the Trinidad Enterprise “rode slowly out of town”.

George Wilson was later killed in Arizona. But “One-Armed” Bill had returned to the Cross Timbers of Texas to ranch and cowboy between the Forks of the Trinity and the Fingers of the Brazos. He married Emma Sheek, a cousin of Charles Goodnight’s stepbrother and lived into the 1920s.

Now it is time to make a gather of my words and talk about that difficult and eventful cattle drive of 1867.

*Note: the picture here is often identified as Bill and Emma Wilson and although there are some doubts about its origin, it is generally accepted as being the couple

The Democrats have sown discord and it threatens the Republic. They have not had a graceful concession since Carter lost. Think about that, for the last 40 years, when a Republican has won, the Democrats have refused a graceful concession. Indeed, they have used legal means to attack the win in 2000 and 2016. Kerry took until the next day to concede to Bush the second time.

Now, the Democrats are openly war gaming ways to avoid the loss, including demanding political concession on amending the Constitution to let Trump win. Their previous candidate for president is openly telling Biden not to concede under any circumstances.

And, there is an open plan, to say “Hey if Trump wins by a landslide on election night, don’t stop fighting, let the mail-in ballots come in, and then Biden will win.” They are telling us how they plan to steal the election. They are sowing the ground to dispute the election.

Now, Trump is having to respond. The Republicans are forced to point out what the Democrats are doing, and be ready to dispute what the Democrats are doing.

This is the fault of the Democrats. This is their doing. For the history of their party, they have always been the sore losers. They have always been the party of prosecution of their enemies. They are the party of succession. They are the party of the Trail of Tears, they are the party of Jim Crow, they are the party of the KKK. They are the party of riots, bloodshed, and refusal to lose at the ballot box. And now they threaten the Republic more than ever, except for when the walked so that they could keep other human beings in bondage.

Good job, Democrats.

Short preamble from me: I was brought up in the Midwest by liberal parents from NY State. My dad is originally from NYC and my mother from Long Island. I was always baffled about why they left NY, where everyone is cool, open-minded, cosmopolitan, and sophisticated.

I went back to “my roots” for college and until HRC won the nomination, spent a lot of time as a knee jerk liberal. So why did my Dad leave NYC? It had to do with being an iconoclast totally uninterested in image — he loves the Midwest, always hated East Coast snobbery and NYC chauvinism. And, as he once deigned to explain, in response to my repeated questioning of his decisions, because he felt that the sins of the popular kids I would meet in the Midwest might be less seductive to me, and ultimately less dangerous to my future. In other words, instead of doing coke and talking about Black Power and Foucault, he preferred that I play beer pong with people in crew cuts and polo shirts (or rather watch them play beer pong).

This calculation of his paid off. I was hopelessly unsophisticated in college, to my great disappointment. Never could overcome the uncoolness of my youthful social life. It always showed through, and I was always too stable to be cool.

This was circa 2003 so the rot wasn’t very advanced. Even the Coolest, most Jaded, East Coast kid I met in college wasn’t violent, and therefore couldn’t hold a candle to Clara Kraebber and her friends.

Preamble over. Remember my post about NYC child psychologist Markus Kraebber and architect wife Virginia Kindred and their lovely child Clara?

Well, turns out the whole group of Clara’s friends are Sarah Lawrence-educated (didn’t I predict that school would have something to do with this?) graphic designer, model, European-vacationing violent Maoists.

By the way, the NY Post has published some of Clara’s musings, about appropriating luxury apartments in NY, a “revolutionary strategy” inspired by Stalin, Trotsky, and the Spanish Civil War.

Interestingly, when the Post called Clara at home at her parents’ 1730 country estate in Litchfield, Connecticut, following her arrest, she was suddenly less inclined to expound on the details of her “revolutionary strategy.” It could have been her opportunity to martyrize herself for the cause, but she is as cowardly and craven as she is violent.

I here pay homage to my dad’s prescience (at that time he was a liberal too!). He saw the writing on the wall. I feel like I have had a close call.