The Devil's Highway Read Online Free PDF

didn’t. If you did, you were one of the Elect, the Chosen. If not, well, you would be on the outside looking in, if said Apocalypse ever came to pass. Dangerous notions, common ideas in troubled times.
    DesertRat419 had mentioned The Compound. Was there, then, some sort of gathering place for the True Believers, This Army of Redemption, out there in the West Texas desert?
    I couldn’t turn anything further up on Internet searches. Google searches for militia compounds in the USA brought results from Alaska to upstate New York, from Southern California, and even some in the Yukon in Canada. Many of the militias had similar beliefs to Tolbert’s group, while others had extremist views, some even rejecting taxation as unconstitutional. Some were small private armies, while others were integrated within their communities, and a few even recognized as responsible and viable political entities in their local governments.
    Not all militias were alike, I gathered. Their beliefs ran the gamut from heart-felt reverence for the Constitution and the Founders to government-hating, neo-Luddite creeds. There had been a number of shootouts between Law Enforcement various agencies and some of these militia groups, while other militias had actually aided Law Enforcement in searches for missing persons. The irony of that didn’t escape me. I pulled up Wikipedia and typed in Tolbert’s name, to find out more about him.
    He was dead.
    Elihu Glendower Tolbert, (January 11, 1940-March 23, 2010.) The dates proclaimed. Reading the article, I saw that Tolbert, the son of Welsh immigrants, had served with great distinction in the United States Army, and received a battlefield commission in the Viet Nam War, where he served in combat for over three years. He was the recipient of the Bronze and Silver Star, the Purple Heart (twice), and was also twice cited for conspicuous gallantry in the face of the enemy. Drafted as a private, he’d retired as a colonel, after, late in his career, his judgment had been called into question.
    It seemed the good Colonel had threatened several of his own men with summary execution when they refused to advance against enemy fire in Nicaragua. Air cover had been spotty due to bad communications, and ground operations had been muddled. In the confusion, some men had balked at advancing under enemy fire. The Colonel had whipped out his side arm and threatened some teenage soldiers with the ultimate punishment for their timidity.
    After that, Tolbert was quietly cashiered, though allowed to keep his pension, and his outstanding service record went unblemished, with the incident only noted in an attachment. Charges had been dropped without further comment. I’d been in the Army, served as an MP in some combat zones, and I knew how weird things could get when there were hostile rounds whizzing over your head. I also knew Army politics pretty well.  
    The Colonel had been in the service long enough that he would have had some friends way up the chain of command, and no doubt at least a brigadier among them had pulled some strings for their old pal Colonel Tolbert. So he’d retired, written his Manifesto, and started his own little Army of Redemption to get ready for the end that he saw coming. As I read on, there it was, a partial conformation of what I suspected:
    Until his death, Tolbert led the Redemption Army at its home post, which is situated at a secretive location near the West Texas Border.
    I switched back to Google Street View’s panorama of Van Horn. Van Horn was, indeed, very close to the West Texas border. The mention of Delgado was still a mystery, but one, I hoped, a visit to Van Horn would soon explain.

 
    Chapter 6
     
    I came into town on Highway 10. I had flown over Van Horn enroute to the storied city of El Paso. Therefore I had to backtrack to Van Horn over 120 miles of desert highway in a rented Nissan SUV. It was rugged country, the colors of rust and battleship hulls, with a brooding blue sky