Existe una teoría que intenta probar que el mundo es un pañuelo. Se llama la Teoría de los Seis Grados de Separación, la cual plantea que todas las personas del mundo están conectadas entre sí a través de una cadena de conocidos que no tiene más de cinco intermediarios.
La pregunta es: ¿Alguno de ustedes, refinados lectores, tiene relación directa o indirecta con alguien que haya muerto a causa de la influenza?
Es sólo una pregunta. Tengo esa duda porque yo, que tengo familia grande, amigos y compañeros de trabajo (sí, a pesar de ser un amargado), no me ha tocado saber de un sólo caso que no sean los que se mencionan en los medios. Eso sí: me tocó que a todos en el trabajo les entró la paranoia, se sintieron enfermos, les dieron dolores de cabeza, pidieron el día para irse a checar y a la mera hora no tenían ni madres. Por algo dicen que la mente es cabrona.
Y no es que dude de lo que está sucediendo, lo que me mortifica es que sea cierto y las muertes sean provocadas a propósito para justificar algún fin oscuro. Algo así como el 9/11. Ya ven como son los gringos de hijos de puta.
He escuchado y leído (no en mails cadena ni en presentaciones de Power Point) que supuestamente esto de la influenza es "El Chupacabras" del nuevo milenio; una cortina de humo para tapar la legalización de las drogas, la intervención militar de los Estados Unidos a territorio nacional, la adjudicación del ejército mexicano al pentágono, la imposición de un nuevo impuesto y demás teorías conspiratorias que desgraciadamente a nadie le constan.
Si es una cortina de humo, algo debe de quedar claro: que sea cortina de humo no significa que sea mentira, pero sí una realidad exagerada o manipulada con un trasfondo tenebroso.
La pregunta es: ¿Alguno de ustedes, refinados lectores, tiene relación directa o indirecta con alguien que haya muerto a causa de la influenza?
Es sólo una pregunta. Tengo esa duda porque yo, que tengo familia grande, amigos y compañeros de trabajo (sí, a pesar de ser un amargado), no me ha tocado saber de un sólo caso que no sean los que se mencionan en los medios. Eso sí: me tocó que a todos en el trabajo les entró la paranoia, se sintieron enfermos, les dieron dolores de cabeza, pidieron el día para irse a checar y a la mera hora no tenían ni madres. Por algo dicen que la mente es cabrona.
Y no es que dude de lo que está sucediendo, lo que me mortifica es que sea cierto y las muertes sean provocadas a propósito para justificar algún fin oscuro. Algo así como el 9/11. Ya ven como son los gringos de hijos de puta.
He escuchado y leído (no en mails cadena ni en presentaciones de Power Point) que supuestamente esto de la influenza es "El Chupacabras" del nuevo milenio; una cortina de humo para tapar la legalización de las drogas, la intervención militar de los Estados Unidos a territorio nacional, la adjudicación del ejército mexicano al pentágono, la imposición de un nuevo impuesto y demás teorías conspiratorias que desgraciadamente a nadie le constan.
Si es una cortina de humo, algo debe de quedar claro: que sea cortina de humo no significa que sea mentira, pero sí una realidad exagerada o manipulada con un trasfondo tenebroso.
Yo Guffo... ex compañera de trabajo muerta. Papá de señora que hace la limpieza, muerto.
ResponderBorrarAy Guffo... usualmente me gusta lo que escribes... pero ahora si son las mismas pendejadas populistas...
ResponderBorrarConozco dos casos.
La mama de una amiga mia.
y el amigo de una ex.
Y si, si los conozco, la señora ya no esta grave, pero el otro wey sigue internado. Podrias tratar de investigar antes de escribir las pendejadas que te llegan en mails.
Sobrino en Mexicali.
ResponderBorrarPendejo.
Jajajajaja... bien lo dijiste, Guffo, pinche gente:
ResponderBorrar"La mamá de una amiga, el papá de la señora de la limpieza, una ex compañera a la que ya no veo", jajajajaja.
Puras mentiras. Pónganse a jalar.
Te recomendaria que leyeras la entrada de la epidemia en wikipedia (en ingles).
ResponderBorrarLa pagina de la OMS.
La pagina de la BBC.
Pondria los links... pero mejor que te cueste...
El amigo de una ex... la mamá de la mamá de la señora... jajajaja
ResponderBorrarDigan alguien cercanoooooooo no mamen. esos tenian otra cosa y se sujestionaron y dijeron que era influenzaa.
Si te fijas quienes "conocen" casos son: niños de 19 años en patineta (muy creible su punto de vista), gente del ejido de mexicali (superignorantes, ni como crreerles), viejas histericas que dicen que le dio al papa de la señora del aseo JAJAJAJAJAJAJAAJAJA
Ahi la llevan. comprence sus mascarillas y sus tapabocas porque el mundo se acaba mañana, jajajaj.
Guffo ya aclaró que este post no es suyo, al parecer alguien robó su contraseña o algo así.
ResponderBorrarVean el post de abajo.
Este comentario ha sido eliminado por el autor.
ResponderBorrarLo peor es que se enojan: "Podrias tratar de investigar antes de escribir las pendejadas que te llegan en mails."
ResponderBorrar¿Qué es esto sino investigación?
A mí también me la mentaron en mi blog por hacer la misma pregunta. Mi mamá, la reina de las teorías de la conspiración, diría: son empleaditos de Gobernación, jaja.
Un amigo de carne y hueso dice que tuvo la peor gripa de su vida hace unos diez días, antes del show de la epidemia, y que se asustó y fue al doc y le dio medicinas y se curó sin pedos. También un amigo doctor, confiable y de carne y hueso, me dijo que dos colegas suyos la tuvieron, pero que se curaron sin bronca en cuestión de días con su mata-virus.
A mi pregunta llegaron respuestas parecidas: "ex compañero de trabajo de la prima, muerto", "amigo del primo de la tía Eduviges, muertísimo", etc., pero no les creo un varo.
No sabremos la verdad hasta que uno de nosotros se enferme. Zafo.
Pues a mi no me chingan, pa mi que algun cabron se cogio un marranito y el resto de la historia ya se la saben jajajaja
ResponderBorrarSaludos!!!
LA neta, no mamen. Lo mesmo MESMO se decìa del chupacabras, pero neeeeeee, no mamen ni se unan a la bola de histéricos masificados. Aparte, no tienen por qué insultar (jaja, irónicamente lo digo yo).
ResponderBorrarNeta, para poder opinar, comentaristas, infórmense. Con sus impulsivos, infundados y estúpidos comentarios muestran su ignorancia.
Y la respuesta correcta, WEYES! NO SOMOS NAIDEN (sí, naiden de los que leemos este blog) QUÍMICOS BIÓLOGOS ESPECIALIZADOS EN VIRUS como para afirmar que los muertos son por la putísima epidemia, o que el dolor de cabeza es 'influenzia', weyes, no mamen, investiguen, y no vomiten sus ideas a lo pendejo.
He dicho.
Y Guffo, amo tu blog. Fin.
Yo igual me cago de miedo con las dos. Con que sea verdad y la gente se esté muriendo y con que sea una cortina de humo.
ResponderBorrarYo si soy experto en epidemiología, y trabajo en el sector salud. Y les voy a decir un secreto a voces:
ResponderBorrarEsta madre de la influenza es más lengua que otra cosa. Si, la gente se está muriendo, pero son casos ya extremos de desatención y descuido, pero en el hospital disque recibimos quiensabe cuantos millones de dólares y sólo llegaron vacunas para 2000 personas, y más de la mitad era para "trabajadores" y sus familiares. La verdad temo por mis hijos, pero no por la enfermedad.
yo no, ni a uno solo. Saludos =)
ResponderBorraryo igual sé de casos de banda que enfermó de gripa así loca y se curó pero banda lejana.
ResponderBorrarfamiliares paranoicos tengo muchos, pero ninguno se ha enfermado de esta madre.
y bueno, igual no cuenta, pero el sábado me subí a un pesero que olía bien cabrón a gripa, así mal pedo. pero no me contagié ni nada.
A ver:
ResponderBorrar¡No se me apendejen!... Ambos bandos (pro y contra) denotan ignorancia total. Puede que en efecto sea una conspiración internacional, pero para afirmarlo, deben tener bases, estar bien documentados y dar una opinión objetiva (no como la mamada de este post). Y los que dicen que si es cierta la epidemia de igual forma, documéntense (pero no únicamente eso, y no únicamente en la wikipedia ); piensen analicen...
En fin... Se lo lavan, pinche bola de ignorantes (el tal Guffo y toda su bola de lectores pendejos)…, me voy de aquí para nunca regresar...
FIN
Post Data:
ResponderBorrarCreo que el único que denota sabiduría y conocimiento es “Drumstick”. En efecto, la teoría más acertada hasta el momento por la OMS: “Un zoofilico se cogió a un pobre marranito”.
…Ahora si me voy pa’ no volver.
FIN
Yo si, un amigo del esposo de mi hermana. El es del DF y alla dejo muchos amigos cuando vino a trabajar a Monterrey, y me comentaron cuando estaba empezando lo de la influenza que habia muerto, asi que habia que cuidarnos.
ResponderBorrarSiiiin embargo, como le dije a mi mama, muchas de las muertes son porque no se cuidaron, de dejarlos pasar como "un simple resfrio mas" o "al rato se me pasa". La neta me parece muy sospechoso como se solto el virus justo en el DF, cuando supuestamente viene de Estados Unidos o de Asia, porque dicen que es una variacion del SARS. Tambien le dije que me parece muy sospechoso que de un dia para otro se hiciera la histeria colectiva, en vez de un "ajijo, han habido algunas muertes en las ultimas semanas, hay que preocuparnos", y no algo de un dia para el otro. Siempre ha habido el riesgo de influenza en las temporadas de frio, pero curiosamente ahorita le estan dando mucho auge, pero por algo sera, no existen las coincidencias para mi.
Pero tampoco ayuda la tan saludable dieta que la mayoria de los del DF tienen. Grasas, comidas rapidas, etc. nada que ayude al sistema inmunologico (lo que nos protege de las enfermedades), asi que a webo son mas propensos a enfermarse, junto con la poblacion en general.
Y bendita mente sugestionadora, excelente para hacer que la gente se sienta enferma cuando no tenian nada. Y lo se porque una vez me "autoprovoque" una fiebre para no ir a un evento xP Sufri, pero me di cuenta de que se puede jeje
Ah, y yo no estoy usando cubrebocas. Confio bastante en mi sistema inmunologico.
Bueno, creo que hice un post largo, pero quise poner mi punto de vista en claro. Quien lo haya querido leer, chido =)
Saludos Guffo, que estes bien
hasta el momento no tengo idea de que pedo pero soy enfermero de la clinica oca y ahorita tenemos a 3 internados graves y 7 mas de neumonia recurrente en observacion, solo eso, se nos murio apenas ayer uno pero era un chilango de poca monta que acababa de llegar de mexico, como que intento huir y comoquiera le dio al pobre pendejo.
ResponderBorrarsalu2
claro que si guffo¡¡¡¡
ResponderBorrarEL PRIMO DE UN AMIGO EXPERTO EN HEMORROIDES
hey mamones mexicali no es un ejido :P y aqui no hay muertos por influenza, asi que no nos adjudiquen nada
ResponderBorrarJa, cercanísimos: "EL primo de una vecina de un cabron que frecuenta al portero de la chamba de un concuño que no vino a la fiesta"
ResponderBorrarAcá anda la bola de farolones con su cubrebocas, y no conforme, ayer vi a dos chundos con guantes de doctor en la calle, no mamar.
LO que está destrozando la ePRIdemia (o ya es PANdemia?) es el buen gusto. Diamadres, fatal.
Y lo mejor: Se rascan los güebos y luego el hocicote por debajo del cubrebocas... eso les va a dar ladillas bucales, otra pinche epidemia.
A nadie. Simple.
ResponderBorrarAclaración:
ResponderBorrarEste post sí es mío. Aproveché el escrito que un graciosito subió ayer por la tarde (nunca dejen abierta su cuenta de blog) y lo hice menos "ofensivo" y más a manera de cuestionamiento, sin afirmar ni negar nada.
No se encabronen, gente: es sólo una pregunta. He leído un chingo de notas, reportes, estadísticas, páginas de internet, teorías de conspiración y he escuchado de mucha gente sobre muchos casos.
Lo curioso es que los casos que me ha platicado gente confiable o cercana, son casos de gripa que se ha curado; los casos donde ha habido muertos, son del "amigo del esposo de mi cuñada", "el primo de una amiga", "la comadre de una tía que es enfermera", etc.
Como dicen los gringos: I rest my case.
Buen miércoles.
Nadie.
ResponderBorrarY tengo muchisimos contactos en myspace msn hi5 y todas las mmdas habidas y por haber para tener contacto con ellos(¿ya les pregunte a muchos)y nadie conoce a alguien que murio de influenza.
Mi prima vive en el DF y tampoco conoce a nadie, cortina de humo, burocracia pura o influenza en algun momento nos va cargar la chi.. a todos, si no es en medio de una balacera, de una bilis por un coraje burocratico o de gripe.
Asi que dejar d mamar y ponganse a trabajar.
Yo queria ir al cine hoy, con la pic@#* crisis nomas c puede ir en miercoles y salen con estas mermas.
Respuesta: van varios casos pero sólo 7 confirmados que hayan sido solamente por éste virus, esta cifra puede aumentar cuando terminen los análisis. Muchos casos son por otras complicaciones que ya se tenían.
ResponderBorrarY mire que yo igual no le creía al gobierno con sus estadísticas.. pero luego de la paranoia y de escuchar cientos de pendejadas y rumores de la gente mejor sí le hago caso al sector salud.
De lo que sí deberíamos estar seguros es:
1.- El virus existe.
2.- No es tan mortal como el aviar,pero se contagia de persona a persona.
3.- Hasta el momento el antiviral lo puede curar, si muta ya valió madres.
4.- No hay vacuna para esta variante, la que están aplicando es para H1N1 humano, no el porcino.
5.- El cubrebocas no sirve gran cosa, y menos estos de telita azul como el que me obligaron ponerme.El consejo que casi nadie está siguiendo es el de lavarse frecuentemente las manos.
6.- No vean las noticias de Televisa ni TVAzteca. El amarillista del Loret de Mola está encantado con la noticia.Las del Once del Poli son más imparciales.
6.- Esto sólo es el comienzo, a partir de ahora tendremos que cambiar nuestros cochinos hábitos para evitar contagios no sólo de este virus sino de los próximos que surgan.
Desde el tercer estado con más casos, Iceman.
P.D. Si pueden, escuchen lo que al director del INER, lo que dice es bieeen cabrón pero bien realista, no se anda con pendejadas de "este virus no es mexicano" ni de "ya pronto tendremos una vacuna"
PURA HISERIA COLECTIVA, IGNORANCIA, Y EXAGERACION, YO CREO QUE LA GENTE SE ALUCINA POR NADA, ES INFLUENZA NO EBOLA NO MAMEN, MAS BIEN CREO QUE EN VEZ DE SER INFLUENZA ES INFLUENCIA...
ResponderBorrarNo conozco a nadie que este enfermo de influenza, En cambio conozco a muchas personas victima de la delincuencia. Esa es la verdadera epidemia.
ResponderBorrar"¿De qué nos ha servido hacernos con los canales de difusión? Si repetimos los rumores validados por los medios, y amplíamos su dominación" Oscar Luviano.
ResponderBorrarDenle una checada al corto de The Shock Doctrine... Vale la pena en estos tiempos en que todo mundo nos dice que obedezcamos sin hacer preguntas, pero en el que pocos reparamos en toda la lana que el país está pidiendo prestada al Banco Mundial... especialista en cobrar intereses impagables, por cierto.
For Your Information Only...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_nNJM0kKrDQ
Osea que mi camioneta esta a menos de 5 conocidos?, ya devuelvanmela!
ResponderBorrarGuffo si en tu post dice que son 6 GRADOS de SEPARACION entonces por que no crees como los que te dicen que el papa de la señora de limpieza en el 4 grado ya hay quien lo conoce y en otro caso el 3 asi que si no vas a creer algo por favor no preguntes
ResponderBorrar2 medicos del INER muertos tres dias despues de atender un posible caso. Edades de 30 y 31 años sanos. No es conspiracion, por favor ni de calderon, ni ebrard, ni peña nieto, ni la ONU, OMS, o E.U.A. es real, no es alarma. LO positivo de esto es que la gente deje de ser tan marrana y sea mas higienica en su vida diaria...
ResponderBorrarno que no era este tu Post???
ResponderBorrar..por hay anda una teoría toda loca de que USA al ya no poder hacer el uso de la guerra para fomentar su economía, ahora lo va a hacer por medio de su ramo farmacéutico.
lo que si es cierto es que si es una enfermedad que no hay que tomar a la ligera, pero tampoco caer en la paranoia
yo no, a nadie
ResponderBorrarNo se si alguien alcanzo a grabar un video ke aparecio ayer en YOUTUBE muy temprano que se llama "la verdad sobre la influenza" es de una persona que asegura que esto de la propagación del virus era un arma del gobierno para impedir que varios de los carteles grandes del pais se unieran, que fue por eso que Obama hizo su primer visita oficial a México para entregar el famoso bono de iniciativa contra el narcotrafico, la cosa es que como todo, se les salio de las manos cuando las personas encargadas de implantar el virus decidieron agregar una cepa mas y de esta forma mutaron el virus.
ResponderBorrarLa idea del gobierno era matar solo a unos cuantos en su mayoria narcotraficantes, y pensaban tener todo controlado, ya que para eso ivan a usar el dinerito que les dio Obama.
yo la verdad no puedo asegurar que dicho video sea cierto o falso, lo que si se me hizo muy raro es que en los de YOUTUBE eliminaron el video 4 veces en dos horas ke el chavo lo estuvo subiendo.
aparte seamos realistas el gobierno de México no es el mas listo, y todos sabemos que cuando algo se les sale de control, ellos no saben hacer otra cosa que mas estupideces, no dudemos que esta sea otra de ellas, desgraciadamente hoy es nuestra vida la que esta en juego, asi es que lo unico que podemos hacer es cuidarnos.
Yo opino queeee...
ResponderBorrar1.- No se por que madres se enojan si no es nadie de su familia.
2.- Que alguien se inyecte el virus y corrobore que el Virus no mata devolada. zaffo También.
Saludos Guffo
Pura paranoia, dimes y diretes. Yo no conozco a nadie, ni que este enfermo o haya muerto. Y coincido en que cualquiera de los dos escenarios esta de la chingada.
ResponderBorrarSi es cortina de humo esta funcinando conmadre y si es verdad, pues a cuidarse y se chingo.
Lo triste aqui es que el día que todo esto pase y el mundo vuelva a la normalidad, estaremos de nuevo mas expuestos a morir por un bala perdida o asesinados por un secuestrador expres (no profesional) que por el mentado virus este.
Al pueblo, circo, maroma y teatro.
Ayer estaba en la casa de un alto mando militar del país (su hijo va conmigo en la universidad, pero estamos de webones sin clases jugando Xbox).
ResponderBorrarEstaban de lo mas tranquilos en su casa, y nos contaba su papá que ahora que vino Obamha insertaron a proposito el virus en ciertos cargamentos de cocaina (que fueron estrategicamente ubicados e insertados y los dejaron seguir su destino), para atacar biologicamente a los narcotraficantes y sus consumidores.
De hecho los pocos casos de influenza porcina son cocainomanos (notese en las edades de los enfermos, que ocilan entre los 18 y 30 años).
Si es así como dice el anónimo de las 10:49 y el de las 11:49, me parece genial.
ResponderBorrarQue maten a todos los pinches narcos y adictos, son pura mierda social que estanca el progreso de este país.
...EL PEOR ENEMIGO DE LA HUMANIDAD NO ES OTRO MAS QUE LA IGNORANCIA
ResponderBorrar...la mayor parte de las teorias de conspiración toman fuerza gracias a eso, desde gente que dice que la enfermedad no existe... hasta personas que aseguran que en realidad ya son miles los muertos...
yo solo digo, tomen precauciones, yo si creo que existe la enfermedad, que no es gravem es curable, que lo mas dañino de la misma es el descuido... que claro que muchas personas se han sugestionado....
yo tambien tengo referencias a algunas personas enfermas que no tienen relacion directa conmigo... 2 muertos y un enfermo grave, uno de ellos maestro de una amiga, otro un taquero donde iban unos amigos... y por ultimo un amigo me dijo que suy primo esta grave en el hospital por esto... si tampoco son directos... y espero que asi sigan las cosas...
...por cierto, si quieren leer algo acerca de la influenza... no la porcina, sino la influenza estacional... es un estudio del 2006
ResponderBorrarhttp://www.insp.mx/rsp/_files/File/2006/num%205/MORTALIDAD%20EN%20MEX%20POR%20INFLUENZA.pdf
CLAUDE DALLAS ENTERED the high desert of Idaho and Nevada the way many mountain men had—18 years old and as shy as he was green, holding close to him myths of the raw West. In 1980 he had reached the age of 30, and he was no longer young. His beard had grown full, and after one grueling winter alone in the desert, he kept his brown hair long and tied in a ponytail. He had become a good horseman and a crack shot, and was learning skills that would help him survive on his own deep in the wilderness, the tricks of trapping bobcat and coyote. Later, after it was all over—the allegations of murder, Dallas's disappearance, and the futile manhunt—one friend would lament, "Claude was born 150 years too late."
ResponderBorrarFor a while the sheriff's office received word of five or six Dallas sightings a day, enough to cause one officer to comment during the hunt, "It's a bad time to be wearing a beard." But from the outset all there was to go on was George Nielsen's testimony that Dallas had actually begun his escape at Sand Pass Road in the Bloody Run Hills. Wherever he had been dropped off, Dallas had gained nearly 30 hours head start on his pursuers in territory he knew intimately.
"I've got to believe it when they say this guy could travel 30 or 40 miles a night," Nettleton declared. "He was tough." When it became obvious within a week that Dallas was probably not in the area, the manhunt was suspended. Posters offering a $20,000 reward were later sent to law agencies across the country; reports of Dallas sightings began to pour in from almost every state. None have yet produced the suspect.
Once the manhunt was played out, the search for Bill Pogue's body became paramount. Sonar and ultrasonic devices, scuba divers, tracking dogs, psychics, grappling hooks, bulldozers, helicopters, planes, land vehicles, and nearly 200 people figured in the month-long search. Still the winter desert and mountains yielded nothing.
IN 1972 THE NATIONAL Geographic Society published a book titled The American Cowboy. The volume included two photographs of a peach-fuzzed cowhand on the Little Humboldt Ranch in Nevada; it was Claude Dallas. The author, Bart McDowell, observed in the text, "not every buckaroo can be identified here [on the Owyhee Desert]; some give spurious Social Security numbers to protect the privacy of their past." Although he was barely out of his teens, Claude seems already to have been one such mysterious character. As it turned out, he had his reasons for anonymity.
Few people knew, and no one seems to have cared, that the reclusive boy had come from the East. Born in Virginia in 1950, he was reportedly raised in New York State with four brothers, one sister, and two half-sisters. After graduating from high school in 1968 Dallas headed west, possibly thinking he had left all authority behind.
It is said that one day he just showed up on the Alvord Ranch in southeastern Oregon, carrying his bedroll and a commemorative-edition rifle. There Claude got his first taste of cowboy life. With the money he earned in Oregon, the teen-ager purchased two horses and set off somewhat quixotically to explore the withered frontier. Eventually his wanderings led to the Paradise Valley region in northern Nevada, where he led a cowboy's life, worked harvest on potato farms, dug wells, and generally paid dues. During his first year with the Quarter Circle A outfit in Nevada, Dallas hand-filed a pair of spurs and made his own chaps.
"Anybody can go down and be a cowboy," explained Sheriff Nettleton. "Thirty days with this outfit, 30 days with that outfit. Normally you put five outfits under the belt and you've done something. This guy apparently worked for upwards of 20 or 30 of them. He earned a reputation for being a hard-working loner type. . .clean, neat, and polite."
In 1973 Claude's idyll was shattered. The FBI tracked him down and arrested him for failure to appear for military induction, Dallas blamed the photographs published in The American Cowboy for his arrest, although one FBI agent denied the book led the bureau to him. He was extradited to Columbus, Ohio, where his draft board was located. Later he told friends he had spent a month in custody in Columbus and was fined before being released.
"Claude had bad feelings toward the FBI," said Irene Fischer, who first met Dallas in 1970 when she was a cook with the Quarter Circle A outfit and he was a green, shy cowhand. "Claude's father said that the FBI had harassed that family for years," Irene remembered. "They wouldn't let it rest. They hunted him until they caught him. And when the man put him on the bus back to Nevada he told him, 'Claude, I'll get you, even if it's for income tax evasion.' " Whether the FBI did or did not harass the Dallas family, Claude clearly felt harassed.
Back in Nevada, Dallas resumed the hard, plain life from which he'd been yanked. Although he was capable of discoursing on the evils of the Vietnam War and a wide range of other topics, it was the West that most interested him. Fading arts such as braiding rawhide, bottle collecting, and reloading old cartridges appealed to him, and he was fond of the paintings of Charles M. Russell, particularly a lighthearted work entitled A Bronc to Breakfast.
Sometime around 1975 Dallas started teaching himself how to trap. In recent years, when pelts began to fetch prices in the hundreds of dollars, numerous ranchers and farmers have taken up trapping, though few have done better than break even. But for Dallas trapping was not just a hobby. He considered it a basic necessity for the life he wanted to live. According to older professionals like Santy Mendieta and Frank Aramburu, Basques who have been trapping for 40 and 60 years, respectively, Dallas was only an amateur trapper. Just the same, they say, he brought in respectable pelts.
MANY LAW OFFICERS between Boise and Winnemucca have expressed concern that Dallas might be lionized by the media. Some angrily deny it, but others allow that Claude Dallas cut quite a figure—at least on the face of things. The man was devoted to a life style celebrated in fiction and film, part cowboy and pan trapper. He lived clean and simple. As Sheriff Nettleton observed, "Outside of this one small quirk, he's the kind of guy you could respect." Because of that "one small quirk," what is alleged to have been his role in the murders, Dallas is one of the most wanted men in America.
In March 1976 Dallas was cited and fined for a trapping violation near Eureka, Nevada. It is said that after that incident he added game wardens to his list of aggravations headed by the FBI. He seemed to be more and more in the habit of quietly spurning the law. The traps he set around Bull Camp last January are one example of his civil disobedience. According to the wardens who pulled them, his traps were neither tagged for identification nor gapped for eagle protection, and they were baited. In addition, although Dallas had pur- chased a nonresident trapping license for the state of Idaho, he was at least four days premature in setting out his line.
"I hunt a lot," said Dr. James Calder, a Winnemucca dentist who regularly checked Dallas's teeth. "I've come across Claude out in the desert lots of times. He has camps all over this country. As well as I know him, I always got the cold shoulder when I met him in the desert. Probably why he didn't like you coming around was he always had a deer or something he had shot out of season in his camp. There's no secret about that. He either didn't want you to see what he had shot or he didn't want you to be implicated if he got in trouble for it. I don't know which. I do know Claude believed he had a right to kill animals out of season without regard for game laws."
In the winter of 1978-79, Nevada Department of Wildlife warden Gene Weller confiscated two guns from Dallas as well as traps he believed belonged to the trapper. The peculiar circumstances of that encounter underscore the cat-and-mouse game some hunters and trappers play with game wardens and vice versa. The scenario also places Dallas's alleged statements two years later at Bull Camp in illuminating context.
Late one afternoon, during a routine check of trap lines in a canyon of the Bloody Run Hills, Weller came across a number of baited— and therefore illegal—sets. Because of the location of the traps and the lateness of the hour, Weller decided against waiting for the owner of the traps; he instead confiscated them. The warden left his business card and a note stating why the traps had been seized and who to contact. Early the next morning, as Weller was returning to the canyon,
he saw a red jeep moving toward the canyon mouth. He parked his truck in an arroyo and waited until the driver had departed on foot up the canyon, then drove closer and prepared for a rare event—an arrest of a violator caught red-handed.
"I waited all day," Weller said. "I waited and waited. It was in the winter and the canyon was slipperier than all get-out, and I thought, finally. This guy has slipped and broken his leg. By then it was dark. I called for a sheriffs backup and got a couple of deputies.
"The three of us went up. One of the deputies checked the jeep and found a rifle. He told me it was loaded, with an unexpended [therefore illegal] round in the chamber. We went up the canyon.
"Well, I tracked him in the frozen snow, tracked him to the first trap site, and my business card, which I'd hung on a bait wire, was gone. At this point I circled around with a flashlight. There was another set of tracks coming down, but not on the trail. So 1 tracked these; finally the tracks went up a side hill and I lost the track. . . .1 later found out that he was in fact sitting on the mountain watching me watch for him. He was probably, chuckling the whole time. In retrospect, he could have blown me away at any time that day."
The three officers retreated to their vehicles, confiscated the rifle and a pistol from the jeep, and left. After a few days Dallas appeared at the county courthouse to claim the confiscated guns. He denied that the traps had been his or that the rifle had been loaded. Weller had no evidence that connected Dallas with the traps, and when the deputy who'd opened the rifle was questioned about it, he declined to swear under oath that the round had been a live one. Weller could do nothing but sign the guns over to Dallas. It may have been this incident that Dallas had in mind on January 5, when he allegedly informed Bill Pogue that he would deny the charges if taken to court.
There was another significant postscript to Weller's encounter with Dallas. He remembers, "[Claude] told me, 'You are welcome in my camp.' His camp was very important to him, I found out later. 'But,' he said, 'leave your badge outside.' And 1 told him, 'Claude, 1 can't leave my badge outside.' And he said, 'Well, don't come into my camp, then.'"
This sentiment may illustrate Dallas's distaste for authority, but it explains nothing about the greatest mystery of all: if Jim Stevens's eyewitness account is accurate, why did Dallas drive 70 miles out of the wilderness to dispose of Pogue's body? He had failed to haul the corpse of Conley Elms up to the rim and must have known that the body would not disappear in the waist-deep, slow-moving waters of the Owyhee. With his plan for hiding both bodies ruined, why would he then have driven back to civilization to bury Pogue?
Irene Fischer may have come close to explaining the mystery. "There's still this horrible feeling of why, what was Claude's idea to bring Pogue's body in here," she said. "He was so angry at Pogue that he was just going to make sure that man was never found."
WE'RE CALLED CONSERVATION officers," says Michael Elms. A stocky, bearded man, Elms knew both murder victims well—one was his "little brother" and the other "a very, very close friend." Had he not been ill the day before the shootings, Michael Elms would have been at Bull Camp instead of his brother. Jazz plays softly on his living room radio as he talks about his job. The books on his shelves include a copy of The Whole Earth Catalog and a multi-volume set of The Classics of Philosophy.
"We check hunters and fishermen, trespassers, rustlers. We do quite a bit of public speaking. We're on call for helping with different law enforcement agencies and whatever biological work the department wants us to do. Almost all of us have got at least bachelor of science degrees, quite a number have master's, and there's several Ph.D.'s walking around." Idaho conservation officers earn roughly (1600 per month, and each senior officer is responsible for some 1200 square miles of state, federal, and private land. Their mission is to manage a walking, eating, renewable resource—the stare's wildlife. Because of the nature of their responsibilities, conservation officers must deal with outdoorsmen, most of whom carry guns and a few of whom have no desire to see the law nosing around their campsites.
"We go out and find even fishermen carrying guns and big knives," Elms says. "It's sort of a Wild West syndrome. For example, we have an air force base down the road here [Mountain Home Air Force Base]. As soon as they hit the base some of the men go out and buy a gun, a big knife, and a couple of bandoleers and head out into the hills." One ten-year study conducted by the Wyoming Game and Fish Department showed that a game warden has roughly seven times the chance or being shot at or threatened with a gun as a regular peace officer and almost nine times as great a chance of dying if assaulted.
Much of the job's danger stems from the marginal communications between officers and the distances that often separate wardens from one another. And yet the inherent danger does not appear to have caused any paranoia among Idaho's game wardens—even after the Bull Camp shootings. Dale Baird, chief of law enforcement in the Idaho Department of Fish and Game, explains, "Privately and around campfircs over the years, we've all said that sometime it's going to happen to one of us—just hope it isn't going to be me. So while [the double murder] was a shock, it wasn't a total surprise. You worry about these things, but you can't worry too much or you wouldn't go."
Conley Elms had Struggled for years to obtain his job with Idaho Fish and Game, working at odd jobs and as a part-time biological aide with the department until he was hired as a conservation officer in 1977. He and Michael had grown up on a small ranch near Beaver Marsh, Oregon (population 20 or less), and for four years before his murder Conley and his brother had shared the same occupation with great satisfaction. From all accounts Conley was a man at peace with himself. His main passion was a quiet one—fly fishing. At the time of his death at age 33, he and his wife, Sheryl, were in the final stage of adopting a baby from India.
Comments from various Idaho Fish and Game officers give the impression that Conley Elms was less likely to have been a party to a conflict with Dallas than Bill Pogue. This is not to say that Pogue was responsible for the alleged confrontation, but Elms was probably less threatening to Dallas.
"Bill Pogue was difficult to get to know," says Jerry Thiessen, big-game manager with Idaho Fish and Game and one of Pogue's closest friends. "It rook me six or eight years.... Bill and I would go down to Owyhee County and do what buddies do—look for arrowheads, cook a steak. We built a relationship and a rapport with Owyhee County. He was gentle, he was kind.
"But he had an air about himself that represented authority, even without his uniform on. He had little time for idle chitchat with people he didn't know well. I wouldn't say he was brusque, but he was sometimes short with people. Bill believed you shouldn't dillydally around. If you're not going to enforce the law, don't have the law."
Pogue was a lawman, and most people seern to remember him as such. Thiessen says, "When Bill walked up to you, there was no question in your mind that he represented the law." Pogue's stare, especially intense as the result of an accident to his right eye, made his presence keenly felt. "People remembered that he'd looked at them," says Thiessen. "There wasn't any way you were going to forget the man."
Dr. Calder agrees. "Bill was a tough law officer," he says, "but you've got to be tough around here. He was stern with poachers, people ripping off the wild game." But beneath Pogue's icy demeanor was a warm humor. Having spent part of his life in bunkhouses with cowboys and years as a student of the early mountain men, Pogue admired much the same western period and life Style that Dallas did. In 1964, when he first arrived in Garden Valley, Idaho, to take a job with Idaho Fish and Game, Pogue moved his family into a log cabin. His love of nature and regard for history surfaced most articulately in his artwork. He was a photographer who favored river otters and hummingbirds as subjects. But it was his sketches and paintings that most vividly revealed the inner man.
Pogue's personal favorite was entitled Mountain Man. In this drawing a bright-eyed, bearded character softly touches a single strand of barbed wire, gazing with innocent resignation at the near side of civilization. Inasmuch as Pogue himself accepted civilization and its restricting barbed wire, Mountain Man may have been a self-portrait of sons. It expresses a deeply felt sympathy for the trappers and frontier recluses who fell before the changing times. Except for the resignation in the mountain man's eyes, the drawing could also have been a portrait of Claude Dallas.
In the menagerie of characters Pogue drew, one figure resembles his alleged murderer more closely still. The Trapper depicts a fierce, bearded hunter straddling a dead wolf. Trap in one hand, walking stick in the other, the man in this drawing is clearly defiant, not resigned to the viewer's trespass. Drawn a year before the shootings, the work seems to have presaged the persona Pogue and Elms last encountered.
TO SOME IT WOULD seem that Claude Dallas is a man of almost legendary proportions. The stage is certainly set in his favor: his story brings elements of the western myth—wilderness, solitude, and violence—together. There have even been reports that some people applauded the murders. But Santy Mendieta summarizes a more general feeling among locals when he observes, "It's a sad thing. You can't make a hero out of either of them. What brought it about was that the one was going to drag the other into Boise, or wherever, handcuffed and hogtied. And the other man just wasn't going to go—and he didn't. From what I hear and from what I knew of them, they being the two men they were, [they] would have had the same trouble right out here on the street."
In Idaho capital punishment is now administered by lethal injection, and several law officers have expressed angry hope that Claude Dallas will be the first guinea pig for the new technique. The murders have torn holes in the lives of the victims' families and friends; they wait for the day of justice. But the questions raised by the tragedy have also caused deep anguish for Dallas's closest friends.
"These law boys had a chance to use what I call appropriate common sense," explains Cortland Nielsen, brother of George Nielsen. "They didn't have to push Claude. They could have told him in a right way that someone had reported him. People talk bad about him, but Claude wasn't the sort to waste deer meat."
Nielsen remembers Dallas back when he was a teen-ager beginning the horseback circuit of Nevada that led him. 11 years later, to Bull Camp on the Owyhee. He searches for some negative quality in the boy he watched grow into a man, something that might demonstrate that, even at his worst, Dallas was better than most.
"The only thing wrong with him," he says, pausing, "he let his hair grow. But in this book here, the Bible, it says that long hair is a woman's beauty and it's filth on a man. I told him so, too." Nielsen drops into silence and gropes for a different thought. Almost wish- fully he suddenly booms, "I'm confident Claude is traveling around the world and getting along fine." He falters. "Bur then he's got a conscience, too. So finally it'll hit him too much someday. Then he'll figure a way to get lost and that'll be the end. No one will ever see him again." Nielsen stops, disturbed by the idea he has just ex- pressed. Outside his window enormous winds rip at the topsoil of the solitary ranches perched up and down the valley.
"The only way that he could ever get back, that people will ever see him again, would be if the people [the law] let it be known that. ..that. . .but, see... you can't excuse, you can't. . .it's so tough." At last he concludes, "I just don't know how to call it. I wrote a letter to Norman Vincent Peale to find out right from wrong, what should be done if I ever see Claude, say in Portland or Calcutta next Sunday, other than tell him to pray or turn himself in. I don't know. It's really tough."
Not far down the road from Nielsen lives Dallas's old friend, Irene Fischer. The winter she and Claude worked the Circle A together, Irene and her husband, Walt, gave the lone boy presents and a Christmas meal when all the other hands had departed for the holiday. Now she mourns Claude, almost as if he were a dead younger brother. Her scrapbook contains some of the few photographs in which Dallas ever appeared, and pictures taken for The American Cowboy hang in her home.
During the past few months Fischer has sketched an exquisite fantasy of the moment of the alleged murders. Behind Dallas is a hazy rendition of a western saloon. Buildings and skyscrapers, the urban landscape Dallas repudiated, loom even deeper in the background, tucked in some narrow alley of the trapper's psyche. The romanticized periphery is balanced by the event taking place in the work and the realism of the desert floor in the foreground. In the sketch Dallas is shooting a lawman. Such is the nightmare within the dream.
"I'm very sorry for what he done," Fischer says, "sorry because we'll never see him again. I hope he never gets caught for the simple reason I don't think Claude will ever be taken alive. I wouldn't want him to kill anyone else, and I wouldn't want them to kill him. And I wouldn't want him to end up killing himself. He did make a remark to a friend that if he was caught he'd shoot it out, and that if it got down to his last shell he'd shoot himself before he'd be taken."
That sentiment is less painful to her than another, more personal one, though. Despite her anger at the law for its determined pursuit of Claude Dallas, Fischer has had to compose her own answer to a question that haunts her: what would she have done if this friend of years had arrived at her house with the blood of two dead men on him?
"I've laid awake at night and thought about it," she sighs. "Claude was a dear friend, and I've really had to look inside myself. And I honestly believe that I would have been in my right mind. . .I'm so dead set against. . ." She halts and would rather not say it. "I couldn't have helped Claude. . . .His destiny is in the hands of God now."
CLAUDE DALLAS ENTERED the high desert of Idaho and Nevada the way many mountain men had—18 years old and as shy as he was green, holding close to him myths of the raw West. In 1980 he had reached the age of 30, and he was no longer young. His beard had grown full, and after one grueling winter alone in the desert, he kept his brown hair long and tied in a ponytail. He had become a good horseman and a crack shot, and was learning skills that would help him survive on his own deep in the wilderness, the tricks of trapping bobcat and coyote. Later, after it was all over—the allegations of murder, Dallas's disappearance, and the futile manhunt—one friend would lament, "Claude was born 150 years too late."
For a while the sheriff's office received word of five or six Dallas sightings a day, enough to cause one officer to comment during the hunt, "It's a bad time to be wearing a beard." But from the outset all there was to go on was George Nielsen's testimony that Dallas had actually begun his escape at Sand Pass Road in the Bloody Run Hills. Wherever he had been dropped off, Dallas had gained nearly 30 hours head start on his pursuers in territory he knew intimately.
"I've got to believe it when they say this guy could travel 30 or 40 miles a night," Nettleton declared. "He was tough." When it became obvious within a week that Dallas was probably not in the area, the manhunt was suspended. Posters offering a $20,000 reward were later sent to law agencies across the country; reports of Dallas sightings began to pour in from almost every state. None have yet produced the suspect.
Once the manhunt was played out, the search for Bill Pogue's body became paramount. Sonar and ultrasonic devices, scuba divers, tracking dogs, psychics, grappling hooks, bulldozers, helicopters, planes, land vehicles, and nearly 200 people figured in the month-long search. Still the winter desert and mountains yielded nothing.
IN 1972 THE NATIONAL Geographic Society published a book titled The American Cowboy. The volume included two photographs of a peach-fuzzed cowhand on the Little Humboldt Ranch in Nevada; it was Claude Dallas. The author, Bart McDowell, observed in the text, "not every buckaroo can be identified here [on the Owyhee Desert]; some give spurious Social Security numbers to protect the privacy of their past." Although he was barely out of his teens, Claude seems already to have been one such mysterious character. As it turned out, he had his reasons for anonymity.
Few people knew, and no one seems to have cared, that the reclusive boy had come from the East. Born in Virginia in 1950, he was reportedly raised in New York State with four brothers, one sister, and two half-sisters. After graduating from high school in 1968 Dallas headed west, possibly thinking he had left all authority behind.
It is said that one day he just showed up on the Alvord Ranch in southeastern Oregon, carrying his bedroll and a commemorative-edition rifle. There Claude got his first taste of cowboy life. With the money he earned in Oregon, the teen-ager purchased two horses and set off somewhat quixotically to explore the withered frontier. Eventually his wanderings led to the Paradise Valley region in northern Nevada, where he led a cowboy's life, worked harvest on potato farms, dug wells, and generally paid dues. During his first year with the Quarter Circle A outfit in Nevada, Dallas hand-filed a pair of spurs and made his own chaps.
"Anybody can go down and be a cowboy," explained Sheriff Nettleton. "Thirty days with this outfit, 30 days with that outfit. Normally you put five outfits under the belt and you've done something. This guy apparently worked for upwards of 20 or 30 of them. He earned a reputation for being a hard-working loner type. . .clean, neat, and polite."
In 1973 Claude's idyll was shattered. The FBI tracked him down and arrested him for failure to appear for military induction, Dallas blamed the photographs published in The American Cowboy for his arrest, although one FBI agent denied the book led the bureau to him. He was extradited to Columbus, Ohio, where his draft board was located. Later he told friends he had spent a month in custody in Columbus and was fined before being released.
"Claude had bad feelings toward the FBI," said Irene Fischer, who first met Dallas in 1970 when she was a cook with the Quarter Circle A outfit and he was a green, shy cowhand. "Claude's father said that the FBI had harassed that family for years," Irene remembered. "They wouldn't let it rest. They hunted him until they caught him. And when the man put him on the bus back to Nevada he told him, 'Claude, I'll get you, even if it's for income tax evasion.' " Whether the FBI did or did not harass the Dallas family, Claude clearly felt harassed.
Back in Nevada, Dallas resumed the hard, plain life from which he'd been yanked. Although he was capable of discoursing on the evils of the Vietnam War and a wide range of other topics, it was the West that most interested him. Fading arts such as braiding rawhide, bottle collecting, and reloading old cartridges appealed to him, and he was fond of the paintings of Charles M. Russell, particularly a lighthearted work entitled A Bronc to Breakfast.
Sometime around 1975 Dallas started teaching himself how to trap. In recent years, when pelts began to fetch prices in the hundreds of dollars, numerous ranchers and farmers have taken up trapping, though few have done better than break even. But for Dallas trapping was not just a hobby. He considered it a basic necessity for the life he wanted to live. According to older professionals like Santy Mendieta and Frank Aramburu, Basques who have been trapping for 40 and 60 years, respectively, Dallas was only an amateur trapper. Just the same, they say, he brought in respectable pelts.
MANY LAW OFFICERS between Boise and Winnemucca have expressed concern that Dallas might be lionized by the media. Some angrily deny it, but others allow that Claude Dallas cut quite a figure—at least on the face of things. The man was devoted to a life style celebrated in fiction and film, part cowboy and pan trapper. He lived clean and simple. As Sheriff Nettleton observed, "Outside of this one small quirk, he's the kind of guy you could respect." Because of that "one small quirk," what is alleged to have been his role in the murders, Dallas is one of the most wanted men in America.
In March 1976 Dallas was cited and fined for a trapping violation near Eureka, Nevada. It is said that after that incident he added game wardens to his list of aggravations headed by the FBI. He seemed to be more and more in the habit of quietly spurning the law. The traps he set around Bull Camp last January are one example of his civil disobedience. According to the wardens who pulled them, his traps were neither tagged for identification nor gapped for eagle protection, and they were baited. In addition, although Dallas had pur- chased a nonresident trapping license for the state of Idaho, he was at least four days premature in setting out his line.
"I hunt a lot," said Dr. James Calder, a Winnemucca dentist who regularly checked Dallas's teeth. "I've come across Claude out in the desert lots of times. He has camps all over this country. As well as I know him, I always got the cold shoulder when I met him in the desert. Probably why he didn't like you coming around was he always had a deer or something he had shot out of season in his camp. There's no secret about that. He either didn't want you to see what he had shot or he didn't want you to be implicated if he got in trouble for it. I don't know which. I do know Claude believed he had a right to kill animals out of season without regard for game laws."
In the winter of 1978-79, Nevada Department of Wildlife warden Gene Weller confiscated two guns from Dallas as well as traps he believed belonged to the trapper. The peculiar circumstances of that encounter underscore the cat-and-mouse game some hunters and trappers play with game wardens and vice versa. The scenario also places Dallas's alleged statements two years later at Bull Camp in illuminating context.
Late one afternoon, during a routine check of trap lines in a canyon of the Bloody Run Hills, Weller came across a number of baited— and therefore illegal—sets. Because of the location of the traps and the lateness of the hour, Weller decided against waiting for the owner of the traps; he instead confiscated them. The warden left his business card and a note stating why the traps had been seized and who to contact. Early the next morning, as Weller was returning to the canyon,
he saw a red jeep moving toward the canyon mouth. He parked his truck in an arroyo and waited until the driver had departed on foot up the canyon, then drove closer and prepared for a rare event—an arrest of a violator caught red-handed.
"I waited all day," Weller said. "I waited and waited. It was in the winter and the canyon was slipperier than all get-out, and I thought, finally. This guy has slipped and broken his leg. By then it was dark. I called for a sheriffs backup and got a couple of deputies.
"The three of us went up. One of the deputies checked the jeep and found a rifle. He told me it was loaded, with an unexpended [therefore illegal] round in the chamber. We went up the canyon.
"Well, I tracked him in the frozen snow, tracked him to the first trap site, and my business card, which I'd hung on a bait wire, was gone. At this point I circled around with a flashlight. There was another set of tracks coming down, but not on the trail. So 1 tracked these; finally the tracks went up a side hill and I lost the track. . . .1 later found out that he was in fact sitting on the mountain watching me watch for him. He was probably, chuckling the whole time. In retrospect, he could have blown me away at any time that day."
The three officers retreated to their vehicles, confiscated the rifle and a pistol from the jeep, and left. After a few days Dallas appeared at the county courthouse to claim the confiscated guns. He denied that the traps had been his or that the rifle had been loaded. Weller had no evidence that connected Dallas with the traps, and when the deputy who'd opened the rifle was questioned about it, he declined to swear under oath that the round had been a live one. Weller could do nothing but sign the guns over to Dallas. It may have been this incident that Dallas had in mind on January 5, when he allegedly informed Bill Pogue that he would deny the charges if taken to court.
There was another significant postscript to Weller's encounter with Dallas. He remembers, "[Claude] told me, 'You are welcome in my camp.' His camp was very important to him, I found out later. 'But,' he said, 'leave your badge outside.' And 1 told him, 'Claude, 1 can't leave my badge outside.' And he said, 'Well, don't come into my camp, then.'"
This sentiment may illustrate Dallas's distaste for authority, but it explains nothing about the greatest mystery of all: if Jim Stevens's eyewitness account is accurate, why did Dallas drive 70 miles out of the wilderness to dispose of Pogue's body? He had failed to haul the corpse of Conley Elms up to the rim and must have known that the body would not disappear in the waist-deep, slow-moving waters of the Owyhee. With his plan for hiding both bodies ruined, why would he then have driven back to civilization to bury Pogue?
Irene Fischer may have come close to explaining the mystery. "There's still this horrible feeling of why, what was Claude's idea to bring Pogue's body in here," she said. "He was so angry at Pogue that he was just going to make sure that man was never found."
WE'RE CALLED CONSERVATION officers," says Michael Elms. A stocky, bearded man, Elms knew both murder victims well—one was his "little brother" and the other "a very, very close friend." Had he not been ill the day before the shootings, Michael Elms would have been at Bull Camp instead of his brother. Jazz plays softly on his living room radio as he talks about his job. The books on his shelves include a copy of The Whole Earth Catalog and a multi-volume set of The Classics of Philosophy.
"We check hunters and fishermen, trespassers, rustlers. We do quite a bit of public speaking. We're on call for helping with different law enforcement agencies and whatever biological work the department wants us to do. Almost all of us have got at least bachelor of science degrees, quite a number have master's, and there's several Ph.D.'s walking around." Idaho conservation officers earn roughly (1600 per month, and each senior officer is responsible for some 1200 square miles of state, federal, and private land. Their mission is to manage a walking, eating, renewable resource—the stare's wildlife. Because of the nature of their responsibilities, conservation officers must deal with outdoorsmen, most of whom carry guns and a few of whom have no desire to see the law nosing around their campsites.
"We go out and find even fishermen carrying guns and big knives," Elms says. "It's sort of a Wild West syndrome. For example, we have an air force base down the road here [Mountain Home Air Force Base]. As soon as they hit the base some of the men go out and buy a gun, a big knife, and a couple of bandoleers and head out into the hills." One ten-year study conducted by the Wyoming Game and Fish Department showed that a game warden has roughly seven times the chance or being shot at or threatened with a gun as a regular peace officer and almost nine times as great a chance of dying if assaulted.
Much of the job's danger stems from the marginal communications between officers and the distances that often separate wardens from one another. And yet the inherent danger does not appear to have caused any paranoia among Idaho's game wardens—even after the Bull Camp shootings. Dale Baird, chief of law enforcement in the Idaho Department of Fish and Game, explains, "Privately and around campfircs over the years, we've all said that sometime it's going to happen to one of us—just hope it isn't going to be me. So while [the double murder] was a shock, it wasn't a total surprise. You worry about these things, but you can't worry too much or you wouldn't go."
Conley Elms had Struggled for years to obtain his job with Idaho Fish and Game, working at odd jobs and as a part-time biological aide with the department until he was hired as a conservation officer in 1977. He and Michael had grown up on a small ranch near Beaver Marsh, Oregon (population 20 or less), and for four years before his murder Conley and his brother had shared the same occupation with great satisfaction. From all accounts Conley was a man at peace with himself. His main passion was a quiet one—fly fishing. At the time of his death at age 33, he and his wife, Sheryl, were in the final stage of adopting a baby from India.
Comments from various Idaho Fish and Game officers give the impression that Conley Elms was less likely to have been a party to a conflict with Dallas than Bill Pogue. This is not to say that Pogue was responsible for the alleged confrontation, but Elms was probably less threatening to Dallas.
"Bill Pogue was difficult to get to know," says Jerry Thiessen, big-game manager with Idaho Fish and Game and one of Pogue's closest friends. "It rook me six or eight years.... Bill and I would go down to Owyhee County and do what buddies do—look for arrowheads, cook a steak. We built a relationship and a rapport with Owyhee County. He was gentle, he was kind.
"But he had an air about himself that represented authority, even without his uniform on. He had little time for idle chitchat with people he didn't know well. I wouldn't say he was brusque, but he was sometimes short with people. Bill believed you shouldn't dillydally around. If you're not going to enforce the law, don't have the law."
Pogue was a lawman, and most people seern to remember him as such. Thiessen says, "When Bill walked up to you, there was no question in your mind that he represented the law." Pogue's stare, especially intense as the result of an accident to his right eye, made his presence keenly felt. "People remembered that he'd looked at them," says Thiessen. "There wasn't any way you were going to forget the man."
Dr. Calder agrees. "Bill was a tough law officer," he says, "but you've got to be tough around here. He was stern with poachers, people ripping off the wild game." But beneath Pogue's icy demeanor was a warm humor. Having spent part of his life in bunkhouses with cowboys and years as a student of the early mountain men, Pogue admired much the same western period and life Style that Dallas did. In 1964, when he first arrived in Garden Valley, Idaho, to take a job with Idaho Fish and Game, Pogue moved his family into a log cabin. His love of nature and regard for history surfaced most articulately in his artwork. He was a photographer who favored river otters and hummingbirds as subjects. But it was his sketches and paintings that most vividly revealed the inner man.
Pogue's personal favorite was entitled Mountain Man. In this drawing a bright-eyed, bearded character softly touches a single strand of barbed wire, gazing with innocent resignation at the near side of civilization. Inasmuch as Pogue himself accepted civilization and its restricting barbed wire, Mountain Man may have been a self-portrait of sons. It expresses a deeply felt sympathy for the trappers and frontier recluses who fell before the changing times. Except for the resignation in the mountain man's eyes, the drawing could also have been a portrait of Claude Dallas.
In the menagerie of characters Pogue drew, one figure resembles his alleged murderer more closely still. The Trapper depicts a fierce, bearded hunter straddling a dead wolf. Trap in one hand, walking stick in the other, the man in this drawing is clearly defiant, not resigned to the viewer's trespass. Drawn a year before the shootings, the work seems to have presaged the persona Pogue and Elms last encountered.
TO SOME IT WOULD seem that Claude Dallas is a man of almost legendary proportions. The stage is certainly set in his favor: his story brings elements of the western myth—wilderness, solitude, and violence—together. There have even been reports that some people applauded the murders. But Santy Mendieta summarizes a more general feeling among locals when he observes, "It's a sad thing. You can't make a hero out of either of them. What brought it about was that the one was going to drag the other into Boise, or wherever, handcuffed and hogtied. And the other man just wasn't going to go—and he didn't. From what I hear and from what I knew of them, they being the two men they were, [they] would have had the same trouble right out here on the street."
In Idaho capital punishment is now administered by lethal injection, and several law officers have expressed angry hope that Claude Dallas will be the first guinea pig for the new technique. The murders have torn holes in the lives of the victims' families and friends; they wait for the day of justice. But the questions raised by the tragedy have also caused deep anguish for Dallas's closest friends.
"These law boys had a chance to use what I call appropriate common sense," explains Cortland Nielsen, brother of George Nielsen. "They didn't have to push Claude. They could have told him in a right way that someone had reported him. People talk bad about him, but Claude wasn't the sort to waste deer meat."
Nielsen remembers Dallas back when he was a teen-ager beginning the horseback circuit of Nevada that led him. 11 years later, to Bull Camp on the Owyhee. He searches for some negative quality in the boy he watched grow into a man, something that might demonstrate that, even at his worst, Dallas was better than most.
"The only thing wrong with him," he says, pausing, "he let his hair grow. But in this book here, the Bible, it says that long hair is a woman's beauty and it's filth on a man. I told him so, too." Nielsen drops into silence and gropes for a different thought. Almost wish- fully he suddenly booms, "I'm confident Claude is traveling around the world and getting along fine." He falters. "Bur then he's got a conscience, too. So finally it'll hit him too much someday. Then he'll figure a way to get lost and that'll be the end. No one will ever see him again." Nielsen stops, disturbed by the idea he has just ex- pressed. Outside his window enormous winds rip at the topsoil of the solitary ranches perched up and down the valley.
"The only way that he could ever get back, that people will ever see him again, would be if the people [the law] let it be known that. ..that. . .but, see... you can't excuse, you can't. . .it's so tough." At last he concludes, "I just don't know how to call it. I wrote a letter to Norman Vincent Peale to find out right from wrong, what should be done if I ever see Claude, say in Portland or Calcutta next Sunday, other than tell him to pray or turn himself in. I don't know. It's really tough."
Not far down the road from Nielsen lives Dallas's old friend, Irene Fischer. The winter she and Claude worked the Circle A together, Irene and her husband, Walt, gave the lone boy presents and a Christmas meal when all the other hands had departed for the holiday. Now she mourns Claude, almost as if he were a dead younger brother. Her scrapbook contains some of the few photographs in which Dallas ever appeared, and pictures taken for The American Cowboy hang in her home.
During the past few months Fischer has sketched an exquisite fantasy of the moment of the alleged murders. Behind Dallas is a hazy rendition of a western saloon. Buildings and skyscrapers, the urban landscape Dallas repudiated, loom even deeper in the background, tucked in some narrow alley of the trapper's psyche. The romanticized periphery is balanced by the event taking place in the work and the realism of the desert floor in the foreground. In the sketch Dallas is shooting a lawman. Such is the nightmare within the dream.
"I'm very sorry for what he done," Fischer says, "sorry because we'll never see him again. I hope he never gets caught for the simple reason I don't think Claude will ever be taken alive. I wouldn't want him to kill anyone else, and I wouldn't want them to kill him. And I wouldn't want him to end up killing himself. He did make a remark to a friend that if he was caught he'd shoot it out, and that if it got down to his last shell he'd shoot himself before he'd be taken."
That sentiment is less painful to her than another, more personal one, though. Despite her anger at the law for its determined pursuit of Claude Dallas, Fischer has had to compose her own answer to a question that haunts her: what would she have done if this friend of years had arrived at her house with the blood of two dead men on him?
"I've laid awake at night and thought about it," she sighs. "Claude was a dear friend, and I've really had to look inside myself. And I honestly believe that I would have been in my right mind. . .I'm so dead set against. . ." She halts and would rather not say it. "I couldn't have helped Claude. . . .His destiny is in the hands of God now."
CLAUDE DALLAS ENTERED the high desert of Idaho and Nevada the way many mountain men had—18 years old and as shy as he was green, holding close to him myths of the raw West. In 1980 he had reached the age of 30, and he was no longer young. His beard had grown full, and after one grueling winter alone in the desert, he kept his brown hair long and tied in a ponytail. He had become a good horseman and a crack shot, and was learning skills that would help him survive on his own deep in the wilderness, the tricks of trapping bobcat and coyote. Later, after it was all over—the allegations of murder, Dallas's disappearance, and the futile manhunt—one friend would lament, "Claude was born 150 years too late."
For a while the sheriff's office received word of five or six Dallas sightings a day, enough to cause one officer to comment during the hunt, "It's a bad time to be wearing a beard." But from the outset all there was to go on was George Nielsen's testimony that Dallas had actually begun his escape at Sand Pass Road in the Bloody Run Hills. Wherever he had been dropped off, Dallas had gained nearly 30 hours head start on his pursuers in territory he knew intimately.
"I've got to believe it when they say this guy could travel 30 or 40 miles a night," Nettleton declared. "He was tough." When it became obvious within a week that Dallas was probably not in the area, the manhunt was suspended. Posters offering a $20,000 reward were later sent to law agencies across the country; reports of Dallas sightings began to pour in from almost every state. None have yet produced the suspect.
Once the manhunt was played out, the search for Bill Pogue's body became paramount. Sonar and ultrasonic devices, scuba divers, tracking dogs, psychics, grappling hooks, bulldozers, helicopters, planes, land vehicles, and nearly 200 people figured in the month-long search. Still the winter desert and mountains yielded nothing.
IN 1972 THE NATIONAL Geographic Society published a book titled The American Cowboy. The volume included two photographs of a peach-fuzzed cowhand on the Little Humboldt Ranch in Nevada; it was Claude Dallas. The author, Bart McDowell, observed in the text, "not every buckaroo can be identified here [on the Owyhee Desert]; some give spurious Social Security numbers to protect the privacy of their past." Although he was barely out of his teens, Claude seems already to have been one such mysterious character. As it turned out, he had his reasons for anonymity.
Few people knew, and no one seems to have cared, that the reclusive boy had come from the East. Born in Virginia in 1950, he was reportedly raised in New York State with four brothers, one sister, and two half-sisters. After graduating from high school in 1968 Dallas headed west, possibly thinking he had left all authority behind.
It is said that one day he just showed up on the Alvord Ranch in southeastern Oregon, carrying his bedroll and a commemorative-edition rifle. There Claude got his first taste of cowboy life. With the money he earned in Oregon, the teen-ager purchased two horses and set off somewhat quixotically to explore the withered frontier. Eventually his wanderings led to the Paradise Valley region in northern Nevada, where he led a cowboy's life, worked harvest on potato farms, dug wells, and generally paid dues. During his first year with the Quarter Circle A outfit in Nevada, Dallas hand-filed a pair of spurs and made his own chaps.
"Anybody can go down and be a cowboy," explained Sheriff Nettleton. "Thirty days with this outfit, 30 days with that outfit. Normally you put five outfits under the belt and you've done something. This guy apparently worked for upwards of 20 or 30 of them. He earned a reputation for being a hard-working loner type. . .clean, neat, and polite."
In 1973 Claude's idyll was shattered. The FBI tracked him down and arrested him for failure to appear for military induction, Dallas blamed the photographs published in The American Cowboy for his arrest, although one FBI agent denied the book led the bureau to him. He was extradited to Columbus, Ohio, where his draft board was located. Later he told friends he had spent a month in custody in Columbus and was fined before being released.
"Claude had bad feelings toward the FBI," said Irene Fischer, who first met Dallas in 1970 when she was a cook with the Quarter Circle A outfit and he was a green, shy cowhand. "Claude's father said that the FBI had harassed that family for years," Irene remembered. "They wouldn't let it rest. They hunted him until they caught him. And when the man put him on the bus back to Nevada he told him, 'Claude, I'll get you, even if it's for income tax evasion.' " Whether the FBI did or did not harass the Dallas family, Claude clearly felt harassed.
Back in Nevada, Dallas resumed the hard, plain life from which he'd been yanked. Although he was capable of discoursing on the evils of the Vietnam War and a wide range of other topics, it was the West that most interested him. Fading arts such as braiding rawhide, bottle collecting, and reloading old cartridges appealed to him, and he was fond of the paintings of Charles M. Russell, particularly a lighthearted work entitled A Bronc to Breakfast.
Sometime around 1975 Dallas started teaching himself how to trap. In recent years, when pelts began to fetch prices in the hundreds of dollars, numerous ranchers and farmers have taken up trapping, though few have done better than break even. But for Dallas trapping was not just a hobby. He considered it a basic necessity for the life he wanted to live. According to older professionals like Santy Mendieta and Frank Aramburu, Basques who have been trapping for 40 and 60 years, respectively, Dallas was only an amateur trapper. Just the same, they say, he brought in respectable pelts.
MANY LAW OFFICERS between Boise and Winnemucca have expressed concern that Dallas might be lionized by the media. Some angrily deny it, but others allow that Claude Dallas cut quite a figure—at least on the face of things. The man was devoted to a life style celebrated in fiction and film, part cowboy and pan trapper. He lived clean and simple. As Sheriff Nettleton observed, "Outside of this one small quirk, he's the kind of guy you could respect." Because of that "one small quirk," what is alleged to have been his role in the murders, Dallas is one of the most wanted men in America.
In March 1976 Dallas was cited and fined for a trapping violation near Eureka, Nevada. It is said that after that incident he added game wardens to his list of aggravations headed by the FBI. He seemed to be more and more in the habit of quietly spurning the law. The traps he set around Bull Camp last January are one example of his civil disobedience. According to the wardens who pulled them, his traps were neither tagged for identification nor gapped for eagle protection, and they were baited. In addition, although Dallas had pur- chased a nonresident trapping license for the state of Idaho, he was at least four days premature in setting out his line.
"I hunt a lot," said Dr. James Calder, a Winnemucca dentist who regularly checked Dallas's teeth. "I've come across Claude out in the desert lots of times. He has camps all over this country. As well as I know him, I always got the cold shoulder when I met him in the desert. Probably why he didn't like you coming around was he always had a deer or something he had shot out of season in his camp. There's no secret about that. He either didn't want you to see what he had shot or he didn't want you to be implicated if he got in trouble for it. I don't know which. I do know Claude believed he had a right to kill animals out of season without regard for game laws."
In the winter of 1978-79, Nevada Department of Wildlife warden Gene Weller confiscated two guns from Dallas as well as traps he believed belonged to the trapper. The peculiar circumstances of that encounter underscore the cat-and-mouse game some hunters and trappers play with game wardens and vice versa. The scenario also places Dallas's alleged statements two years later at Bull Camp in illuminating context.
Late one afternoon, during a routine check of trap lines in a canyon of the Bloody Run Hills, Weller came across a number of baited— and therefore illegal—sets. Because of the location of the traps and the lateness of the hour, Weller decided against waiting for the owner of the traps; he instead confiscated them. The warden left his business card and a note stating why the traps had been seized and who to contact. Early the next morning, as Weller was returning to the canyon,
he saw a red jeep moving toward the canyon mouth. He parked his truck in an arroyo and waited until the driver had departed on foot up the canyon, then drove closer and prepared for a rare event—an arrest of a violator caught red-handed.
"I waited all day," Weller said. "I waited and waited. It was in the winter and the canyon was slipperier than all get-out, and I thought, finally. This guy has slipped and broken his leg. By then it was dark. I called for a sheriffs backup and got a couple of deputies.
"The three of us went up. One of the deputies checked the jeep and found a rifle. He told me it was loaded, with an unexpended [therefore illegal] round in the chamber. We went up the canyon.
"Well, I tracked him in the frozen snow, tracked him to the first trap site, and my business card, which I'd hung on a bait wire, was gone. At this point I circled around with a flashlight. There was another set of tracks coming down, but not on the trail. So 1 tracked these; finally the tracks went up a side hill and I lost the track. . . .1 later found out that he was in fact sitting on the mountain watching me watch for him. He was probably, chuckling the whole time. In retrospect, he could have blown me away at any time that day."
The three officers retreated to their vehicles, confiscated the rifle and a pistol from the jeep, and left. After a few days Dallas appeared at the county courthouse to claim the confiscated guns. He denied that the traps had been his or that the rifle had been loaded. Weller had no evidence that connected Dallas with the traps, and when the deputy who'd opened the rifle was questioned about it, he declined to swear under oath that the round had been a live one. Weller could do nothing but sign the guns over to Dallas. It may have been this incident that Dallas had in mind on January 5, when he allegedly informed Bill Pogue that he would deny the charges if taken to court.
There was another significant postscript to Weller's encounter with Dallas. He remembers, "[Claude] told me, 'You are welcome in my camp.' His camp was very important to him, I found out later. 'But,' he said, 'leave your badge outside.' And 1 told him, 'Claude, 1 can't leave my badge outside.' And he said, 'Well, don't come into my camp, then.'"
This sentiment may illustrate Dallas's distaste for authority, but it explains nothing about the greatest mystery of all: if Jim Stevens's eyewitness account is accurate, why did Dallas drive 70 miles out of the wilderness to dispose of Pogue's body? He had failed to haul the corpse of Conley Elms up to the rim and must have known that the body would not disappear in the waist-deep, slow-moving waters of the Owyhee. With his plan for hiding both bodies ruined, why would he then have driven back to civilization to bury Pogue?
Irene Fischer may have come close to explaining the mystery. "There's still this horrible feeling of why, what was Claude's idea to bring Pogue's body in here," she said. "He was so angry at Pogue that he was just going to make sure that man was never found."
WE'RE CALLED CONSERVATION officers," says Michael Elms. A stocky, bearded man, Elms knew both murder victims well—one was his "little brother" and the other "a very, very close friend." Had he not been ill the day before the shootings, Michael Elms would have been at Bull Camp instead of his brother. Jazz plays softly on his living room radio as he talks about his job. The books on his shelves include a copy of The Whole Earth Catalog and a multi-volume set of The Classics of Philosophy.
"We check hunters and fishermen, trespassers, rustlers. We do quite a bit of public speaking. We're on call for helping with different law enforcement agencies and whatever biological work the department wants us to do. Almost all of us have got at least bachelor of science degrees, quite a number have master's, and there's several Ph.D.'s walking around." Idaho conservation officers earn roughly (1600 per month, and each senior officer is responsible for some 1200 square miles of state, federal, and private land. Their mission is to manage a walking, eating, renewable resource—the stare's wildlife. Because of the nature of their responsibilities, conservation officers must deal with outdoorsmen, most of whom carry guns and a few of whom have no desire to see the law nosing around their campsites.
"We go out and find even fishermen carrying guns and big knives," Elms says. "It's sort of a Wild West syndrome. For example, we have an air force base down the road here [Mountain Home Air Force Base]. As soon as they hit the base some of the men go out and buy a gun, a big knife, and a couple of bandoleers and head out into the hills." One ten-year study conducted by the Wyoming Game and Fish Department showed that a game warden has roughly seven times the chance or being shot at or threatened with a gun as a regular peace officer and almost nine times as great a chance of dying if assaulted.
Much of the job's danger stems from the marginal communications between officers and the distances that often separate wardens from one another. And yet the inherent danger does not appear to have caused any paranoia among Idaho's game wardens—even after the Bull Camp shootings. Dale Baird, chief of law enforcement in the Idaho Department of Fish and Game, explains, "Privately and around campfircs over the years, we've all said that sometime it's going to happen to one of us—just hope it isn't going to be me. So while [the double murder] was a shock, it wasn't a total surprise. You worry about these things, but you can't worry too much or you wouldn't go."
Conley Elms had Struggled for years to obtain his job with Idaho Fish and Game, working at odd jobs and as a part-time biological aide with the department until he was hired as a conservation officer in 1977. He and Michael had grown up on a small ranch near Beaver Marsh, Oregon (population 20 or less), and for four years before his murder Conley and his brother had shared the same occupation with great satisfaction. From all accounts Conley was a man at peace with himself. His main passion was a quiet one—fly fishing. At the time of his death at age 33, he and his wife, Sheryl, were in the final stage of adopting a baby from India.
Comments from various Idaho Fish and Game officers give the impression that Conley Elms was less likely to have been a party to a conflict with Dallas than Bill Pogue. This is not to say that Pogue was responsible for the alleged confrontation, but Elms was probably less threatening to Dallas.
"Bill Pogue was difficult to get to know," says Jerry Thiessen, big-game manager with Idaho Fish and Game and one of Pogue's closest friends. "It rook me six or eight years.... Bill and I would go down to Owyhee County and do what buddies do—look for arrowheads, cook a steak. We built a relationship and a rapport with Owyhee County. He was gentle, he was kind.
"But he had an air about himself that represented authority, even without his uniform on. He had little time for idle chitchat with people he didn't know well. I wouldn't say he was brusque, but he was sometimes short with people. Bill believed you shouldn't dillydally around. If you're not going to enforce the law, don't have the law."
Pogue was a lawman, and most people seern to remember him as such. Thiessen says, "When Bill walked up to you, there was no question in your mind that he represented the law." Pogue's stare, especially intense as the result of an accident to his right eye, made his presence keenly felt. "People remembered that he'd looked at them," says Thiessen. "There wasn't any way you were going to forget the man."
Dr. Calder agrees. "Bill was a tough law officer," he says, "but you've got to be tough around here. He was stern with poachers, people ripping off the wild game." But beneath Pogue's icy demeanor was a warm humor. Having spent part of his life in bunkhouses with cowboys and years as a student of the early mountain men, Pogue admired much the same western period and life Style that Dallas did. In 1964, when he first arrived in Garden Valley, Idaho, to take a job with Idaho Fish and Game, Pogue moved his family into a log cabin. His love of nature and regard for history surfaced most articulately in his artwork. He was a photographer who favored river otters and hummingbirds as subjects. But it was his sketches and paintings that most vividly revealed the inner man.
Pogue's personal favorite was entitled Mountain Man. In this drawing a bright-eyed, bearded character softly touches a single strand of barbed wire, gazing with innocent resignation at the near side of civilization. Inasmuch as Pogue himself accepted civilization and its restricting barbed wire, Mountain Man may have been a self-portrait of sons. It expresses a deeply felt sympathy for the trappers and frontier recluses who fell before the changing times. Except for the resignation in the mountain man's eyes, the drawing could also have been a portrait of Claude Dallas.
In the menagerie of characters Pogue drew, one figure resembles his alleged murderer more closely still. The Trapper depicts a fierce, bearded hunter straddling a dead wolf. Trap in one hand, walking stick in the other, the man in this drawing is clearly defiant, not resigned to the viewer's trespass. Drawn a year before the shootings, the work seems to have presaged the persona Pogue and Elms last encountered.
TO SOME IT WOULD seem that Claude Dallas is a man of almost legendary proportions. The stage is certainly set in his favor: his story brings elements of the western myth—wilderness, solitude, and violence—together. There have even been reports that some people applauded the murders. But Santy Mendieta summarizes a more general feeling among locals when he observes, "It's a sad thing. You can't make a hero out of either of them. What brought it about was that the one was going to drag the other into Boise, or wherever, handcuffed and hogtied. And the other man just wasn't going to go—and he didn't. From what I hear and from what I knew of them, they being the two men they were, [they] would have had the same trouble right out here on the street."
In Idaho capital punishment is now administered by lethal injection, and several law officers have expressed angry hope that Claude Dallas will be the first guinea pig for the new technique. The murders have torn holes in the lives of the victims' families and friends; they wait for the day of justice. But the questions raised by the tragedy have also caused deep anguish for Dallas's closest friends.
"These law boys had a chance to use what I call appropriate common sense," explains Cortland Nielsen, brother of George Nielsen. "They didn't have to push Claude. They could have told him in a right way that someone had reported him. People talk bad about him, but Claude wasn't the sort to waste deer meat."
Nielsen remembers Dallas back when he was a teen-ager beginning the horseback circuit of Nevada that led him. 11 years later, to Bull Camp on the Owyhee. He searches for some negative quality in the boy he watched grow into a man, something that might demonstrate that, even at his worst, Dallas was better than most.
"The only thing wrong with him," he says, pausing, "he let his hair grow. But in this book here, the Bible, it says that long hair is a woman's beauty and it's filth on a man. I told him so, too." Nielsen drops into silence and gropes for a different thought. Almost wish- fully he suddenly booms, "I'm confident Claude is traveling around the world and getting along fine." He falters. "Bur then he's got a conscience, too. So finally it'll hit him too much someday. Then he'll figure a way to get lost and that'll be the end. No one will ever see him again." Nielsen stops, disturbed by the idea he has just ex- pressed. Outside his window enormous winds rip at the topsoil of the solitary ranches perched up and down the valley.
"The only way that he could ever get back, that people will ever see him again, would be if the people [the law] let it be known that. ..that. . .but, see... you can't excuse, you can't. . .it's so tough." At last he concludes, "I just don't know how to call it. I wrote a letter to Norman Vincent Peale to find out right from wrong, what should be done if I ever see Claude, say in Portland or Calcutta next Sunday, other than tell him to pray or turn himself in. I don't know. It's really tough."
Not far down the road from Nielsen lives Dallas's old friend, Irene Fischer. The winter she and Claude worked the Circle A together, Irene and her husband, Walt, gave the lone boy presents and a Christmas meal when all the other hands had departed for the holiday. Now she mourns Claude, almost as if he were a dead younger brother. Her scrapbook contains some of the few photographs in which Dallas ever appeared, and pictures taken for The American Cowboy hang in her home.
During the past few months Fischer has sketched an exquisite fantasy of the moment of the alleged murders. Behind Dallas is a hazy rendition of a western saloon. Buildings and skyscrapers, the urban landscape Dallas repudiated, loom even deeper in the background, tucked in some narrow alley of the trapper's psyche. The romanticized periphery is balanced by the event taking place in the work and the realism of the desert floor in the foreground. In the sketch Dallas is shooting a lawman. Such is the nightmare within the dream.
"I'm very sorry for what he done," Fischer says, "sorry because we'll never see him again. I hope he never gets caught for the simple reason I don't think Claude will ever be taken alive. I wouldn't want him to kill anyone else, and I wouldn't want them to kill him. And I wouldn't want him to end up killing himself. He did make a remark to a friend that if he was caught he'd shoot it out, and that if it got down to his last shell he'd shoot himself before he'd be taken."
That sentiment is less painful to her than another, more personal one, though. Despite her anger at the law for its determined pursuit of Claude Dallas, Fischer has had to compose her own answer to a question that haunts her: what would she have done if this friend of years had arrived at her house with the blood of two dead men on him?
"I've laid awake at night and thought about it," she sighs. "Claude was a dear friend, and I've really had to look inside myself. And I honestly believe that I would have been in my right mind. . .I'm so dead set against. . ." She halts and would rather not say it. "I couldn't have helped Claude. . . .His destiny is in the hands of God now."
un amigo enfermo... un vecino muerto.
ResponderBorrarEntre todos los que han dicho que tienen a una ex compañera muerta, a un amigo, el taquero, el de la limpieza, etc etc Ya pasaron mas de los 7 muertos OFICIALES.. ¿raro no? Ahora resulta que todo Mexico lee a Guffo.
ResponderBorrarSaludos!!
JAJAJAJAJAJAJA, que pinche risa con la primer vieja toda histerica poniendo su lista de muertos conocidos y pone "el papá de la señora del aseo", JAJAJAJJAJA.
ResponderBorrarY mas risa el pendejo que quiere póner a Mexicali entre las estadísticas y miente diciendo que su sobrino murió. En Mexicali se muere la gente no por influenza, si no proque no hay hospitales y viven aun en la edad de las cavernas ajajjaja.
Y es cierto: con sus muertos se elevan un chingo las estadisticas que tanto defienden, jajajaja
ches mentirosooooooosssssss
Si conocen a tanto muerto y enfermo, por quéno los reportan. Nomás aquí ya dijeron conocer a más de 200 jajajajajaja
ResponderBorrarYo si creo q sea una cortina de humo, todo para meternos otro ROBAPROA. Lo mismo de siempre, los mexicanos somos unos pendejos que todo lo que sale en la tele lo creen sin preocuparse de informarse. Pinche ignorancia de siempre. Si creo en lo que dices Guffo. Saludos.
ResponderBorrarsi, son muchas las personas que afirman que hay muertos, pero ni tan siquiera así se puede saber si es cierto. Puede que hayan muerto de otras causas pero como toda la gente anda histérica lo primero que le viene a la mente es echarle la culpa a la influenza, cuando muertes siempre ha habido.
ResponderBorrarBueno guffo..
ahí luego.
"lo primero que le viene a la mente es echarle la culpa a la influenza, cuando muertes siempre ha habido."
ResponderBorrarCreo que ha sido el comentarista más sensato. Realmente la gente vive en una utopía donde la gente NO MUERE. O sea no tienen en mente que todos nos vamos a morir, algunos de influenza, algunos quemados, algunos asesinados, algunos ahogados, etcétera. ES NORMAL QUE LA GENTE MUERA DIARIAMENTE, hay una tasa de mortalidad promedio, que creen que si se murió el amigo de la prima del vecino por una enfermedad respiratoria, es algo EXTRAÑO y tenemos que volvernos paranoicos? No mamen! La gente se muere!!
Dentro de la tasa de mortalidad hay un porcentaje FIJO de muertes por enfermedades respiratorias. Ya parece que ahorita nadie se puede morir de gripa o neumonia o bronquitis o enfisema porque seguro es INFLUENZA.
No mamen. Por cierto el post, muy bueno. Saludos.
Por cierto, qué pedo con el comentario kilométrico? :S
ResponderBorrarla gente se está volviendo hipocondriaca de manera exagerada.
ResponderBorrarshalee. que miedo.
Eso junto con la ignorancia son la peor enfermedad. si que sí.
Opino que no hay que caer en extremismos ("el virus no existe", "todos nos vamos a morir"). Ni descuidarnos ni apanicarnos.
ResponderBorrarDespués de todo, a nadie la consta LA verdad. Si la ignorancia es una enfermedad, pues todos estamos enfermos en este caso.
Saludos.
Bueno, a Camacho Solís lo conocemos todos, y él la tuvo...
ResponderBorrarhttp://www.eluniversal.com.mx/notas/594634.html
Gracias a todos por comentar. Interesantes todos los puntos de vista, sobre todo los que hablan de teorías conspiratorias, jojojojo.
ResponderBorrarP.D. Chingue a su madre el que puso el comentario kilométrico.
Para mí que ese post también lo escribiste tí (el anterior que salió ayer) pero decidiste cambiarlo porque estaba muy radical y te iban a llover criticas.
ResponderBorrarLástima, antes cuando eras menos famoso eras más duro y directo, pero ahora con tanto fan y anuncio, pues entiendo que debes suavizar tu discurso.
Como quiera te leo con gusto. Besos!
¿Quién de nosotros tiene relación directa o indirecta con habitantes de la República de Eritrea?
ResponderBorrarPor lo tanto, por la inexorable lógica de la premisa de esta entrada, los eritreos no existen.
Y del comentario kilométrico, ¿por qué no lo tira a la basura de donde nunca debió de haber salido?
¿Cuándo le ha importado a Guffo que le lluevan críticas y chingazos aun y escribiedno las pendejadas más pendejas del mundo?
ResponderBorrarPinche pelón culero aguanta bara y me consta que no borra coments aunque le digan que vaya a chingar a su puta madre JAJAJAJAJAJ
Si es una cortina de humo para que no se sepa que te la comes.
ResponderBorrarEl anonimo pendejo de la 1:25 es el tipico cagenge pretencioso que se siente viviendo en Inglaterra el pendejo...de seguro solo hay lugares y hospitales decentes donde tu estas, no es asi?
ResponderBorrarY en cuanto al post del Guffo, pues, yo solo se que no se nada, ni a quien creerle tanta vaina; aunque muchos de esos rumores se oyen medio logicos...
Ni pedo, dijo el tapado...a seguir chingandole...chido su post carnal...
Saludos desde Phoenix
noo yo no creo en esto, si nos ponemos a pensar es basntante sospechoso y hay bastantes contradicciones:
ResponderBorrar1 no es curioso que se desatara el virus DIAS despues de que Obhama vino a Mexico??
2 el dia que se desato la paranoia se APROBO la portacion de droga
3 las contradicciones: habia cientos de muertos y ahora solo 7
4 es un virus nuevo... como es posible que de un dia para otro ya haya vacuans y medicamentos y dias despues digan k no hay vacuna para esa enfermedad??
Pero bueno es i humilde punto de vista y no, no conozco a nadie enfermo y mucho menos muerto!! saludos guffo
tengo una tía que trabaja en un hospital público en Tlalpan -cd de méxico- y dice que ahí se han presentado 6 muertos
ResponderBorrarYa tengo mi playerilla del escuadrón :D hehe
ResponderBorrarte anexo este link:
ResponderBorrarhttp://www.tu.tv/videos/influenza-o-distraccion-economica
Lo mejor de la conspiración fue el temblor en el df. Les quedo que ni mandado a hacer. Son unos fregones de veras
ResponderBorrarpor cierto, acabo de leer aqui en los comentarios que en el df tambien tenemos la fama de que comemos mal! que puras garnachas y grasa. WOW. Eso si es nuevo, ah! y una generalización que tiene poco de verdad.
ResponderBorrar¡sexo con becerritoos!
ResponderBorrarun amigo :/
ResponderBorrarEste comentario ha sido eliminado por el autor.
ResponderBorrarEste comentario ha sido eliminado por el autor.
ResponderBorrarSimplemente ya no se sabe en que creer... nuestro gobierno nos ha vuelto incredulos, los medios de comunicacion no sirven para otra cosa que no sea apendejar a la gente. Al final el resultado sera el mismo: la gente pobre mas jodida y los ricos mas ricos.
ResponderBorrarTodos podemos decir lo que queramos, sino quieren creerlo simplemente no lo hagan y si van a escribir opiniones por favor háganlo con un poco de respeto, que detrás del monitor hay una persona como ustedes leyendo.
ResponderBorrarHola Guffo... había puesto un comentario un tanto largo, como acostumbro, jaja, de hecho dos(qué frustrada!)... pero como que me dieron ganas de extenderlo un poco más, jejejejeeee, así que me dije: MEJOR VAS A HACER UN POST EN RESPUESTA O COMO COMENTARIO EXTENDIDO DE LA ENTRADA DE GUFFO.
ResponderBorrarNo sea que luego te manden a chingar a tu madre como el del comentario en Inglés, jajaja.
So... ahi está ya mi entrada... favor de pasar a mi blog a leerla, si?
GRACIAS!!!
SALUDOS!
yo tengo relación de tercer grado con gente que se enfermó de influenza, que le dieron todos los síntomas, aunque nu hubo necesidad de hospitalizarlos, sino que se les dio tamiflu y afortunadamente se aliviaron: son dos hermanos de mi novia gulp, bien cerca
ResponderBorrarchispas . . . es que yo tampoco conozco a nadie enfermo, pero me me cuesta trabajo creer que hayan inventado algo tan grande a nivel internacional . . no sé, es solo mi opinión
ResponderBorrarA ver cabrones , cuando la gente se muere por "intoxicacion de plomo" como en tijuana y en la frontera que fue mas comun hace unas semanas que empezo calderon con la lucha , nadie decia nada? Quien de aqui tiene familiares narcos que hayan muerto? en la tele salen los muertos pero quien los conoce? a lo mejor el gobierno ni ha matado tantos y solo va y se tranza unos muertitos no reclamados y asi se ve muy chingon frente al narco. A ver cabrones ahi no se quejaban?
ResponderBorrarSI la gente estaba hasta la madre del narco de las estafas de estos hacia la gente honesta, no seria mas una cortina de humo que el gobierno repita a cada rato que esta luchando contra el narco ? y mientras a la gente le valdria puro chile si suben impuestos o se aprueban prestamos , porque el problema que esta a la vuelta de la esquina, en sus calles y ciudades se esta combatiendo.
=== CONSTRUYE TU PROPIO COMPLOT!!! ===
ResponderBorrarDiviértete explotando la ignorancia y la paranoia de la gente haciendo tu propio complot sobre la fiebre porcina. Es muy fácil, sólo sigue los siguientes pasos:
* Primero, elige un agente siniestro que está detrás de todo (¡sé creativo! ¡Puedes mezclarlos y crear combinaciones fantásticas!) Estos son algunos sospechosos comunes:
o El gobierno para controlar a la gente.
o El PRD para desestabilizar al gobierno.
o La ONU para dominar el mundo.
o La industria farmacéutica para ganar dinero.
o La industria de tapabocas y desinfectantes.
o Los nazis para acabar con razas inferiores.
o Los terroristas (islámicos, marxistas, fascistas, etc.)
o La prensa para generar noticias.
o Los especuladores para lucrar.
o La industria del pollo para desprestigiar al cerdo.
o Los cerdos para que ya no se los coman.
o Los extraterrestres para exterminar a la humanidad.
o Dios para castigar a este mundo pecador.
o Satanás por ojete.
* Escoge un puñado de datos vagamente relacionados (no importa mucho el tipo de datos ni si son ciertos; pueden ser datos económicos, eventos políticos, fechas cabalísticas, citas bíblicas, eventos históricos, profecías antiguas, etc.)
* Mézclalos en una narrativa ambigua pero con cierta coherencia.
* Agrega frases y preguntas sugerentes, como “piénsalo bien y verás”, “¿por qué no hay más información sobre…?”, “qué casualidad que…”, “es igual que cuando nos engañaron aquella vez que…”, “mira el video de…”
* Se recomienda poner un elemento de autoridad no comprobable, “me lo dijo un pariente que trabaja en el gobierno…”, “un amigo muy confiable que tiene contactos en la industria…”, “mi tía Chuchis que sin querer escuchó una conversación privada…”.
* Incluye reflexiones personales y altruistas que le den credibilidad a tu mensaje, como “ustedes me conocen y saben que no acostumbro enviar este tipo de mensajes, pero estoy muy preocupado.”
* Motiva a que se propague “Por favor envía esto a todos tus conocidos, para que se sepa la verdad.”
* Envíalo al mayor número de personas posible y siéntate a esperar. Si tienes suerte, en unas horas te llegará de nuevo, a lo mejorado con “mutaciones” ingeniosas y divertidas.
Como sabes, las cosas nunca son como las pintan y siempre hay algo siniestro detrás de cualquier evento importante. Aprovecha que en este puente la gente va a estar encerrada en sus casas con mucho tiempo para especular.
Por favor envía esto a todos tus conocidos, para que se sepa la verdad.
lo mejor es la plaqueta poniendo:
ResponderBorrar¿Qué es esto sino investigación?
jajajajjajaa, la perdimos desde hace tiempo y no nos dimos cuenta.
No entiendo por que se enojaron tanto algunos méndigos borregos, han de haber sido tratados con este revolucionario metodo:
ResponderBorrarhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_nNJM0kKrDQ&feature=related
"...dicen que fue El Narco, acorralado por la implacable justicia mexicana (!) y, junto con E.E.U.U.; liberaron un virus sintético para mantener ocupado al ejército. Mientras que las vacunas, que fueron desarrolladas previamente; son resguardadas secretamente en algún lugar de las Rocallosas y sólo podrán ser adquiridas en AMEROS"
ResponderBorrar¡¡¡JAJAJAJA!!!... (JURO QUE SI NO FUERA PORQUE SE ME OCURRIÓ A MÍ, YA ME HUBIERA MUERTO; ¡¡¡PERO DE RISA!!!)
Mi hermano
ResponderBorrarDejen sus teorías estúpidas. Se siente de la verga cuando te dicen que tu hermanito chiquito está enfermo. Se está atendiendo, pero de cualquier manera creo que nadie de mi familia dormirá bien hasta saber que se recuperó.
Omar Dávila
Cuantos millones de mexicanos hay? y cual es el porcentaje de infectados (ni mencionar muertos) Es mas facil que te atropellen en la calle a que te infectes con las medidas que se han tomado. Lo peligroso de esta gripe es que si no sabes que pedo te dejas morir pero con toda la informacion que hay es muy dificil que el numero de muertos se levante mucho, por lo menos aqui en mexico.
ResponderBorrarQue onda Guffo, yo pienso igual, que bueno que te animaste a hacer este experimento.
ResponderBorrarPienso que están haciendo demasiado teatro para lo que en realidad está sucediendo. Yo por trabajo viajo mucho a Jalisco y a Tamaulipas y no he escuchado a absolutamente nadie que diga que tenga un familiar enfermo. Tampoco conozco directamente a nadie enfermo.
Incluso el médico de una empresa en Reynosa que es cliente de nosotros se informó en las clínicas para ver si había mucha gente infectada y le dijeron que no había nadie.
Me parece que la teoría de la cortina de humo es muy probable. No dudo que sí haya gente enferma con este virus, pero no creo que sea tanta como para andar haciendo tanto ruido y menos para decretar un paro de labores nacional...
La teoría de la coca con virus se me hace divertida...
En fin... les mando un saludo a todos...
Ánimo!
PINCHES LECTORES IMBECILES Y ANIMALES QUE TIENES GUSTAVITO:
ResponderBorrarlEYENDO LAS PENDEJADAS QUE INVENTAN Y HACIENDO CUENTAS, AQUI NAMAS VAN LOS MUERTOS QUE DICE EL GOBIERNO JAJAJAJAJJAJA. CON QUE CARA VAN A DESMENTIR LO QUE DIJERON, BOLA DE ANIMALES???? A VER, VENGAN A DAR DATOS A ENSEÑAR LA FOTO DE SU SOBRONO MUERTO, DEN PRUEBAS DEL PAPA DE LA SEÑORA DEL ASEO, JAJAJAJAJAJ
EN SERIO QUE PINCHE GENTE SIN QUE HACER, DEJEN DE VER A LOPEZDORIGA Y HECHOS BOLA DE PENDEJOS ANIMALES IMBECILES
un virus contagiable entre humanos se puede distribuir por todo el mundo en solo 60 horas, lo falso seria mas bien que las cifras son muy bajas?
ResponderBorrarharian todo este desmadre mundial solo por una stupida legalizacion de poder traer 1 tacha y otras cosillas?
la oms sta tan pendeja?
sea falsa o no, creo que debemos tomar nuestras precauciones de higiene, y por cierto el cubrebocas no cubre del virus, quien pitos les dijo que protegia contra este supuesto nuevo virus, es solo para dar falsa seguridad a la poblacion
no estabas tan errado...
ResponderBorrarhttp://www2.esmas.com/salud/060531/como-vemos-epidemia
Conste que me zurra televisa
wow este si es un blog exitoso XD
ResponderBorrarey men, si amm mi tio tiene influenza.
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ResponderBorrarTo be a good benign being is to have a kind of openness to the mankind, an ability to trust unsure things beyond your own restrain, that can lead you to be shattered in very outermost circumstances for which you were not to blame. That says something very outstanding thither the prerequisite of the principled life: that it is based on a conviction in the up in the air and on a willingness to be exposed; it's based on being more like a weed than like a sparkler, something somewhat tenuous, but whose acutely special beauty is inseparable from that fragility.
ResponderBorrarn the whole world's sustenance, at some dated, our inner fire goes out. It is then bust into passion at hand an encounter with another magnanimous being. We should all be indebted for those people who rekindle the inner transport
ResponderBorrarIn the whole world's time, at some time, our inner pep goes out. It is then blow up into flame beside an face with another hominoid being. We should all be thankful quest of those people who rekindle the inner inclination
ResponderBorrarAs your faith is strengthened you make declare that there is no longer the emergency to have a sense of repress, that things will stream as they will, and that you will bubble with them, to your monstrous delight and benefit.
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I am Glad i ran across this blog.Added guffo.blogspot.com to my bookmark!
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