The Outlaw Carl K

I met Carl K at a dance in the old mining town of Lake Valley when I was sixteen years old, through a mutual friend who had known him all his life. Carl came from an old ranching family having roots in the rough and tumble days of early New Mexico. He was a handsome young man then who had an easy way about him, and a confident smile that seemed to draw people to him.

The harsh reality of ranching in the upper Chihuahuan desert along the border with Mexico caused young men like Carl to grow up quickly, and because responsibility was thrust upon them early they were expected to be men at an age that most city kids were still considered to be children. Carl was a grown man at sixteen, and he cut a pretty good sized swath through life even then.

We developed a casual friendship during the next few years, but then life causes us to lose track of our friends sometimes and I never had anything to do with him for the next twenty five years.

When I became Chief of Police in Columbus, New Mexico I became aware that Carl had been caught by Border Patrol Agents with a load of marijuana unconcealed in the back of an open four horse trailer, after the Agents had tracked Carl from where he crossed the Mexican Border with the trailer and had driven it to his home a few miles north of the border fence.

I was dismayed by the news and I knew that he was out on bond awaiting trial, and so I intended to look him up the first chance I had. I met Carl but not in the way I had intended.

One night while patroling on a well maintained dirt road west of Columbus while following a set of interesting foot prints, believing the prints belonged to a burglary suspect for whom I was searching, suddenly the beam of my flashlight revealed that I had driven right into what appeared to a group of vehicles with people around them, who I later confirmed were in the act of transfering a load of marijuana from one set of vehicles to another set of vehicles in the dark.

I don't know who was more surprised, me; or the smugglers. I had been driving with my headlights off using a flashlight to see in the dark, driving slowly along the roadway with my driver's side door propped open with my foot, so I could follow the obvious foot prints in the dirt of the roadway. The smugglers had their pickup stereos turned up on the highest level, playing Mexican norteno music and I guess they did not hear my car approach until I was right on top of them so to speak. I didn't hear their music because my hearing is bad. Somewhat laughable in different circumstances, but this situation was deadly serious.

When I became aware that there were men in front of me on the roadway I turned on my vehicle headlights and the sudden brilliant light revealed that there were at least ten men in the act of transfering what appeared to be saran wrapped bundles of marijuana.

Everyone froze for a moment when the lights came on and then I reacted to the situation by placing my vehicle in reverse and driving backwards down the road I was following to quickly place distance between myself and the smugglers.

I then turned on my high intensity beam spotlight which really lit up the scene, and then the men doing the transfer dropped their bundles and began running towards the interior of their vehicles to retrieve rifles and shotguns with the obvious intent of dealing with the threat my sudden presence imposed.

Suddenly there appeared in the beam of my lights a man in a cowboy hat who screamed at the men with the guns to stop and not shoot in a loud voice in spanish. The men did as directed and lowered their guns, and then the man in the cowboy hat began approaching my vehicle with his hands up, shouting at me not to shoot him.

When he reached a point within twenty feet of the front of my car, I ordered him to stop, and placed my patrol shotgun into the light so that he could see it. The man said, "Is that you T?" Confused I answered, "Yeah, but who the hell are you?" He returned with, "It's Carl K., don't shoot me, I wanta talk." To say that I was surprised is an understatement. I haven't had contact with this man for twenty five years and this is how it happens?"

I asked him what he wanted and he stated that if I wanted to live I had better backup down the road quickly and get away, and told me the obvious that I did not have a chance to survive a shoot out with the ten men he had with him. He said that he was sorry that this had happened the way it had happened and simply turned around and walked back towards his men.

I immediately backed my car up to a point where I could turn around in the road and traveled back into town as quickly as I could, trying desperately to contact Border Patrol on my radio for help. I finally contacted the Border Patrol Agents working the area and we went back to the area where I had seen Carl K. in force, but the marijuana and all of the participants were long gone.

One day several weeks later I was seated in a booth in Norma's Cafe in Columbus when Carl K. walks through the door, and sits down across from me. Carl looking old and with the weight of a coming trial obviously on his shoulders, still with the grin he had when he was a kid, reaches across the table with his right hand and of all things says, "Still friends?"

I hesitated for a moment but finally shook his hand stating, "I'll shake your hand for old times sake, but I can never be friends with a smuggler!"

He said, "T you should be thanking me, those boys would have killed you if
I hadn't done what I said. You stumbled into something you shouldn't have, you were badly outgunned and I saved you, you should be grateful!"

Well needless to say a rather heated discussion ensued about what I thought about what my former friend had become. He discussed the fact that he regretted what he had become, but I do give Carl some credit, he never tried to blame his actions on anything or anyone else, stating simply that he had began smuggling because the money was good.

There were no outstanding warrants out for Carl at the time of our meeting, and he had gotten away with smuggling the marijuana I had seen he and his men with, so hense no evidence; so there was no reason for me to hold him at that time. He left as suddenly as he showed up and I didn't shake his hand before he left.

The next I heard about Carl was that he did not show up for his trial date, jumped bond and fled into Mexico to avoid prosecution.

Several months later some Customs Agent friends of mine told me that Mexican authorities had found a dead body in a burning car near the border, and had found Carl K's passport and driver's license on the body. The identity of the body could not be confirmed as being Carl and so it was surmised that Carl had set it up in an attempt to convince the authorities that he was dead. No one was convinced that he was dead.

Almost a year later I heard that Carl had been arrested in Willcox, Arizona at a livestock auction, so he must have illegally entered the U.S. possible thinking that his ruse in Mexico had worked and that he was now free to return to the U.S. under another identity. He was tried and convicted on Federal drug smuggling charges and served his five year sentence at La Tuna Federal Pentitentiary located just north of El Paso, Texas.

The next I heard about Carl was from a friend who had visited Carl often in prison. He stated that on the day Carl was released from prison after serving his term, while driving home to Deming, New Mexico was involved in a traffic accident and was killed. I later confirmed this report as being true.

Thus ended the tragic life of my former childhood friend.