by James Coplin

Created on: December 28, 2009

If you wish to know about headless riders, go ask residents along the border land of South Texas. I just hope you are not the sensitive sort, put off by frightened looks and doors being slammed in your face. People down there still pull the covers over their heads should they hear hoof beats in the night. Who else rides the moonless darkness save El Muerto, the headless Vaquero?

There is documented evidence of at least El Muerto's origin. Then he was known as Pablo Vegas and a minor bandito and horse thief preying on the herds of the fledgling state of Texas in the 1850's. Unfortunately for him, one of his frequent victims was a Captain of the Texas Rangers who eventually ran him down and strung him up on a post oak.

Apparently, the Captain and his buddy Big Foot Walls were in high humor that day for they cut Pablo down, removed his sombrero with his head still in it and strapped his body on the saddle of a half broken horse.  As a finishing touch they strung his head from the saddle horn and vamoosed the poor pony on its way. It was a fine joke, sure to scare every horse thief from there to the border and warn them off from the Captains stock.

It did more then that. For the next several months reports were made from all over South Texas of a headless Vaquero, increasingly more skeletal, seen riding alone. By now it had several arrows sticking from it - evidence that the Comanche had come across him as well. One Gabriel Harris testified that he and another cowhand had been drinking coffee by the fire one evening when a horse whinnied from outside the fire light and then walked into their camp. The figure slumped in the saddle was no more then a decayed corpse with his badly torn serape flapping on his bony shoulders and skull grinning at them from the saddle bow. They fired half a dozen shots at it with no more effect then the horse bolting from camp, leaving behind two badly shaken cowboys.

A few weeks latter, a couple flank riders from a cattle drive came across a lone horse at a water hole and roped it. What little was left of poor Pablo was removed from its back and resigned to the sod. That should have ended it but, according to several tales over the years, El Muerto must have enjoyed his midnight rides for there were several reports of him spanning the years.

In the 1870's he was witnessed by a whole troop of U.S. Cavalry on patrol for Commaches, standing on top of a ridgeline watching.  The patrol gave pursuit but the army

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