Vengeance on the High Plains – The Dread Rider

By Mr. Ghaz, October 22, 2009

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Vengeance on the High Plains – The Dread Rider

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In the mid-19th century the area around the Rio Nueces in southwest Texas was known for its wild mustangs. It was also renowned for the spectral figure who roamed around on the back of a black mustang stallion.

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The rider was dressed in the clothing of a Mexican vaquero: rawhide leggings, a buckskin jacket, and a tattered shawl about his shoulders. But above the shoulders, where the head should have been, there was nothing. Instead, what appeared to be a head wearing a wide sombrero was tied to the horn of the saddle, from where it stared blankly out across the plains. This grisly apparition and its mount could appear at any time of day, racing across the open range. It was always alone; the other mustangs shunned it.

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There was no doubt that is existed; too many people had seen it. Some had even shot at it; many local frontiersmen claimed that their bullets had gone straight through the mustang. Apparently the creature was impervious to bullets. What could the mysterious apparition be?

Demon in Disguise

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Some people claimed that the rider was alive – perhaps an outlaw who intended his ghostly disguise to repel the inquisitive. Some said it was the devil. Others maintained that the vaquero was a ghost, guarding the lost gold mine of the abandoned Candelaria Mission on the Rio Nueces.

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A more mundane suggestion was that the figure was a kind of scarecrow that mustang hunters had tied to a stallion. The frightened horse would head for the mares, which would flee at the sight of the rider. The panic could spread through the herd; once the horses had stampeded themselves into exhaustion, they would be unable to offer much resistance to the men came to round them up.

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Eventually some of the riders of the Nueces range decided to put an end to the mystery and hunt down the phantom rider. Half a dozen rode to a local watering hole and lay in wait for the gruesome figure, not knowing what to expect.

The Truth Revealed

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When the mustang finally appeared, the men opened fire and the horse fell to the ground, dead. The riders approached the dead animal with trepidation. The riddle of the headless horseman would at last be solved.

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When they examined the horse’s back, they found the dried up corpse of a Mexican, riddled with bullets. Under the tattered sombrebro was a skull, shriveled from the sun. The ghostly vaquero was no ghost. But who was he?

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Reportedly, the men were informed that his name was Vidal, a horse thief who operated from the Rio Grande into Louisiana and beyond. One day in 1850 Vidal stole some horses belonging to Creed Taylor, a hardened veteran of the Mexican War. Taylor pursued Vidal halfway across Texas before ambushing him near the Rio Nueces.

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One of the men riding with Taylor, Bigfoot Wallace, suggested that Vidal’s corpse be strapped to an untamed mustang stallion and, as a warning to other rustlers, be left to ride out wild on the range. Supposedly Wallace added a final gruesome touch by decapitating the corpse, trying a sombrero to the head, and fishing it firmly to the saddle.

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Then the half wild horse, bucking and rearing, was sent on its way, taking the corpse of Vidal on a last, long ride into legend.