Last Stand of Buckweed Ranch

Let me tell you now the tragic tale of Buckweed Ranch.

Back in Texas, during the Great Depression, there was a wave of crises that involved landlords going to the farmer's home in order to evict them from the property in the fear that they could no longer produce profit. This caused a wave of terror among the farmers themselves, calling for the government to amend these so called discriminatory violations and be able to stay in the place they raised their families. And yet, despite all this anger and fear that developed out of these unplanned evictions, all of the families ended up leaving – begrudgingly or no. All of them, except Walter Forsen.

Walter had always been the stubborn type. Ever since he was born he had lived on that Ranch, he had a strong devotion to it. As men and their families began to be evicted, Walter had barely batted an eye. Even Lando Holmes, the owner of the ranch and lifelong friend of the Forsens, begged Walter to leave early, offering him large sums of money to go live in a more stable area. He told Walter that it wasn't him, but the banks that were throwing Walter off. Walter didn't listen.

At it was in February of 1932 that Lando himself was finally forced to come down to the ranch with a tractor and force Walter off the land. He got all the way up to the door and prepared to knock when Walter opened the door himself.

From the beginning the last Forsen's disposition seemed incredibly odd. Whereas he had been sending Lando crude and hateful replies to his letters from that point on, at the door the man seemed eager to see him and completely oblivious of what was about to happen. He welcomed Lando in, told him to sit at the kitchen table, and then wait while Walter went to go finish something up. The way Lando sat at that kitchen table meant he was facing the windows of the kitchen with the door behind him – meaning he was completely ignorant when Walter fired the two shots from his revolver straight into the back of his head.

They say Lando didn't die at first, but rather fell off the chair and began convulsing on the floor for a few moments before his official death finally came. It didn't matter to Walter. The man he had once called a friend was now a significant threat that needed to be eliminated. As all men know, property is valued more than friends.

It didn't take the police too long to gather what had happened to Lando. They had warned Lando of Forsen's speech before, when he had first began sending the letters. Lando, in his ignorance, refused to believe them. He believed that he was the only man who could convince Walter to leave that place. Now, everyone knew no one could.

They send the entire Alberton county police department to that farm. The cop cars were perfectly lined up around the perimeter so there was no escape. They wanted to bait him out, so they waited. Waited until the man himself finally appeared at the second story balcony.

He was only able to shoot the rifle once before a flurry of bullets decimated his body. The one shot was actually quite interesting; the bullet was a long way off from hitting any of the policeman. This is the shot where the story tends to differ. Some say Walter Forsen was just a bad shot. Some say that the rifle he was using was old and worn out, and so the bullets trajectory was much different than Walter probably anticipated. Others say that he wasn't trying to hit the police at all, but rather for they to hit him.

Buckweed Ranch never had an occupant since. The Depression wore it out, and its newly found dark history destroyed it. Some men in Alberton county believe that's what Walter wanted – for it only to ever be a Forsen ranch. To some men in the county, Walter is a pioneering hero. To others, he is the ultimate fear, and the ultimate villain.