Killers’ stolen car found in the Pequops
Logan Welles McFarland exited a U-turn and drove into the hinter land of the Pequops Mountains worthy of moon shiner Junior Bonner his successful attempt to evade police New Years Eve Day.
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So why were deputies and highway patrol troopers smiling when they lost track of their man?
“Where was he going to go?” asked Elko Detective James Carpenter after McFarland and his accomplice Angela Hill were captured three days later. “This is hard country about four or five people die every year out in the High Desert and they want to be found. There is no food, no water and every light you see at night is either a ranch house with guns and dogs or a sheep herder with guns and dogs. I would not want to be on the run out here.”
According to Montello resident Brent Palmer the reception the two fugitives would have received would had they stumbled into a settlement would not have been warm. From the moment word got around that there were two killers on the loose, practically everyone in Montello and Pilot Valley was packing, Palmer said.
“We were real close to where they went off the road,” Palmer said. “So we were prepared.”
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And while the weather this winter has been unseasonably warm temperatures in the Pequops still dipped below freezing during the three days the fugitives huddled in their stolen car.
Finally Tuesday morning McFarland and Hill broke camp and walked out of the Pequops. Still armed some law enforcement speculate that the violent fugitives may have intended to make it to the interstate and car jack yet another victim.
But like many lost travelers before them the two grossly misjudged the distance they had to trek as well the people whose country they violated.
Spied from above in a plane flown by Nevada rancher and Elko County Commissioner Demar Dahl the two soon saw the flashing lights of a half a dozen patrol cars belong to the Highway Patrol, the Elko County Sheriff’s Department and U.S. Marshals.
They surrendered without incident.
Just how hard the High Desert is can be seen in the archeological record or lack of it. The presence of American Indian is attested to by only a hand full of sites, with the largest and apparently most heavily used is at Danger Cave near Wendover. The Wendover settlement however is at best over 2,000 years old when the climate in the High Desert was much warmer and wetter. More recent sites are limited to temporary hunting camps.
For most Europeans and Americans the High Desert was something to get through as fast as possible and only the hardiest souls tried to make a living in this often unforgiving and potentially deadly region.
It was only in the 20th century with the wonders of water pipelines, electricity and modern transportation that islands of civilization such as Wendover could come into existence.
But islands they remain and while the countryside separating the High Desert communities is often ignored by drivers as they speed past on I-80 the illusion of safety quickly dissolves for those who lose the convenience of modern transportation.
“Outsiders don’t understand that when we say rural Nevada we don’t mean farmland, we mean wilderness,” Palmer said. “If those two didn’t walk out when they did odds are they would have died.”
