When Jones didn’t find his cattle, he did the only thing he knew — he called the sheriff.
K
eith Jones stood in a hot, dusty cattle pen with 2 special rangers and a sheriff’s dep- uty. He anxiously watched as ranch hands, screeching gates open and banging them
shut, readied another group of bawling calves to run past him. A thief stole his cattle and he wanted them back. But it was a long-shot — this order buyer bought only 2 of the 10 stolen, and without brands or ear tags on the cattle it was going to be like fi nding a needle in a haystack.
The cattle he knew Keith Jones and his wife both grew up in ranching
families. After college and entering the business world, Jones dreamed of someday raising his own herd. Sev- eral years ago, after an out-of-the-blue phone call, he became the proud recipient of his father-in-law’s small herd in Cleburne. “Those cattle of mine were so gentle, you could take
a sack of range cubes and lead them through the lobby of the Waldorf Astoria Hotel,” Jones says. One Memorial Day weekend friends of the Joneses
visited from Houston. They even took a cell phone picture of one of the friends petting a calf. “This calf
94 The Cattleman June 2014
was more like a dog. When I came into the pasture it would always come look me up,” Jones says.
Two simple phone calls The Monday after that Memorial Day weekend, a
man named Shawn Linville brought 5 calves to the Hubbard Livestock Auction to sell — 60 miles away from Cleburne. Like any good cop, Texas and Southwestern Cattle
Raisers Association (TSCRA) Special Ranger Marvin Wills keeps his fi nger on the pulse of local criminal activity. Because of Linville’s cattle theft history, Wills asked the owners at Hubbard to give him a call if Lin- ville ever dropped off any cattle to sell. Linville brought the calves in at an unusually early
hour and, according to employees, had acted suspi- ciously. When one of the owners reported this to Wills, he wasn’t aware of any reported stolen cattle, so Hub- bard Livestock Auction had no choice but to accept and sell the cattle. Once every few days, Jones drove out to the pasture,
coasting slowly, scanning the horizon and counting his cattle — the cattle he knew well. But a few days after Memorial Day weekend, his count came up 10
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