On the first of October, if you wanted to contact the Texas Minutemen for a look at their El Paso maneuvers, you rang up Shannon McGauley. The Dallas private investigator and former bail bondsman was terse and mysterious with his directions, as if setting up a payoff. “Call me at 11 tomorrow, I’ll send someone to meet you.” Tomorrow came: “Drive to the Fort Hancock exit. They’ll be there.” A third phone call led in turn to another set of cryptic directions, this time a woman’s voice: “Take 20 toward El Paso, to where the wooden telephone poles turn to steel…

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