Big Trouble in Little Loving County, Texas

MENTONE, Texas — In America’s least populated county, the rusting ruins of houses, oil drilling operations and an old gas station interrupt the sun-blanched landscape. A hand-painted wood sign still promises good food at “Chuck’s Wagon” to drivers along State Highway 302, though the proprietor died months ago and the wagon is gone.

Apart from the brick courthouse, the convenience store packed with off-shift oil-field workers and the lone sit-down restaurant where you’re liable to see the sheriff at lunch, everything else that the county’s 57 recorded residents might need is a ways away. No school. No church. No grocery store.

But while it might seem quiet, all has not been well in Loving County. The first sign of the brewing conflict came in the spring of last year with the killing of five cows, shot to death and left in the dry dirt.

That brought a special ranger — a so-called cow cop — to town. He quickly began to see other things awry.

He opened an investigation into possible thefts of stray cattle by the top local leader, the county judge. Then it emerged that the complaints about cattle theft might have grown out of a deeper problem: a struggle for political control. People told the cow cop that some “residents” who called the county home and voted there actually lived somewhere else most of the time. Election fraud, in other words.

Soon, it would seem like everyone in the county was being arrested.

First, the judge, Skeet Jones, was charged along with three of his ranch hands with taking part in an organized crime ring aimed at stealing cattle.