Or would you fight back to your last breath?
Ever have such an experience?
I did, in the summer of 1973. It was near my 17'th birthday, one side or the other. I do not remember which.
I was the shortest male and probably the lightest in my graduating class a year later. That summer, I could have easily passed for 13.
We lived at the end of County Roads. Our 500 acres of privately owned and leased property were surrounded on three sides by BLM. That BLM was our back yard and play ground with boundary roads from 5 miles to 1.5 miles in various directions.
Anyway, I was jogging and running around out there about 1 1/2 miles from the house searching for a wayward holstein heifer which was worth about $1600 in 1973 dollars.
Then an old blue small Buick four door sedan with a sun faded hood came down out of the BLM on the two track. Which, in itself was not out of the ordinary. Lots of people used those hills to target shoot, or hunt rabbits, or whatever.
But this car came to an abrupt stop about fifteen yards from me and a young adult male (about thirty) bailed out of the car along with five adolescent males. The man stood near the car and began speaking to me while the juveniles formed a circle around me about thirty yards in diameter. The boys looked to be of ages 11 or 12 up to 17 or 18.
The man demanded to know what I was doing out there. He claimed there were no farms around that I could have come from. Then he stated that I matched the description of some escapee from a mental asylum and demanded I get into the car.
While carrying on this discussion, I was slowly backing away from the man. I shoved a fist deeply into my pocket as if I were clutching a knife. But I did not even have a tiny pocket knife.
Finally I backed even with the circumference of their circle. I thought the boys would charge me, but they did not. Perhaps they were uncertain whether I was actually clutching a knife.
I continued backing away for another ten yards, then turned and walked until I could put a sagebrush between me and the adult speaker. Then I ran for my life towards the thickest of the sagebrush which was coincidentally on the steepest of terrain between me and the safety of home.
Just as I started running, I heard the man yelling "Get him! GET him!" I was the slowest sprinter in my class at school. But I had the endurance of a cross country runner and about a thirty yard head start.
Like I said, this was my back yard and play ground. While other boys were playing sports or chasing girls, I was out on these hills riding my horse, shooting rabbits, hunting pheasant or coyotes. I knew the location of every sage brush and badger mound. I also had the advantage of silence while my pursuers were quite vocal shouting back and forth.
I hid under the sagebrush and observed where all the boys were while the man circled the ridgeline two track in his car trying to spot me.
I was able to move about 1/2 mile under cover of the sagebrush. But then I had a 300 yd dash uphill with no cover to the ridgeline and two track, then 1/4 mile more open ground to the canal behind our house.
I waited until the car was back on the opposite ridgeline behind me, knowing I could make the 300 yds before he could intercept me from there. Then I would have to depend on rough terrain to keep him from following downhill toward the house.
I hit the open ground headed up hill, and all Hell broke loose. One of the boys spotted me and started screaming for pursuit. I could see them scattered in the brush 50 to 100 yds behind me. But I had been taking it easy in the sage brush and they had been running pell mell searching. They were out of breath. I was fresh. But there was that Buick, with about two miles of two track to make the circle back to me, and he was coming in a cloud of dust.
I made the ridge line and headed down the other side in the steepest draw going in the direction of the house. I heard the shouts as the man stopped his car where I had crossed the two track. He gathered up the boys and got them into the vehicle. But no one pursued me down the East face of the hill.
I hit the house and told Dad what had happened. He grabbed his Rem 760 and a couple mags on the way out the door. A neighbor from up the road was visiting at the time. The three of us piled into our old Chevy pickup and headed around to where it all started. But it was a five mile drive around the county roads to get across the canal.
By the time we could get there, the car was gone along with all the occupants. All that was left was the Buick's tracks in the dirt,
The Sheriff Dept put out a bulletin. But whoever these guys were, they were only a couple miles from I 80. Then thirteen miles to the state line and Oregon, or five miles the other way to the next county and high traffic levels.
We never did find a clue as to their identity or reason for being there.
But I am quite convinced, had they got their hands upon me, I would be listed to this day as a mysterious disappearance.
OP has been into the eggnog early....
