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Big Bend Mystery Under the Sands

by | Jun 30, 2008 | Art, Guns and Culture

Discovering a frontier-era dragoon, while out riding fence.
How long it had lain in the West Texas desert, no one knew. It was 1972, and the firearm looked as if it had been undisturbed for at least a century. Nonetheless, there it was, a dark brown hulk, yet glistening with the patina of desert varnish in the West Texas sun. As the two young mounted cowboys riding fence, Mark Bleakely and Barry Heath, spotted the gun, the


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