When Texas millionaire John Poindexter invited Justice Antonin Scalia to his remote ranch near the Mexican border, it was for a private party with about 35 other guests, a weekend of hunting and sightseeing on his painstakingly restored and cultivated 120,000-hectare spread.
But when Scalia, 79, failed to appear for a morning excursion at 8am Saturday, Poindexter became concerned and went to his room, which has its own outdoor fire pit and a wall of windows overlooking the 22-room adobe ranch hotel, a lake and surrounding peaks of the Chinati Mountains.
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“I had not seen him, and everyone else was up. I knocked loudly, Poindexter said. But Scalia was in a large room, the “El Presidente” suite, and the owner figured that perhaps the justice couldn’t hear him.Poindexter had just met Scalia, and although he found him “congenial” and they got on well at dinner the night before, his first thought was: “He’s a Supreme Court justice, and if he doesn’t want to be bothered...”
Eventually, Poindexter entered the silent room, apprehensive.
“I was worried I was going to find something very tragic,” he said.
There he spotted Scalia, still in his pajamas.
“He was in perfect repose in his bed as if he was taking a nap. His face wasn’t contorted or anything,” Poindexter said. “I went over and felt his hand and it was very cold, no pulse. You could see he was not alive.”It was Scalia’s first visit to the storied ranch, and his death is already becoming part of the lore at Cibolo Creek, a site steeped in Southwest history and frequented by what Poindexter’s consultant George Van Etten called “a lot of Hollywood people and captains of industry”.
The ranch, established in 1857, sits in the middle of remote desert, 24km north of the border and 240km southeast of El Paso, the last several kilometres on a dirt road.
On-site bird hunts include pheasant, chukar, white-tailed dove and blue quail. The area is home to more than 500 species of birds.
“Tread lightly and you’re likely to see more than a few species of wildlife, including the American buffalo, Carmen mountains white-tailed deer, mule deer, elk, aoudad, coyotes, black bears, javelinas, mountain lions and bobcats/ringtail cats, along with domestic livestock grazing in our pastures,” the ranch web site says. Cibolo is a Native American word for buffalo.Several films were shot here: No Country for Old Men, There Will Be Blood and, 60 years ago in nearby Marfa, the Texas epic Giant. Guests have included Mick Jagger, Julia Roberts and Tommy Lee Jones.
Poindexter recalled how, after Scalia arrived about noon on Friday, he joined the other guests on a successful quail hunt.
“He did not hunt. He was out on the property, looking at it,” Poindexter said. “It’s a reasonably attractive place. He seemed to enjoy himself. He got off the truck once and seemed to enjoy himself.”
Most of the other guests had been to the ranch before and were friends or longtime acquaintances of Poindexter, who has a home on the ranch and has been hosting winter weekend gatherings for 20 years.
“He was very congenial. He spoke to anyone who would address him,” Poindexter said. He sat next to Scalia at a dinner of “typical ranch fare” .
“I spent quite a bit of time talking to him — about nothing official, just pleasantries: Texas scenery, outdoors, what life is like in Washington,” Poindexter said. “He didn’t come to have a long conversation about jurisprudence.”
By dinner’s end at about 9pm, Poindexter said, “he seemed in good spirits.”
“He stood up and said he was tired, he had had a long week and he would see us in the morning,” he said.
After Scalia’s body was found, the ranch alerted the US Marshals Service, which is responsible for protecting the justices when they travel outside Washington, although Van Etten had not noticed them around Scalia at the ranch.
“He was very unassuming. He didn’t want his entourage of marshals to stay here with him,” Van Etten said.
He said they also later alerted a Catholic priest, the Reverend Mike Alcuino from nearby Presidio, who arrived Saturday afternoon to administer last rites to the justice, a devout Catholic.
The other guests, who had decided to stay but cancelled their scheduled blue quail and box bird hunt, kept their distance.
“It was a sober mood, of course,” Van Etten said as he headed to the presidential suite during a tour of the ranch Sunday. “We stayed away, directed the father over there. We lost a great jurist and a great American.”
A gray hearse arrived Saturday — a decoy, Van Etten said, to distract the news media. It wasn’t until about midnight that a van and police arrived to spirit the body away.
The family was handling funeral arrangements Sunday, he said.
Although not allowed into the suite where Scalia stayed, visiting reporters were allowed to peer inside through glass doors.
The bed still appeared slept in. No personal items were visible on the carved wooden tables.
