Texas Police Won’t Be ‘Beating The Bushes’ For Fugitive He May Be Forced Out By Thirst Or Danger

A day after law enforcement officers killed a member of a secessionist group in a gunfight in the mountains here, authorities said Tuesday they have significantly scaled back their search for the group’s sole remaining fugitive.

They predicted that the man still at large would soon be forced from the rocky highland by thirst or the danger of attack by a wild animal.

The man has been identified by state officials as Richard Frank Keyes III, 21, who quit his job at a Kansas toilet manufacturing company a few weeks ago to become the self-proclaimed “bodyguard” of Richard McLaren, leader of the secessionist group, the Republic of Texas.

McLaren and four of his followers laid down their arms and surrendered on Saturday after an armed standoff of nearly a week in which they emained ensconced at their “embassy”: a trailer and a wooden shed.

But Keyes and a fellow member, Mike Matson, 48, fled for the hills rather than surrender. It was Matson who was killed in the shootout on Monday. The Texas Department of Public Safety says he was shot after firing at a police helicopter and at officers and several hounds tracking him in the mountains.

No charges had been pending against Matson, a Chicago native and former Marine whose last known residence was California and whose brother quoted him last week as vowing to make his “death stand” in Texas.

Had he been captured alive, however, it seems likely that the state would have brought charges of some sort.

As for Keyes, the state is continuing an investigation into his whereabouts but will “not be beating the bushes for him,” Mike Cox, a spokesman for the Department of Public Safety, said Tuesday.

Daytime temperatures are soaring into the 80s, and Keyes is believed to be hiding in an area with no accessible water. He is also in danger from mountain lions, wild mountain pigs called javelinas and rattlesnakes, state officials said.

From a jail in nearby Marfa, McLaren issued an appeal Monday for Keyes to turn himself in.