Cowboy’s Alien Secret

By David Paul Vorphal

Vern Carson, known as Cowboy, was the first on the scene when a UFO crashed on his ranch near the town of Davenport, Washington. A day after the crash, Carol, who was his girlfriend, and the sheriff discovered Cowboy missing for a few days.

After his encounter with one of the aliens and his five days on their main UFOFROM, he showed up at Carol’s Café. To avoid Carol, the sheriff, the townspeople, the news reporter, and the UFO investigators from questioning him, he kept his secret for twenty years by saying, “I don’t remember.” However, many believed the Cowboy was abducted by the aliens.

The Davenport businesspeople and city and county government did whatever they could to keep the tourists coming to visit with their UFO museum.

Vern and Carol married and retired from ranching. One evening, they were entertaining the former sheriff and his wife. As the couples sat in the porch chairs to watch the sunset, an event took place that changed the lives of Vern and Carol.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jun 4, 2019
• ISBN: 9781796038804

David Paul Vorphal

About the Author David P. Vorpahl holds a PhD from Gonzaga University. This is his fourth novel. He has also written plays for his church and short stories and poems for his four children and seven grandchildren. He his retired and lives in Spokane, Washington, with his wife, Beverly. OTHER BOOKS BY THE AUTHOR Unlikely Soul Mates The Twins’ Incarnation A Promise Made, A Promise Kept Doctor Morgan and His Twin Sons, White Wind and Theodore

Book preview

Copyright © 2019 by DAVID PAUL VORPAHL.

ISBN:                  Softcover                     978-1-7960-3867-5

                            eBook                           978-1-7960-3880-4

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 06/04/2019

Xlibris

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

797731

CONTENTS

Dedication

Acknowledgements

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

DEDICATION

This book is dedicated to all UFO investigators who are trying to prove UFOs are real and to get the government to reveal what it knows.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thanks to my family for their encouragement and especially my wife, Beverly Smith Vorpahl, and daughter, Illa Davis, and my copyreader, Michelle Grove

I also want to express my appreciation to the History Channel fo. their UFO stories.

CHAPTER 1

Telephones across the US Western states jangled off their hooks in police stations, radio stations, military bases, private homes … People were calling in reports of seeing a silver disk, a flying saucer, flying erratically over Spokane, Washington, headed west. It passed over Fairchild Air Force Base. Radar control towers at Fairchild and the Spokane International Airport picked up an unidentified flying object on their scopes. Fighter jets launched from nearby area military bases tried to keep it in sight, but all radar contact was lost. The blip ceased.

Trackers thought the UFO had crashed in the scablands, about five miles southwest of the small farming town of Davenport, Washington, population 1,730. Buildings lined up along Main Street, which was also known as State Highway 2.

Carol’s Café, owned by Carol Kelly, was one of the town’s most popular spots. Farmers, townspeople, business owners and employees of various shops all gathered at Carol’s for their morning coffee break and her cinnamon rolls that continually won blue ribbons at the Lincoln County Fair.

Among Carol’s various tables and along the counter every morning, Monday through Saturday, there were such far-reaching conversations as the weather, whether it’s good or bad for the crops; the price of wheat; cattle; last night’s high school boys’ and girls’ sports: football, basketball and baseball, depending the season. But that morning, the single topic centered on the radio report about an unidentified flying object. The café spontaneously emptied as every customer poured into the street, craning their necks to see the UFO. Talk in the street included statements like: It’s just a bunch of hype, There’s nothing in the sky but contrails, Don’t see a blamed thing, Let’s go back in. Our coffee’s gone cold by now.

As Carol poured hot coffee into cups that had grown tepid, she noticed a regular customer was missing. Anyone seen the Cowboy this morning? she asked.

No. Haven’t seen him today, was the reply given in one form or another by several people. Everyone knew the cowboy Carol was talking about. While she thought it was a secret, all knew that Vern Carson was more than just a friend to her.

Carson was a widowed rancher in his late twenties with dark wavy hair that escaped from under his worn, sweat-stained Stetson cowboy hat. His handsome, square face displayed a typical farmer’s tan; his bright blue eyes and warm smile made him popular among the local women after his wife Joanna had been killed two years earlier in a car accident while trying to miss a deer. And Vern’s older brother, Virgil, was killed as a bull rider in a national rodeo leaving a wife and two little girls. The accident left Vern to run the ranch by himself. He now lived alone with his dog Wolf, his constant companion. He and Wolf worked the ranch with the temporary help of Roger Walter and some other townsmen during planting and harvest time. It was a clear, warm spring day the 23rd of May, 1998, when Vern, with Wolf at his side, was mending fences. He looked up as low flying Air Force jet fighter planes flew overhead. He knew Fairchild didn’t have any jet fighters on base, but, What the, he said aloud as he saw a saucer-shaped object disappear behind a small hill nearby followed by a loud dusty crash. He waited a few seconds, expecting an explosion. When there was no detonation, he ran to his ATV, grabbed his cell phone and called Paul Wagner, his friend and Davenport’s county sheriff. He revved the motor, whistled for Wolf and headed to the hill where the saucer had disappeared. As he came upon the rise and looked down, he saw a strange looking object, crashed and crumpled. Dumbfounded, he stared until, out of the corner of his eye, he saw something running.

Are you all right? he called to what he thought was a small boy who was probably out hunting and got scared, seeing the metal object and hearing the horrific sound of the crash.

It must have scared the hell out of that kid, he said to Wolf. The dog barked in what might have been agreement.

When Vern reached the craft, he started pulling away some type of metallic material he had never seen before. It was surprisingly cool to the touch. At last, he was able to peer inside the craft and saw a creature slumped over what Vern thought looked like a control console. Traumatized by the appearance of the individual, Vern didn’t know how long he stood there gawking. He didn’t notice that the sheriff and a number of his neighbors who had also witnessed the crash had arrived.

Sheriff Wagner was a stout man, built like the tackle for the Washington State Cougars that he had been years earlier. In his five years as sheriff, he thought he had seen everything. But now, as he stood by Vern looking into what appeared to be a cockpit, he couldn’t believe his eyes. Vern reached in and pushed the head of the object back, and the two men looked at each other speechless. They were still staring at the creature with its big head and oversized, bug-like green eyes, oblivious to a Fairchild helicopter as it set down 20 yards away.

Out jumped a dozen Air Force MPs led by Captain Wayne Morse. While his men moved to keep the fast-growing crowd back, Morse went to the sheriff and Vern and also looked into the open cockpit.

Oh my God, he said, stepping back in amazement. It is a space ship. He wiped the sweat off his face and regained his composure. He looked up at the sheriff and said in his most-officious commander’s voice, This is now military business. You are not to discuss what you saw here under penalty of government law. Do you understand? And sheriff, get some of your men out to block off the roads. We don’t want any more people tramping over any evidence.

Both the sheriff and rancher nodded and backed away.

Come on Sheriff, I’ll give you a ride to your car on my ATV, Vern said. Come on Wolf, we’re going home.

I can’t believe what we saw, Paul said when they got to the sheriff’s car. "I’ll have to call the office and have the deputies put up roadblocks.

What do you think that was that we saw in the vehicle Paul asked after he had made his call.

I have no idea, but it is not my idea of what an alien should look like. It sure didn’t look like any of the alien drawings people claimed they have seen, Vern said. I don’t think I’ll get anymore fencing done today. I’ll help with crowd control.

Back at the crash site, the captain called the base for back-up and a medical crew and learned they were already on the way.

The MPs were trying to control the scene by moving the gawkers and the press and TV crews out of the area when two busloads of airmen showed up as reinforcements and to search the area for debris from the craft. A field ambulance arrived with two corpsmen and two flight surgeons. The captain showed them the body, and once they recovered from their initial shock, pronounced the creature dead. The medics covered the body, loaded it in the ambulance and rushed it to the base hospital.

At Fairchild’s hospital, one doctor asked another as he removed the sheet to look at the body again: What the hell is it?

I have no idea, said the other surgeon as he palpated the hard outer skin of the body’s abdomen, looking for landmark organs to help him identify just what it was he was probing.

Press reporters and TV crews were driving the captain crazy as he tried to keep them away from the wreckage.

Is it an extraterrestrial space craft, A KHQ-TV reporter asked.

What was in the ambulance? questioned a reporter from KXLY-TV.

Any other bodies found? a come-lately KREM reporter asked after being briefed by a fellow newsperson.

No comment, the captain barked in answer to all questions and was relieved when a large flat-bed Air Force truck showed up with a small crane. With the crane, the airmen lifted the craft onto the truck covered it with a tarp and sped off to Fairchild.

Some press people followed the truck while others talked to those in the crowd to learn what they knew and had seen. The consensus was that it was an extraterrestrial craft and that a body of some kind had been removed from the craft.

Who was the first one at the crash? the reporters wanted to know.

This is Vern Carson’s ranch, and I think he was the first one to arrive, a neighbor woman said.

Can you point him out for me? I want to talk to him, said the reporter.

He left with the sheriff, she replied.

Damn! The reporter said and left to find some of his colleagues.

In the meantime, the captain had called all the military personnel together, told them they had done their job well with crowd control – and then warned them not to talk to anyone about what they had seen or heard. With the exception of a squadron left to guard the crash site, he dismissed the others. He and his contingency boarded the helicopter and flew to the base, where they landed on the helipad on the headquarters’ lawn. The captain went directly into the building and headed to the office of the Base Commander, Jeb Jenkins, to give his report.

Thank you, Capt. Morse, Jenkins said after an hour of debriefing. Post your men as guards at the hospital and the hanger where the craft was taken. And warn them not to talk to anyone about what they saw or are doing. This is top secret.

Yes sir, Capt. Morse said. He saluted his commander and left. He posted guards at the hanger both in and outside and also at the base hospital, making sure the body was under heavy security.

Commander Jenkins immediately called Air Force Headquarters’ Command Center for instructions and information for a press release, and later that afternoon released a statement stating that the object that many people saw in the sky was an Air Force experimental drone. No human body was in it but they did recover a mannequin fitted with covert research experimental equipment.

However, witnesses at the crash site and the news media didn’t buy the commander’s explanation. The print and TV reporters were calling it a Roswell cover-up and demanding an investigation.

Back at Fairchild, medics packed the creature’s body in a container immersed in dry ice to ship it to a top-secret base. The space craft was also under heavy guard in an empty hanger, being crated for shipping, still covered in the tarp from the crash site. Those doing the work only knew it was a highly confidential job and that they were forbidden to look under the covering. Later that afternoon, after the crash site was searched again for any wreckage, the remaining airmen were called back to Fairchild.

The next day, a large, unmarked cargo plane landed at Fairchild and was observed flying off that night. While the news media kept questioning the cover-up theory, base officials issued no more comments, and were sticking to the press release.

That same morning, Sheriff Wagner, during his morning coffee ritual, complained to Carol Kelly about having to hire more deputies for traffic control in the little town.

I don’t care what crashed out there, Carol told the sheriff, but it sure is good for business.

Carol was a blue-eyed blonde, standing 5’ 9" tall. Her slender waist made what some called a Hollywood beauty type. In her early 20’s, her husband, Kirk Kelly, had died in a car accident a few days after their wedding.

Carol knew everyone in town and kept her customers returning with her friendly, flirtatious smile. But those same customers also knew that her eye was now set for Vern, the widowed cowboy rancher who made it a practice to come to town almost every mid-morning for coffee and an occasional meal.

Carol’s eyes sparkled, and her smile broadened when Vern walked in and found the only vacant spot at the end of the bar, next to the sheriff, just where he wanted to sit.

Howdy, Vern, Carol said as she set a cup of coffee in front of him and filled the sheriff’s cup. Have you ever seen this place so busy? The regulars can hardly find a place to sit. You want breakfast, a roll?

Just coffee, Vern said. Thanks. The smile he gave Carol would have warmed any woman’s heart. I hope you’re not complaining that you’re profiting from the crash. I had to move my cattle off that scabland. All the sightseers are trampling down my good pasture.

Like it or not, all this crash-site stuff is bringing this town good fortune, Carol said. If this keeps up, I’m going to recommend that the town council rename the town Carson City after you, since the UFO crashed on your land. She laughed and went to help other costumers.

Both men smiled. The sheriff poured sugar in his cup, stirred it, and slurped a noisy sip. He looked at the rancher. Vern, what do you make of the Air Force’s explanation of what we saw out there?

Vern sat his cup down. I think it’s a cover-up. I could maybe have bought the story of an experimental plane after seeing these new Stealth Air Force planes, but that creature we saw: that was no dummy. There’s something bothering me about the crash yesterday, but I’ll be darned if I can put my finger on it.

Did you notice that there were two control panels? the sheriff asked. It appears that there were two of everything they had in the back of the craft but we couldn’t see it very well.

Vern gave his friend an astonished look, as though he just woke up from a deep sleep. That’s it, Vern said, jumping up. He left two dollars on the counter. Sorry, I’ve got to go.