This story is published in partnership with AT WILL MEDIA .

March 2, 2021. A cool, clear morning. An open highway in West Texas.

A lawman named Marty Baker cruised down state Highway 302, strewn with rubber truck-tire shreds that looked like black eels. The landscape around him was parched and coated in a layer of pale-green mesquite, the vast horizon punctuated by oil pumps, processing tanks, and natural-gas flares. Baker was heading 96 miles from Midland, Texas, to Loving County in the heart of the Permian Basin, the highest-producing oil field in the country. His destination was a spot just west of Mentone, the county seat, a dusty outpost of around 13 residents with a courthouse, scattered trailer homes, a gas station, and a few taco stands and eateries catering to the 15,000 oil

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