REMEMBER THE TEXAS EMBASSY?

By CHRISTOPHER JOHN FARLEY

In the end, surrounded by the forces of the mightiest nation on earth, the ambassador decided to abandon his ramshackle redoubt deep in a lower ventricle of Texas. He had sent out a "Mayday" on shortwave radio, calling on "any nation in the world" for assistance. "We have hostiles in the woods," he cried. "We are being invaded!" But no one came to his aid, and his supporters were beginning to trickle away. Even the ambassador's wife had decided to leave the combination lean-to and trailer that was designated the "embassy compound." Thus, shortly after 4 p.m. on Saturday, with barely the pretense of extraterritoriality, Rick McLaren, self-declared "ambassador, consul-general and chief foreign legal officer" of the separatist Republic of Texas, ended his 6 1/2-day standoff against America, laid down 10 rifles and hundreds of rounds of ammunition, and agreed to a cease-fire. In a nod to protocol, the plenipotentiaries who negotiated the agreement--otherwise known as the Texas Rangers--watched as the separatists ceremonially arranged their arms in a circle.

Texas authorities were ecstatic at the bloodless finale. Of the seven people who held out through the week, five were in custody while two who had fled into the countryside seemed likely to be run to ground by bloodhounds and Rangers on horseback. Midway through the almost comic siege, reporters joked that Governor George W. Bush might have to turn into Governor Fujimori--a reference to the Peruvian President who had to use force to end the four-month siege of the Japanese embassy in Lima. Officials took every precaution in the standoff, not least because Texas is the place that saw the Waco conflagration. (Earlier in the week, the Denver trial of Timothy McVeigh, who was allegedly motivated by Waco, was placed under tighter security after three men with ties to the Branch Davidians were arrested in a raid in Colorado in which FBI agents confiscated explosives.) Thus, arrayed in Fort Davis, Texas, against McLaren, his wife and five lieutenants were officers of the Texas department of public safety, Texas Rangers, border-patrol agents, Texas National Guard troops, Texas parks and wildlife agents, FBI agents, SWAT teams, armored personnel carriers and bloodhounds. "This is not the Alamo, and I'm not Davy Crockett," said Texas public-safety spokesman Mike Cox. "All we are trying to do is serve major-felony warrants."

McLaren's militia-style outfit believes the Lone Star State was illegally absorbed into the Union in 1845 and is a sovereign nation. It has its own courts, army and even license plates. On April 27, McLaren's followers took up arms (and a couple of hostages) in retaliation for the arrest of two members, one for weapons possession and the other on contempt charges. The hostages--neighbors who had quarreled with the litigious McLaren--were freed after Texas Rangers allowed a jailed "republican" to join the commandos, who then decamped to McLaren's "embassy." That exchangee, Robert Scheidt, apparently wilting under the pressure, chose to leave his compatriots and be rearrested on Friday.

McLaren is a resident of the county's Davis Mountains Resort, a 6,000-acre subdivision in West Texas made up of modest homes and trailers where neighbors live miles apart and the landscape is mountainous and sporadically wooded, decorated by cactus and the occasional jackrabbit. It is the perfect place for someone trying to start a new nation without much resistance. But how did a bad neighbor become one of the most wanted suspects in Texas, accused of everything from burglary to organized crime?

The man who would be the father of a new country isn't even a son of Texas. A native of Missouri, McLaren first started dreaming of Texas after writing a book report on the Alamo in third grade. As an adult he moved to Fort Davis, achieving local notoriety when, in 1985, he sued the local property owners' association over the way it was spending its fees. After a decade of legal wrangling he won an out-of-court settlement, including $87,000 in cash.

Then McLaren had his historical revelation that Texas was not legally a part of the Union. He began recruiting like-minded folks and, to achieve his ends, honed a new kind of "paper terrorism"--placing liens on the property of his neighbors and enemies (bogus liens can cost thousands of dollars in legal fees to remove). "He kept filing more and more, and if you resisted he would put a lien on every piece of property you owned," says a clerk at a hotel near McLaren's home. "He's put liens on most of the property in this county, including some of mine." The state legislature is considering legislation making the filing of false liens a criminal act in some cases.

McLaren says his purpose is "basically re-forming Texas," but some of his ideas go even beyond that. The republic is pursuing a $93 trillion claim against the U.S. for "war reparations" and plans to sell the state capitol in Austin to Uruguay. McLaren has also promised followers free energy-producing machines and a cure for AIDS after the republic breaks from the "united" States (members of the anti-union Republic do not capitalize the u).

Recently, McLaren grew more bellicose, perhaps under the influence of Robert ("White Eagle") Otto, his second in command and one of the men who surrendered with him last Saturday. On March 24, McLaren declared that more than half of New Mexico and parts of four other states belong to the republic. But the Republic of Texas itself has lost its organizational integrity, breaking into three factions. Some members say the split took place when an African American was elected vice president of the group. Others say it was a result of McLaren's increasingly militaristic bent.

"I don't know what happened to Rick--he's not the same," says Archie Lowe, who heads one faction. "We used to sit around for hours writing legal opinions. You can tell a real Van Gogh from a fake, you can tell an Ernest Hemingway from a Tom Clancy, but in the past few months these so-called documents that are coming out of the embassy, they are not the real Rick McLaren."

Earlier, McLaren's lawyer, Terry O'Rourke, had pleaded publicly for McLaren to surrender, saying that the "ambassador" was not a "Koresh." Later, however, O'Rourke added, "It's clear that [McLaren] is willing to die for what he believes in." On Friday, McLaren fired O'Rourke for his troubles. The length of the siege did nothing to win McLaren points with his neighbors, who were fed up with both the ambassador and the "kid-glove" siege that kept them away from home and livestock. In Marfa, 25 miles away, where McLaren, his wife and his friends will be held, Jake Brisbin, the county judge, says, "He brings out the worst in us."

--Reported by S.C. Gwynne/Fort Davis and Hilary Hylton/Austin

With reporting by S.C. GWYNNE/FORT DAVIS AND HILARY HYLTON/AUSTIN