Trouble in the Hills

Despite the tensions, some local residents made light of their secretive new neighbors. When Warren Jeffs reportedly predicted the end of the world in 2005, one Eldorado resident paraded in front of their gate in a Grim Reaper costume. Ball caps were sold proclaiming ELDORADO: POLYGAMY CAPITAL OF TEXAS, and another man became marginally famous for writing the "Plural Girl Blues," a song about polygamy. "We always laughed it off and said if they had a wife like you, you wouldn't want 50 of them," said Swift, the coffee-shop owner. "We just hoped it wouldn't be another Waco."

Sheltered Lives
When the town and the polygamists were finally brought face to face after the raid, it was startling for both. The women and children first sheltered in Eldorado had not been allowed to watch television, use the Internet or have any contact with the outside world. They appeared to be loving, if incredibly naive, parents, who didn't know what crayons were used for.

The sight of the lost, anxious faces of the women and children looking out the bus windows or hiding behind their coats as they left the compound was enough to make more than one Eldorado man cry. "No one in our community has any connection to them, they were pretty much out by themselves. Up until yesterday or the day before, I was not even sure I had met a member of the cult," said Pastor Andy Anderson of First Baptist Church, which temporarily housed some of the group. He and leaders of all the churches in town, which far outnumber restaurants, had been waiting for years for this chance to minister to them in Christ's name.

Residents and local businesses donated carts full of food and sodas, boxes of teddy bears, and cots and cribs to the women and children at the Eldorado shelters. "Numerous people are going to have much better lives as a result of this raid," Anderson said. "And if even one person could be salvaged from child abuse, I think it was worth it."

Church volunteers and child-welfare officials said the women and children were emotional but relatively composed, given the shock of what they must be experiencing. "Obviously this has been a tense situation for all involved. We are trying to be as kind and respectful as we can be, and they seem to be respectful of that," said Texas Child Protective Services spokeswoman Marleigh Meisner. For now they are cooperating with the caseworkers, she said, but "as you know human emotions are a strange thing, and that can change any time."

Tela Mange, a spokeswoman for Texas troopers and the Department of Public Safety, added, "We have been trying very hard to be sensitive to the folks at the ranch … trying to be sensitive to their concerns about their holy places. So we have been much more diplomatic with them than we typically are when we are serving any other search warrant."