He had no way of knowing just how well his plan had worked so far, but by the time the company began setting up operations in El Paso, over two hundred people had unknowingly ingested enough of his formula to develop symptoms from visiting the Fort Stockton site.
Of those, almost half were children younger than eight, and many of them were sick enough that their parents rushed them to local emergency clinics.
Unlike the Midland cases, the Fort Stockton patients were scattered over a much larger region. Each local provider simply chalked the new cases up to the same culprit - a strong variant of stomach flu that had ravaged the area all summer - not realizing that the problem was more widespread and much more sinister.
After two hectic days the group wrapped up in El Paso and headed east
