The community of Llano is no exception. It, too, is partial to its partially departed and doubleminded spirits, and has held on to its hair-raising tales of hovering ghosts and howling malcontents like a dog assiduously hoards its bones.

One of these tales involves the 120-years old Rountree house still standing approximately 18 miles west of Llano near the rural community of Prairie Mountain. Folks have claimed, for approximately the past 102 years, that the place is haunted by the ghost of its original owner, Robert F. Rountree, an early Llano teacher, surveyor and rancher who, they say, was murdered there by some unknown assailant in 1893. Folks claim also that even before Rountree met his mysterious end, the spirits of Indians stalked the infamous site.

But small wonder. Indeed, several accounts of tragic death including that of Rountree and of a local group of Indians surround the history of the site like the strands of a tightly spun cocoon—and this, of course, provides the basis for a good ghost story. The only one of these accounts ever verified, however, is the one concerning Rountree’s death, which occurred when the man was only 46 years old.

The legend goes that this particular ghost story began some 18 years before Rountree’s murder. Sometime between 1875 and 1888, during the time the house was under construction, workers reported hearing strange utterances which sounded eerily like Indian chanting. The sounds came from somewhere within the structure’s 20-inch stone and plaster walls which were slowly taking shape.

It is said also that Rountree’s children told of actually having seen the ghosts of Indians in the house and, on one occasion, coming up the steps. These reports led people to speculate that either a group of Indians had met death in a battle nearby, or Rountree had had the audacity to erect his home over their graves. Some even claimed that "on clear, crisp nights when the moon was just right," you could hear their savage screams.

While these reports provide an open playground for lovers of the macabre, no one has ever come up with proof to support the spectacular claims. One account pertaining to another death at the site is true, however, and this fact became the basis for yet another ghost story which many still repeat today, 102 years later.

This fact is the demise of Robert F. Rountree, whose untimely death gave birth to controversy which time has never laid to rest: Who was the murderer? Why did he kill Rountree? History is silent on the subject and to this day the answers, wrapped in the unyielding arms of the past, remain a mystery.

In his book, Llano, Gem of the Hill Country, a History of Llano County, Texas, the late historian Wilburn Oatman, Sr., says only that Rountree "was ambushed and killed a short distance from his pasture gate one night, as he was returning to his ranch in his wagon with supplies for his family." He offers no clue to either the motive or the identity of the assailant.

Oatman’s son, Wilburn Oatman, Jr., a Llano attorney and historian, says he vaguely remembers his father theorizing on the case when the junior Oatman was a boy. He says that his father left the impression that Rountree "was a pretty hard land owner, a straight-laced man. He was against cattle-thieving and everything that went with it. I think my dad figured Rountree may have had some knowledge of someone’s wrong-doing and they were afraid he would turn them in, so they killed him. But this is only supposition. No one really knows."

Over the years, however, time has produced several twists to the tale. It is anyone’s guess which is true—if, indeed, any of them are. According to one account, Rountree had been away on a two-week trip selling cattle. Returning home, he reached the entrance to his ranch just at sunset. When he stopped his horse-drawn wagon to open the gate, masked men robbed, then shot him, leaving him for dead.

At this point hearsay offers even more conflicting versions. One is that the horses delivered Rountree’s dead body in the wagon to the house a few hundred yards away. Another claims he did not die immediately, but drug himself moaning along the dirt road toward the house, crying out to his family for help.

But as differing as these accounts may be, they apparently gave rise in a short period of time to other tales—bizarre stories which the teller could only repeat in frightened, knowing whispers. Some 25 years later, by approximately 1918—or possibly earlier—people were exhorting others to avoid both house and grounds. By then it was a "known fact" that Rountree’s ghost lurked about the shadowy premises moaning and sometimes visibly demonstrating its discontent.

Some ten years ago, the late Frankie Teich Foster of Llano, then in her 80’s, recalled the warnings well. "They used to say the Rountree house was haunted," she said. "When I was young and we were going out that way everyone would say, ‘Don’t go near the house because it’s haunted.’

"They said his ghost would return. They would hear him in the kitchen rattling dishes and moaning. Seems like I remember hearing they had a baby who died, and that the baby would return and haunt the place, too—but I’m not sure."

Time, steadily insistent upon change, has added rich seasoning to the bewitching brew. One deft dash of spice, for instance, holds that the best place to hear Rountree’s ghost is not in the kitchen but on the road running from the gate to the house—especially at sunset—for it is here that his desperate spirit roams the most free, bleeding, calling, pleading for help…

These are the legends, filled to the brim with horror and with a dread associated with the tragic figure of Robert F. Rountree. A dread which somehow seems cruel, which somehow leaves one with the haunting conviction that somewhere down the line, time denied the man the dignity due him. It is one which remains, nevertheless. Lovers of the macabre, reluctant to examine the known facts and to leave them be, have seen to that.

One of the greatest tragedies of the whole affair is that Rountree left behind him a wife and six children ranging in age from one to eleven years.

Another is that he lived to enjoy his magnificent new home only a few years after its completion. Workers began building it in 1875 and put the finishing touches to the imposing structure 13 years later in 1888.

Five years later Rountree was dead—at the hands of a murderer whose identity, to this day, remains a mystery.