What Is This Plant?

It was one of those slam on the brakes, U-turn moments as my peripheral vision caught a blur of brilliant red amongst the lush green, almost tropical foliage we enjoy here in East Texas as I zipped down a country road on my way to somewhere (going grocery shopping, visiting a declining aunt in a nearby nursing home, or any number of errands I find that take up my time these days).  I had to travel about half a mile before I found a suitable place to turn around on this narrow, two-lane, winding and hilly thoroughfare to return to investigate this anomaly.  Behind a gate on totally unimproved, unmarked property which didn't even have a road to enter it, sat this clump of fire.  Luckily I had a pair of boots in the back or else I would have been reluctant to brave the knee-high grass, which surely had slithery creatures crawling through it, and the fallen, rotting tree trunk which was attempting to block my getting closer to that locked gate.

It seems vaguely familiar, like that word on the tip of your tongue that you can'r form on your lips until five minutes after the person you were explaining something to left the scene.  This leafless beauty reminds me of something I might see at the Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix, but a search of red-blooming desert plants yielded no clues and I'm still at a loss.  Anyone with any ideas out there on what it is?  It looks like nothing I've ever seen growing in this area, nor does the place where it grows appear to have ever had a house on it, so even after I discover what it is, I will still be wondering how it got here!

Thanks for your help.