Brand Ramsey had been eight days in the saddle since LaJunta, trailing his whiskey-colored stallion along a stretch of sand that shimmered like a white-hot coal, and looking for a reason not to slip his Colt and end it all. A puncher by trade, if not by reputation, he had come to Tularosa on the word of a cootie old vaquero who seemed to think the cattle trade still flourished there. But as he turned onto the main street, he could see that it was typical of the drought-starved towns he had already been through, with many storefronts boarded up, and the random squeaking sound of a saloon door. The whitewashed adobes that lined the lengthy plaza had fruit trees like skeletons in the neatly platted huertos. The river, which once fed lush beds of maiden ferns, red and yellow monkey flowers, and big and little pinks, now barely satisfied the meagre thirst of the bankside cottonwoods. The scattered clumps of prickly pears clinked on their vines like poker chips.
He stopped to light a cigarette, couching the flame beneath his brown felt. Twelve years ago he and his cousin, Bi ka (His Arrow), had traveled this way on tribal business. In those days mining camps dotted the plains, and young men of twenty thought of only one thing.
“The women back there all had eyes for you,” his cousin had said, as they
