Pepper-hot wind seared the New Mexico desert. Mizquel slouched in his saddle, his sombrero shading his eyes from the sun. Sweat soaked his shirt, his trousers, even his bandanna. He longed to stop, to find a cool place where he could wait out the worst of the day's heat. Rides like this reminded him of how this desert had earned its name, Jornada del Meurto--the Journey of Death.
He resisted the urge to stop. The sooner he reached the Bar-T ranch, the sooner he would know if he had a job. He'd been a vaquero for twelve years, from his sixteenth birthday until now, the Year of Our Lord 1903. He liked the life, the long rides to set out salt licks, build fences, dig wells, and rescue cows that stumbled into mine shafts, the rousing turmoil of cattle, horses, and men when it came time to bring in the herd for branding, or the days spent alone with the endless land and a sky parched white by the blistering sun.
Desert, shimmering with mirages of water, rolled out around him. The land mottled in shades of yellow and dusty brown, prickled by gray-green sagebrush and ocotillo plants. Sunset would paint the sky chili red. In the north, lava flows made the ground bleak and hard. To the south, the Organ Mountains reached out to the sky, with great, upthrust slabs, unfinished in their jagged beauty, as if they had formed only yesterday and hadn't yet yielded their sharp edges to the sun, and the rain, and to Time itself.
A gust of hot wind struck his face. It tugged at the straight black hair he had tied back with his red bandanna. The wind grasped at his clothes too, like fingers pulling at them. Odd, that. Although the dusters that whipped across the desert often came up fast, this one seemed to form out of nowhere.
He squinted ahead. With this heat and wind, he ought to stop--but if he delayed, the jobs at the Bar-T might be gone by the time he arrived. If he landed work, he could buy a ring for Bonita. It was hard to believe what she'd told him, that she feared he would ride off any time and vanish from her life. It was true, he was gone a lot, for months at a time. But he always came back. Didn't she know he loved her? Maybe not. He had never been any good with the soft, pretty words a woman like Bonita needed to hear.
Mizquel didn't want to give up his life--but he didn't want to give up Bonita either. He thought of her standing on the porch of her parents' house, her large dark eyes luminous in the night, her long hair cascading down to her waist. He sighed. She was so pretty. If he got this job, if he gave her his name and vows, maybe then she would feel more secure about his feelings for her.
The wind picked up, gathering dirt and driving it against his face. He swore under his breath. A duster was on its way, he was sure of it. He needed cover. But where? The closest shelter was the old ghost town of Goldstrike, still a good ride to the west. It couldn't offer much, with its broken, abandoned buildings--but if the storm turned bad, even patchy shelter would be better than none at all.
He pulled down the brim of his sombrero to protect his face against the grit. Shading his eyes with his palm, he studied the desert. The storm hadn't built enough to hide the land, but air was growing darker. On every side he saw blowing dust, thorny mesquite, and tumbleweed that rolled in lumpy brown balls across the desert.
Wait! Up ahead there--was that a town? He hadn't gone far enough west to reach Goldstrike, and as far as he knew no other towns existed between here and there. With so much dirt blowing, though, it was hard to make out those vague shapes.
He neck-reigned Cisco and guided the horse forward, squinting. The hunched shapes took hazy form, visible when the curtains of dust parted, then hidden again as the dust swirled across them or whipped into his eyes. He didn't have a good view until he was actually riding among them. Then he saw houses. Stores. A saloon. Wood. Adobe.
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