Chisos Mountain Sunset

MARCH 2009 Lionel Sturgis never anticipated the wind. It whipped and threw him about, striking without notice as fast and unexpected as a lightning strike from a distant almost invisible cloud. One second it would be perfectly still, the next he would be steadying himself in the only way he could, by taking an extra stumble step to prop himself up and avoid tumbling into the nearest prickly plants. The rustling mesquite bushes were everywhere and, he thought, surely must be the only other thing alive out here other than him. He would have sought shelter from the wind but there was no shelter because this was the desert, el grande Chihuahua, as the natives south of the border called it in what at first seemed a mocking insult. Chihuahuas were anything but grand: skinny yapping little dogs with fingernail-on-chalkboard barks that tugged at pant hems and nipped at heels. Giving the same name to a huge, sweeping desert that stretched hundreds and hundreds of miles from West Texas south to San Luis Patosi in central Mexico just didn’t make sense. Sturgis knew nothing about San Luis Patosi, or Mexico, and even less about West Texas, but he realized after only a short two or three hours that fleeing into this unforgiving expanse may in fact be as effective and as fatal as any death penalty some damn jury was about to hand him. As protection went, it was the nearest thing Lionel would find: a boulder the size of a school bus. He crawled up next to it, finding the wind had lessened somewhat but had still somehow managed to find its way over, under, around and maybe even through the giant rock. It crept under his shirt collar like icy prickly fingertips and created a chill that shook him to his bones. He eased his head back onto the rock and caught a breath. With his adrenaline slowing for the first time in hours, a flood of thoughts came rushing back to him and he remembered like a bad and repeating dream all of the events of the day, events that would only hasten the end of his life, which had already been fast approaching before he decided to grab the bailiff’s gun.