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an unforgiving place Herpamperedskinwasmoreaccustomedtothecaressofperfumethanthe rivuletsofhot,wind-drivendesertsandabradinghernakedback.Onlytwo weeks earlier the beautiful young woman had been dancing in the arms of admiring suitors at the spring ball of her Bay Area sorority. A large-eared pack rat darted back and forth from the safety of its midden -lined nest in a nearby crag, to tug at the glinting diamond wristwatch thattheolderwomanworeonherleftarm.Therodentwasansweringsome inexplicable instinct to collect such bright trinkets to decorate its burrow, more driven by primordial addiction than fear of approaching the human corpses intruding on its natural habitat. ThejourneyofNancyandHazelFrome,missingfourdaysontheircoastto -coast schedule, had ended in this shallow caliche pit in the Chihuahuan Desert, six miles east of the hamlet of Van Horn, Texas. The great desert covering much of northern Mexico and Far West Texas is an unforgiving place for those who enter unprepared. In all seasons, a relentless sun makes for searing days that rapidly turn to freezing nights, soon after it sets. The extremes of temperature swung that day, on April 3, 1938, in a violent pendulum of more than fifty degrees, enough to cause tiny, eroding fissures in rock surfaces. The women were not prepared, nor did they intend, to come to this spot. Cruel men, some would later say maniacs, had delivered them here, to execute them and leave their fragile remains to be consumed by the creatures and elements of the harsh desert. They lay side by side in death, as they had always been in life, mother and daughter, waiting for someone to find them. They were oblivious, in morbid stillness, to a hundred kinder men ranging for miles over the sere plain in search of them. ...

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