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7 The morning sun had not quite cleared the mountains when the man stepped onto the covered front porch of the small frame house. Blowing into a mug of coffee, he walked to the end of the porch and leaned against a support column. He sipped the hot coffee and stared out at a wide valley.To the left side of the valley as he looked out at it,a small town against impressive mountains was waking, electric lights glowing in ordered symmetry in the half-light of sunrise. To his right another distant range of mountains was just becoming visible at the edge of the retreating darkness. The wide valley, perhaps ten miles across,lay between the two mountain clusters.Behind and above the house rose two closer, almost identical mountains. As the sun climbed over the mountains daylight spilled across the valley. The man smiled as he stood on his porch watching another day being born. The man looked like what he was—a working cowboy. He wore jeans and well-worn riding boots with high heels and pointed toes, and a faded gray work shirt beneath a denim jacket. The man was slim, and the hands cupping the coffee mug were worn and scarred. His face was darkly tanned, but midway up his forehead the tan gave way to pale skin,the mark of a man who wore a hat when he worked. Noticing a flicker of movement out of the corner of his eye,he looked to the right—toward the towering twin mountains—and saw a group of mule deer grazing on the upward slope, no more than fifty yards from his porch. There were ten in the group, one buck with an impressive rack of antlers, six does with no antlers, and three fawns, not much past the nursing stage. The man stood motionless, watching the grayish-brown deer graze, moving between small patches of grass growing on the rocky hillside. Periodically the deer would raise their heads to look for threats, and detecting none, lower them to continue grazing. The man felt lucky to be able to watch the reclusive deer from such close range. Not wanting to spook the skittish animals, he stood very still as he watched. Eventually the horse in the nearby corral noticed the deer and snorted a startled exclamation that alarmed them. The deer rapidly bounded out of sight over a small rise on the slope. The man watched appreciatively as the deer nimbly ran and jumped over the rocky hillside. He smiled, tossed out the remaining coffee from his mug in an arching spray that sparkled in the morning sunlight as it fell through the air, and walked back into the house. Chapter 2 6:30 AM, Saturday, October 2, 2004, Alpine, West Texas 8 The house went dark as the lights that had created a warm orange glow in the windows were turned off. The man reemerged carrying a weathered, gray Stetson hat that he pulled down over his head. He walked stiffly on the high-heeled boots down the porch steps and across an open area that might be considered a yard. As he headed toward the corral, he passed a rock tank and a windmill. The horse backed away at first when the man opened the gate. The man picked up a bridle hanging on the fence and approached the horse, which stilled as the familiar human talked soothingly to him.The man sped without thinking through the familiar ritual of saddling the horse, a process he had repeated countless times. He led the horse out of the corral, stopping to close the gate from habit, even though there were no other animals in the pen. He grasped the reins in one hand and the horn of the saddle in the other and pulled himself onto the horse’s back. The horse took a couple of uneasy steps backward when he felt the weight, but quickly calmed. There was a chill in the air. It was early October, and mornings in the mountain country were growing noticeably cooler. The man buttoned his denim jacket as he sat astride the horse. He paused to look once more out at the wide valley, and then back toward the tall twin mountains to his rear. Although the day was now bright, the shadows of house, windmill, and barn were still long. The dried white blossoms on the tall stalks rising out of the lechuguilla cactus plants growing...

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