Part 1: There is no sex in this part; therefore no sex among or viewed by anyone under the age of 18.
In part one the setting and characters are established, and, to be honest, while much of the story is from my fertile imagination, I spent six summers in the Big Bend and Davis Mountains, and the places I went, the people I met, and the stories I was told strongly influenced this tale.
If you've never been to the Big Bend area, trying Googling images of it. That won't come close to doing it justice but you will have an idea of what the country is like. The whole area is unique and the characters who live there rare, but the Study Butte to Terlingua area, and the folks who used to hang out at La Kiva and those who drank beer with Clay Henry, are extra-special.
The sky at night is unlike anything in your experience, unless you've lived in a desert away from lights, or been in the midst of an ocean.
Warning: While the introduction is mild, you may not want to start the series If you don't like violence. The story is posted in Novels and Novellas because, in its entirety, it doesn't fit anywhere else neatly.
Part 2 will be posted soon after this part is published.
Duke's ears perked up; he sniffed the air and listened for a moment, then emitted a low growl. I saved the spreadsheet I was working on, closed the laptop, and holstered the pistol lying beside me on the table. None of the alarms had been triggered yet, but Duke was never wrong. He scrambled out of his Sealy Orthopedic XL Dog Bed and waited at the door while I retrieved my AR and tactical shotgun from their ready station near the couch.
Looking through the glass door, I could see dust rising on the road running to my property through the dessert. A cute little German-made SUV emerged from the dust and stopped just before the creek, a few hundred feet below my vantage. The unknown occupants were reading my hand-painted 6'x6' sign: DO YOU BELIEVE IN THE HEREAFTER? PROCEED BEYOND THIS POINT UNINVITED AND YOU WILL KNOW FOR SURE. POSTED - NO TRESPASSING -- PRIVATE PROPERTY - KEEP OUT. An identical sign stood beside it, written in Spanish.
My line of work and my uncompromising methods seemed to invite, or perhaps provoke, retribution from those whose own selfishness had cost them dearly in dealings with me. Additionally, this desolate area of the Big Bend is rife with
Coyotes
hustling illegals through the desert toward needy agricultural interests to the north, and to needy employers in big cities to the east, north, and west. As well, we contended with drug runners hustling products to the surging markets in those same cities.
Generally speaking, we let them be if they let us be, but some thought they were more than they were.
The sheriff had suggested the need for the straightforward signage after a few tried to breach my castle and I invoked the doctrine. As he said, a sign won't stop the motivated, but it will warn off the lost, and it gives me the necessary cover when the investigation begins.
I was fairly confident, however, that neither my business casualties nor the drug/human runners drove silver Beamers that I was sure had a window sticker like "My child is on the honor roll at..."
I set the shotgun against the wall just inside the door, but kept the AR nestled in my elbow.
The only way to get to my fortified house is up a road that begins just across the shallow creek bed. The narrow road was cut into the granite and gravel of my small mountain at a steep incline, using dynamite, a backhoe, and a bulldozer. It is narrow, with a sheer fall on the outside, a rock face on the inside, and a series of switchbacks on the back (west) side of the mountain that ain't for the faint of heart.
Regardless of how often I run a road grader over it, the road surface is uneven. That's because the sand and small gravel blows away in the high winds that are common out here, and the only rainfall we get falls in torrents. Erosion leaves the uneven granite uncovered, so I have to haul more gravel from time to time.
I left a sluice on the inside, against the mountain, and buried several pipes under the road that send the water flying outward like water main breaks. Those devices keep the roadway from washing out.
The forces of nature also loosen and remove the gravel and sand on the rock face, ultimately causing stones, and sometimes boulders, to break loose and fall onto the roadway. If you have a high-clearance vehicle with big tires, the rocks are only a nuisance, but a standard automobile isn't going to make it up the road.
Over the years, a few have ignored the sign and tried. There were three men who ignored the sign, motivated by anger because they had thrown away their businesses trying to put one over on me. There were a couple of drug dealers high on their product who decided they would kill me and use my house for storage and distribution of their product. The Sheriff's department made a SWAT vehicle out of their Hummer a few months later.
Other than those few, however, all the other people who wandered seven miles down the rough dirt road leading here read the sign, viewed the daunting roadway, backed up, turned around, and fled back the way they came.
Not the folks in the silver SUV; they crossed through the creek and turned onto the road.
Duke and I walked out onto the rock patio so we could keep an eye on our uninvited guest(s).
My curiosity was piqued on two matters: who ignores dire warnings about proceeding sans invitation; and, can the SUV actually ascend the rough road? From early observations, it appeared to be an all-wheel drive X6, so maybe, if it had enough clearance.
The BMW proceeded upward at a rather breath-taking 30-degree angle; it looked like an airplane that had just lifted off the runway and was desperately climbing. Several of my friends with four-wheel drive pickups complained about the narrowness, the angle, and the surface of my road, but my big Jeep handled it easily enough.
The clearance on the SUV appeared questionable from our location, but we watched with appreciation as it made the climb across the south face rather nicely before disappearing behind the west side of the mountain. We waited, listening for sounds that might tell us if the vehicle fell off the road, crashed into the rock wall, or got hung up on the uncovered granite extrusions.
Hearing none, we gave it a few minutes, and then walked around the east side of the house so we could watch it emerge along the north face and into the open area behind the house.
As soon as I saw the nose appear, Duke and I moved against the northeast wall of the house, giving us cover in case whoever was inside came out shooting. Peeping around the corner, I saw the BMW emerge from behind the mountain, enter the open area, and pull into the parking area about 20 steps behind the house.
The AR's muzzle was pointed toward the suspect vehicle as it stopped; Duke's menacing growl grew in volume.
Like his human, the faithful Lab assumed all other humans were enemies until proven otherwise; his fangs were exposed, and he was prepared to do battle unto the death!
