The driver flicked his whip across the horses’ haunches, as moonlight reflected upon buttes, spires, and caprock escarpments on the distant horizon. Inside the cab, a salesman, two soldiers, a lawyer, a cowboy, and a hatless young vagabond sat with knees jammed together, enveloped in the fragrance of springtime. They’d been on the road five days, sleeping in ramshackle roadhouses, alert for Indians. The young man was nearly eighteen years old, tall, with black hair and ill-fitting clothes. He peered out the window at a town down the road, glittering like a sprawl of diamonds across the valley. His name was Duane Braddock, he had thirteen dollars and change in his pocket, and was on the first journey of his life. He didn’t know a soul in Titusville, and had heard that big towns were sinkholes of sin and depravity, with drunken men shooting each other at random, and scarlet women luring lovelorn males into the fires of hell.
