by Wayne Gray
Tex is no ordinary cowboy. Oh he looks the part! He is tall and slim, and his ruggedly handsome face is appropriately bronzed and chiseled by years of outdoor work. It also helps that Tex really had been raised on a Texas ranch, and that cattle raising was in his blood. In spite of his Ivy League education, he had never managed to lose his Texas twang.
Tex is actually a fugitive from both a failed marriage and a disappointing attempt at urban corporate life. At first he hated the name 'Tex', which was first stuck on him in college, but he finally stopped fighting it. After all, it describes him pretty well!
Although Tex is a cattle owner and a cowboy, he is too poor to own a normal ranch and he hasn't lived in Texas since his high school days. Tex actually lives in the Arizona desert. Arizona's 'open range' laws allow him to raise cattle without actually owning a ranch.
So Tex owns only a few acres of cheap desert land, just enough for his little self-built cottage, a small pen shared between his horse and occasional cattle use, and his water well with its associated large tank. His horse is a cherished pet only occasionally used for working cattle. His Jeep is his real workhorse.
If you live in a city or town, you might have trouble visualizing Tex's life. Tex's nearest neighbor is miles away. Nobody bothers stringing the desert with power or phone cables, so Tex lives 'off the grid'. His cabin and water well are powered by solar panels, and his cellular phone connects him to the world. At night, the only lights that Tex can see are the moon and the stars!
Although it was failure and frustration that sent Tex out into the desert to live, he has learned to love it here. His horse, 'Midnight' and his Border Collie herding dog 'Angel' serve as his only partners in his cattle business and as his sole daily companions.
You may think of Tex as 'damaged goods' because of the twin failures of his marriage and his corporate career, but he has found peace, quiet, and happiness in the solitude of his snug little home in the desert. Also, he has become a bit set in his ways, so he doesn't always react well when the occasional human shows up to interrupt his peace.
So Tex didn't smile that one memorable night when his dog Angel suddenly barked out a warning. Shortly later he heard a female voice call out from the darkness, and then somebody knocked on his door!
Sara wasn't thinking straight! But she knew one thing for sure! Greg, her live-in boyfriend, couldn't treat her like that!
To Sara, it seemed like a minor thing. She had forgotten to pay a few bills. Oh she had meant to pay them, but it was all such a hassle to keep track of! Her arrangement with Greg was that he paid the rent from his salary, and she paid their household's other bills from hers. And really it wasn't her fault that by the time the power and gas companies had gotten around to sending her overdue notices, she had already spent her paycheck!
Even that wouldn't have been a problem except that Greg decided to be unreasonable when she asked to 'borrow' the money. Simply because this had happened a few times before, he had called her irresponsible! Finally, the last straw for Sara, Greg had actually had the temerity to suggest that the price for loaning her the money should be a spanking! Imagine!
In a snit, Sara had jumped into her car and dashed out of town. As the unfairness of Greg's attitude kept running through her mind, Sara kept driving. All she wanted to do was put distance between her and that bastard Greg!
As she drove, the roads got smaller. She went through a tiny town, and then the roads started to branch. The sun was getting low so Sara decided to find a motel for the night. Remembering that little town behind her, Sara turned around to settle for that little rundown motel she had spotted there. Perhaps things would look better in the morning!
When she tried to retrace her path, Sara ran into trouble. She tried several turns, but she couldn't find her way back to any main road. By now her headlights were on and she couldn't believe how dark it had become. Also worrisome was her gas tank which was now below a quarter full and sinking fast on the rough roads she was forced to negotiate.
At one point the road took a dip and became sandy for about thirty feet. She could see tire tracks through the sand so she 'knew' it was safe to drive on, but just to be safe she drove the car very slowly through the soft spot. Later she would learn that creeping through soft sand was exactly the wrong strategy, but that wouldn't help her tonight. When she felt the car bog down she quickly put it into reverse and revved the engine. Rather than back out of the sand, she felt the car sink to its chassis! Over the next several minutes, Sara tried to work the car loose, but all she succeeded in doing was getting it more stuck!
Defeated and in tears, she shut off the engine and doused the headlights. She couldn't believe how dark it was! It was just Sara's luck that she had picked a moonless night to get stuck in the desert.
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