Mojave Sun

By Glenn Trust

They came searching for paradise. They found Hell.

Chance Wills is an unlikely savior…but he's the only one they have.

In this modern-day western thriller, Rancher Javier Fuentes is rebuilding the family's ranching empire in the Nevada desert. The problem is beef prices are down, and costs are up.

Tormented by the ghost of his dominating father haunting his thoughts, he must prove that he is strong enough to carry the Fuentes name forward. The new empire will be founded on a business that is not subject to the whims of the marketplace. He has it all calculated and weighed, profit against loss. It is the perfect business.

The only drawback is that the scheme will leave a trail of pain and death, bleeding away into the dust. For Fuentes, that is just the cost of doing business. For those caught up in his plan, it will become a living hell.

Only Wills can open the gates of hell for those imprisoned by Fuentes' plans.

>>>Assisted by his only friends Ralph "Blister" Doates, and Maricruz Sanchez, Chance takes on Fuentes in a showdown reminiscent of "Dirty Harry" meets Calvera and his gang of banditos from "The Magnificent Seven".

Scroll up and grab your copy of this Modern-Day Western Thriller!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Glenn Trust
• Release date: Oct 10, 2016
• ISBN: 9781393265542

Glenn Trust

Glenn Trust is a native of the south but has lived in most regions of the country at one time or another. Varied experiences from construction worker to police officer, corporate executive to city manager, color and provide insight into the characters he creates. His stories are known for detailed plots, solid research, and realism. There are no superheroes or knights in shining armor in his stories. According to Trust, knights are for fairy tales. His books are gritty and based in the real world with characters who face their frailties while dealing with their roles in the story. The heroes are average people doing the best they can. Also missing from his stories are any references to vampires, zombies, supervillains, or other assorted monsters. Trust's monsters hide behind the smiling faces that pass us on the street. They look like us, and this makes them more frightening. He is the author of the bestselling Hunters, Blue Eyes-The Journey, and Sole Justice Series of mystery/suspense/thrillers as well as stand-alone novels and short stories. Today, he writes full-time and lives quietly with his wife and two dogs, Gunner and Charlie. You can find all of his work on his Book Bub author page, or check out his Facebook Page - Glenn Trust Books where you can sign up for his email group to receive updates on new releases and upcoming book promotions.

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1. Mojave Sun

He stood in the door of the shack, squinting into the rising sun as it etched another line across his face. A breeze blew down fresh and crisp from the mountains surrounding the valley. He turned into it, savoring it. By the afternoon, it would change directions, sending hot, stinging gusts over the land, laden with the dust that seeped into every crack and crevice of every inanimate object and living creature, including him.

Chance Wills stepped out onto the plank porch and lifted the coffee mug to his lips. A rooster crowed on cue.

You’re late. He rinsed his mouth with the coffee and spat into the dust. As usual.

The chicken coop sat to the side of the small cabin in a patch of desert he called the yard. Hens stirred and pecked at the hard ground, looking for a seed or insect that might have blown into their domain during the night.

Walking to the galvanized trashcan beside the pen, he reached for the grain scoop and shoveled chicken scratch through the wire, spreading it in a wide arc. The hens scurried about in the dust to gobble up their share before the rooster flopped to the ground and chased them out of the way.

Watch out. Here comes the old bastard, Chance called to the hens.

He landed with a dusty, clumsy, wing-flapping thud in the midst of the hens. They scattered. He strutted in a calm, dignified way, bending down occasionally to peck up the best morsels for himself.

You’re a greedy son of a bitch, Cogburn. Chance eyed the rooster and shook his head.

The name came from the main character in one of his favorite movies. It was one of his few concessions to modern technology, watching old movies on the DVD player and television that he powered with the generator on the back porch. Modern, of course, is a relative term.

He turned to the cabin, sipping from his mug, scratching under his tee shirt as he walked. One of the goats in the shed bleated.

You’re next. After my coffee.

He dropped onto a hard wooden chair on the front porch. Years of heat, wind and sand had long since blasted away any finish that had covered it. The white, bare wood shined as if it had been polished, its smooth surface pitted here and there, by the sand driven on the desert winds.

He lived alone, but he was not lonely, and he was not a hermit, although most of the few residents of Campo Seco thought of him that way. That didn’t trouble him. What others thought of his life was of little importance.

Once he had lived in a city back east, one of the large ones. That was a long time ago, before that other life had ended. He had been a different person then. This was his life now.

He didn’t hate people. He relished peace, savoring it the way a thirsty man does a sip of water. There had not been enough of it in his life.

He had come to Campo Seco in the desert of southern Nevada searching for peace. Under the baking sun, he found it.

He put his head back and closed his eyes, letting the sunlight wash over him, cleansing and warm. Two flies buzzed against the screen door behind him, seeking the shade of the house. They sensed the heat that was coming, frantically searching for a place to hide in the shadows until dark.

It was up over the hills now. The glowing morning warmth would start to take on a fierce intensity by ten o’clock. By the afternoon, the Mojave sun would morph into an angry flaming ball that scorched the earth and anything on it. Chance Wills welcomed the burning.

2. Survival

The temperature rose with the sun’s ascent above the horizon. Crammed inside the truck’s steel box, the cargo, thirty-eight men and women, sat along the walls.

It was a tight fit. The cargo dimensions measured twenty-six feet by seven. Each passenger was allotted less than a foot and a half of space.

Some leaned back against the aluminum walls, feeling the rising sun’s heat warm their backs through the thin sheet metal. Others rested their heads on raised knees trying to sleep. The two weeks of work, digging irrigation canals on a central California farm had exhausted them.

The bone-jarring six-hour night trip across the desert and over mountain passes was punctuated by potholes and boulders in the road. The truck swayed and lurched as it made the switchback turns along mountainsides. Stomachs churned sending bile into the throats of the passengers who had no outside horizon to steady their eyes but could only see the rocking insides of the cargo box.

A bucket by the bay door served as the toilet. Another at the opposite end contained rusty water. Most refrained from drinking the water as much as possible so that they would not have to use the bucket. Filthy and reeking of human excrement and vomit, it was to be avoided if at all possible.

When it was used, there was no privacy. Men and women squatted over it and did what they were forced to do. Eyes were averted to provide as much privacy as possible, but the sounds and smells were unavoidable.

There was an agreed upon protocol for seating in the truck. Mostly it was based on age, but time with the group and infirmity also factored in. Senior members, the sick and the weak sat farthest away from the slop bucket. Junior members sat closer, the most junior with their legs touching the reeking bucket and its contents that splashed over the sides as the truck lurched over rocks or around turns.

None complained about the arrangement. If they survived, each would eventually have the senior spot in the truck. Those who currently occupied it would meet the fate of those who had gone before. They would die. There was no hurry to become the senior member of the group.

*****

They came from many places, Mexico, El Salvador, Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras, some from as far away as South America. Driven by the promise of work, reunion with family members, escape from poverty or political turmoil, they came and paid their money, sometimes their life’s savings, to the coyotajes...the smugglers of people.

Some of those fulfilled their agreements and delivered their human cargo in reasonable safety, pocketed their money, and returned to repeat the trip. Their customers were the lucky ones.

Others, like those in the truck, simply disappeared. Preying on the ignorance and desperation of people whose knowledge of America was based on dreams and hearsay, the coyotajes took their money and abandoned them to die in the southwest deserts or sold them to the highest bidder.

It was always a gamble. Driven by the vision of life in the States, they accepted the risk. They had to. There was no way for them to know the character of those who took their money, smiling and assuring them of the wonders just across the border.

That the coyotajes trafficked in human beings for a profit should have been a warning, but desperation is a powerful force, clouding judgment and filling hearts with unfounded hope. They trusted themselves to the human smugglers. Some paid a terrible price for their faith.

The people in this truck had chosen poorly. Paying their money to the smiling man in Mexico, they had placed themselves in his hands, and in that moment, their lives as free people had ended.

The journey into captivity began in the Sonoran Desert on the Mexican side of the border. In a deserted garage in the town of Sasabe, the money changed hands. They smiled and climbed willingly into the back of a truck similar to the one they rode in now.

Somewhere in the barren hills west of Sasabe, the truck was met by the guides. They were members of the Tohono O’odham Nation of Native Americans from the Arizona side of the border. All young men, they would earn more for the night’s work than most of the tribe would in a year. In a place where unemployment was stalled at sixty percent and with families to feed, the smuggling of human beings did not seem to be such a terrible thing.

The reservation encompassed 4,600 square miles and 28.5 million acres lying along the border with Mexico. It was their land, their nation. They had a right to bring whomever they chose across the border into their country; at least that was how they saw the matter. They merely took the immigrants into their own smaller farm and ranch trucks and transported them across the reservation where they were met by others who loaded them into other trucks.

From there, the immigrants made a circuitous journey over back roads and mountain trails. When the back door of the truck was flung open, they had no idea where they were, but it did not look like the pictures they had seen of North America. The sheds where they were housed were located in the Mojave Desert of southern Nevada, but they could have been on the moon for all they knew.

There were others there. Silent ghosts wearing straw hats against the sun and torn clothing, fetching buckets of water to the sheds, carrying wood and charcoal for cook fires, hanging a few scraps of ragged garments out to dry in the desert air. They eyed each new load of newcomers sadly but did not speak.

*****

You must use the bucket, Rosa. The old woman coaxed the girl gently.

No. She lowered her head, shaking it. I cannot.

You are making yourself sick. We have two more hours before we arrive. You will soil yourself, and then what? You will be dirty and spread disease to everyone. She patted the girl’s hand and looked at a young man seated across from them. Emilio. Help her.

He nodded and stood, steadying himself with a hand against the truck’s swaying wall. Come, Rosa. We will stand guard. No one will see. He put his hand out. Come.

Rosa looked up. Finally, she stood, tears starting down the sides of her dust-streaked face.

Emilio nodded at two others seated near the toilet bucket. They stood and with him, turned their backs to the bucket and made a barrier between it and the rest of the truck. Rosa stood behind them, hesitated, and finally dropped her pants to her knees.

Let it come with force, Rosa, the old woman said. There is no paper to clean yourself. It is best to force it all out at once. That way you will not be soiled by it.

Rosa sobbed, squatted and pushed so that her bowels emptied explosively. Her weeping increased, feeling the humiliation and knowing that all had heard.

Emilio and the others waited patiently. Rosa was new to the group, a replacement having just arrived the day before they had been sent to dig the big ditch for the farmer in California. They had all experienced this as newcomers...the degradation and humiliation.

In time, those feelings would fade. After that, only one thing mattered...survival.

3. ¿Comprende?

Maricruz Sanchez pushed the door open, stepped inside and turned the cardboard ‘Closed" sign to ‘Open’. Sunlight filtered across the room. Specks of dust floating in the air lit up in the rays streaming through the door like tiny suns drifting in the morning breeze.

She pulled the shutters apart, bathing the room in full light. A half dozen wood-topped tables and scarred chairs made up the furnishings. Along one wall, a bar stretched twelve feet, the entire length of the building.

Maricruz turned on the coffee maker behind the bar and then walked through the door in the rear wall. Outside a hard-packed path led to a walk-in cooler under a tin-roofed shed. She unlocked a padlock, stepped inside, and checked the temperature.

It was where the beer was stored. The thermometer read forty-two degrees. By the afternoon, it would read sixty-five and the chilling unit would be running non-stop to keep it there. She grabbed two eighteen pack cases of longnecks, Budweiser and Miller, one in each hand.

After pulling the cooler door shut behind her, she returned through the bar’s rear door carrying the cases of beer. The first customer of the day was waiting for her.

’Bout time you showed up. The thickset, round-bellied man with a week’s growth of gray stubble grinned, clicking his dentures in the process. I was beginning to worry about you.

You knew where I was. Maricruz hefted the cases of beer onto the counter, brushed a strand of her dark hair away from her face, and turned to face the man. Beer or coffee this morning?

Hmmm. That’s always a dilemma, ain’t it? His false teeth clicked into a grin again. Believe it’ll be coffee...to start. Had a late night last night.

You have a late night every night. She poured the coffee into a mug and placed it on the bar in front of him. Right here, on that stool.

So I do. He nodded. So I do. He picked up the mug and sipped delicately like a banker wearing a five hundred dollar suit instead of dungarees and a faded work shirt.

It was the way they started every day. Maricruz Sanchez ran the most frequented business in Campo Seco...the bar. It had no name except for ‘The Bar’. When people felt the need to be more specific, they called it Sanchez’s Bar.

Ralph Blister Doates was the first customer in every day and usually one of the last to leave. A ranch hand had good-naturedly dubbed him Blister, saying that the amount of time he spent on that barstool must have worked up one hell of a blister on his ass.

Doates offered to drop his pants and offer his rump for inspection. The invitation was declined by the ranch hand, but the name stuck.

In truth, Nevada has no mandatory closing hours and no ‘last call’ for bars. Blister would stay all night if Maricruz would allow it, but she didn’t.

Usually, she closed down around one in the morning, when the local crowd had headed back to the dusty little shacks and trailers they called home. If there were some special event like New Years, Christmas or the Fourth of July, she would extend the party for an hour or so.

Maricruz Sanchez and her husband Tomás had purchased the small adobe building in the middle of the desert a dozen years earlier. It wasn’t much, but in Campo Seco, it was all there was. Ranch hands, squatters, homesteaders, and the loners from fifty miles in every direction made their way to Sanchez’s for beer and gossip. Then they disappeared into the desert until the need for company struck them again.

A few, like Blister, were regulars, there every day, or most days at least. It was enough to provide the Sanchez’s with sufficient funds to pay for the electricity to keep the beer cold with a little left over.

Damn. I like a woman with curves. Blister watched appreciatively as Maricruz bent over, putting beers in the well behind the bar.

She stood and patted her rump then her chest. Too much ass, not enough tit.

Looks pretty good from here.

You drank too much beer last night.

Hell, I drink too much beer every night, but my eyes are just fine.

Drink your coffee. She turned away. I have work to do.

*****

For the last eight years, Maricruz had done all of the work in the bar. Tomás had disappeared one day, hiking in the mountains on the eastern side of the valley. He had driven off in the morning saying that he was going to scout for bighorn sheep. By the time they found his body, Maricruz had ended her grieving and taken to running the bar on her own.

Chance Wills and Blister Doates had gone out on four-wheelers, crisscrossing the hills from the point where they found Tomás’ pickup. It took a month.

The headless body of the rattlesnake that had killed Tomás was clutched in his right hand. He had killed the snake and carried it as a sign to whoever found him, in case he was incapacitated, that he needed anti-venom serum.

By the time Chance and Blister found him, coyotes, crows and buzzards had been hard at work on the free meal that Tomás had provided by allowing a snake to kill him. They took what was left of his body back to be buried behind the bar. There wasn’t much.

Mabry Dawes, the sheriff department’s deputy responsible for that deserted section of the county, was advised. He duly reported the accidental death of Tomás Roberto Sanchez, notified the coroner and released the remains for burial.

Maricruz opened the bar late the day of the funeral. A priest from Boulder City came out to say the mass. The wind covered his vestments in dust and drowned out much of what he said, although everyone present remained attentive and solemn. After all, the owner of the only bar in town was dead.

After the burial, Maricruz bought drinks for everyone who attended, including the priest. The solemnity vanished with the alcohol. The day stretched into evening, and the party continued. Everyone told their best Tomás Sanchez stories.

When they left, Maricruz wept. The following day the bar opened at the regular time.

*****

When the morning opening chores were completed, Maricruz poured herself a cup of coffee and leaned against the bar in front of Blister. Is Chance coming in today?

Shit. He shook his head. Here you got a man right in front of you, and all you can do is ask about the one that ain’t here.

You know I love you too. She smiled and patted his hand. But have you heard from Chance?

It’s Saturday. I reckon he’ll be in, like usual.

Will you go out and check on him then?

It’s a hell of a thing, being friends with the man who’s got the woman I want. He shook his head. Yeah, I’ll go check on the old bastard. Don’t I always.

Yes... She leaned forward on her tiptoes across the bar and kissed his cheek. Yes, you do. Then she looked him sternly in the eye. "And no one has got me. I do what I want, with who I want. ¿Comprende?"

"Comprende. Blister nodded, chastised. It’s just a hell of a thing, is all I was sayin’."

Good, Maricruz smiled. How about a beer, on the house.

"Believe I will and muchas gracias Señora." Blister’s Spanish came out, moochy-ass grassy-us Seen-your-uh.

Maricruz cringed and handed over the beer. Put that in your mouth and shut up. You’re hurting my ears.

4. El Patrón

From the mountainside, Javier Fuentes could see across the entire valley. Fifteen miles to the east, the sun was making its way above the mountains that rimmed the eastern side of the basin. He leaned back in the seat of the Jeep Wrangler, adjusted his sunglasses, and drew deeply on the cigar. The morning breeze freshened in his face as the temperature on the valley floor rose.

Once, the valley, the mountains on each side, and the basin as far as it extended to the north and south had belonged to his family. Two hundred years ago, all of it would have been his.

*****

That was in the days of his grandfather’s grandfather. Descendants of Spanish conquistadors, the Fuentes family had moved east from California and the political strife between the aristocratic Spanish families that controlled the land and the expanding United States.

Crossing the Sierra Mountains, they laid claim to a vast stretch of the Mojave Desert in what would become southwestern Nevada along the California border. There they made the desert bloom, prospering from the cattle they raised on the mountain slopes and in the cool, watered passes and canyons.

When the indigenous Mojave tribes objected to their presence, Alberto Fuentes, Javier’s great-great-grandfather, fought a short but bloody war against them. The strategy to drive them away was simple, the tactics even simpler. They killed the Indians indiscriminately, and without mercy until they moved their tribal camps from the barren valley they had called home for a thousand years.

The victory was short-lived. Within another generation, other interlopers began arriving in the Fuentes’ domain. These would not be pushed out so easily.

Mountain men, explorers, miners searching for the next gold strike, even a few other ranchers made their way into the valley. They were as well armed as the Fuentes clan and as determined to stay.