The General is dead. Hellfire smolders on the horizon and Isidro's crackle still rings in my ears. The desert is quiet as the sun slowly climbs to high noon, hotter than two rats fucking in a wool sock. Me and Vade stop to pass the bottle at each exit, but pushing a truck down the highway is no picnic. My boots dig into the dirt with every step; we're making a few yards of progress for every mile of effort. The world is dry and the wind picks up the dust so much I can taste it. The tequila helps.

By mid-day it's over a hundred on the asphalt and we are forced to stop and rest in General Lee's shade by the side of the road. No vultures circling yet, to my surprise. We look like we've been fighting coyotes, bruised and bleeding; I think I still got some glass in my face.  When we at last kill the bottle, Vade flings it at the sky and it falls to shatter on the broken ground. Nothing happens. 

I ask him if there's anything out here we can eat. He shakes his head. 

"No animals?" I ask.

"Si, but they are too smart to come out in daytime." 

Somehow I still believe I'm going to live, but doubt we will ever make it to our destination. The horizon shimmers as our shade grows shorter. The sun finally peaks overhead, bathing everything in the yellow smear of desert sun. We take shelter in the cab and fall into a lazy silence, looking up the road, down the road, and back at each other before settling the flickering horizon. There is nothing to say; we both know how hot it is. I prop my feet in the window and listen to the Stars and Bars flapping as I close my eyes. The tattered flag had been nailed to the General's hood ever since the first day my father came home with the rusty pickup, reeking of card games and moonshine. The next morning he rose early and told me to haul ass, today I started learnin’ to be a man. Lesson plan was five days a week of sweatin’ blood at the Circle R ranch as an apprentice, meaning unpaid and just below a horse in the pecking order. I wasn’t a day over thirteen, but I was bigger than most men and strong enough to out-pull any horse in the stables--I know because my father’s gas money came from gambling on these tug-of-wars during the lunch hour, taking each of his fellow hands with this bet at least once. Only Weird Leroy never caught on. But if you bought Leroy a cup of coffee, he’d tell you about his alien abduction.

Click. I must have dozed off; damn near fall out of the cab when I jerk awake and see Vade unfolding his knife. My hand gropes for the holster under the seat.

"Easy, Kemosabe. You sleep well?" he says without looking over. The desert is gray with dusk already, and Vade is cutting open our last swisher to roll a blunt.

"That what you woke me for?" I relax as my fingers brush the familiar leather.

Vade shakes his head, then inclines it toward the horizon as he licks and smooths the blunt. "For him."

I get out of the truck and squint hard. Silhouetted against the setting sun I see the unmistakable black cloud of a Mexican truck growing large as the sky grows dark.

"Think he'll stop?" I say, walking back to the truck.

"Is possible..."

Find out what happens to Kemosabe, Vade and the General in the novella El Mescaleros.