The sun was just going down a hissing globe of fire and torment. Already the lower limb was in contact with the jagged backbone of the mountain chain that rimmed the desert with purple and gold. Out on the barren hard-baked flat in front of the corral just where it had been unhitched when the paymaster and his safe were dumped soon after dawn a weather-beaten ambulance was throwing unbroken a mile-long shadow towards the distant Christobal.' (Excerpt from Chapter 1)