The desert had no clocks.

It measured time differently.

By the color of the morning sky. By the length of shadows beneath the mesquite trees. By how quickly a canteen emptied beneath a merciless sun. By the tracks left in the sand and how long they remained before the wind erased them.

People who lived near the desert learned not to ask how long something would last.

They asked whether it would survive.

Elias Ward had survived for eleven years.

He had survived drought, gunfire, fever, bad horses, worse men, and three winters when the cold had nearly killed him.

He had survived the loss of his brother.

He had survived the disappearance of the woman he had once intended to marry.

Most of all, he had survived himself.

That was the one thing he had never understood.

Why a man who had spent eleven years running from his past could still wake every morning carrying it inside his chest.

On the afternoon everything changed, Elias was riding alone through a stretch of desert so empty that even the vultures seemed reluctant to follow him.

His horse was exhausted.

So was he.

The leather straps around his saddle had cracked from the heat. His shirt was stiff with sweat. A faded scar ran from beneath his left ear to the edge of his jaw, a souvenir from a fight he no longer remembered clearly.

He had been traveling west for three weeks.

He had no destination.

That was deliberate.

Destinations gave a man reasons to stop.

Elias had spent years making sure he never stopped anywhere long enough for anyone to ask where he had come from.

He had learned that people were dangerous when they became curious.

A stranger could be ignored.

A friend could ask questions.

A person who loved you could ask questions you were not prepared to answer.

So Elias had chosen loneliness.

Loneliness never demanded explanations.

The storm arrived without warning.

He saw it first as a dark line along the horizon.

Then the wind struck.

His horse reared.

Elias leaned forward and grabbed the reins.

“Easy.”

The animal screamed.

Dust swallowed the world.

For several minutes there was nothing but sand.

Elias could not see his own hands.

He pulled his scarf over his mouth and tried to turn the horse toward the nearest rocky ridge. But the storm had erased every landmark.

Then lightning split the sky.

For one brief second, he saw the ridge.

Too far.

The horse stumbled.

Elias heard the crack of something breaking beneath the animal's hoof.

The next moment he was falling.

He struck the ground hard.