A poster on a storefront, the picture of a wanted man
He had a reputation spreading like fire throughout the land
It wasn't for the money; at least it didn't start that way
It wasn't for the running, but now he's running everyday

Five minutes drive north of Tombstone, close to the junction of the Jefferson Davis Memorial Highway and state route 82, I pass a roadside sign with a warning: PREPARE TO STOP AHEAD. Traffic cones either side of me squeeze the lane down to the width of a truck. As I top the summit of a long upward incline I see an orange trailer on the nearside verge about five hundred meters distant. A US flag hangs from a high white pole, with barely enough breeze to cause a stir in the harsh heat of mid-day. Moving at the regulation 15mph speed limit I’m now close enough to read the words ‘US Border Patrol’ on the side of the two four wheel drive vehicles parked in the shade of a roadside shelter.

Up ahead, an officer is bending forward as he talks with the driver of a stationary Toyota through the open side window. The red brake lights flicker, then go off and the patrolman straightens up, motioning the car to move on with a sweep of his arm. He turns my way and beckons me forward. I switch off the radio and take my passport from the glove box, leaving it in my lap.

Despite the early afternoon temperature the officer is bareheaded, but his eyes are shielded behind aviator-style sunglasses. His uniform is pressed and sharp, his manner is loose and amiable. From a sideways glance he could pass for Brad Pitt. He drops down to meet me eye to eye.

‘Hello Sir, what brings you to highway 80 on this magnificent afternoon?’

I look for a sense of irony. There is none. He means it.

‘Oh, I’m just passing through. Came down from Willcox to Douglas this morning, then on through Bisbee and Tombstone’.

‘Did you cross into Mexico when you were in Douglas?' he says, his teeth white against his glowing tan.

‘No, I didn’t have the time’.

“OK Sir, can I see some ID please?’

‘Certainly'. I hand over my passport.

‘Right, you’re a citizen of the United Kingdom', he says, perfect teeth set free once more. ‘Outstanding’.

I have no answer and can only smile meekly as he flicks through the pages until he finds the stub of the green visa waiver form that I completed on the plane coming over. Satisfied, he moves on to the last page, then, with an elaborate magician’s flick of the wrist, hands the passport back to me.

‘Where are you off to next?’ he says, grinning like a college boy out on a spree.

‘Up to Tucson, then Phoenix’, I say, putting my passport back in its place and shutting the door with a slam that has more force than I intend.

‘Well you be sure to enjoy the rest of your stay here in the United States of America. Drive safe and a have safe flight home when it’s time’, he says standing up, his face out of sight.

I take my foot off the brake and ease forward, ‘Thanks, I will’, I say, raising my arm in a gesture of farewell. I keep my speed down until the roadblock is gone from my rearview mirror and only then do I press my foot to the accelerator and turn up the volume on the radio.

The highway is my legacy
On the highway I will run
In one hand I've a Bible
In the other I've got a gun
Well, don't you know me
I'm the man who won
Woman don't try to love me
Don't try to understand
A life upon the road is the life of an outlaw man

Douglas, Arizona, is a border town. I pull up outside the Gadsden Hotel around 10.15am after driving down state highway191 from Willcox, passing through Cochise, Elfrida and Double Adobe on the way. The road follows the line of the Dragoon Mountains, where, in the 1860's, the Chiricahua Apache leader Cochise took refuge with two hundred of his people and for ten years waged a guerrilla war against the US army and the settlers of the southwest. In the clear morning light, the mountains stand hard and timeless against the blue empty sky; the spirits of those passed whisper still in the shadows of each hidden canyon and gulley.

Situated a mile from the border with Mexico, The Gadsden stands six stories high at 1046 G Avenue. Originally built in 1907, it fast became home-from-home for cattlemen, ranchers, miners and businessmen in this corner of what was then called Arizona Territory. Rebuilt in 1929 following a catastrophic fire, legend states that Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa once rode his horse up the marble staircase: a chipped step remains as evidence for those who wish to believe in such folk tales. My visit is motivated by an altogether more basic need. I have come to sample the breakfast in the Gadsden's El Conquistador restaurant, renowned as one of the best to be had in Cochise County.

I take my place in the high walled room among a mid-morning scattering of fellow diners; late rising guests, subdued and not long awake, chewing silently while gazing, bleary-eyed, into some private inner space: local businessman taking time-out between appointments, eyes down, scanning newspapers or leafing through documents, jotting down notes; drifting travellers like myself, passing the time here in search of a lost and more glamorous past, chasing ghosts. And this fading hotel has its share of those. Sightings by staff and guests have been regularly reported over the years, made more incredible with each retelling.

Myself, I prefer the story of Lee Marvin coming within a hair of the dog's breadth of a brawl in the Saddle and Spur Tavern. Tossing down the contents of his glass with his pinkie elegantly extended, his sullen eyes drilled the fear of God into his foolish challenger, like he'd done a hundred times up on the big screen. Only this time, he wasn't acting. Then there was Shelly Winters, who, as a young starlet and hopeful pretender to Marilyn's crown, had answered the door to room service clothed only in the brassy confidence of her youth. Both are gone now, into the stuff of legend.

Breakfast over, I step out into the brightness beyond the front entrance of the hotel and turn right towards the border crossing. Unlike some towns I've visited, Douglas manages to hang on to a handful of businesses the like of which were to be found on every main street in thousands of such towns the length and breadth of this country until the 1960's. I walk past a grocery store, a furniture showroom, a ladies and gents clothing outlet, a flooring specialist and a post office. In so many small towns these have been replaced by trashy gift shops, thrift stores and failing cafes. Edge of town shopping malls have killed off retail in the centres of small towns in America, forcing surviving traders to scratch a living from passing tourists while giant Walmart superstores rule supreme and unseen, a short drive beyond the city limits.

The collection of low, bunker shaped buildings and high razor wire topped fences that identify the crossing point into Mexico are in a desolate part of town. Buildings peter out on the wide sidewalk-free streets, the dust blowing across from vacant lots, stinging eyes and catching in the back of the throat. A bunch of US border patrolmen and women are in position, dark featureless shapes in the shadows beneath a canopy that straddles the road, quietly going about their business. A dog is led around each vehicle by its handler, the animal trained to sniff out drugs and explosives. Papers are checked, the barrier raised and vehicles are waved through, highlights occasionally picking out the metal of the officer's weapons. These are dangerous times at the border and the authorities are on high alert and fully armed.

Thousands of people from Mexico cross into the United States every day. They get in line before it's light and they come to work. Then each evening, they return, a full day's work done in exchange for the US dollar. But they spend the night on their own side of the border.

There's something about this place that is giving me a sense of unease. It could be the military presence, the guns, the wire, the dogs, or it may be the thought of all those people passing this way every day, only tolerated for their labour before being forced to return to their country of origin. I'm aware that my view is based on privilege. I am able to work freely in my own country without the need to cross a border in order to earn a living wage. If this were so, my view would likely be very different, grateful for the opportunity to support my family by providing more, however that was achieved.

My head spinning with such thoughts I turn around and head back to the car.

The parking lot at the Cactus Flower is approaching full. It’s reputation as the best eatery in town is borne out by the rows of cars and pickups drawn up outside this single story building on the western limits of town. I squeeze in beside a battered two-tone Dodge and a gleaming, buffed Ford; black with tinted glass, shiny chrome reflecting the fluorescent neon of a sign, high atop a pole overhead.

As I pass, a dog - a mongrel with a black face and lazy flopping ears – raises its head in the cab of the Dodge, wet nose smearing the glass, eyes showing white, wide open and wild. It doesn’t bark, but sits and watches me all the way to the restaurant door, restlessly shifting its weight between its two front legs. Entering the lobby I’m hit with a wall of sound, heat and smells; spicy food mixed with the babbling clamour of humanity. Waitresses brush past me in a constant stream, manoeuvring swiftly in and out of tables packed with diners; trays balanced expertly on each arm and loaded high with steaming, chilli-hot dishes and ice-cold beers and sodas. The roar of conversation sits just below the steady bass thump and flashy trumpet blare of a TexMex soundtrack, piped in through speakers around the walls.

I take my place in line at the entrance to the dining room. The place is full and there are two large groups in front of me waiting for tables to empty. Being a party of one, I may be here for a while. But I’m in luck. A table for two has just been vacated, and the hostess ushers me forward. I follow as she sweeps past chattering family groups and revelling businessmen, the petticoats beneath the swirling colours of her skirt rustling against her silk covered legs. She leads me to a small table set against the wall. The busboy is just finishing laying-up and I take my seat. He returns immediately with a pitcher of iced water and fills my glass. I thank him and he acknowledges with a short nod. He’s at the bottom of the ladder around here and his is not a job that draws much thanks, so he doesn’t expect any.

A waitress, dressed in the same Tijuana costume as the hostess, appears at my side and hands me a menu. Her name is Maria - it’s confirmed on the badge she wears - and she’s happy to be my server this evening and answer any questions I may have. She has quick black eyes that light up in time with her smile, which appears often and without a hint of being forced. Maria runs through the night’s specials; meatloaf with greens, prime rib-eye and blackened catfish with a salsa sauce. I order the catfish, with cornbread on the side and a cold Mexican beer.

Removing my glasses I take some time to take a look around the room. Without Spanish, to look is all I can do. The table next to mine seats six men. They are dressed for business; pressed shirts, some with ties, dark pants, two are wearing Stetsons. Beside them, propped against chair legs or lying on vacant seats, are document cases and bags bulging with papers. But whatever business they came here to do is now over and they’re in party mood. The cigars are lit, the beers and liquors are flowing and the laughter is loud and frequent, rattling the bottles on the table. One of them has been joined by his son, a boy of twelve or thirteen, who looks unsure and ill at ease, not yet ready to take his place in the bawdy company of his male elders out for a night on the town.

Other children, those in the familiar company of their families, are relaxed and uninhibited, swapping jokes and joining in the joyous exchanges that inevitably end in shared laughter. It would be easy to feel out of place in these surroundings; alone, with no understanding of the language, while all around are passing their time in the company of others; sharing, communicating, touching, loving, just being themselves and for a while, forgetting whatever troubles they may have until another day. ‘Until tomorrow.’ I raise my glass to that.

At around 4pm I check into the motel one block south of Main Street. It’s franchised from a national chain, looks no more than ten years old and is clean and comfortable. My room is on the second floor on the inside of the building overlooking a fenced-in pool, which despite being drenched in warm afternoon sunlight, remains empty. Around the edge on the concrete flagstones are five or six white plastic tables with shade umbrellas, matching chairs and a row of loungers, primed and waiting for sun worshipers that have yet to show.

On the walkway opposite stands a cleaner’s trolley. The sound of a local Hispanic radio station drifts through an open doorway and mixes with the drone of a vacuum cleaner as the maid finishes off her last chores of the day. A child appears with a bundle of used towels and dumps them into the large plastic laundry bag that’s attached to the front of the trolley, then disappears inside carrying a fresh supply, crisply folded and piled high on her outstretched arms, the uppermost tucked under her jutting chin. Dropped off by the school bus, the little girl probably comes here every day to help her mother so she can get through early and be home in time to fix her husband’s supper: a family working hard to make it in the land of opportunity.

I shower off the day’s dust and change into fresh clothes. Deciding to plot tomorrow’s route down to Tucson, I step outside to retrieve the Arizona state atlas from the car. The pool is still empty and the maid and her daughter have left for the day. As I’m locking the car, the atlas tucked under my arm, a large white pickup pulls into the space alongside me. The back is loaded with decorating materials; large industrial-sized tubs of paint, brushes, rollers and dust sheets. A large man aged around fifty, thinning red hair, military-style moustache, kitted out in splattered overhauls, swings his legs clear of the sagging driver’s seat and slides to the ground.

‘You lost?’ he says, nodding towards the atlas.

‘Lost? No. Just checking the route between here and Tucson for tomorrow. I thought I may stay off the freeway and take the scenic drive along the border to Douglas and Bisbee.’

‘Good if you can spare the time,’ he says, reaching into the cab to gather a few possessions that lay scattered over the passenger seat. ‘Me, I need to get from place to place quick as I can. Don’t need a map to help me none neither, not after fifteen years of doing this job.’ He anticipates my reply before I get a chance to speak. “I’m a decorator for Sears. Travel all over the country refurbishing the stores and offices, so I know my way round pretty good by now. I just done a store in Tucson, now I’m headed over El Paso way. After that it’s up to Show Low, Arizona.’

‘A lot of travelling. Don’t you get tired of it?’ I say.

‘No, it’s my life now. I took it up when my wife and me split back in 1989 and here I am. It’s not a bad life for a single man, always movin’ on, meeting new folks.‘

‘Do you ever get home?’

‘Once in a while, but these places are my home now,’ he says looking around him, ‘I always stay in one of these if there’s one in town. They’re good value and generally reliable. Got everything I need pretty much and I only sleep in ‘em, all’s said and done. The only thing missing in the smaller places is regular security so that’s why I always take a room where I can park right outside - keep an eye on things. I’ve known guys get cleaned out. Everything took overnight. Fine if you want to paint out your house to look like a Sears store. But I’ve never lost so much as quart can of paint. Been lucky so far I guess. By the way, the name’s Ed, Ed Medel’, he says, offering his right hand, ‘originally from Barstow California, now residing in Lawton, Oklahoma, when I’m not on the road.

‘And I’m Farquhar,’ I say taking his hand, ‘originally from England, but now from wherever my four wheels last took me.’

‘Please to meet you I’m sure,’ he says, ‘And if you’re looking for a good place to eat here in Willcox, ain’t but one place and that’s the Cactus Flower out on the west side of town’. With that, he checks the locked doors of his truck, produces a key-card from the pocket of his overalls and lets himself into number 109.

Returning to my room past the empty pool, I stretch out on the blue coverlet of the bed to study the map. Within seconds I am asleep on the strange pillow of my wanderlust, dreaming of the green shady canopy and high banks of an English country lane on a summer’s evening long ago.

Born Rex Elvie Allen to Faye and Horace Allen on a ranch in Mud Springs Canyon, forty miles from Willcox, Rex grew up to become a popular entertainer known as The Arizona Cowboy. As a boy he played guitar and sang at local functions with his fiddle–playing father until high school graduation, when he toured the southwest as a rodeo rider. He got his start in show business on the East Coast as a vaudeville singer and in 1948 he signed to Mercury Records where he recorded a number of country albums.

In 1949, following in the hoof prints of singing cowboys Roy Rogers and Gene Autry, Rex made a successful screen test for Republic Pictures and was put under contract. Starting in 1950, Allen starred as himself in nineteen Hollywood western movies. A top box office draw in his day, he played the clean-cut, God-fearing, all-American hero, in his white Stetson, mounted on his faithful horse Koko, with his loyal buddy riding at his side. Buddy Ebsen, who later found fame as ‘Pa’ in TV’s Beverley Hillbillies, played his first sidekick, to be replaced by much-loved character actor Slim Pickens in later movies.

As a boy, all the cowboy heroes I revered were like Rex. Strong, upright, true - and single. Romantic liaisons were fleeting. With the trail into the sunset always close by for a quick and convenient getaway, responsibility and fancy notions of settling down could be left behind as an unfulfilled desire in the heaving, but tightly cupped 50’s bosoms of a string of luckless, deserted females. And the trusty compadre was always just that: a male friend and nothing more, as straight as an arrow fired from an Apache bow, that came only second to a horse in my assorted heroes list of undying loyalties.

The museum given over to a celebration of Willcox’s favourite son is well worth the three-dollar entrance fee, crammed with exhibits spanning his illustrious career. Exotic rhinestone outfits tailored by Nudie of Hollywood, customised pearl-handled pistols, beautiful hand tooled saddles, movie posters, comic books, album covers, photographs, videos and even a full scale replica of Koko, his knightly steed. But the prize for the top exhibit has to be awarded to the work of art that is the sensationally coiffured head of the charming lady who sold me my entry ticket. Reaching astonishing heights of tonsorial engineering, its magnificence is a wonder to behold. She is though, a victim of her own excess, trapped, not daring to venture out. For on the other side of the door is a vicious and merciless prairie wind that will rip her hair-do apart in seconds. Life out here on the range, where the deer and the antelope play, can be mighty hard.

(Farquhar is taking a short break until June 21, returning for more instalments soon.)

I drive out of the hill country and return to the desert, the land dropping away southwards, towards Mexico. Rounding a left hand bend ten miles short of Lordsburg, I’m presented with a panoramic view of the town below: a scattering of low buildings and power lines strung out along the I-10; its own path marked by a line of trucks crawling east and west across the flat, brown, sun-hammered plain, the morning light flashing from glass and metal, like Morse Code. In the far distance, faint and shimmering through the haze, the high peaks of mountains that lie across the border, their feet in the cool, meandering waters of the Rio Grande.

Lordsburg, like many towns in the States, sounds bigger than it is. The name suggests something stately, even regal. I imagine a town square, green lawns, a grand civic building at its centre, granite built with a Capitol dome, columns, a couple of Civil War cannon flanking the entrance. I find something else: a huddled collection of flaking clapboard and adobe buildings; empty lots and dust-blown streets, seemingly empty of people, except those hidden from view in the dark shadows of a passing car or pickup.

But I’m not disappointed. There’s something heroic about these small desert towns, defying logic and refusing all reason by stubbornly hanging on to 100 years of history and tradition under a burning sky. The land that surrounds them wants only to reclaim what has temporarily been taken, forever probing the perimeter, blowing in through cracked windows and under doorways, using wind and sand to wear down walls and rain to wash away loose shingles from the rooftops and turn nails to rust. But, the brave ones hang on; pioneer settlements, populated by the sons and daughters, grandsons and granddaughters of pioneers. Then there are the new settlers, immigrants from the south, speaking Spanish and here to carve out a new life with a future for their children.

I find the entrance to the I-10 and slip up the westerly ramp in the direction of Tucson, check the wing mirror and accelerate into the nearside lane, tucking in between two thundering rigs. Wanting to make up time, I pull out and watch the needle on the speedometer climb to 80mph; 5mph over the legal limit on this stretch of road, but I figure that it’s worth the risk out here. Close to the state line I pass a ghost town, a sagging jumble of brown timbered ruins just off the freeway on the old highway, but I keep on, heading for my next stop – Willcox, Arizona.

It’s after mid-day by the time I come to a halt outside of The Rex Allen Cowboy Museum. Glad to be off the freeway, with its ruthless cut-throat trucks and crazed speed freak cars, I cruise silently through the deserted outskirts of Willcox. With the window down, I breathe in some fresh desert air, the strong hickory wind whipping up the dust into miniature twisters and thrasing the trees around with a wild whooshing violence.

Before I take a look inside the museum that’s dedicated to this town’s most famous son, I set off down the street in search of food and something to wash it down. Starting early and missing out on a Bear Mountain Lodge breakfast, all I’ve had today is a stale gas station cinnamon roll and a luke-warm ‘styrene coffee. About fifty yards down, past a clothing store, a gift shop, hairdressers and a realtor’s office, I come to Louisa’s Kitchen.The front porch has a couple of tables, wooden chairs and an old hitching rail in the street out front, worn shiny and smooth, but unused now. Parked alongside is a farm truck full of dents and rust with sacks of potatoes and cardboard egg boxes loaded in the rear. A cat, sprawled across the cafe entrance, lifts it’s head, yawns and stretches, claws extending before slipping away to find another resting place away from troublesome strangers.

Pushing through the screen door I step inside. The place is part café, part antique, and part thrift store. Down one side is a counter serving a selection of coffees, homemade cookies, pies and cakes. On the other side and in the room out back are touristy knick-knacks, native jewellery, local souvenirs and all manner of second hand items cleared from attics, garages and the houses of deceased relatives for a thirty-mile radius. Behind the counter is a fifty-year old Harley rider with a limp. His head is shaved shiny clean, he wears a goatee on his chin and two silver earrings share one ear lobe. He looks up when I enter, a friendly smile showing two rows of perfect teeth. The woman he’s talking to, late sixties, but probably seventy-three or four, joins him, smiling a silent welcome. She has loosely cropped white hair, tapered into a thin weather-browned neck, her face age-lined, but bright and alive from a life spent on the land: her land. Dressed in faded working denims she has just delivered fresh laid eggs and is taking her leave, speeded by my arrival; not an unfriendly act, but removing herself so that I can place my order without interruption.

‘So long Marty, I’ll be around again on Tuesday. Call me before if you need extra. Say ‘Hi’ to Louisa’. And with that she was gone, the truck taking her back to the farm.

‘Hi, what’ll it be?’ beams Marty as the sound of the engine fades, carried off by the wind, ‘There’s what you see along the counter here and the beverages are up on the board.’

‘Thanks’, I say, reading through the selection on the chalkboard over his head, ‘I’ll have a cappuccino and a slice of that apple pie there’.

‘You can get cream or ice cream with that’, offers Marty, ‘ we’ve got strawberry, chocolate, vanilla, maple…’

I jump in, ‘Vanilla ice cream please.’

‘Do you want chocolate sprinkles on your cappuccino?’

‘No thanks.’

‘Cream?’

‘No, that’s fine’.

There was something askew about this large man, in his black teeshirt with biker emblems and black leather waistcoat, busy on the server side of the counter, fixing me a frothy Italian coffee and a slice of pie on a hot afternoon in Arizona; somehow made more poignant when he occasionally struggled to manoeuvre his shortened leg around in the confined working space back there. Ian Dury’s ‘Sweet Gene Vincent’ came instantly to mind, as songs do.

Looking around the room, in search of distraction, I spot a painting on the wall behind me, done in oils. It’s a portrait of Marty in his motorcycle leathers. I use it as a chance to break the silence. ‘Like the portrait. That’s you isn’t it? ‘

He looks up; seems pleased with being disturbed. ‘It most certainly is. Done about a year ago by a local artist. A very talented lady.’

I nod in agreement.

‘She was in here for a coffee one time and asked me if I’d sit for a portrait. I was happy to do it. It’s not every day someone wants to paint your picture. Now, it was apple pie with the coffee wasn’t it? He pushes a large cup of foaming cappuccino towards me across the counter. ‘Sugar and spoons are in the tray there’.

I carry the pie and coffee outside and find a table away from the swirling wind. Traffic criss-crosses the train tracks opposite. A ball of tumbleweed hurtles past, getting wedged under the front fender of an old Cadillac parked twenty yards down the street.

‘That apple pie was real good’, I say, returning my empty plate and cup to the counter fifteen minutes later.

‘Thanks, but I can take no credit for myself’, says Marty, looking up from a newspaper, a small pair of silver rimmed spectacles clinging to the end of his nose, ‘that was Louisa’s handywork, my partner in crime around here.’

‘Well you pass on my compliments to the cook. And say, I was thinking of checking into the motel for the night, can you recommend anywhere good to eat around here - for dinner that is?

‘There is only one place’, says Marty, removing his glasses and buffing them with the hem of his teeshirt, ‘ and that’s The Cactus Flower out on the edge of town. Take a left out here at the junction, left at the stoplight and it’s about half a mile on the right hand side. Can’t miss it.’

‘Much obliged. And be sure to mention the pie to Louisa’.

Outside, squinting into the brightness, I retrace my steps to find Rex Allen, The Arizona Cowboy.

Whereas Vernon is deliberate and measured in manner, taking time to form a response (this maybe, in part, due to his partial deafness; Vernon wears a hearing aid), Barbra is excitable and verbose. She has a childlike, wide-eyed enthusiasm that pours forth and envelops any listener in the liquid, clinging tones of her hypnotic voice. Words are delivered breathlessly with perfect annunciation; her eyes wide open as if in constant wonder at the words that leave her mouth. Unlike Vernon, her real interests are to be found indoors: amateur dramatics, musicals preferably and singing in a women’s choir, an offshoot from church membership. Barbra and Vernon are nice people, difficult to dislike and I have no reason to try hard to do so.

I said my farewells last night. To Louis and Denise, Larry and Jean, George and Betty, Guy and Hilary and finally, Vernon and Barbra. There was no exchange of address as we had all met up a long way from home, with very little chance of crossing paths again, not by chance anyway. Fate has thrown us together and circumstance will part us, each of us either returning to, or moving on from - back to our private lives in our private worlds. To say I will miss them is misleading. I’ll miss the company, the conversation, but I’m ready to go, ready for a new day, new encounters.

It’s barely light as I step outside. Stillness hangs in the air, no breeze to stir the trees. The first birds of the morning dart from branch to branch, soundless, getting familiar with the day. A mule deer raises its head from the pond twenty feet away, long ears twitching, and moves away, unhurried but aware. I pick up my bags and walk to the parking lot, taking care to step on the sawn off logs that form the pathway. Only when I reach the gravel do I make a sound. The trunk springs open in response to the button pressed on the ignition key and I swing the bags inside. Before I start the engine I check the map that lies open on the passenger seat. Satisfied that I have the route committed to memory, at least until I join the Interstate 50 miles to the south, I reverse and switch the shift to ‘drive’.

Passing through the gate a quarter of a mile on I snatch a glance into the rearview. The first glow of deep orange is highlighting the east wall of the hacienda. Time is already slipping away from me. I reach the public road and turn right towards downtown. The first traffic of the day is on the move, catching the early rays of the sun in the chrome trim. I follow a two-tone Ford truck down the lane past single-story homesteads, a dog sounding the alarm as we pass, leaping up onto the kitchen stoop, its legs getting tangled in the chain that holds it back. I pull up alongside the pickup when we reach the state highway that cuts trough the town. The driver wears a baseball cap, worn threads hanging down around the brim, a cigarette glowing bright in the gloom of the cab as he takes a drag. Then he’s gone with a roar, turning right as I go left. I take the next right at the lights and I’m on my way to Lordsburg and the I-10. A song comes through the airwaves on the local radio station:

It's a restless hungry feeling
That don't mean no one no good,
When ev'rything I'm a-sayin'
You can say it just as good.
You're right from your side,
I'm right from mine.
We're both just too many mornings
An' a thousand miles behind.

‘Did you see anything?’

‘Some mule deer’, I answer, ‘making their way down to the lodge for their evening treats.’

‘Many birds?’

‘Nothing I recognised, but you could’ve probably put names to them.
A slow smile lights up Vernon’s eyes and then spreads right on through him as he nods in acknowledgement of my gentle flattery. He zips up his windcheater against the cool evening air and turns to look up the hillside, anxious to move on.

‘Think I’ll head up there and take a look’, he says, tapping the binoculars that hang around his neck, ‘although it’s still a mite cold for the migratory birds to be this far north.

I watch him walk away as he moves swiftly along the single track that winds through the dried-out meadow of last summer’s Rudbeckia and up into the trees beyond.

Vernon has driven down from Michigan with his wife Barbra for a week’s bird watching, but the weather here has been unseasonably cold and the smaller birds, insect and seed eaters, are still south of the Rio Grand, waiting for some spring warmth to draw them across the border. He’s disappointed, but is trying his best not to show it, filling time by signing up for a day-long ranger tour of the surrounding Gila National Forest and also visiting the massive crater in the mountainside east of town where copper has been gauged, blasted, shipped out, used up and since abandoned by the mining companies, leaving a scar you can see from space.

I‘m staying at Bear Mountain Lodge, about three miles out on the northern limits of Silver City. Set in 178 acres, the original adobe hacienda dates back to the 1920’s and was then run as a ranch, cattle grazing on the surrounding slopes. But any grass was soon cleared and the juniper pines that now cover much of New Mexico moved in, making the continued raising of livestock unviable. The owner, not wishing to leave, opened the house to paying guests, provided bed and breakfast and turned the land over to whatever wildlife settled or passed through. When she died, with no close blood relatives she ensured the future sanctity of the land by leaving it to The Nature Conservancy, who remain as its present owners.

Meals at the lodge, breakfast and dinner, are served in a communal dining room and the staff ensure that the atmosphere is friendly and informal. This, together with the distance from town and a common interest in ecology and the environment, encourages greater interaction than is usual in the anonymous, transient world of chain motels and hotel lodgings. As Farquhar, the mystery Englishman, I’m much in demand as a table guest and in the lounge afterwards, although my first evening meal here was taken alone, providing the opportunity to listen to all surrounding conversations masked by the pretence of reading a book. It was Orson Wells who said that dining alone will hold no stigma or be a cause for loose gossip and unwelcome speculation if one’s attention is given over to the activity of reading intently while one eats. It works. But, when, next morning I neglected to take my book into breakfast I was soon engaged in discourse and have had no call to take the paperback beyond the confines of my room again.

Aside from Vernon and Barbra, there’s Louis and Denise, also from Michigan, Larry and Jean from New York State, George and Betty from Illinois and Guy and Hilary from California. Tact and diplomacy are put severely to the test as I juggle the requests to join one table or another without appearing to favour one above the rest. Balance is possible and cordial relations are maintained by joining one or more of the eager couples for coffee in the lounge after the meal is completed, thus ensuring that I am seen to spread my favours evenly.

Conversations range wide and far, covering everything from conservation, terrorism (or ‘tourism’ as pronounced by George Doubleya), drought, immigration, through to a performance of The Who at the LCP in 1968 and the fact that fish and chips don’t come wrapped in newspaper any more. Fascinating stuff. And they can’t get enough of it. Tonight it’s blackened catfish, a dinner date with Vernon and Barbra and possibly Larry and Jean if we can get the big table. My mouth is watering in anticipation.