[b]Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua[/b]
[i]June 1955[/i]

	Despite the relief that the night gave from the constant beating of the sun, the air was still sweltering like an oven. They had even reached record temperatures the week before, with temperatures reaching over forty-five degrees Celsius in the sand and rocks of northern Chihuahua. Two riders sat atop horses at a slow trot, wearing baggy green fatigues while their heads were covered by sweat-ringed, pulled-low military field caps. They were riding thirty miles to the west of Juárez, alone on a single-track dirt path that went straight through the featureless desert, bathed in the star and moonlight that the clear desert air afforded them. Barely a hundred or so meters to their left, cloaked in darkness and marked by the occasional sign, was the United States.

	A deep exhale left the first rider’s lips as he scanned the night landscape and stopped his horse. It was always beautiful out in the wilderness, he appreciated the lonesome nature of his patrols to enjoy the landscape. Such a rugged and harsh place, conjuring images of [i]vaqueros[/i] and [i]machismo[/i]. His partner rode up beside him and stopped, adjusting the collar on his uniform. The man, who wore a corporal’s stripes on his jacket sleeve, checked his watch: the radium-green hand was ticking closer to dawn. The soft glow of the sun could be seen below the horizon ahead of them, ready to come up soon for them. This was the most critical moment of their patrol.

	The first rider, a sergeant, took a folded map from his jacket pocket and clicked on his L-shaped flashlight to read the wrinkled and weathered paper. He had been keeping track of their position the hard way, keeping a count of his horse’s steps and dividing them against a “pace count” he knew of how many steps it took for the animal to travel a hundred meters. He backtracked that distance from their last known point, where they had turned east along the border road after doglegging out from the spot where they camped. Not much else they could do to find their location in the middle of a flat mesa. They were right where they needed to be, with time to spare.

	“We made it?” the corporal asked, a yawn creeping into his question.

	“Just about, yes. This should be the spot we need to watch,” the sergeant answered duly, putting the map away. He sat on his horse and held his wood-stocked rifle across his lap, reaching for his web gear to take out a metal canteen from a pouch. The corporal nodded, although his sergeant could not see him, and waited. Nothing would happen until dawn; the enemies here followed that rule just as any other hostile force would. They called it stand-to. Except these enemies weren’t combatants in a formal sense, but instead cattle rustlers from across the border. They liked to come through this flatland between the mountains in Mexico and ride covertly south towards the [i]ranchos[/i] past the outskirts of the city. It was enough of a problem that the Army had put them on duty to deal with it.

	The corporal unwrapped a candy bar and bit into the soft chocolate underneath the crinkling wrapper. The sergeant shot a glance over at him, but realized it was pointless. They were the only people in this desert and would be for another couple of hours. They waited silently, their horses occasionally snorting and impatiently hoofing at the sandy path below then. The sun rose ever so slightly every minute, the dull glow beyond the horizon turning into orange fingers that extended past the silhouetted mountains and into the flat basin where the soldiers were posted. It was almost six in the morning, right on time. With his binoculars out, the sergeant was now able to see even further across the border.

	Just like the reports suspected, their first indication of movement came at around seven in the form of distant horse galloping. It was the corporal who noticed this; his younger ears hadn’t fallen victim to tinnitus the same way that his sergeants’ had. He nudged his sergeant and pointed in the general direction that he heard. Instantly, the binoculars went up to his eyes and he scanned for the telltale clouds of dust that accompanied a group of American cattle thieves. The two both motioned for their horses to lie down onto their legs as a way to conceal their profiles against the sand. Hopefully the Americans would be too busy to notice them, as they usually were. The dust cloud of horses drew closer to the border and the sergeant could now make out a total of four riders. Dressed in jeans and their obnoxiously large Stetson hats, they barreled down the sands with no intention of stopping.

	“Wait for it,” the sergeant said as he noticed the corporal unsling his rifle. The sergeant withdrew a flare gun from a holster on his belt and clicked the hammer back. With a dramatic sweep of his hand, he shot it directly overhead the path of the American cattlemen. The flare gun made a popping noise and the projectile whistled as it flew a few meters into the air before igniting with a whoosh and producing a brilliant red light that could still compete with the newly-risen sun. “Let’s go!” the sergeant shouted, kicking his horse with his spur to get it up and going. The two riders ran out on the dirt path, careful to keep on their side of the border as they raced to meet the cattlemen.

	A bullet cracked overhead from the American side. The corporal ducked to the saddle instinctively, swearing and shouldering his own rifle. He let loose a trio of his own shots, hopelessly inaccurate but somewhere in the cattlemen’s direction. That seemed to do something: the Americans reduced their speed a little, perhaps rethinking their decision to cross the border that day. The sergeant rushed his horse faster, coming to within hearing distance of the Americans. He withdrew a whistle from a chain around his neck and blew it as hard as he could, waving a revolver in his other hand that he knew the cattlemen could see. The corporal kept his rifle shouldered as he suddenly stopped his horse and had it kneel again. There would be no missing this next shot.

	The cattlemen must have seen the Mexican soldier drop his horse to a steady firing position, because their formation began to turn around. They didn’t want to play this game today, but they still had to have the last laugh. Another round slammed into the dirt ten meters to the front of the sergeant, kicking up sand that blew towards the pair. The corporal had enough experience to know that the cowboys just wanted to save face, tell their friends and the pretty girls that they had come up across the Mexican Army and escaped with their lives in a gunfight. He decided to give them some more fodder for the saloon that night and returned fire with a single shot aimed narrowly over their heads. He smirked as he saw one of the cattlemen almost trip over and fall off his horse from the shot. Luckily for him, he retrieved his cowboy hat at the very last second and rode off.

	“Another job well done,” remarked the sergeant. The cattlemen went back through the same pass they entered from, disappearing into the rugged landscape almost as quickly as they came. The pair put their weapons on safe and slung them across their shoulders, turning around their horses and heading back to their campsite. Whatever happened during the day would be the next shift’s problem.