The kid was a Navajo, big and slow for his age; lived with his grandmother, somewhere in the desert of Southern Utah, a place outside of the purview of maps and laws, where even the BLM had to let the wild mustangs roam free.

To reaffirm the wholesomeness of the homesteaders who had chosen to live there, each egress was anointed with an evocatively benign appellation which seemed to ameliorate the yeasty rapidity with which this side of the valley had risen, sprawling outward now toward the horizon of the Oquirrh Mountains with the same insular batting as a pioneer quilt.