On arriving at the fringes of a town, from a sun-baked quarry...

...My neighbor L announced that her faltering metabolism desperately required a Slushy, Right F'ing Now. I didn't hear anybody argue. That particular confection wasn't my favorite thing even when I was a kid, but a cold drink certainly seemed like a good thing. The few sips left in my canteen were positively hot.

So we turned left toward a convenience store, rather than right into the desert. We had spent ten hours moving rocks in the hot sun, including travel time, and none of us were at our best. Pawing through big piles of rock is a good way to make the acquaintance of scaled and fanged bad guys, and everybody was quite openly armed. And filthy, and sweat-encrusted, and not in the best of moods. It must have looked like an invasion of the hole-in-the-wall gang on a particularly bad day, and I can well imagine the effect our arrival might have had on the inhabitants of more genteel spaces.

Hardly anybody even looked up, including the cop who was hanging out at the soda dispenser. Which is one reason I like it here.