The badlands escarpment west of the city is grotty and bitter, covered in crap: old refrigerators, truck cabs riddled with bullet holes, abandoned hardware—we saw a double sink complete with faucet—blowing trash, mashed beer cans. As we hiked down into the breaks, dirt bikes droned and snarled along the skyline. Light planes buzzed overhead.

Everywhere the gun people were out. Shots echoed from every side. A party of gunmen stood on a distant parapet, shooting out into space. The ground at the escarpment rim was littered with every conceivable style of bullet casing: slim, fat, stubby, long. Here and there was a spent slug, mashed on impact with a sandbank, and the occasional unspent bullet.

Explosions all around us. I was afraid to walk along the skyline, for fear some gun-happy soul might go temporarily insane.