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The press was at it again. Somewhere between a trade war and a cant rail, they’d decided a conspiracy was afoot—a sprawling techno-drama where tariffs tangoed with stainless steel, and adhesive became the villain no one expected.

In Shanghai, the skies were pretty clear for spring. The Gigafactory there, affectionately dubbed GigaSH by its engineers, hummed along, producing Model 3s and Model Ys like a rice cooker on overdrive. These were the crowd-pleasers, the darlings of the People’s Republic, and conveniently, they were exempt from the latest round of retaliatory tariffs that turned U.S.-built exports into financial lead balloons.

Meanwhile, back in the U.S., the Cybertruck—a creation so angular it looked like it was drawn by a seven-year-old with a ruler—was having… issues. The kind that made headlines, not crashes–yet.

A stainless steel strip—called a cant rail—had the unfortunate habit of detaching during high-speed wind serenades. The government wasn’t amused at videos of dudes casually peeling Cybertrucks like bananas were going viral.

The NHTSA, perhaps feeling left out of the global drama, recalled all of them. Forty-six thousand ninety-six Cybertrucks, built between November 2023 and February 2025, now needed a stronger adhesive. The good kind that doesn’t fall victim to something called “environmental embrittlement,” which sounded like a progressive rock band.

Across the Pacific, Tesla’s Chinese website had gone suspiciously quiet about the Model S and Model X. Orders for the U.S.-built luxury cars had vanished like a Silicon Valley founder after an SEC subpoena.

Some journalists said it was because of the new 125 percent tariff slapped on U.S. imports. Others tried to connect it to the Cybertruck recall despite the Model S and X having nothing in common with the panel-peeling metal monsters.

But they made the connection anyway because nothing says journalism by mashing square pegs into round holes and calling it investigative reporting. Never mind that Model S and X had always been a niche in China. Never mind that the real issue was probably the sticker shock from a 125 percent surcharge plus customs plus a few silent nods from bureaucrats who hadn’t forgotten past tweets about Taiwan.

Back home, the chaos wasn’t just economic. It was chemical.

In Colorado, a woman got arrested for tossing Molotov cocktails at Tesla showrooms. “Nazi cars,” she’d painted across the building, apparently unaware that the actual Nazis had preferred VWs.

In South Carolina, a man torched charging stations. Investigators found DOGE-related ramblings in his wallet and hand-scrawled screeds about government surveillance. Nobody knew what it meant, but it sure sounded Tesla-adjacent.

The same thing happened in Las Vegas, where the media was quick to point out the suspect was an Independent voter, though he never cast a ballot.

Tesla shares? Down 42 percent in 2025. Some blamed the recalls. Others blamed the trade war. Still, others blamed the vibes.

In the meantime, Tesla was fixing cant rails, answering hotline calls, and mailing out recall letters. Meanwhile, a team of exhausted engineers calculating wind shear coefficients worked while the press wrote think pieces about “America’s Technological Decline.”

But inside the walls of GigaSH, the Model 3s kept rolling out–smooth and tariff-free. And in the back of a Cybertruck somewhere in Nevada, a forgotten cant rail shimmered like a silver snake, loose and flapping in the desert breeze –and no one carried.

Everything is connected if you squint hard enough or on a deadline.

By Someone Who Ain’t Got No Time for Shenanigans

It was a mild sort of Monday in Nevada when the Secretary of State’s Office sauntered out with a grand announcement–they had finally gotten around to sweeping out the old cobwebs from the voter rolls, booting some 160,000 names clean off the list and giving another 37,000 the bureaucratic cold shoulder. The official word was that this was all part of a grand, noble effort to ensure the transparency, security, and accessibility of the Silver State’s sacred elections.

Now, that might’ve sounded mighty fine if folks didn’t remember that just two years earlier, in the year of our Lord 2022, Secretary Francisco Aguilar had assured the public—with a straight face and polished boots—that the voter rolls were just as clean as a new whistle and needed no more scrubbin’. He dismissed any talk of dead folks or ghost voters with the kind of certainty only a politician with a paper-thin broom could muster.

“Nothing to see here,” he hollered from his high horse perch, and sure enough, nothing got done.

Fast forward to 2024—after all the primaries, preferences, generals, and probably a few scandals over lukewarm coffee—and suddenly, the rolls weren’t so clean. The state’s numbers showed that counties sent out 185,644 notices warning folks that their voting credentials were hanging by a thread, and more than 138,000 got benched. The same names Aguilar once dismissed as harmless now warranted a post-election purge so mighty it could’ve sent chills up a corpse’s spine.

The whole affair’s cloaked in legalese and officialdom, with mentions of the National Voter Registration Act and “blackout periods” that make you wonder if we’re talking about voting or bootlegging. The counties couldn’t touch the lists for ninety days before each election—not because they didn’t want to, mind you, but because the rules forbade it. It’s the law, they said, and by gum, we follow it–just not too fast.

And what of the poor souls deemed “inactive”? The folks who haven’t voted, haven’t called, haven’t written, and maybe didn’t even know they were still on the list. A couple of missed elections, a postcard returned “undeliverable,” and you’re tossed in the limbo bin–not dead, not deleted—just forgotten like last year’s snow.

The counties–overworked and underloved, have to do all this alongside a heap of other responsibilities—especially the 15 out of 17 that aren’t Clark or Washoe. The clerks out yonder don’t just deal with elections; they probably mend fences and deliver calves, too.

But let’s not forget the headline here–162,519 voter registrations canceled, 37,749 made inactive. And all of it after the election, when the ballots got boxed and the power comfortably seated. Aguilar now crows about the success of the cleanup and the importance of a shiny new statewide voter management system. He encourages voters to check their info, update their details, and add their phone numbers—lest they vanish like old acquaintances.

My how the tune changes after the music stops.

So here we are, with the rolls finally pruned, the dead metaphorically buried, and Aguilar preaching from a new hymnal. But some folks out here remember 2022.

They remember getting told the barn was clean even while the stink lingered. And now, seeing all these names struck down in 2024, they can’t help but ask–If the list was so spotless two years ago–what exactly were we standing on?

Ethan Carver rode into the nameless town as the sun dipped below the jagged ridges, the sky awash in fiery hues. Dust clung to his duster, and his horse’s breath came heavy, nostrils flaring from the hard ride.

The town was little more than a cluster of buildings huddled against the basin, the wooden fronts worn gray by wind and time. Carver hadn’t been in the area in years—not since taking a Paiute wife and settled in the hills where the cottonwoods grew thick along the creek.

But that life was gone now, taken from him by a man who had mistaken his kindness for weakness.

The murderer had fled, but Carver tracked him. Through dry washes and over granite ridges, he had followed the signs—boot prints worn at the heels, a fire pit left smoldering, a strip of torn canvas snagged on sagebrush.

Now, the trail led here.

Carver dismounted and hitched his horse outside the saloon. The place stank of stale beer and unwashed bodies, where men huddled over cards and whiskey, talking low.

They went quiet when he stepped in, some recognizing him, others just sensing the frightful weight he carried. He moved to the bar, set his hands on the polished wood, and spoke low to the barkeep.

“Ben Latimer come through here?”

The barkeep, a narrow-eyed man who had seen his share of trouble, nodded toward a table near the back. Carver turned his head slightly, taking in the man seated there.

Latimer. A lean figure with a face that had gone to seed, his mustache barely hiding a cruel mouth. He was laughing at some jest, whiskey in one hand, the other resting near his gun belt.

Carver stepped from the bar, his boots heavy against the wooden floor. The laughter at Latimer’s table died as his companions saw the look in Carver’s eyes.

Latimer saw it, too. He shifted in his chair, his fingers twitching toward his gun.

But Carver already had his iron drawn, steady as bedrock.

“You took my wife and boy from me, Latimer.” His voice was flat, carrying no more weight than a judge pronouncing a sentence. “A man like you ought to be set right.”

Latimer sneered, his fingers flexing, but he wasn’t fast enough. Carver’s Colt roared, the bullet catching Latimer square in the chest. The outlaw slammed back against the wall, whiskey spilling as his body slumped sideways, lifeless.

Silence settled over the saloon. Carver holstered his gun, threw a coin on the bar, stepping into the cool desert night.

The deed done, and justice, the only kind this land understood, had been meted. He mounted his horse and turned toward the open desert, where the wind whispered through the sagebrush.

He had no home to return to, no family left to welcome him. Yet, there were trails to ride and other men, requiring a reminder that the frontier carried an unwritten code and that it came as hot lead.

Reporting from the Outskirts of Reason

Matrimony is a sacred bond best entered into with clear eyes, full hearts, and a lawyer on retainer.

But the folks at The Little Vegas Chapel—bless their entrepreneurial spirits—have taken it one parsec further with what they call Star Wars-themed weddings. Come May the 4th–a date chosen less for astrology and more for punnery–couples can now pledge eternal devotion under the solemn gaze of Princess Leia—or Darth Vader, depending on whether you prefer buns or breathing tubes.

The whole affair is “YODA One For Me,” which I presume is the kind of joke that gets a laugh after three mimosas and a heatstroke. For the bargain price of $860–or approximately one Ewok pelt and a kidney–you get roundtrip limo service—because nothing says “galactic romance” like sitting in traffic on the Strip.

The ceremony is peppered with Star Wars music, which I can only assume means someone presses play on “The Imperial March” while Grandpa weeps in the third pew. Symbolizing either the shifting nature of love or Anakin Skywalker’s dislike of the desert–you can include a Unity Sand Ceremony.

You’ll get a bouquet that looks like it bloomed on Tatooine, a boutonniere worthy of the Senate, while the whole production gets captured in video and photos, presumably with enough lens flare to blind a Jedi. And to top it off, they hand you a Star Wars-themed certificate—valid in neither court nor council—but perfect for framing next to your original VHS copies.

If you’re not ready to mortgage the Millennium Falcon for the deluxe package, you can opt for “Love Star” at $600. This version is slightly trimmed but still includes a bouquet, some lightsabers, and a podium that probably glows ominously. They provide a witness should your cousin Cheryl not make her flight, and phones are welcome because nothing says “I do,” like live-streaming to the guy who used to bully you in middle school.

As for me, I say let them have it. If a man wants to wear a Chewbacca mask while declaring his undying love to a woman in a polyester space bikini, who am I to stand in the way of destiny? It may not be the galaxy far, far away—but it’s at least a block past the pawn shop and two doors down from Elvis.

And truth be told, it’s probably just as well. After all, the course of true love never did run smooth, especially when your officiant is a Sith Lord and your marriage certificate glows in the dark. But if the Force is with them—and the air conditioning holds—the lovebirds might make it past the credits.

By Yours Truly, a Traveler of Truth and Occasional User of Government Cheese

Now, I’ve seen some tall tales in my day, but that spun about Kilmar Abrego Garcia—deemed innocent by folks sipping coffee in Washington and a terrorist by those who’ve had the misfortune of housing him in El Salvador—takes the ribbon at the County Fair. The whole affair would be laughable if it weren’t so wrapped up in the nervous knots of modern-day politics, with the media howling at the moon and the courts drawing maps in the sand where logic once stood.

Garcia was plucked from Maryland and deposited in a Salvadoran prison, where he’s now settled into a less-than-voluntary retirement. The Supreme Court recently declared that the U.S. government ought to “facilitate” his return—as if we’re talking about shipping a crate of peaches, not someone described by the Salvadoran president as a terrorist.

President Bukele, whose own country is finally clawing its way out from under the thumb of gang warfare, looked at the camera like it had grown two heads and said, “Of course I’m not going to do it.”

That’s the kind of plain talk that makes friends or enemies–but never politicians or press types.

In what I consider an admirable act of restraint, President Trump didn’t roll his eyes—at least not in front of the press—but made it clear the whole mess wasn’t his making.

“That’s up to El Salvador,” he said, with the kind of shrug a man gives when someone asks why the rooster crows at dawn.

And he’s right, mind you. If President Bukele doesn’t want to send the man back, should we sail a clipper ship down to San Salvador and storm the gates?

The press, particularly one ornery soul from CNN, pressed the matter like a butter churn, and Trump, in fine form, asked the obvious, “Why don’t you just say, ‘Isn’t it wonderful that we’re keeping criminals out of our country?’”

I’d wager even the birds outside the Oval Office gave a nod.

Now enter the ACLU, stage left, like a traveling show with too many props and no plot. They’ve filed more lawsuits than a porcupine’s got quills, arguing that twenty-four hours is not enough warning for a man to stop his deportation, especially when he’s facing a lifetime in a foreign prison.

Never mind that the very same Supreme Court they once pinned their hopes just handed them a unanimous decision–if you want to argue about deportation, do it where you’re in El Salvador. That’s what I call jurisdiction, and even Marshal Dillon could’ve told you that.

At the center of this dust storm is an old law—the Alien Enemies Act of 1798—which the Trump Administration has dusted off like an antique rifle, claiming it fits the times just fine. With gangs like Tren de Aragua treating our southern border like an open buffet, Trump figures this is as close to an “invasion” as we’ve seen without bayonets on the beach.

Some say he’s stretching the law, but I say the stretch makes it last.

The Colorado challenge is on behalf of two fellas detained in Denver. One says he’s mistaken for a gang member; the other claims the gang killed his kin. It’s a grim business either way, and I’ll not make light of it—but I will say that the line between fleeing from terror and bringing it along in your suitcase can be mighty thin, and a country’s first duty is to know the difference.

So here we are, with the courts saying “facilitate,” the media saying “outrage,” and Trump saying, “Not on my watch.” Meanwhile, President Bukele’s saying he’ll not smuggle anyone back across our border. At least he knows which side of the fence he’s standing on.

The truth is the Trump administration is not breaking the law—they’re upholding the idea that citizenship, borders, and laws still mean something in a world too quick to forget they exist. So, if there’s a villain in this story, it’s not the man in the Oval Office.

It’s the fog of folly settling over reason–every time politics and media try to do the work of common sense.

By someone who’s witnessed more than one kind of government stampede.

Now then, gather ’round and let me spin you a yarn of modern America, where the gears of government grind not toward sense–but ceremony—and where, twenty years after a great howl went up in Congress, we still find ourselves fussing over a gold star on our driver’s license like it’s a passport to the Pearly Gates.

It all began in 2005–when the Real ID Act got passed by the fine folks in Washington who reckoned that a fancier ID card might keep the bad guys at bay. Never mind that the hijackers of 9/11 had perfectly legal papers or that none of this folderol would’ve stopped a single one of them from boarding a plane.

That didn’t trouble the minds of our elected betters. Nope, they got set on doing something—anything—so long as it sounded official and came with a deadline far enough in the future that none of them would have to explain it when it failed to make a lick of difference.

Fast-forward two decades, and here we are in Nevada, with local TV folks pacing around half-empty DMVs, asking why folks aren’t stampeding toward compliance like cattle at branding time. A pleasant DMV spokeswoman, Miss Hailey Foster, assures that appointments are going faster than hotcakes on Sunday morning and that folks are panicking appropriately. She says the lobby may look calm, but don’t get fooled—it’s just the quiet before the bureaucratic storm.

They say more than two million Nevadans have done their civic duty and gotten their Real ID, leaving nearly 600,000 souls still flapping in the breeze. Those poor unmarked masses will soon be unable to board a flight or stroll into a federal building without raising suspicion, all because their license lacks a golden star.

Now, I don’t know about you, but I reckon if a terrorist was looking to sneak onto a plane, he wouldn’t be too troubled by a DMV appointment.

The requirements to get this sacred document are enough to make a schoolmarm weep—birth certificates, Social Security cards, bills from the water company, and proof that your name didn’t once belong to someone else. And if you miss the deadline? Well, don’t fret too much. You can still get your Real ID later, which makes one wonder what the fuss is about in the first place.

The whole business has become a kind of modern-day morality play. The government insists you must comply to be safe while offering no evidence that this twenty-year-old notion has made us any safer than the day when once signed into law. They keep kicking the can down the road, moving the goalpost, and congratulating themselves on their vigilance. And all the while, we stand in line, clutching our birth certificates and utility bills, praying that this time the system won’t crash before our number gets called because nothing says national security like verifying your water bill.

So come May 7, remember this–if the Real ID is the key to America’s safety, then we’re already knee-deep in folly. But if it’s just another golden calf for the bureaucratic faithful to worship, well then—mission accomplished.

Penned by a fellow who ate government cheese, tasted powdered milk, and lived to tell the tale while still believing in hard truths.

Now, let me start by telling you somethin’ true, which is rarer these days than hen’s teeth and less welcome at a cocktail party than a skunk in a silk hat. I was raised on government cheese so stiff it could double as a doorstop and powdered milk that looked like chalk dust and tasted like a mistake—but we drank it because we were thankful and hungry.

Back then, a man knew what public assistance was for–keepin’ a soul alive long enough to find a shovel or a job. But oh, how times have changed.

I took a trip to a 7-Eleven with some young’uns whose thirst for Slurpees is matched only by their talent for makin’ a mess. And there, right on the machine in bold letters, was a little sticker announcing to the world that “All Slurpee cups are EBT eligible.”

I nearly dropped my Big Gulp in shock.

Turns out, Uncle Sam is now buyin’ sugary dye-water for folks with food stamps. The same government that won’t let a school child eat a peanut butter sandwich without filling out three forms is shellin’ out for grape-flavored corn syrup masqueradin’ as refreshment.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I got no quarrel with helpin’ those that’s hungry.

Lord knows I’ve stood in that line and thanked the Lord someone had stocked the shelf. But when I see taxpayer dollars goin’ to Slurpees and soda fountains, I start thinkin’ maybe the safety net’s become a hammock.

And I reckon I ain’t the only one.

You’d think a suggestion like “Maybe food stamps shouldn’t buy junk food” would be met with a nod and a little common sense. But no, the moment a Republican raises the idea, Democrats come runnin’ like prairie dogs from a jackal, shriekin’ about starvation, cruelty, and—of course—fascism.

Take Congresswoman Yvette Clarke, bless her excitable heart. She said Republican proposals are “the difference between life and death.”

Now, I don’t want to downplay anyone’s hardship, but if not buyin’ a Slurpee means you perish, you might need more than a food program—you might need a doctor. Or a mirror.

Then there’s Hakeem Jeffries thunderin’ about Medicaid cuts like Paul Revere warnin’ of a British invasion. And Nancy Pelosi, well, she’s said dismantlin’ the Department of Education is a “direct attack” on students.

That’d be quite the feat, considerin’ most students couldn’t find the Department of Education on a map even if colored in bright red and labeled “useless bureaucracy.”

Let’s talk plain–when Republicans try to clean up waste, they’re called heartless. When they try to make programs work better, they get accused of murder. And when they question whether a government agency is doin’ any good at all, the left acts like someone’s torchin’ the Library of Alexandria.

But stop and ask–what has the Department of Education accomplished? Test scores are flatter than a pancake on a plow blade, and public schools are focused more on feelings than phonics. The department’s been around since 1979, and most kids still can’t tell you who won the Civil War—or worse, think it’s still goin’.

And don’t get me started on Medicaid. If you tried to build a health system that cost more and helped fewer people, you’d have trouble beatin’ what we got now.

Now, I know what some of y’all are thinkin’ this is just partisan grousin’. Maybe.

But I’ve got a little challenge for you. Pull out your fancy calendar app.

Go ahead—I’ll wait.

Make an appointment with yourself. In the notes section, jot this down– “Republicans cut SNAP, and 100,000 people died. Trump ended Medicaid, and people keeled over in parking lots. The Department of Education was gutted, and now we’re all too dumb to spell our name.”

A year from now, look around and see if any of that came true—or if the sky stayed where it’s always been. If the sky did fall, I’d eat my hat. But if America’s still standin’—if folks are still eatin’, learnin’, and livin’—maybe the Chicken Littles were wrong.

See, the trouble with fearmongerin’ is that it’s like cayenne pepper. Use it too much, and people stop tastin’ the stew.

Right now, the stew’s boilin’ with shrieks about Trump bringin’ about the apocalypse every Tuesday. But I lived through disco and generic beer, and I can tell you–we’ll survive.

So, if you hear tell that Trump’s tryin’ to starve the children, poison the sick, and outlaw arithmetic, maybe take a breath. And remember, sometimes the loudest cries come from the smallest of cuts.

Written by a most unremarkable but attentive observer of Men and Follies, from the comfort of a rocking chair with a jug of sweet tea and a wary eye on the headlines.

Now it comes to pass in the Year of Our Lord Twenty-Twenty-Five—or thereabouts, for I never did put much stock in exactitudes—that a most confounding uproar did arise from the learned hills and hollers of Oregon. The state, known better for its hemp than its history, has found itself the stage for a drama of collegiate concern and protestational fervor that even the squirrels at Portland State began to wear little paper hats of resistance.

Word got ‘round by wire and whisper that more than a dozen foreign students—scholars imported from lands where vowels run long and consonants run together—had their golden tickets to the United States plucked from their trembling hands like apples off a low tree. Now, some folks of the ink-stained and spectacles-polishing variety rushed to their typewriters—or whatever contraptions they use these days—and declared this the end of liberty, the death of decency, and the beginning of fascism.

That word—fascism—which in some towns is used to describe everything from paying rent on time to asking someone to hush in the library.

Well, at Oregon State, the University of Oregon, and Portland State alike, young folk of the activist persuasion gathered in tight circles like disgruntled beavers in a dammed-up stream. They hollered chants that rhymed poorly and marched in large, enthusiastic circles, though not one among them could recite a single line from the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952. But that didn’t stop them.

“Say it once, say it twice, we will not put up with ICE!” they shouted, though to my ears, it sounded a bit like they did intend to put up with a lot—so long as it involved skipping class.

Now, I won’t claim to know what every student did or didn’t do, nor do I bear any particular grievance against any fellow trying to learn his letters or earn a degree. But if a fellow comes to a country by invitation to study and starts treating the place like a revolutionary summer camp–there might be consequences.

At least, that’s how Secretary Rubio—a florid man of firm opinions—put it.

“If you come to this country as a student,” said he, “we expect you to go to class and study and get a degree. If you come here to like vandalize the library, take over a campus, and do all kinds of crazy things, you know, we’re going to get rid of these people.”

I don’t always agree with men who wear suits without dirt on their boots, but in this case–the logic was as plain as cornbread.

Portland State’s President Ann Cudd—though I reckon she was more for chewin’ than cuddlin’—called the whole affair “deeply troubling.” That’s college talk: “We’re upset but don’t know how to stop it.” She, along with other dignified university types, demanded explanations from Washington, and Washington, in return, sent back mostly silence and a few sternly worded documents, the kind that smell like bureaucracy and coffee.

Meanwhile, one Diego Duarte, a young man with the gall of a congressman and the mustache of a Spanish poet, declared that this was all fascism again. He hoped the international students “see this as the show of support that it is.” I’ve seen many shows of support in my time—bar brawls, pig roasts, Fourth of July parades—but never one that involved yelling at government agents while skipping Chemistry 102.

Of course, there were whispers of “unspecified criminal charges,” a fancy way of saying something happened, but nobody’s talkin’. The universities claim they know nothing, but I know that a man can’t sneeze on a college campus without someone filing a Title IX report, where a trio of diversity coordinators gotta meet.

And then there was Ms. Cano of “Portland Contra Las Deportaciones,” a group whose name sounds like a war and whose purpose is to fight invisible enemies. She said folks “weren’t angry enough,” a strange complaint in Portland, where anger seems thicker than nine-day-old coffee. She also linked the whole thing to Palestine, which is sort of like blaming a thunderstorm in Omaha on a sneeze in Jerusalem—but these days, every grievance ties to every cause, no matter the geography or logic.

Some say this is Trump’s doing. And I say, well, perhaps it is.

For all his bluster, orange hue, and fondness for capital letters, that man did seem to think America ought to be a country with walls and rules. He wasn’t much for apology tours or academic handwringing. If a student comes here on a visa and uses his time to riot instead of recite, well, I reckon President Trump would say, “You’re fired.”

And so, dear reader, this tale has no neat ending. The students will protest. The administrators will bloviate. And Washington will do what Washington always does—act slowly, speak rarely, and forget promptly.

But in the meantime, the lesson is clear–if you come to America for school, perhaps it’s best to crack a book before you try to storm the Dean’s office.

In the shadow of the rugged peaks near the old mining town of Seven Troughs, Pershing County, Nevada, lingers a tale as old as the wind that carved the canyons.

If the four riders—hard men with a taste for the wild unknown—had ever caught wind of it or reckoned what dark truth fueled its whispers, they might’ve turned their horses back toward the sagebrush plains. Or maybe, being the restless souls they were, they’d have spurred on faster, chasing the thrill of danger.

But they hadn’t heard a lick of it. Of those four, only one staggered out alive, a man so haunted by the nightmare of that ride that he’d draw a pistol at the mere mention of Seven Troughs, his mind teetering on the edge of madness.

Among the Paiutes who roamed those hills—fierce folk with blood older than the stones, who’d run off the whites years back with their quiet, unyielding ways—the story passed in hushed tones, a prayer to the spirits woven through every word. To them, it wasn’t just a yarn spun by firelight–it was a living terror, a curse that prowled the high country. But now, praise the heavens, a stubborn white man had broken its grip, and the Paiutes spoke of it only as a shadow of days gone by.

It was Cal Withers who’d rounded up the crew. Cal was always itching for a hunt, a man born with a rifle in one hand and a map in the other.

Word had drifted to him of a rare breed of bighorn sheep, their twisted horns glinting like treasure in the crags of Seven Troughs. They might not’ve been grander than the ones down in the valleys, but the challenge of the chase sang to him like a lonesome coyote’s howl. He roped in three pards—Jess Harper, Luke Harper, and Sam Tully—and they set out, dust trailing behind ‘em.

The little cluster of sunbaked shacks where they left the stage was a drowsy speck in the desert, no cooler than the rattling coach that’d hauled ‘em in. But it was a jumping-off point, and within an hour, they’d wrangled horses and a scrappy pack mule loaded with gear. The Paiutes who lingered nearby watched with dark, knowing eyes as the four saddled up, the village settling back into its sleepy haze once they rode out.

Then, quick as a rattler’s strike, it came. Jess Harper’s voice cut the air first–sharp with dread, “Lord almighty, look at Luke!”

The others wheeled around to see Luke, Jess’s kin, frozen beside his mount, staring into the jagged hills beyond the shacks. His face twisted like a man wrestling demons in his soul.

Before a word could pass, he vaulted into the saddle and tore off at a gallop, dust exploding under his horse’s hooves. The Paiutes scattered, signing wards against evil, while the mongrel dogs that usually nipped at riders’ heels slunk away, tails tucked as if they smelled death on the wind.

The three left behind traded wide-eyed looks. Sam Tully broke the spell, lunging for his horse with a curse under his breath.

Cal and Jess followed, quick as lightning. One of the Paiutes, a wiry fella with fear etched deep in his weathered face, grabbed Sam’s reins and rasped, “No, don’t ride! One death’s enough—let him go, and we’re spared another year. You follow, you’ll only die with him.”

His voice trembled, his sun-dark skin gone ashen, but Sam yanked the reins free without a word and spurred after Luke, the others hot on his trail.

Luke’s path didn’t stick to the main trail but veered onto a faint, overgrown track—scarcely more than a memory of a road worn deep by feet long turned to dust. Paiutes hadn’t trod it in generations, not since they’d driven the white man out, and it showed.

Gravel choked the ruts, chaparral clawed at the edges, but Luke rode like a man possessed, his horse flying recklessly over ground that begged for a broken neck. The three behind pushed hard, though they couldn’t match his pace, and within a half-hour, he’d vanished around a bend in the ridge. By the time they caught up, he was gone, swallowed by the vastness ahead.

They pressed on, stopping only once where a lone cottonwood shaded a trickle of spring water—knowing it might be the last they’d see. Every twist in the trail brought a stab of fear, expecting to spot Luke’s crumpled form sprawled among the rocks.

But the only sign was the churned earth where his horse had thundered through, gravel flung wide. Night crept in, the desert heat giving way to a bone-chilling cold, and their mounts stumbled, spent. They made camp, firelight flickering on grim faces, words few and far between.

Jess broke the silence first, his voice low. “What’d that Paiute say to you, Sam?”

Sam shrugged, uneasy. “Just some wild talk—superstition, is all.”

Jess pressed, “I heard him say Luke’d die, and they’d be free another year. You reckon they did somethin’ to him?”

Sam snapped, “I told you, it’s nonsense! Somethin’ hit Luke—fever, maybe—and he lost his head. Let’s not jaw about it.”

That shut Jess up.

Cal lit his pipe, staring into the stars. “This whole damn country’s off. You see them hills? Scarred up like landslides hit every day. Could be quake land, but some o’ them rocks didn’t roll straight down—saw one cut sideways ‘cross a slope.”

Sam growled, “Quit it, Cal. You’re seein’ ghosts, and I ain’t in the mood.”

Cal just puffed smoke. “You saw that busted brush too, Sam. Don’t tell me I’m the only one.”

No one said more that night.

Come dawn, they took up the chase. Cal’s talk of rockslides stuck with ‘em, and they eyed the strange trails crisscrossing the brush—paths too big for critters, too wild for reason.

Some didn’t even slope downhill, defying all sense. At one spot where a trail gouged across their path, Cal swung down and looked before climbing back up with a shrug that didn’t hide his worry.

“Find anything?” Sam bit out.

“Nothin’ you didn’t see. Takes legs to drag a mark like that—unless rocks walk here.”

Sam’s jaw tightened. “Footprints?”

Cal hesitated, then said, “Not a one. But a rock that size’d smear any tracks. Still—what’d drag a boulder that big just to smash brush?”

Jess cut in sharp, “Enough! We gotta get Luke!”

The sun was dipping low on the second day when they found him. The queer trails had thickened, the hills plowed up like a mad giant’s playground.

Rounding a bend, they hit a wide open, bare stretch—a natural bowl in the peaks, its floor stripped to naked stone. Lines etched the rock like the ghosts of walls, worn flat by some unholy force.

“Ruins,” they all muttered, reining up.

Anyone who’d roamed the Southwest knew the shape of old Indian villages, though these gotten ground to nothing but echoes.

For a heartbeat, they forgot Luke—then spotted it. Near the center lay a bloody heap, unrecognizable at first.

Jess saw it clear, wailed, and stumbled forward, only to recoil as the truth hit. The others pushed past, staring at the pulped mess of Luke Harper and his horse. A smeared trail of blood and rock dust led to a monster of a boulder—fifty feet long and worm-shaped like it’d crawled over and crushed ‘em flat.

Sickened, they gaped from the rock to the ruin of their friend, then at each other. No quake could’ve shifted that basalt beast without rattling their teeth loose.

What, then, had done this?

Before they could reckon it, Jess screamed, rooted where he’d stopped, his face a mirror of Luke’s last mad look. They followed his stare and froze.

The boulder was moving—pivoting like a living thing, not rolling on, but turning toward them. It slid forward, grinding stone to powder, aiming for Jess.

Cal yelled and bolted, Sam right behind, but Jess stood fast, caught in its path. Torn, they skidded to a halt, lunging back to drag him clear—only to slam into somethin’ unseen, solid as a canyon wall.

They pounded it ‘til their hands bled, but it wouldn’t budge. Then Jess’s final cry echoed, and they wheeled for their horses, terror driving ‘em blind.

They were nigh out of earshot when the sound faded. In the lead, Sam heard Cal’s horse slow and turned to see him swing back toward the ruins.

Sam hollered, but Cal didn’t flinch. Sam cursed and followed as Cal rode like a man chased by death.

When Sam caught sight again, Cal stood dead center, the worm-rock gliding toward him from across the stone floor. Sam charged, hit that invisible wall again, and sank to his knees as the truth sank in.

The white sticks littering the ground weren’t brush—they were bones, flesh long ground away. Two bloody smears marked the rock now, and Cal waited, still as stone, for his turn.

Sam turned tail and ran, the horror clawing at his back. It dogged him all the way—sometimes fading, other times brushing his neck with icy fingers, spurring his horse to a lather.

Night fell, but he didn’t stop, riding blind ‘til dawn broke, and his horse staggered into the Paiute camp, half-dead and bearing a man who looked like he’d clawed out of a grave.

The stage was rumbling up the trail, and Sam gulped water the Paiutes fetched, eyes locked on his salvation. They asked after the others, but he rasped just one word—“Dead”—and they drew back.

As the stage screeched to a halt, that cold touch grazed his neck again, urging him back to the hills. But Sam Withers was a fighter, and with the memory of his pards’ fate burning in his skull, he battled it. He thrashed and roared like a man possessed, the Paiutes scattering ‘til the stage crew tackled him, thinking him sun-struck.

They hauled him aboard, chalking it up to heat fever as he lay there, pale and trembling. As the stage rattled off, the Paiutes whooped, reckoning he’d beaten the curse—a fiend from the days when the old hill-dwellers got wiped out. Legend said it’d claim it’s due ‘til some soul defied it, and then it’d fade, scars and all.

Sam never once heard that tale. He knows too much already and clings to the notion it was all a fever dream.

But the hills of Seven Troughs stay quiet now, and the Paiutes speak no more of it.

Now, I ain’t one to meddle in courtroom affairs, nor do I make a habit of wagging my finger at fellas from other lands. But there comes a time when common sense, like a rooster on Sunday morning, starts crowing loud enough to wake even the sleepiest soul in the valley. It’s a tale not spun from imagination–but plucked from the ripe and ridiculous tree of modern reality–a tree whose roots are a tangle of red tape and whose fruit tastes curiously like hubris.

There once was a man named Mahmoud Khalil, a graduate student at Columbia University, which is a place so highfalutin’ in reputation that it’s a wonder they let the pigeons land there. Khalil, a man of foreign birth and lofty ideals, came to these United States not by accident–but by invitation–a guest at the table, if you will. And like any guest, he was expected to wipe his feet at the door, say “thank you” now and again, and not spit in the soup.

Instead of minding his manners, Mr. Khalil took to the streets with a crowd that seemed less interested in learning and more interested in shouting things that could curdle milk. The protests he joined—against Israel and the war in Gaza—weren’t so much peaceful persuasion as they were a good holler that rattled windows and riled tempers. Don’t mistake me–for the Constitution grants every man the right to speak his piece–but it’s wrong when a guest cheers for the folks shooting arrows at the host’s house.

Immigration Judge Jamee E. Comans, no doubt spectacles lowered on the bridge of the nose, declared Mr. Khalil a national security risk–a label not tossed around lightly, like a sack of flour. Comans said his presence bore “potentially serious foreign policy consequences,” which is government talk for “he’s stirring up a hornet’s nest we can’t afford to poke.”

And with that, the wheels of deportation began to turn. But oh, what a tangled mess!

Mr. Khalil’s lawyers, slicker than a greased weasel, hollered to a federal judge in New Jersey, who threw a wrench in the works and halted the deportation like a brakeman slamming the lever on a downhill train. The claim? Why, that Mr. Khalil was not just a student but a citizen, which raised eyebrows and questions alike since no one’s quite sure whether he’s a guest or the fella who now owns the house.

To add a twist, Secretary of State Marco Rubio dusted off a statute older than Aunt Lottie’s biscuit recipe–a law that lets him send folks packing if they’re considered a danger to Uncle Sam’s foreign affairs. It’s a rare move, like finding a buffalo nickel in a gum machine, but one he insists is necessary to keep the porch light burning for the right kind of visitors.

Meanwhile, in a courtroom far from Columbia’s ivy-covered walls, another man—Kilmar Abrego Garcia—was deported by a supposed mistake and now languishes in a grim El Salvadorian prison as the government wrings its hands and mutters “We’re working on it” like a handyman with no tools. Judge Paula Xinis, clearly unimpressed, demanded to know where the man was and what was getting done to haul him back.

And not to be outdone, yet another federal judge named Dabney Freidrich ruled that immigration agents can still bust down the doors of houses of worship if they get the notion—so long as they do so with “discretion” and a lick of “common sense.” The clergyfolk cried foul, saying it violated their religious freedoms, but the court ruled that a handful of raids doesn’t make a pattern, and besides, churches are no longer off-limits when fugitives are hiding in the pews.

So here we are, in a time where the line between guest and squatter grows blurrier than a saloon mirror at midnight. And I say this not out of meanness but with the wisdom of a man who has worn thin his welcome—folks who come to this country with a promise in their pockets oughtn’t to wave the flag of our enemies, be it in the square, the classroom, or the confines of their cozy apartments.

While the welcome mat remains in the Land of Liberty—it ain’t a doormat.