Train from Tucumcari

Max had been to Clayton, New Mexico many times by car and stayed at the Eklund hotel often. This time, perhaps his last, he came on the train from Tucumcari. They met because they had been the sole occupants of the passenger car on the train other than two women conversing in German in the front seats. The old man and young girl were now the only customers for breakfast in the dining room of the Eklund Hotel in Clayton, New Mexico. According to the frost-encrusted thermometer just outside the window, it was fourteen degrees and howling wind pushed swirls of snow and other debris down the street. Shannon Martin had just returned home to give birth. She was seventeen. Max Graham, pushing sixty-five, was travelling randomly looking for a place to die.

THE LAST CAMEL IN NEW MEXICO
Lieutenant Ned Beale and 29 men of the US army corps of topographical engineers brought camels to northern Arizona in the 1850s to survey a road and future railroad. There were problems and when finished the remainder were released into the wild.

BACK TO THE 1890s
"I tied the knot, made him drop, and from his neck, his head did pop. Black Jack Ketchum was no more."