Johnny McBride has been running all his life Since age six, when he discovered his mother drowned in her wedding dress in the stock tank on their ranch, someone has been trying to kill young Johnny McBride. Everyone in Van Horn, Texas, it seems-from the scion of the feuding clan on the surrounding ranch to his own witless father and brother-wants to do him in. But Johnny has his defenses. Armed with his own brand of dark humor and unique take on the infamous "McBride luck," Johnny has the friendship of the green-eyed, blonde vaquero, Jose Navarette, who once rode with Pancho Villa. Moreover, he has the tenacity born of deprivation and the desert itself. From the West Texas wilderness, cratered and barren as the moon, to the jungles of Viet Nam and the impoverished villages of Mexico, the epic journey of Johnny McBride comes full circle. On his return to his desert home, Johnny discovers a landscape so mired in the seepage of corporate lust and betrayal that not even he can outrun it.