Cover of The Border Nightwalkers

See synopsis of The Ghost of Mount Chinati on the next page.

The Border Nightwalkers

This title was originally published in 2004 as The Naked Twilight by Outskirts Press of Denver, CO.

This novel was inspired by, and partly based on, the author's 13 years in the U.S. Border Patrol, and in particular, his last ten years as an agent in the El Paso, Texas Sector.  During his last five years of service in the Border Patrol, and during the period covered in the novel (1966-67), he attended the University of Texas at El Paso and earned a B.A. degree in English with a Creative Writing Option.  The author earned a BA in Creative Writing from UTEP in December, 1975, and that same month became an Immigration Inspector and a year later an Immigration Examiner.  He also worked as a Criminal Investigator with the INS in Los Angeles.

SYNOPSIS:

The protagonist, Rodney Capers, is a recent transferee from the Laredo, Texas to the El Paso border patrol station.  He had asked for the transfer to continue work on an English degree in hopes it would open doors to better opportunities.  

One night, soon after arriving in El Paso, he received a gash on his head from a  struggle on the banks of the Rio Grande by a night prowler who was trying to abduct a small girl.  After he lost his revolver in the river, Capers watched the prowler  escape back to Mexico.  From then on, he feverishly hoped to gain a rematch with the prowler to avenge the humiliating injury and escape.

Rodney soon enrolled in part time studies in college, but discovered that BP management had a strong antipathy toward those who attended college on thier own time.  He was "exiled" to a unit that was given continuous night assignments on the border river team, called SLIBs.  These malcontents resented the restrictions placed on patrolmen by the bureaucracy, and soon began making their own "rules of engagement."  Rodney enjoys the perpetual river duty, but finds himself becoming cynical like the rest of the SLIBs, most of whom also have "scores to settle" with some of the "border nightwalkers." He succumbs to the contagion of cynicism and violence-until he meets a border beauty with a strange, Aztec name...