Depth of Winter (Walt Longmire, #14)

by Craig Johnson

“United States Border Patrol, puttin’ the panic in Hispanic since 1924.”

Henry Standing Bear says that the greatest thing you can do to respect the dead is to remember them, to keep them in your mind so that they do not slip away into that cold, dark infinity that awaits all of us.

I wished for a sound, but pressed hard against the sky, the terrain gave no answers.

The sun was now directly above, and I felt like the flesh was burning from my bones, even with my palm-leaf hat, the light striking the desert and bouncing back up at me like grease in an overly heated frying pan.

You find that kernel of madness at an early age, and if you’re lucky you start building up a callus around it, a tough layer of humanity that holds it at bay, because it’s just too dangerous to allow to escape. Your family can’t ever see it, your friends can’t ever see it, no one must ever see it—but it’s there, waiting to burn the protective covering away that has taken a lifetime to build and burst open like a volcanic canker of maniacal emotion.