Im rounding San Benito Mountain, which peaks at over 5,000 feet, so Ranger Tom tells me it snowed here last year and often the temperatures are twenty degrees one minute and then shift to mild, and then back again exemplifying the mercurial elements at work on the land where nothing has changed and nothing remains the same and even the side of a hill which suddenly seems to shift the closer I get until I realize it’s just an illusion playing tricks and that it‘s May and that isn’t snow at all but my sleepless night in which my dreams intersected outward from the edges of my eyes where the brittle light is and I want to look the other way and as soon as I look back it disappears and if the one thing I’m chasing out here doesn’t manifest itself soon I’ll know Spanish Lake is just a mirage too and not a part of anyone’s reality, even Joaquin’s. Or even his dreams because he must have had them out here sleeping under the stars at his hideout where his gang had lookouts and could see anyone coming for miles, past Spanish Lake, further along the ridge, until it heads back in the direction I came from, all the way east down Horse Thief Canyon, almost back to Coalinga where Harry Love tracked him after Ana Benetiz, – or LaMolinera, depending on who you believe, betrayed him the year after she was dressed up like a man and slept out here under the stars and had dreams too, way out at the place called Joaquin Rocks. It’s all starting to come back to me now, almost like I can see her face dressed up like a man under the stars forever on the horizon, not quite here, but just up ahead, just around the bend at Spanish Lake with a hundred stolen horses.