FADE IN:

EXT. MOUNTAINS - NIGHT

Snow is falling in a gusting wind. The voice of an old man:

VOICE OVER:

I was sheriff of this county when I

was twenty-five. Hard to believe.

Grandfather was a lawman. Father

too. Me and him was sheriff at the

same time, him in Plano and me here.

I think he was pretty proud of that.

I know I was.

EXT. WEST TEXAS LANDSCAPE - DAWN/DAY

We dissolve to another West Texas landscape. Sun is rising.

VOICE OVER:

Some of the old-time sheriffs never

even wore a gun. A lot of folks find

that hard to believe. Jim Scarborough

never carried one. That's the younger

Jim. Gaston Boykins wouldn't wear

one. Up in Comanche County.

We dissolve through more landscapes, bringing us to full

day. None of them show people or human habitation.

VOICE OVER:

I always liked to hear about the old-

timers. Never missed a chance to do

so. Nigger Hoskins over in Bastrop

County knowed everbody's phone number

off by heart. You can't help but

compare yourself against the old-

timers. Can't help but wonder how

they would've operated these times.

There was this boy I sent to the gas

chamber at Huntsville here a while

back. My arrest and my testimony. He

killed a fourteen-year-old girl.

Papers said it was a crime of passion

but he told me there wasn't any

passion to it.

EXT. WEST TEXAS ROAD - DAY

The last landscape, hard sunbaked prairie, is surveyed in a

long slow pan.

VOICE OVER:

Told me that he'd been planning to

kill somebody for about as long as

he could remember. Said that if they

turned him out he'd do it again.

The pan has brought into frame the flashing light bars of a

police car stopped on the shoulder. A young sheriff's deputy

is opening the rear door on the far side of the car.

VOICE OVER:

Said he knew he was going to hell.

Be there in about fifteen minutes. I

don't know what to make of that. I

surely don't.

Close on a pair of hands manacled behind someone's back. A

hand enters to take the prisoner by one arm.

VOICE OVER:

The crime you see now, it's hard to

even take its measure. It's not that

I'm afraid of it.

Back to the shot over the light bars: the deputy, with a

hand on top of the prisoner's head to help him clear the

door frame, eases the prisoner into the backseat. All we see

of the prisoner is his dark hair disappearing into the car.

VOICE OVER:

I always knew you had to be willing

to die to even do this job -- not to

be glorious. But I don't want to

push my chips forward and go out and

meet something I don't understand.

The deputy closes the back door. He opens the front passenger

door and reaches down for something-apparently heavy-at his

feet.

VOICE OVER:

You can say it's my job to fight it

but I don't know what it is anymore.

The deputy swings the heavy object into the front passenger

seat. Matching inside the car: it looks like an oxygen tank

with a petcock at the top and tubing running off it.

VOICE OVER:

...More than that, I don't want to

know. A man would have to put his

soul at hazard.

The deputy slams the door.

On the door slam we cut to Texas highway racing under the

lens, the landscape flat to the horizon. The siren whoops.

VOICE OVER:

...He would have to say, okay, I'll

be part of this world.

INT. SHERIFF LAMAR'S OFFICE - DAY

THE DEPUTY:

Seated in the sheriff's office, on the phone. The prisoner

stands in the background. Focus is too soft for us to see

his features but his posture shows that his arms are still

behind his back.

DEPUTY:

Yessir, just walked in the door.

Sheriff he had some sort of a thing

on him like one of them oxygen tanks

for emphysema or somethin'. And a

hose from it run down his sleeve...

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