FADE IN: EXT. HIGH DESERT, FENCE LINE, NEW MEXICO TERRITORY, PRE-DAWN Blue-grey light. Not quite dark, not quite morning. The kind of hour that has no name in the city but has one out here: working time. ELIAS CORD (62) rides a dun quarter horse along a fence line that runs southeast as far as the light will show. He is lean, weathered past the point of age into something harder and more permanent: a man whose face stopped changing some years ago and simply settled into what it was going to be. His hands are large and scarred at the knuckles. No legend in him. A man who has been outside for forty years. He rides at a walk. He is not inspecting. He is looking, and looking is different: slower, more continuous, the eyes moving before the head does. A section of fence is down. Three posts leaning. The wire pulled loose on the north side and coiled on the ground. Elias dismounts without ceremony. He ties the horse to a