I finally leave the city centre behind me, but within minutes become embroiled in the mass of converging secondary roads which loop over and under but never actually directly onto the freeway heading south. Hoping for salvation before I hit Canada, I battle on through Tucson’s suburbia, a nightmare sprawl of real-estate offices and Motel 8s offering cheap room rates and frothy Jacuzzis, before the system spits me out into an industrial zone and, shortly after that, a small town preceded by two signs, the first echoing Winfred’s warning with the enigmatic ‘Danger. Do not pick up hitchhikers!’ and the second, a mile on, the more explanatory ‘Prison’. I stop the car and, utterly confused, turn the map first one way, then the other. I am either north-west of Tucson or south-east but which? There are precious few humanoids around to ask and the only sign of life is the coughing engine of a tri-coloured GMC with very bald tyres parked about a hundred yards away by the entrance to an industrial-looking zone signed ‘Pima Corporation, Exploratory Mining Co.’ The Indians inside the car are big and scary and wearing cheap cowboy hats. All four of them are chewing something which has left a greenish layer of scum on their lips and when they direct me straight through the dirt track behind the sign, with a series of thumb jerks and grunts, I suppress the instinct to drive off at high speed in the opposite direction and instead, due to some innate English embarrassment about not wishing to appear rude, follow their advice to the letter. The first few miles are spent glancing twitchily in my rear-view mirror but after a while I relax. It’s a beautiful afternoon, the sky blue and empty save for the odd white twizzle of an aeroplane that appears like some alien vessel coming from one world, on its way to another. I have a map, bags of supplies and a full tank of petrol. The truck is mended and working fine, the children are being fed and watered by Benjamín and I don’t have to deal with any residual feelings of unease about Duval until Monday.