“Shot Twice, Kept Running” — The Road Runner of New Mexico

They aimed their rifles at him. All they hit was dust. In 1933, on the edge of the New Mexico desert, a smuggler named Ray Moreno slipped a sheriff’s cuffs and vanished into sand. Two hours later, a deputy spotted him five miles away—running at a full sprint. It kept happening. Every time the law closed in, Moreno reappeared on another horizon, leaving only a drifting plume.

Locals swore he could cross twenty miles of desert without breaking stride. Bounty hunters were hired. One claimed he shot Ray twice and watched him keep running. In 1935, a railroad inspector found boot prints on a high trestle and a dropped satchel of fresh tobacco, still warm in the sun. No one ever saw Ray again.

Was he a gifted runner, a desert phantom, or a legend stitched from heat haze? Th ...