“Yes.”

“You’re right. That’s why we need him.”

“We’ll find him, boss.”

“Jack! The name is Jack, for Chrissake.”

“We’ll find him, Jack. For your sake.”

The horses stop suddenly, lifting their heads, nostrils flexing. From miles away, upwind on the barely moving air, off in the mountains dark against the stars, comes the sound of a high, faint, inhuman wail. They listen. The sound is not repeated. The horses wait, then lower their heads.

Jack Burns spits on the ground. “I ever tell you about my honeymoon, Sam?”

“Which one?”

“The first. That first premature honeymoon. Took this here city girl out camping in the woods. When it got dark we bedded down under the pines and then I told her about some of the things that creep around out there in the night. Trying to make her hang on tight, you see.” The old man stares at the horses, smiling at his thoughts.

“Well? What happened?”

Burns’s face wrinkles with a leathery, deeper grin. “She fell asleep. I was awake all night; every time a pine cone dropped I damn near jumped out of my skin.”

The Indian nods in agreement. “Yes. We create our own fears. And at four o’clock in the morning we create the worst fear of all. The fear of living.”

The horses shuffle about in the starlight. The old man says, “I look at it this way, Sam. If the worst thing that can happen to a man is death—then there ain’t nothing that’s worth fearing.”

“Yes again. If that is the worst.”

Leaning against the tree and against each other, they doze off. From far away, dim and distant, the wail sounds again, borne on the gentle wind, a cry of anguish or of ecstasy deeper than despair, wilder than joy. The men stir at the sound but do not awaken. The horses, after another pause, continue feeding. Bright stars burn, clusters of blue, red, green fires in random constellation turning on the wheel of space. In silence.

Hours later, well past midnight, roused by an inner clock, Jack Burns opens his eyes. He nudges his companion. They rise and grope through the dark of the trees toward the noise of their horses, catch them and mount. They follow a path through the rocks, downcanyon, and come to a clear and definite trail. They follow the trail for a mile, two miles, and reach an old road, stony, deeply gullied, overgrown with brush and cactus. They ride the road, single file through the obstructions, over a ridge and into the next valley and come to a fence with open gate.

“Smoke,” mutters Sam; “I smell smoke.”

They go through the gateway, ride on for another mile, passing two abandoned, weed-grown automobiles on the way. Ancient and gigantic cottonwood trees loom ahead, their leaves making a constant rustling noise as of running water. Beyond the trees they find the ruins of a burned-out ranch-house, a leveled barn; fiery coals wink among the ashes; smoke twists up from the charred, fallen timbers. The men look at the ruins and then at one another, through the fading starlight, and say nothing.