When they hit level ground, they were able to make their way walking rather than scrambling, but they still had to squeeze around and between and over granite boulders. Tom hoisted himself to the top of a boulder. On the other side was a drop of nearly ten feet. He sat there and waited for the others. It was still cold, and they needed their coats and would need their blankets at night, but the rock was warming in the sun and comforting.

“Here,” he said to John when he had come up alongside him. He handed John his bedroll, gun, canteen, and a canvas bag of food and ammunition. “When I get to the bottom, throw all this down to me, then throw your stuff and follow me.”

John looked at the drop-off. “How we going to get back up?”

“Not the problem right now. Getting down is.” Tom rolled over onto his back and spread his arms, pushing himself across the rock like a swimmer doing the backstroke. After a few pushes, gravity took over, and he slid about four feet down the face of the rock before he fell away, landed and rolled over, then got to his feet again. “It ain't that bad.”

John threw down Tom's stuff and then his own. He rolled over onto his back and followed Tom down.

Sisson was giving the drop a bad glare. He rolled over onto his back as the brothers had done, though he looked more like a steer struck by lightning than a man preparing to jump off a boulder. “Fuck me. I don't want to do this.”

“We could leave you there,” Tom said.

“Yeah,” John agreed. “We'll pick you up on the way back.”

“You'd be our first line of defense if they follow us up here.”

“Yeah,” John said. “He looks like he could be right dangerous if someone was to trip over him.”

“Yep. Fall down that boulder and break his neck or something.”

“All right,” Sisson said. “When you morons are done amusing yourselves, you might want to give me a hand so I don't break my neck.”

“Aw, Sisson. It ain't that likely.”

“Yeah,” John agreed. “I'd think he'd break his leg, not his neck.”

“Probably right.”

“All right, then. Goddamn it. Shut up. I'm coming down.” Sisson pushed himself across the arc of the boulder with his hands until gravity had a grip on him and pulled him down the face of it, then dropped him into the arms of the Power brothers.

“You looked right graceful coming down, Sisson.”

“Shut up.”