It was all, finally, a trade-off. The advantages of the foothills and the weak light of the half moon became disadvantages if you simply looked at the situation from the other side. It seemed to Sisson that the disadvantages outweighed the advantages because the men had to be on the move, and movement was easy to spot and to hear. The waiting posses, if they were here, would have the advantage of stillness and perpetual cover, while he and the boys would have to move from cover to cover. They were not Apaches, and they did not wear moccasins. They could not move silently even two or three steps. The hard soles of their boots and shoes would draw complaints from the earth under them.

With both Tom and John half blind, Sisson again took the lead. They moved slowly through the heavily treed foothills, moving from scrub oak to scrub oak, slowly. Slow was key here. But slow also entailed the need to resist running from one point of cover to the next. That was instinct—spend as much time under cover as you could. But three men sprinting from one tree to another were loud and easily seen, giving back the advantage that the weak moonlight gave them. Sisson was again aware how much he hated being the quarry rather than the hunter and how little he actually knew about it. Tom, he thought, probably knew more.

Each time they stopped, they listened. The sounds of night were just starting to rise. Though winter was quieter than summer, when crickets, cicadas, and night birds were out, there was the hiss of a barn owl that seemed to be following them and, farther off, the hoot and who of a great horned owl. The coyotes were just starting up. There was plenty to hear, but also plenty to cover up the stray sounds of men.

So Sisson listened for horses. Horses heard better than men did, and horses would hear movement before the men who had ridden in on them. And when horses heard sounds, they reacted to them, often nickering or neighing and almost always moving restlessly, knowing that when men were moving, horses would soon be moving as well. Horses were also louder than smart men. Nothing was louder than a stupid man.

In the peering into the dark, the creeping from one cover to the next, the listening, the efforts to control breathing, there was nothing. They all felt the eyes on them, the rifle sights, even, but there was nothing. Sisson thought of deer, the way they moved, cautious, alert, then began or resumed grazing until the next stray sound or smell reached them, and they stopped, came alert again, and listened, tense and ready to spring and bolt.