Perhaps the greatest danger was the uneventfulness of the long trek. They simply walked, keeping their eyes open for distant lights. With no real problems to occupy them, they could think, and, thinking, their thoughts turned to the pain. John's left eye was swollen to the size of Sisson's hammy fist. The bridge of his nose was crusted half an inch deep in blood. Every so often the scab would break open again, and a new rivulet of blood would course down his face to dry and harden. Tom's eye was less swollen, though it was shut tight and had turned a bright purple, like a baby bird's.

To keep their minds off the big pains, they thought about the small ones. Their feet hurt and would keep hurting. Tom had developed a small limp that John figured meant blister. Sisson was a plodder anyway, but now he looked like an old horse shuffling through the chute to catch the hammer between the eyes. Dog food. John's feet just hurt, and his legs had progressed through burn into the dull grind of fatigue that was going to go on for hours more.

Their gear, in leather and cloth bags, banged against their backs and ribs. The roped and leather lacings cut into their hands and shoulders. Their rifles, though slung, were in their hands because there was no more room on their shoulders to carry them. The water bags were the worst. They steadily thumped against their bodies, John's bumping his ass with every step, sixteen pounds of slow, soft tapping that was threatening to break him.

They rested every couple of miles. They took two kinds of breaks—standing breaks, when they could rest their hands from carrying the guns and unsling the water bags from their shoulders, and full breaks, where they dropped everything, sat, breathed, and felt what it was like to not lug weight. The full breaks they allowed every five or six miles. Tom called the breaks, but Sisson occasionally overruled him, declaring that he had to rest or he wouldn't be able to go on much farther.

The rest was the soft concussion of step after step. The slow chewing of the landscape. The Chiricahuas were still too far off to really see them in the dark. The only indicator of how far they had traveled was the Dragoons, steadily diminishing. Every time John looked back, he found them harder to see.