There was still some water running in the creek, and they stopped and ate, drank, and filled their water bags at the creek. It was a nice spot here—sheltered, clear running water, not too cold. They would have trouble getting up and out of this spot, but it was vulnerable, and easy country wasn't good for them. They were hard men, and hard country favored them.

John's eye was beginning to putrefy. The smell was awful, and John moved in and out of consciousness regularly now, though he still kept pretty much on his feet, walking even when sleep overtook him. They had two bottles of whiskey left from the line shack, and nearly all of it was going onto John's eye. John's awareness of his own predicament was fading in and out as well. Often enough, he forgot what the whiskey was for, and Sisson would have to grab him from behind and wrestle him to the ground and hold him for Tom to pour the alcohol into the eye, sending John into a fit of screaming rage and pain.

Other times, he took treatment with a stoic calm, the working of his jaw muscles the only clear sign of the pain that engulfed him. The eye less and less resembled a human eye. The swelling covered the entire eye socket to the size of a plum and roughly the same color. The eyelids had now lost their elasticity and pulled back from the ruptured eyeball so that Tom was no longer required to pull them open to get the whiskey in. The yellowish ooze that came from the eye continued to darken, and everyone knew that things were getting worse as time passed.

They were in the oak and pine of middle Bonita Canyon now, well hidden unless someone rode right up on them. John was useless as a lookout, so Sisson and Tom took turns down in the lower reach of the canyon in a nest of rock with two rifles and a sack of ammunition. The other tried to watch John and sleep at the same time. John was prone to coming back to consciousness without warning and, disoriented, getting up and running.

Tom Power was just starting to nod off, the rifle jammed between two rocks, when Sisson came up behind him. “You need sleep,” Sisson said. “Go on back there. I got this.”

“How is he?”

“Sleeping. You sleep a bit, too. You need it.”

“I don't want him waking up and running on us.”

“Not to worry.”

When Tom got back to the camp, John was curled at the base of a pine. A length of rope was wound several times around his ankles and knotted. The rest of the rope was wound around the base of the tree. John had maybe six or eight feet of freedom if he awoke.