They took turns sleeping. John took first watch because he had slept most of the night as they rode. He took a spot near the crest of the ridge where he was partially sheltered by a pile of rock. He had a good view of the north and east where any posse was likely to come either from the northern road that went to Tucson or out of the riverbed to the west.

He had the binoculars, though he had to hold them to the side of his face so he could look through the left ocular with his right eye. Otherwise, the left eyepiece touched his swollen left eye, and he could barely stand the pain. Sweeping the glass from his right to his left, east to west, he saw only a few cattle grazing some distance away. There seemed to be no auto or horse traffic on the road. As he glassed back the way he had already looked, he saw movement. He reached down and touched the rifle beside him.

It was a herd of pronghorn antelope, a good-sized one, maybe a dozen or more, coming hard out of the east, not far from the playa, a dry lakebed that once or twice a year filled to a depth of a foot or so. Instinctively, he brought the gun up to await the approach of the antelope. Antelope was good meat, lean, stringy, but sweet, like deer meat. As they approached, John shouldered the rifle, only to take it down again. He was hungry, but he couldn't risk a shot, even if it meant giving up a good supply of meat for the run.

He thought what Tom would say. He was stupid. They were hiding in the middle of the desert in nearly plain sight, and John took to blasting away at some pronghorn. And they got caught. And shot. Or hanged. He was stupid. Only he had not done it. He hadn't shot the antelope. He wasn't so stupid, maybe. It didn't matter what Tom thought.

He wasn't smart like Tom. He had known that since they were little. Tom wasn't more than seven or eight when the Old Man had begun to favor him. It didn't matter that John was strong and tough and could outwork many full-grown men. The Old Man looked on Tom different. John would catch them exchanging words, sometimes even just glances, and would know that there was something that the Old Man and Tom understood and he didn't. It was like they could see, and he was blind, at least to some things. Or that they spoke some language that he didn't, though they all spoke Mexican pretty well.