“Telephone,” Sisson said. He shook his head. He didn't know much about telephones, except that he didn't like them. He had known the telegraph operators at Fort Grant, and he figured they were out of work now because of the telephones. Now he had to outrun the damned things. He wished they had never been invented.

The snow that had begun a couple of hours earlier was easing off now. They had been riding in it all the way down the mountains from Kielberg Canyon, a ragged upheaval of rhyolite, treacherous in summer and worse in winter, especially in snow. But whoever was going to report the fight to the police, and someone was going to report it, would go the other way—east and north to Klondyke and then to Safford. They wouldn't come this way, west, toward Tucson, and the law in Tucson wouldn't be as anxious to take them as the law in Safford. And the law in Tucson wouldn't try to hang them.

The horses moved slowly, picking their way down the canyon. The men wanted speed, but, blind, they needed the horses to go as they would. Even with Sisson, clear-sighted and in the lead.

The mountains, the Galiuros (locals pronounced the name “glurrows”), were rugged and steep. There was a road on the east side through Rattlesnake Canyon that the Powers and Sisson had cut through to bring in mining supplies and to take out the ore they had mined. They left the other way, though—the way without roads, the way that was safest for them. The Galiuros had been home to Tom, John, and their family for years. It was hard country, but they were hard men. They had expected to become rich up there in Kielberg Canyon. They had not. And now only the dead were left up there in the canyon. They were leaving the Galiuros, and they were not coming back.

“We should have stayed with the Old Man,” John complained. Often enough, he picked up on Tom's thoughts, though he was the dumb one and Tom was the smart one. “We shouldn't have left him there to die alone.”

“More dead than alive,” Tom said.

“It wasn't right.”

“You want to die, don't you?”

“Nah, I don't want to die.”

“You keep coming up with ideas that lead to the same place—you and me and Sisson here, dead. When Thems come up and find all of them dead, killed by Gentiles, Thems is going to want us dead. Going to get us dead, if they can. The only way that ain't going to happen is if we can put enough distance between us and Thems to keep ourselves alive. You want to go back and see to the Old Man and take your chances? You want to see if Thems is going to forgive in that holy way that Thems got? You think we got ourselves a chance?”