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that first allout effort, later at a trot,
     hour after hour, saving the horses at the expense of the men. Amos rode relaxed now, wasting no motions and no steps. He had
     the look of a man resigned to follow this trail down the years, as long as he should live.
    And then Amos found the body of an Indian not buried in the ground, but protected by stones in a crevice of a sandstone ledge.
     He got at this one— and took nothing but the scalp. Martin had no idea what Amos believed about life and death; but the Comanches
     believed that the spirit of a scalped warrior had to wander forever between the winds, denied entrance to the spirit land
     beyond the sunset. Amos did not keep the scalp, but threw it away on the prairie for the wolves to find.
    Another who was showing change was Brad Mathison. He was always the one ranging farthest ahead, the first to start out each
     morning, the most reluctant to call it a day as the sun went down. His well-grained horses—they had brought four spares
     and two pack mules—showed it less than Brad himself, who was turning hollow-eyed and losing weight. During the past
     year Brad had taken to coming over to the Edwardses to set up with Lucy—but only about once every month or two. Martin
     didn’t believe there had been any overpowering attachment there.But now that Lucy was lost, Brad was becoming more involved with every day that diminished hope.
    By the third day some of them must have believed Lucy to be dead; but Brad could not let himself think that. “She’s alive,”
     he told Martin Pauley. Martin had said nothing either way. “She’s got to be alive, Mart.” And on the fourth day, dropping
     back to ride beside Mart, “I’ll make it up to her,” he promised himself. “No matter what’s happened to her, no matter what
     she’s gone through. I’ll make her forget.” He pushed his horse forward again, far into the lead, disregarding Amos’ cussing.
    So it was Brad, again, who first sighted the Comanches. Far out in front he brought his horse to the edge of a rimrock cliff;
     then dropped from the saddle and led his horse back from the edge. And now once more he held his rifle over his head with
     both hands, signaling “found.”
    The others came up on the run. Mart took their horses as they dismounted well back from the edge, but Mose Harper took the
     leads from Mart’s hands. “I’m an old man,” Mose said. “What ever’s beyond, I’ve seen it afore—most likely many times. You
     go on up.”
    The cliff was a three-hundred-foot limestone wall, dropping off sheer, as if it might be the shoreline of a vanished sea.
     The trail of the many Comanche ponies went down this precariously by way of a talus break. Twenty miles off, out in the middle
     of the flats, lay a patch of haze, shimmering redly in the horizontal light of the sunset. Some of them now remembered the
     cat-tail marsh that stagnated there, serving as a waterhole. A black line, wavering in the ground heat, showed in front of
     the marsh haze. That was all there was to see.
    “Horses,” Brad said. “That’s horses, there at the water!”
    “It’s where they ought to be,” Mart said. A faint reserve, as of disbelief in his luck, made the words come slowly.
    “Could be buffler,” Zack Harper said. He was a shag-headed young man, the oldest son of Mose Harper. “Wouldn’t look no different.”
    “If there was buffalo there, you’d see the Comanche runnin’ ’em,” Amos stepped on the idea.
    “If it’s horses, it’s sure a power of ’em.”
    “We’ve been trailin’ a power of ’em.”
    They were silent awhile, studying the distant pen scratch upon the world that must be a band of livestock. The light was
     failing now as the sunset faded.
    “We better feed out,” Brad said finally. He was one of the youngest there, and the veteran plains-men were usually cranky
     about hearing advice from the young; but lately they seemed to listen to him anyway. “It’ll be dark in an