We rode south and followed the old Caravan Road, following its line through the hills and keeping out of sight as best as we could. This was still hostile country and there were certainly other raiders about, so we rode with our weapons ready and our pistols loose in the holsters. The horses were much the better for the brief rest back at the station and the good water and good grass had done them a world of good. They moved with their old vigor and easily ate up the miles and by the end of the day we had covered as much ground as a caravan could in three. Moving with a caravan is slow work, what with the heavily laden Brahmin and all the men on foot or riding in Brahmin carts. Horses were rare this far south, as Boone had told me before, and so the paces down here were much slower than those I was used to.

The country continued to change as we rode. Gradually the green grass gave way completely to the sandy desert and the high red rock cliffs and mesas that towered always above us. Creeks were becoming more common and so we didn't worry so much about water. On the first day we crossed two small streams that were little more than trickles of water fed by tiny springs and the second day we struck the Virgin River and followed it south. It was a fair-sized river, maybe a hundred yards across and about six or seven feet deep at its deepest point where we rode. The water was cool and clear and tasted good and when we camped on its banks we threw out some hand lines and caught a few fish for our supper. We gathered more of the Banana Yucca fruit and Xander Root as well, and when the fish were cooked and the coffee was on we had us a good meal.

On the third day after the fight at the station we saw the first of the markers. It was a mural of some sort, painted high up on the face of one of the red rock cliffs, and it depicted some sort of battle. There were paintings of men lying dead and bloody, men standing over them with guns raised in triumph, and leading them was a man wrapped in white with a black vest and pants. The man stood with his arms crossed, only his eyes visible beneath the wrappings or whatever they were. And I recognized the painted figures on the ground by their war paint and markings; they were White Legs.

Another mile down the river, we saw another mural. They were painted almost impossibly high on the face of the cliff. I would never have thought that a man would climb so high just to paint a picture when there was so much cliff face to paint on farther down. Then again, the painting was supposed to be seen from miles away and be seen by all who came into the country. It was a thing to remember. The picture was the same as the first and had the same tall man standing over the others. Memories of stories I had heard of this country started to come back to me now, stories of the Burned Man and the great battles between the White Legs and the Dead Horses and Sorrows tribes. They were stories that had been told by soldiers at Hooverville and the few tribesmen that were more friendly with the White Legs. The tall man had to be him, the Burned Man that had led the two tribes to victory against the White Legs in Zion Valley. It had been six or seven years before, when the White Legs were driven back to the Great Salt Lake just before the Eighties tribe massacred them almost to a man and drove them north. The Burned Man . . . Joshua Graham.

We followed the Virgin into Zion Valley and then further into Zion Canyon. The canyon itself was a fabulous sight, its high walls rising hundreds of feet above the Virgin and its little offshoots and branch canyons twisting and winding in every direction along its course. The red walls and sandstone cliffs, worn and sculpted by centuries of wind and rain, formed beautiful rounded designs that seemed to almost swirl down the cliffs and down to the shores of the river. I heard the sound of some beast lowing far up the canyon. It sounded almost like a low roar, but Boone looked over and told me that it was a Bighorner Bull. A half hour later we rode up on a bunch of them, a bull and two ewes with a four calves in tow. They were huge red beasts, almost as large as a Radbuff, and their coarse red fur and huge curled horns were a thing to see. They just stood there as we rode by them, barely noticing us aside from a big bull that walked out to meet us and stood there with his head lowered.

We were scarcely a few yards into the mouth of the canyon when I saw the man rise up on a rock ledge. He seemed to spring out of the rock itself, for there was no cover there that I could see and his tanned body blended perfectly with the rock and the sandy soil. He was a short man, maybe five and a half feet, with a slim build and a wiry frame that was packed with muscle. His skin was tanned brown by the sun and he was naked to the waist, his head was shaved bald, and he was wearing moccasins and a breechcloth that looked to be made of buckskin or some similar kind of tanned hide or leather. He also had paint on his body that was made to look like weeping tears that ran down his chest and middle. He said nothing and made no threatening move, but the rifle he held in his hands was enough to show he meant business.

We continued walking our horses toward him, our hands away from our guns and our eyes on him, and after we had taken three steps he gave a whoop. As the sound of it echoed off the stoic rocks, I caught the faintest suggestion of movement out of the corners of my eyes as four other men rose out of the dry grass on either side of us. They were all similarly dressed and armed and with one casual glance to both sides I took them all in. These men were warriors all. Every one of them held a weapon of some kind, most of them carrying rifles while two younger men held war clubs, and they had us neatly boxed.

I pulled Buck up short, Boone stopping beside me, and raised my right hand in a sign of friendship. They closed in around us, stopping about ten feet from us on all sides and with their weapons ready, but that man on the ledge hadn't moved a muscle. He stood there with his Trail Carbine in the crook of his arm with his hard eyes bearing down on us. I made the sign for friend and for passing through. I didn't know if they understood the sign language of the north, but it was all I could think of. He watched me make the signs and when I had finished he spoke to us in a harsh tone. His language was strange to me. It was some dialect of Res that I had never heard before, but there were enough words and phrases that I could muddle my way through. I smiled and spoke to him in my own dialect, hoping that he would understand.

"We come here in peace, friend. We come to trade for supplies and hope to pass through your country. We seek no trouble but we will answer any that you offer."

He nodded when I spoke and climbed down from his perch on the rocks and came down the almost sheer rock face with the grace of any Panther and came walking toward us with his hand resting on the action of his rifle. I let my hand fall to my thigh, resting within inches of my gun butt, and when he came closer he saw the move and smiled. He looked from me to Buck, then to Boone's dun and the two pack horses behind us. His eyes were wide and he gave an appreciative nod.

"What these? Not Bighorner, not Yao Guai, what be these?"

It was hard to understand, but after a moment I realized that he had never seen a horse before. Boone had said that horses were rare in the southern lands, but never had I seen a Tribal that had never seen one at all. These men were all grown, or mostly grown, and yet for the first time I noticed the way they were looking at the horses with amazement and just a little fear. It must have meant big medicine to them, for none of them came a step closer than ten yards. The pack horses were nervous around the new smells of the new men, but Buck stood stock still and the dun flipped her head at the man with the Trail Carbine.

"These are horses, friend," I said as I patted Buck's neck, "they can carry a man into battle and across the desert faster than a man can walk or run. They can make one man like three and carry more than any five men. They are a gift from the Spirits and a beast of great medicine."

"No man ride beast like this. No beast carry man. I think you lie, outsider!"

I put the heels to Buck and he took off like a shot. The man, who seemed to be the leader of this little party, had been standing off to my right and closer to Boone than to me and when Buck bolted forward I came to within two feet of him and reached down and touched him on the shoulder before he could even raise his gun. He started to lift his rifle as I sped toward the mouth of the canyon, but I wheeled Buck around and he spun around on a cap and I put him into a dead run in the opposite direction. I raced past Boone and slipped from the saddle hung from the side with one hand on the saddle horn with my arm outstretched and my legs folded. I swung back into the saddle and spun Buck again, this time dropping from the saddle, landing on both feet and jumping up and over his back and then back into the saddle. I slipped into my seat again and turned Buck back toward Boone, walking him this time and easing him sideways and around the leader until he was standing beside Boone again.

Every one of them had a look of awe on his face and they were pointing at Buck and talking in excited tones. Boone kind of looked sideways at me and had that sly smile of his across his face. My little show had just the effect that I had been hoping for. The big one with the Trail Carbine was smiling and motioning for us to follow him into the canyon and we obliged. The others fell in behind us and walked a few yards behind the pack horses, still looking at us with surprise and amazement. I couldn't help but smile at that. The show I'd put on was nothing special back up north, for any rider in any of the horse tribes could have done those same feats of horsemanship. We needed some leverage, though, and convincing these people that we rode spirit animals would certainly make them less likely to shoot us in the back.

They led us down a narrow arm of the canyon that was scarcely wide enough for us to pass through on horseback. In places my stirrups scraped the sandstone walls. We came out into a box canyon in which a small village had been built, mostly of small huts and shelters that had been built out of hides and pole frames, and I could see three or four caves in the canyon walls in which other shelters had been built and where the villagers had taken up residence. There were about a hundred people in the village, all of them coming out to see the two strangers and their four strange beasts that bore them and their goods. We must have made an impressive sight to them. All of them were painted in a similar fashion as the warriors who walked before and behind us and every one of them had their heads shaved in the same manner, even the women an the children.

They led us to a cave at the far end of the box canyon beside a waterfall and a small pool of cool, clear water. An older man with a staff of some kind was standing outside the cave with several warriors, all armed, and with him was a well-built man with a submachine gun across his back who was dressed in flannels and dark trousers with a wide-brimmed hat over a shock of dark hair that was well kept. His skin was lighter than that of the Tribals around us and he was not painted, so obviously he wasn't one of them. We pulled up and staked the horses near the water so they could drink and as I stepped down from the saddle I slipped my rifle from the scabbard and held it in the crook of my arm. No one missed the move, either. Several of the warriors gave us a nod after seeing it. Boone stepped down from the dun and I heard the snapping sound of the safety straps on his holsters being undone. It was only then that I remembered that the thong was still on the hammer of my revolver. I had the rifle, at least, and it was the rifle that I preferred above all other weapons.

"Welcome," the old man said, "to our home. You come in peace and as friends, yes?"

"Yes," I replied, "we come seeking men that have taken some of my people. We wish no trouble from you or your people. We have followed them from the far north where they raided my people. This was many months ago. They were warriors dressed in red who stole our children."

I saw the man in the flannel shirt look up after I spoke those last few words. He knew of the Red Warriors somehow. He hid his surprise well, though, and waited until the old man had finished speaking. He invited us to stay and to have water and feed for our animals and even assigned us a lodge that was apparently kept aside for guests. A woman of the tribe came forward at his bidding and gave us a bow, as if we were royalty or something, and the old man said that she was to aid us while we stayed with them. Her name was Waking Cloud, he said, and he introduced himself as White Bird when he came down to shake our hands. The other man introduced himself as Daniel, of New Canaan.

The hut they showed us to reminded me almost of home. It was a hide lodge, apparently made from the skins of several Bighorners and poles carved from the trunks of juniper, mesquite, and Joshua trees. It was sparsely furnished, with two cots in the far corner made from hides, a dresser and a wardrobe that had both seen better days set up along one wall. There was a hearth and small table at the center of the one room, with places set on a hide rug where people could kneel while eating. The dishes and utensils were made from wood or stone. Several baskets were brought in, all laden with food. Gecko steaks, cactus fruits, pinyon nuts, yucca fruit, and a large chunk of Bighorner were all brought in for us, as well as several jugs of water from the basin where our horses had drunk.

We stripped the saddles and gear from the horses and put them under the shelter outside the hut that was normally used to store firewood and other supplies. They were brought hay and cut grass that was normally given to the few tame Bighorners that the Sorrows kept as livestock in the higher canyons. Several people had gathered around our hut when I came out to rub down the horses, many of them children who stared wide-eyed at them. I just couldn't believe that these people had never seen horses!

That night there was a feast of sorts, the whole tribe gathering around large cook fires and roasting whole sides of Bighorners with mounds desert herbs and fruits in celebration of our arrival. Guests such as us were rare, and we had come from the far north where none of them had ever been or even heard of anyone being. We came out and ate the rich meat and the sweet fruits, loving the taste of such delicacies after living so long on dried meats and fruits and camp fare. They even had beer and whiskey, of which we imbibed freely. We sat around the fire and listened to their songs and watched them dance around the fires as I told stories of the north and the history of the Fire Hairs. They sat and listened with interest, particularly the warriors and young men, when I told of the great battles we had fought and they way we trained our horses for war. Boone, as usual, was silent and merely sat and ate as I spoke.

Daniel came over to us while we ate and told us about the tribe, their history, and about the other tribe that lived in the valley, the Dead Horses. For a moment I was hopeful that they might be a horse tribe, with a name like that, but Daniel smiled and said no.

"I've lived here for years," he said, "and I've never heard of a horse living in this valley. I saw a few in California when I went there with a trading caravan to the NCR, but they were nothing like the ones that you rode in. Those are some fine animals."

"Thank you," I replied, "I raised them all myself."

"I've never heard of your tribe. The Fire Hairs, right?"

"Yes. There's no reason for you to have heard of us. We're a horse tribe, a warrior tribe with a fine history, but our exploits are not well known beyond our own lands. I've heard of the man in those murals, though. We all know the legend of the Burned Man."

"Yes, Joshua was very famous in his time."

"Was?"

"Yes. Joshua Graham was his real name. He died of a fever two years ago. His wives and his sons were all there with him when it happened. I always thought he would die in battle with a heap of fallen enemies at his feet, but he was too strong for that. I never saw the man that could match him in a fight of any kind. Well, maybe once."

"I heard he was a great warrior in his time."

"Oh yes, he was. One of the greatest warriors the Legion ever produced."

I had been eating a thick slice of Bighorner steak, but at the mention of the Legion my knife froze halfway to my mouth. I looked over at Daniel and saw that his face was without expression. He went on picking at the fruits on his wooden plate and watching the women of the tribe dance around one of the large fires to the tune of the drums and the deep voices of the men who were singing. Boone looked over at me, then at Daniel, and after a moment the New Canaanite put down his plate and looked back at us.

"He was once Caesar's malpais legate, the general of his armies. He conquered eighty tribes for Caesar's Legion, always swiftly and without mercy. He never knew defeat until the First Battle of Hoover Dam. When he lost that battle, Caesar had him burned alive and tossed into the Grand Canyon. He was supposed to die there, but somehow he survived. I don't know how, but he did. He wandered north until he came to Zion, and the tribes took him in. Became the leader of the Dead Horses and, with the help of a man called the Courier, he led them to battle against the White Legs a few years back."

"I know that story well. The White Legs fled north into my country. I've fought them many times. They're not the best warriors."

"They were once. They wanted to be absorbed into the Legion, so Caesar armed them and sent them against us. They wiped out my home, New Canaan, and then attacked us here in the Canyon. I wanted to lead the tribes out and to safety, but Joshua and the Courier convinced them to stay and fight. The Sorrows were once a peaceful people, hunters and traders, not warriors and killers. Since then they have become like the Dead Horses. Warriors, fighters, raiders against other tribes. I hate what they have become."

"War is what makes a people strong. A man or a people are only as strong as their enemy requires them to be, and only for as long as they have an enemy to make them strong. My people have always been warriors, as have all the other tribes of my land. The tribes cannot survive without war."

I could tell that he was becoming angry by the conversation. He was a peaceful man, that much I could tell, and one who hated warfare and the carnage that came with it. He was a strong man and carried his weapon like he knew what it was for, but there was a way about him that told of a gentler man underneath. This man was a scholar, not a warrior. I had known many like him. Not all men can be warriors, but warriors are required just as craftsmen and scholars are by any nation, tribe, or people. It was a sad truth and one that I myself often wished was not so, but wars and warriors were the only way that mankind could thrive and prosper. Peace had its place, but in the end all peoples were born and died in war.

"I know you're looking for the Legion. I know where they would take the people they took. I knew they were raiding into the north, but I had no idea that they had gone as far as Montana. They must be getting ambitious."

"Where would they go?"

"For as many slaves as they took, there's only one place. Slaves from foreign lands and exotic tribes are always more valuable than the average slave taken from conquered tribes or from enemies on their borders. Those people will be sold for top denarii to the highest bidders. They would take them to Phoenix."

For the first time all night, Boone perked up. On the trail he had talked about the Legion and what to expect if and when we got into their territory and he had mentioned Phoenix a few times. It was their capital, the seat of their power and home of their elite. No one he had ever heard of had seen the city and lived to tell about it, for he was of the NCR and there was an old hatred between them and the Legion. Foreigners were looked down upon and were often objects of suspicion. Many a traveler had been killed on the roads or crucified on some ridge or in some town square on the mere suspicion that they might be a spy. I remembered once when he said that he hoped we wouldn't have to go into Phoenix or the larger cities, since to do so would be something akin to suicide.

"How long ago were they taken?"

"Maybe six months."

"Then I'm sorry to say that you've made a long ride for nothing. By now those people have been sold and are probably spread all over the empire. Most slaves don't survive a year in the camps and the boys that are taken into the army sometimes don't even survive the training. It's always worst for the women. They usually become concubines for some rich noble or baby factories that are used by the generals to breed more future soldiers. When they've been all used up, they get thrown to the troops. Most of them don't even live six months."

"I'm looking for a boy most of all. His name is Adrian, the son of my friend Marcus. He's like a son to me, too. I want to find him and bring him home."

"If he was taken into the army, then the boy you knew is long gone. By now he's either dead or brainwashed into a ruthless killing machine. Even if you do find him, he won't even know who you are. He's just as likely to kill you as look at you."

"That's what I told him," Boone said around a mouthful of Bighorner steak, "he won't listen. If that kid's in Phoenix, then Cain here will go after him. And I'll go with him."

We talked on for an hour or more, Daniel and I, and he told me about the roads and trails that were the best to take when entering Legion country. He advised against riding through the Mojave, for there was still fighting there. The Legion and the Nevada Federation had declared an uneasy peace years before, but there was still sporadic fighting along the border and occasional raids by both sides. It would be better to ride east for a few days and go in through Colorado. He said that the trails to the north would more than likely be watched or guarded and so we would have to ride careful.

After the feast Boone and I retired to our lodge and turned into our bedrolls for the night. We stayed for three days with the Sorrows, hunting and laying in supplies for the ride south. The horses were well cared for and well fed, and we were showered with gifts and food. Daniel came every day and we talked of the trails and the desert conditions, the plants and herbs that were good for food and medicine, where were the best places to find water, and the traditions of the Legion and the tribes of the regions we would travel through. He talked of his home in New Canaan, of the days he had spent in the Legion lands and what he had learned from Joshua Graham, and he told me much of the Copache tribe to the east who had fought them for years. He said they were a fierce tribe, a horse culture like my own, and that they were the fiercest people they had encountered aside from the Nevada Federation.

I took the time to work over the Splithorn hides that I had taken back at the caravan station and made myself a new pair of trousers from the hide. I sewed on the fringe and was working on new moccasins when Boone came back from a hunt with the Dead Horses across the valley. He had a quarter of Bighorner and a hide full of meat which he immediately put on the fire to cook. We were drying as much as we could and shared our kills with the Sorrows as repayment for their generosity and tanned the hides we took for later sale. Daniel came by for his daily visit and saw the trousers I had made and told me that I had better get a change of clothes. My buckskins, he said, would stand out far too much in the Legion lands.

"Anyone can see that you're an outsider. Anyone that was in that raiding party will know who you are and where you came from. You'll want to blend in all you can."

"We're already riding horses in a horseless land. How can we blend in with those?"

"Horses aren't quite as rare in Legion territory. The Copache and the El Pasos both ride them and they have some of their own since they've conquered New Mexico. Those buckskins stand out like a sore thumb. There isn't a tribe in the Southwest that wears those."

He insisted that I trade for some different clothes and he showed me some of the ones that he had. He had several flannels similar to his own and a few vests that he had lying around that had belonged to Joshua Graham. I tried on a few of the shirts, but none of them were large enough to cover my shoulders, chest, and arms. I was a broad man, much broader than Daniel or any of the men of the Sorrows or Dead Horses, and it was finally decided that any shirt I wore would have to be made. Waking Cloud measured me and went off to several of the other women and they went to work on some shirts. In the end I traded two of the rifles we had taken from the raiders at the station for a new pair of Bighorner leather boots, a black Yao Guai hide vest that had been made for Joshua Graham out of the hide of a special Yao Guai that the tribes had called She, and three shirts. He even threw in a wide-brimmed hat like his own.

I rode the trails of the canyon in the mornings while the air was cool and the day was young, as much to get to know the country as to exercise Buck during our layover. I looked for the plants that Daniel had told me about, familiarizing myself with them and learning all I could about them by watching for where they grew, in what quantities, and in what proximity to water. Everywhere I rode I saw game or signs of game. There were Bighorners, Green Geckos, Mantises, Yao Guai, coyotes, Mole Rats, and the occasional Radscorpion. Any of them would have made good camp meat, but we were already overloaded with meat and supplies and I had no wish to kill anything that we didn't need.

Already I was beginning to see the strange beauty of this land that Boone had told me about along the trail. It was plain, desolate, and mercilessly hot when the heat of the day came on it, but sitting the saddle and looking out over the tall red rock cliffs, the miles of chaparral, and the endless expanse of sandy soil and hard-packed earth. I had never seen more beautiful sunrises or sunsets than those of the high deserts and mountains in which I rode. The air was clear and crisp of a morning, the calls of the Geckos in the mountains sounded as they hunted for Mantises and Mole Rats, and the dust devils danced across the barren landscape as I sat the saddle and watched the day unfold. It was a hard land, a fierce land, a land where only the strong survived and the weak were left to die broken and bloody in the sweltering sun. That was true of plants, animals, and men alike. Nothing in the desert lives without struggle, Boone had told me, and it was a land that tested men every day and the tests were always pass-fail. Those that passed lived to be tested another day, those that failed left their bones to bleach in the desert sun.

Even for all its brutality, though, this land had some kind of strange power. It was a hard and deadly land, but it had a beauty that entranced a man and drew him to it. The mountains of my homeland had a similar power, as did the rivers and the great rolling plains over which we had passed. They all drew the wandering man to them with their danger and their lonesome ridges and the dangers that they presented. Man was always drawn to danger and conflict, for these were the things that made a man strong and brave. The tests of the wilderness proved to a man that he was worth his salt, that he could be strong in himself, and that he could call himself a man in his own right.

When we rode out of Zion Canyon we were loaded down with enough dried meat and fresh fruits to last us for weeks and all the water we could carry. The shirts that the women had made for me fit me well and were much lighter than my old thick buckskin shirt. Two of them were red and the one I wore out of the canyon was a turquoise blue color and all had a Tribal spiral design embroidered on the sleeves. I felt like a new man riding out in my new shirt and vest, my long hair pulled back under my new hat, and my new boots. I still had my moccasins and buckskins stored away in my blanket roll and I wore the fringed trousers I had made from the Splithorn hides. Boone had seen me walk out of the lodge in my new duds and nodded with approval, saying that I looked I "fit in". I still wore my gun ready, though, and the weight of it was reassuring on my leg.

Boone himself had changed during our brief respite. He wore only one pistol now, the other tucked into his waistband, and for the first time on the whole trip I saw that he had shaved and trimmed his hair. His dark hair and beard had grown long and shaggy, but now he had shaved his whiskers back to nothing but a mustache and his hair had been trimmed short. His red flannel shirt had been replaced by the dirty short-sleeved one that I remembered from the trunk back at his cabin, and he wore a much more solemn look on his face than usual. He went always with his Hunting Rifle slung over his shoulder and the long-tubed Cowboy Repeater we had picked up back at the station was in his saddle scabbard.

We rode by the lonely trails and over endless miles of sun-baked sand and hard-packed earth with its woven tapestry of cholla, ocotillo, chaparral, barrel cactus, Coyote Tobacco, Banana Yucca, and prickly pear. Every day we saw game. Mostly it was Bighorners roaming in small groups of five or six, usually one or two big bulls with four or so cows and sometimes a couple of calves in tow, but twice we came across herds of well over a hundred that spread out for more than a mile. Every night we camped in shaded places and we cooked our meals over creosote and mesquite fires. The mornings and evenings were cool and clear and the days were mercilessly hot. It was a far, lonely land through which we rode, but the more time I spent in it the more I came to love it.

For three weeks we rode and didn't see a soul. Every day we saw game or the signs and tracks of game, but nowhere was there a trace of human passing. We had left the caravan roads far behind and followed the Old World roads and the forgotten trails where few men went. We had our troubles. A week out of Zion we were chased by a pack of Nightstalkers that would have taken down one of the pack horses if I hadn't wheeled Buck around and dropped two of them with headshots. I took no aim, I just drew my .44 and pointed it as I would a finger as I fired. Five days later a pack of Golden Geckos came out of the desert and challenged us over the carcass of a Bighorner that Boone had shot. There were six of them in all, but when they finally ran away three of them had added their meat to our stores.

The weeks passed by and we rode over sun-baked desert plains and saw-toothed ridges that looked like Hell with the fires out, never seeing either men nor the signs of men. I didn't see a single track of a man or a horse and only occasionally did I see the tracks of game. At night we bedded down in the shaded places where our fires would go unnoticed, if anyone was around to see them at all, and we picketed the horses on the sparse grass. I began to notice that Boone was different somehow. He was more distant, less prone to talking during the day's ride, more stoic than he had been since leaving Hooverville. At night I heard him stirring in his bedroll, groaning and grunting amidst bad dreams that plagued him almost every night. I heard him shouting sometimes, screaming for men to stop whatever they were doing, calling for a woman named Carla. When he awoke in the mornings his eyes were always hard and he would say nothing at all through the day.

We rode through the desert flats of Utah, southeast through the corner of Colorado, then we swung south along the old highways into Arizona. The sandy plains stretched far and away all around us and we began to see the great green towers of the saguaro cactus that Boone had told me about sometimes. He said that they towered well over twenty feet high in some places and that there were some that were fifteen feet across at the bottom. I hadn't really believed him. Now, though, as we neared the first of the great cacti that we saw, I saw at least one that was that large and even larger and hundreds more that were scattered all over the desert for as far as the eye could see. We rode in their shadow and came to a tall rocky ridge that rose a few hundred feet above us to the south and when I looked up at it I could see a tall cross sky-lined against the horizon. We rode closer to it, riding up to the foot of the ridge and pulling up where we could see the cross a little better.

The first thing I noticed was the smell. I had smelled it far too often and it was always a smell that made my stomach turn. The stench of death was one that could never be forgotten or mistaken. We rode to the foot of the ridge and we drew up a hundred yards from the cross and I looked up at the half-rotten body of a young man, dressed in ragged robes and with his hands and feet nailed to the arms and shafts of the cross.

"A slave," Boone said beside me, "the Legion haven't changed."

"Why would they do that?"

"To mark the border of their territory. If we ride thirty miles or so in either direction, we'd find more of these on every mountain and ridgeline that offered a good view of the country. They want anyone that comes along to know that they're serious about keeping out invaders."

"Bastards."

"Yes. They are. From now on, Cain, it's all gonna be different. We've been riding in wilderness until now. Up till now it's just been raiders and Tribals. Once we cross that border, all bets are off. Everyone we meet will be an enemy and anyone you meet will be suspicious of us. If they even suspect that we're after what we're after then it'll be us up on a cross somewhere."

"I've got it to do, Craig. Adrian is out there somewhere. I have to find him, Craig. I just have to."

"I . . . I . . ."

"What is it, Boone?"

"I don't think I can do this, Cain. I thought I could, but seeing this . . . . it's just too much. It's bringing back a lot of bad things that I thought I'd left behind. I'm sorry, Cain, but I just can't ride in there with you."

Something in the way his voice shook when he spoke made me realize what a fool I had been to bring him along in the first place. He had told me way back in Hooverville that there were things in his past that he had wanted to forget and that he had come to Montana to get away from, that he was making a new life in the mountains as far from his old home as he could. I had always known that he harbored a hatred for the Legion. Something in his voice when he spoke of them hinted at a deep-seeded hate for everything they stood for, a deep desire to see them and everything of them to be destroyed. Now, sitting on the border of their lands, I knew that he was fighting the urge to either turn back for the far north or to ride in with me and kill every man of them that he could find. I didn't blame him.

"Where will you go?"

"I don't know. I have friends in Nevada. I'll head to New Vegas. If you need me you just send word and I'll come running."

"Take the horse, then. She likes you more than she ever liked me, anyway."

It was true that the dun had grown attached to Boone over the past few weeks. He doted on her and was always slipping her extra feed, rubbing her down more carefully than the other mounts, and making sure not to push her too hard during the day's ride. Sometimes I caught him speaking to her as we rode or when we camped of an evening and I could swear that I had heard him call her Carla a few times.

Sitting there in the saddle as he told me that he was leaving, I felt a sudden loss. I had barely known him before a few weeks ago, but in that time we become the best of friends. We had ridden the hard trails together, shed and spilt blood together, and we had eaten miles of trail dust together. Trail dust can be thicker than blood, and now that he was leaving it felt like I was leaving home all over again. I held out my hand and he took it, gripping it firmly in a parting shake. I got down and took all the gear that I could carry on Buck or in my pack and saddlebags, then handed him the other pack horse's lead rope. He had a long ride ahead of him and he would need the supplies more than I would. Besides, it would be better to ride in looking like a lone drifter than like someone who had just ridden a thousand miles to find a slave.

I stood there until he was out of sight, holding Buck's reins and with the stench of death in my nose, and watched him ride away to the west. Soon he was nothing but a black dot on the far horizon, and then he topped out on a ridgeline and disappeared behind the far hills. I was alone. Alone, but ready for the task to come. My friend's son was somewhere out there, somewhere in the vast and dangerous land to south, and I was honor bound to find him or his body and take him home to his father. So I stepped into the saddle and pointed Buck southward, touched my heels to his flanks, and I rode alone into Legion country.