Colt and Boone crouched as they approached the edge of a small cliff. A billboard, that advertised Helios One and Hoover Dam, was behind them and it cast a long shadow over the two. The putrid fumes of chemical waste and overheated, out-dated gasoline emitted from the El Dorado Gas and Serve. Colt ignored the smell as he followed Boone's lead, who was already lying prone and creeping forward. They crawled to the edge of a rocky cliff that tore a portion of Interstate 93 in half and had a whole view of the dry lakebed.

"I can't see a damn thing. Can you?" Colt asked as he squinted, trying to examine the lakebed from afar.

"Yeah, just barely," Boone answered quietly as he kept his eye to the scope of his rifle.

"Do you see anything? People or maybe a camp?"

It took awhile for Boone to answer; he just remained quiet. After a few moments, he took his rifle's scope away from his eye and slowly shook his head. Colt's heart began to sink.

"You're kidding, right? Give me that rifle," Colt motioned for the rifle. Boone handed the weapon to the desperate man and he peered through the scope. He scanned the lakebed over and over again, but he found nothing. There was no camp. There were no people. There was nothing on the lakebed. Hopelessness crept into Colt's body and overtook his mind. The gang wasn't there… which means Cass wasn't there. Colt slammed his fist on the ground in frustration and heartache, "Fuck! There isn't anyone there! Where the fuck did they go?"

"They probably moved out and left," Boone answered as he looked out at the lakebed, "Who told where the camp was?"

"One of the gang members me and Cass trapped back in Nipton. A man named 'Ivan'. He said it was here."

"One of the gang members told you?" Boone raised an eyebrow. "And you believed him?"

"He told us out of fear for his life."

"Fear makes men do things they would never normally do. Like lie so they can live another day."

"Love makes you do funny things too."

Silence overtook the two for a few moments before Boone spoke up, "So," he said, switching the conversation back to the lakebed, "you want to go check it out?"

"Yeah," Colt answered as he scanned the lakebed once more. Something caught his eye. Down on the floor in the middle of the dry lake was a small pile of dark rocks. The way the rocks were arranged is what really got Colt's attention; it was if they were arranged to be some sort of barrier, like that of a barrier you put around a campfire. "I think I've found a campfire," Colt said as he handed the rifle back to Boone.

"A campfire?" Colt nodded and pointed in the general direction of where he saw the campfire. Boone looked back into the rifle's scope, "That could be anyone's," he said with skepticism.

"Or, it could be the gang's campfire. We won't know until we investigate," Colt said as he stood and sat on the edge of the small cliff.

Boone nodded as he shouldered his rifle and sat on the edge of the cliff with Colt. "I guess you're right."

The two slid off the cliff and plunged to the ground three feet below. Pain jolted through Colt's leg as the shockwave of the landing sent pain up his leg. He held his hand to the stinging bullet wound, trying to stem the pain, and stumbled forward.

Boone caught Colt before he could fall. "You owe me one," he said as if he intended to smile, but didn't.

"Yeah, thanks," Colt grunted through gritted teeth. The pain felt like someone was repeatedly stabbing him with a sharp edged blade. His leg ached with pain, but not as much as his heart ached with sorrow. He fought through both pains, in hopes of finding Cass.

After a few minutes of holding his wound and Boone helping him keep his balance, the pain subsided and Colt was able to walk again. Boone and Colt continued to walk across two broken lanes of 93, with Colt limping worse than he did before. His limp was so bad that it caused him to misstep on several occasions and almost fall into the cracks in the road. Luckily, Colt was able to keep his balance by grabbing onto Boone's shoulder. They finally reached the edge of the road, where the lake meets the asphalt and just a lazy slope separated the two men from the cracked, dry lakebed.

Boone was the first to slide down the slope. He slid, right leg first, and came to the end without fault. Now, it was Colt's turn. Colt put his uninjured left leg forward and braced himself for any pain as he slid down the embankment and into the lakebed. He had a few jolts of pain and wobbled a little on his way down, but he managed to keep into the slide. As he came to the end of the slope, he lost his balance, due to a severe stab of pain, and nearly fell forward onto his face, but Boone caught him before he could make contact with the ground.

"You owe me two," Boone said, helping Colt stand up straight again.

"Just put it on my tab," Colt remarked, clutching the wound as pain overtook his calf with the quick movements.

After the pain in Colt's leg subsided once more, which only took a minute or two, the two continued towards the suspected campsite. The ground crunched underneath Colt's feet. The ground's brittle nature, caused by the intense heat and, more than likely, the nuclear fire and radiation of the atomic bombs that fell on the Mojave, made it sound as if Colt were walking on snow.

They arrived at the campsite within moments. It was nothing more than a circle of rocks with a stack of decaying, black, and burnt wood in the middle of the small circle of rocks. A small stream of smoke drifted up from the burnt wood.

"See anything?" Boone asked as he walked around the perimeter of the old campfire.

"Nope. Damn, there's nothing here at all," Colt answered as he bent down in the sand.

Colt rubbed his hand over his face and under his glasses. All the hope he had before was completely drained from him. He finally decided to face the facts that he's lost the Stallions; the trail had gone cold. A cold tear came to his eye as he realized that this meant he may never see Cass again. He had finally come to know this fear that had haunted him… until something in the sand shined a ray of sunlight past his glasses and into his eye.

Colt sheltered his eyes from the reflected sunlight and looked down at the source. There was something resting in the sand and dirt. Colt pushed the sand away and uncovered the object; it was a necklace of sorts. It looked very familiar. He picked it up and examined it further; in the middle of the pendant was a rose.

"They were here," he twirled the pendant around in his fingers.

"What makes you so sure?" Boone asked, turning to Colt.

"Because… I found this," Colt answered, holding up Cass' rose pendant.