By the tenth day of travel Pea Eye had given himself up for lost. There was so little vegetation that he had let his horse go at night, in hopes that he would find enough grazing to survive. Often, when he awoke in the gray dawn, neither the horse nor Famous Shoes would be anywhere in sight.

All he would see, as the sun rose, was an empty, arid plain, almost desert. There was seldom a cloud, just a great ring of horizon, with nothing moving within it. The freezing plains to the north had been just as empty, but he had only ventured onto the llano with a troop of men; now, for most of the day, he was alone. He had long since stopped believing that they would find Gus McCrae--why would Gus leave the cozy saloons of Austin to come to such a place?

After the first week, Pea Eye's days were spent struggling against his own sense of desperation.

Sometimes he would not see Famous Shoes until the evening. He rode west, west, west, feeling hopeless. It was true that Famous Shoes always returned, as promised, when the evening star shone; but, every day, Pea Eye became more anxious that the man would abandon him. When Famous Shoes did appear, Pea Eye's relief was intense but short lived; soon it would be morning again, and Famous Shoes nowhere to be seen.

Sometimes it took Pea Eye an hour just to locate his horse--the animal would be nibbling leaves or small plants in some little dip or gully. Then, all day, he would plod to the west, seeing no one. All day he longed for company, any company.

On the tenth evening, when Famous Shoes rejoined him, Pea Eye could not hold back his doubts.

"Gus ain't out here, is he?" he asked.

"How would he get this far? Why would he want to cross so much of this poor country?" Famous Shoes knew the young ranger was scared.

Nothing was easier to detect in a man than fear.

It showed even in the way he fumbled with his cup while drinking coffee; and it was normal that he would be afraid. He didn't know where he was, and it must puzzle him that Captain McCrae would choose to go so far into the desert. The young ranger was not old enough to understand the things men might do when they were uncertain and unhappy.

"He is ahead of us, just one day," Famous Shoes said. "I have not lost his track, and I won't lose it." "By why would he come so far?" Pea Eye asked. "There's nothing here." Famous Shoes had been wondering about the same thing. The journeys that people took had always interested him; his own life was a constant journeying, though not quite so constant as it had been before he had his wives and children. Usually he only agreed to scout for the Texans if they were going in a direction he wanted to go himself, in order to see a particular hill or stream, to visit a relative or friend, or just to search for a bird or animal he wanted to observe.

Also, he often went back to places he had been at earlier times in his life, just to see if the places would seem the same. In most cases, because he himself had changed, the places did not seem exactly as he remembered them, but there were exceptions. The simplest places, where there was only rock and sky, or water and rock, changed the least. When he felt disturbances in his life, as all men would, Famous Shoes tried to go back to one of the simple places, the places of rock and sky, to steady himself and grow calm again.

Though he had not talked with Captain McCrae about his journey, Famous Shoes had the feeling that such a thing might be happening within him because of the loss of his wife. Captain McCrae might be going back to someplace that he had been before, hoping he would find that it was the same and that it was simple. Every day Famous Shoes followed his track and noted that the Captain was not wandering aimlessly, like a man too distracted to notice where he was going. Captain McCrae knew where he was going--t much Famous Shoes did not doubt.

"I think he is going back to a place he has been before," Famous Shoes said, in answer to Pea Eye's question. "He is pointed toward the Rio Grande now. If he stops when he comes to the river we will find him tomorrow." Famous Shoes suspected that the young ranger did not believe what he had just said--he was not old enough to understand the need to go back to a place where things were simple. He had no happiness in his face, the young ranger; perhaps he had never had a place where things were simple, a place he could think about when he needed to remember happiness.

Perhaps the young ranger had been unlucky--he might have no good place or good time to remember.

Famous Shoes himself had begun to feel the need to live in a simpler place. The plains were filled with white travellers now, all heading west. The Comanches were more irritable than ever, because their best hunting grounds were always being disturbed. The buffalo had moved north, where there were fewer people.

The old life of the plains, the life he had known as a boy, was not there to be lived anymore. The great spaces were still there, of course, but they were not empty spaces, as they had once been; the plains did not encourage his dreams, as they once had.

Lately he had been thinking of moving his family even farther south, to a simpler, emptier place, such as could be found along the Rio Grande, in the place of the canyons. There was not much to eat along the river there; his wives would have to keep busy gathering food, and they would also have to learn to eat things that people of the desert ate: rats, mesquite beans, corn, roots of various kinds. But his wives were young and energetic--he was sure they could find enough food if he beat them a little, just enough to convince them that the lazy years were over --p who lived in the desert had to work. The food was not going to come to them.

One of the reasons he had agreed to track Captain McCrae was because once the job was finished he could go on and investigate the river country a little--he wanted a place where he would not be bothered by irritable Comanches or the continual movement of the whites. He was hoping to find a place with a high mountain nearby. He thought it might be good to sit high up once in a while.

If he was high enough there would be nothing to see but the sky and, now and then, a few of the great eagles.

He thought living in a place where there were eagles to watch might encourage some pretty good dreams.

Augustus had always enjoyed calendars and almanacs--he rarely journeyed out of Austin without an almanac in his saddlebag. If he did any reading at night around the campfire it was usually just a page or two of the current almanac. Often he would discover that, on the very day he was living, the signs of the zodiac were in disorder, causing dire things to be predicted.

If the predictions were especially dire-- hurricanes, earthquakes, floods--Gus would amuse himself by reading aloud about the catastrophes that were due to start happening at any moment. If he saw a heavy cloud building up he would inform the men that it was probably the harbinger of a forty-day flood that would probably drown them all. Many of the rangers were unable to sleep, after one of Gus's readings; those who knew a few letters would borrow the almanac and peer at the prophetic passages, only to discover that Augustus had not misread. The terrible predictions were there, and, inasmuch as they were printed, must be true.