Chapter 5

It was a fine day. There was little wildlife, though we scared up the occasional grouse or quail. Mostly, though, we were the only two living things visible on the vast, open plain. Once we saw a coyote trot by not far distant, and a herd of bison on the horizon, tiny specks in the distance, though they were in truth far larger than we. We passed the day traveling.

We stopped whenever we saw sign of a stream or seep, filling ourselves and our canteens, and we stopped to graze now and then, but mostly we moved, alternating an easy canter with a slow walk.

The mountains slowly fell away behind us as we covered mile after mile. When the sun set, we halted. There was no copse of trees this time, so we would not be able to build a fire, but we found a little hollow against a low hill that offered shelter from the night breeze. The plains were not truly flat, they were a series of low, rolling hills that we climbed and descended as we moved steadily eastward.