We rode south for a few miles after leaving Pete Kitchen's place, then turned off the main trail toward the east.  Now, a man who leaves a trail in the desert had best know exactly where he is going, for his life is at stake.

Travel in the desert cannot be haphazard.  Every step a man takes in desert country has to be taken with water in mind.  He is either heading for water, or figuring how far he will be from it if he gets off the trail.  The margin of safety is narrow.

All of us had been south of the border, but it was Tampico Rocca who knew most about it, with me coming second, I suppose.  Like everybody else, we had to depend on waterholes, and no matter what route we chose, sooner or later we had to wind up at those watering places.  This was just as true for the Apaches.

The desert has known waterholes, but it also has other waterholes not generally known, usually of limited capacity and usually difficult to find.  Birds and animals know of those places, and so do the Apaches in most cases.  If you did not know of them you had to know how to find them, and that was something that did not come easy.

A man living in wild country has to be aware of everything around him.  He has to keep his eyes looking, his ears listening, his every sense alert.  And that doesn't mean because of Apaches, but because of the desert itself.  You can't fight the desert... you have to ride with it.

The desert is not all hot sun and sand; there's the rocks too.  Miles of them sometimes, scattered over the desert floor, great heaps of them now and again, or those great broken ridges of dull red or black rock like the broken spines of huge animals.  They shove up through the sand, and the sand is trying hard to bury them again.

In much of the southwestern desert there's even a lot of green, although the playas, or dry lake beds, are dead white.  Some of the desert plants hold back until there's a rain, then they leaf out suddenly and blossom quickly, to take advantage of that water.  But much of the greenness of desert plants doesn't mean that rain has fallen, for many of the plants have stored water in their pulpy tissues to save against drought; others have developed hard-surfaced leaves that reflect sunlight and give off no moisture to the sun.

Plants and animals have learned to live with the desert, and so have the Apaches.  And we, the four of us, we were like Apaches in that regard.  The desert is the enemy of the careless.  Neither time, nor trails, nor equipment will ever change that.  A man must stay alert to choose the easiest routes, he travels slow to save himself, he keeps his eyes open to see those signs which indicate where water might be found.  The flight of bees or birds, the tracks of small animals, the kind of plants he sees - these things he must notice, for certain plants are indications of ground water, and some birds and animals never live far from water.  Others drink little, or rarely, getting the moisture they need from the plants they eat or the animals they kill.

We rode until the sun was two hours in the sky, and then we turned off into a narrow canyon and hunted shade to wait through the hottest hours.  We unsaddled, let the horses roll, then watered them at a little seep Rocca knew of.  After that, with one man to watch, we stretched out on the sand to catch some rest.