The air, so still and silent the slightest sound was magnified, bit to the bone with its invigorating breath. Vance had been gone six weeks, not two, and there was little to show for his absence save a face strained and haggard from long hours on the trail. Beneath his fleece-lined buckskin coat and flannel workshirt a jagged line of new white scar tissue contrasted with the still summer-bronzed flesh of his shoulder, a new scar added to the roster streaking his torso. The bandits had split as they were chased, the main body heading northwest for New Mexico and the remainder crossing the border into Mexico. Captain Alexander left Vance and the men from the PAX patrolling a hundred miles of border while the battalion itself continued in pursuit of the larger force. And little Vance could say in the way of protest, there being simply no one else to handle the job. For three weeks eight men working in pairs rode the hard, cold miles and searched for sign indicating their quarry had crossed back over the Rio Grande.
