It had seemed that just riding at a walk was difficult enough, but heading into the mountains meant slight drifts of fear at every incline, every pass. It was enough to make Lazarus realize that whatever little hillocks they'd encountered on their march from San Antonio to their headquarters at Fort Stockton were nothing. They tried to file two by two, but there were some places the scouts had led them where the men had to go through one at a time, and it was then that Lazarus feared that the horse in front of him would lose its footing and fall, smacking him with the might of an avalanche of horseflesh, or that Grey Bat, his own horse—who was a little too fond of leaping up or rushing down a slope—would miscalculate, and that would be the end of them both.