Towards early evening, they took their horses down the arroyo, to gain some respite from the heat, which drained every ounce of their strength, leaving them lethargic, bad-tempered, and desperate for sleep.
“I thought it was meant to get cold at night,” said a lean, hungry looking trooper called Nolan as he warily guided his big roan to the bottom of the gully.
The others, moving with equal caution, joined him. “It’s the rocks,” said Corporal Dewy, pulling up his own horse before sliding from the saddle. He arched his back and let out a loud groan.
“Rocks?” Nolan dismounted, immediately going through a series of twists and stretches to ease out the cramps from his joints. It seemed to him that he had lived almost his entire life in the saddle.
“They suck in the heat throughout the day,
