We sat, waiting, Pinto, Tippy, and myself. Joachim had went off, up the cliff, citing some sort of mysterious spring. We hadn’t seen water for days, and everything else in the way of provisions was beginning to look like a thing of the past or future, something we missed or desired.

It’s hard to tell what got into Joachim’s head to make him think such a fantasy, but there was no convincing him otherwise. He was going to scramble up the hill with his bladder and come back with fresh, cool water.

Now, looking across the landscape over the tepid morning air, it dawned on me that he was never coming back. We’d ridden through the night, our thoughts on the one and only thing that keeps men alive. Survival.

After three hours and two-hundred hoof stomps, both the horses and I gave each other knowing looks, glances that translated into some uncanny knowledge that something that once was now wasn’t.

That something was Joachim.

To wait any longer would have been a waste, we all seemed to agree, and with each passing moment we were one step closer to our own end. But none of us wanted to make the first move, as if it was a desecration of the dead. As if our mourning passed as quickly as his death dawned on us.

After a spell, I had to be the one to speak up, to lead us, if only for the obvious reason that our horses didn’t speak in such a way to fill the vacuum Joachim left in his wake. So strange the thoughts one has after someone they had just spent time with passes, or even someone they haven’t seen or spoken with for twenty years. Sometimes the distance between yourself and the deceased is what defines your grief, your guilt.