In the dusk, Glan­ton and twen­ty-one men, along with a dog and their cart con­tain­ing an idiot in a cage and a whiskey keg, set out from a town into the desert. The keg had been mod­i­fied to hold whiskey dis­guised with­in water, and as they left, the idiot called hoarse­ly after the sun. Glan­ton, rid­ing in a new sad­dle, led the group, while David Brown at the rear har­bored dark thoughts about leav­ing his broth­er behind. The men inter­act­ed with sav­ages to exchange the whiskey for gold and sil­ver, which Glan­ton dis­missed, opt­ing to keep his focus for­ward.

They rode west through des­o­late land­scapes, encoun­ter­ing the remains of a crock­ery fur­nace and the haunt­ing beau­ty of saguaro forests under a dark­ened sky. As they pro­gressed fur­ther into the bar­ren lands devoid of water, Glan­ton reflect­ed on the many lives lost, the Delawares all slain, shap­ing his per­spec­tive on their future. Sit­ting around a fire that night, Glan­ton con­tem­plat­ed fate and his role with­in the vast uni­verse, assert­ing agency over his exis­tence, regard­less of what lay ahead.

As they con­tin­ued their jour­ney, they met a ragged legion led by Colonel Gar­cia, who aimed to hunt down Apach­es. The encounter left Glan­ton and his men aston­ished at the state of the Mex­i­cans, some wear­ing rags, and their makeshift weapons. Glan­ton felt dis­con­nect­ed from these rid­ers, rein­forc­ing the idea that their land and strug­gles were incon­se­quen­tial to his cause. After part­ing ways with the Mex­i­cans, they camped once more, dis­cussing the nature of war and exis­tence.

The judge expound­ed philo­soph­i­cal views about war, assert­ing that it was an eter­nal pres­ence in human­i­ty, pre­dat­ed by noth­ing. In his dis­course, he saw war as the ulti­mate game, lead­ing to sig­nif­i­cant val­i­da­tion of man’s worth, inter­twined with moral­i­ty and exis­tence itself. Brown expressed skep­ti­cism about the judge’s phi­los­o­phy, lead­ing to exchanges about the rela­tion­ships between war­fare, moral­i­ty, and human nature.

As they tra­versed a dry land­scape, they expe­ri­enced hunger, dis­com­fort, and a sense of futil­i­ty. The judge believed that men are inher­ent­ly play­ers in this grand game called life, wit­ness­ing con­flicts that define their exis­tence. The next day, they crossed a lava bed and found an ancient femur, mark­ing the inter­sec­tion of their real­i­ty with the specter of the past. The judge, pay­ing homage to time and exis­tence, brought forth gray phos­pho­res­cent truths root­ed in explo­ration, while they resolved to con­tin­ue their relent­less jour­ney across the des­o­late ter­rain.