After another night under the stars, breakfast and an hour or so of fishing, the boys packed up and bade the cowboy happy trails. They headed back up the Little Kern and over the Western Divide.
The boys camped on the Hockett Plateau, near the river ford. There was a welcoming little campsite there. The fire ring resembled an old, silted over reservoir. It was filled with the ashes, half-burnt branches, garbage, and smothering dirt of many a dead campfire. Armen noticed that the pit was too shallow to shelter a spark from the evening breeze, so he decided to excavate the pit. He removed several rocks from the ring and shoveled the dregs through the gap where the rocks had been. A buried hunk of black, dirt-encrusted wood caught his attention. It had an intricate carving on it. The carving was partly burned away, and its etchings were caked over with dirt and ash. Armen showed it to Sam who observed, “someone had too much time on his hands.”
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Sam thought about what he’d seen the cowboy doing down in the river, and he thought about Buck. “How many dogs are named Buck?,” he wondered to himself.
He broke the fireside silence. “Have you ever seen somebody catch a fish with their hands?”
“Not I,” Armen answered.
“Think it’s possible?”
“I guess. Lots of things are possible.”
“You know what I mean. Is it crazy?”
“No. Not crazy. It’s not like that. It’s probably one of those things people learn how to do when they’re really bored.”
The next day, the boys continued down the hot, shady trail to South Fork. Armen had been feeling the wear and tear of all the miles that they’d put behind them, but the final descent was especially abusive. One of Armen’s ankles slipped, and as if that weren’t enough, he thoughtlessly kicked a dozen or so roots and rocks. His feet were hot, swollen, and sore. One of his big toes felt strangely naked. Just next to it, he could feel something sharp in his sock. It turned out to be a toenail.
As soon as they arrived at South Fork Camp, they went down to the river for drinking water. As before, they made a small purification fire. The granite boulders that marked the river course were still orange with countless ladybugs.
Armen wanted to visit the cave that he knew to be hidden in the cliffs above the campground. It was one of several such caves in the area, most of them undiscovered at the time. Alas, his body refused to do anything but rest. Sam seemed restless, so Armen asked him to go investigate the cave. Sam followed the unmaintained trail up to the cliffs and found his way into the cave. He was struck by how cool, dark, and quiet it was. It was damp—utterly unlike the bone-dry world of heat and glare outside the entrance.
By the time Sam made his way back to the campground, Armen was ready to walk to the ranger station to recover their bikes.
Riding down to Three Rivers was nothing like riding up had been. This time it was a long, breezy, effortless roll downhill. When they got down to Three Rivers, they stopped to get something to eat. They saw kids swimming in the river below, so they limped down to the stream and joined in. After slipping down a natural water slide a few times, Armen dried on a granite slab and took to contemplating the long ride across the hot sink bottom. He decided to walk back up to the highway and call home for a ride. After he hung up the pay phone receiver, he stood in the shade and tried to make sense of all that had happened.