The governor of Sonora provides the gang with a new contract to hunt the Apaches. Carroll and Sanford have left the gang once and for all, but a man named Sloat has joined after falling ill and being left behind by a company of people seeking gold. The narrator implies that Sloat is not long for this world. The scalp hunters ride north onto the Sonoran Desert, where they massacre a village on the Nacozari River.