After a while, he could no longer see the birds and he began to be frightened again. I am not my five senses, he thought. I am not this thought. Though I walk through the valley of the shadow... belay that. In the end, there was only the tracks. That's enough, he said, to himself, I can dig tracks. Out of spite, out of pride, he counted the crossties aloud. He counted hundreds and hundreds of them. When he had to stop, he leaned his head on his rifle and held to the blazing rail with his strong right hand. Robert Stone, Dog Soldiers (This is Ray Hicks, about to die. He has just been in a firefight against 4 evil men, and two of them are dead. He has been hit under the arm with an air marshal round and is in very bad shape. Ray was nibbling peyote before the fight and is now on heroin as well to kill the pain. The red cir...