to do so with several traveling merchants. Abe has spent the past five weeks with the Trader, and has noticed that his former employer seems changed. While the Trader is just as powerful and commanding as he was in the past, Abe is worried about a new streak of brutality he has noticed in the man's behavior. Abe keeps these observations to himself. The next day, the companions awake and find that Michael is not in his room. They initially assume he has simply left the ranch, but he is discovered in the barn, dead, having hanged himself. Inside his room Dean finds a suicide note, which Doc reads aloud to the rest of the group. In it, Michael explains that he is not killing himself simply out of guilt, but also due to his worsening depression over the past few weeks, which he attributes to the bleak life found in the Deathlands. He then says goodbye to each of the companions individually, and asks Jak for forgiveness; Jak bitterly confesses to the rest that he had already forgiven Michael. With Jak's approval the group bury Michael alongside Christina and Jenny in a remote box canyon. Afterward they stock up on supplies at the ranch and head out on horseback in pursuit of the General. The companions camp for the evening in the abandoned ville of Opium Wells. During the night Dean is ambushed while urinating and briefly threatened for information on the rest of the group, which is cut short when Ryan and his friends surround the ambushers. Once Dean states that they are hunting the General the ambushers reveal they are Navaho, also hunting the General for a recent attack on one of their settlements. A tense truce is established, and the Navaho release Dean. After further discussion the Navaho agree to travel alongside Ryan and his friends, to better their chances of catching and killing the General. The truce between the two groups is soon tested when, the following evening, they come across one of the General's wags which has become stuck in the mud. At Jak's suggestion they start a small fire near the wag in order to make its occupants believe the Navaho intend to burn them alive inside the vehicle. The stranded raiders flee the vehicle and are killed. However, when one of the Navaho looks inside the vehicle they are grabbed by a