Two: The Approach

Exploring the stables, the floor, the shelves, the cots and the bedrolls all seem to be buried in piles of rat turds. Some of the shelves appear to have collapsed under the weight of them. Moving around in here requires wading through the pellets. It appears that the two scorpions had made themselves a couple of dugout nests in the turds near eroded baseboards that would've allowed them in and out of the stable easily. Rook finds a broken branding iron spilled out from a collapsed shelf.
Fenhari discovers through reading the walls, that they are absolutely covered. Mostly there is lewd poetry and dirty drawings, but there are also drawings of insects and animals and some sort of symbols scattered throughout that he doesn't recognize as letters. He does find a list of names scrawled into the wood, amongst them is Clayton, Clayton Jr and Roy.

Rook scratches his beard. "Not much to go on… make any sense of those scratchings on the wall? Think that could be a clue?"

"If we're only a few days behind, there must be some sign of the child was brought this way. Did either of you find anything interesting?"

’Found a broken branding iron…’ Rook examines the brand to see if it was recognizable.

It's a letter D with an arrow coming out of it pointing to the right. Rook does not recognize the brand.

"I see the names of some of them cowpokes we saw back in that town. I bet they wrote this poetry, although I didn't think they were that smart."

Fenhari tries to interpret the symbols, although he's not the scholarly type.

Xur'Tual examines the brand closely to see if he recognizes it from the traders that come and go from the city.

Between the two of them they can see a beam of wood that bears the mark of the D Arrow burned into it, but little else is remembered or revealed to them.

The beam of wood frames the place where there was once a door for the stall. The arrow points directly at the stall where the scorpion had just emerged. Beyond that the arrow points toward the back doors of the stable leading to the corral.

Below the symbol is a poem that reads,
"Mom to Dad:
Thar's work be done.
Out on the farm,
you don't **** for fun."
A crude drawing illustrating Dad having this active conversation with Mom accompanies the poem.

"Ugh. For the kid's sake, I hope he wasn't brought here." The ranger glances around the room. "I reckon this is a dead end. I'm ready to ride on."

If you're done exploring the stable you can exit to the corral, or you can go back the way you came.
Also, everyone should level up.

"Ageed, let's press on." Xur'Tual fetches the waiting horses and mounts up.

Emerging from the stable, you notice the heat of the outside. Exposed skin begins to give you the first warnings of sunburn. Most of the wildlife is hiding wherever it hides during the hot part of the day except for the lizards and the ants that can be seen scattering in their own particular ways as you move to return to your horses.

from here the instruction were to press on to the east into the open desert. According to Roy, this was exactly what he had done when he saw your kidnapper in the distance traveling South on New Frederick Rd. The first obstacle you encounter is the first fully intact fence-line between you and the east. It's a four foot high wire fence, the top wire is barbed and the posts are metal. There are plants growing through the fence in many places. It Appears to continue on to the North. To the South, it looks like the fence turns back towards the hut. The other side of the fence looks like rough terrain dense with rocks and brush.

As they approach the fence, Xur'Tual notices the same bird that he saw earlier, it stands on top of the tallest tree on the other side of the fence. It is definitely a hawk, but beyond that he is unable to identify it. Based solely on it's color he would guess that it was probably native to this environment.

"Can someone hit that bird from here? I think it's been following us." Xur'Tual Whispers to his companions.

‘Not me- but I’ll keep eyes on it now that you said that.’ Rook says in a modest tone of voice. Clearly this was not the job he prepared for…

Fenhari narrows his eyes in the sunlight. "The hawk hasn't done anything to us. The desert has enough dangers -- there's no need to create an enemy. Remember what we were told the Choitll lived out here and were shapeshifters? If this is a natural hawk, he's just curious and will leave us alone. If he is supernatural, he'll see we're just here to rescue the child."