—Mother, boulder fields more copious than—Terrible slopes for even the—This is the Payment Part of mountains—Reward is aloft in thinner air against the—pelts galore, meat from the back strap, if so desired—Quiet of uninterrupted thought—my horses are nameless. Here’s a picture …

When Mother finally asks, he’ll say, We do not name our horses here. The animals know who they are—

He found her small Instamatic camera among his belongings. Had he taken it by mistake? Taken it with purpose but unconsciously? All acts—from birth to the Awakening at the Big Window—are preconscious. Or had she known all the time he was going and dropped the camera amid his underthings? Impossible. There were too many differences between them, child and mother. Only the umbilical cord ever truly connects.

He replaced the sheriffs’ team’s baseball cap. The cob’s tracks hugged the canyon wall, in tight at the base of the cliffs, needled up and out onto tongues of stone. The Old Swede’s cairns were infrequent but reliable. Little stone men walking in a line. It was quite some job, these cairns. No badge but so much care for others, that old man. Who had he been?

The horses swayed on with the smallest tug of leather. He’d never even heard of a cob before, cornfields aside. He’d pictured this place in dreams, he on horseback with a packhorse trailing, heels pressed down smartly. The sun sat on the east cliff. A broken antler passed by, a horseshoe with one nail. Thus he wound through cities of rocks, spires, arches, dollops, lava cooled black teetering, lichen holding things in place. He craned his neck uphill for the cob, and then back over his horse’s yellow rump for the “search party.” They’d brought too many animals. Anyone could see that. They would never catch up to him. It was miscalculation, but they’d not expected him. They were polite, only, as he’d blown by them. He considered the danger often caused by the introduction of the unpredicted. Heart attacks, car wrecks. He’d passed them two days back. He’d peeled off the Kevlar he’d worn under his new coat that morning. The cob’s tracks were all his now.