But the straying mariner is honor bound also. His duty is to offer an oar across the gap, to catch hold of the rope thrown to him, to pull back to the boats with all his might, to make the greatest effort to save himself, to paddle, to swim, to haul his craft back through the waves. In short, he is honor bound to save himself. His life is a borrowed property, while he lives it, and so must be preserved. The duty of each boat is equal and opposite and reciprocal.

But even assuming all duties are discharged on either side, here is a third case to consider. If the big raft can’t reach the wandering dinghy in time, despite its best efforts, if the boat adrift can’t be caught, if the vanishing mariner can’t haul himself back due to injury or confusion or a rogue wave rolling in, if a terrible fluke of this kind should occur, and there’s no changing it, well, then and only then is the raft released from its duty to the departed. There and then the duty shifts, becomes a duty to the safety and survival of the majority. What I mean is there are limited cases that can arise and necessarily alter the laws governing acceptable human behavior. When it’s life or death, it’s clear as clear. But Ginny, I see now, is not to be filed under this header. She belongs to the fourth case.

When the unmoored dinghy not only refuses but impairs assistance, imperiling the flotilla so urgently trying to help its captain, well, in that instance, the duty to rescue is inverted. The rules of the Lone Wolf apply.

“Tell me this,” Dan said that morning in Elk Valley after the Narrows. He was now saddler to the yellow horse and the packhorse, the newest members of the line, his hands quick about muscles and knots, his sleeves rolled to elbows slick with sweat already though the sun was just peeking behind the peaks in a hide-and-seek of blinding bursts, his shirt a stink of sweat and filth, his eye patch already become obscene, blood and puss and ooze, a living thing clinging to his face—they didn’t speak of it—the fabric grafting day by day onto him—attaching whole—to his nose, his jaw. It would never come off. They tried not to look at it. “How can that idiot deputy get by without horses? Way out here?” He grimaced. Tried to laugh.

“Your girth is twisted,” Maul said. “Pay attention.”

Dan fixed the girth and said—reluctant—“You boys dispatch him?”

He did not look up from his work, the hot yellow breathing swell.

“That packsaddle’s crooked,” Ella said. “Better redo it.”

“I guess the idiot doesn’t need horses now,” Maul said. “Otherwise they wouldn’t be here. Would they.”

“It really is,” Ella said. “Catawampus.”