At the turns, they rested. The horses’ mouths dripped green slime that slopped their knees and dried there. Hawks swept by, sped by. They knew the hawk’s idea. A rabbit. An old horse. Rabbits were only plan B. Plan A was wait for a stagger. This hawk had seen it all before. The hawk was patient. The hawk would float down. Peck the eyes. Tug the meat, toss it up, swallow: Come, friends. Eat with me. The little gray’s head hung down. Maul watched him, urged him kindly.

Maul threw a rock. The hawk tipped its wings. The rock fell. The hawk dove.

They wove around a horseshoe ledge under a waterfall. The animals shied, pulled back, and the rumps were pushed from behind. Mist misted their faces. Rocks fell away from hooves. A hoof slipped off but the other three held. Stepping to the ridgetop, they were almost happy, almost real friends. The mountains rippled off. Creeks they’d walked looked foreign and far. At a small lake on top, weeds, and cob tracks everywhere around it. Boots. They all plowed happy into the steaming surface. The hawk ruffled on a rock, lifted his wings to keep steady. Dan gave him the finger. They laughed.

They tasted smoke before they saw flames or smoke. Nearly midday. Clouds.

“Oh, for a bunk,” Maul said.

“We were never staying overnight,” Saul said.

They rode fast at last. Fire was eating the cabin roof—how copious, how billowing the flames. Downhill they let gravity dictate the tilt of their pelvises, trying to free the horses’ backs. The mules got no such help. The loads no longer hung level. They’d been packed too hastily that day. They descended and the slope widened and split and encircled the hollow around the cabin. Bowman split left. Saul split right and the rest followed.

“Where’s he going?” Dan asked.

The bay trotted the mossy left shoulder then disappeared into tall straight pines.

“Flanking her,” Saul said.

The mules were restless with the smoke coming up.

“Maybe I’ll hold them here,” Maul said.

“Hold them,” Saul said. “Don’t hold them. I’m going.” They all followed him into straight pines. They saw the bay once, over there, on a jut of rock above the bowl of smoky air. Saul motioned to him. Bowman disappeared again.

The stand was thick and hazy. They coughed and tied bandanas on.

“Why the rifles?” Dan said. “Why the rifles?”

“Yours is out too,” Saul said, and it was true, a .24 Magnum aimed roughly at Saul. “Point it elsewhere.”

Ella dropped off her paint and walked him through blue haze forest between islands of rotting snow and branches.

“Keep together.”

“Over here.” Not yelling.