The ridges were blurry now with night and moisture filling every space. Saul talked. The sleet was pounding, almost hail. The streams ran down the ponchos, under the animals’ bellies and down legs in twisting rivers. The wind whipped plastic around Saul’s face and he was yelling his words at the wind now. They caught a word or two. They’d been standing there on the plateau too long and the horses were eyeing each other through dripping lashes. Saul’s mouth was moving with energy. The cabin taste on their tongues was food. They extended those tongues, curled, and caught sleet. Not Saul. His lips were twisting as a horse lip twists, showing the band of fragile skin holding the top lip to its inner lining. They heard no complete thought, didn’t care. Ella heard nothing at all, but her face changed listening to the purple smudges under Saul’s eyes. Perhaps he was talking about the cob or cabin. Neither existed now. The clearing existed but would fill with weeds. They’d brought sticks collected for fires on the ridge when they got there. The sticks were packed in bundles tied with strips of burlap, piled on the tallest, the cockeyed mule. Sleet was the beginnings of snow. It began to snow on Saul as he concluded his speech. Dan was staring at Saul. Saul refused to look. Saul was his own man. Saul lived like he killed snakes, Ginny always said, all in or all out. Now his mouth was moving like a dying beetle’s pinchers gripped on a lump of pork. Dan smiled at this thought. It was what Grannie might have said. Now the snow was a torrent of blinding flakes swirling white. Another blizzard. When Saul quit talking he respread the poncho. It resettled over the sorrel’s rump. Ice was forming on hooves, stirrups. The horses waiting under their riders in their ponchos could not have been wetter. The next decision was all Saul’s. King Saul, this latest revelation, Eureka! The horses waited in a horse-cluster, the mules in a line of mules, and the men waited too, each swimming in his own thoughts about what King Saul would do now. God’s great oversight; He’d failed to bestow on men any unity of mind despite being generous with this trait when he was sketching out His birds and beetles. Each man is kept blind to all but his own fragments of information. His neighbor has the other bits and pieces of the puzzle. One neighbor has a single corner of the map only, another the middle left, another the middle right edge, but no one has the whole picture to follow. Each must endure, make the best of his own paltry material, beg his neighbor for the part he needs if his neighbor is willing to be begged.

“Well,” Ella said, when Saul seemed done. “That was a nice speech. How long have you been practicing?”