“Can we stick with taters?” Ella snapped.

Saul watched Dan chew. “I’ll tell my decision in the morning.” His face said too tired for such paltries as he gazed out into the black that was the land they’d traverse tomorrow. He was never one for looking back. “To bed,” he said, a rare expression of indecision, but at dawn when the sack was found empty, and when its precious contents were recovered, he was firm.

“Can’t hide tubers,” Maul said, plucking russets from pockets in Dan’s satchel.

“Supplies will not be allocated on a single rider’s whim,” Saul said. “As for theft, the perpetrator will miss one meal. No food all day on the second offense.”

In this case it was breakfast. Bowman fried hash browns. He didn’t glance at Dan glaring through cook smoke.

They pitched the tea bags off the ledges like steaming comets. They thanked God for the yellow horse and the packhorse, very handy now. They thanked God for the cook tent, for the wisdom of packing it. They’d dodged a bullet and thanked God.

They slept in a row inside the cook tent, heads or feet to the tiny stove they’d hauled in all this way. The mules and horses stood just on the other side of flapping canvas, heads hanging, resigned, if someone cared to peek through any gap. Maul peeked. Life and pain had not killed his curiosity as it had Saul’s and Bowman’s. Only Saul and Ella had bedrolls now. Bowman rolled a saddle under his bad leg. The mornings were clear at first on the ridges, but damp and cold, high winds wicking body heat.

“What are we after now?” Maul said. “Why not go home now?”

He was sure no one knew but him. Until now, all his life, he’d been last, generally, to recognize stupidity. Things had changed for him on this trip. The losses were big, but he now saw that he could see some things that others were totally blind to, were crippled by. Maul was not crippled at all. He’d lost weight. He’d made one friend, a real one, maybe two. He thought about devils and what they really were. He left messages of all kinds for rescue. He wanted to live more than ever now.