Halfway up was Maul. The keeper of the animals, the mule man, the neighbor with the maul—that eager voyeur of the normal, that hovering damned creature who’d played choirboy at the tree trunk, a satellite watching as the fuckers fucked. Not his type. No. Merely a salivator at the grunters, a peeper at Dan’s crotch and that rodeo kid without a shirt.

Maul dropped down from his meaty dun. He waddled up, staggered, scrambled ahead on fat-legged fours in the dust to the front of the first pack string, five mules in each. He urged the line with patience, kindness even, that he’d not shown to that poor poor woman, Ella’s sister. He called down at Dan. Waved his hat. It was not contradiction. Thinking was made for inversions, perversions, residue of events. The mind contracts around paradox like a pearl. In the end, though, it would be Ella’s actions Ginny would judge one day. And God would no doubt take her side.

One little gray tried to pass the jenny and all was forgot.

“Watch that gray making a move on the jenny!” Maul called down at Dan. “Watch that jenny! She’s smarter than you!” Maul’s coveralls could fit three of Dan. Poor Dun, she might write, but did not. “Those mules will blow up!” he called, and Dan shook his head and Maul quoted some old book, “Hell is empty and, by God, all the devils are here!”

“They’re not blowing up,” Dan called with venom.

He walked his chestnut. Urged the first string with a stick to the last ass and swishing tail. He led the second string with a rope to the second jenny, a buckskin. The chestnut had gray showing on his muzzle. The black patch over Dan’s eye flashed at particular angles. The mules swayed and lumbered uphill with careful steps when what was needed was speed.

Ella preferred last in line. The last rider can see all.

The day was hot and the canyon walls cooked them. Birds floated up in columns, no need for wings. No clouds. Dust swirled around the mules’ bellies. Their hooves obliterated any trace of the cob’s tracks. They were packed high with gear for a week.

“This is how the world is, my darling,” Ella told the paint.