One glove rested on his neck. Her wrists were narrow bands of sunburn despite best efforts. The paint waited, but fussed in protest. She understood, but he had to learn. He danced on his back legs. His energy would find its place very soon. But to wait was in his best interest. He didn’t see it yet. He was a child-horse still. Rebellion was natural, and therefore good, both to feel it and to quell it. Every young thing has its time, then the boom is lowered. Let the boom wait. You are young, she thought. To exert himself was still such pleasure. He would amaze himself with the power of himself. The bluff would fall away under him eaten by his hooves. Gravity was nothing to him. Friction was nothing. The whip was nothing. It had been an aggravating day already. So little sleep in that old tent with Saul’s snores after standing First Watch only stoppable by a hard elbow to the ribs.

She gave into curiosity, opened the little diary to the last page.

Mule Thought #1 (collective): The Itch. When it was close by the mules leaned into bark, when they chanced some bark, when given time to spend with bark and the bark was rough and old and good and the bits of dried-out mule skin were evicted by the bark, along with the bark, the pressure of the big mule body pressing into those tiny cliffs and crevasses, a tiny vertical world of tree trunk, the huge animals made so needy by that itch—nearly defeated by the small. A recalcitrant mule gets a bullet in the brain—a mule that stops forward progress does too. It is a rule, nearly a fact. The bark seemed so inert to some, seemingly truly dead to some, the opposite of free. Freedom was a worthy thought for mules and men, but the bullet in the brain intruded, stopped the thought, and the line of thought was sliced through.

Closed it, locked it, slid the book away in the saddlebag.

“Who’s been writin’ in my book,” she called, but without energy, not loud enough to be of note, then “Invasion of privacy,” even less so.

“Haw! Head ’em up!” Maul was whipping a mule.

She tightened her legs around the paint. Poor boy. Resentment and frustration were made by God too, like serpents and beetles and dung. The first string was on the summit of the bluff now inching over.

“She’s in fuck-all Minnesota!” she called.

“Probably only to fuck-all South Dakota!” Maul called back easy-like, and she whipped the paint who stormed at the insult but not enough to disturb her hat.