The first string disappeared over the bluff’s summit one by one. They might have fallen off a cliff. There are chasms everywhere. Ella couldn’t hold him back now. She heeled his ribs to cover this fact and he blasted up the bluff and her hat flew back over her braids, her first in years. She’d let her oldest girl braid the braids. Ten years old. Her hand reached back but the hat wagged free and she forgot it. The paint passed the second pack string, surged to the summit, and she hauled back on him there, where he bucked and turned angry. Her children would love to see this: Queen of the Mountain.

From above she saw the creek and Saul’s sorrel, belly deep in the flow parting cold and blue around him. The first line of mules had arrived at the shore already, pressing in, tail to harness, tail to harness. It was a wide riffle with cattails. She’d rebraid tomorrow. The first mules swung heads down to drink and the second pack string passed the paint on the summit, showed him their lowly tails, and descended, then plowed in the riffle now filled with animals and men.

“No room for us,” she teased the paint.

The pack train was enormous, ridiculous, no argument. Saul was a hope-for-the-best, expect-the-worst, better-to-have-it-and-not-need-it-than-need-it-and-not-have-it sort. Saul Logic. Everyone has a different sense of the future.

What small men from above. Saul talked to Bowman, Bowman to Saul. The sweat split their shirts in two colors, creek splashing up their legs. You’re not having fun till your boots are wet. A tired old saying. Someone should say something new? Leave it to the kids.

Saul waved his hat. Hers still hung down her back. She didn’t touch it. She would have to burn her diary. Evidence, since she was sure to write about the pit in some weak moment then forget it, like her mule thoughts, telling some future snoop things they had no right to know. How, back at the pit, she’d walked, maybe even ambled away from the scene of her sister’s escape. She didn’t run as a rule, didn’t panic, a trait she prized in herself. She’d headed for the herd to think it out. The cows had clattered at the south fence. Dan was blubbering in the corral and everywhere, Saul was making lists in his head. Grannie said Cows can smell human frenzy. Ella opened the gate calmly, like ten thousand times before. The cows threaded past her, trotted to the new field, neither rushed nor nervous. The Mormoras stood huge that morning, as now, as usual, reserved, black, and silent. She admired them, but the feeling wasn’t mutual.

“Look who’s dawdling now!” Saul with his hat waving again.