“They’re part mustang,” Maul said. “Never shoe a wild horse.”

“Don’t look like mustangs,” Bowman said.

There was such a thing as natural affinity, Ella knew. Saul and Bowman, for example.

“For example,” Saul was saying, “a snake is not a villain. Just a frail thing hated from the beginning of time.”

Maul and mules, for example. There was such a thing as too-complicated-to-pick-apart.

“Eve’s refusal of responsibility for the apple,” Bowman said.

“To kill a snake,” Saul was explaining, “the rope must be aimed perfectly. The knot must hit just behind the snake’s head. The spinal cord. When you nail it, there’s no wriggling. No suffering. It’s over, dead-done.”

Sometimes Bowman went ahead with his spotting scope. Ropes were passed, tethers transferred from glove to hand. Saul loathed gloves. He loved a callus. He didn’t wash his hands in hot water but scrubbed them in cold and borax. The line looped down from his sorrel’s haunches to the red jenny leading the first pack string, two grayish-black behind her, and two big red-browns last, then Maul, his line looping down to the big nameless buckskin jenny leading the second string. She was as tall as Maul’s dun leading her. Two browns followed the buckskin. She’d mixed up the names already. The first could pass as a quarter horse. The second brown was the tallest of both strings, gangly and ravenous looking.

“Generally less shapely.”

“But not all.”

“Smaller, generally.”

“But not all.”

“They’re ugly, all of them.”

Maul was silenced. He didn’t sulk. He might have said, I call the tall brown Man-o’-War. A racehorse bloodline. A winner wins. A loser loses. The black mule was Ella’s favorite with his shaggy mane and forelock. She called him Mohammed in her diary.

The chestnut walked close behind the black.

She’d told Dan the chestnut was too old for a trip.

The canyons wound up. The creeks rose with day heat and snowmelt. The mules didn’t spook. They plowed under branches just out of reach, missed snags set to take an eye out, single file through creeks dumping onto hard pack. The slipknots were best for quick release at cliffs, ravines. One mule lost was better than the whole string. They walked in the order they’d been unloaded down the aluminum ramp of Maul’s trailer where prepayment had been duly made. MULE RENTAL BY THE WEEK, the trailer said. They didn’t believe in credit and Grannie always said money was private, but Maul’s bib pocket still bulged with Ella’s rolled-up bills. In the house he’d picked through the broken china. He’d lifted Grannie’s broken English teapot—no spout, no handle.

“What will you do with all these shards?” he said.

“I’ve got glue.” And she took it out of his grubby hands.