She found a rock and flung it. She arrived at the false summit, a grassy edge. The ridge loomed. He climbed fast on all fours. He was a spider, turned out. Another rock. He did not drop his eyes, starving. A light peered from the camp, a lantern. Voices gathered and ran into splashing water. She climbed. She was stronger than whatever it was, the Creature, the spider, the boy. She hated everything and hate was fuel. When her feet slipped, she flung more rocks. She scrambled with bloody hands, exactly what hands were for. Her boot slipped and she looked behind. A huge hat bent down. She lifted the rifle and fired it. Surely a miss, but it was how The Cowboy Got Her One Shot.

Ginny slid down the scree on the other side. No one followed. In the mountains the world begins again and again. At a flat, she let her bowels go. Liberty. She heard voices on the ridge, the Cavalry, Saul and Bowman at the very least. The sun was nearly up.

In the cottonwoods, she explained to the cob about the oats. She opened a can of spiced ham with a sharp rock. She ate ten raisins and gave him twenty. She untied the red dog but unmuzzled later. She cleaned herself by a pool with old grass. She breathed newness in, her dirty insides out. She pulled her pants up. The stars had faded, gave into blue, that strangest and most impossible color. As morning came, she told the cob about the Creature, how even now in the pink light of dawn he tends to his bullet wound since the shoulder damage is ugly. His knife is exquisite, fine old work by the Cutler with an antler grip curved to fit and a very wide blade cut and forged from a saw. Pewter poured nicely at the neck, a leather wrap about the handle, little tassels. To clean the blade he’s dropped off the ridge to a new and unknown lava flow. A bush bursts into flame. He turns the blade in blue flicker, thereby the bush cleans the blade. The lava is coming. He slides the tip of the blade into the wound, lifts the bullet out. He sets the bullet on his tongue, swallows it.

He finds a mud wallow. He packs the wound, lies on the ground with the burning land around him as the microbes eat infection gone. The mud dries. The cob listens to every word, tells her she needs rest, more food, an antibiotic. The dog turns a three-sixty in agreement, lies down then rises as she climbs on the cob and they ride on.