He shuttles between them, follows the Beast’s tracks, slipping along cliff walls, hopping barefoot sometimes boulder to boulder. No marks at all. Her eyes are cast down and see nothing. When he feels her about to turn, he slips into creeks and breathes through reeds. He carries his boots and wraps his feet in burlap or sage leaves to fool the tracker. He is alive. There is no person on earth more alive than the Kid. At night, he walks wrapped in a blanket, a crocheted thing from the Grannie’s couch. Crochet, he sees, is a weave of holes. Still he’s attached to it, loves the blanket, a cape. He changes the dressing on his wound when fever comes. He drops down in their camp every night. He is small and lithe. For a spark, he strikes the back of his hunting knife against flint. In the absence of flint are quartz, jasper, iron pyrite, or native jade. The lid to the barrel of oats is secured by a steel ring, opened by a lever like a thumb pulled back. He digs his hands in, feasts. Mules press in. Ella leaves a saddle blanket unattended by mistake or not. He reminds her of her little son perhaps. He takes the sleeping bag that Dan never uses. It lies right there. The men would not welcome him. He listens to their private talks and critiques them. He hears Dan tell a Cowboy Joke. They sing sometimes, talk about the Beast. The Kid takes hot coals in a large steel spoon and he runs. The Beast who in his head is also on occasion the Indian Spy is beyond him, her orbit the farthest possible to maintain the pull of gravity from their center in the camp. If she goes farther, the string will snap and she will spin off and die in the cold between stars. He dips his hand in saddlebags. He staggers with booty. She is the one who messes with the mules. She’s addled. She is quick with knots. Her strategy is liberty over booty, an error. His heart is big and he keeps on going. Sometimes he clamps the ends of the blanket under his chin, a blue and gold zigzag pattern, innocent and yet made with hooks. His uniform is filthy. The piping blends with the fabric now. The bolo is gone. He will travel this way for forty days and forty nights. He shoves one hand then the other in his crotch, or armpits, to warm them. He finds roots to pack in the wound, roots to eat, roots to dream strange dreams. Here’s one of them:

THE CAMERA: How did you feel getting shot on the ridge?