While he dismounted to water Crisis at a tank he saw the Indian Service riders crossing the rise ahead of him. Al and Billy halted to stand in their stirrups and examine the tank through binoculars, then moved on. Joe waited another minute in the shadow of the tank until a second pair of Service officers riding drag followed. When they were out of sight, he swung up on Crisis and started again toward the Jemez.

Though he rode in warm, glassy sunlight, a rare rain was falling in the Jemez, covering the peaks with a gray as faint as waves in a stone. As the trail ascended, it reached ponderosas, cedars, cattle bones and a new profusion of wildflowers. Where the canyon before it folded into the mountain was a mesa the general shape of a battleship. He had to kick the horse up a steep path of loose stones to the top.

The mesa was not a mile long and less than a hundred yards across at its widest point. Cedar huddled over dwarf sage. The cedar was twisted and vigorous, half dead and half alive. It was the same with the cholla he saw, half green stem and half empty lattice. A trick to survival in the high desert was to bloom and die at the same time. Cedar made good firewood. A dead cedar branch could last for years if it didn’t touch the ground. He tied Crisis to a live bough and went the rest of the way on foot.

In the middle of the mesa were ruins, a worn knee-high grid of stone walls. The stones were volcanic ash. Adobe had long since washed away, along with any sense of what had been storeroom or living quarters. All a puzzle now, Joe thought. White nuggets in the stones were timber cinders a million years old. When he picked a cinder out, it turned to talcum between his fingers.

The only excavation on the mesa had been performed by animals. Between the walls were gopher mounds of soft earth, richly mixed with shards of pottery that were black, white, reddish brown, and bits of obsidian strewn like jewelry.

Joe sat down for a smoke next to a kiva filled in by a gooseberry bush. The sun dropped over the far side of the Jemez, turning clouds red, rung by rung.

“Hello, Joe.” Roberto and Ben Reyes stepped out of the cedars. They were in blankets and braids.

“Brought you some cigarettes.”

“How did you know we were here?” Ben asked.

“The clay. Sophie was seeing you and was getting her clay. This is the place.”

“I knew you would come,” Roberto said.

“I came because they’re finding your wands on the Hill.”

“What kind of cigarettes?” Ben asked.

“At fires on the Hill. Luckies.” Joe handed the pack to Ben, who tapped one out suspiciously.

“How’d you know they were mine?” Roberto squatted by Joe.

“Mica in the paint. Typical Taos horseshit.”