“Really?”

“That’s what we’re talking about.”

Joe still hesitated.

Hilario said, “Five thousand dollars, Joe. Side bets are up to you.”

“Ten thousand, winner take all.”

“You’re crazy. We’re talking about reality.”

“Uncle, the reality is that the war is over and the soldiers are going home. You’re an ant in the desert watching a picnic pack up. Does the kid think he can beat me?”

“He knows he can.”

“So winner take all should be fine with him.”

“Then the rest of the rules are mine. No priests, no gloves, no ring, no referee. Strictly a sporting event for interested parties. Anyway, you know how to use a ring; you’d tie a faster man up in the ropes. A referee just gets in the way. I can keep time for rounds.”

“How many rounds?”

“As long as it goes.”

“In a week,” Joe said.

“Impossible.”

“We fight in a week. You said before that you could put the fight together in two days.”

“I need Texas money, from El Paso, from Lubbock. That’s a long way to come.”

“I’ll make it easy for them. We’ll meet in the middle, south of Socorro at the Owl Cafe. The night of the fifteenth. In back. Yes or no?”

Joe thought Hilario would back out at the last moment.

“You came here to deal, you big son-of-a-bitch. You came looking for me.”

“Looking towards peacetime, Hilario, same as you.”

“Okay.” Hilario nodded to Joe and added a public nod for the other men at the corral. “Okay, you place your bets, Joe. I think you’ll be surprised at the good odds you’ll be able to get on the famous Chief Joe Peña.”

Feet trussed, the calf tried to swim on the ground. Felix squeezed the sac, clearing the way for the sizzling edge of the knife. Hilario would put it together. It wasn’t a matter of face; it was a matter of action, of money eager to ride on the only two fighters in the state. The calf’s eyes grew.

Joe walked into the cottonwoods to relieve himself. He was going to have to start taking better care of his kidneys. One more fight. And get some sleep. A morning star lay over the river. Jupiter? Venus? What if there were no moon? Men walked around bound by the gravity of the earth, but also lifted by the floating mass of the moon. What if there were no moon, no lift, only the heavy and monotonous chain of the earth? No better light at night than stars that said, “We are cold and far away.” What if he lost?