Joe passed out cigarettes. Apaches were Chinese to Joe. Navajos were thieves. Likewise, Apaches and Navajos thought all Pueblos were women. The Navajo moved close enough to take a smoke and stepped back. Flakes drifted down. The storm was resting, not leaving. The Navajo’s rifle was held casually toward the car.

“They kicked off the white ranchers,” the father said. “They,” Joe knew, meant the Army. “Still horses, though. If we don’t take them, they just shoot them.”

“They come over in planes and machine-gun them,” the son said. “Sometimes they bomb them. Day and night.”

“Could be Texans,” Joe said.

The Apaches erupted. They slapped each other on the shoulder and then slapped Joe. Even the Navajo laughed nervously.

“Those bastards,” the son said. “Army planes, they’re crazy.”

“Army bought the ranchers out,” the father confided, “but they made it in one payment so the ranchers had to give it all back in taxes, and if the ranchers try to get back on the land, they bomb them.”

“Sheep up north.” The Navajo had a high voice and clipped his words in half. “Someone in Washington says an Indian can only have eighty-three sheep. Part of the war effort. What do sheep have to do with the war?”

“Nothing,” Joe said.

“Indian Service comes and kills the sheep. Shoot you if you get in the way.”

Now Joe remembered. Near Gallup, a gang of Navajos had taken a couple of Service riders hostage and then vanished. Across the state, newspapers were treating it like an uprising. The Indian Service and the FBI were looking for the fugitives all the way north to Salt Lake City. Not south, with Mescaleros.

The young Apache looked speculatively at Joe. “You ever fight in Antonio?”

“Yeah.”

“You fought my brother in Antonio. They put up a ring at the motor lodge behind the cafe. Kid Chino?”

“He was drunk, he shouldn’t have got in the ring.”

“He was sure sober when you were done.” He stomped his snowshoe for emphasis. “That was the soberest I ever saw him.”

Joe recalled the brother, all piss and steam the first round, about throwing up in the second.

“Pretty good fighter, your brother.”

“A good boy.” The old man glared at the son with him.

Joe passed the pack around again. The Apaches examined the lighter, a Zippo. Battery C, 200th Coast Artillery was engraved on one side.

“Bataan.” The son handed it back.

The father looked up. “Good weather. Bombers can’t fly and it’s easy tracking in the snow.”

Joe didn’t see any signs. He was a fair tracker, but he was no Apache.

“Better you get the horses than no one.”