The path descended into a spring-fed canyon where water had cut through tiers of pumice, pink sandstone, limestone. Box elders grew at the canyon floor, ponderosas up the sides. Much of the Jemez pines had been cut for timber. Not this canyon. These ponderosas were deep orange, diamond-plated, over a hundred years old. In the soft stone walls over the treetops, jays and dippers made their nests. In the highest and least accessible reaches of the walls were the pockmarks of handholds and the shadows of rock shelves.

“This is where Fuchs went climbing?”

Anna nodded. “It was very dull.”

Joe picked a crow feather off a twig and it left a gray smudge on his fingers. “Could be fun by now.”

At the base of the wall behind a screen of pines was a rough ladder with more feathers. Joe told Anna to stay on the ground. He scaled the ladder and was climbing the niches in the stone when he heard her following.

“Why should I miss the fun?” she asked.

The pines as they swayed brushed his back. Sixty feet up, he climbed above the treetops and reached a rock ledge about ten feet wide and fifteen feet deep carved out of soft tufa. The low roof and floor were blackened with soot mixed with feathers. Two men sat, facing each other. Klaus Fuchs, his shirt torn and dirty, and Roberto, the blind man from Taos.

“Gott sei Dank, Du bist hier,” Fuchs said when he saw Anna.

“It’s me, Joe Peña,” Joe told Roberto.

“I heard you coming,” Roberto said.

Roberto’s hair was long and unbraided. He had his blanket over his shoulders, and it wasn’t until Joe helped Anna up that he noticed that Roberto was holding a Marlin double-gauge shotgun with its muzzle nestled firmly in Fuchs’ crotch.

“We’re not disturbing anything, are we?” Joe asked.

“Not you, no,” Roberto assured him.

“I am a guest of the American government, on American government land, with American government protection, is this not so?” Fuchs demanded.

Fuchs’ neck was covered with finger smudges, so there’d been a scuffle. His hair stood up with fright. Wooden idols wrapped in red feathers and painted leather lay in a corner of the shelf. Cut in the rock under a layer of soot were ghost figures, snakes like hoops, lightning drawn as sticks.

“There are parts of this area, this canyon especially, that are set aside for local people so they can carry on their religion,” Joe said.

“You mean Indians,” Fuchs said.

“Those are the local people,” Joe said.

“You mean—” Fuchs began.

“Enough,” Roberto said and jabbed the barrel, not savagely, just enough to make Fuchs lean forward tenderly. “He was up here when we got here, Joe.”