“Good.” Roberto pointed in Fuchs’ general direction. “But don’t bring him.”

Joe had to carry Fuchs fireman-style off the canyon wall. When they finally got to the floor, Fuchs ran off, gagging, behind the pines, wrenching his belt open while he ran.

Anna watched him disappear. “This is another planet.”

“New Mexico.” Joe felt for cigarettes, then remembered he’d smoked the last on the shelf.

“If he’d pulled the other trigger, he would have killed Klaus.”

“If he’d wanted to kill Klaus, he would have done it before we got there.”

“I thought so, but then …” She smiled. “Was Roberto crazy or not? Were we humoring him or was he humoring us?”

“Roberto knows what he’s doing.” Joe took a deep breath and looked straight up at the far-off, converging tips of the ponderosas. Up in the sky a squirrel swayed on the highest tip. Maybe he was blind. Maybe the other squirrels were coming back.

“They say you are so violent, Joe. You don’t seem so.”

He liked the way she ran her words together; the accent was sinuous in her mouth, alive and warm under the cool surface. It was the first time she’d said his name. He liked the explosion of the J.

“I don’t shoot blind men.”

“Your aura of violence must attract some women, though.”

“Yeah, first I fuck them, then I scalp them.” He sighed. “Sometimes the other way around.”

She clapped her hands together and laughed. “Wild, wild, Joe!”

Around them, juniper boughs nodded under mistletoe. Fuchs, shirt stained and reeking, lagged far behind.

“Oppy studied under my father in Göttingen. In Germany,” Anna said. “He seemed to live in our house. We thought he would marry my older sister, Emma. My father was very worried because everyone believed Oppy would leave physics for poetry. He was very German in Germany, except when he talked about New Mexico.”

“About New Mexico in Germany?” Joe was surprised.

“With my father he discussed physics. With Emma he discussed poetry, philosophy, psychology. With me he talked about wild Indians. I think I had the best bargain.”

“Oppy loves to talk.”

“Roberto is a medicine man?”

“A priest.”

“You believe in Indian medicine?”

“Crazy stuff like that? No, I believe Christ died and rose again in three days and ascended like a B-19. But Indian stuff is all around here. Like Roberto today, like the kiva I told you about.”

“I used to believe that if I ate a shrimp, I was an unclean girl and a shame to God’s eyes. Once I had a lobster and was positive that I would die in the night.”

He couldn’t imagine Anna scared. He had been scared with Roberto; she wasn’t.

“What do you suppose Oppy believes in?” she asked.