“I’m Al.” The old man gave Joe the briefest possible shake. “This is Billy.”

Billy cocked his head, as if that reduced Joe in size. His nose twisted when he smiled. “Fuck off.”

“You can see better over in the plaza,” Joe said.

“We’ve seen Indians before,” Billy said. The shirt was shabby, but painfully romantic. No one would wear it unless he’d considered the possibility of an Indian maiden eyeing him in it.

Joe wanted to give him every chance. “Indian Service?” he asked.

“Who says?” Al looked up, pushed back his hat, revealing stringy hairs stuck to damp, untanned forehead.

“You’re Service riders,” Joe said.

Billy dropped his cigarette and stepped on it. “No one said that.”

“It’s not hard,” Joe said. “Cowboys here, but not for the dance and you don’t care for Indians. And you smell like sheep shit. That’s right; you’ve been out shooting those Navajo sheep. With that?” He looked at the gun on Al’s belt, a rust-speckled Colt .45. “Doing your bit to win the war?”

“Just because they let you in the Army—” Billy began.

“But this isn’t the Navajo reservation,” Joe said. “No Navajos here. You’re lost.”

“Peña.” Al stored the name away aloud. “You work on that magic mountain the Army’s got.”

“I’ll show you the road out,” Joe offered.

“You don’t—” Billy stood up.

“By the way, that shirt,” Joe said. “That shirt looks like shit and spaghetti on a plate.”

“I told him,” Al said. He slid off the tombstone, stretched and started for the graveyard gate. “Catch you later, Sergeant.”

Though Billy looked bewildered and reluctant to leave, he followed the older man. Halfway to the gate, he turned to say, “We got those Navajos, every one.”

The tombstone Al had been using for a seat was a weathered slab of marble that said, “Miguel Peña, 1895–1935.” Dolores had bought the whitest stone in Santa Fe, and it shone while she was alive. Billy had been sitting on a smaller, rose-marble marker that said, “Dolores Montenegro Peña, 1899–1944.” She had bought it along with Mike’s in anticipation; there was nothing more exotic to Dolores than a rose. He picked up the butt Billy had thrown down, fieldstripped it and blew the tobacco away.

There was a certain definition, an edge to the dance, when Joe returned. One black-and-white clown had a camera and was taking a picture of Foote, then aimed it like a gun. The clown in sunglasses pretended to be blind and stumbled with a stick along the front line of the tourists, pinching a skirt here, feeling a blouse there. In the dancers’ line, women giggled. Slide, half-toe, turn.