On the back were his name and his unit, and in the “message” box was just one sentence.

Is it harder to be the parent of a child or the child of a parent?

It was his mother’s handwriting. She hadn’t signed it. The photo looked to be twenty or thirty years old, and, based on the length of the rifle, Duncan Cody was a tall fellow. His expression was courageous and ready for action, rifle aimed high, one eye in a squint, as if the photograph had been taken not in a studio but in a settler’s hut on the edge of a cliff, where Apaches were sawing out the foundations so that it would teeter and fall into a den of rattlesnakes.

My father, he thought, and then, with relief, thank you. Then he wondered how long she had held on to this souvenir, and if she had others.

He took the postcard and sat down, and his dogs were on him—Boy for pats and Nanette to keep him from getting any. He couldn’t tell if he looked like his father; the image was small, and there was the goatee to consider. His father seemed proud and had worked hard to look like this, as if it was important. Lee stared at his mother’s inscription and thought, “Dear Mom: the child, of course,” and as if a bright sun were bursting overhead, he realized he was not just her son but this man’s. The word “father,” which so many people used so easily. Perhaps it was harder to be Duncan Cody’s son than what she wanted for him.

His father looked young and able. It was starting to rain, so Lee put the postcard in his pocket. He put Nanette on her leash and scooped up Boy (he didn’t know how to walk on the leash yet) and walked back to barracks for his last moment of rest there.

He wanted to tell someone about the postcard. He and Ripley had spoken only in passing since the day at the winery. Ripley had gone to Paris and delivered papers against Lenore, which was helpful in that, the following week, he met another deadpan, startling beauty who seemed to torture him.

Lee put his dogs back in their wire kennel (he put a stack of books on top of the hatch), and he took the postcard back out again. He noted how perfectly the fringe of his father’s jacket fell, just so, looking effortless and yet far from slipshod. The vest had damask-pearl buttons, the kind you had to order from London, utterly nonfunctional for a lawman or scout, but lovely in a photographer’s studio light. He knew the look in his father’s eye, for he had feigned it a thousand times. Picture a terrible danger, and know you will protect anyone looking at this photograph from it. Go!