“Yeah? Is that so?” Burns ponders on this for a while. “Well, let me tell you something, Sam. I know bullshit when I smell it.”

“A man knows what he can know.”

“Yeah? God, there’s nothing worse than a smart Indian. And that reminds me of something else. If you’re really a goddamn Indian why the hell don’t you talk like a goddamn Indian?”

“You’re a bigot, white man.”

“I’m no bigot, I hate everybody. Talk like an Indian.”

“How? I don’t know how. I’m a spoiled Indian. Harvard ruined me.”

Burns ruminates, chewing his cud. “My daddy always said the only good Indian is a dead Indian.”

“Mine would’ve said the only good Indian is a bad Indian. But he was a troublemaker. He was shot dead at Pine Ridge, South Dakota. By good Indians. His last words were, and I quote, ‘Let me go, my friends, you have hurt me enough.’

“Sam, you don’t play fair. I’ll say no more.”

They ride on in silence, down over the rocks and into the trees. At first they cannot find the water; they give rein to the horses; the horses find it immediately, upcanyon, among the boulders, where the musk of startled javelinas floats on the air. The men fill their canteens and let the horses drink.

“If we could get one of them wild pigs,” the old man says, “we wouldn’t have to eat your mongrel dog.”

“Bigotry again. There’s more and better meat on a dog. Next best thing to a horse.”

Burns looks at the horses. “Sure ain’t much meat on ours. We better let them feed for a while, if there’s much more here than up on the hill. Did I see filaree under those sycamores?”

They lead the horses back to the grove of trees and turn them loose, hobbled again, with trailing reins. The men squat against the comfortable bole of the biggest sycamore, deep in darkness, and listen with pleasure to the shuffling feet, the work of powerful jaws ripping up the sweet dry grass. Neither man is sleepy; they had slept earlier, during the heat of the afternoon. They will ride still farther tonight.

“That ole charger of mine,” says Burns, “she ain’t doing too bad. She’ll make it yet.” He ejects a stream of tobacco juice through the gap in his front teeth and onto the ground between his boots. “Since that raid she’s the only horse I got left with enough sense and enough strength for a long march. She ain’t much but she’ll do.”

Sam lights his little clay pipe. “I’ve seen uglier horses. Not many.”

“Now Sam…” Thinking, the old man says, “We’ll liberate a few on the way home. Should be lots of strays around the city.”

“Is your son a rider?”

“Last time I seen him he was on a goddamn bicycle. But he’s my son.” That should be sufficient; but the old man adds, “Any son of mine can’t ride will be shot, personally.” Smiling in the dark, Burns looks at his partner. “You think I’m getting old, Sam? Old and creaky and cranky? Maybe a little touched in the head?”