passage from Ecclesiastes? ?One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh, but the earth abideth forever??

Eleven thousand years ago people who may or may not have been Indians lived in these hills and wended their way along the same riverbeds and canyons and left behind arrowheads that looked like Folsom points. Nomadic hunters followed the buffalo here, and primitive farmers grew corn and beans in the alluvial fan of the Rio Grande, and conquistadores carrying the cross and the sword and the cannon that could fire iron balls into Indian villages had left their wagon wheels and armor and bones under cactuses whose bloodred flowers were not coincidental.

Right here he had found the backdrop for the whole human comedy. And what was the lesson in any of it? Hackberry?s father the history professor had always maintained the key to understanding our culture lay in the names of Shiloh and Antietam. It was only in their aftermath that we discovered how many of our own countrymen?who spoke the same language and practiced the same religion and lived on the same carpet like, green, undulating, limestone-ridged farmland?we would willingly kill in support of causes that were not only indefensible but had little to do with our lives.

At six A.M. Hackberry saw Pam Tibbs?s cruiser turn off the asphalt road and come under the arch and up his driveway. She parked the cruiser and unchained the pedestrian gate on the horse lot and walked toward him with a big brown paper bag hanging from her right hand.

?Are Gaddis and Flores up yet?? she said.

?I didn?t notice.?

?Did you eat??

?Nope.?

?I brought you some melted-cheese-and-egg-and-ham sandwiches and some coffee and a couple of fried pies.?

?I have a feeling you?re going to tell me something.?

?Talk to the state attorney?s office. Get somebody on your side.?

?Wars of enormous importance are always fought in places nobody cares about, Pam. This is our home. We take care of it.?

?That?s what this is about, isn?t it? The outside world came across the moat.?

Hackberry propped the push broom against a stall and took two folding chairs out of the tack room and set them up on the concrete pad. He took the paper bag from Pam?s hand and waited for her to sit down. Then he sat down and opened the bag but did not remove anything from it.

?Some of the Asian women had eight-ball hemorrhages. I see their eyes staring at me in my sleep. I want Collins dead. I want this guy Arthur Rooney dead and this guy Hugo Cistranos dead. The feds are after a Russian out in Phoenix. Their workload is greater than ours, and their priorities are different from ours. It?s that simple.?

?I doubt they?ll be that tolerant.?

?That?s their problem.?

?Flores seems like a nice kid, but he?s a five-star fuckup.?

?Y?all talking about me?? Pete said from the doorway.

Pam Tibbs?s face turned as red as a sunburn. Pete was smiling, silhouetted against the sunrise, wearing a T-shirt and a pair of fresh jeans he had tucked into his boots.

?We were wondering if you and Vikki would like to have breakfast with us,? Hackberry said.

?There?s something I didn?t pass on yesterday,? Pete said. ?I don?t think it?s a big deal, but Vikki did. When Danny Boy picked us up, he had to stop for gas at that filling station run by Ouzel Flagler?s brother. I just thought I?d mention it.?

Pam Tibbs looked at Hackberry, her lips pursed, her eyes lidless.

?Some people say Ouzel is mixed up with Mexican dope mules and such, but I don?t set a lot of store in that. He seems pretty much a harmless guy to me. What do y?all think?? Pete said.

THE FIRST MORNING that he woke in Preacher?s tent, Bobby Lee could feel the difference in the temperature. He pushed open the flap and felt a great cushion of cool air rising off the earth, glazing the mesas and monument rocks and creosote brush and spavined trees with dew, even staining the soil with dark areas of moisture, as though an erratic rain shower had blown across the land during the night.

Preacher was still asleep on his cot, his head deep in a striped pillow that had no pillowcase and had been stained by the grease from his hair. Bobby Lee went outside and used the chemical toilet and started a fire in the woodstove. He filled a spouted metal pot with water from the hundred-gallon drum Preacher had paid four Mexicans to mount on eight-foot stanchions; he poured coffee grounds into the