Behind the Marfa depot lay the world’s most short and useless railroad, a fifty-foot track that led from one prickly pear to another. Victoria balanced upon it, transforming it into a gymnastic beam upon which she executed a perfect cartwheel.

“Victoria! We’re not at home!” Owen cried as her traveling dress fell over her head. A pair of legs shot up, strong and long and alarmingly pretty.

“Oh, come on, Father. There’s no one around.”

She readjusted her skirts, all the while maintaining her balance. He sighed, not at her, at the track. He had left it there as a warning, a reminder of the danger that railroads could bring, but how could anyone have received this message? All anyone would notice were wasted resources left to crack in the sun.

“What do you think, Vic?” Owen called from the shade of the Marfa depot’s ramada. “Should we resuscitate that old monster?”

“The train?”

Owen nodded. Most of what he’d feared the train would bring had come anyway, and to no great calamity. Besides, he no longer cringed at the idea of being directly connected to the big cities. On his last trip to Washington, he had positively enjoyed himself, and this even though the Secretary of War never did grant him that interview. He’d visited the Smithsonian and sniffed at the cherry blossoms and helped Clara around the house. It had been impossible for him to summon his earlier rage. If Victoria’s injury had been more severe, then perhaps forgiveness would have come less easily, but she had recovered magnificently. Anyhow, he’d been wrong to blame the Bradley boys’ perversions on Washington’s air; their own clear Chihuahuan air had produced bandits capable of far worse.

Victoria left the track and returned to him, her tongue poking thoughtfully at the inside of her cheek. “Pristina doesn’t need a train,” she said at length. “Too much hoo-ha. Auto trucks are the way to go. They’re cheaper and they go anywhere you want. Did you see that picture of Pershing’s truck train?”

Pershing and his truck train had gone into Mexico, looking to even the score after Pancho Villa had done what they’d always said he would: burned an American town to the ground, shot down its citizens and the soldiers guarding them. There were Get Villa! posters plastered all over the train station.

The train chugged westward toward the state border. They had a nice compartment to themselves, green upholstery and newly cleaned windows. Owen studied Victoria’s profile as she watched the landscape, the dark, thick hairs of her eyebrow, her pert nose curving downward, her slightly pursed lips. She looked uncharacteristically delicate, like a cameo brought to life. It was strange, how faces could change, momentarily transforming into something quite unknown. When he had lived at the office, his image of Dolores’s face had gotten mixed up with the face of his father—that is, the face of his father that he’d thought he remembered from the portrait that hung in Clara and Benjamin’s front hallway. He’d convinced himself that the red in his father’s sideburns was the same shade as Dolores’s hair, that the lines of their noses followed the same course, that they shared the same indentation around the temple, that these physiognomic traits were signs of deceit and pride, signs that he should have been able to read, but had been blind to. When he returned to Washington, that recent springtime trip, and again glimpsed the portrait, he saw that he had been wrong. His father looked laughably ordinary, a middle-aged man sitting on a green armchair, trying to keep his eyes open. Younger than Owen. Not the least like Dolores.

He’d asked Clara if he could have the painting, surprising even himself in his desire to take hold of it. A little bit of him. A rapprochement. He would have asked Benjamin directly if he’d known where his father had gone, but Benjamin had died, and Clara, if she ever knew, knew no longer. Her mind drifted about the house, forming arbitrary sentences about windowsills and mousetraps. But she’d clung to the portrait. No! No! You cannot have it! Shaking her head fiercely, the remnants of her chins flapping. No matter. He’d get it. He’d take it after her funeral.

Victoria, still looking out the window, at the endless expanses of gamma grass, sighed.

“A penny for your thoughts,” Owen said.

“Nothing. It’s just an uncomfortable seat.” She wiggled around, wrinkling her nose. “Don’t you agree?”

Maybe she was thinking about Ysidro. Dolores had been right. The way she looked at him, the way her voice changed when she spoke of him. When Owen first recognized this, he’d considered canceling Ysidro’s commission. But the boy hadn’t done anything wrong. Indeed, he’d done everything right. He was shining proof that the Principles worked: a boy with nothing but the blood of peons running through his veins, and what did they produce but a brilliant carpenter and burgeoning architect, well spoken, confident, skillful, industrious, not a lazy bone in that body. She was right to admire him.

“Are you sad to be away?”

“No.” She pressed her forehead to the window pane. “It’s just an uncomfortable seat. I’m just looking out the window. There’s so much grass. Isn’t there anything other than grass?”

She seemed on the verge of tears. He pressed himself back into his seat, laced his fingers together, and waited for some clue as to how to proceed. She remained focused on the window, her profile to him, not the profile that he had been admiring earlier, but one that was tense and closed, the lips pressed too tightly together. She was seldom like this with him, but he’d seen similar behavior right before she and Dolores started to fight. He leaned forward again, unable to help himself, put his hand on her knee.

“Are you all right, honey?”

Without looking at him, she nodded. He pressed down on her knee. She laid her hand over his for a moment. He sat back in his seat, feeling better.

She knew about the soldiers. She was the only one in Pristina, not even Dolores knew. She’d been organizing the file cabinets in his den and found a draft of a petition he thought he’d destroyed, a secret attempt to get the governor to supplement Troop A with state militia. She had arrived at his office out of breath, waving the paper.

At first he hadn’t see it. He’d seen her eyebrows, plucked for the very first time: two artificial arcs, the tender skin between pink and upraised. It felt as if she’d yanked the hairs out of his own head. He assumed she’d come down to flaunt her new look, and he was trying to think of something to say that wouldn’t sound like a cry of agony when she held the petition straight up to his face. The shock of it still made him shudder. From the wording, any intelligent reader could tell that Troop A had been his idea, that attributing it to the governor had been a ploy. He had sat her down. He had put his hands on her quaking shoulders. “Honey,” he’d said. “What was I to do? The safety of Pristina must be held above all else.”

He hated obfuscation, damned it in others, recognized his own hypocrisy, but didn’t see what other course he had. They needed protection. No one would agree to it. The original Pristinians wanted nothing to do with the government and the Mexicans distrusted any defense, imagining it led to support for the federales. With her quaking before him, he had launched into a disquisition on the lesser of two evils, warming up as he went. It had felt good to finally unburden himself. But she had stopped him midstream.

“I understand.”

“You don’t,” he had said. “You can’t.” How could she, at that age? The soldiers had killed Rivera. They had spat upon children for no reason other than nationality. He would not have forgiven it. He would have flown into a fury. He would have seen it as apostasy.

“I do,” she’d said calmly, looking him in the eye. She’d torn up the petition and let the pieces fall to the floor. “It’s ugly, but necessary. That’s what you’re saying.”

“Are you thinking of Rivera?” he asked after fifteen minutes had passed. She turned to him, more patiently, more kindly than she had before.

“I would say that you are the one thinking about Rivera.”

Owen smiled. “He was a good man.”

“The soldiers didn’t think so.”

“I don’t think that they thought about it one way or another. They had been drinking. He had been drinking.”

“You should have never allowed alcohol.”

“Alcohol is a balm for some, not an obscurant. Or perhaps it is an obscurant for all, but some people need that obscurant. Perhaps the sharpness of pure light pains them. I don’t know. Ask your mother.” He smiled. Victoria didn’t.

“You could reinstate the ban. She doesn’t need to drink.”

“All the new men drink.”

“So? Let them go. They don’t care about the Principles.”

“We need them, Victoria, as you well know. Even with them the miners are overworked, the shifts longer than we intended.”

“Then cut down on operations. The mercury will still be there. It doesn’t matter how fast you take it out.”

“And what of our obligations?” He had spoken too sharply. She pulled away. “Honey, you don’t seem to understand. America is at war. We are at war. The army needs our mercury. The Red Cross needs our mercury. They look to us.”

She stared out the window, clearly disgusted.

She was right about Pristina’s size. If they weren’t so desperate for men, they would have been able to maintain a finer population. They could have even formed their own militia. The soldiers would not have come. Rivera would still be alive. Victoria would still be Owen’s greatest admirer.

The next day was better.

Victoria sat across from him, lecturing him on the whys and wherefores of the snake dance, the Hopis’ first mesa, the importance of Indian art in general and how it ought to be incorporated into a True American Art. He did not understand her passion. What did any of this have to do with mercury?

“Well now, honey, if you like the Indian art so much, why didn’t you decorate the façade of the new HQ with a kachina? Isn’t that Mercury you ordered exactly what you are arguing against? What’s inherently American about a classical Roman figurine?”

Her eyebrows dipped into a disconcerted V. He chuckled, pleased to have tripped her up for once.

“Well,” she said after several moments, “that’s an idea. The problem is that I don’t think the Hopis have a god for mercury. Only corn and rain, that sort of thing. The Romans are the only ones I know who have a god specifically aligned with mercury. But you would like the Hopi gods, Father.”

“Right-o.”

“I’m serious. The Hopi gods live underground. That’s why they use snakes to talk to them. The snakes are the conduits. They burrow down to the gods’ realm.”

“Well, if you have to have gods, I suppose underground is a good enough place to keep them.”

“Oh, come on, don’t you prefer it to the sky? I would think that you would.”

Her eyes were shining prettily. “Sure,” he said, happy to make her happy.

At Gallup, they hired a motorcar and set off on the two-day trip across the Sonoran Desert. The sky was blue and the earth red, much redder than the Chihuahuan earth, making the greens of the sagebrush and cacti all the more vibrant. They stopped the car for lunch and the scent of the sagebrush was so strong, so lovely, that Owen forgot himself and capered around like a kid.

“It’s good to get away,” he said as they got back into the car. “This has been said about vacations, hasn’t it? An antidote for brain fatigue. Happy birthday, dear.” This was her birthday present, delayed. He had been in Washington the day that she turned sixteen.

That night, they set up a tent a few miles past Ganado, and ate a cold meal of chorizo and buttered bread. The coyotes sang and the stars came out. Owen and Victoria lay on the ground, looking up at the sparkling sky. He couldn’t sleep, so overcome by the beauty of the night. This was what he had hoped that his men could experience, this energy that the beauty gave rise to, that he could feel roiling in his chest. That’s what he had wanted. That’s what was to have been the engine of Pristina. Not commerce. Not this … this hunger he could feel Victoria accusing him of. She snored softly beside him. He kissed her cheek. He did not feel that he had completely failed. She did not stir. He watched the stars and listened to her breathe until stillness slowly crept over him.

On the day of the dance, they arrived at the foot of the Hopis’ First Mesa. They parked the car and climbed up a steep, precipitous trail, stepping gingerly and admiring the gorgeous vistas. Six hundred feet below, the red earth spread out beneath them, dotted with juniper. Above, the sky arched a perfect blue.

“Those Hopis are going to have to dance hard,” Owen said, catching his breath. “There’s not a cloud in sight.”

“They’ve thought of that,” said Victoria. “They’ve got four days to make it rain.”

“Ah, and in monsoon season. They’re not stupid.”

“Not at all.”

They reached the mesa top and arrived at Walpi, a vertical jumble of crumbling red adobes. “The oldest living settlement in the United States,” Victoria announced—how she loved to teach him! The plaza teemed with people. Hopis with their bangs and creased faces and colorful shawls. Taller, bluejeaned Navajos. White ranchers and their wives. Teenage campers in matching hats and neckerchiefs. A well-known philanthropist from New York City. Owen hadn’t realized how crowded it would be.

“I’m going to get something to eat,” Victoria said, stepping away from him. “Do you want something?”

“No, thanks.”

“I’ll be back.”

A photographer in a striped suit spread the legs of his tripod, ducked under the black cloth, and aimed at a bunch of Hopi kids who hung off the pueblo’s ever-present ladders. They noticed the photographer, leapt off their perches, and scrambled over the rooftops laughing and shrieking. An older Hopi man walked over, shaking his head. No pictures allowed.

“You can take a picture for me,” said Owen, approaching the photographer. He wanted something to commemorate his and Victoria’s trip. The photographer agreed and Owen stepped up on a ladder to look for her. She was easy to spot. She had the effect of diminishing the people around her, dimming them somehow. She was hatless, her hair as dark as an Indian’s, glossy in the sun, her face, in this light, golden. She waved. He gestured for her to come over.

“I’ve got some fry bread,” Victoria said when she got closer, brandishing a wad of oil-stained newspaper. She opened the package, letting loose a heavy steam of honey and grease. “Want some?”

“No, thanks.”

She raised a skeptical eyebrow. He frowned at her forehead which on closer inspection was not a golden sheen, but a swath of oily bumps the fry bread would only worsen.

“It’s good,” she said, her lips smeared with honey. “Are you sure you don’t want a taste?”

He shook his head. “Too sweet, it rots the teeth.”

She laughed and brushed the crumbs off her mouth. “The teeth get rotted by all sorts of things.” She pushed the bread back toward him. She was teasing him, insinuating something that he did not choose to explore, but he liked the way her eyes sparkled.

“Shall we have a photograph taken?”

“Sure.”

He stood proudly by her side as the photographer turned his knobs and disappeared under his blanket. At this point Owen felt almost at ease with photography, so much practice he’d had. A few years ago a reporter for Western Magazine discovered Pristina. The man had started his career covering the Colorado mining wars and Steunenberg’s assassination, and he couldn’t believe a mining town like theirs existed: no detectives, no dynamiters, no trace of the WMF? His articles had overflowed with praise, bringing forth other reporters, other photographers, a cavalcade of fast-talking men with skinny ties and short-brimmed hats. Owen squeezed Victoria’s shoulders, reliving their enthusiasm. Photographs! Handshakes! Copies of the Principles! Whoever said that he had given up couldn’t see what was right in front of them. The Principles were being distributed, and not by Pristina, by outsiders, by impressed outsiders.

Victoria tugged at his sleeve. “Father! You have to look at this pottery! This is what I’ve been telling you about.” She led him to a heap of ceramic objects presided over by an Indian woman in a threadbare shawl. Her old wrinkled face took him in with a wary nod.

“Good afternoon,” he said, picking up a bowl that had been dyed black and white, a mazelike design running along the sides. He made a show out of examining it, tracing his fingers along a line and nodding judiciously.

The old woman made an obscure clucking sound. He wondered if she had any views on the seeds of American art. She squinted first at the pot, then at Owen, and held up seven fingers.

“Looks like a fine specimen, eh, Victoria? Shall we get this for your mother?”

Victoria burst out laughing. “For Mother?” she almost shrieked. “Oh yes, please! Let’s!”

“That’s no way to talk about your mother.”

“What? What did I say?”

“Your tone, young lady. Don’t pretend that you don’t know what I’m talking about. Next vacation we’ll have to go somewhere that she would like too.”

“What about Buenos Aires?”

“What about Boston?” he said. “I got an invitation to speak at an education conference. We could all go out, take a look at Radcliffe while we’re at it.”

He wanted to show her the street where he’d lived, see if the elm still stood at the corner.

She watched the old Hopi woman palm the dust off the pot. “Mother might like it if she’d only look,” she said quietly.

“Would you like to give it to her?”

Victoria studied the pot for a moment, then looked at him thoughtfully. “Yes.”

“Well then, we’ll take it.” His words were superfluous. The Indian woman had already understood and was again brandishing seven of her gnarled fingers. “Yes, yes, I know.” He ran his thumb down the slit of his wallet and fingered each bill. He enjoyed paying in cash; in Pristina he never got a chance to—personal expenses were pencil marks in a slew of ledgers, and company expenses were done by check. An entirely different experience, this simplicity of bills that anybody might take, or anybody might give; it dropped you into a whirl of freedom, a world of anonymity. The old woman recounted the money then wrapped the pot in newspaper. He watched the headlines fold over, turn into abstract letters, then fractions of letters, losing their gist, becoming something new.

The dance for which they had made this trip, the infamous Hopi Snake Dance, occurred in the sweltering heat of the late afternoon. Owen and Victoria joined the crowd gathered on the rooftops of the pueblo, the better to see the plaza which spread out beneath them, empty but for the snake hut. A drum started. You could not see the drummer, just feel the slow and heavy poundings, the rhythm of which bothered Owen. He turned to ask Victoria if the drum bothered her too, but then more drums and rattles came, piling on top of each other in a chaotic mess, and the men appeared. Owen had read about the ritual. He knew what to expect: the men dusted with the colors of their clans, the bone rattles tied to the ends of their skirts. Yet the sight of them, their bodies already shimmering in the heat, their almost complete lack of clothing, made him want to clap his hands over Victoria’s eyes. They reminded him—especially the clansmen powdered with red—of his miners. Women weren’t allowed down in the mines. The men swore it was bad luck, but the real reason was modesty. They did not want to be seen in their loincloths.

She stood beside him, calm and dignified, a cocked eyebrow the only sign of discomfort. Perhaps her sangfroid was an attempt to show him that she would be fine in the mines. She was always clambering about it. How could he expect her to take over? How could she direct a mining operation if she were not allowed on the site where most of the work took place? He saw her point. Maybe when she was older it would not be such a problem, when she was of an age where she could be a mother to most of the men. But he could not let her down now. He’d have an insurrection on his hands.

The drumming continued to disturb him, something about the rhythm. Maybe it clashed with the tempo of his own heartbeat. He took a sip of water, then offered her the canteen. She accepted it without taking her eyes off the men. They did not look exactly like his miners. They had black-andwhite stripes on their faces, they were wearing skirts. They wound their way over to the snake hut. According to Teddy Roosevelt, who had written an interesting article about it, the Hopis did not remove the venom from the snakes. They took a foul-smelling antivenom before and after the ceremony, in case they did get bitten, but this was rather like an insurance policy. They believed that they would be protected by their courage and purity, that the snakes would only attack them if they sensed fear. A heavyset man with a large red belly kneeled to the ground in front of the hut, then rose with a snake dangling from his mouth. The snake was almost as long as the man, and yellow. It undulated, slippery and fluid compared to the solid bulk of the man. And so it went, each man kneeling down, then standing up with a snake dangling like an obscene tongue. The men and their snakes formed a circle in the middle of the plaza. They shuffled round and round and dangled round and round in the heat-stroked blaze of the evening.

Owen focused on the snakes, the better to block out the drumming. He understood Victoria’s fascination. For him, it had been insects. When he was a kid, he’d loved lightning bugs, butterflies, cicadas. Especially cicadas. He had been amazed by their life cycle, the seventeen years sucking at tree roots, the end of life burrowing up, the throbbing racket after so much silence. The cicadas had surfaced that summer he spent in Washington. He had collected their shells, crisp, brown, and empty, clinging to twigs and bushes and so thickly scattered over the sidewalk you could barely make out the red bricks below. He’d started to unhook one from a twig when he realized that a nymph was still inside, slowly squeezing out, wet and pale. He captured it and brought it back to his room, then sat and watched for what must have been hours. The nymph’s skin dried and its wings hardened. When finally it could fly, he pried open a window warped by the summer heat, and released it into the muggy haze. It had been the summer after his father left; he had a boyish hope that the bug could somehow find his father, serve as an emissary.

This was all the Hopis were doing now, he thought, feeling cheerful all of a sudden. They were sending snakes to serve as emissaries. Maybe religion was just that, the imaginary world of childhood adopted by adults. He nudged Victoria, wanting to share his idea, and saw to his dismay that she had forgotten all about him, so caught up was she, so rigidly entranced, by the dance.