"Excellent tracking snow, Sergeant." The captain considered the thin sheet-white snow that lay over the road and the prints of a woman's shoes leading from the door.

"For hunting, sir?" Joe held the cigarette case behind his back.

"Just what I was thinking. Better get your clothes on, Sergeant, we don't want to miss the dawn."

"Now, sir?"

"No better day."

"I don't have a rifle, sir."

"I brought one for you. Better get your clothes on."

"I'm supposed to pick up the Director at eleven."

"We'll be done by then."

While Joe went in for his clothes and jacket, he realized his own taste for the expedition. Who was fooling who? If Mrs Augustino was in the bed, could Captain Augustino ever be far behind? Her invitation to Joe became, as soon as he was between her legs, his invitation to the captain, and there was a pure and shining inevitability to the situation that appealed to the blood, as if the blood were rising with the moon. If nothing else, his career as an informer was coming to an end. Though, mulling a different set of ethics, he should stay away from officers' wives. MacArthur jiggled as Joe passed. He deserved to be shot.

The weapons carrier climbed west to the Valle. The snow was deeper in the mountains and the pines made a luminous tunnel in front of the headlights. Captain Augustino's face had its own lunar glow, the intensity of a husband who had not slept during the night's snowfall.

"It's illegal, you know, Sergeant."

"What, sir?"

"Hunting. This is an Army preserve now. Of course, Indians still hunt here."

"Do they, sir?"

"Sneak up here and hunt. Hard for your friends to break old habits."

"Yes, sir."

"It's poaching now, just like in Robin Hood's time. This is like Sherwood Forest now."

"Really, sir."

"You're not a student of history, Sergeant."

"Not really, sir."

"History repeats itself, the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce. It was not an Indian who said that."

"Not a Pueblo?"

"Karl Marx. You never heard of him?"

"From New Mexico, sir?"

"No."

"From Texas?"

"No."

"Musician?"

"Maybe the violin in his parlour. You never heard of Das Kapital or The Communist Manifesto?"

"I'm going to develop my mind some time, sir."

Pines rose like snow-bearing shadows. Augustino was a skillful driver, swinging the weapons carrier wide on a curve without losing momentum or control. A Marlin and Winchester, both lever actions, rattled on the back seat. Also on the seat was a box of .30-.30s.

"At any rate, Sergeant, you don't mind doing something illegal?"

"Not with the right person, sir."

"That's what I thought. You said you were a neck shot or a heart shot?"

"I don't recall, sir."

"I like the spine shot myself. I like to see a big animal drop where he stands, so he doesn't run for a mile and make me chase him. Ever shoot a deer in the ass, Sergeant?"

"No, sir, but I understand it's called a Texas heart shot."

Augustino laughed appreciatively.

"Well, Mrs Augustine's father shot a Mexican in the ass once and chased him ten miles up the Bravo before he nailed him."

"In Brownsville."

"Outside Brownsville by the time he caught him. Maybe it was a New Mexican. You see, Sergeant, our attitude is that New Mexicans are basically Mexicans on the wrong side of the border. Also, it is an idea dear to our hearts that Indians are basically red niggers. That's why they lust so after white women, that's what proves the point. Anyway, I'm a much better shot that Mrs Augustine's father."

Daybreak was when deer and elk were most active. They left the weapons carrier by the road and trudged up a sloping meadow. A pre-dawn blue filled the Valle, and in the distance the higher peaks of the Jemez were flagged with mist. Joe had the Winchester and a pocket of rounds; the captain had chosen the Marlin. In spite of himself, the crisp air and snow excited Joe; it was a perfect morning for a hunt. Ridiculous as it seemed, he saw an identical eagerness in Augustino. They moved quickly upwind to the black edge of the tree line and crouched. Elk would be more likely to cross the meadow; mule deer were louder moving through trees. Joe worked his way along the tree line, further upwind, and Augustino followed as naturally as if he'd hired Joe as a guide. They stopped where the trees formed a spit on the edge of the meadow, commanding 100 degrees of white slope and another tree line facing them only sixty yards away. Their disadvantage was that they'd be in sunlight before the opposite tree line was, but they couldn't have everything. The Winchester's sights were set for 150 yards. He'd aim low on deer coming out of the trees. He might hit nothing; he'd never fired the rifle before and didn't know whether it pulled right, left, up or down.

Augustino pointed to faint dimples in the snow at their feet. Joe knelt and blew the loose flakes away, exposing impressions the shape of dragging double crescents. Heifer? Augustino mouthed. Elk, Joe answered. No more than an hour before.

Not more than an hour before. This was the best part of hunting, the passing of time. Joe had probably been in this same spit of spruce and pines, hunting, twenty years ago with his father.

When solid forms were so faint, it was easy to see into memory. It was a quality of the hour, neither night nor day, that lent every second its weight. Eyes seemed to grow huge and adept even as they were fooled by the nod of a branch. An owl seesawed through the trees. Joe didn't care if deer or light never came. If ever someone was going to shoot him through the head, this was as good a time as any. The captain watched the meadow with the same concentration. Of course, mice, shrews and rats ran back and forth all night, and hunters only saw their snow tracks in the morning. At daybreak, a man could only see well enough to shoot something his own size. Shadows clung, half-born. When what was real and what was shadow was uncertain, a man could meet his opposite, Joe thought. Like this white racist officer from Brownsville, Texas. He and Joe could huddle under the same spruce bough.

"Sergeant, tell me," the captain whispered, "have you ever thought of this as the Century of the Jew?"

"No."

"Marx was a Jew, you know. The worldwide communist movement started with Marx. The Russian Revolution was largely led by Jews, such as Trotsky. Every country on earth, even China, is fighting for its soul against Marx."

"Even China?"

"History unfolds like a wonderful and terrible adventure. There are great rhythms and cycles. Each century is different."

"What was the last century?"

"That was the Century of the White Man."

Joe couldn't figure what this had to do with Mrs Augustino. "Sure wasn't the Century of the Red Man."

"No. But now we're all in the same boat, Sergeant. First, Marx overthrows traditional authority and religion, then another Jew destroys every absolute in the laws of science."

"Really?"

"Science was built on absolute laws until Einstein's theories of relativity and quantum physics, Marx and Einstein. Now there's nothing an intelligent man can believe in, either in religion or science. The very word 'atom' in Greek means that which is indivisible, did you know that?"

"No, sir."

Captain Augustino stirred beside Joe. "Which does not mean that they haven't suffered. When I hear of the suffering of the Jews under Hitler, I wish I were a Jew myself. You see, in the Century of the Jew they've taken our hearts, when they already had our minds. You see how it's coming together, all of it, right here."

"Here?"

"I'm talking, Sergeant, of the Third Great Jew. Sergeant, what would you say if I told you that J. Robert Oppenheimer was the most brilliant man you or I or anyone here had ever met?"