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the grass against the cabin wall, in the shade, and faced the sunlit world below. We were silent for a while and too busy to admire the spectacular view, eating what I thought was probably the best meal I had ever had in my life. Later, after second helpings all around, full and comforted, we set our plates aside and began to talk and look at things again.
    “How could I forget my cigars.”
    “Have a tailormade,” Lee said, offering a cigarette to the old man.
    Grandfather examined the cigarette. “They say women enjoy these things.”
    “That’s right,” Lee said, “and I enjoy women.” He offered his pack to me. “Cigarette, Billy?”
    I hesitated. I wasn’t allowed to smoke, of course. Besides, Ipreferred the corncob pipe I had hidden in my suitcase back at the ranch-house.
    “Put them back,” Grandfather said. “Don’t give the boy one of those.”
    “Why not?”
    “It’s a filthy, evil, despicable habit, a disgrace to the human race.” Grandfather lit his cigarette and took a deep drag. “He’s too young. Put them back.”
    They smoked. I pulled a stem of grass and chewed on it and looked. There was much to look at from where we sat. With the great mountain at our backs, we had a full and open view to the north, east and south—one-half the known world. I could see four different mountain systems, not counting the one holding me up, the lights of two cities, and about seven thousand square miles of the desert in between. I saw the San Andres Mountains rolling north, the Sacramento Mountains beyond Alamogordo forty miles away to the northeast, the Guadalupe Mountains some eighty miles due east and the Organ Mountains and the hazy smudge of El Paso far to the south, with the deserts of Chihuahua spreading toward infinity beyond.
    The sun dropped lower. We watched the shadow of Thieves’ Peak creep across the plain toward Grandfather Vogelin’s ranch, toward the village of Baker, toward the Guadalupe Mountains, reaching out to meet the curtain of darkness coming toward us from the east.
    “Grandfather?”
    “Yes?”
    “Did you ever climb that mountain?”
    “What mountain?”
    “The one above us. Thieves’ Mountain.”
    “No, can’t say I did. And I never will. This cabin here’s high enough for me. About as close to Heaven as I ever want to get. You can bury me here.”
    “We’ll need dynamite for that,” Lee said.
    “Here Lies John Vogelin: Born Forty Years Too Late, Died Forty Years Too Soon,” Grandfather said.
    “Why forty years too soon?”
    “I figure in forty years civilization will collapse and everything will be back to normal. I wish I could live to see it.”
    “Why? You’d be right back where you started from.”
    “I’d like that. That’s the place to end up.”
    “Don’t you want to get ahead?” Lee grinned at me.
    “I’d rather stay behind. I already got a head.”
    “You already got a behind, where your head ought to be.”
    “Don’t confuse me. It took me seventy years to figure this much out. Who’s going to water the horses?”
    Nobody spoke. I stared out at the approaching union of light and dark. Lee and Grandfather stared at me.
    “Okay,” Grandfather said, “we’ll try again: who’s going to wash the dishes?”
    “I’ll water the horses,” I said.
    “Fine. If you start right away you’ll still have time to wash the dishes.”
    “I’ll light the lamp for you,” Lee said, “when you’re through watering the horses. So you don’t have to wash the dishes in the dark.”
    “Thanks,” I said. “But us real cowboys always wash our dishes in the sand.”
    Lee was silent.
    “Lee, you lose,” Grandfather said. “You wash the dishes. The boy’s whipped you again. Billy, you’ll find another old bucket inside the corral.”
    “Why can’t I just take the horses down to the spring?”
    “That boy asks a lot of questions,” Lee said.
    They stared at me hopefully.
    “All right,” I said, “why not? That’s all I asked. Wouldn’t