Three Points Trading Post is a landmark just east of the Tohono O’odham Reservation boundary. The novel places it within the everyday geography of travel and work around Sells and Highway 86, then returns to its vicinity in the aftermath of Roseanne Orozco’s murder. Its significance comes less from a detailed description of the establishment than from the different lives and events that the surrounding landscape connects.

Setting and Local Geography

The Trading Post is identified as being just east of the reservation boundary. Benny Gutierrez works along Highway 86 west of Sells, and the narrative situates his account in relation to the Trading Post and nearby roads. These references establish a practical local geography: the Trading Post serves as a recognizable point in a landscape shaped by the reservation boundary, highway travel, and nearby communities.

Benny Gutierrez’s Visits

On November 2, 1970, Benny recalls spending Saturday and Sunday with friends at the Trading Post after attending a dance at Crow Hang. The weekend left him with a serious hangover as he went to work collecting roadside trash under the Tribal Work Experience Program. His brother and sister-in-law had offered him a place to stay on the condition that he work, making the slow, underpaid labor part of his immediate effort to avoid sleeping outside in the cold.

The Trading Post also figures in Benny’s easy rivalry with Alvin Narcho, who had spent Sunday afternoon there with him. As Benny worked along the highway, he measured his progress against Alvin’s growing pile of rubbish; neither man was moving quickly. The reference links the Trading Post to Benny’s social life, but also to the precarious circumstances surrounding his work and housing.

Connection to Larry Stryker

Within days of Roseanne Orozco’s murder, Larry Stryker drove toward Tucson at high speed in his Camaro after draining most of the oil from its engine. The car overheated and caught fire just west of Three Points. Its burned remains were taken to a junkyard, and the insurance company paid Larry’s claim. The Trading Post thus becomes a geographical marker in Larry’s effort to dispose of a vehicle he feared could retain evidence of the crime. Set beside Benny’s ordinary weekend visits, this later reference gives the same local landscape sharply different meanings: routine social passage for one character, concealment and destruction for another.