skygiants

Because I haven't read the other books, I just assumed that it was part of the Califa timeline, and that for some reason Wilce had seen fit to AU-recreate the US-Apache conflict, with the snarky frame story commentary about its speculative nature referring to the chupacabra thing. All of which seemed unnecessary, but the kind of unnecessary that people doing alt-real world places sometimes do. Having it be the only story in which this conflict even exists, as a kind of alt-alt-history thing, is much weirder! And makes the uncritical pastiche even more awkward.

I almost wonder if she wrote that story separately, found it on her hands and at loose ends, and decided to pad out the collection by shoehorning it into the Califa setting? But that's pure guesswork.