They’re all part of legend now, the sweethearts who died at Skunkwater Flats: they died and were raised to glory; I lived and became deflated and old. It’s a melancholy thing because, hard though they were, I liked those gunmen who died in that windy gully. They only warred on one another, as near as I can see, and they brought some spirit to the ragged business of living, a spirit I confess I miss. Happy Jack Marco could tell a joke as brightly as any man I ever met; he had an uplifting laugh. Hill Coe rose from disgrace to die as gallantly as the hosts at the Alamo.

I guess I just don’t care for the caliper approach. What matters it now if Simp Dixon died ten feet from the cabin, or a hundred? For they’re all gone where Hickok is, and Custer, those sweethearts, and where Napoleon is and Hector and the other great fallen, and the soundest measurement in the world won’t console me for their passing.

22.

I was sound asleep when I heard the splatter of bullets that killed Vivian Maldonado.

Shooting will bring you awake fast, but in this case it wasn’t fast enough to allow me to say adieu to the brilliant pearl of Naples; he must have awakened full of vim and confidence because he simply jumped on the nearest horse and tried to run for it, with three or four Texans looking right at him. Perhaps Viv thought they’d be too surprised to shoot straight, but if so he miscalculated. Two or three of them shot sufficiently straight, and Vivian fell dead just across the campfire from Isinglass, who was sitting on his blanket drinking coffee at the time.

“Damn the man, why would he do that?” Isinglass asked. “Now we’ve lost our chance for entertainment.”

He looked at me as if I alone could make sense of such an action.

“Perhaps he preferred the bullet to the noose,” I said rather shakily—it’s disturbing to see a comrade thud down dead before one is well awake.

“I had no mind to hang him for a while,” Isinglass protested. “We could have strung up a trapeze in the big barn and let him put on shows. In his spare time he could have taught school. There’s a terrible short-age of schoolteachers in this part of the country just now.”

“I’m not sure he had the temperament,” I said. Trying to conjure up an image of Vivian in the classroom was not easy.

“Well, he sure don’t now,” the old man said. Two of the Texans were even then dragging poor Vivian away.

“People from over in Europe have peculiar brains, don’t you think?” Isinglass asked a little later. “Their brains just don’t work practical, like American brains. My old partner, Lord Snow, seldom did the practical thing either.”