Billy wore his stony look. For a second I thought he might as well go on and kill me.

“He jumped out at me,” he said. “Any Indian fighter will tell you the kids and the women are the most dangerous.”

“But he has no weapon,” I said. I felt myself grow weak. I may have fainted on my feet for a few seconds. When I came to my senses, Billy had already ridden on. There was nothing he hated more than criticism of his killing.

Then I saw a little Apache girl standing silently on a ridge, perhaps fifty yards away. Not knowing what else to do, I picked up the dead boy and carried him toward her. The little girl vanished, but when I walked over the ridge I saw a small hogan another hundred yards or so west. I carried the dead boy to it, feeling that very shortly I would be dead myself. But there were only an old woman and two girls at the hut. The old woman began a high tragic wailing when I lay the little body down. The girls looked on, silent and tearless.

There was no sign of menfolks. The old woman knelt in front of the hogan, wailing, and the two silent girls looked on.

“I’m sorry for this, very sorry,” I said, feeling so weak I could hardly stand. I stumbled back to Rosy and rode south as fast as I could. In about an hour I caught up with Billy, who seemed to be in no great hurry.

“I’d ride a little faster, if I were you,” I said. “This is Bloody Feathers’s country. When he finds out you shot that boy he may want to do worse than pick you up by the ear.”

It startled Billy a little—he rarely dwelt on the past, but one thing he did remember was watching Bloody Feathers hold Vivian Maldonado up by his ear. He looked around as if expecting to see Bloody Feathers right behind us.

“Do you think he’s around?” Billy asked.

“It’s his country,” I said. “Of course he’s around somewhere.”

At least he had the sense to be scared. The cockiness immediately left his face.

“We better go find Tully,” he said. “He’s a good Indian fighter.”

“Tully’s in Lincoln,” I said. “And Lincoln’s a long way away.”

“We won’t get there talking,” he said, spurring his long-gaited horse.

11.

There’s a school of writers who now mainly want to whittle down the count of Billy’s killings, and the Apache boy is the first one they try to drop off the list.