“Most places they’d just shoot him down like a dog,” Joe explained.

“Philadelphia must be a curious kind of a place,” Billy said. “You wouldn’t catch me getting up early just to go buy yarns.”

“It’s hard to get you up early to do anything,” Joe said—it was a bone of contention between them.

“The sun itself don’t get up as early as you do, Joe,” Billy said.

“The early bird gets the worm,” Joe remarked.

“Yeah, but who besides a bird would want a dern worm?” Billy replied.

I guess he had heard enough about the Philadelphia life because he yawned, as a kid will, rolled his blanket around him, and fell asleep long before I had finished the story of why and how I had come to be sitting on that rock in the Hidden Mountains where the three of us met.

10.

Billy was right about Joe Lovelady’s penchant for an early start. The stars were still bright above me when I heard him stirring the fire—as bright as opals against a black velvet choker.

By the time the stars had melted into the coming light, Joe had his horse saddled. He made what noise he could while he went about it—it was as if he hoped we’d hear him and take the hint.

Well, I took the hint—I had not made much progress at learning to sleep on the ground, anyway. The earth might be my mother, as the red men believed, but that didn’t mean it was much of a mattress. I had spent fifty years sleeping on feathers, and atop a high bed at that. On a high bed, nothing much worse than Dora was apt to crawl over me—the same could not be said for the great bed of the plains, particularly if there was nothing between you and it but a saddle blanket.

I sat up and picked hairs out of my mouth for a while—evidently my beard was shedding. Joe Lovelady handed me a tin cup of bitter coffee. A sip of it dissolved the rest of the hairs, and what sleep was left in me as well.

“We don’t travel with no sweetening,” Joe said apologetically.

It was just coming light. The sky above us and the grass around us were the same color, a dim gray. Then the coyotes began to yip. A herd of antelope grazed to the east of us. When the sun began to edge from the ground it seemed for a moment as if the antelope were walking along the rim. It was still and nice.

I didn’t mind the plains so much in the morning stillness. It was when the wind came searing across the long emptiness, snatching at every weed and seed, that I felt a little exposed.