He demanded another glass of whiskey from Des Montaignes and took it over to the table where the cowboys and the poor whore sat.

“What’s the game?” he asked, sinking into a seat.

“Come with me, I have a good bed,” the young whore said. She had stringy brown hair and broken teeth. I believe she had given up on Dewey Sharp and Waco Charlie.

“Dot’s my name,” she added.

Billy didn’t know how to respond to her bold invitation. Despite his recent experiences, he remained painfully shy with women. “Ask Sippy, he’s older than me, and richer, too,” he said.

“You mean you really want to sit around and play cards in the trouble you’re in?” Dewey Sharp asked.

“I ain’t in trouble, Dewey,” Billy said. “I just stopped through for a nap on my way to Chicago.”

That was the first mention he had made of his place of elopement.

“They say Old Whiskey hired Long Dog Hawkins to kill you,” Dewey said. “Besides that, Tully’s vowed to bring you in, dead or alive.”

Billy perked up at the mention of Long Dog Hawkins, a formidable assassin who had made his name killing settlers during the range wars in Wyoming. With the deaths of Hickok and Hill Coe, he was—except for Billy—the most feared killer in the West.

“Long Dog Hawkins!” he said. “Dern, I didn’t know I was that dangerous.”

“If I had more time I’d wait around and turn Long Dog into a dead dog,” he said, and laughed his boyish laugh for the first time in weeks. Then he finished his second whiskey and demanded that Waco Charlie cut the cards.

3.

It was Des Montaignes who eventually went off with the whore named Dot. La Tulipe stirred up a bowl or two of prairie-dog stew, so greasy it would have been inedible if Billy and I hadn’t been starving. Waco Charlie, who was almost as mute as the mutes of the Mesa, nonetheless proved to be by far the best cardplayer on hand; after an hour of play none of us had a handy cent left to wager, so I rolled up in a corner by La Tulipe’s little stove. Billy Bone and Dewey Sharp were still exchanging gossip about Long Dog Hawkins, whose nickname derived from the long-barreled Colt he favored for his assassin work.

“It’s good to be back in New Mexico,” I heard Billy say before I fell asleep.

The next morning, when I wandered out to relieve myself, the wind had died, but some of yesterday’s fine dust still hung in the air; the rising sun was coppery and muted.

To my surprise, Billy Bone had already saddled his horse.

“Hurry up, Sippy—today’s the day we have to meet Snow,” he said.