“I thought you were bound for Chicago,” I reminded him. “Unless I’m very turned around, this isn’t the way to Chicago.”

“No, we’re bound for Galveston now,” Billy said. “There’s weeds and things down that way that Snow wants to paint.”

I was about to make one or two stern points, but before I could, Cecily Snow came out, as beautiful as Helen, and we ate the delicious guinea hens by candle-light under a high moon. I played the part of Mahamood—set up the table, smoothed the linen, carved the hens.

Nothing was said by anyone about the happy couple moving on, and afterward I took a plate to La Tulipe, who sat on her stool outside the deserted cantina, crooning a low song, When I offered her the food, La Tulipe just smiled.

7.

That night I slept poorly. In one of my wakeful moments I realized I had forgotten to inquire about Bertram, of whom I had grown rather fond. Had he been hung with Mahmood, or was he still propped in his closet at Winds’ Hill?

When Cecily had loaned me one of her father’s camp chairs, finally I got up and went outside and sat in it for the rest of the night, leaning back against the wall of my hut, watching the white moon and wondering when the killers would begin arriving.

I felt restless, uneasy, puzzled, leaning there against my hut; but then, in a flash, I grasped Cecily’s reasoning—saw it with the unhappy clarity that comes a tic too late in a chess game, after the fatal move has been made: she wanted Billy to kill Isinglass. That was the reason for the tent and the lingering. In all likelihood Cecily didn’t mean to go to Chicago, or Galveston either; if she had considered that she was departing Winds’ Hill for good, four mules would not have been enough to carry her clothes.

Undoubtedly Isinglass had been gone on one of his restless tours when the elopement began—otherwise Cecily and Billy would not have had the leisure to pack the four mules.

Just as certainly, the old man would soon return and follow them—and he was known for his capacity to cover the miles. If Isinglass arrived first, and Billy did kill him, Cecily would be sole heir to the greatest ranch in the world; then no doubt Bloody Feathers or Tully Roebuck or Long Dog Hawkins would remove Billy, an unpredictable young killer who might at some point become an encumbrance to a great lady.

It was cynical reasoning, I know—perhaps I wronged Cecily Snow. She may have nursed a genuine fondness for the boy, as she did for her hyrax. But I couldn’t rid myself of the feeling that the trap was closing on Billy Bone, and that Cecily Snow had baited it with scientific care.