“No, I can’t, Billy,” I said. “I’m too worried—I think you’re in a lot of danger.”

For a moment he seemed concerned. “Dang, Sippy, you lead too hard a life,” he said. “Maybe you oughta go home and just let the dang Territory take care of itself.”

“I wish you’d run, Billy,” I said. “I wish you’d catch a horse right now. Go east or north, and don’t stop. I’m rich. I can wire you some money once you get to Kansas City or Fort Worth.”

My plan seemed to amaze him.

“Why, I wouldn’t leave Snow just to miss a few killers,” he said. “I’m a first-rate killer myself—they’ll just have to watch out.”

He started to go back to the tent and then stopped.

“Have you got any of them general pills?” he asked.

“Yes, a few,” I said. “Do you have a headache?”

“Oh, not me, I’m fine,” Billy said. “I thought you ought to eat a few yourself. They might help you sleep.”

Then he slipped back into Lord Snow’s tent and left me to stare at the starlit plain.

9.

There’s a popular book called The Wind’s Four Quarters, written by a newspaperman who spends all his holidays researching Billy’s life. He’s made it his hobby to ride all the trails that led to Greasy Corners. Of course there’s nothing left of the place now—even the last adobe wall has been broken up and the chunks sold for souvenirs, no different except in color from what they try to sell you in Greece or Rome, if you try to have a picnic on the Acropolis or in the Colosseum.

This newspaperman has written the longest book yet about what happened the next morning: he’s taken Isinglass and Tully Roebuck, Katie and Bloody Feathers and the killer Long Dog Hawkins, and followed them practically from birth to their arrival at that clump of hovels on the Rio Pecos. He’s mapped each arrival, marked where each one stood, developed very reasonable theories about how each meant to kill Billy that morning.

Of course, like all the rest, the historians and outlaw collectors, he came up against the awkward fact that I was sitting there in Lord Snow’s camp chair, not thirty feet from where Billy fell. He was polite, though—he came to see me and told me what happened that day, and when I demurred and explained how it really happened, he smiled and did his best to overlook my bad manners.

I don’t guess I blame those people much—the scholars and the believers. Billy’s death was simple, and yet even the simplest events grow mossy with the passage of years. If the students accepted the simple view of events in past times, how would their stiff brains ever get any exercise?