Then, from the wind’s four quarters, the losers in the race to kill him moved out of their hiding places. Isinglass stepped in view from behind the tent, Winchester in the crook of his arm. Tully Roebuck emerged from the China Pond, a pistol in each hand. Bloody Feathers stood atop the old, rotting pile of buffalo hides where Jim Saul and his crew had made their last stand. And a small weasel in a dark coat—it was Long Dog Hawkins—appeared practically at my elbow, carrying a huge Colt: he had been hiding behind my own hut.

“Now here, goddammit, it ain’t fair!” Long Dog complained, addressing himself to Old Whiskey. “I’ve rode all the way from the Wind River and this Mexican whore has cheated me of my bounty.”

Katie raised her gun and shot him, as coolly as she had broken the beer bottles that morning on the plain nearby. Long Dog fell backward, almost beside me, slumped down, and didn’t move. The spot of blood, in his case, was in the middle of his forehead.

“Well, Long Dog’s a dead dog, like I predicted,” Billy said, and he too slumped flat. Tully Roebuck came walking over, his guns still cocked. Bloody Feathers jumped off the hides and joined his father.

Katie knelt down by Billy and shielded his eyes with her hat, for the sun had broken the horizon and was shooting its strong rays into his face.

I joined the group around the fallen boy.

“Hi, Tully,” Billy said in a weaker tone.

He looked at Katie with a crook of a smile.

“You ought to let on that Tully got me,” he said. “Tully’s got politics to think of.”

“Hurry up and die, chapito,” Katie said softly. “I’ve ridden a long way and I need to water this horse.”

The remark scored big with Billy Bone.

“That’s spunk, ain’t it, Sippy?” he said.

“That’s spunk,” I agreed, but before my words were out Billy Bone had obeyed her request.

Katie Garza laid her hat over Billy’s face. Then she stood up, broke into sobs, and flung herself into her father’s arms. Tully Roebuck—he really liked Billy—was crying too, and my own eyes were not dry.

Bloody Feathers had a long knife in his hand. While Katie sobbed on Isinglass’s breast, he stepped over to the corpse of Long Dog Hawkins and took his scalp—the last scalp taken on the southern plains, some say.

“I promised old Grandmother a scalp for that boy she lost,” he said. “I guess this dirty hank of hair will do as good as any.”

“Brash boys always come to bad ends,” Isinglass said, looking down at Billy.