Yet he had had four sons by Cecily’s mother, started three in Cecily herself, fathered Katerina Garza, the flame of the cantinas, on a Mexican woman, and Bloody Feathers, hawk of the Jicarillas, on an Apache girl.

All these years later I still wonder about that old man. When the knell had finally rung for all the sweethearts; when Cecily Snow was gone and even Mesty-Woolah had fallen; when the great Whiskey Glass ranch was taken from him and a century weighed upon his shoulders; when Billy Bone had killed his four mute sons, and only the Mexican girl and the Indian brave were left to mark his passage across that huge land—did he know regret?

Even I had regrets about Dora, a woman who used her tongue as a cabbie uses a buggy whip.

The one person I had to put the question to was Tully Roebuck, the sad sheriff, one of the men Isinglass sent after Billy once Mesty-Woolah was dead.

He and I were sitting in the shade of his porch in Lincoln, listening to his little blind daughter croon from her bedroom, when I asked him if he thought Isinglass had known disappointment at the end.

“Doubt it,” Tully said, tipping his chair. “Old Whiskey was not a man to question himself.”

3.

The extraordinary thing about Will Isinglass was that, to an uncommon degree, he forced life to honor his expectations. Most of us can’t do that—I’m a prime example of one who can’t. My own expectations are apt to soar and dip, depending on the direction and the stiffness of the breeze.

Ten seconds after Joe Lovelady and I followed Billy Bone into the China Pond, my own expectations took an immediate plunge.

It was just a dim, smoky barroom—why Des Montaignes had chosen to call it the China Pond was never explained. Joe and I had just got through the door and were peering through the smoke trying to spot Billy when guns began to shoot.

I realize that’s a poor description; it would never pass muster in a dime novel, but then I wasn’t in a dime novel at the time. I couldn’t really see the men—the barroom was too murky—and all I could think of was that guns were shooting.

The sound, in the small room, was so loud that it paralyzed me. I meant to run back out the door, but the message could not seem to proceed from my brain to my legs.

Others were luckier in passing the message—there was such a rush for the door that I got knocked completely off my feet. I rolled up against the bar and hid my face in my hat. It was primitive reasoning—if they can’t see your face they won’t shoot you—but I was badly scared.