The dime novelists might portray gunfighters as a confident, satisfied lot—I’ve been guilty of that myself—but the truth is they were mainly disappointed men. They spent their lives in the rough barrooms of ugly towns; they ate terrible food and drank a vile grade of liquor; few of them managed to shoot the right people, and even fewer got to die gloriously in a shoot-out with a peer. The majority just got shot down by some bold stranger, like the drunk who killed the great Hickok.

A cowboy such as Joe Lovelady might not have firm plans, but at least he had dreams. I expect Joe saw himself running a small ranch in a peaceful valley somewhere, with a wife and tots and hay in the barn, and a good cow horse to love. Greasy Corners didn’t figure in his plans—he just felt he had to allow Billy a little holiday.

I had barely settled into my squat when we heard the crackle of gunfire and the sound of hooves, many hooves. The noise came from the south, toward the Bitter Lake.

“That could be your man Tully,” I suggested.

“No, that ain’t him,” Joe said. “Tully Roebuck mainly travels alone. I don’t know if he’ll even show up. Sometimes Tully just gets out of the mood for company.”

I was still trying to get adjusted to the sound of gunfire—you rarely hear it in Philadelphia, at least not on Chestnut Street.

“I expect it’s just los Guajolotes, coming in for a little frolic,” Joe said, perfectly calm.

“Los what?” I asked.

“Guajolotes,” Joe repeated, crediting me with more Spanish than I have.

I was reluctant to expose my ignorance, but the gunfire grew louder—it sounded as if a small army was racing toward the town.

“What’s guajolotes?” I asked, hoping the word meant militia or something official and benign.

“Turkeys,” Joe said. “The turkeys. It’s what Katie Garza calls her gang.”

9.

It’s often occurred to me that the Wild West would have been a safer place if fireworks had been more generally available a little sooner.

Nothing elaborate would have been needed—just firecrackers and Roman candles, the usual Fourth of July stuff. No one realizes the lengths people would go to in the West just to hear a little noise.

So much of the country was silent and empty, you see—men in the lonely line of cabins strung out around Isinglass’s ranch could go for months hearing nothing but the wind’s howl or the coyote’s cry. They made what noise they could, yelling and whooping at the livestock. They scratched at fiddles and blew into harmonicas—Lady Snow even taught Billy to play one, though he never really learned a tune.

But the silence of the huge plain carried more resonance than such puny sounds.