But when I met him, Billy Bone had yet to shoot a man. A bully named Joe Loxton had abused him considerably when he was thirteen or fourteen and making his living cleaning tables in a saloon. Joe Loxton made the mistake of wrestling him to the ground one day when Billy had just been carving a beef and happened to have a butcher knife in his hand. When they hit the floor the butcher knife stuck in Joe Loxton’s belly, and a day or two later he was dead.

“It was mostly an accident,” Billy said, “though I would have stabbed that shit-ass if I’d had time to think.”

That’s not to say that Billy was a gentle boy. He was violent all right. In his case the reputation just arrived before the violence.

I felt a little peculiar for a moment. There we were, in a thick cloud in the Hidden Mountains, with only one mule between us and the most feared young gunman in the West making jokes about my name. Nothing unfriendly had occurred, but it’s a short step, in some situations, from the unfriendly to the fatal—and a short step that often got taken in New Mexico in those days.

We had exhausted what few conversational supplies we seemed to have, and were just standing there. Billy had stopped giggling and looked depressed.

“I get a headache when I’m up this high,” he said.

I was carrying one or two general nostrums, but before I could offer Billy one, Rosy, my mule, lifted her head and nickered.

I was horrified. Now all the Messy Apaches would have to do was ride in and make a mess of us, unless Billy Bone could shoot them all.

But Billy didn’t even draw his pistol—he just looked irritated.

A minute later Joe Lovelady trotted out of the cloud, riding one horse and leading another.

“See! I told you it would be just like him!” Billy said.

Joe rode up beside him and handed him his bridle reins, but Billy didn’t even look up. “It must get boresome being so danged competent,” he said in a tone that was anything but grateful. “Did you scalp all the Indians, too, while you were rescuing these nags?” Billy asked, in the same annoyed tone.

“Nope,” Joe Lovelady said. “I just snuck in and stole back our horses while they were taking a shit.”

“I thought those dern Apaches were supposed to know their business!” Billy said in an ugly tone. He seemed to be working himself into an angry fit just because his friend had recovered their horses.

Joe Lovelady, a calm man if I ever knew one, was unperturbed.

“It ain’t getting any earlier,” he said. “Why don’t we lope on over to Greasy Corners?”

“In this fog?” Billy asked. “I couldn’t find my hip pocket, much less Greasy Corners.”