“Shoot with me, chapito,” Katie said, grinning. “Mr. Coe didn’t give me no contest.”

Chapito means “little Shorty,” but Katie said it with a lilt in her voice, and Billy didn’t take offense.

“Let’s shoot,” he said, and even swaggered a little—I doubt such a pretty girl had taken an interest in him before.

Joe and I and La Tulipe sat by the donkey cart and watched the two of them play. Katerina shot another round of twenty bottles and hit eighteen. Joe later said he thought she had missed two on purpose to let Billy think he had a chance.

Then Billy stepped up and missed eighteen—and of the two he hit, one was barely chipped. On some of the shots he would aim for two or three minutes, and the bullet would still sing away.

Joe Lovelady was deeply embarrassed for his friend. “He can’t shoot a pistol,” he said. “I don’t know what makes him think he can.

“I hope it don’t put him in one of his surly moods,” he added.

I wouldn’t have thought Billy would tolerate losing that badly either—but Katie sat down by him and flirted so charmingly that his mood was far from surly. He soon grew amused at his own bad shooting and began to giggle. He loaded both his pistols and blazed away at the bottles with both hands without hitting a thing. That struck him as so funny he had to stop and wipe tears out of his eyes.

“You shoot, Joe,” Katie said, still in a lively mood.

Joe Lovelady performed respectably, breaking twelve bottles of twenty.

“I hate being beaten by a dern cowboy,” Billy said, but he was just joshing. With Katie Garza laughing at his side, he kept a carefree attitude.

“Could I try?” I inquired.

“Oh, try, Sippy, show us your style,” Billy said, giggling. He handed me one of his guns.

“This’ll be rich,” he said, smirking at Katerina.

Katie had taken little notice of me, but she looked me over thoughtfully when I stepped to the line.

“I guess he knows how to shoot,” she said, though I don’t know what she based her conclusions on.

“Sippy?” Billy said. “Why, he don’t know anything. He chased a dern train nearly to Kansas and couldn’t stop it.”

Imagine his surprise when I cracked seventeen straight bottles. It takes a fair selection of hobbies to get a man through a year with Dora, and target shooting had once been one of mine.

16.

I was shooting confidently, and I feel sure I could have shattered the next three bottles and beaten Katie Garza, but while I was drawing down on number eighteen, the thunder of hooves was heard and los Guajolotes came racing up to the shooting range, one of them leading Katerina’s white mare.