The appearance of one old man on a scrubby black horse was a considerable letdown for the gunfighters and the buffalo hunters, all of whom had been working themselves up for a glorious last stand. A huge amount of weaponry was quickly assembled, and many bracing toddies were gulped down.

Joe Lovelady and Tully Roebuck rode in and sat quietly on their horses, a little apart from the mob.

Billy Bone lounged against the hitch-rail in front of the China Pond. His horse, Chip, always hard to saddle, had been particularly difficult that morning. Though I held Chip’s ears and tried to soothe him with an Irish ditty, he still kicked Billy twice before he accepted the saddle. This had the good effect of making Billy furious. He soon forgot Mexico and death and everything else except how much he disliked Chip; by the time we got to the Pond he was in ideal fighting spirits.

He seemed coolly contemptuous of the buffalo hunters’ solemn preparations for battle.

“Look at these fools, they’re ready to die roaring, ain’t they?” he said, watching Jim Saul blow dust out of the sights of his buffalo gun.

The gunfighters emerged from the saloon in a nervous cluster. Hill Coe was walking unsteadily—he was already on his way to becoming the shaking drunk he would be for the rest of his life.

Vivian Maldonado had drunk till dawn, as was his habit—he had not had time to perfect his toilette, or even to slick down his hair; obviously he would have preferred to delay the annihilation until a more civilized hour—that would have been the style in Naples.

Billy was peeved at Joe and Tully for showing more reserve than the rest of the crowd. They sat quietly on their horses, a little way down the street—the very models of decorum.

“Now look at them!” Billy exclaimed. “They’re too fine to join the rabble, them two.”

He insisted I take one of his pistols—the one I had used to shatter the bottles.

“Don’t be polite, now, Sippy,” he said. “Shoot a few cowboys, if the chance arises.”

“You seem to have it in for cowboys, Billy,” I said.

“I consider them dull fools, for the most part,” he replied.

“But your best friend’s a cowboy.”

“Yes, because he’s stubborn,” Billy said with some irritation.

Then, to everyone’s surprise, the dust cloud veered to the east, missing Greasy Corners by a couple of miles.

“They’re circling,” Happy Jack Marco said. “Maybe they’re Indians.”

“Maybe they’re angels, but I doubt it,” Billy said, slightly bored.

Then the old man trotted in on his nondescript black plug.

21.

It was clear that fear formed no part of Isinglass’s makeup, for he trotted casually up to the very door of the China Pond, ignoring the arsenal that had been assembled to stop him.