“I thought I fired you off this ranch a while ago,” he said, looking at Billy. “You don’t look crippled, so why ain’t you left?”

“You mean this sand hill is part of a ranch?” Billy asked with a smirk. He loved being the center of attention.

Isinglass didn’t answer immediately—he was tying the leather thongs that held his jar in its pouch.

“I fired you off it and you would have done well to leave,” Isinglass said, when he looked up.

“I tried, but my horse gave out,” Billy said. “You have to ride dern near to the ocean to get off your property, anyway. Seems like everything’s your property, and I don’t consider that fair.”

Isinglass turned in his saddle and surveyed the crowd of armed men.

“Is that the opinion, then?” he asked.

“It’s my opinion,” Billy said hotly. He took the fact that Isinglass had turned away as a slight to himself. No one was as touchy about small things like that as Billy.

“It’s a hundred miles to that big house of yours,” Billy said. “A hundred miles is far enough to ride off, I say.”

“You’re a brash boy and will very likely meet a bad end,” Isinglass said. “I despise wordy talk so I’ll just deliver the facts of the matter. My north line is above the Cimarron, and my south line is not much shy of the Guadalupes. I own what’s in between, hide and hair. This settlement here is an illegal settlement within the bounds of my ranch, which I’ve let be up till now because I had other things to attend to. We’ve got the Comanche reservationed off, and the Apache reservationed off, although that Jicarilla whelp of mine will still fight you if he likes the odds. The Pawnee and a few other bands are pretty well settled. You men have been well-behaved up to now, but a barroom community like this can easily breed rustling, and I am not such a fool as to encourage rustling of any sort. I saw a brochure the other day about Arizona—there’s lots of space in Arizona and plenty of fine dry sunlight. I recommend a move in that direction within the next few days. Or if that direction don’t suit you, a couple of hundred miles in any direction will pretty well put you clear of me.”

He stopped and smiled, evidently pleased with himself. “I doubt the governor himself could render a cleaner speech,” he said.

“What you mean is get out,” Billy said. “That’s all you meant. You might as well have just said it plain.”

Isinglass looked again at the buffalo hunters and the gunfighters, all of them as silent as stumps.

“I find this peculiar,” he said. “Here I sit amid a dozen grown men, and no one except this brash boy has a word to say.”