“Well, there’s gonna be a war,” Joe said, no more excited than if he were predicting showers.

“I don’t believe that old man will wait no few days,” Tully said. “I expect him back any time.”

“You ought to go home, Mr. Sippy,” Joe Lovelady said. “You’re an educated man.”

What he meant, I imagine, was that no educated man ought to risk dying in a squalid hole such as Greasy Corners; he was a well-intentioned man, though a little romantic about advantages he himself had never had.

But I shook off his advice—I saw myself, for the moment, as Russell of the Times: the Whiskey Glass war would be my Crimea. Russell had probably seen hundreds of men disemboweled before breakfast in the course of his work.

“Oh, I’ll stay,” I said. “I’ive taken a fancy to this country—and perhaps I can be of some use to Billy.”

“The best use you could be would be to talk him out of fighting,” Joe said. “That tall nigger is a scratch too rough for Billy.”

“A scratch too rough for me, too,” Tully Roebuck said. “Did you see how he hid behind his camel? That was slick.”

There was a thunder of gunshots from inside the saloon. The whores, who were trying to get Jerry’s boots off, looked up hopefully. Des Montaignes had gone inside.

“That sounded like Billy’s gun,” Joe Lovelady said.

“Yep, the debate’s begun,” Tully said.

25.

We crowded into the China Pond, where a stormy scene was in progress. Billy had become enraged at Nute Rachal, the meekest of the buffalo hunters, and had fired at him twice, but Nute, adopting my own tactics, had dropped to the floor and the bullets had only chipped the wall of the barroom.

“Get up, you dern possum, and die,” Billy said. He was pointing both pistols at Nute, who still lay on the floor.

“No, Billy, I’ve never enjoyed falls,” Nute said with surprising calm. “I guess I’ll just die flat.”

“What’s the dispute?” Joe Lovelady inquired.

“Why, the coward favors moving to Arizona,” Billy said.

“Now, Bill, be fair,” Happy Jack Marco said. “All Nute said was we oughta go kill the Earps—now that can’t hurt.”

“Yes, and as soon as we’ve killed them Old Whiskey will buy Arizona,” Billy said. “He owns New Mexico now, what would keep him from buying Arizona if we remove the Earps?”

“We’d have to remove Doc Holliday, too,” Ike Pumpelly remarked. “Doc’s a little firecracker.”

Billy, abrupt as ever, lost interest in Nute Rachal and stuck his guns back in his coat pockets.

“Every possum-hearted one of you can go, for all I care,” he said. “I won’t turn tail to that old cud myself.”

“I’ll stay with Beely,” Vivian Maldonado said. “In Arizona you can stick to the trees.”

“They ain’t trees, they’re cactus,” Simp Dixon said.