That was to be his style to the end—six shots at least, if not twelve; volume, not accuracy, was Billy Bone’s skill.

The campfire was unaffected, but the shooting seemed to relieve his spirits a little.

“You may think I’m starting—I think I’m finishing,” he said. Then he yawned and curled up, his head on his saddle. In a moment he was asleep, exhausted by his own mood.

When the fire died and the night grew chill, I covered him with his saddle blanket. I guess I felt a little lonesome for my girls.

31.

By the time we got to Las Cruces the news was that Katie had ridden on down to El Paso. I wanted to linger in Las Cruces a day or two—I thought I might introduce Billy to the pleasures of decent hotels—but he was in a fever to catch up with Katie Garza, and wouldn’t pause. His bleak mood had passed, and he was primed for action.

“She keeps on the move, that’s good,” he said. “That’s the way I am—don’t like to be stopped too long. If you stop too long, people will figure out where to find you.”

So on we went to El Paso, where the dust was swirling disagreeably through the famous pass of the north.

“My eyeballs feel like they’ve been sandpapered,” I remarked.

“Shut your eyes, then,” Billy said. “There’s nothing to see here except these murdering Texans.”

He seemed to regard Texas as a far more barbaric place than New Mexico, though to my untutored eye the two places seemed much alike.

“Texans are speedy and mean,” Billy insisted. “If they don’t kill you standing they’ll kill you running.”

The citizenry did not have an easygoing look, I admit—but we managed to pass a few hours safely in a flytrap barroom, whittling on beefsteaks that must have been carved from some well-exercised beeves.

“The steak is tougher than the knife is sharp,” I complained. My taste for decent cooking still reasserted itself from time to time.

“You Yankees are tiresome complainers,” Billy remarked.

That afternoon, having heard that we were looking for her, Katie Garza came loping up to the bar.

Billy had been brashly surveying the saloon’s clientele, muttering hot death threats when anyone unruly did anything he didn’t approve of. But when Katie stepped in the door he began to fidget and look shy. He quickly took off his old filthy hat, and then put it back on.

“Hi, Katie,” he said meekly, like a lad greeting his aunt.

“Hi, Bill,” Katie said, a sparkle in her eye. “Let’s ride off and leave this place to the flies.”

We rode some twenty miles south beside the river, which was high but not very wide. Across it, a few miles farther south, we could see a little adobe village.

“That’s San Isidro,” Katie said.