“Where’s your gang?” Billy inquired. He was looking slightly more relaxed.

“Oh, here and there, getting drunk or chasing girls,” Katie said. “Sometimes I ride with my turkeys and sometimes I don’t.”

“Here we’ll cross,” she went on, turning the white mare toward the water.

Billy started to follow, but suddenly stopped. His face turned white. Katie looked back at him, puzzled.

“Ain’t you coming?” she asked.

“I can’t,” Billy said, very tense. “I can’t go over there.”

“Why not?” Katie wanted to know. “We’ll eat some cabrito and shoot at bottles.”

“La Tulipe warned me,” Billy Bone said. “She says I’ll die if I cross the Rio Grande.”

Katie Garza looked slightly vexed. “Why’d you ride all the way down here, if you didn’t mean to do anything I want to do?” she asked.

“I forgot what the Tulip said,” Billy replied, embarrassed.

“It’s just a river,” Katie said. “People cross it every day and they don’t die from it.”

“No, but I would,” Billy said. “The Tulip said so.”

“That old woman’s jealous,” Katie said bluntly. “She don’t want me and you to have no fun.

“I guess she fancies you for herself,” she added, her black eyes grown cold.

“The Tulip?” Billy said, shocked. “It’s nothing of that sort, not a bit. It’s just that she can see the past and the future.”

“She can see a pretty boy, is all she can see,” Katie Garza said. “Old women are full of lies.”

She deliberated for a minute, while Billy looked miserable. Then her cold black eyes fixed on me.

“What do you believe, Mr. Yankee?” she asked. “Do you believe that old yellow whore?”

“No, I’m not convinced by fortune-telling,” I said.

“See, Mr. Yankee don’t believe it, either,” Katie said. “A river is just a river. It don’t want to kill nobody.”

Billy was in an agony—I doubt he had ever angered a woman before, and he was new to the fire and the ice. So far Katie had applied only the ice—but I felt the fire might not smolder much longer.

Billy just sat on his tall horse, Chip, looking worried. He was scared to go nearer the river but also scared of what Katie might say next.

What she did then stunned him even more than her cold words. She shook her head in vexation a time or two and then got off her horse and began to undress.

“What’s wrong?” Billy said, shocked as she shucked her silver-nuggeted jacket and began to undo her skirt.

Katie smiled, as if her little pet was forgotten.

“Why, nothing,” she said. “The river’s up and I don’t want to get these clothes wet. You ought to strip off too, if you’re coming.”