Billy and Katie I scarcely saw. Some days they would ride off on their horses; other days I heard the pop of their guns as they shot at targets by the riverside. Sometimes late at night I would see them pass the cantina on their way to Katie’s little hut, where I suppose they went to play the old common game.

But when the historians or the newspapermen ask me for the texture of those times, I’ve not much to say. Did Billy and Katie kiss? Did they sigh? I’m sure they kissed, and I expect they sighed; for that sighing follows kissing has ever been the way of love.

But their words and their looks, their whispers and their laughing, the little joys they may have shared or imagined or looked forward to—all the sweet interchanges of happy young hearts—all these I missed.

I don’t know what wiles Katie employed to overcome Billy’s shyness—he started mighty shy—and I didn’t want to know; those who have taken their leave of l’amour, as I have, don’t care to be spectators at the bower.

The historians think I just want to keep the story for myself, but they’re mistaken. Some things I know; others I can made a shrewd guess at; but the main things the professors and the newspapermen want to know about the romance of Billy and Katie, those things have floated on down the stream that makes no turning.

I know Billy loved Katie, for he was a quick-hearted boy who could never conceal a feeling for a second. He was in love, and he bubbled with it. I’d be rich if I had a dollar for every time he looked at Katie and said, “Ain’t she a peach!”

Katie, though, was a woman—which is to say, complicated. She cast a shawl of chatter around her feelings, and the shawl had a fine weave. I couldn’t penetrate it, and I guess I didn’t realize how deeply Katie Garza loved Billy Bone until that dark morning in Chavez County when I heard her speak her words of heartbreak over his grave.

3.

Joe Lovelady, ever a man of his word, polished up those Tularosa colts in just two weeks. He came trotting into San Isidro on a day so hot and still you could hear a watch tick from thirty yards away.

I know, because I owned the only watch in town, a sturdy pocket model with far too healthy a tick. Being in an irritable state generally, I often thought of smashing it with a rock just to gain a little peace and quiet. Once I stuck it in the crook of a tree, and a big Mexican woodpecker flew in and watched it for nearly an hour as if it were a small, round bird with an unfamiliar call.