BooksBarbecue
Back Anything for Billy
Chapters (127)
  1. Cover Page
  2. ANYTHINGFOR BILLY
  3. Dedication
  4. PART I
  5. 1.
  6. 2.
  7. 3.
  8. 4.
  9. 5.
  10. 6.
  11. 7.
  12. 8.
  13. 9.
  14. 10.
  15. 11.
  16. 12.
  17. 13.
  18. 14.
  19. 15.
  20. 16.
  21. 17.
  22. 18.
  23. PART II
  24. 1.
  25. 2.
  26. 3.
  27. 4.
  28. 5.
  29. 6.
  30. 7.
  31. 8.
  32. 9.
  33. 10.
  34. 11.
  35. 12.
  36. 13.
  37. 14.
  38. 15.
  39. 16.
  40. 17.
  41. 18.
  42. 19.
  43. 20.
  44. 21.
  45. 22.
  46. 23.
  47. 24.
  48. 25.
  49. 26.
  50. 27.
  51. 28.
  52. 29.
  53. 30.
  54. 31.
  55. PART III
  56. 1.
  57. 2.
  58. 3.
  59. 4.
  60. 5.
  61. 6.
  62. 7.
  63. 8.
  64. 9.
  65. 10.
  66. 11.
  67. 12.
  68. 13.
  69. 14.
  70. 15.
  71. 16.
  72. 17.
  73. 18.
  74. 19.
  75. 20.
  76. 21.
  77. 22.
  78. 23.
  79. PART IV
  80. 1.
  81. 2.
  82. 3.
  83. 4.
  84. 5.
  85. 6.
  86. 7.
  87. 8.
  88. 9.
  89. 10.
  90. 11.
  91. 12.
  92. 13.
  93. 14.
  94. 15.
  95. 16.
  96. PART V
  97. 1.
  98. 2.
  99. 3.
  100. 4.
  101. 5.
  102. 6.
  103. 7.
  104. 8.
  105. 9.
  106. 10.
  107. 11.
  108. 12.
  109. 13.
  110. 14.
  111. 15.
  112. 16.
  113. 17.
  114. 18.
  115. PART VI
  116. 1.
  117. 2.
  118. 3.
  119. 4.
  120. 5.
  121. 6.
  122. 7.
  123. 8.
  124. 9.
  125. 10.
  126. 11.
  127. 12.

That indicated to me that Mr. Lovelady was at last thinking of his stomach, which proved to be the case. That night we feasted on four fat hens, and our troubles seemed to be over. The big pills had left Billy and me with gaseous stomachs, and we did a lot of belching, which Joe Lovelady, an unfailingly polite man, did his best to ignore. Billy tended to linger over his belching, as kids will—some of his better productions gave the horses a start.

While we were polishing prairie chicken bones, Joe Lovelady suddenly looked at me and smiled—his first smile since we met.

“I know who you are,” he said. “Sippy. You’re that Yankee who don’t know how to rob trains.”

“Hey!” Billy said. “Are you that Sippy?”

I had to admit I was. My own little reputation had caught up with me again.

4.

When I set out to try the new Western sport of train robbing, it was my belief that New Mexican trains were a lot more cooperative than they actually are. In the East, trains stop every few miles to let people with tickets get on and off, and somehow that had given me the notion that if you showed up beside the tracks with the proper hardware the train would stop and let itself be robbed.

In the East, where trains are civilized, that approach might have worked, but in New Mexico Territory trains were as hard to manage as anything else. When I stood up on the track below the Fort Stanton mines and tried to stop an ore train I had to dive off the embankment to keep from being squashed. I stood in the middle of the tracks and shot off my pistol, but the train just kept on coming.

The next time, I determined to try the thing on level ground—there was plenty of that available in the eastern part of the state. I picked out a train, and Rosy and I raced up beside the engine and I shot off my pistol a few more times, thinking that the engineer would soon realize a robbery was in progress and shut things down. Of course, I just shot in the air—I had no desire to injure anyone.

But the engineer just laughed and waved his cap at me and kept on engineering. Maybe it was his birthday and he thought I was giving him a send-off, or maybe his wife had a baby and he thought I was congratulating him—I’ll never know.