The Rio Grande’s cold waters stung like ice when we swam the river.

7.

Billy Bone chattered all day as we cut through the Hueco Mountains and crossed the desolate land that lay beyond them. It was a plain, but a poor plain—for hours we saw nothing living except a colony of thin prairie dogs and the occasional soaring buzzard.

He chattered—and got little in the way of response from Joe and me.

I supposed I had hoped to feel more cheerful once we got moving, but the country was of a bleakness not designed to lift one’s spirits. Life had seemed pointless in Philadelphia, but was there noticeably more point to riding a difficult mule up and down the New Mexican plain in the company of a rash boy such as Billy?

I couldn’t see that there was, and I was not the only disaffected traveler along the trip. Joe Lovelady was as out of sorts as I’d ever seen him. He managed to kill one of the thin prairie dogs, which was all we had to eat that night.

Billy had been so anxious to rush off before Katie could shame him with her emotion that we had left unprovisioned.

“There was a time when I had more to show for a day’s work than a dern prairie dog,” Joe Lovelady said.

Indeed, the meat was greasy and half raw; we had barely been able to scrape up enough brush to cook it.

“We can stuff when we get to a town,” Billy said, trying to sound nonchalant.

He was aware that we were both somewhat unimpressed by him at the moment. It may be that the abrupt departure from San Isidro was a reaction to his sense that Katie and Joe and I had come to regard him as ever so slightly ridiculous. I believe he intended to show us that he was every bit as dangerous as he was generally held to be. Any discomfort that might be encountered on the way to battle he was prepared to ignore.

“You did say you’d try Texas, Bill,” Joe reminded him—it was a promise I’d not been aware of.

“I will, too—we’ll just lope right over there after we josh those roadrunners a little,” Billy said. “Maybe I’ll win enough at cards to buy you a spread.”

It seemed a far-fetched hope, and Joe said so.

“You won’t win nothing at cards, Viv will just skin you,” he said. “We’re just a nod from the Texas ranches now. Why don’t we leave the warring to the warriors and lope over to San Antonio? You could land a slick job in the city, since you don’t care for livestock.”

It was a long speech for Joe, and well-intended, but hearing it immediately depressed Billy Bone.