“I hate Texas,” he said bluntly, “and I ain’t going to San Antone. If you want to go, go, and take Sippy with you. I can make Anton Chico on my own, or anywhere else, for that matter.”

Joe said nothing; he was prepared to let it drop. But Billy went on sinking.

“You don’t know what I’m like, neither one of you do,” he said in his sad voice. Then he turned his back to us and put his head on his saddle.

“Nobody knows what I’m like,” he said with some bitterness, without looking around. “Nobody knows—but they will before I’m through.”

8.

The next morning Billy was sullen. He didn’t utter a word when he got up, and he ignored the cup of coffee Joe offered. He flung his saddle on Chip and rode off north.

Joe Lovelady and I were faced with a decision. Texas, offering peaceful occupation for Joe, at least, was within easy reach. Billy Bone was rapidly becoming a dot on the prairie. Should we be sensible or loyal?

I had already seen enough violence to know that I had neither the taste nor the capacity for it. I liked Billy and felt somewhat fatherly toward him; a man with nine daughters will usually welcome a son. But I had been badly scared in Greasy Corners, and was more than half inclined to visit Texas.

“He may be bluffing,” I suggested. “If we call it and go on to Texas, don’t you think he’d come, eventually?”

“Nope,” Joe said. “He won’t. A crowbar bends oftener than Billy does.”

“You’re a cowhand,” I reminded him. “Do you really want to wade into this fight?”

Joe picked up his saddle.

“Nope,” he said again. “But I don’t want to lie awake all night worrying about Billy, either. He don’t know these old plains. If he strikes a wrong angle he could find himself a hundred miles from water. Half an army nearly starved to death out there, you know.”

He was referring to the ill-fated Texans who tried to capture Santa Fe—their failure was the subject of my half-finished half-dimer, Black Beans.

“I wouldn’t want that on my conscience,” Joe said.

So, reluctantly, we saddled up—and reluctantly we followed Billy north.

Neither of us was in any particular hurry to catch up with him; we were trotting along, two or three miles to the rear, each of us thinking his own rather sober thoughts, when Joe Lovelady, ever alert, spotted two riders far ahead.

“Why, there’s the Fay brothers,” he said cheerfully.