“The Tulip must have read the cards wrong on me,” he said. “I crossed the Rio Grande and came back and got in a gunfight, and I’m still alive.”

“I’d remain a little humble if I were you,” I said. “Tomorrow you might meet a gunfighter instead of a horse trader.”

Billy looked disgusted.

“I wish you’d gone with Joe, if you’re so finicky about killing,” he said. “You’ve been gloomy all day over one dead Texan, and I call that ignorant.”

“I suppose Mr. Fay had a life, the same as you and I,” I said. “He may have enjoyed a good meal, or liked to dance. He may have been a comfort to his family. But that’s all lost now, and for no reason.”

Billy clearly didn’t see the point of such a comment.

“Why, he can dance in hell, if that’s his pleasure,” he said. “I’ll send that brother of his to join him, next time we meet.”

I had thought to draw a little picture, describe the dead man’s life a little, hoping to draw from Billy at least a drop of remorse for the life he had so brusquely ended—to get him to consider them the moral aspect of murder, I suppose.

But my hope was misplaced. Indeed, it was foolish; the only regret Billy felt was that he had not managed to kill Jody Fay too.

“I think I ought to buy a big old shotgun,” he said.

“Why, for the prairie chickens?” I asked, mindful of my hunger.

“No, not for prairie chickens,” he said. “All you Yankees think about is food. I just need the shotgun because I’m no good with a pistol at moving targets. If I’d had a loaded ten-gauge, that dern Jody would never have escaped.”

The first thing he did when we arrived half starved in Anton Chico was borrow fifty dollars from me, all of which he promptly spent on a shotgun and a sackful of buckshot at the general store.

12.

Billy decided at once that he didn’t care for Anton Chico, a community little more imposing than Greasy Corners had been.

“Too chilly,” he said, as we were shivering over our coffee the morning after we arrived. Dark clouds were rolling down from the Sangre de Cristo, not far to the north. Billy was taken with a sneezing fit that left him dizzy. He blamed it on the chill.

The gunfighters had also found the town not to their liking; the only one still there was Vivian Maldonado, who had conceived a grand passion for an Apache girl. The rest had drifted back down the Pecos to Puerta de Luna.

“There they will die, but not me,” Vivian said. “I’d rather be in love.”