I don’t give up easily, though. I raced along beside that train for several miles, thinking that sooner or later the engineer would realize I was serious. I shot twenty or thirty shots up in the air—but then I dropped my pistol, trying to reload on the run. The engineer was still just as cheerful as ever—once in a while he’d wave his cap at me and toot his whistle.

It annoyed me a little, that engineer’s sunny humor. I was ready to chase the damn train all the way to Kansas City, but Rosy was of a different mind. After six or seven miles she decided the whole thing was ridiculous and pulled a spectacular balk. She stopped and didn’t move a muscle for about three hours. I could have done her portrait if I’d had a paintbrush and an easel. My threats didn’t impress her; my blandishments failed to appease her. It was slap dark before she decided she was ready to travel. I never did find my pistol, either.

The next day, riding back along the tracks toward Las Cruces—it was the one place in southern New Mexico that had a decent hotel, and I was definitely in the mood for a few days in a decent hotel—I came upon three Mexicans working on the rails. They had pumped their way far out on the plains on one of those little handcars. I feel sure I could have robbed them—I still had my Winchester and my derringers. It would have been a train robbery, of a sort; I would have had something to show for three weeks of anxiety.

But I was hungry and depressed and ended up giving them fifty cents for a few tortillas. Instead of robbing them, I guess I made their fortune, for they soon packed up their tools and headed for town to invest the fifty cents.

A low mood seized me. I couldn’t think why I had supposed I could be a train robber anyway—or any kind of owlhoot, for that matter. It wasn’t in my breeding.

I said as much to Billy Bone and Joe Lovelady after trying to explain to them, as best I could, what had gone wrong in my efforts to rob trains.

Billy thought the story of me and Rosy chasing the train was the funniest thing he had ever heard. He nearly rolled off his blanket laughing. Even Joe Lovelady, who was not comfortable with hilarity, chuckled a time or two.

“You have to race up and shoot the conductor if you want to stop a train,” Billy explained, when he had got himself under control. “You don’t need to kill him—if you just wing him he’ll usually pull the brake.

“Me and Joe don’t go in for robbery, though,” he added. “Joe’d rather punch cows.”