He had acquired a heavy serape and sat most of the day drinking tequila with his back against the adobe wall of the little store where Billy bought the shotgun. If a crack of sunlight pierced the clouds and lingered for a minute, Vivian would scoot over to take advantage of it.

“If you’re so in love, sell me your pistol,” Billy said. “My best one will hardly ever hit where you aim it, and my other one’s plumb worthless.”

“No, I don’t sell you no pistol,” Vivian said, with a Neapolitan sigh.

The object of his passion, a comely if somewhat rotund Apache girl of no more than fourteen, was grinding corn across the street from where we sat. She worked for the alcalde of the village, an old Spaniard who also owned the general store, the only commercial establishment in town.

“But if you’re in love and have quit the battle, you don’t need an expensive gun,” Billy argued. He was intent upon raising the quality of his arsenal, though it seemed to me he was deadly enough with what he had.

Vivian ignored him. “I see cows,” he said.

He was right. Three cowboys were approaching the town from the south, driving forty or fifty head of cattle before them.

“I got worse news than that,” Billy said. “I see Indians.”

Sure enough, three Indians on small horses were loping in from the northwest.

“I don’t like this place much,” Billy said. “I wouldn’t have come if I’d known it was Indian country.”

“It’s just three, we can kill them,” Vivian said.

“Maybe and maybe not,” Billy said dubiously. The sight of the Indians had clearly left him feeling subdued.

“The Tulip always said not to drift too far north,” he said. “She said the meanest Spaniards and the toughest Indians live up toward the north part of the Territory.”

The cowboys were evidently not too cheerful about the arrival of the Indians, either. They stopped their little herd about a half mile south of town and held a quick discussion among themselves.

Then one spurred his horse and came racing into town lickety-split, leaving the other two to hold the cattle. He raced right up to the wall where we were sunning ourselves and yanked his horse back on its haunches.

“Tell Bloody Feathers there’s his beef,” he said.

The name had an electric effect on Vivian Maldonado—he jumped to his feet at once.

“Bleedy Feathers, is that him?” he asked.

“We don’t speak the Apache language,” Billy observed to the cowboy in the formal tone he was apt to adopt when disconcerted.

“Why, Bloody Feathers speaks American as good as you do,” the cowboy said, obviously impatient to be leaving.

“He’s Old Whiskey’s son,” he added. “The old man sends him fifty beeves a month so he won’t be scalping the cowpokes.”