I suggested a trip to La Glorieta, the village where the invading Texans had been captured. I thought a visit to the site of their defeat might revive my interest in the half-completed Black Beans.

Billy came along without protest. “Sister Blandina lives over that way,” he said. “She’s one of the few people who likes me.”

A chill was blowing down from the Sangre de Cristo as we rode west. Billy always hated to see the temperature drop below eighty degrees—he moped along all afternoon with his blanket wrapped around him, looking shivery and depressed.

Fortunately we were back where there was wood. That night we built a fire that would have cooked an ox. Billy sat so close to it that sparks kept popping into his blanket, causing it to smolder.

“It wouldn’t be easy to kill that Indian,” he said, his mind still going over the encounter in Anton Chico.

“But you’ve no reason to kill him,” I pointed out. “He wasn’t hostile. He just came to get his beeves.”

“He made Viv look silly,” Billy said. “And Viv’s fast.”

“None of these gunfighters amount to much,” he said, a little later. “Hill Coe missed that bottle, and Viv let himself get picked up by the ear. They’re said to be the two best—if that’s so, the rest of them won’t last no time.”

“They could take up a profession,” I suggested.

“What, be cowboys for thirty dollars a month?” Billy said. The notion clearly struck him as ridiculous, and I suppose it was.

“It’s good enough for Joe Lovelady,” I remarked.

Billy thought that over for a long time, a sad look on his face. I believe he truly missed his friend.

“Well, Joe’s gone along,” he said finally. “If we let the Apaches steal these horses, like they did the last time I came up here, we’ll just have to try and get them back ourselves.”

14.

Sister Blandina, Billy’s friend, was a tiny little nun. She stood about donkey-high and was sassy as a banty hen. When we rode up, she was on the roof of the little church, supervising some repairs to the adobe.

“Why, Billy, where have you been?” she called down. “And where’d you get the Yankee?”

“He was lost, I just happened to find him,” Billy replied. The sight of the active little nun seemed to cheer him greatly. She hurried down a ladder and soon supplied us with heaping bowls of pozole, a hominy stew much favored in certain parts of Mexico.

Sister Blandina was not accomplished at keeping still. While we ate she climbed up and down the ladder a few times to see that the adobe was being set right, assisted in the butchering of a sheep, and swept the floor of the church’s little kitchen, all the while peppering Billy with questions.