“Oh, you’re so dern choosy,” Billy said. But his good humor had returned. Probably he had been contemplating challenging Doc Holliday, and was relieved not to have to do it. The thought of a pitched battle with Isinglass and his forces didn’t worry him in the least.

Fifteen minutes later we were all once again on the road—though of course it wasn’t a road, or even a patch. We just loped off to the southwest, across the great carpet of grass.

Billy Bone, in high spirits, jumped two young wolves and chased them willy-nilly over the prairie for miles.

17.

We slept that night at a place called Skunkwater Flats—in my view as good an example as one could find of the whimsicality of Western nomenclature.

For one thing, there was no water, and the old cabin where we all slept was in a gully, not on the flats. About sundown the sand had begun to blow fiercely, so it was nice to have the cabin, at least, though its door had fallen off, but it was puzzling that a dry place in a gully would be named Skunkwater Flats.

I asked Joe and Billy about it and they looked at me as if I’d gone daft.

“That’s just its name,” Billy said.

“Oh, you mean God named it Skunkwater Flats?” I asked with some irritation—my eyes were stinging and my clothes were full of grit from the sandstorm.

“Go to sleep, Sippy. A place is just called what it’s called,” Billy said.

Joe Lovelady seemed concerned, but not about nomenclature.

“We should have ridden all night,” he said. “Old Whiskey will.”

“It’s too dern dark and blowy to be riding around in these gullies,” Billy said with a yawn. “If that old man tries it he’ll fall off in one and break his neck. Or else he’ll get lost, and we’ll be shut of him.”

“Why, they say Old Whiskey has got a compass in his head,” Happy Jack observed. “They say he’s never been lost, night or day, rain or shine, in his whole life.”

“If he gets in shotgun range I’ll blow his dern compass out the other side of his skull,” Billy said. Then he wrapped his black coat around him a little tighter, and was soon asleep.