“Hand him over now!” Jody yelled. “Do it quick and we’ll guarantee the rest of you safe passage.”

“Safe passage to the nearest tree is what they’d guarantee us,” Happy Jack remarked. “You should have killed that dern cowboy while you had the chance, Billy.”

“I know it,” Billy said. “Dern, I hate it that I missed.”

I suppose what united Billy and the other gunmen was their determination to defy any order, no matter who it came from, or what the consequences.

“What do you say we do, Joe?” Billy asked. He still had a pinched look.

“Nothing we can do but wait for night, if we can hold out,” Joe said. “In the night a few of us might sneak by them.”

That strategy didn’t lift Billy’s spirits; of course, it was scarcely dawn, and a long hot summer’s day stretched ahead. We had no water, little food, and could not move more than an inch or two in any direction without running the risk of being shot through the doorway. A sizable pool of blood had already leaked out of poor Barbecue Campbell, and the flies were buzzing around it.

The situation called for patience. Joe Lovelady and most of the gunmen had it, but Billy Bone was not a patient boy.

“I’ll be damned if I want to sit here all day,” he said. “Let’s charge them—at least we’d get a few.”

“You are brash,” Hill Coe said.

Joe Lovelady had been working with his pocket-knife at a small chink in the west wall of the cabin. I saw that he had gouged a tiny opening. He put his eye to it, and then motioned for me to do the same. My first try was a failure—I merely got sand in my eye. But on the second try I got a clear look down the arroyo. Far to the west, well out of range of any gunfire, sat two riders: the old man on the black nag, and the tall Negro on the camel.

“I guess Old Whiskey’s so rich now he just hires the killing done,” Pleasant Burnell said after he had had a look.

The Texans, irritated at not getting prompt compliance with their request, began to shoot again. Once more a rain of bullets began to splatter against the walls of the cabin. After a furious twenty minutes of fire, they stopped.

“Ask for a parley,” Hill Coe suggested when it was quiet enough that we could hear ourselves again.

“Why?” Happy Jack wondered. “They’ll parley and then hang us just the same.”

“I know, but it’s boresome sitting here,” Hill said. “A parley does pass the time.”

“I’ll talk,” Vivian Maldonado said. “I know Mexican.”

The thought of being the besieged group’s ambassador seemed to perk him up—although, of course, the Texans were speaking English.

“Parley!” Pleasant Burnell yelled. “We want to talk to Old Whiskey.”