“There must not be many Yankees like you,” he said, smiling at me with some fondness. “If there was many like you, they’d never have won the war.”

Joe Lovelady was peering out the small hole he had made in the cabin. He evidently saw something that interested him, because he motioned to Billy and Billy took a look. When Billy stepped back, he was grinning.

“It’s your dern mule,” he said. “She must have got loose last night.”

I peeked, and sure enough there was Rosy, grazing on a sagebrush some half mile down the arroyo.

“If you can catch her, you might make it,” Joe said to Billy.

“Why, it’s Sippy’s mule—I have no right to her,” Billy said. “I may be low, but I ain’t low enough to steal a friend’s mule in a gunfight.”

“Billy, she’s yours,” I said. “I don’t mind walking a ways.”

Billy peeked through the chink again at Rosy.

“Okay,” he said. “Thank you, Mr. Sippy. If I make it through them, and they don’t hang you right away, I’ll come and slaughter the whole crowd and get you out.”

Vivian Maldonado surprised everyone by handing his beautiful pearl-handled Colt to Billy Bone.

“You wanted it, take it, Beely,” he said.

“But what’ll you shoot, Viv?” Billy asked.

“I don’t shoot,” Vivian said.

“Dern, Viv, I never figured you for a suicide,” Happy Jack said.

“You are the suicide, if you try to get out of this,” Vivian said. “They will shoot you with ten bullets—twenty bullets.

“I will stay with Mr. Sippy,” he added, with some dignity. “We will behave like gentlemen.”

Joe Lovelady had been watching the fading light.

“It’s time to run,” he said, carefully turning his gelding around. “Could somebody just ease that corpse out of the door for me? I want to be racing when I leave the shelter.”

Simp Dixon and Hill Coe positioned themselves by the corpse, prepared to yank it inside when Joe gave the signal.

Joe tightened his girth—then he handed Hill Coe his pistol. “You might need this extra gun,” he said. “I’ll just keep my rifle.”

Then he looked at Billy Bone, who had been watching his friend prepare to leave with a certain sadness in his face.

“Give ’em a race, Joe,” Billy said. “I’m sorry I put you to the trouble.”

Joe Lovelady thought the situation over for a moment. I don’t know what he might have said to his friend had they been alone—perhaps he would have voiced a reproach, or perhaps left with a word of encouragement or kindness; he was of a kind nature, certainly.

But they weren’t alone. I suppose Joe thought it best just to be practical.

“Bill, when you approach that mule, approach her soft,” he said. “She’s a skittish mule.”