Breast of pheasant could not have tasted better than those frijoles. While we were shoveling them in, Isinglass rode up with five or six Texans, all bristling with guns. I didn’t feel too good about the situation, but the old man dismounted and looked us over placidly.

“Ain’t you that circus monkey?” he asked Vivian Maldonado.

Vivian gave him a haughty look and kept on eating.

“He’s a trapeze star,” I explained quickly. “He’s famous all over Europe.”

“Oh,” Isinglass said. “I wish my ranch was as big as Europe, but I’ve studied the map and it ain’t.”

Then he motioned for the boy to put down the rifle.

“Son, if you’re planning to shoot them, shoot them,” he said. “I’ve no doubt they deserve it. But don’t just sit and hold a gun on the men while they’re trying to eat—it’ll just give them the rumbling stomach, and that’ll keep them awake.”

He untied his blanket from the saddle and bedded down practically in the ashes of the fire.

“I slept cold too often as a boy,” he said, noticing my surprise. “Now I like to snuggle up to a nice blaze when I can.”

The boy with the rifle fed the campfire all night, while the old man snored beside it and the Texans kept a vigilant watch.

“I guess they’ll hang us in the morning, but I’m too tired to worry,” Vivian said as he stretched out.

“Maybe Billy will save us,” I said, though I knew if Billy Bone was still alive he probably assumed the two of us were already dead.

21.

The Old West is gone now, and yet, in another sense, it’s the coming thing. I could make a profession just out of giving interviews about what they call the Battle of Skunkwater Flats, though none of the newspapermen or the historians really believe a word I say.

They’ve all made a study of it, you see, whereas I was just there. The very fact that I was there—it’s about the only fact they can’t dispute—just makes them edgy; in fact, it makes them jealous and produces much resentment. They’d all like me better if I were dead, like the other mighty men who fell that day.

I try to tell them it was just a long hot boring day, with a certain amount of fear mixed in—after all, I was squeezed into a sweltering cabin with a horse and a dead man and a bunch of moody gunfighters who made very little effort at conversation.

When the day finally ended, Joe Lovelady made his break and led off Mesty-Woolah and a few of the Texans, and Billy Bone crawled off unnoticed and caught my mule; the gunfighters fought until they were all shot dead, and then Vivian Maldonado and I walked over to the Isinglass camp and surrendered.