Bob and I had stayed cooped up there since Leliaetta in September and now it was late November and I was growly when Bill rode up into the yard. It was seven o’clock in the morning and I was sitting in the two-seater porch swing using my fingers to rub brown paste polish into my boots. I heard his horse nicker and cocked a pistol that was folded into my coat; then Bill lifted a pine branch aside from the lintel and green needles cascaded down. He said, “Excuse me but I’m looking for Pecos Pete.”

I grinned and said, “You got the next best thing.”

Bob heard Bill’s voice and hopped barefoot in his bedroom, hurrying into bib overalls, then banged out through the screen door to clap Bill’s back and hug him in welcome and call for Eugenia to meet his older brother.

Her blond hair was unpinned onto shoulders of a white robe that she was tying as she came out. She shook his hand and stayed shy and tilted her head for her comb. I don’t think she liked Bill much.

My brother Bill put on an apron and cooked a Spanish omelet and fried potatoes and the four of us sat down for a long breakfast during which Bill announced his plans. He wanted a fresh start, to get into Oklahoma real estate, move his wife Jenny and the kids back, study law. He’d settle scores with the railroads, talk with the common people, run for the state legislature. He’d be governor when he was forty. He’d be the good Dalton, the front. He’d invest whatever money we stole and mail what we needed down to the Argentine. And he could spy for us, take the heat off, coddle the lawmen and maybe wangle a pardon for us some day. “It’ll work, Bob. By God, it will!”

“I take it you’re asking Bob to stake you,” said Eugenia, blunt as a ball-peen hammer.

“I’m asking, Miss Moore, for a loan; that’s all.” He winked in my direction. “I’d borrow from the Katy but I heard the railroad already gave all its money away.”

Bob rocked back in his chair, amused. He folded his arms and looked at his woman, awaiting her response.

I said, “I couldn’t come up with a more bodacious idea if I tried.”

Eugenia turned her coffee cup. “Have you had experience in the real estate business, Bill?”

Bill rolled his eyes at my brother. “I confess, Miss Moore, that I haven’t traded in land, not in this neighborhood, but I guarantee that during the last thirty-nine years I’ve been out of the nest I haven’t exactly had my thumb up my keester and my mind off in Arkansas!”

Bob said, “I get asked for loans all the time, Bill. I’m trying to clamp down. How much was it you needed?”