Some cowboys were slumped in chairs on the porch of a hotel and not doing anything else at all. Four hatless old men sat at a picnic table outside playing nine-point pitch, a nickel a game. A woman in a pale gingham dress and a sunbonnet crossed the street with a market basket. Bob kicked his horse up to a walk beside her but she said she didn’t talk to strangers.

“Maybe I could find someone to introduce us,” he said, but she hustled inside a dress shop.

Bob crossed over to a man in a bowler hat and a suit coat that was only buttoned at the lapels so that his checkered vest and watch chain showed. Bob told him he was looking for lodging in the town and a place to get a tub bath and a smith who could doctor the horses. They wanted new oats and new shoes, he said, and they were badly fistulowed.

The man directed Bob without taking his hands from his pockets and the five of us tied up at a boarding house where the widow had a sign up saying, NO COLOREDS. NO CHINESE, NO MEXICANS, NO IRISH. We heaved our saddles up her varnished stairs to a room of six single bunks and a dresser and a China washbowl and pitcher. There was a thundermug under each bed. We each paid a nickel and the widow fried up tomatoes and bread, put on a pot of coffee, and brushed down our coats and hats with a broom. We slept in our clothes until three in the afternoon and sat in iron tubs while a girl poured steaming water from a bucket. Then we sat in the widow’s parlor in our wrinkled black suits, watching the brass pendulum clock until Bob descended from the bedroom with envelopes of spending money that he parceled out at the door. Thereupon we split up, each to his separate pleasure.

Blackface Charley Bryant knew the place and he left us without so much as a good-bye, and he walked the plank bridge across the arroyo with his head sunk down and the lapel collar up on his coat. He bought jars of green peppers and Chile Colorado from a Mexican and squatted down in the dirt to eat them. A dog came up to sniff and Bryant gave him a lick of a pepper he held by the stem. The dog grimaced as much as a dog can and Bryant got a big kick out of that. He ate the pepper and wiped his hands on his pants. The Mexican was staring at the ugly blister on Bryant’s face.

“Do you sell peyote?” Bryant asked.

The Mexican frowned.

“How about tobacco? Do you have it?”

The Mexican sold him a pouch for a dime and they both sat in the dirt to roll it in papers and smoke. Bryant said, “What do you think of my scar?”

The Mexican squinted and smoked.