Like most of the temporary residents of Crow Town, he had gone there because he had more or less used up the West. His career had taken him from Memphis to Abilene, from Abilene to Dodge City, from Dodge City to Silver City, from Silver City to Denver, from Denver to Deadwood, from Deadwood to Cheyenne, from Cheyenne to Tombstone, and from Tombstone to Crow Town.

Other renegades, whether Mexicans, Swedes, Indians, Irish, or American, took the same route in different order. What they shared was a sense that there weren't too many places left where life was so cheap that the law wouldn't bother trying to preserve it. Why send Rangers, or the army, to clean out a dirty little village in the sandhills, whose residents were so quarrelsome that they could be counted on to eliminate one another themselves, at the rate of one or two a month?

Renegades of all descriptions could reside in Crow Town and feel themselves safe from the law-- they just weren't safe from one another. The few women who came there enjoyed no illusions about their safety. They weren't safe from anyone, and they knew it.

Very few lawmen ventured into the sandhills.

"I doubt even Woodrow Call would go to Crow Town," Billy Williams said, some two months before Maria left. He was discussing the matter in Maria's kitchen with an experienced smuggler named Olin Roy, whose specialty was moving gold across the border, at the behest of corrupt Mexican generals who were afraid they would be robbed by generals yet more corrupt.

Olin Roy was a large man, weighing just over three hundred pounds. He had trouble finding mounts that could carry him swiftly over the distances he sometimes had to cover.

"I expect Call would go to Crow Town if he felt like it," Olin said. "Probably he don't feel like it, though." Maria overheard the conversation. She could not have avoided it, since Billy and Olin were in her kitchen. Olin Roy had once tried to marry her. She had refused him, but he still had hopes.

He and Billy were opposites in one respect: Billy was always drunk, Olin always sober.

Though large, Olin was delicate in his appetites. He could stomach only the mildest of peppers, preferring to diet on raw eggs stirred into a little sugary milk. In his travels, eggs were often unavailable to him. As a concession to the great fondness Maria knew he bore her, she tried to have eggs on hand when he came to visit. She could tell that Olin appreciated such small attentions.

When Billy and Olin were in Ojinaga at the same time, Maria was careful. She was no man's woman, but men were men and she had a lot of trouble with men who became confused about her affections.

Her first husband, Carlos Garza, was so jealous that he would fight any man who turned his eyes in Maria's direction. She was beautiful then; men often turned their eyes; there were many fights. She tried to soothe Carlos, to see that he rose content from their bed, but her love, though she gave it all, was not enough. Even if he had just left her bed, jealousy burned in Carlos's dark eyes. He loved, but he could not trust, and when she became pregnant with Joey he beat her and accused her of taking a lover. He would not accept that the child was his.

For Maria, his distrust brought pain and shock.

She was young, and she had given herself body and soul to Carlos. She could not understand how he could think she would accept another man. She wanted no other man, could not even imagine wanting one. Only Carlos Garza could move her. He was very handsome, and he could move her with a touch or a look. Many times she begged him not to be foolish, not to fight over things that wouldn't happen, over feelings she didn't have. But Carlos was like a deaf man. From him, Maria learned that few men trusted women. Carlos heard only his own fears. Maria's words meant nothing, for to Carlos, women were liars.

When Joey was one year old, Carlos noticed a soldier turn his eyes to Maria.

She was making tortillas, outside in the sun.

The soldier, a fat Federale, was sitting in a wagon, across the street. It was a hot day.

Probably the soldier was hungry, and only wanted a few of the tortillas Maria was making.

But Carlos didn't think the soldier only wanted tortillas. Maria had seen the man look, but her mind was on her task. Carlos was supposed to be carrying water. She thought he was at the river, until she heard the sound of his voice, raised in anger. The soldier had a crowbar, since the Federales had been repairing the telegraph. She saw the soldier strike Carlos once, but he struck so hard that Maria was a widow before she could even run across the street. Carlos had been right about the soldier, too. Three weeks later, he was back in Ojinaga. Maria spat on him in full view of several Federales. She expected to be killed, but in fact, the man was a coward and did nothing. For a year, Maria felt guilty. She felt she had not done enough to make Carlos happy.

If she had done even a little more, perhaps Carlos would not have been so tormented by jealousy. If he had lived, surely in time he would have come to accept that she wanted no other man.

But Carlos died, leaving Joey fatherless and herself a widow. Since then, she had been cautious around males. She treated them carefully, as vaqueros treated bulls. Everyone knew that bulls were at their most dangerous when they fought, and at such times, the loser was more dangerous than the winner.

Maria didn't want Billy and Olin to fight. She valued their experience and their affection and didn't want to lose one of them in a silly fight.

"I don't think either of you know this Woodrow Call," Maria said.

"I know him, but I'll be perfectly happy to leave him alone," Olin said.

The two men fell silent. Mention of Call seemed to remind them of the uncertainty of life, along the border.

"I'll do better than that," Olin added.

"I'd ride about a hundred miles out of my way, to avoid the man." "Didn't you sell Call the horse that killed his boy?" Billy asked.

"No, no," Olin said, wishing the legend of the Hell Bitch would just die.

"Why, I thought, you sold her to Call," Billy said. "That's what everybody thinks." "I did once own that mare," Olin admitted. "At the time, I had no idea Call had a son for her to kill." It was growing dark; great shadows stretched into Chihuahua. The two men talked too much history, too much about things that were past. Bad things had happened to her, too, but she did not like to dwell on them. A certain restlessness took her, when she heard too much about the past. She still liked to laugh, to dance a little in the cantina.

Roberto Sanchez, her last husband, had not been a very good man, but despite that, she missed him. She would have liked to have a husband. She enjoyed being with a man at night, and not just a pistolero or a man of the cantina. She wanted a man who was not so prone to comings and goings, one who would spend months or even years with her; someone whose hands she liked, whose ways she liked. Perhaps this man, if she could find him, would also like her ways, and would welcome the laughter in her. Not all men liked happiness in a woman; they seemed to fear her laughter. Was it only men who were supposed to laugh?