Olin told Billy Williams what he had seen, and Billy told many others. Soon a legend was born, the legend of Joey Garza's cave. It was said that Joey was filling a cave with things he had stolen: rifles, fine spurs, fancy bridles, ivory combs and jewels, stolen from the bedrooms of rich ranchers on both sides of the river. The river was no boundary to Joey. He crossed it as he would cross any stream.

Olin told Maria what he had seen. He loved Maria, and knew that she worried about her son. He also knew that things had not been good between mother and son since Joey returned from the Apaches.

"When he left here he was on a horse, a sorrel he got from Ramon's son," Maria said, in response to Olin's news. "When he came back, he was walking. He leaves on horseback--he returns on foot. Or he leaves on foot and returns with a horse.

He's a boy I don't understand." "Maybe Joey eats the horses. Apaches do, you know," Olin said, when he was discussing the matter with Billy Williams. "It's a long way from Ojinaga to Laredo, but Joey steals from Laredo like it was a candy store." "If he steals horses, then it's better that he eats them," Billy said. He had always liked Joey. He thought he was a good boy, but strange. Being strange was not something he could hold against anyone; after all, he himself was strange.

"Life makes everybody strange, if you keep living long enough," Billy told Maria, once.

Maria disagreed. "I am not strange," she said. "I could be a happy woman, if I had a little help." "Well, I'll help you," Billy said "You name it, I'll do it." "If you really wanted to help me, I wouldn't have to name it," Maria said. "You'd be doing it right now." She smiled when she said it, though.

Billy Williams felt disquieted. They had just eaten a good meal, cabrito and frijoles. What could it be that Maria wanted help with? He considered asking, but in the end, he didn't. He got drunk instead.

Maria had almost no money. She worked as a midwife for food, for herself and Rafael and Teresa. Her two brothers had run away to Texas, and her little sister had died one winter; she got a sickness in her chest and died within a week. Maria had to work hard to see that there was enough food for Rafael and Teresa. When Joey returned from his journeys, he always had money.

He wore it in a belt that went across his shoulders, like the belt of the machete she had once carried to defend herself against Ramon.

It angered Maria that her son would not share his money, not even the few pesos it would have taken, every week, to keep his family in food. Besides her midwifing, Maria did washing and cleaning, so as to be able to give corn and frijoles to her children.

Joey liked for his mother to wash his clothes, because she did it well. When she did them, they were clean and soft. Joey took the soft, clean clothes as his due. He never offered to pay for the food he ate, and he took no notice of his brother and sister at all, unless he was in the mood to torment one of them.

One day when Maria was tired and angry--an old man she cooked for had tried to poke his bony hand between her legs, and when she shoved him away, he spat at her--she challenged Joey about the cave.

"I hear you have a cave full of treasures near Boquillas," she said. "Is that true?" Joey looked at her insolently, as he always did when questioned. Who was this woman to ask questions of him? She was a woman who had whored with four men. Perhaps there had been even more.

"Where do you go, when you go?" Maria asked, when Joey said nothing. She felt like slapping him, maybe punching him with her fist. Rafael and Teresa, her damaged children, loved her. Even Rafael would come to her bed and try to speak to her, to express his little hopes. If he had a new chick, he would bring it to his mother and offer it to her as a present, cupping it tenderly in his large hands. Teresa would come to her bed to cuddle with her every morning. If Maria was sad, if tears leaked from her eyes, Teresa would whisper to her and wipe the tears away.

"Don't worry, Mama," Teresa said.

"I am here. Rafael is here. We will take care of you." It made Maria angry that her children who had no gifts--one who could not see, the other who could not reason--would help her with their love; while Joey, the brilliant one, the one whose mind was quick as a young deer, whose eyes were blue, whose teeth were so white that girls and even grown women melted at his smile--Joey gave nothing, not even little scraps of information. Maria did not really much want his money; what she wanted was his help.

"Someone saw you near Boquillas," Maria said. "Near the cave where you keep the treasures." "I don't have a cave," Joey said. "I go to Piedras Negras, not Boquillas. There is nothing in Boquillas." Maria thought of following Joey to his cave.

She didn't believe him when he said he didn't have one. She didn't want his money for herself, she wanted it for her children. She had heard that in the City of Mexico, there were doctors who could cure many ills. It was said that there were doctors who could make blind people see. She wanted to take Teresa to such a doctor. It saddened her that her little girl had never seen the beauty of the world.

Also, she had heard that there were doctors who could help people whose minds were incomplete, or whose thoughts could not stay in order. She wanted to take Rafael to such a doctor, so that someday he could think like other people.

Maria wanted to take her children and go and seek the great doctors, in the City of Mexico, but she had no money. Joey had money.

Maria wished he could be generous and give her what she needed, but she knew he never would. Joey was not generous, and not interested in her life or the lives of his brother and sister. He was only interested in himself.

"You help no one," she said to Joey one day, bitter.

"I help myself," Joey said.

"Are you the only one in the world?" Maria asked. "What is wrong with you?" Joey didn't answer. He left, as he always did if she asked questions.

The day Maria rode off to Crow Town to warn Joey that Captain Call, the famous manhunter, had been sent to kill him, Billy Williams sobered up and made food for Maria's children.

As he cooked and set the plates, Billy felt sad. He should have gone with Maria, although he was nearly as blind as Teresa. He would have gone if Maria had asked him, should have gone, even though she hadn't asked. He was too old for places such as Crow Town. Going there might mean his death, but it also might mean Maria's death. He would worry now until the moment he saw her again.

He wondered if Maria had refused him because he was a Texan. After all, her husbands had been Mexican. He didn't know if that had been her reason. Probably he had made some mistake and Maria had turned away from him instead of toward him. He ate his frijoles in sadness; he was old; it was too late. The large boy crooned, the little blind girl chattered. Billy thought it would be enough if Maria could just escape harm, if she could return from Crow Town to her children. His job was to stay sober and take care of her children.