"You might be wrong," he suggested. "We are all wrong, sometimes. Maybe the guts are trying to fool you." "Maybe," Goat Woman said.

"Do they ever try to fool you?" Famous Shoes asked.

"No," Goat Woman replied. "But sometimes, I get confused and don't see what is plain." "Can anything change the future?" Famous Shoes asked. He rarely got a chance to talk to Goat Woman, who knew about many things he would like to understand.

"Yes, the stars," Goat Woman said. "The stars can change the future. But I don't think they'll change it for Maria." Now he was actually with Maria, who was wet and cold beside the Pecos. He knew what old Goat Woman knew, and Maria didn't, although it concerned Maria's own death. She didn't want him to take the killers to her son, but if he didn't do it and do it quickly, her son might kill her.

It was a dilemma that made his mind tired.

Usually the sleet freshened him, but this morning he did not seem very fresh. He didn't know what to do.

Maria was warming up, and as she grew warmer, she also grew more and more angry. She had been grateful to the old man for saving her from freezing.

But when she discovered that he was leading Captain Call's deputy, she stopped being grateful.

She wanted the old man to take the deputy far away.

"I want you to go," Maria said. "This deputy might show up any time. If he sees me here alone, he will figure it out and tell the Captain." "The Captain will figure it out anyway," Famous Shoes said. "I can't fool him.

He's the Captain. All he does is kill men." "Maybe, but you don't need to help him," Maria said. "Let him catch Joey himself, if he can." "All right, I will leave," Famous Shoes said, very annoyed.

"Thank you for your help with the coffee. Now go away," Maria said. "I don't want this man to see me. I have to help my son." "If you are in Juarez, you should see Goat Woman," Famous Shoes said. He was outraged. He had kept the woman from freezing, and now she was sending him away, all because of a boy who would kill her someday. She didn't seem to understand that he was old and had to make a living.

Also, he wanted badly to learn about the tracks in books. Pea Eye's woman might teach him, if he stayed with Pea Eye and brought him home.

But he couldn't say much to Maria, without revealing what he had heard from old Goat Woman.

"Next time you cross this river, you need to build a bigger fire," he said.

Then he remembered the tracks, near Agua Prieta.

"The-Snake-You-Do-Not-See is alive," he said. "You need to be careful. Don't let him get you and burn you." "The-Snake-You-Do-Not-See?" Maria asked. She remembered hearing that there was such a man, and that he was evil, but she didn't know much about him.

Famous Shoes turned back up the river to find Pea Eye. It was a nuisance. He had been happy to see Maria, when he found her soaking wet and freezing, but she had been disagreeable and had made him feel confused. If he took Captain Call to Joey Garza, it might save her life. But if he took the Captain to Joey, Maria would hate him, although Joey was a bad son and meant his mother no good.

It was a confusion that he didn't know whether to mention to Pea Eye. He would have to think about it when he found him.

Maria stayed by the fire until she was dry.

She thought at one point that she saw a rider to the north; perhaps it was the man Famous Shoes was with, Pea Eye. She didn't know what to do. She thought she might try to slip away quickly, on Grasshopper. But then she lost sight of the man--if it had been a man. She wasn't quite sure she had seen him. Perhaps it had only been an antelope. The air was still full of sleet, and it was hard to see clearly, very far.

No rider appeared, so Maria wrapped up in her poncho and made her way into the sandhills, toward Crow Town. The sleet rattled on the chaparral bushes, but soon, over the rattling, she heard the sound of crows, and began to see them, sitting on the cold bushes or in the little skinny black mesquite trees. The crows cawed at her as she rode. Grasshopper didn't like it.

He would have liked to go away from the crows, but Maria wouldn't let him. Soon there were crows all around them, in the trees and in the air. As she got closer to the settlement, the wheeling, gliding crows seemed thicker than the sleet.

The settlement, when she came to it, was just a few bumps on the plain. There were several low houses, none of them much higher than the hills of sand. Smoke rose into the air, mixing with the sleet, rising high with the crows.

Joey's house was easy to find, because his black horse grazed behind it, hobbled to a long rope.

There was not much to graze on, just a few little sage bushes and a tuft or two of grass. The horse lifted its head when it saw Grasshopper. The two horses had met the last time Joey was in Ojinaga. The black horse neighed, and when he did, a chubby young Mexican woman came out the door. When she saw Maria, she quickly retreated. A second later, a white woman came out. The woman was shivering; she wore only a thin housecoat. But she waited politely for Maria to speak.

"Is my son here?" Maria asked. She did not dismount.

"Joey Garza," she said, in case the woman was stupid and could not think who her son might be.

"Joey, yes," Beulah said. "He's here, but he ain't awake." "Wake him and tell him his mother is here," Maria said. "I have some news he needs to know." "You can come in. I ain't going to wake him," Beulah said. "He don't like it when people wake him up." Maria got off Grasshopper and pushed into the little house. The white woman had a smell. It must not be easy to wash, in such a place, where there was much sand and little water, Maria thought.

She did not look like a bad woman, the white woman; she was not young, and she was frightened.

Inside, two fat Mexican girls sat on a pallet, trying to huddle under one blanket.

There was another room. The low door to it was shut, but Maria pushed it open. Joey, her boy, was asleep, under many blankets. The room was dim. She could just see Joey's face, a young face, so young that for a moment she saw him merely as her son, the child she had borne, the child she loved.

He was still only a young boy. Perhaps it was not too late to save him, to help him become decent.

"Joey, wake up, you need to leave," she said, touching his shoulder.