The man was still reaching for her gun, and she still drew back.

"No, thanks, I live for myself," John Wesley replied.

"Captain Call will kill him," Maria said.

"For all you know, he might kill you, too." "No, they ain't paying him for me, they're just paying him for your boy," Wesley Hardin said.

"Call's economical. He don't kill just anybody that needs killing. He just kills when he's paid." Then he grew enraged; his splotchy face turned red and white.

"It's too damn cold to be standing in the wind.

Give me the gun and come in, if you want to discuss your son." "If I come in, it will be with my gun," Maria said.

The scabby man seemed to lose interest in taking her pistol from her. He looked again at the dead pig.

"I wish there was some way we could charge people that want to come and look at this pig you killed," he said, shivering. He kicked the pig a time or two; his boots had holes in them. Maria could see his toe through one of the holes.

"These Texans are superstitious," he said.

"They think this pig was the devil. I could have killed it years ago, and I would have, too, if it had ever bothered me. I figured it was more interesting to let it live, so people would have something to be scared of." Maria followed him into the low building. No more was said about taking her pistol. There seemed to be a thin trail of blood leading into the cantina, yet the dead pig lay outside, in the sand.

The cantina smelled of tobacco, spit, and whiskey. The limping man had his boot off. The trail of blood had come from his foot. The man did not look well. He was shaking, and his sock was soaked with blood.

"What's wrong with his foot?" Maria asked.

"I stomped it. The sonofabitch is a card cheat," Wesley Hardin replied. "What's the news, other than that Woodrow Call is on his way to Crow Town?" "The-Snake-You-Do-Not-See is alive," Maria said. "Famous Shoes saw his track." "Oh, Mox Mox?" Hardin said. "He won't bother me. I'm meaner than he is.

It's bad news for anyone else who crosses his path, though. He's meaner than most folks." Maria saw him looking at her as a man looks, although she was dirty from her ride. She was glad she had kept her gun.

"There's a bed in that corner," Wesley Hardin said, pointing. "Come crawl in it with me." Maria thought she should have known that was what he wanted when he invited her into the cantina.

Killers she had known had not wanted women much.

Their interest was in other things, as Joey's was.

She said nothing, but she was glad she had her gun.

"You're a fine one," Hardin said. "You come in here and kill our best pig, and you ask me to help your killer son, but you won't crawl in bed with me, even though I asked you polite. Have you got some old punch you bed down with, down in Mexico?" Maria remembered that Billy Williams had warned her about Crow Town. It had been foolish for her to bother the killer at all. She didn't know why she had thought he might help.

"A dollar and a quarter, then?" Wesley Hardin asked. "Red can pay you. He owes me money. If he wants to throw in seventy-five cents for himself, he can have the second turn and you'll be two dollars richer before you even eat breakfast." Maria turned and walked out the door. The killer gave her a hot look, but he didn't follow. He was shuffling cards.

She walked past the dead pig, and went to Joey's house. When she pushed inside, her feet and hands were cold, although it had only been a short walk. The woman who smelled was crying, and so were the two girls. The door to Joey's room was open. He was gone, and so was his rifle.

Maria ran out of the house, hoping he was still in sight; maybe he would at least let her ride with him for a while, out of the bad town.

But Joey wasn't in sight, and neither was Grasshopper. Joey was gone, and he had stolen her horse. Maria felt that she must be the most foolish mother in the world, to ride so far in the winter, into the place of the Texans, for such a boy. Now she was afoot, and tired, in a town where the men were hard. Call was coming, and The-Snake-You-Do-Not-See was somewhere around.

Maria began to weep, at her own folly.

She knew her son. She should never have given him a chance to steal her horse. Now she was really in trouble. She remembered the killer's hot look.

She would have to cross the cold river again, to get back home, and this time she would have no horse to warm her at night.

"Did he say anything when he left?" she asked the white woman, once both of them had stopped crying.

"Maybe he just went to hunt antelope," she added.

"He didn't say nothing. He don't usually say nothing, in the morning," Beulah said. "I didn't want to make him mad, so I didn't ask. He gets real mad if you ask." "Yes, he thinks somebody crowned him king," Maria said. "Do you have any food I could take?" The white woman looked hopeless.

"We don't have no food," she said.

Her face was streaked with tears. She, too, had made a mistake in coming to Crow Town, Maria thought. Probably this white woman had made many mistakes. Now she wasn't young, she smelled bad, and she was in a bad place with no food.

It would not be easy for her, or for the fat girls, either.

"I'm going to Mexico. Do you want to go home with me?" Maria asked the two girls.

If the three of them traveled together, it might be warmer. Then she remembered the pig she had killed--there was her food.

The girls were very young. They looked scared.

"We don't have nobody, in Mexico," Gabriela said. Her sister seemed numb. She wouldn't speak. "We don't have nobody here, either. We don't have nobody." "Do you know anybody with a horse we could borrow?" Maria asked. "I killed the pig, but he is too big, I can't drag him. I can butcher him, but I can't drag him. I need a horse, for a little while." At home, she had always done the butchering, whether of pigs or of goats. None of her husbands were good at it. Benito wouldn't even try to butcher. He hated blood, and butchering would have made him sick. Then, in the end, he was butchered himself, and hung like a carcass, his own blood draining.

"I'll get Red's horse," Beulah said.