He liked the old man, though. It astonished him that a man Famous Shoes' age could travel faster on foot than the rest of them traveled horseback. He stayed ahead of them all day, moving at his strange little trot.

The four of them watched the rest of the night, but there was no more shooting. About dawn, Call thought he heard something, a kind of cry or keening. But he couldn't figure out what might be making it.

"Could it be an eagle?" he asked Pea Eye. "They say eagles scream, but I've never heard one." Pea Eye heard the sound only faintly.

He had no idea what it was.

Before it was fully light, Call had them headed toward the east.

"What about Famous Shoes?" Brookshire asked. "Shouldn't we wait for him?" "He's a tracker, we don't have to wait for him," Call said. "He'll find us." Famous Shoes did find them, about an hour later. He was down in a little ravine, and he had Ben Lily with him. The old hunter was shaggy, filthy, and mad.

"It was the manburner," Famous Shoes said, as he trotted up out of the ravine. "He has seven men with him." "He burnt my best dog," Ben Lily said. "Kilt all nine of them, and burnt one alive." "That's what we heard, I guess," Call said. "That's the sound a dog makes when it's being burned alive." "He wanted to burn me," Ben Lily said.

"I hid in a snake den. His men shot my dogs. They roped old Flop and burnt him." "Not to eat, though," Famous Shoes said. "You can see--the dog is a little ways ahead." Ben Lily sat on a rock, unkempt and bewildered. Call offered to let him ride one of the pack horses, if he wanted to come with them, but the old man didn't even answer. He sat on the rock, shaking his head and mumbling.

"I think he's gone loco," Famous Shoes said quietly, to Call.

"He's always been loco," Call said. "Now he's old, and he's lost his dogs. If I were him I'd quit, but I ain't him." Call went over to the old hunter, who seemed stunned by the calamity that had befallen him in the night. He held an old Winchester; apart from two cartridge belts, he seemed to have no equipment. Ben Lily was reputed to be an exceptional shot, exceptional enough to have killed more than two thousand bears and an unreckoned number of mountain lions. Call remembered him as having keen, mean eyes. This morning, his eyes seemed vague.

"He burnt old Flop," Ben Lily said.

"Old Flop was my best dog." "You're lucky he didn't burn you, Mr.

Lily," Call said. "You'd better follow along with us for a day or two, until we know where he is and where he's going. Next time, you might not make it to the snake den." The old man shook his head. He wore a ragged cap, which looked as if it had been made from a wolf skin. He kept putting it on, and then taking it back off.

"I'm going to Santa Fe," he said. "I got to get some new dogs." "You won't need them, if Mox Mox catches you," Call said. "You better come with us until we stop him." "I got to get some dogs," Ben Lily repeated. "I can't run no bears or tree no lions without some dogs." "I can't take you against your will, Mr. Lily, but you'd be wiser to come with us," Call said. "This man's not your ordinary killer. He's the manburner." Ben Lily paid no attention; he was looking to the southwest, toward the distant mountains. His eyes seemed blurred and tired, but Call supposed they might clear quickly enough if he had a lion, or better yet, a bear in his sights.

"Them mountains are full of lions, but there ain't no bear," he said. "I be going on to Wyoming, I guess. There's bear up there in Wyoming." He stood up and looked around, as if surprised to see that he was among people and not dogs.

"That killer kilt my dogs," he repeated.

"I best go to Santa Fe." His eyes turned to the northwest; he stared at the distances.

"You could go with us to Roy Bean's," Call suggested. "He usually has a few dogs." "No, I don't like Bean," Ben Lily said. "His dogs are just hounds. One mean lion could run them all off. I won't hunt with dogs that run from lions." "Be careful, then," Call said, but the old man either didn't hear him, or didn't care to respond. He put his Winchester on his shoulder and climbed out of the ravine, heading north.

Though he seemed stiff in his movements, he kept moving north and was soon out of sight.

Brookshire couldn't get used to the way people behaved in the West. The old man had no blanket, or kit of any kind. No doubt he had matches somewhere about his person, but otherwise he was setting out to walk hundreds of miles, in the wintertime, with nothing but a gun and two cartridge belts, and in country where there were at least two deadly killers on the loose.

"He just hunts?" Brookshire asked.

"Yes, all his life," Call said. "I never heard of him doing anything else." "If he was born today, he'd have to do something else," Deputy Plunkert said. "There wouldn't be enough varmints to satisfy him. I've never even seen a wild bear. The circus come once and it had a little bear, but it was tame." "You're right," Call said. "Mr. Lily's worked himself out of a job, where bears are concerned, unless he heads for Alaska." Call felt some sadness as he watched Ben Lily disappear into the sage and the distance, his rifle on his shoulder. It was unlikely that he would ever see the old man again. Call had never liked him, really. The two of them had probably not exchanged a hundred words in all their various brief meetings over the years. Ben Lily would talk of nothing except what he was hunting at the time, and Call hunted only for practical purposes and had nothing to say about it.

But Ben Lily was one of the old ones of the West. Ben Lily and Goodnight and Roy Bean and a few others. None of them were particularly likable, although Charles Goodnight had become friendlier than Call had ever expected him to be. But all of them, and those like them who had fallen--Gus McCrae and old Kit Carson, the Bent brothers, Shanghai Pierce and Captain Marcy--had been part of the adventure. Gus McCrae had declared the adventure over before the Hat Creek outfit had ever crossed the Yellowstone. A few days after he said it, he had gone off adventuring and been killed. Gus had been both right and wrong. The exploring part of the adventure had ended, but not the settling part, and settling, in the time of the Comanche and the Cheyenne and the Apache, had plenty of adventure in it.

Now, the settling had happened. Ben Lily and Goodnight and Roy Bean and, he supposed, himself--for he, too, had become one of the old ones of the West--were just echoes of what had been. When Lily fell, and Goodnight, and Bean and himself, there wouldn't even be echoes, just memories.