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held in his left hand. Steaming hot. Smelling mighty fine.
    â€œWhere’s . . . ?” My voice cracked. Had to swallow down some spit. “Where’s the lady that’s been feeding me?” I asked.
    He laughed so hard he almost spilt the soup, which would have been a tragedy. Placing the bowl near my bedroll, he wiped his nose with the back of his left hand, and laughed some more. “I haven’t seen a lady since Prescott,” he said.
    I give him the dumb look.
    â€œI’ve been feeding you, mister.”
    â€œOh.” Sure couldn’t hide the disappointment in my voice. Because he dressed real fine, kept hisself clean and shaved, but this guy, iffen you was to ask me, was uglier than sin.
    â€œBrain must’ve been playing tricks on me,” I told him. “I saw this woman feeding me soup. With the damnedest, longest black snake hanging around her neck.”
    â€œLike this?” He pointed at the floor.
    Which is when I saw the whip. Well, they do call those whips “blacksnakes.”
    I laughed.
    â€œIt bites, sure enough,” my savior said. “Kills like a sidewinder. Eat your soup, if you’re able.”
    Well, knowing that this wasn’t some goddess saving my worthless hide but an ugly man with two pistols and a whip, I managed to get myself into a seated position, back against the wagon’s side, and tasted the soup. I’ve tasted better, but I smiled politely. And kept right on eating.
    â€œThat’s good to see,” the man said. He pointed a slim finger at me and the bowl and the spoon. “Thought you was gonna die on me. That would have set me back a spell.”
    â€œMaybe you won’t have to bury me,” I told him.
    â€œOh, I wouldn’t have buried you, mister. Takes too much time. I would have just tossed your body to the buzzards. You would have set me back ten dollars had you croaked. Juan Pedro said you’d surely die before we reached Calico. I bet against that old Mex.”
    â€œI’m glad Juan Pedro lost his bet.” Then his words struck me. I finished the soup, lifting the bowl and draining the rest. “You’re going to Calico?”
    He motioned at the crates and kegs. “That’s where we’re selling this.” He took the spoon and bowl, tossed them through the opening in the back of the wagon. “Juan Pedro!” he shouted. “More dishes for you. And you owe me ten dollars, old man.”
    His black eyes lighted back on me. “You owe me, too.”
    â€œI’m your servant,” I told him, and give him this slight bow.
    With a grin, he moved back, taking his whip with him, sitting on one of the kegs.
    â€œThat’s good to hear,” he said. “Because I can use a man like you.”
    Which made me a bit nervous, more wary.
    â€œYou know me?”
    â€œI know enough.” He reached into his vest pocket, pulled out a fine cigar—not one of them two-cent jobs I was prone to smoke, but a real fat expensive cigar—and fetched the candle, lighting the smoke, and him sitting on a keg of gunpowder with six or seven more kegs well within reach of some random spark.
    Didn’t offer me one of them cigars, but I don’t think I would’ve lit it up if he had. I’m a gambler, but I don’t take chances that might get me blowed to perdition.
    When the cigar’s tip was glowing, he moved the candle back atop the crate marked “Hammers” and exhaled a long stream of smoke toward the top of our canvas roof.
    â€œI find you half-dead, more like three-quarters dead, fried, soles of your boots worn to nothing, clothes threadbare, alone in the desert. No horse.” He stared at me, waiting for some response.
    â€œHad a buckskin,” I told him. “Died on this side of the Colorado River.” Figured there was no point in telling him how that horse had expired.
    â€œMost people would have returned to Arizona