Anything for Billy by Larry McMurtry

Author:Larry McMurtry
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks
Published: 1988-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

17.

We slept that night at a place called Skunkwater Flats—in my view as good an example as one could find of the whimsicality of Western nomenclature.

For one thing, there was no water, and the old cabin where we all slept was in a gully, not on the flats. About sundown the sand had begun to blow fiercely, so it was nice to have the cabin, at least, though its door had fallen off, but it was puzzling that a dry place in a gully would be named Skunkwater Flats.

I asked Joe and Billy about it and they looked at me as if I’d gone daft.

“That’s just its name,” Billy said.

“Oh, you mean God named it Skunkwater Flats?” I asked with some irritation—my eyes were stinging and my clothes were full of grit from the sandstorm.

“Go to sleep, Sippy. A place is just called what it’s called,” Billy said.

Joe Lovelady seemed concerned, but not about nomenclature.

“We should have ridden all night,” he said. “Old Whiskey will.”

“It’s too dern dark and blowy to be riding around in these gullies,” Billy said with a yawn. “If that old man tries it he’ll fall off in one and break his neck. Or else he’ll get lost, and we’ll be shut of him.”

“Why, they say Old Whiskey has got a compass in his head,” Happy Jack observed. “They say he’s never been lost, night or day, rain or shine, in his whole life.”

“If he gets in shotgun range I’ll blow his dern compass out the other side of his skull,” Billy said. Then he wrapped his black coat around him a little tighter, and was soon asleep.

Hill Coe had not been able to bring along enough whiskey to make him thoroughly drunk, so he and Happy Jack and Pleasant Burnell gambled most of the night. Viv Maldonado, who hated sandstorms as much as I did, made a kind of tent of his heavy serape and hid in it, muttering and grumbling in Italian. Simp Dixon said he didn’t think he could sleep for fear of scorpions, which he claimed preferred sandy sites; but he lay down anyway and was soon snoring. His snore made the kind of sound a rasp makes against a horse’s hoof. Henry Knogle, the Tadpole, whistled most of the night, while his large companion, Barbecue Campbell, slept sitting up, his head fallen forward. From time to time he sneezed, his nose tickled by his own fine beard.

Joe Lovelady went out and sniffed the wind; when he returned he carefully led his horse inside, to the surprise of the gamblers.

“Why, you’re too cautious by far,” Hill Coe said with a stern look. “Even if they find us I doubt they’d shoot the horses. It would be poor economy.”

Joe didn’t reply. His horse was a young sorrel gelding with a fine head. He stood where Joe placed him and didn’t move during the night.

The wind howled and the sand blew through the open door; from time to time the wind blew out the candle, but the gamblers always relit it.

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