“We'll let 'em water,” Bren Early said.

“You give 'em too much they'll camp there,” Moon said.

“We got no choice but have a talk first, do we?”

“No,” Moon said.

“So they'll water and stretch first, take a pee and look the situation over. I hope they don't use dirty language and offend the girl's ears.”

“Don't worry about her,” Moon said.

He laid his Greener on the chest-high crumbling wall, leaned the Sharps against it, cocked, in front of him, loosened the Colt's in his shoulder rig, then decided to take his coat off: folded it neatly and laid it on the wall a few feet away.

“They're watching us,” he said.

“I hope so,” Bren Early said.

Bren had leaned his Spencer against the adobe wall. Now he drew his big .44 S & W Russians, broke each one open to slide a bullet into the empty sixth chamber and reholstered his guns.

Sundeen's bunch was at the stock tank now, fifty yards off, stepping down from the saddles.

Bren Early said, “At Chancellorsville, a Major Peter Keenan took his Eighth Pennsylvania Cavalry, four hundred men and-buying time for the artillery to set up-charged them full against ten thousand Confederate infantry. Talk about odds.”

Moon turned his head a little. “What happened to 'em?”

“They all got killed.”

6

The Mexican in the straw Chihuahua hat who came over to talk looked at first like he was out for a stroll, squinting up at the sky and off at the haze of mountains, inspecting a cholla bush, looking everywhere but at Moon and Early until he was about thirty feet from the adobe wall, then giving them a surprised look: like, what're you doing here?

The riders back of him, small figures, stood around while their horses watered in the corrugated tank and in the slough that had formed from seepage. One of the figures-it looked to be Sundeen-had his peter out and was taking a leak facing this way: telling them what he thought of the situation.