In the code of the cowboy, it was right that Pedro should die. I felt that I had done a magnificent thing to kill him. Kidlike I had a notion that Jim Stanton had watched and approved.

But we did not go back to 101. We hid in chaparral patches in the day, traveling nights until we reached the Lazy Z range near the Rio Verde. They made me chuck-buyer here. We had to go thirty-five miles across the desert to the town of Las Cruces for our provisions. It was about three months after the murder of Jim Stanton that I took my last ride through the gulches. In a mean and shameful predicament my father found me.

Old Spit-Nosed Ben, the superannuated relic of the Lazy Z, was with me on that last ride. He was a sort of errand boy on the ranch. We had loaded up the ancient double-decker freight wagon with about 1,600 pounds of chuck. Ben was hitching up the ponies. We were just ready to leave.

And then it occurred to me that I would get a drink. I was the youngest peeler on the Lazy Z. Chuck- buying was a man-size job, and I had a sense of great importance in it. A fellow in the grocery had gibed at me. "Eh, little gringo diablo, little wart, where did they pick you off?"

I wanted to prove myself. At the 101 the men had held me down. Jim had shoved me away from whiskey. I felt it was time to assert myself.

The saloon was a dingy, one-roomed Spanish adobe with an atmosphere of stale frijoles and green flies.