“The woman must have dropped it,” somebody said.

“The woman?” the man with the field glasses said.

A Lipan Apache woman who was his wife or his woman or just with him. Mr. Tanner hadn’t been clear about that. All they knew was that there was a woman in the hut with him and if the man wanted her to stay and get shot that was his business.

A Mr. Beaudry, the government land agent for the county, was there. Also Mr. Malson, manager of the Maricopa Cattle Company, and a horsebreaker by the name of Diego Luz, who was big for a Mexican but never offensive and who drank pretty well.

Mr. Beaudry, nodding and also squinting so he could picture the man inside the line shack, said, “There was something peculiar about him. I mean having a name like Orlando Rincon.”

“He worked for me,” Mr. Malson said. He was looking at Mr. Tanner. “I mistrusted him and I believe that was part of it, his name being Orlando Rincon.”

“Johnson,” Mr. Tanner said.

“I hired him two, three times,” Mr. Malson said. “For heavy work. When I had work you couldn’t pay a white man to do.”

“His name is Johnson,” Mr. Tanner said. “There is no fuzzhead by the name of Orlando Rincon. I’m telling you this fuzzhead is from the Fort Huachuca Tenth fuzzhead Cavalry and his name was Johnson when he killed James C. Erin six months ago and nothing else.”

He spoke as you might speak to young children to press something into their minds. This man seemed to have no feeling and he never smiled, but there was no reason to doubt him.

Bob Valdez arrived at the Maricopa pasture about noon. He was riding shotgun on the Hatch and Hodges run from St. David. He swung down from the boot, holding his sawed-off shotgun in the air, as the stage edged past the whiskey wagon.