IT’S A LONG RIDE SOUTH through New Mexico and Texas, and it seems even longer when you stop in every run-down, aimless little dried-up town, looking for Allie French. By the time we got to Placido, Virgil Cole and I were almost a year out of Resolution.

It was a barren little place, west of Del Rio, near the Rio Grande, which had a railroad station, and one saloon for every man, woman, and child in town. We went into the grandest of them, a place called Los Lobos, and had a beer.

Los Lobos was decorated with wolf hides on the wall and a stuffed wolf behind the bar. Several people looked at Virgil when he came in. He wasn’t special-looking. Sort of tall, wearing a black coat and a white shirt and a Colt with a white bone handle. But there was something about the way he walked and the way the gun seemed so natural. People looked at me sometimes, too, but always after they looked at Virgil.

“Think that wolf might’ve exprised of old age,” Virgil said.

“A long time ago,” I said.

“Exprised ain’t right,” Virgil said. “You went to West Point.”

“Expired,” I said.

“Means died,” Virgil said.

“Uh-huh.”

Virgil believed in self-improvement. He read a lot of books and had a bigger vocabulary than he knew how to use. He sipped his beer.

“Mexican,” he said. “Mexicans know how to make beer.”

“How much money you got?” I said.

“Got a dollar,” Virgil said.

“More than I got,” I said.

Virgil nodded.

“Guess we got to get some,” he said.

I grinned at him.

“We got sort of a limited range of know-how,” I said.

“Least we know it,” Virgil said.

“Lotta saloons, lotta whores,” I said. “Not much else.”