Two of the men wet themselves. They were too afraid of his bullets even to move behind a bush.

Watching the passengers tremble was more satisfying than killing them. None of them were people of importance, and there was no distinction to be gained from killing people of no importance. Making people dead was easy, but it was no longer interesting to him.

Wounding Captain Call so badly and so easily was a triumph Joey knew he would never be likely to equal. But he would never need to equal it, so potent was the reputation of the man he had wounded. Even if he never shot another person or robbed another train, his reputation would grow and grow along the border and all through the West. He had ended the career of the most famous manhunter of all. People would still be talking about Joey Garza when he was an old man, even if he never killed or robbed again.

He planned to kill again, though, and quickly.

He wanted to shoot Captain Call's three deputies. They were probably too inept to be a nuisance, but Joey wanted it known that he had wiped out Captain Call's whole party. That would build his reputation even higher.

Joey followed the blond woman all the way to Ojinaga. From time to time, he took out his spyglass and trained it on the horse carrying Captain Call. He expected to see that the old man had died. But every time he looked, he saw movement. Somehow the old man still lived.

When he saw the woman lead the horse upriver toward the village, he let her go and rode off a few miles into Mexico, where he made camp. He meant to travel up the Rio Concho and locate the deputies.

The next morning, a little before midday, he found their camp. They were almost a day's ride inside Mexico, and they seemed simply to be waiting.

They were probably waiting for Captain Call.

They didn't know what had befallen him.

Joey was surprised to see that there were now only two deputies and old Famous Shoes. He saw no reason to kill the old man.

Probably the third deputy had met with an accident of some sort.

Joey studied the camp for a while with his spyglass, trying to decide on a method of attack that would provoke the utmost fear. After giving it some thought, he decided to shoot the horses and the two pack animals first. Maybe he could scare the men out into the desert. If he frightened them badly enough, he might not even have to shoot them. He could simply chase them into the desert, shooting now and then to scare them farther away from the river. When he had them exposed and lost, he could simply go away and leave them to freeze or starve to death.

Joey decided to wait until the next morning. Captain Call would not be coming to their rescue. Unless Famous Shoes happened to be wandering around tracking some animal, no one would know he was there. His shots would come as a complete surprise.

The next morning, Joey's first shot killed a pack mule just as Brookshire was trying to extract some coffee from one of the saddlebags.

The mule fell in Brookshire's direction, knocking him back several feet and causing him to spill the coffee. Before he could scramble to his feet, a second shot killed the other pack mule.

Pea Eye had been frying bacon. A third shot kicked the frying pan into the air, causing sizzling grease to burn his hands and wrists. He got to his feet and began to run to his horse, only to have a fourth shot kill the horse before he could even grasp the bridle reins.

Brookshire's big horse was the only mount left, but before Pea Eye could step over his own horse, which was down but still kicking, Brookshire's mount was knocked to its knees.

It scrambled up and was shot again. Pea Eye was in agony from the pain of the sizzling bacon grease, but he knew he had to run for cover or he would be dead and past worrying about a little thing like burned hands.

"Run!" he yelled to Brookshire, who sat amid the spilled coffee, looking dazed. "Get a gun and run to cover!" As he said it, Pea Eye realized he didn't have a gun himself. He had taken his pistol off because the scabbard was rubbing his hip raw, and his rifle was propped against his saddle. The pistol was closer, so he turned and grabbed it.

Brookshire had picked up the big shotgun and was stuffing shells into his pocket.

"No, get a rifle, we need rifles," Pea Eye yelled.

Brookshire just looked addled. Pea Eye decided to try for his own rifle, so he ran back and grabbed it. Then he turned and headed down into the riverbed. Soon he heard Brookshire stumbling after him. Pea Eye ran for a hundred yards or more, then stopped and waited for Brookshire to catch up. He listened, but he could hear nothing other than Brookshire, as he stumbled on the rocky ground.

"Reckon it's him?" Pea Eye asked, when Brookshire caught up. "Reckon it's the Garza boy?" "I don't know who it is," Brookshire said. The dying mule had slammed into him, knocking the breath out of him. He had somehow grabbed the shotgun and made it into the riverbed without having quite regained his breath. He stopped by Pea Eye and gasped for air. He realized he had not made a good choice in taking the shotgun. Carrying it was like carrying a small cannon. But he couldn't immediately spot his rifle or his pistols, and he didn't want to just stand there with a killer shooting mules and horses to death on either side of him.

A little creek cut into the Rio Concho not far from where they stood. It, too, was dry, but its steep walls were pocked, offering better cover than they had in the riverbed. As Pea Eye led Brookshire into the narrow creek, a memory flashed back to him of the time long ago in Montana, when he and the wounded Gus McCrae had hidden in a creek while they attempted to fight off the Blood Indians. Of course, this creek was dry and that creek had water in it, and he'd had to eventually swim out at night past the Indians and walk a long way naked to find the herd and bring the Captain back to where Gus was. Without the deep-walled creek, the Indians would have had them. A creek had saved him once, and perhaps the dry little Mexican creek would save him this time.

Pea Eye took off his hat and crawled up the creek bank to a spot that allowed him to look over the plain. He saw nothing. The only movement on the whole vast plain was a hawk, dipping to strike a quail.

Then Pea Eye remembered Famous Shoes.

The old man hadn't been around when the shooting started. There was nothing unusual about that, though.

Famous Shoes was rarely there in the mornings.

He went off in the darkness to take a walk or track bobcats or badgers or anything else whose track he struck. He would just show up again later on in the morning. If they were traveling, Famous Shoes would just step out from behind a bush or appear out of a gully and fall in with them. Sometimes he would mention interesting tracks he had seen; other times he wouldn't say a word all day.