Joey could not understand his own error: he had left a loaded gun by a corpse. It was a big, ugly gun, not worth keeping, but he should not have left it. His pistol was empty; all he could do was flee. As he turned to run for his horse, he saw the old deputy drop his rifle and scoop up the big gun. Then the heavy shot cut his back and he stumbled and fell. He sprang up and kept running, but he saw over his shoulder that the old man was still running toward him, holding the big shotgun. Joey was leaping for his horse when Pea Eye shot again. This time, the heavy bullets ripped his legs. In his pain he almost went over his horse, but just managed to hang in the saddle.

He looked back and saw that the deputy had turned and picked up his rifle. There was no time to free the Mauser; the deputy might kill his horse if he didn't flee. He ducked onto the far side of his horse and put the horse into a run. Pea Eye's shot hit the cantle of the saddle. Before Pea Eye could aim again, Joey was racing away through the sage; soon he was out of range. He clung to the safe side of his horse, expecting that the deputy would shoot again and that his horse would fall. But the deputy didn't shoot again. Joey was bleeding from his shoulders to his heels, but he clawed himself back into the saddle and hung on.

Pea Eye went back and dug in Brookshire's pockets. He found the other two eight-gauge shells. He trusted the big gun a lot more than he trusted his rifle or his pistol. He knew he had hit the Garza boy with both barrels. It might not have been at a killing range, but it had probably damaged the young killer severely. Pellet wounds worked slow, but they worked, and all the boy's wounds were on his backside. Joey would not be able to dig the pellets out himself.

Pea Eye sat down to rest a moment. He was not far from Brookshire's corpse. As he rested, Famous Shoes approached and handed him back his boots.

"Take these boots," he said. "You hit Joey pretty good. I don't think he'll need them." Pea Eye was experiencing a kind of disbelief in the course of events that he had just passed through.

He was alive; moreover, he had hit the Garza boy twice with blasts of eight-gauge pellets, and the boy had run. He had driven off a prominent killer. The boy had shot at him six times with a revolver and hadn't killed him. He might yet see his wife's face and hold his children on his lap.

"Why, he was supposed to be a dead shot," Pea Eye said. "He missed me three times, and one shot hit my dern toes." "I don't need this knife," Famous Shoes said, handing Pea Eye back his pocketknife.

"Joey left his knife by his blanket, and his is better." Pea Eye stuck his finger into the wound at his hip. It was the deepest of his wounds. It might be that his hip was broken, but the wound wasn't going to be fatal. The wound in his shoulder wasn't serious. Pea Eye looked at his foot and noticed that he had lost two toes.

Pea Eye looked at the body of Ned Brookshire. He remembered that the sister he was supposed to send his love to was named Matilda Morris; she lived in a town called Avon, but he had forgotten the name of the state. It was one of the Yankee states, he felt sure. Lorena would help him look it up. She would have to write the letter too, of course; he didn't imagine she'd object.

Mr. Brookshire had been the wrong man for the job he had been sent to do, but he had been a very decent man, Yankee or not. It seemed sad to Pea Eye that Mr. Brookshire would not get to know that Joey Garza was wounded and on the run.

The long job might soon be finished. His Colonel would get to know, but not Brookshire himself. He should have stayed in camp. But if he had stayed, Pea Eye would not have been the one using the big shotgun.

"I reckon I owe my life to Brookshire, mainly," Pea Eye said, holding his finger in the deep wound in his hip. "After all, he bought the shotgun." "I may take Joey's blanket too," Famous Shoes said.

The doctor from Presidio did not want to cross the river and operate on someone in a Mexican woman's house. If word got out that he was treating Mexicans, he was sure to lose business. But when Billy Williams told him that Woodrow Call was the patient, he finally agreed to make the trip.

Call was in a fever of delirium when Billy and the doctor arrived. He had been in and out of the delirium for two days. In his dream the little blind girl, Teresa, was leading his horse down into the Palo Duro Canyon. The drop was almost sheer, but the little blind girl picked her way down the cliff, and the horse didn't stumble.

"Well, the Captain smashed Joe Doniphan, but now he's smashed himself," the doctor said, when he looked at Call.

"I'll take the arm first. Then if he lives, we'll go after the bullet under his heart." The doctor looked at Maria sternly.

"It's too dark in this kitchen," he said. "Go borrow some lanterns." Maria said nothing. She knew the doctor scorned her. When she went to borrow a lamp from Gordo the butcher, the butcher looked at her with similar scorn.

"Why don't you just kill the old gringo?" the butcher asked. "Remember what he was." "I remember what he was," Maria said.

"Joey ended that. I can't kill a sick man in my home." "You should never have brought him into your house," the butcher said. He was a large man, and he had always coveted Maria. He had fathered twelve children, but his wife had died recently. The butcher kept looking at Maria, but he gave her the lamp. Maria decided that she would ask Billy Williams to return it. The butcher and two of his friends had tried to catch her by the river when she was younger. She had seen them coming and escaped on her horse. She did not intend to let him catch her now.

While the arm was coming off, Lorena began to feel faint. She was helping hold Call down, and she was afraid for a few minutes that she would have to leave the room. But she was needed. Maria and Billy together were not strong enough for the task.

In the bedroom, Teresa heard the old man moan. He moaned like the cows moaned, when they were being slaughtered. Teresa hoped the old man wouldn't die. He had told her that her name was pretty, and that she was pretty, too. His moans woke Rafael, who began to moan, too, from fear. Strange sounds frightened Rafael, but not Teresa. She knew that Lorena was helping her mother and Billy hold the old man. She had told Lorena her story about the spider, and Lorena, in turn, had told her a story about a rabbit. Teresa wanted Lorena to stay with them so they could exchange more stories. She heard her mother's hard breathing and Lorena's and Billy's.

Once she heard the old man cry out, "Let me up!" But the hard breathing continued. They did not let him up.

When the doctor finished, Call was unconscious and scarcely breathing. The doctor decided not to try for the bullet near the heart.

He knew that if he cut any more, the old man would probably die.