“You don’t like it.”
“I’m just disappointed that you can’t tell the color of your eyes. They’re such a lovely powder blue. And your hair needs cutting, and it looks dark, not your honey blond. Plus your ears stick out like bat wings.”
She kindly did not note what he could see now, that he seemed girlish, with wide hips and narrow shoulders and those ever-unmanly hands. And his squirrely front teeth looked even bigger, like he could eat fruit through a picket fence.
“Oh, please don’t misunderstand, Billy. I’m really grateful for this and I’ll cherish it forever, but it doesn’t do you justice.”
“You’re saying I look like a slack-jawed oaf.”
“So you see it, too? You’re a handsome man! You’re the kind of cavalier who makes wives fall out of love with their husbands.”
The Kid wondered if she knew about Celsa.
“So this is your birthday?” she asked.
“Yep.”
“How old?”
“Twenty.”
She was chagrined. She scanned her very feminine bedroom and concluded, “But I have nothing to give you.”
“A kiss?”
She smiled and softly complied.
“Don’t quit,” the Kid said. “Kiss me till I’m drunk with you.”
She did.
* * *
On January 10, 1880, faithful Tom Folliard visited from wherever, and since he’d been alone for weeks he was in the mood for a rollick and soon grew tired of the smallness and innkeeper calm at Beaver Smith’s, harassing the Kid to find him some action and sporting ladies in Bob Hargrove’s saloon.
Walking across the parade grounds in front of the Maxwell house and in a hunker from the sleeting cold, the Kid was called to by Jim Chisum, Uncle John’s younger brother, who’d been in conversation with Pete Maxwell on the front porch. Pete offered a friendly wave and went back inside the former officers’ quarters as Jim and one of his hands, a Jack Finan, hurried through the gate of the picket fence to interrogate them.
Jim told the Kid and Tom that he’d been retrieving stolen cattle in Canyon Cueva near the village of Juan de Dios. Would the Kid know anything about that? The Kid said he didn’t. Jim and Jack squinnied their eyes at him.
“I’ll grant you I have rustled from time to time, but not in this particular instance.”
Jack Finan said, “Pete says you prolly did.”
“Pete says a lot of things, and he lies like a no-legged dog.”
Tom was hugging himself as he asked, “How long we gonna stand out here? I’m frozen!”
The Kid asked, “Would you galoots like to join us in Hargrove’s? Just to let bygones be bygones? I’m buying.”
Jim Chisum dithered a little, but Jack Finan scoured the Kid with his glower. The Kid chose to take note of Jack’s gun, an ivory-handled Colt single-action Army revolver that shone like new chrome. “You got a handsome hog leg in that scabbard.”
“Cost me plenty,” Jack said, his face hinting at a readiness to smile.
“Could I heft it?”
Jack was tentative as he handed it to him. The Kid felt its weight, tested its balance, spun it on his trigger finger, and looked down the barrel at the front sight as he aimed at a sheet of newspaper flying on the wind.
“Go ahead and try it,” Jack said.