Billsky was the meekest little hairy man; and now he too was fit to cry. “He don’t know me,” he said, very sad, “but it’ll be all right. . . . What’s on there?” he said, pointing beyond.
“God knows, who made it,” said the man, “out of hell’s leftovers. But no one else does, for no one’s ever been there.”
“It’ll be all right,” said Billsky again. “I’ll go on after him, and forgive him, and bring him back.”
He started out to do it, taking one of Rad’s burros, which were fresher than his; and bound he’d come up with Rad this time.
I don’t rightly know what happened there, beyond the last water. One thing, I never been there. I gather Billsky just pushed on as usual, following Rad’s tracks. He followed ’em easy: the only footsteps within a hundred miles or so! As he went he sang “Glory for Me,” because he was going to be able to forgive Rad at last.
The big bird in the sky, he swung off from the water-hole and followed Billsky. There was just them two moving things for him to see: Radway on ahead, mad to get away from Billsky, and old Billsky, mad to forgive him, and singing the glory song.
Billsky couldn’t tell me much about this part of it. He just went on, and on, and on. Sometimes, he said, there were stars. The place was so still he began to think he could hear ’em shine: a sort of fizzing, like an arc-light, which, of course, he knew to be foolishness. Sometimes there was just the sun, a great fire, like as if it were fastened to the earth and burning all the life out of it. There were the rocks, of course, but he didn’t remember them much: only one great black cleft, and a glimmer in the walls of it. The glimmer was gold-veined turquoise, just sticking out o’ that cliff so you could have pried it loose with a toothpick. Billsky couldn’t tell you where it was if you paid him. He wasn’t thinking of anything but forgiving Rad.
Then, with a noise, he says, like a roll of rifle-fire, that big bird dropped out of heaven like a stone, and shot past him, and settled just ahead. There was a dead burro there, and an empty water can. But Radway, he’d gone on. Billsky went after him, singing powerful; but his voice didn’t make much noise.
Then there was a little crack ahead. Something sang past Billsky, and flipped a tiny flake off of the side of the cañon. Billsky stopped and looked at the flake lying at his feet, just as pretty as a pink rose-leaf. He knew a bullet had chipped it off, and that he’d come within shooting length of Radway. He let out a yell of joy. “It’s me, Rad!” he yelled. “I’m comin’ to forgive you!” But Radway didn’t stop. He went on, as if he was mad; and behind him came the man that was killin’ him: the man that only wanted to forgive him.
There were more shots. Billsky said Rad fired at him all that afternoon, but owing to the refraction, he wasn’t hit once. Besides, Rad was breaking up. Once your nerve goes, you break up quick in the Altanero.