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All Terry said was “Long as the boy got away… that’s the main thing.”

AFTER THAT EVERYTHING was quiet for a while. Of course what had happened made good conversation, and wherever you’d go somebody would be talking about the half-wild white boy who’d lived with Apaches. And they talked about Max Repper and Terry. Everybody agreed that was a fine thing Terry did, loosening Max’s teeth …but Terry better watch himself, the way Max holds on to a grudge with both hands and both feet.

Terry went back to his diggings and Deelie wore her tragic look like he was off to the wars. Max would come in about once a week still, but now he didn’t talk so much. Ordered what he wanted and got out.

Then one day a man named Jim Hughes came in and told how he’d seen the boy.

Jim had a one-loop outfit a few miles beyond Repper’s place. I told him it was probably just a stray reservation buck, but he said no, he came through the willows to the creek off back of his place and there was the boy lying belly down at the side of the creek. The boy jumped up surprised not ten feet away from him, scrambled for his horse, and was gone. And Jim said the boy was wearing a red shirt, the back of it all ripped.

Max heard about it too. The next day he was in asking whether I’d seen the boy. He talked about it like he was just making conversation, but Max wasn’t cut out to be an actor. He wanted to find that boy so bad, he could taste it, and it showed through soon as he started talking.

Within the next few days the boy was seen two more times. First by a neighbor of Jim Hughes’s who lived this side of him, then a day later by a cavalry patrol out of Dos Fuegos. They gave chase, but the boy ran for high timber and got away. Both times the boy’s red shirt was described.

Now there was something to talk about again; everybody speculating what the boy was up to. The cavalry station received orders from the commandant at Fort Huachuca to bring the boy in and be pretty damn quick about it. It didn’t look good to have a boy running around who’d been stolen by the Indians. This was something for the authorities. Down at the State House Saloon they were betting five to one the cavalry would never find him, and they had some takers.

Most people figured the boy was out to get Max Repper and was sneaking around waiting for the right time.

I had the hunch the boy was looking for Terry McNeil. And when Terry finally came in again (it had been almost a month), I told him so.

He was surprised to hear the boy had been seen around here and said he couldn’t figure it out. Thought the boy would be glad to get away.

“Why would he want to go back to Apaches?” I asked him.

“He lived with them,” Terry said.

“That doesn’t mean he liked them,” I said. “I could see him going back to those Mexican people, but Sahuaripa’s an awful long way off and probably he couldn’t find his way back.”

Terry shook his head. “But why would he be hanging around here?”

“I still say he’s looking for you.”

“What for?”

“Maybe he likes you.”

Terry said, “That doesn’t make sense.”

“Maybe he likes red shirts.”

“Well,” Terry said, “I could look for him.”

“It would be easier to let him find you,” I said.

“If that’s what he wants to do.”

“Why don’t you just sit here for a while,” I suggested. “The boy knows you come here. If he wants you, then sooner or later he’ll show up.”

Terry thought about it, making a cigarette, then agreed finally that he wouldn’t lose anything by staying.

Right in front of me Deelie threw her arms around his neck and kissed him about twelve times. I thought: If that’s what having him around just a little while will do, what would happen if he agreed to stay on for life?

DURING THE NEXT four days nothing happened. There weren’t even claims of seeing the boy. Terry said, well, the boy’s probably a hundred miles away now. And I said, Either that or else he’s closing in now and playing it more careful. Repper came in once and when he saw Terry he got suspicious and hung around a long time, though acting