Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Larry McMurtry (1936–2021) was the author of twenty-nine novels, including the Pulitzer Prize–winning Lonesome Dove, three memoirs, two collections of essays, and more than thirty screenplays. He lived in Archer City, Texas.

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Anything for Billy

Simon & Schuster

from Part One: 1

The first time I saw Billy he came walking out of a cloud. He had a pistol in each hand and a scared look on his rough young face. The cloud drifted in from the plains earlier in the morning and stopped over the Hidden Mountains, in the country of the Messy Apaches -- that was what buffalo hunters called the Mescalero.

It was a thick cloud, which made downhill travel a little chancy. I had found myself a seat on a rock and was waiting for the cloud to go somewhere else. Probably I looked as scared to Billy as he looked to me -- my mule was winded, my gun was empty, my ears were popping, and I was nervous about the prospect of running into some Messy Apaches. One minute I wanted the cloud to leave; the next minute I was glad it was there.

Billy looked relieved when he saw me. I think his first notion was to steal my mule -- it would only have been common sense.

"This mule won't make it far," I informed him, hoping to scotch that notion -- though if he had pointed one of the pistols at me I would have handed him the reins on the spot.

Billy gave me a chip-toothed grin. I would have guessed him to be no more than seventeen at the time, and short for his age at that. In fact, he was almost a runt, and ugly as Sunday. His dirty black coat was about three sizes too big for him.

He glanced at Rosy, the mule. She didn't like heights, or clouds either, and was in a foul mood.

"An Apache could take that mule and ride her fifty miles," he pointed out. "It's lucky for you I'm not an Apache."

"If you were I'd offer you the mule and hope for the best," I said.

He stuck one of the pistols into an old holster he wore and shoved the other one into the pocket of his black coat.

"Joe Lovelady's around here somewhere," he said. "It would be just like him to show up with my horse."

"I'm Ben Sippy," I said, thinking it was about time we got introduced. I stood up and offered a hand-shake.

Billy didn't shake my hand, but he gave me another grin. He had buck teeth, and both of them were chipped.

"Howdy, Mr. Sippy, are you from Mississippi?" he said, and burst out laughing. In those days Billy was always getting tickled at his own remarks. When he laughed at one of his own jokes you couldn't help liking him -- he was just a winning kid.

Though now, when I think of Billy Bone giggling at one of his own little sallies, I soon grow blind with tears -- sentimental, I guess. But there was a time when I would have done anything for Billy.

"No, I'm just from Philadelphia," I said. He was not the first person to make the Mississippi joke.

"Well, I'm Billy Bone," he said, with a flicker of threat in his eyes.

I guess I must have started or flinched or something, because the threat immediately went away and it seemed to be all he could do to keep from laughing again. I don't consider myself much of a comic, but for some reason Billy always had trouble keeping a straight face in my company.

"You act like you've heard of me, Mr. Sippy," he said.

Of course, he knew perfectly well I'd heard of him. Everyone in the West had heard of him, and plenty of people in other parts of the world as well. Since Wild Bill Hickok had let himself get killed in South Dakota two years before, I doubt there was a gunfighter alive with a reputation to match Billy's. But I just looked at him and tried to take a relaxed line.

"Oh, you've got a reputation," I said. "They say you're a cool killer."

"I am, but the cool killing don't start till around November," he said, giggling again. "This time of the year we mostly do hot killing, Mr. Sippy."

Copyright © 1988 by Larry McMurtry

from Part One: 2

Later on, I realized it was a good thing I had paid Billy's reputation that trite little compliment. If I hadn't, I doubt we'd ever have become friends. In fact, if I hadn't, he might just have shot me.

Billy expected people to take note of his reputation, though why he even had a reputation at that time was a mystery to me, once I knew the facts. From listening to gossip in barrooms I had formed the general impression that he had already killed ten or twelve white men, and scores of Indians and Mexicans as well.

But when I met him, Billy Bone had yet to shoot a man. A bully named Joe Loxton had abused him considerably when he was thirteen or fourteen and making his living cleaning tables in a saloon. Joe Loxton made the mistake of wrestling him to the ground one day when Billy had just been carving a beef and happened to have a butcher knife in his hand. When they hit the floor the butcher knife stuck in Joe Loxton's belly, and a day or two later he was dead.

"It was mostly an accident," Billy said, "though I would have stabbed that shit-ass if I'd had time to think."

That's not to say that Billy was a gentle boy. He was violent all right. In his case the reputation just arrived before the violence.

I felt a little peculiar for a moment. There we were, in a thick cloud in the Hidden Mountains, with only one mule between us and the most feared young gunman in the West making jokes about my name. Nothing unfriendly had occurred, but it's a short step, in some situations, from the unfriendly to the fatal -- and a short step that often got taken in New Mexico in those days.

We had exhausted what few conversational supplies we seemed to have, and were just standing there. Billy had stopped giggling and looked depressed.

"I get a headache when I'm up this high," he said.

I was carrying one or two general nostrums, but before I could offer Billy one, Rosy, my mule, lifted her head and nickered.

I was horrified. Now all the Messy Apaches would have to do was ride in and make a mess of us, unless Billy Bone could shoot them all.

But Billy didn't even draw his pistol -- he just looked irritated.

A minute later Joe Lovelady trotted out of the cloud, riding one horse and leading another.

"See! I told you it would be just like him!" Billy said.

Joe rode up beside him and handed him his bridle reins, but Billy didn't even look up. "It must get boresome being so danged competent," he said in a tone that was anything but grateful. "Did you scalp all the Indians, too, while you were rescuing these nags?" Billy asked, in the same annoyed tone.

"Nope," Joe Lovelady said. "I just snuck in and stole back our horses while they were taking a shit."

"I thought those dern Apaches were supposed to know their business!" Billy said in an ugly tone. He seemed to be working himself into an angry fit just because his friend had recovered their horses.

Joe Lovelady, a calm man if I ever knew one, was unperturbed.

"It ain't getting any earlier," he said. "Why don't we lope on over to Greasy Corners?"

"In this fog?" Billy asked. "I couldn't find my hip pocket, much less Greasy Corners."

"I reckon I can find my way down a hill, fog or no fog," Joe Lovelady said.

Billy choked off his fit, sighed, and struggled onto his horse, a rangy black at least seventeen hands high.

"Gentlemen, could I ride along with you until we get out of these mountains?" I asked, seeing that they were about to ride off and leave me without further ado.

They both looked down at me. Joe Lovelady was a good-looking young man with a fine mustache. He could have been twenty-one or two, but no older, and he had more self-assurance than Billy Bone would ever have.

"I'm out of bullets and I'm lost and I'm not good at heights," I said, realizing it was a lame speech.

It had...