When they did stop, it was at a water station where an old man and his German wife operated a waterwheel with the aid of a button-backed donkey. After watering the horses and the four mules, the party took shade beneath a large cottonwood tree at the edge of a low adobe-and-stone wall. As the others rested with their hat brims ducked low on their foreheads, Della sat down on a spread blanket beside Shaw and said, “Lawrence, that was the first time I’ve ever seen a man draw a gun and kill someone. I’ve heard of gunfights…but I’ve never seen one. When you three rode in on us at the wagon and I held the pistol on you? I was only bluffing. I don’t know what I would have done if you were men out to do us harm. I like to pretend I’m fast and loose. But when it gets right down to it…I’m not.” Shaw looked at her, his green eyes much clearer now that he had sweated out the whiskey. “You would have done whatever it took to stay alive, is what I’m betting,” he said. Della shrugged.
