“Why do the guys call you ‘Wild Bill’?”
“You know how it is. Everyone in the Nam either arrived with a nickname or did something to earn it. In my case, the guys started calling me ‘Wild Bill’ after seeing this picture of me from back home.”
He withdrew a wallet from the rubber pouch in his rucksack, extracted a photograph, and handed it to John.
“See what I mean?”
The picture showed a cowboy standing next to a brown and white Appaloosa horse. In the background was a snow-capped mountain range and wild sagebrush; both silhouetted in front of a royal blue, cloudless sky. Shoulder-length brown hair hung from under a black cowboy hat with a silver band. He sported a six-inch long but neatly trimmed dark brown beard that hung over the front of an unbuttoned tan buckskin jacket. A thick, bl
