Valdez Is Coming (11 page)

“Ask him if he’s sure it’s the same one,” Tanner said.

The segundo stepped close to the Mexican again. He knew he was dead as he looked at him, though the man’s eyes were open, staring at the sky.

The Mexican had reached the village, his head hanging, letting the horse take him, but he seemed to be still alive as he entered the street between the adobes.

You can die any time after you tell them, Valdez had thought, watching through the field glasses at the top of the trail. He had nothing against the man except a kick in the back and the certainty the man had wanted to kill him. He knew the man would die, and it would be better if he did; but he didn’t wish the man dead. It would happen, that was all.

Soon they would come out. They would come out in all directions or they would come strung out across the graze toward the trail into the hills. As the Mexican had reached the adobes, Valdez had climbed higher, off the trail now, leading the buckskin up into the rocks. From here he watched the three riders coming first, letting their horses out across the open land. They came up through the ravines and went down the switchbacks on the other side, not stopping. Three more came behind them, but not running their horses, taking their time. They climbed over the trail looking at the ground; coming to the place where Valdez had shot the Mexican they dismounted.

There were others coming out from the village, fanning out, not knowing where they were going. They were nothing. The three looking for his sign were little better than nothing; they had less than an hour of light and no chance of catching up with him. He counted seventeen men who had come out of the village. There would be others with the herd and perhaps others somewhere else. There was no way of knowing how many still in the village. There was no way of knowing if Tanner had come out or was still in the village. He would have to go there to find out. And if Tanner was not in the village he would have to think of another way to do it and come back another time. There was no hurry. It wasn’t something that had to be done today or tomorrow or this week. It could be done any time. But you’d better do it tonight, Valdez said to himself, before you think about it too much. Do it or don’t do it.

Do it, he thought. He took a sip of the whiskey and put the bottle back in the warbag that hung from his saddle.

Do it before you get too old.

He took the reins of the buckskin and began working down through the rocks toward the village. He would circle and approach from the trees on the far side, coming up behind the burned-out church.

The clerk from the Republic Hotel, as soon as he was off duty, went over to De Spain’s and asked if the three Tanner riders had been there.

Hell, yes, they had. They’d been here and to Bob Valdez’s boardinghouse and the Hatch and Hodges office and had stuck their heads into almost every store along the street. They moved fast and didn’t waste any questions and you could tell they wanted him bad. Bad? Did you see the sign out in front? Nailed to the post?

It was a square of board, and one of them had lettered on it with charcoal: BOB VALDEZ IS A DEAD MAN. ANYONE HELPING HIM IS ALSO DEAD.

That was how bad they wanted him. They were going to kill him.

If they ever found him. Where the hell was Valdez? Nobody knew. Nobody remembered seeing him in days. The last time was Saturday when he rode out to see Tanner. No, somebody said, he had made the run to St. David the next day. How about since then? Nobody could recall. Maybe he’d been around; maybe he hadn’t. Bob Valdez wasn’t somebody who stuck in your mind and you remembered.

Mr. Malson said to Mr. Beaudry, “If he’s got Tanner on him and knows it, he’ll be seven hundred miles away by now.” “Or farther,” Mr. Beaudry said. “If he don’t know it,” somebody said, “then he’s a dead man, like the sign says.” “There must be something wrong with his head,” Mr. Malson said. “Christ, we should have known it the minute he started talking about the Lipan woman something was wrong with him.”

R. L. Davis didn’t say anything. He wanted to, but he still wasn’t sure what people would say. They might say he was crazy. If he’d pushed Valdez over in the sun, then what had he gone back for?

They’d listen to him tell it. “Sure, I pushed him over. I was teaching him a lesson for coming at me with the scatter gun the other day — after he shot the nigger.” They’d look at him and say, “You killed a man like that? Like a Indin would do it?”

And he’d say “No, I was teaching him a lesson is all. Hell, I went back and cut him loose and left him a canteen of water.” And they’d say, “Well, if you cut him loose, where is he?” Somebody else’d say, “If you wanted to kill him, what did you cut him loose for?”

And he’d say, “Hell, if there’s something between me and Bob Valdez, we’ll settle it with guns. I’m no goddam Apache.”

But he had a feeling they wouldn’t believe a word of it.

All right, three days ago he’d left Valdez in the meadow. And this evening Tanner’s men come in looking for him and write his death sentence. So Valdez must have gone back and done something to them.

Valdez hadn’t been here; at least nobody remembered seeing him. So where would he have been the past three days? Not at his boardinghouse.

But, goddam, Diego Luz had been to his boardinghouse! He could see Diego again coming out of it and the funny look on the man’s face when he realized he’d been spotted.

What would Frank Tanner say about that? R. L. Davis said to himself. If you could hand him Bob Valdez he’d hire you the same minute, wouldn’t he?

Go up to Tanner and cock the Walker in his face and say, All right, give me the money, Valdez was thinking. Not asking him, telling him this time. A hundred dollars or five hundred or whatever he had. Take it and get out and don’t think about later until later. He would have to leave Lanoria and go someplace else and maybe worry about Tanner the rest of his life — because he had wanted to help the woman; because he had started it and gotten into it and now was so far in he couldn’t turn around and walk out. You must be crazy, Valdez thought. Like Inez had said. Or an idiot. But he was here and was going through with it and he wasn’t going to think about why he was here.

He was behind the church, bringing the buckskin along close to the wall, then into the alley that led to the yard of the church. At the far end of the yard was the building with the loading platform. Past the low wall of the churchyard he could see the square and the water pump and stone trough. There was no one in the square now. Farther down the street, in the dusk, he could make out people in front of the adobes, a few of the women sitting outside to talk; he could hear voices and laughter, the sound clear in the silence.

Valdez left the buckskin in the yard. He went over the wall and through the narrow space between the platform and two freight wagons that stood ready for loading. He mounted the steps at the far end. On the platform he looked out at the square again and at the church doorway and the fence across the opening. There were a few horses inside; he wondered if one of them was his claybank. Maybe after, he would have time to look. He crossed the platform and went into the building, into the room crowded with wooden cases and sacks of grain. Maybe this wasn’t Tanner’s place. Maybe he would have to work his way down the street, hurrying before it was full dark and they gave up looking for him. It was already dark in the room. He had to feel his way at first, moving between the cases to the stairway. The boards creaked and his boots on the stairs made a hard, sharp sound that Tanner would hear if he was upstairs; he would be ready or he would think it was one of his men. Valdez reached the hall and opened the door in front of him.

The room was still and seemed empty, until the woman moved and he saw her profile and the soft curve of her hair against the window. She watched him cross the room and open the door to the bedroom, waiting for him to look toward her again.

“He’s not here.”

Valdez walked toward her. He stopped to look out the window at the square below. “He went with them?”

“I guess he did,” the woman said. “He didn’t say.”

“Are you his wife?”

She didn’t answer for a moment, and Valdez looked at her.

“I will be his wife, soon.”

“Do you know him?”

“That’s a strange question. I guess I know him if I’m going to marry him.”

“Well, it’s up to you.”

There was a silence between them until she said, “Are you going to wait for him?”

“I don’t know yet — wait or come back another time.”

“He won’t give you another time. You killed one of his men.”

“He died. I thought he would die,” Valdez said. “Unless you had a doctor.”

She watched him look out the window again. “Did you come here to kill Frank?”

“It would be up to him,” Valdez said.

“Then what do you want?”

“The same thing as before. Something for the woman.”

“Why? I mean why do you bother?”

“Listen,” Valdez said. He hesitated. “If I tell you what I think, it doesn’t sound right. It’s something I know. You understand that?”

“Maybe you’ll kill him,” the woman said, “but you won’t get anything out of him.”

Valdez nodded slowly. “I’ve been thinking of that. If he doesn’t want to give me anything, how do I make him? I push a gun into him and tell him, but if I have to shoot him, then I don’t get anything.”

“If he doesn’t kill you first,” the woman said.

“I’ve been thinking,” Valdez said. “If I have something he wants, then maybe we make a trade. If he wants it bad enough.”

She watched him and said nothing. He was looking at her now.

“Like I say to him, ‘You give me the money and I give you your woman.’ ”

She continued to look at him, studying him. “And if he doesn’t give you the money?” she said finally.

“Then he doesn’t get his woman,” Valdez said.

“You’d kill me?”

“No, the question would be how much does he like you?”

“He’ll outwait you. He’ll put his men around the building and sooner or later you’ll have to go out.”

“Not if I’m already out,” Valdez said. His face went to the window before he looked at her again. “Listen, if you want to take something with you, get it now.”

A woman who belonged to one of Tanner’s men saw them leave. She had gone to the water pump in the square and stood looking at them as they came out to the loading platform: the woman of Mr. Tanner with a blanket roll and the man carrying a grain pack with something in it and an empty water skin. She looked at them and they looked at her, but she didn’t call out. She told Mr. Tanner she was afraid the man would do something to her or to the woman of Mr. Tanner.

“Go on,” Tanner said. “Then what?” He was still mounted, standing with his segundo and several of his men in the lantern glow of the square — the lantern on the seat of a freight wagon so Tanner could see the woman while she told what had happened.

“They went to the yard of the church,” the woman said to Tanner. Then the man came over the wall toward her and told her to get a horse from the church, asking for a particular claybank horse if it was there. The woman brought out a horse but was not sure of its color in the darkness of the church and it wasn’t the claybank but a brown horse. Then he told her to bring a saddle and bridle and a half sack of dried corn.

While this was taking place, the woman of Mr. Tanner was astride a horse in the churchyard, sitting in the saddle as a man does, though she was wearing a dress. “I think a white or a gray dress,” the woman said. When Valdez was ready and had mounted the brown horse, he rode into the churchyard and told the woman of Mr. Tanner to follow him.

“Did she say anything to him?” Tanner asked.

“Not that I heard,” the woman said.

They left through the alley next to the church. The woman waited until they were in the alley and followed, but by the time she reached the back of the church they were gone.

“Could you hear them?” Tanner asked.

“I think going toward the river,” the woman said.

“To reach cover,” the segundo said. He was sitting his horse close to Frank Tanner. “Then maybe south into the mountains.”

“How long ago?” asked Tanner.

The woman thought about it and said, “Not long. They would be maybe two or three miles away only. Or a little more if they ran their horses.”

“You know what to do,” Tanner said to the segundo. “Whoever’s here, send them out again.”

“In the dark,” the segundo said, “how do we see them?”

“You listen,” Tanner said. “Somebody could run into them.”

The segundo waited, about to speak, but looked at Tanner and then only nodded. It was Tanner’s business. No, his business was in the morning with the arms and grain and cattle, taking it all across the border and coming back without being killed. That was his business.

But in the morning the freight wagons stood empty, and Frank Tanner waited on the loading platform for his men to come in. Some of the women stood in the square, watching him, waiting to see what he was going to do. The men came in singly and in small groups and would talk to the segundo while they watered their horses and while the women watched. It was almost midmorning when the three trackers came in. One of them was dead, the other two were wounded.

These three who came along the street single file, one of them facedown over his saddle, were the segundo’s best hunters and trackers. They had been in the Army and had lived through the campaigns against the Apache. But now one was dead and another would soon be dead.

Tanner sat in a rocking chair in the morning sunlight and watched them brought in: another dead man on the loading platform and a man coughing blood and a third one, luckier than the first two, shot through the left forearm, the bone shattered, and there was no doubt about that. This one could talk and he told what had happened, his the only voice in the stillness. Tanner listened to the man and did not interrupt. He heard how the three had put themselves in Valdez’s place and decided he would follow the river south into the hills of the Santa Ritas, then maybe work his way west around toward Lanoria or maybe not, but they’d take a look.