Valdez Is Coming (2 page)

Down in that worn-out pasture, dusty and spotted with desert growth, prickly pear and brittlebush, there was just the sun. It showed the ground clearly all the way to just in front of the line shack where now, toward midafternoon, there was shadow coming out from the trees and from the mound the hut was set against.

Somebody in the scrub must have seen the door open. The shout came from there, and Bob Valdez and everybody on the slope were looking by the time the Lipan Apache woman had reached the edge of the shade. She walked out from the hut toward the willow trees carrying a bucket, not hurrying or even looking toward the slope.

Nobody fired at her, though this was not so strange. Putting the front sight on a sod hut and on a person are two different things. The men in the scrub and in the pines didn’t know this woman. They weren’t after her. She had just appeared. There she was; and no one was sure what to do about her.

She was in the trees by the creek awhile, then she was in the open again, walking back toward the hut with the bucket and not hurrying at all, a small figure way across the pasture almost without shape or color, with only the long skirt reaching to the ground to tell it was the woman.

So he’s alive, Bob Valdez thought. And he wants to stay alive and he’s not giving himself up.

He thought about the woman’s nerve and whether Orlando Rincón had sent her out or she had decided this herself. You couldn’t tell about an Indian woman. Maybe this was expected of her. The woman didn’t count; the man did. You could lose the woman and get another one.

Mr. Tanner didn’t look at R. L. Davis. His gaze held on the Lipan Apache woman, inched along with her toward the hut; but he must have known R. L. Davis was right next to him.

“She’s saying she didn’t give a goddam about you and your rifle,” Mr. Tanner said.

R. L. Davis looked at him funny. Then he said, “Shoot her?” like he hoped that’s what Mr. Tanner meant.

“You could make her jump some,” Mr. Tanner said.

Now R. L. Davis was on stage and he knew it, and Bob Valdez could tell he knew it by the way he levered the Winchester, raised it, and fired all in one motion, and as the dust kicked behind the Indian woman, who kept walking and didn’t look up, R. L. Davis fired and fired and fired as fast as he could lever and half aim and with everybody watching him, hurrying him, he put four good ones right behind the woman. His last bullet socked into the door just as she reached it, and now she did pause and look up at the slope, staring up like she was waiting for him to fire again and giving him a good target if he wanted it.

Mr. Beaudry laughed out loud. “She don’t give a goddam about your rifle.”

It stung R. L. Davis, which it was intended to do.

“I wasn’t aiming at her.”

“But she doesn’t know that.” Mr. Beaudry was grinning, twisting his moustache, turning then and reaching out a hand as Diego Luz approached them with the whiskey.

“Hell, I wanted to hit her she’d be laying there, you know it.”

“Well now, you tell her that,” Mr. Beaudry said, working the cork loose, “and she’ll know it.” He took a drink from the bottle and passed it to Mr. Malson, who offered the bottle to Mr. Tanner, who shook his head. Mr. Malson took a drink and saw R. L. Davis staring at him, so he handed the bottle to him. R. L. Davis jerked the bottle up, took a long swallow and that part was over.

Mr. Malson said to Mr. Tanner, “You don’t want any?”

“Not right now,” Mr. Tanner answered. He continued to stare out across the pasture.

Mr. Malson watched him. “You feel strongly about this Army deserter.”

“I told you,” Mr. Tanner said, “he killed a man was a friend of mine.”

“No, I don’t believe you did.”

“James C. Erin, sutler at Fort Huachuca,” Mr. Tanner said. “He came across a tulapai still this nigger soldier was working with some Indians. The nigger thought Erin would tell the Army people, so he shot him and ran off with a woman.”

“And you saw him this morning.”

“I had come in last night to see this gentleman,” Mr. Tanner said, nodding toward Malson. “This morning I was getting ready to leave when I saw him, him and the woman.”

“I was right there,” R. L. Davis said. “Right, Mr. Tanner? Him and I was on the porch by the Republic Hotel and Rincón goes by in the wagon. Mr. Tanner said, ‘You know that man?’ I said, ‘Only that he’s lived up north of town a few months. Him and his woman.’ ‘Well, I know him,’ Mr. Tanner said. ‘That man’s an Army deserter wanted for murder.’ I said, ‘Well let’s go get him.’ He had a start on us and that’s how he got to the hut before we could grab on to him. He’s been holed up ever since.”

Mr. Malson said, “Then you didn’t talk to him.”

“Listen,” Mr. Tanner said, “I’ve kept that man’s face before my eyes this past year.”

Bob Valdez, somewhat behind Mr. Tanner and to the side, moved in a little closer. “You know this is the same man?”

Mr. Tanner looked around. He stared at Valdez. That’s all he did, just stared.

“I mean, we have to be sure,” Bob Valdez said. “It’s a serious thing.”

Now Mr. Malson and Mr. Beaudry were looking up at him. “We,” Mr. Beaudry said. “I’ll tell you what, Roberto. We need help we’ll call you. All right?”

“You hired me,” Bob Valdez said, standing alone above them. He was serious, but he shrugged and smiled a little to take the edge off the words. “What did you hire me for?”

“Well,” Mr. Beaudry said, acting it out, looking up past Bob Valdez and along the road both ways. “I was to see some drunk Mexicans, I’d point them out.”

After that, for a while, the men with the whiskey bottle forgot Bob Valdez. They stayed in the shade of the hollow watching the line shack, waiting for the Army deserter to realize it was all over for him. He would realize it and open the door and be cut down as he came outside. It was a matter of time only.

Bob Valdez stayed on the open part of the slope that was turning to shade, sitting now like an Apache with a suit on and every once in a while making a cigarette and smoking it slowly and thinking about himself and Mr. Tanner and the others, then thinking about the Army deserter, then thinking about himself again.

He didn’t have to stay here. He didn’t have to be a town constable. He didn’t have to work for the stage company. He didn’t have to listen to Mr. Beaudry and Mr. Malson and smile when they said those things. He didn’t have a wife or any kids. He didn’t have land that he owned. He could go anywhere he wanted.

Diego Luz was coming over. Diego Luz had a wife and a daughter almost grown and some little kids and he had to stay, sure.

Diego Luz squatted next to him, his arms on his knees and his big hands that he used for breaking horses hanging in front of him.

“Stay near if they want you for something,” Bob Valdez said. He was watching Beaudry tilt the bottle up. Diego Luz said nothing.

“One of them bends over,” Bob Valdez said then, “you kiss it, uh?”

Diego Luz looked at him, patient about it. Not angry or stirred. “Why don’t you go home?”

“He says get me a bottle, you run.”

“I get it. I don’t run.”

“Smile and hold your hat, uh?”

“And don’t talk so much.”

“Not unless they talk to you first.”

“You better go home,” Diego said.

Bob Valdez said, “That’s why you hit the horses.”

“Listen,” Diego Luz said. “They pay me to break horses. They pay you to talk to drunks and keep them from killing somebody. They don’t pay you for what you think or how you feel. So if you take their money keep your mouth shut. All right?”

Bob Valdez smiled. “I’m kidding you.”

Diego Luz got up and walked away, down toward the hollow. The hell with him, he was thinking. Maybe he was kidding, but the hell with him. He was also thinking that maybe he could get a drink from that bottle. Maybe there would be a half inch left nobody wanted and Mr. Malson would tell him to kill it.

But it was already finished. R. L. Davis was playing with the bottle, holding it by the neck and flipping it up and catching it as it came down. Beaudry was saying, “What about after dark?” And looking at Mr. Tanner, who was thinking about something else and didn’t notice.

R. L. Davis stopped flipping the bottle. He said, “Put some men on the rise right above the hut; he comes out, bust him.”

“Well, they should get the men over there,” Mr. Beaudry said, looking at the sky. “It won’t be long till dark.”

“Where’s he going?” Mr. Malson said.

The others looked up, stopped in whatever they were doing or thinking by the suddenness of Mr. Malson’s voice.

“Hey, Valdez!” R. L. Davis yelled out. “Where you think you’re going?”

Bob Valdez had circled them and was already below them on the slope, leaving the pines now and entering the scrub brush. He didn’t stop or look back.

“Valdez!”

Mr. Tanner raised one hand to silence R. L. Davis, all the time watching Bob Valdez getting smaller, going straight through the scrub, not just walking or passing the time but going right out to the pasture.

“Look at him,” Mr. Malson said. There was some admiration in his voice.

“He’s dumber than he looks,” R. L. Davis said, then jumped a little as Mr. Tanner touched his arm.

“Come on,” Mr. Tanner said. “With the rifle.” And he started down the slope, hurrying and not seeming to care if he might stumble on the loose gravel.

Bob Valdez was now halfway across the pasture, the shotgun pointed down at his side, his eyes not leaving the door of the line shack. The door was probably already open enough for a rifle barrel to poke through. He guessed the Army deserter was covering him, letting him get as close as he wanted; the closer he came the easier to hit him.

Now he could see all the bullet marks in the door and the clean inner wood where the door was splintered. Two people in that little bake-oven of a place. He saw the door move.

He saw the rag doll on the ground. It was a strange thing, the woman having a doll. Valdez hardly glanced at it but was aware of the button eyes looking up and the discomforted twist of the red wool mouth. Then, just past the doll, when he was wondering if he would go right up to the door and knock on it and wouldn’t that be a crazy thing, like visiting somebody, the door opened and the Negro was in the doorway filling it, standing there in pants and boots but without a shirt in that hot place, and holding a long-barreled dragoon that was already cocked.

They stood twelve feet apart looking at each other, close enough so that no one could fire from the slope.

“I can kill you first,” the Negro said, “if you raise it.”

With his free hand, the left one, Bob Valdez motioned back over his shoulder. “There’s a man there said you killed somebody a year ago.”

“What man?”

“Said his name is Tanner.”

The Negro shook his head, once each way.

“Said your name is Johnson.”

“You know my name.”

“I’m telling you what he said.”

“Where’d I kill this man?”

“Huachuca.”

The Negro hesitated. “That was some time ago I was in the Tenth. More than a year.”

“You a deserter?”

“I served it out.”

“Then you got something that says so.”

“In the wagon, there’s a bag there my things are in.”

“Will you talk to this man Tanner?”

“If I can hold from busting him.”

“Listen, why did you run this morning?”

“They come chasing. I don’t know what they want.” He lowered the gun a little, his brown-stained tired-looking eyes staring intently at Bob Valdez. “What would you do? They come on the run. Next thing I know they firing at us.”

“Will you go with me and talk to him?”

The Negro hesitated again. Then shook his head. “I don’t know him.”

“Then he won’t know you.”

“He didn’t know me this morning.”

“All right,” Bob Valdez said. “I’ll bet your paper says you were discharged. Then we’ll show it to this man, uh?”

The Negro thought it over before he nodded, very slowly, as if still thinking. “All right. Bring him here, I’ll say a few words to him.”

Bob Valdez smiled a little. “You can point that gun some other way.”

“Well…” the Negro said, “if everybody’s friends.” He lowered the revolver to his side.

The wagon was in the willow trees by the creek. Off to the right. But Bob Valdez did not turn right away in that direction. He backed away, watching Orlando Rincón for no reason that he knew of. Maybe because the man was holding a gun and that was reason enough.

He had backed off six or seven feet when Orlando Rincón shoved the revolver down into his belt. Bob Valdez turned and started for the trees.

It was at this moment that he looked across the pasture. He saw Mr. Tanner and R. L. Davis at the edge of the scrub trees but wasn’t sure it was them. Something tried to tell him it was them, but he did not accept it until he was off to the right, out of the line of fire, and by then the time to yell at them or run toward them was past. R. L. Davis had the Winchester up and was firing.

They say R. L. Davis was drunk or he would have pinned him square. As it was, the bullet shaved Rincón and plowed past him into the hut.

Bob Valdez saw Rincón half turn and he saw Rincón’s accusing eyes as Rincón pulled the long-barreled dragoon from his belt.

“They weren’t supposed to,” Bob Valdez said, holding one hand out as if to stop Rincón. “Listen, they weren’t supposed to do that!”

The revolver was free, and Rincón was cocking it. “Don’t!” Bob Valdez said. “Don’t do it!” Looking right into the Negro’s eyes and seeing it was no use, that Rincón was going to shoot him, and suddenly hurrying, he jerked the shotgun up and pulled both triggers so that the explosions came out in one blast and Orlando Rincón was spun and thrown back inside.

They came out across the pasture to have a look, some going inside where they found the woman and brought her out, everybody noticing she would have a child in about a month. Those by the doorway made room as Mr. Tanner and R. L. Davis approached.

Diego Luz came over by Bob Valdez, who had not moved. Valdez stood watching them and he saw Mr. Tanner look down at Rincón and after a moment shake his head.