Elmore Leonard: Valdez Is Coming

R. L. Davis was a good one to hit. Once in a while though, he would leave R. L. Davis alone and hit Mr. Malson, not hitting him too hard, but letting him know he was hit. And sometimes he would fire Mr. Malson, call him over and say, “It’s too bad, but you’re too goddam weak and stupid to do this work anymore so we got to get rid of you. And don’t come back.”

Diego Luz would think of these things as he worked his land and broke the mustangs he and his eldest son drove down out of the high country. His place was southeast of Lanoria, well off the road to St. David and only a few miles from the village of Mimbreno, though there was no wagon road in that direction, only a few trails if a man knew where to find them.

His place was adobe with straw blinds that rolled down to cover the doorway and windows and an open lean-to built against the house for cooking. There were a few chickens and two goats in the yard with the three youngest children and a brown mongrel dog that slept in the shade of the house most of the day. There was a vegetable garden for growing beans and peppers, and the peppers that were drying hung from the roof of the ramada that shaded the front of the house, which faced north, on high ground. Down the slope from the house was the well, and beyond it, on flat, cleared ground, the mesquite-pole corral where Diego Luz broke and trained the mustangs he flushed out of the hills. He worked here most of the time. Several times a year he drove a horse string down to the Maricopa spread near Lanoria, and he would go down there at roundup time and when they drove the cattle to Willcox.

When Bob Valdez appeared, circling the corral – two days following the incident at the pasture – Diego Luz and his eldest son were at the well, pulling up buckets of water and filling the wooden trough that ran to the corral. They stood watching Bob Valdez walking his horse toward them and waited, after greeting him, as he stepped down from the saddle and took the dipper of water Diego’s son offered him.

There was no hurry. If a man rode all the way here he must have something to say, and it was good to wonder about it first and not ask him questions. Though Diego Luz had already decided Bob Valdez had not come to see them but was passing through on his way to Mimbreno. And who lived in Mimbreno? Frank Tanner. There it was. Simple.

They left the boy and climbed the slope to the house, Bob Valdez seeing the children in the yard, Diego’s wife and her mother watching them from the lean-to where they were both holding corn dough, shaping tortillas. The small children ran up to them and the eldest daughter appeared now in the doorway of the house. Hey, a good looking girl now, almost a woman. Anita. She would be maybe sixteen years old. Valdez had not been up here in almost a year.

When they were in the shade and had lighted cigarettes, Diego Luz said, “There’s something different about you. What is it?”

Valdez shrugged. “I’m the same. What are you talking about?”

“Your face is the same.” Diego Luz squinted, studying him. Slowly then his face relaxed. “I know what it is. You don’t have your collar on.”

Valdez’s hand went to his neck where he had tied a bandana.

“Or your suit. What is this, you’re not dressed up?”

“It’s too hot,” Valdez said.

“It’s always hot,” Diego Luz said. His gaze dropped to Valdez’s waist. “No gun though.”

Valdez frowned. “What’s the matter with you? I don’t have a coat on, that’s all.”

“And you’re going to see Mr. Tanner.”

“Just to say a few things to him.”

“My son rode to Lanoria yesterday. He heard about the few things you said the other night.”

Valdez shook his head. “People don’t have anything to talk about.”

“Listen, the woman doesn’t need any money. She doesn’t know what it is.”

“But we know,” Valdez said. “I just want to ask you something about Tanner.”

Diego Luz drew on his cigarette and squinted out into the sunlight, down the slope to the horse corral. “I know what others know. That’s all.”

“He lives in Mimbreno?”

“For about two years maybe.”

“How do the people like him?”

“There are no people. Most of them left at the time of the Apache. The rest of them left when Frank Tanner come. He’s there with his men,” Diego Luz said, “and some of their women.”

“How many men?”

“At least thirty. Sometimes more.”

“Do they ever come here?”

“Sometimes they pass by.”

“What do they do, anything?”

“They have a drink of water and go on.”

“They never make any trouble?”

“No, they don’t bother me. Never.”

“Maybe because you work for Maricopa.”

Diego Luz shrugged. “What do I have they would want?”

“Horses,” Valdez said.

“Once they asked to buy a string. I told them to see Mr. Malson.”

“Did Tanner himself come?”

“No, his segundo and some others.”

“Do you know any of them?”

“No, I don’t think any of them are from around here.”

“Do you think that’s strange?”

“No, these are guns he hires, not hands. I think they hear of Tanner and what he pays and they come from all over to get a job with him.”

“He pays good, uh?”

“You see them sometimes in St. David,” Diego Luz said. “They spend the money. But you see different ones each time, so maybe he lose some in Mexico or they get a stomach full of it and quit.”

“What, driving cattle?”

“Cattle and guns. He gets the guns somewhere and sneaks them over the border to people who are against Diaz and want to start a revolution. So over there the rurales and federal soldiers look for him and try to stop him. Everybody knows that.”

“I’ve been learning the stageline business,” Valdez said.

“Keep doing it,” Diego Luz said, “and live to be an old man.”

“Sometimes I feel old now.” He watched the chickens pecking the hard ground and heard Diego Luz’s children calling out something and laughing as they played somewhere on the other side of the house. What do you need besides this? he was thinking. To have a place, a family. Very quiet except for the children sometimes, and no trouble. No Apaches. No bandits raiding from across the border. Trees and water and a good house. The house could be fixed up better. A little work, that’s all. He said, “I’ll trade you. I become the horsebreaker, you work for the stage company.”

Diego Luz was looking out at the yard. “You want this?”

“Why not? It’s a good place.”

“If I had something to do I wouldn’t be here.”

“You do all right,” Valdez said.

“Do it forever,” Diego Luz said. “See how you like it.”

“Maybe sometime. After I see this Tanner.”

Diego Luz was studying Valdez’s horse. “You don’t have a rifle either.”

“What do I need it for?”

“Maybe you meet a couple of them on a trail, they don’t like your face.”

“I’ll talk to them,” Valdez said.

“Maybe they don’t let you talk.”

“Come on, they know who I am. I’m going there to talk, that’s all.”

“You talk better with a rifle,” Diego Luz said. “I give you mine.”

From habit, approaching the top of the rise – before he would be outlined for a moment against the sky – Bob Valdez looked back the way he had come, his eyes, half-closed in the sun’s glare, holding on the rock shapes and darker patches of brush at the bottom of the draw. He sat motionless until he was sure of the movement, then dismounted and led his claybank mare off the trail to one side, up into young pinon pines.

For a few moments he did not think of the rider coming up behind him; he thought of his own reaction, the caution that had stopped him from topping the rise. There were no more Chiricahuas or White Mountain bands around here. There was nothing to worry about to keep him alert and listening and looking back as well as to the sides and ahead. But he had stopped. Sure, habit, he thought. Something hanging on of no use to him now.