Elmore Leonard - Valdez Is Coming

“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.