Elmore Leonard - Valdez Is Coming

“Why didn’t you?”

“I don’t know. I was afraid. I went back to the post. The next day, after they found him, they asked me questions. I told them Jim had gone out late, but I didn’t know where. They told me he was dead and I didn’t say anything, because I couldn’t pretend to be sorry. When I didn’t tell them then, I couldn’t tell them later, at the hearing. They decided it must have been the man who deserted, a soldier named Johnson who everybody knew was buying corn beer from the Indians and selling it at the post.”

Valdez drew on his cigarette, letting the smoke out slowly. “You haven’t told Frank Tanner?”

“No. I almost did. But I thought better of it.”

“Then why did you tell me?”

Her eyes raised now in the firelight. “I don’t know,” she said softly. “Maybe it’s this place. Maybe it’s because I wanted to tell somebody so bad. I just don’t know.” She paused, and with the soft sound gone from her voice said, “Maybe I told you because you’re not going to live long enough to tell anyone else.”

“You want to stay alive,” Valdez said. “Everybody wants to stay alive.”

She was staring at him again. “Do you?”

“Everybody,” Valdez said.

“Well, remember that when you close your eyes,” she said. “I killed a man to be free of him, to stay alive.”

“I’ll remember that,” Valdez said. “I’ll remember something else, too, a man lying on his back tied to a cross and someone cutting him loose and giving him water.”

He watched closely but there was no change of expression on her face. He said, “The man believes a woman did this. He thought the woman had dark hair, because he had been thinking of a woman with dark hair. But maybe he thought it was dark hair because it was night. Maybe it was a woman with light hair. A woman who lived near this place and knew where he was and could find him.”

She was listening intently now, hunched forward, her long hair hanging close to her face. She said, “It could have been one of the Mexican women.”

“No, it wasn’t one of them, I know that. They live with those men and they would be afraid.”

She waited, thoughtful, but still did not move her eyes from his. She said, almost cautiously, “You believe I’m the woman?”

“There’s no one else.”

She said then, still thoughtful, watching him, “If you believe I saved you, why are you doing this to me?”

Valdez took a last draw on the cigarette and dropped it in the fire. “I’m not doing it to you. I’m doing it to Frank Tanner.”

“But if he doesn’t give you the money-”

“Let’s see what happens,” Valdez said. He got to his knees and spread his blanket so that his feet would be toward the fire.

Gay Erin didn’t move. She said, “Why do you think I cut you loose?”

“I don’t know. Because you felt sorry for me?”

“Maybe.” She watched him. “Or maybe because of Frank. To do something against him.”

“You’re going to marry him,” Valdez said.

“He says I’m going to marry him.”

“Well, if you don’t want to, why didn’t you leave?”

“Because I’ve no place to go. So I’ll marry him whether I want to or not.” She looked into the fire, moving her hair from the side of her face gently, with the tips of her fingers. “I have no family to go to. People I used to know are scattered all over the territory. I think even when I was married to Jim I felt alone. I stayed with him, I guess, for the same reason I’m going to marry Frank.”

Valdez knelt on his blanket, half turned to look at her. “You want to get married so bad, there are plenty of men.”

“Are there?” She got up and smoothed her skirt, standing close to the fire. “Where should I spread my blanket?”

“Where do you want to?”

Looking down at him she said, “Wherever you tell me.”

Look at him again as he looked at himself that night. His name was Roberto Eladio Valdez, born July 23, 1854, in an adobe village on the San Pedro, where the valley land climbed into the Galiuros. His father was a farmer until they moved to Tucson and his father went to work for a freight company and sent his children to the mission school. Roberto Eladio Valdez, born of Mexican parents in the United States Territory of Arizona, a boy who lived in the desert and knew of many people who had been killed by the Apaches, boy to man in the desert and in the mountains, finally working for the Army, leading the Apache trackers when the hostiles jumped San Carlos and went raiding, and finally through with that and deciding it was time to work the land or work for a company, as most men did, and do it now if it wasn’t already too late. Roberto Eladio Valdez worked for Hatch and Hodges, and they put him on the boot with the shotgun because he was good with it. He asked the municipal committee of Lanoria for a town job and they made him a part-time constable and put a shotgun in his hands because he was good with it and because he was quiet and because everybody liked him or at least abided him, because he was one of the good ones who kept himself clean and neat, even wearing the starched collar and the suit when everybody else was in shirtsleeves, and never drank too much or was abusive. Remember, there is the Bob Valdez who knew his place, and the one looking for a normal life and a home and a family.

Now this one is inside the one at the high camp above the mountain meadow at the edge of the timber. Bob and Roberto both there, both of them looking at the woman across the firelight, but Roberto doing the thinking now, saying to himself but to the woman, “All right, that’s what you want.”

He was not smiling now or holding open the coach door or touching his hat and saying yes, ma’am. He was on his own ground and he was un-buckling the Walker Colt from his leg.

He said, “Bring it over here.”

He rose to his feet as she came around the fire with the rolled blanket, now taller and bigger than she was. She spread the blanket next to his, and when she straightened, he took her shoulders in his hands, not feeling her pull back, feeling only the soft firmness of her arms. He said, “You don’t want to be alone, uh?”

She said nothing.

“You want somebody to hold you and take care of you. Is that it?”

Her face was close, her eyes looking at him, her lips slightly parted.

“What else do you want? You want me to let you go?”

Slowly her hands came up in front of her and she began unbuttoning her shirt, her hands working down gradually from her throat to her waist. She said, “I told you I killed my husband. I told you I don’t want to marry Frank Tanner. I told you I have nothing. You decide what I want.”

“I heard something,” Diego Luz said.

His wife lay beside him with her eyes closed. He knew she was awake because sunlight filtered through the straw blind covering the window, the way the early morning sunlight looked each day when they rose to work in the yard and the fields and the horse corral until the sun left for the night. Without opening her eyes his wife said, sleep in her voice and on her face, “What did you hear?”

Diego Luz sat up now. “I heard something.”

“Your horses,” his wife said.

“Horses, but not my horses.”

“The chickens,” she said.

“Horses.” Diego Luz got out of the bed Bob Valdez had slept in a few days before. He looked at the two children on the mat beneath the window; they were asleep. He went into the front room and looked at his daughter and his youngest child and his wife’s mother in the bed. His mother-in-law lay on her back staring at the ceiling. Diego Luz said, “What is it?”

“Outside,” his wife’s mother said.

“What outside? What did you hear?”