Elmore Leonard - Valdez Is Coming

He saw Davis at the edge of the rock again, seeing him more clearly now with part of the brush torn away. Davis came out a little more, his left hand covering his ear and the side of his face.

“Don’t shoot. Listen to me, don’t.”

“The first one was for Diego,” Valdez said. “The next one’s from me. I owe you something.”

“I didn’t leave you, did I? I didn’t let you die. I could’ve, but I didn’t.”

“Pick up your gun.”

“Listen, I cut you loose!”

Valdez paused, letting the silence come over the clearing. He heard another sound, far away, off behind him, but his gaze held on Davis.

“Say it again.”

“After I pushed you over. That night I come back and cut you loose, didn’t I?”

“I didn’t see you that night.”

“Well, who do you think did it?”

His gaze dropped to the woman, to her eyes looking at him above the bandana. He heard the sound again and knew it was a horse approaching, coming fast up the arroyo.

“I left you my canteen. I can prove it’s mine, it’s got my initials scratched in the tin part, inside.”

Valdez raised his Walker to shut him up and motion him out of the brush. Davis started out, then stopped. He could hear the horse.

“Come on,” Valdez hissed.

But Davis hesitated. The sound was louder down the arroyo, rumbling toward them. Davis waited another moment then yelled out, “He’s in here!” throwing himself behind the outcropping. “Get him! He’s in here!”

Valdez reached the woman and pushed her over. He turned, moving crouched through the brittlebush, at the edge of it now, and stepping out of it as the first rider came at him from thirty yards away, drawing his revolver as he saw Valdez and the barrels of the Remington, then seeing nothing as the ten-bore charge rocked him from the saddle. The second rider was down the arroyo coming fast, low in the saddle and spurring his horse, his handgun already drawn, firing it from the off side of his horse. Valdez raised the Walker. He thumbed the hammer and fired and thumbed and fired and saw the horse buckle and roll, the rider stiff, with his arms outstretched in the air for a split moment, and Valdez shot him twice before he hit the ground. The horse was on its side, pawing with its forelegs, trying to rise. Valdez looked down the arroyo, waiting, then stepped to the horse and shot it through the head. He walked over to the man, whose death’s head face looked up at him with sunken mouth and open eyes.

“I hope you’re one of them Diego wanted,” Valdez said. He turned toward the yellow brittlebush, loading the Remington.

“Where was he?” the segundo asked.

“He must have been in them bushes and fired on them as they come by,” the rider said. “I was back a piece, up on the west side looking for his sign. When I heard the gunfire I lit up this way and they was coming out of the draw.”

The segundo held up his hand. “Wait. You don’t want to tell it so many times.” He squinted under his straw hat brim toward Tanner, mounted on his bay, looking down at them in the arroyo.

Tanner saw the two bodies sprawled in the dry bed. He saw the dead horse and the yellow-baked ground stained dark at the horse’s head. He saw the segundo and a man standing next to him and a half dozen mounted men and a riderless horse nibbling at the brittlebush. Tanner kicked the bay down the bank to the stream bed. He stared at the dead men, then at the segundo, a stub of a cigar clamped in his jaw.

“This man,” the segundo said, “is one of the four we left.”

“You left,” Tanner said.

“I left. He says they went south looking for a sign of him. Then after a while the piss-ant you hired, something Davis, he come back this way.”

“Let him tell it,” Tanner said, judging the man next to the segundo as he looked at him.

“Well, as he says we worked south a ways,” the rider said. “Davis come back first and we spread out some. Then these two here must have started back. I was down there a mile and a half, two miles” – he pointed south, more at ease now, a thumb hooked in his belt – “when I heard the shots and come on back.”

“Where were they?” Tanner said.

“When I come back? They were laying there. He must have been in the bushes and fired on them as they come by. As I got close they was coming up out of the draw and going west.”

“Who’s they?” Tanner asked him.

“Two men and a woman.”

“You saw them good?”

“Well, I was off a ways, but I could see her hair, long hair flying in the wind.”

“You’re saying it was Mrs. Erin?”

“Yes sir, I’d put my hand on the Book it was.”

“You see Valdez?”

“Not his face, but it must have been him. One of these boys here was blowed off by a scatter gun.”

“That one,” the segundo said. “This one, I don’t know, forty-four or forty-five, in the chest twice, close together.”

“That’s five men he’s killed,” Tanner said. He drew on the cigar stub; it was out, and he threw it to the ground. “What about Davis?”

The rider looked up. “I figured he was the other one with them. Once I saw he wasn’t around here.”

“That’s the strange thing,” the segundo said. “Why would the man want to take him? He’s worth nothing to him.”

“Unless he went with him on his own,” Tanner said. “Mark him down as another one, a dead man when we catch up with them.”

“We’ll get him for you,” the rider said.

Tanner looked down at him from the bay horse. “Did you fire at them?”

“Yes sir, I got down and laid against the cutbank for support and let go till they was out of range.”

“Did you hit anybody?”

“I don’t believe so.”

“But you might have.”

“Yes sir, I might’ve.”

“That range you couldn’t tell.”

“They was two hundred yards when I opened up.”

“You could have hit one though.”

“Yes sir.”

“You could have hit the woman,” Tanner said to him.

“No sir, I wasn’t aiming at her. No, I couldn’t have hit her. There wasn’t any chance I could’ve. See, I was aiming just at Valdez and he was a good piece from the woman.”

Tanner looked at the segundo. “Put him against the bank and shoot him.”

The rider said, “Mr. Tanner, there was no chance I could’ve hit her! I swear to God that’s the truth!”

The segundo felt the tobacco in his cheek, rolling it with his tongue as his eyes moved from the rider to Frank Tanner, looking at Tanner now but aware of the mounted men behind him and those up on the bank watching. The segundo said, “We lost five now. We shoot our own, that’s six, but the same as Valdez killed him. How many you want to give for this man?”

“As many as it takes,” Tanner said.

“Instead of shoot him,” the segundo said, “we make him ride point. The first one Valdez sees if he’s up there waiting. What do you think of that?”

The rider was watching Tanner. “I’ll ride point. Mister, I’ll cut his sign, too, and get him for you.”

Tanner stared down from his judgment seat on the bay horse. He let the man hang on the edge for a long moment before he said, “All right, this time,” saying no more than that, but holding his eyes on the man to let him know how close he had come.

The segundo said to the rider, “Start now, come on.” He was aware of the men on the bank, beyond Tanner, moving in their saddles, a man wiping his hand across his mouth and another loosening his hat and putting it on again. They were glad it was over. They had killed men, most of them had, but they didn’t want to put this one against the bank and shoot him. That would be the end of it. In a few days they would all be gone.