Elmore Leonard - Valdez Is Coming

Ten years before, he had camped in these hills with his Apache trackers, following the White Mountain band that had struck Mimbreno and burned the church and killed three men and carried off a woman: renegades, fleeing into Mexico after jumping the reservation at San Carlos, taking what they needed along the way.

Ten years ago, but he remembered the ground well, and the way toward the twin peaks.

Valdez had worked ahead with his trackers and let the cavalry troop try to keep up with them, moving deep into the hills and climbing gradually into rock country, following the trail of the White Mountain band easily, because the band was running, not trying to cover their tracks, and because there were many of them: women and several children in addition to the fifteen or so men in the raiding party. He knew he would catch them, because he could move faster with his trackers and it was only a matter of time. They found cooking pots and jars that had been stolen and now thrown away. They found a lame horse and farther on a White Mountain woman who was sick and had been left behind. They moved on, climbing the slopes and up through the timber until they came out of the trees into a canyon: a gama grass meadow high in the mountains, with an escarpment of rock rising steeply on both sides and narrowing at the far end to a dark, climbing passage that would allow only one man at a time to enter.

The first tracker into the passage was shot from his saddle. They carried him back and dismounted in the meadow to look over the situation.

This was the reason the White Mountain band had made a run for it and had not bothered to cover their tracks. Once they made it through the defile they were safe. One of them could squat up there in the narrows and hold off every U. S. soldier on frontier station, as long as he had shells, giving his people time to run for Mexico. They studied the walls of the canyon and the possible trails around. Yes, a man could climb it maybe, if he had some goat blood in him. But getting up there didn’t mean there was a way to get down the other side. On the other hand, to go all the way back down through the rocks and find a trail that led around and brought them out at the right place could take a week if they were lucky. So Valdez and his trackers sat in that meadow and smoked cigarettes and talked and let the White Mountain people run for the border. If they didn’t get them this year they’d get them next year.

Valdez could see Tanner’s men dismounted in the meadow, looking up at the canyon walls, studying the shadowed crevices and the cliff rose that grew along the rim, way up there against the sky. Anyone want to try it? No thank you, not today. Tanner would send some men to scout a trail that led around. But before he ever heard from them again, after a day or two in the meadow, seeing the bats flicking and screeching around the canyon’s wall at night, he’d come to the end of his patience and holler up through the narrow defile, “All right, let’s talk!”

That was the way Bob Valdez had pictured it taking place: leading Tanner with plenty of time and setting it up to make the deal. “Give me the money for the Lipan woman or you don’t get your woman back.”

He had almost forgotten the Lipan woman. He couldn’t picture her face now. It wasn’t a face to remember, but now the woman had no face at all. She was somewhere, sitting in a hut eating corn or atole , feeling the child inside her and not knowing this was happening outside in the night. He would say to Tanner, “You see how it is? The woman doesn’t have a man, so she needs money. You have money, but you don’t have a woman. All right, you pay for the man and you get your woman.”

It seemed simple because in the beginning it was simple, with the Lipan woman sitting at her husband’s grave. But now there was more to it. The putting him against the wall and tying him to the cross had made it something else. Still, there was no reason to forget the Lipan woman. No matter if she didn’t have a face and no matter what she looked like. And no matter if it was not happening the way it was supposed to happen. The trouble now was, Tanner could stop him before he reached the narrow place, before he reached the good position to talk and make a trade.

No, the trouble was more than that. The trouble was also the woman herself, this woman sitting without speaking anymore, the person he would have to trade. He said in his mind, St. Francis, you were a simple man. Make this goddam thing that’s going on simple for me.

“You say you know where you’re going,” R. L. Davis said. “Tell us so we’ll all know.”

You don’t need him, Valdez thought. He said, “If we get there, you see it. If we don’t get there, it doesn’t matter, does it?”

“Listen, you know how many men he’s got?”

“Not so much anymore.”

“He’s still got enough,” R. L. Davis said. “They’re going to take you and string you up, if you aren’t shot dead before. But either way, it’s the end of old Bob Valdez.”

“How’s your head?”

“It still hurts.”

“Close your mouth or I make it hurt worse, all right?”

“I helped you,” R. L. Davis said. “You owe me something. I could have left you out there, but being a white man I went back and cut you loose.”

“What do you want?” Valdez asked.

“What do you think? I cut you loose, you cut me loose and let me go.”

Valdez nodded slowly. “All right. When we leave.”

Davis looked at him hard. “You mean it?”

Valdez felt the Erin woman looking at him also. “As you say, I owe it to you.”

“It’s not some kind of trick?”

“How could it be a trick?”

“I don’t know. I just don’t trust you.”

Valdez shrugged. “If you’re free, what difference does it make?”

“You’re cooking something up,” R. L. Davis said.

“No.” Valdez shook his head. “I only want you to do me a favor.”

“What’s that?”

“Give Mr. Tanner a message from me. Tell him he has to pay the Lipan, but now I’m not sure I give him back his woman.”

He felt her staring at him again, but he looked out into the darkness thinking about what he had said, realizing that it was all much simpler in his mind now.

It was two o’clock in the morning when Valdez and the Erin woman moved out leading Davis’s bareback sorrel horse. They left Davis tied to his saddle with his own bandana knotted around his mouth. As Valdez tied it behind his head, Davis twisted his neck, pushing out his jaw.

“You gag me I won’t be able to yell for help!”

“Very good,” Valdez said.

“They might not find me!”

“What’s certain in life?” Valdez asked. He got the bandana between Davis’s teeth and tightened it, making the knot. “There. When it’s light stand up and carry your saddle down the hill. They’ll find you.”

He would have liked to hit Davis once with his fist. Maybe twice. Two good ones in the mouth. But he’d let it go; he’d cut him fairly good with the Remington. Mr. R. L. Davis was lucky.

Now a little luck of your own, Valdez thought.

They walked the horses through the darkness with ridges and shadowed rock formations above them, Valdez leading the way and taking his time, moving with the clear sound of the horses on broken rock and stopping to listen in the night silence. Once, in the hours they traveled before dawn, they heard a single gunshot, a thin sound in the distance, somewhere to the east; then an answering shot far behind them. Tanner’s men firing at shadows, or locating one another. But they heard no sounds close to them that could have been Tanner’s riders. Maybe you’re having some more luck and you’ll get through, Valdez thought. Maybe St. Francis listened and he’s making it easier. Hey, Valdez said. Keep Sister Moon behind the clouds so they don’t see us. They moved through the night until a faint glow began to wash the sky and the ground shadows became diffused and the shapes of the rock formations and trees were more difficult to see. The moment before dawn when the Apache came through the brush with bear grass in his headband and you didn’t see him until he was on you. The time when it was no longer night, but not yet morning. A time to rest, Valdez thought.