Elmore Leonard - Valdez Is Coming

The segundo had scouted the timber and the canyon beyond, studying the canyon and the narrow defile at the end of it, and known at once Valdez was coming here. Where else? This man knew the ground and the water sinks and fought like an Apache. Sure Valdez was coming here: to escape through the defile or to stand in it and shoot them one at a time as they came for him.

Don’t let him get in the canyon, the segundo had thought. Don’t take a chance with him. Wait for him at the canyon mouth and shoot him as he enters. But Valdez would be coming through the cover of the trees and maybe his nose or his ears would tell him something, warn him, and he would run off another way. You have to think of him as you would a mountain lion, the segundo thought. Trap him in the open, away from cover.

So the segundo had gone back through the timber to the edge overlooking the slope and had told his two men very carefully what they would do: how they would watch for him, then study his angle of approach from the cover of the trees, and be waiting for him to walk into it, waiting until he was close to the trees but still in the open, and kill him before he saw them.

But now Valdez was already in the timber. The segundo had told his men to be quiet and keep their horses quiet and listen.

One of them said, “You know he’s going for the canyon.”

“He reached it, that’s all,” the other one said. “Once he gets in the hole ain’t nobody going in after him.”

“Not this child,” the first man said. “Tanner can go in himself he wants him so bad.”

Christ Jesus, the segundo said to himself. “Will you be quiet!”

They listened.

“I don’t hear him,” one of them said. “I don’t hear a sound.”

The segundo drew the two men closer to him, listening, and they listened with him. “Do you know why?” he said. “Because he’s not moving, he’s listening. He knows we’re in here with him.”

“He didn’t see us.”

“When are you going to know him?” the segundo said. “He doesn’t have to see you.”

“He’s got to move sometime,” one of them said.

The segundo nodded. “Before Tanner and the others come up. All right, we separate, spread out a little. But all of us move toward the canyon.” His voice dropped to a hushed tone. “Very quietly.”

There were open patches where sunlight streaked through the pine branches a hundred feet above, and there were thickets of scrub oak and dense brush. There was an occasional sound close to them, a small scurrying sound in the brush, and there were the shrill faraway cries of unseen birds in the treetops. The birds would stop and in the shadowed forest, high in the Santa Ritas, a silence would settle.

They moved deep into the trees from the open slope before Valdez brought them up to listen. And as he listened he thought, You should have kept going and taken the chance. You don’t have time to wait.

He heard the sound through the trees, a twig snapping, then silence. In a moment he heard it again and the sound of movement in dead leaves.

He was right, some of them were already in the trees. But it did no good to be right this time. They should have kept going and not stopped. They weren’t going to sneak through and keep running, and now he wondered if the woman should go first or follow him. Follow him through the trees and in the open, if they reached the canyon, then first into the defile while he held them off. He couldn’t remember the distance to the canyon. Perhaps fifty yards, a little more. He was certain of the general direction, the way they would point and keep going.

He said to the woman, “The last time we run. Are you ready?”

She nodded once, up and down. Both of her hands were on her saddle horn, but she didn’t seem tense or to be holding on.

“I go first,” Valdez said. He nodded in the direction. “That way. You come behind me. Don’t go another way around the trees, keep behind me. If you see them in front of us, stay close to me, as close as you can. At the end of the canyon you’ll see the opening. You go in first. Don’t get off, ride in – it’s wide enough – and I’ll come in after you.”

She nodded again. “All right.”

He smiled at her. “Just a little ride, it’s over.”

She nodded again and tried to smile and now he saw she was afraid.

Valdez dismounted. He untied the sorrel, moving it aside, holding the bridle under the horse’s muzzle. As soon as Tanner’s men entered the trees he would send the sorrel galloping off and hope they would take off after its sound. He waited, telling Tanner’s men to hurry so he would hear them soon; and when it came, moments later, the sound of their horses rushing into the timber, he hissed into the sorrel’s ear, yanking the bridle and slapping the Remington hard across the horse’s rump as it jumped to a start and ran off through the trees.

“Now,” Valdez said.

They were moving, running through the shafts of sunlight and darkness with the beating, breathing sound of the horses and the tree branches cutting at their faces, running through the brush, through the wall of leaves and snapping branches and through a clearing into trees again, now hearing Tanner’s men calling out somewhere behind and somewhere off in the timber. Valdez could see the canyon ahead through the foliage, the open mouth of the meadow, the rock escarpment slanting to the sky.

He saw the opening and he saw a rider slash out of the trees in front of him and come around, his horse rearing with the sudden motion. Valdez broke out of the trees straight for the rider, seeing him broadside now and kicking his mount. He bore down on the man, raising the Remington in front of him, and at point-blank range blew the man off the back of his horse.

He was aware of horses behind him and felt the next man before he saw him or heard him coming up on the left. He switched the Remington to that hand, extending it at arm’s length, and when he looked, he fired as the rider fired and saw the man go out of his saddle. The man’s horse kept running, racing him, and now he felt the wind in the open and saw the sun balanced on the west rim of the escarpment and heard the Erin woman’s horse holding close behind him.

A high whine sang through the narrows as a rifle opened up on him. He remembered the sound of gunfire in the canyon from a time before. He remembered the shadowed crevices high on the walls and the thick gama grass. But he remembered the meadow longer than this, a half mile long in his mind. Now it was not half that distance and he was almost to the end.

Another rifle shot sang out as he reached the defile and came around.

The woman would be there, behind him, and ride in and he would follow her.

But the horse that came behind him was riderless.

The horse veered off, seeing the canyon wall. As it moved out of the way, Valdez saw her: she was about thirty yards from him, her horse was down, and she was rising to her feet, holding her head with both hands and looking at the dead horse.

He saw the segundo close beyond her, dismounting and coming up with a rifle in his hands. Valdez wanted to call out to her, “Run! Come on, do it!” But it was too late. The segundo came on, walking through the gama grass with the rifle in his right hand, his finger through the trigger guard. He stopped before reaching the Erin woman.

Valdez loaded the Remington – not thinking about it, but loading it because it was empty and saying to the segundo with his gaze, You want to do something, come on, do it. He was tired, God, at the end of it, but this is what he was saying to the segundo. With the Remington loaded and cocked he walked out to the woman.

She stood with one hand covering the side of her face, dirt and pieces of grass on her dress and in her hair, as she watched Valdez coming. She looked tired and still afraid, her eyes dull and without question or hope.