Elmore Leonard: Valdez Is Coming

“Almost, uh?” Valdez said.

“Almost,” the Erin woman said.

“Are you all right?” She nodded and he said then, “You don’t have to go back with him. Remember that.”

A look of awareness came into her eyes, as if she had been suddenly awakened from sleep. “Don’t say that.”

“It has to be said.”

“I go with you. I don’t go with him.”

“Frank Tanner doesn’t know that.” Valdez paused. He said then, “Frank,” smiling with the weariness etched in his face. “Francisco. Francis. I had a friend named Francis. I don’t know what happened to him.”

He laughed out loud and saw the startled look come over her and saw the segundo looking at him.

He heard his own laughter again in the canyon and at the far end saw Frank Tanner and men on both sides of him coming out into the meadow. He saw Tanner stop, looking this way.

Gay Erin touched his arm, holding on to it. He said to her, “I don’t know why I thought it was funny. This Frank and my friend having the same name. They’re not much alike.” He smiled, still thinking of it, and watched the segundo approach, the segundo staring at him, trying to understand what would make him laugh.

With his left hand Emilio Avilar raised his hat and wiped his forehead with the same hand and put his hat on again. He said to Valdez, “You have tobacco? For chewing?”

“Cigarette,” Valdez said.

The segundo nodded. “All right.”

Valdez brought the sack and paper out of his pocket and moved toward the segundo, who stepped forward to meet him. The segundo rolled a cigarette and returned the sack to Valdez, who made one for himself, and the segundo lighted the cigarettes. Valdez stepped back, the cigarette in his mouth, the Remington in his right hand, pointed down.

The segundo said, blowing out smoke and shaking the match, “Tell me something – who you are.”

“What difference does it make?” Valdez answered. He looked beyond the segundo to Tanner coming up with his men spread behind him.

“You hit one yesterday,” the segundo said. “I think five hundred yards.”

“Six hundred,” Valdez said.

“What was it you use?”

“Sharps.”

“I thought some goddam buffalo gun. You hunt buffalo?”

“Apache,” Valdez said.

“Man, I know it. When?”

“When they were here.”

“You leave any alive?”

“Some. In Oklahoma now.”

“Goddam, you do it,” the segundo said. “You know how many of mine you kill?”

“Twelve,” Valdez said.

“You count them.”

“You better, uh?” Valdez said.

The segundo drew deeply on the cigarette and exhaled slowly. He was looking at Valdez and thinking, How would you like about four of him? All the rest of them could go home. Four of him and no Tanner and they could drive cattle to Mexico and become rich. And then he was thinking, Who would you rather shoot, him or Tanner? It was too bad the two of them couldn’t trade places. Tanner liked to put people against the wall. This one knew how to do it. He didn’t need a wall. He could kill a man at six hundred yards, and the son of a bitch kept count.

“It’s too bad it turns out like this,” the segundo said.

“Well,” Valdez shrugged. “It will be settled now. It will be finished.”

The segundo continued to study him. “Why don’t you give him his woman? Tell him you won’t do it again.”

“It’s not his woman now.”

The segundo smiled. “Like that.”

“Sure, it’s up to him. He wants her back, he has to take her.”

“You think he can’t do it?”

Valdez shrugged again. “If he tries, he’s dead. Somebody will get me, there are enough of you. But he still will be dead.”

“He don’t think that way,” the segundo said.

Valdez held his gaze. “What do you think?”

“I believe it.” The segundo saw Valdez’s gaze lift and he moved to the side, looking over his shoulder to see Frank Tanner coming toward them. The segundo backed away several more steps, but Tanner stopped before reaching him. He was holding a Colt revolver at his side. A man behind Tanner took his horse, and the rest of the men, five of them, spread out, moving to both sides, keeping their eyes on Valdez. R. L. Davis was next to Tanner, a few feet to his right.

Tanner was looking at the Erin woman, who had not moved as he approached. He stared at her and his expression showed nothing, but he was making up his mind.

He said finally, “Come over here next to me.”

The woman made no move. “I’m all right where I am.”

“You better start thinking straight,” Tanner said. “You better have something to tell me when we get home.”

“I’m not going home with you.”

Tanner took his time. “That’s how it is, huh?” His gaze shifted to Valdez. “She better than a Mexican bitch?”

Valdez said nothing.

“If that’s how it is, you better tell that whore next to you go get out of the way.”

Quietly, Valdez said to her, “Move over a little. Just a little.”

Tanner waited. “Have you got something you want to say to me?”

“I’ve said it,” Valdez answered.

Tanner’s eyes held on Valdez. He said, “Put this man against the wall over there and shoot him.”

He waited and said then, “Emilio!”

“I hear you,” the segundo said.

“Take him.”

The segundo did not make a move or seem about to speak.

“Number two” – Tanner’s voice rose – “I’m telling you something!”

The segundo looked at Tanner now, directly at him. He said, “It’s not my woman.”

Valdez’s eyes shifted to the man, hung there, and returned to Tanner. His hand gripped the Remington lightly, feeling the weight of the gun, the sawed-off barrel hanging at his knee.

Tanner turned his head slowly to the left, to the three men standing off from him, then to the right, to R. L. Davis and the two men beyond him.

“I’m going to give the word,” Tanner said.

“Wait a minute!” R. L. Davis said. “I’m no part of this.” He saw Tanner looking at him as he edged back a few steps, bumping against his horse and pushing it. “I don’t even have a gun.”

“I give you mine,” the segundo said.

“I don’t want one!” Davis was edging back, taking himself out of the group, his eyes holding on the Remington at Valdez’s side. “I don’t have any fight with him.”

In Spanish, the segundo said to the young Mexican on Tanner’s left, “Tomas, go home. This isn’t yours.”

The young man wasn’t sure. “I work for him,” he said.

“Not anymore. I let you go.”

Tanner’s head jerked toward the segundo. “What’re you telling him?”

“That she’s your woman,” the segundo said easily. “A man holds his woman or he doesn’t. It’s up to him, a personal thing between him and the man who took the woman. All these men are thinking, What have we got to do with it?”

“You do what I tell you. That’s what you’ve got to do with it.” Tanner glanced both ways and said, “I’m talking to everybody present. Everybody hears me and I’m telling you now to shoot him. Now!”

He looked at his men again, not believing it, seeing them standing watching him, none of them ready to make a move.

“You hear me – I said shoot him!”

Valdez waited in the silence that followed. He waited as Tanner looked at his men, from one to the next. He drew on the cigarette, finishing it, and dropped it and said, “Hey.”

As Tanner turned to him, Valdez said, “I got an idea, Frank,” and waited another moment. “You have a gun in your hand. Why don’t you shoot me?”

Tanner faced him, the Colt revolver at his side. He stared at Valdez and said nothing, eyes sunken in the shadow of his hat brim, dusty and beard stubbled, still looking like he was made of gristle and hard to kill.