Elmore Leonard: Valdez Is Coming

There was a silence at the table. Mr. Beaudry fooled with the end of his moustache, twisting it, and Mr. Malson cleared his throat before he said, “We? Who’s we?”

“I thought everybody who was there,” Bob Valdez said. “Or everybody who wants to give something.”

Mr. Malson said, “You mean take up a collection? Pass the hat around?”

Valdez nodded. “Yes sir.”

“Well, I suppose we could do that.” He looked at Beaudry. “What do you think, Earl?”

Mr. Beaudry shrugged. “I don’t care. I guess it would be all right. Give her a few dollars for a stake.”

Mr. Malson nodded. “Enough to get home. Where does she live?”

“Their place is north of here,” Valdez said.

“No, I mean where is she from?”

“I don’t know.”

“Probably across the border,” Mr. Beaudry said. “She could collect about ten dollars and it’d be more than any of her kin had ever seen before.”

Mr. Malson said, “I suppose we could do it.”

“I was thinking of more than ten dollars,” Valdez said.

Mr. Malson looked up at him. “How much more?”

Bob Valdez cleared his throat. He said, “I was thinking five hundred dollars.”

The silence followed again. This time R. L. Davis broke it. He moved, shifting his weight, and there was a chinging sound of his spurs. He said, “I would like to know something. I would like to know why we’re listening to this greaser. It was him killed the nigger. What’s he coming to us for?”

“R. L.,” Mr. Malson said, “keep your mouth closed, all right?”

“Why can’t I say what I want?” R. L. Davis said, drunk enough to tell the manager of Maricopa to his face, “He killed him. Not us.”

Mr. Malson said, “Shut up or go to bed.” He took his time shifting his gaze to Bob Valdez, then holding it there, staring at him. “That’s a lot of money, five hundred dollars.”

“Yes sir,” Bob Valdez nodded, speaking quietly. “I guess it is, but she needs it. What does she have now? I mean, we take her husband from her and now she doesn’t have anything. So I thought five hundred dollars.” He smiled a little. “It just came to me. That much.”

Mr. Beaudry said, “That’s as much as most men make in a year.”

“Yes sir,” Bob Valdez said. “But her husband won’t earn anything anymore. Not this year or any year. So maybe five hundred is not so much.”

Mr. Beaudry said, “Giving that much is different than giving her a few dollars. I don’t mean the difference in the amount. I mean you give her a sum like five hundred dollars it’s like admitting we owe it to her. Like we’re to blame.”

“Well?” Bob Valdez said. “Who else is to blame?”

Mr. Beaudry said, “Now wait a minute. If you’re anxious to fix blame then I’ll have to go along with what this man said.” He nodded toward R. L. Davis. “You killed him. We didn’t. We were there to help flush him out, a suspected murderer. We weren’t there to kill anybody unless we had to. But you took it on yourself to go down and talk to him and it was you that killed him. Am I right or wrong?”

Bob Valdez said, “Everybody was shooting-”

Mr. Beaudry held up his hand. “Wait just a minute. Shooting isn’t killing. Nobody’s shot killed him but yours and there are ninety, a hundred witnesses will testify to it.”

“I said it before,” R. L. Davis said. “He killed the coon. Nobody else. The wrong coon at that.”

A few of them laughed and Bob Valdez looked over at R. L. Davis standing with his funneled hat over his eyes and his thumbs hooked in his belt trying to stand straight but swaying a little. He was good and drunk, his eyes watery looking and the corners of his mouth sticky. But it would be good to hit him anyway, Bob Valdez was thinking. Come in from the side and get his cheek and rip into his nose without hitting those ugly teeth and maybe cut your hand. With gloves on hit the mouth, but not without gloves. He could see R. L. Davis sitting on the floor of De Spain’s saloon with his nose bleeding and blood down the front of him. That would be all right.

And who else? No, he should be able to talk to Mr. Malson and Mr. Beaudry, the manager of a cattle company and a government land agent, but he was having one son of a bitch of a hard time because they didn’t see it, what he meant, or they didn’t want to see it.

He said, “I mean this way. What if she went to court-”

“Jesus Christ,” R. L. Davis said, shaking his head.

“What if she went there” – Valdez kept his eyes on Mr. Beaudry now – “with a lawyer and said she wanted to sue everybody that was out there, or this city?”

“Bob,” Mr. Beaudry said, “that woman doesn’t know what a lawyer is.”

“But if she did and they went to court, wouldn’t she get some money?”

The houseman said, “I thought we were playing cards.”

“Since she’s never heard of a lawyer or a county seat,” Mr. Beaudry said, “you’re talking straight into the wind, aren’t you?”

“I mean if she did. Like if you drive cattle over a man’s property and damage something,” Bob Valdez went on, holding on, “and the man goes to court, then the cattle company has to pay him for the damage. Isn’t that right?”

Mr. Malson smiled. He said, “That doesn’t sound like much of a cattle company to me,” and the others laughed. “I was to get involved in court suits, a man would be out from Chicago and I’d be out of a job.”

“But it’s happened,” Valdez said, staying with it. “The person or persons responsible have had to pay.”

Mr. Beaudry said, “I wouldn’t worry about it, Bob.”

“The person has to stand up and prove damage,” Mr. Malson said. “You don’t go to court, even if you know where it is, without a case. And by that I mean evidence.”

“All right,” Valdez said. “That’s what I mean. The woman doesn’t know anything about court, but we know about the evidence, uh? Because we were there. If we weren’t there her husband would be alive.”

“Or if he hadn’t opened the door,” Mr. Beaudry said. “Or if you hadn’t pulled the trigger.”

“Or,” Mr. Malson said, “if he hadn’t come to town this morning and if Frank Tanner hadn’t seen him.”

“Goddam, I was there,” R. L. Davis said. “We was on the steps of the Republic.”

“There you are,” Mr. Beaudry said. “If Frank Tanner hadn’t been here this morning it never would have happened. So maybe it’s his fault. Tanner’s.”

Somebody in the group behind Mr. Beaudry said, “Go tell him that,” and some of the men laughed, picturing it.

“Now that’s not so funny,” Mr. Beaudry said. “If this happened because of Frank Tanner, then maybe he’s to blame. What do you think, Bob?” he asked him seriously, patiently, as he would ask a stupid, thick-headed person.

“I guess so,” Bob Valdez said.

“Well, if you think he’s to blame,” Mr. Beaudry said, “why don’t you ask him for the money? And I’ll tell you what. If he agrees to the five hundred dollars, we will too. How’s that?”

Valdez kept his eyes on Mr. Beaudry. “I don’t know where he is.”

“He’s south of town,” Mr. Beaudry said. “Probably at the relay station for the night if his cattle got that far. Or he might have gone on.”

“He mentioned stopping there,” Mr. Malson said.

“All right,” Valdez said because there was nothing else he could say. “I’ll go talk to him.”

“Do that,” Mr. Beaudry said.

Mr. Malson waited until Bob Valdez was turning and the men who had crowded in were stepping aside. “Bob,” he said, “that Apache woman – somebody said she was over to the hotel trying to get a room.”

“No.” Valdez shook his head. “The manager said they were full up.”