Elmore Leonard: Valdez Is Coming

If she was my woman, the segundo was thinking, I could make her laugh and scream and bite.

He said to Tanner, “The man’s gone.”

“How did he behave?”

“He stood up.”

Tanner drew on the fresh cigar he was smoking. “He did, uh?”

“As well as a man can do it.”

“He didn’t beg?”

The segundo shook his head. “He said nothing.”

“He shot the nigger square,” Tanner said. “He did that well. But outside, I thought he would crawl.”

The segundo shook his head again. “No crawling or begging.”

“All right, tell that man to close his bar and go to bed.”

The segundo nodded and moved off.

Tanner waited until the segundo had stopped at the bar and had gone outside. “Why don’t you go to bed, too,” he said to the woman.

“I will in a minute.” She kept her finger in the handle of the coffee cup.

“Go in and pretty yourself up,” he said then. “I’ll take a turn around the yard and be in directly.”

“What did the man do?”

“He wasted my time.”

“So they put him against the wall?”

“It was the way he spoke to me,” Tanner said. “I can’t have that in front of them.” He sat close to her, staring into her face, at the gray-green eyes and the soft hair close to her cheek. His hand came up to finger the end strands of her hair. Quietly, he said, “Gay, go on in the room.”

“I’ll finish my coffee.”

“No, right now would be better. I’ll be there in a minute.”

She waited until he was out of the door before rising and going into the sleeping room. In the dim lamplight she began to undress, stepping out of her dress and dropping it on the bed next to her nightgown. The light blue one. Thin and limp and patched beneath one arm. There had been a light blue one and a light green one and a pink one and a yellow one, all with the white-scrolled monogram GBE she had embroidered on the bodice when she was nineteen years old and living in Prescott, a girl about to be married. The girl, Gay Byrnes, had brought the nightgowns and her dresses and linens to Fort Huachuca to become the bride of James C. Erin. During five and a half years as his wife she discarded the nightgowns one by one and used them as dust rags. When her husband was killed six months ago, and she left Huachuca with Frank Tanner, she had only the light blue one left.

Gay Erin slipped the nightgown over her head, brushed her hair and got into the narrow double bed, pulling the blanket up over her shoulder as she rolled to her side, her back to the low-burning lamp.

When Tanner came in and began to undress, she remained with her back to him. She could see him from times before: removing his boots, his shirt and trousers, standing in his long cotton underwear as he unfastened the buttons. He would stand naked scratching his stomach and chest, then go to the wall hook and take his revolver from the holster, making sure the hammer was on an empty chamber as he moved toward the bed.

She felt the mattress yield beneath his weight. The gun would be at his side, under the blanket and next to his hip. He would lie still for a few moments, then roll toward her and put his hand on her shoulder.

“What have you got the nightgown on for?”

“I’m cold.”

“Well now, what do you think I’m for?”

“Tell me,” Gay Erin said.

“I’ll show you.”

“As a lover or a husband?”

Tanner groaned. “Jesus Christ, are you going to start that?”

“Six months ago you said we’d be married in a few weeks.”

“Most people probably think we already are. What’s the difference?”

She started to get up, to throw back the blanket, and his hand tightened on her arm.

“I said we’d be married, we will.”

“When?”

“Well not right now, all right?” His hand stroked her arm beneath the flannel. “Come on, take this thing off.”

She lay without moving, her eyes open in the darkness, letting her hesitation stretch into silence, a long moment, before she sat up slowly and worked the nightgown out from beneath her. She pulled it over her head, turning to him.

Inez was fat and took her time coming over from the stove with the coffeepot. Filling the china cup in front of Bob Valdez and then her own, Inez said, “She left early. It must have been before daybreak.”

“You hear her?”

“No, maybe one of the girls did. I can ask.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“I heard what you’re doing,” Inez said.

“Well, I’m not doing very good. I wanted to tell the woman maybe it would take me a little longer.”

“You’re crazy.”

“Listen, I’m tired,” Valdez said. “I’m not going to argue with you, all right?”

“Go upstairs.”

“I said I’m tired.”

“So are the girls. I mean take a room and go to sleep.”

“I have a run to St. David this afternoon and don’t come back till the morning.”

“Tell them you’re sick.”

“No, they don’t have anybody.”

“That Davis was in here last night. I threw him out.”

“You can do it,” Valdez said.

“He was in no condition. Only talk. I don’t need talk,” Inez said. She made a noise sipping her coffee and watched Valdez shape a cigarette. He handed it to her and made another one and lit them with a kitchen match.

“Now what do you do, forget the whole thing?”

“I don’t know.” He rubbed a gnarled brown hand over his hair, pulling it down on his forehead. “I think maybe talk to this Mr. Tanner again.”

“You’re crazy.”

“I didn’t explain it to him right. The part that it’s like a court where you get money for something done to you. Not like a court, but, you know.”

“You’re still crazy. He won’t listen to you. Nobody will.”

“But if he does, the others will, uh?” Valdez sipped his coffee.

“Put a gun in his back if you can get close to him,” Inez said. “That’s the only way.”

“No guns.”

“The little shotgun.”

Valdez nodded, thinking about it. “That would be good, wouldn’t it?”

“Boom!” Inez laughed out and the sound of her voice filled the kitchen.

Valdez smiled. “Has he ever been in here?”

“They say he’s got a woman. Maybe he beats her or does strange things to her.”

“He’s never been here, but you don’t like him,” Valdez said. “Why?”

“My book.”

“Ah, your book. I forgot about it.”

“You’re in it.”

“Sure, I remember now.”

Inez called out, “Polly!” and waited a moment and called again.

A dark-haired girl in a robe came through the door from the front room. She smiled at Bob Valdez, holding the robe together in front of her. “Early bird,” she said.

“No early bird. Get me the book,” Inez said.

“Which, the black one?”

“No, the one before,” Inez said. “The green one.”

Valdez shook his head. “Black ones and green ones. How many do you have?”

“They go back about twelve years. To your time.”

“Like I’m an old man now.”

“Sometime you act it.”

The girl came into the kitchen again with the scrapbook under her arm. “The green one,” she said, winking at Bob Valdez and handing it to Inez, who pushed her coffee cup out of the way to open the book on the table. Inez sat at the end of the kitchen table with Polly standing behind her now, looking over her shoulder. Sitting to the side, Valdez lowered and cocked his head to look at the newspaper clippings and photographs mounted in the book.

“He seems familiar,” Valdez said.

Inez looked at him. “I hope so. It’s Rutherford Hayes.”

“Well, that was twelve, fourteen years ago,” Valdez said. He looked up as Polly laughed. She was leaning over Inez and the top of her robe hung partly open.