Valdez Is Coming

2

A man can be in two different places and he will be two different men. Maybe if you think of more places he will be more men, but two is enough for now. This is Bob Valdez washing his hands in the creek and resting in the willows after digging the hole and lowering Orlando Rincon into it and covering him with dirt and stones, resting and watching the Lipan Apache woman who sat in silence by the grave of the man whose child she would have in a month.

This is one Bob Valdez. The forty-year-old town constable and stage-line shotgun rider. A good, hardworking man. And hard looking, with a dark hard face that was creased and leathery; but don’t go by looks, they said, Bob Valdez was kindly and respectful. One of the good ones. The whores in Inez’s place on Commercial Street would call to him from their windows; even the white-skinned girls who had come from St. Louis, they liked him too. Bob Valdez would wave at them and sometimes he would go in and after being with the girl would have a cup of coffee with Inez. They had known each other when they were children in Tucson. That was all right, going to Inez’s place. Mr. Beaudry and Mr. Malson and the others could try to think of a time when Bob Valdez might have drunk too much or swaggered or had a certain smart-aleck look on his face, but they would never recall such a time. Yes, this Bob Valdez was all right.

Another Bob Valdez inside the Bob Valdez in the willows that evening had worked for the Army at one time and had been a contract guide when General Crook chased Geronimo down into the Madres. He was a tracker out of Whipple Barracks first, then out of Fort Thomas, then in charge of the Apache police at Whiteriver. He would sit at night eating with them and talking with them as he learned the Chiricahua dialect. He would keep up with them all day and shoot his Springfield carbine one hell of a lot better than any of them could shoot. He had taken scalps but never showed them to anyone and had thrown them away by the time Geronimo was in Oklahoma and he had gone to work for the stage company, Hatch and Hodges, to live as a civilized man. Shortly after that he was named town constable in Lanoria at twenty-five dollars a month, getting the job because he got along with people, including the Mexicans in town who drank too much on Saturday night, and this was the Bob Valdez that Mr. Beaudry and Mr. Malson and the others knew. They had never met the first Bob Valdez.

And they had forgotten about the second Bob Valdez; they had gone, everyone cleared out of the Maricopa pasture. He was alone with the Lipan Apache woman as evening settled and the grove in the willow trees became dark.

He had not spoken to the woman. He had touched her shoulder before digging the grave – when she had tried to take the shovel from him to do it herself – he had touched her, easing her to the ground, and she had sat unmoving while he formed the hole and dug deep into the soil. He would look at her and smile, but her expression gave him nothing in return. She wasn’t an attractive woman. She was a round shape in a dirty gray dress with yellow strands of beads. He did not know how old she was. She was something sitting there watching him but not watching him. She would build a fire and sit here all night and in the morning she would probably be gone.

He had never seen the woman before. He had seen Orlando Rincon in Lanoria. He had recognized him, but had never spoken to him before today. Rincon had a one-loop spread a half day’s ride south of Lanoria that he and the woman tended alone. That much was all Bob Valdez knew about them. They had come into town for something and now the man was dead and the woman was alone with her unborn child. Like that, her life, whatever it had been before, good or bad, was gone.

He watched the woman rise from the grave to water the wagon horses in the creek. She returned and made a fire, lighting it with a match. Valdez went over to her then, fashioning a cigarette and leaning in to light it in the fire, taking his time because he wasn’t sure of the words he wanted to use.

In Spanish he said, “Where will you go?” and repeated it in the Chiricahua dialect when she continued to stare at him, and now she pointed off beyond the creek.

“This should not have happened,” he said. “Your husband had done nothing. It was a mistake.” He leaned closer to see her clearly in the firelight. “I did it to him, but I didn’t want to. He didn’t understand and he was going to kill me.”

Christ, if you can’t say anything, Valdez thought, quit talking.

He said, “It isn’t your fault this has happened. I mean, you are made to suffer and yet you did nothing to cause it. You understand?”

The woman nodded slightly, looking into the fire now. “All right, we can’t give him back to you, but we should give you something. You take something from a person, then you have to pay for it. We have to pay. We have to pay you for taking your husband. You see that?”

The woman did not move or speak.

“I don’t know how much you pay a woman for killing her husband, but we’ll think of something, all right? There were many men there; I don’t know them all. But the ones I know I go to and ask them to give me something for you. A hundred dollars. No, five hundred dollars we get and give it to you so you can do what you want with it. Have your baby and go home, wherever your home is, or stay here. Buy some, I don’t know, something to grow, and a cow and maybe some goats, uh? You know goats?”

Christ, let her buy what she wants. Get it done.

“Look,” Valdez said then. “We get in the wagon and go back to town. I see the men and talk to them – you stay in town also. I find a place for you, all right?”

The woman’s gaze rose from the fire, her dark face glistening in the light, the shapeless, flat-faced Lipan Apache woman looking at him. A person, but Christ, barely a person.

Why did Rincon choose this one? Valdez thought. He smiled then. “How does that sound? You stay in town, sleep in a bed. You don’t have to worry or think about it. We pay for everything.”

A Maricopa rider came into De Spain’s, where Mr. Beaudry and Mr. Malson were playing poker with another gentleman and the house man, and told them it was the goddamnedest thing he’d seen in a while: Bob Valdez walking into the Republic Hotel with that blown-up Indian woman.

R. L. Davis came over from the bar and said, “What about the Indian woman? Hell, I could have knocked her flat if I’d wanted. Nobody believes that then they never seen me shoot.”

Mr. Malson told him to shut up and said to the Maricopa rider, “What’s this about Bob Valdez?”

“He’s in the Republic registering that nigger’s squaw,” the rider said. “I saw them come up in the team and go inside, so I stuck my head in.”

Mr. Beaudry was squinting in his cigar smoke. “What’d the clerk do?”

“I guess he didn’t know what to do,” the rider said. “He went and got the manager, and him and Bob Valdez were talking over the counter, but I couldn’t hear them.”

Mr. Malson, the manager of Maricopa, looked at Mr. Beaudry, the government land agent, and Mr. Beaudry said, “I never heard of anything like that before.”

Mr. Malson shook his head. “They won’t give her a room. Christ Almighty.”

Mr. Beaudry shook his head too. “I don’t know,” he said. “Bob Valdez. You sure it was Bob?”

“Yes sir,” the Maricopa rider said. He waited a minute while the men at the poker table thought about it, then went over to the bar and got himself a glass of whiskey.

Next to him, R. L. Davis said, “Were you out there today?” The rider shook his head, but said he’d heard all about it. R. L. Davis told him how he had taken the Winchester and put four good ones right behind the woman when she came out for water and one smack in the door as she went back inside. “Hell,” R. L. Davis said, “I’d wanted to hit her I’d have hit her square.”

The Maricopa rider said, “Goddam, I guess she’s a big enough something to shoot at for anybody.”

“I was two hundred yards off!” R. L. Davis stiffened up and his face was tight. “I put them shots right where I aimed!”

The Maricopa rider said, “All right, I believe you.” He was tired and didn’t feel like arguing with some stringy drunk who was liable to make something out of nothing.

For a Saturday night there was only a fair crowd in De Spain’s, the riders and a few town merchants lined up and lounged at the bar and some others played poker and faro, with tobacco smoke hanging above them around the brass lamps. They were drinking and talking, but it didn’t seem loud enough for a Saturday. There had been more men in here earlier, right after supper, a number of them coming in for a quick glass or a jug to take with them, heading back to their spreads with their families, but now it was only a fair-sized crowd. The moment of excitement had been Mr. Tanner coming in. He had stood at the bar and lit a cigar and sipped two glasses of whiskey while Mr. Malson stood with him. Those who were out at the Maricopa pasture pointed out Mr. Tanner to those who hadn’t been there. The reactions to seeing him were mostly the same. So that was Frank Tanner. He didn’t look so big. They expected a man with his name and reputation to look different – a man who traded goods to Mexican rebels and had a price on his head across the border and two dozen guns riding for him. Imagine paying all those men. He must do pretty well. He was a little above average height and was straight as a post, thin, with a thin, sunken-in face and a heavy moustache and eyes in the shadow of his hatbrim. He made a person look at him when he walked in, but once the person had looked, Tanner wasn’t that different from anybody else. That was the reaction to Frank Tanner. That he was not so much after all. Still, while he was in De Spain’s, it seemed quieter, like everybody was holding back, though most of the men were trying to act natural and somebody would laugh every once in a while. Frank Tanner stayed fifteen minutes and left. He’d gone over to the Republic and shortly after, he and his wife were seen riding out of Lanoria in their buggy with a mounted Mexican trailing them, everyone coming to doors and windows to get a look at them. The men said boy, his wife was something – a nice young thing and not too frail either, and the women admitted yes, she was pretty, but she ought to knot or braid her hair instead of letting it hang down like that; it made her look awful bold.

Frank Tanner had left De Spain’s over two hours ago. Now, the next one to come in, just a little while after the Maricopa rider, was Bob Valdez.

The houseman saw him and nudged Mr. Malson under the table. Mr. Malson looked at him funny, frowning – What was the little bald-headed son of a bitch up to? – then saw the houseman looking toward the door. Bob Valdez was coming directly toward their table, his gaze already picking out Mr. Malson, who looked at him and away from him and back again, and Bob Valdez was still looking right at him.

“I buried him,” Valdez said.

Mr. Malson nodded. “Good. There were enough witnesses, I didn’t see any need for an inquest.” He looked up at Bob Valdez. “Everybody knows how he died.”

“Unless his wife wants him buried at home,” Valdez said.

Mr. Beaudry said, “Let her move him if she wants. Phew, driving that team in the sun with him on the back. How’d you like to do that?”

R. L. Davis, who had moved over from the bar, said, “I guess that boy stunk enough when he was alive.” He looked around and got a couple of the riders to laugh at it.

“I haven’t asked her if she wants to,” Valdez said. “It’s something she’ll think about later when she’s home. But I told her one thing,” he said then. “I told her we’d pay her for killing her husband.”

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.”

“Uh-huh,” Mr. Malson said. “Well, where is she now?”

“I took her to Inez’s place,” Valdez said. “She’s staying there tonight.”

Nobody said anything until he was gone. Then R. L. Davis, as drunk as he was, said, “Je-sus H. Christ. Now he’s turned that Indin creature into a whore.”

He went unarmed, riding south through the darkness, feeling the chill of night settling on the land. He didn’t want to go; he was tired. He had come up this road this morning from St. David on the bouncing, bucking, creaking boot of the Hatch and Hodges stage, throwing gravel at the wheelers and yelling, urging the horses on as the driver held the heavy reins and snapped them over the teams. Sun and dust this morning, and sweat soaking his body under the dark suit; now cold darkness over the same ruts that stretched across the mesquite flats and climbed through barrancas to crest a hill and drop curving into the endless flats again, forever, it seemed, on the boot or now in the saddle of a stage company horse.

He said in his mind, Mr. Tanner, I’m Bob Valdez. You remember, I was out at the pasture today when the man was killed.

When the man was killed. When you killed him, he said to himself.

We were talking about doing something for his wife and Mr. Beaudry, the land agent, said-

He said go out and try to get it from Frank Tanner; you dumb Mexican son of a bitch. That’s what he said. Do you know it?

He knew it. Sure. But what was he supposed to do? Forget about the woman? He had told her they would give her money. God, it would be easy to forget about her. No, it would be good, but it wouldn’t be easy. But with all of them watching him he had had to walk out and get a horse and he would have to ride the ten goddam miles or more to the goddam swing station and, getting it over with, smile and be respectful and ask Mr. Tanner if he would please like to give something for this fat squaw who had lived with Rincon and was having his child.

And Frank Tanner, like the rest of them, would say-

No, they said this Tanner had a lot of money. Maybe he would say, “Sure, I’ll give you something for her. How much do you want?” Maybe it would be easy to talk to him. Maybe now, at night, after it was over and the man had had time to think about it, maybe he would talk a little and say yes.

A mile or a little more from the stage station he saw low shapes out among the brush patches, cattle grazing, bedded for the night, and among them, the taller shape of a rider. But they were well off from the stage road and none of the cattle he saw or the mounted man came near him. During the last mile he was certain a rider was behind him, but he didn’t stop or slow down to let the horse sound catch up with him. It could be somebody on the road, anybody, or one of Tanner’s men watching him; but he had nothing to say to whoever it was. His words were for Tanner, even if he didn’t know how to put the words to convince the man. It would be easier to say it in Spanish. Or in Chiricahua.

Now, coming over a low rise, he could see the glow of their fires, three of them, where the swing station would be in the darkness. Gradually then, as he approached, he could make out the adobe building, the fires reflecting on pale walls in the night. The front of the building, beneath the mesquite-pole ramada, was in deep shadow. Closer now and he could see the low adobe outer wall across the front yard, shielding the well and the horse corral from open country.

Valdez listened as he approached. He could hear the men by the fire, the thin sound of voices coming across the yard. He could hear horses moving in the corral and a shrill whinnying sound. He was aware of horses closer to him, off in the darkness, but moving in with the heavy muffled sound of hooves on the packed sand. He did not look toward the sound but continued on, coming to the wall and walking his horse through the open gate, feeling the riders out of the darkness close behind him as he entered the yard.

A figure by the wall with a rifle said, “Hold it there,” and a voice behind him, in English also but with an accent said, “We have him.” The man with the rifle came toward him, raising the barrel of a Henry or a Winchester – Valdez wasn’t sure in the dimness.

He said in Spanish, “I have no gun.”

And the voice behind him said, also in Spanish, “Get down and show us.”

Valdez swung down. He dropped the reins and opened his coat as the man with the rifle, a Winchester, came up to him.

“The saddle,” the voice behind him said in English.

Not looking around Valdez said, “You make sure, don’t you?” The man behind him didn’t answer. He walked his horse forward and dismounted close to Valdez, looking into his face.

“You go where?”

“Here,” Valdez said. “To speak to Senor Tanner.”

“About what?”

“Money,” Valdez said.

The man who had dismounted continued to study him for a moment. He handed his reins to the one with the rifle and walked off toward the adobe. Valdez watched him and saw the men by the fires, on the side of the adobe, looking out toward him. It was quiet now except for the stirring of the horses in the corral. He saw the light in the doorway as the man went inside. The door remained open, but he could see nothing within.

There was a bar inside the room and two long tables. The station man, Gregorio Sanza, would be behind the bar maybe, serving Tanner. He remembered Tanner did not take anything to drink at the pasture.

He said to the one with the rifle, “The company I work for owns that building. The Hatch and Hodges.”

The man said nothing. Beyond him now two figures appeared in the doorway, in the light for a moment and out of it into darkness. Not Tanner, neither of them. The one who had gone inside called out, “Bring him over.” The two men in shadow came out a few steps and the second one, also with an accent, said, “Against the wall,” motioning with a nod of his head to the side.

Some of the men by the fires had stood up or were rising as Valdez walked toward them. Others sat and lounged on their sides – dark faces, dark leather, firelight reflecting on cartridge belts and mess tins – and Valdez had to walk around them to reach the wall. As he turned, the man who had come out of the house walked over to stand across the fire from him, the men standing or sitting there quickly making room for him.

The segundo, Valdez thought. They move.

He was a big man, almost as big as Diego Luz, with a straw Sonora hat and a heavy moustache that gave him a solemn expression and a strip of beard beneath his mouth. The segundo, with one cartridge bandolier and two long-barreled.44s on his legs.

Valdez nodded to him and said in Spanish, “Good evening,” almost smiling.

“I don’t know you,” the segundo said.

“Because we have never met.”

“I know everyone who does business with Senor Tanner.”

“I have no business with him. A private matter.”

“You told them business.”

“I told them money.”

The segundo was silent, watching him. “He doesn’t know you,” he said then.

“Senor Tanner? Sure, I met him today. I killed a man for him.”

The segundo hesitated again, undecided or taking his own time, watching him. He motioned with his hand then, and the Mexican who had gone into the house before moved away, turning the corner. The segundo continued to stare. Valdez shifted his gaze to the left and to the right and saw all of them watching him in the light of the fires. There were Americans and Mexicans, some of them bearded, most of them with their hats on, all of them armed. He counted, looking about idly, and decided there were at least twelve of them here. More of them out in the darkness.

He said in his mind, Mr. Tanner, do you remember me? Bob-

Tanner came around the corner. He took a stub of cigar out of his mouth and stood looking at Valdez.

Now. “Mr. Tanner, do you remember me? Bob Valdez, from the pasture today.”

Tanner held the cigar in front of him. He was in his shirtsleeves and vest and without the dark hat that had hidden his eyes, his hair slanting down across his forehead, the skin pale-looking in the firelight. He seemed thinner now and smaller, but his expression was the same, the tell-nothing expression and the mouth that looked as if it had never smiled.

“What do you want?”

“I just wanted to talk to you for a minute.”

“Say it.”

“Well, it’s about the man today.”

“What man?”

“The one that was killed. You know he had a wife with him.” Valdez waited.

“Say what you want and get out of here.”

“Well, we were talking – Mr. Beaudry and Mr. Malson. You know who I mean?”

“You don’t have much time left,” Mr. Tanner said.

“We were saying maybe we should give something to the woman now that she doesn’t have a husband.”

“They sent you out here?”

“No, I thought of it. I thought if we all put in to give her some money” – he hesitated – “about five hundred dollars.”

Mr. Tanner had not moved his gaze from Valdez. “You come out here to tell me that?”

“Well, we were talking about it and Mr. Beaudry said why don’t I see you about it.”

“You want me to pay money,” Mr. Tanner said, “to that red nigger he was holed up with?”

“You said it wasn’t the right man-”

“What’s that got to do with it?”

“It was an accident, not the woman’s fault, and she doesn’t have anything now. And she’s got that child she’s going to have. Did you see that?”

Mr. Tanner looked at his segundo. He said, “Get rid of him,” and started to turn away.

“Wait a minute!”

Valdez watched him half turn to look at him again.

“What did you say?”

“I mean if you could take time to listen a minute so I can explain it.” The hard-working, respectful Bob Valdez speaking again, smiling a little.

“Your minute’s up, boy.” He glanced at his segundo again. “Teach him something.” He turned and was gone.

Valdez called out, “Mr. Tanner-”

“He don’t hear you so good,” the segundo said. “It’s too loud out here.” He drew the.44 on his right leg, cocked it and fired as he brought it up, and with the explosion the adobe chipped next to Bob Valdez’s face.

“All this shooting,” the segundo said. “Man, he can’t hear anything.” He fired again and the adobe chipped close to the other side of Valdez’s face. “You see how easy it would be?” the segundo said.

The Mexican rider who had brought him in said, “Let me have one,” his revolver already drawn. “Where do you want it?”

“By the right hand,” the segundo said.

Valdez was looking at the Mexican rider. He saw the revolver lift as the man pulled the trigger and saw the muzzle flash with the heavy solid noise and heard the bullet strike close to his side.

“Too high,” the segundo said.

Now those who were sitting and lounging by the fires rose and drew their revolvers, looking at the segundo and waiting their turn. One of them, an American, said, “I know where I’m going to shoot the son of a bitch.” One of them laughed and another one said, “See if you can shoot his meat off.” And another one said, “It would fix this squaw-lover good.”

Bob Valdez did not want to move. He wanted to run and he could feel the sweat on his face, but he couldn’t move a hand or an elbow or turn his head. He had to stay rigid without appearing to be rigid. He edged his left foot back and the heel of his boot touched the wall close behind him. He did that much, touching something solid and holding on, as the men faced him across the fires, five or six strides away from him, close enough to put the bullets where they wanted to put them – if all of the men knew how to shoot and if they hadn’t had too much mescal or tequila since coming to the station. Valdez held on and now kept his eyes on the segundo for a place to keep them, a point to fix on while they played their game with him.

The first few men fired in turn, calling their shots; but now the rest of them were anxious and couldn’t wait and they began firing as they decided where to shoot, raising the revolvers in front of them but not seeming to aim, pulling the triggers in the noise and smoke and leaning in to see where their bullets struck. Valdez felt his hat move and felt powder dust from the adobe brick in his eyes and in his nose and felt chips of adobe sting his face and hands and felt a bullet plow into the wall between his knees and a voice say, “A little higher you get him good.” Another voice, “Move up a inch at a time and watch him poop his drawers.”

He kept his eyes on the segundo in the Sonora straw, not telling the segundo anything with his gaze, looking at him as he would look at any man, if he wanted to look at a man, or as he would look at a horse or a dog or a steer or an object that was something to look at. But as he saw the segundo staring back at him he realized that he was telling the segundo something after all. Good. He had nothing to lose and now was aware of himself staring at the segundo.

What can you do? he was saying to the segundo. You can kill me. Or one of them can kill me not meaning to. But what else can you do to me? You want me to get down on my knees? You don’t have enough bullets, man, and you know it. So what can you do to me? Tell me.

The segundo raised his hand and called out, “Enough!” in English and in Spanish and in English again. He walked between the fires to Bob Valdez and said, “You ride out now.”

Bob Valdez took his hat off, adjusting it, loosening it on his head. He didn’t touch his face to wipe away the brick dust and sweat or look at his hands, though he felt blood on his knuckles and running down between his fingers.

He said, “If you’re through,” and walked away from the segundo. He mounted the company horse and rode out the gate, the segundo watching him until he was into the darkness and only a faint sound of him remained.

The men were talking and reloading, spinning the cylinders of their revolvers, sitting by the fires to rest and to tell where they had put their bullets. The segundo walked away from them out into the yard, listening to the silence. After a few minutes he went under the ramada to enter the adobe.

The station man, Gregorio Sanza, behind the plank bar and beneath the smoking oil lamp, raised a mescal bottle to the segundo, pale yellow in the light; but the segundo shook his head; he walked over to the long table where Tanner was sitting with the woman. She was sipping a tin cup of coffee.

The woman had gone into a sleeping room shortly after they had arrived in the buggy and had remained there until now. The segundo saw she was still dressed and he wondered what she had been doing in the room. In the months she had been with them – since Tanner had brought her over from Fort Huachuca – the segundo could count the times he had spoken to her on his hands. She seldom asked for anything; she never gave the servants orders as the woman of the house was supposed to do. Still, she had the look of a woman who would be obeyed. She did not seem afraid or uneasy; she looked into your eyes when she spoke to you; she spoke loud enough yet quietly. But something was going on in her head beneath the long gold-brown hair that hung past her shoulders. She was a difficult woman to understand because she did not give herself away. Except that she smiled only a little, and he had never seen her laugh. Maybe she laughed when she was alone with Senor Tanner.

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.