Valdez Is Coming

3

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.

There were photographs of local businessmen, territorial officials and national figures, including two presidents, Rutherford Hayes and Chester A. Arthur, Profirio Diaz and Carmelita at Niagara Falls, and the Prince of Wales on his visit to Washington.

“Have they been to your place?” Valdez asked.

“No, but if they come I want to recognize them.” Inez turned a page. “Earl Beaudry, on his appointment as land agent.” Inez moved to the next page, her finger tracing down the column of newspaper clippings.

“Here it is,” she said. “The first mention of him. August 13, 1881 – Frank Tanner and a Carlisle Baylor were convicted of cattle theft and sent to Yuma Penitentiary.”

Valdez seemed as pleased as he was surprised. “He’s been to prison.”

“For a few years, I think,” Inez said. “It doesn’t say how long. He was stealing cattle and driving them across the border. There’s more about him.” Her hand moved down the column and went to the next page. “Here, October, 1886, Frank J. Tanner, cattle broker, arraigned on a charge of murder in Contention, Arizona.”

“Cattle broker now,” Valdez said.

“The case was dismissed.”

“It’s getting better.”

Inez turned the page. “Ah, here’s the picture. You see him there?” Inez turned the book halfway toward Valdez and he leaned in, recognizing Tanner standing with a group of Army officers in front of an adobe building.

Inez read the caption. “It says he has a contract with the government to supply remounts to the Tenth United States Cavalry at Fort Huachuca.” She turned a few more pages. “I think that’s all.”

“Nothing about him now, uh?”

“There’s something else sticks in my mind about Huachuca,” Inez said, “but I don’t see it. Unless – sure, it would be in the other book.” She sat back in her chair looking up over her shoulder. “Polly?”

Valdez watched the girl straighten and draw the robe together.

“Should I take this one?” the girl asked.

Inez was turning pages again. “No, I want to show Bob something.”

“What have you got now?” he asked her.

Coming to a page, she pressed it flat and turned the book to him. “You remember?”

Valdez smiled a little. “That one.”

It was a photograph of Bob Valdez taken at Fort Apache, Arizona, September 7, 1884: Bob Valdez standing among small trees and cactus plants the photographer had placed in his studio shed as a background: Bob Valdez with a Sharps.50 cradled in one arm and a long-barreled Walker Colt on his leg. He was wearing a hat, with a bandana beneath it that covered half of his forehead, a belt of cartridges for the Sharps, and knee-length Apache moccasins. The caption beneath the picture described Roberto Valdez as chief of scouts with Major General George Crook, Department of Arizona, during his expedition into Sonora against hostile Apaches.

“That’s the way I still picture you,” Inez said. “When someone says Bob Valdez, this is the one I see. Not the one that wears a suit and a collar.”

Valdez was concentrating on the book, looking now at a photograph of a young Apache scout in buckskins and holding a rifle, standing against the same background used in the photo of himself. He remembered the photographer, a man named Fly. And the day the pictures were taken at Fort Apache. He remembered the scout washing himself and brushing his hair and putting on the buckskin shirt he had bought and had never worn before.

“Peaches,” Valdez said. “General Crook’s guide. His real name was Tso-ay, but the soldiers and the general called him Peaches. His skin.” Valdez continued to study the photograph. He said, “They’d put a suit and a collar on him too, if they ever took his picture again.”

Inez looked up as Polly came in with the other scrapbook. She took it from her and held it over the table.

“I don’t know where he is now,” Valdez was saying. “Maybe Fort Sill, Oklahoma, with the rest of them. Planting corn.” He shook his head. “Man, I would like to see that sometime. Those people growing things in a garden.”

Inez opened the book and laid it over the page Valdez was studying. He sat back as she turned a few pages and raised his gaze to Polly, who was looking over Inez’s shoulder again, letting her robe come open. She was built very well and had very white skin.

“Here it is,” Inez said. “Sutler murdered at Fort Huachuca. James C. Erin was found shot to death a few miles from the fort today-”

Valdez stopped her. “When was this?”

Inez looked at the date on the clipping. “March. Six months ago.”

“That’s the one Orlando Rincon was supposed to have killed.”

“It says he was found by some soldiers and” – her finger moved down the column – “here’s the part. ‘Held for questioning was Frank J. Tanner of Mimbreno, said to be the last person to have seen Erin alive. Mr. Tanner stated he had spent the previous evening with Mr. and Mrs. Erin at the fort, but had left for a business appointment in Nogales and had not seen Erin on the day he was reported to have been killed.’ ”

“He was sure it was Rincon,” Valdez said. “And that his name was Johnson.”

Inez nodded, looking at the book. “They mention a Johnson, listed as a deserter and also a suspect. A trooper with the Tenth Cavalry.”

“Maybe they know this Johnson did it now,” Valdez said.

Inez looked over the pages facing her. “I don’t see anything more about it.”

Valdez raised his eyes from the open robe to the nice-looking face of the dark-haired girl. “It’s too bad he doesn’t come here,” he said.

Inez closed the book. “He never has and I would guess he knows where it is.”

“If he did,” Valdez said, his gaze still on Polly. “I could wait for him.”

Diego Luz had a dream in which he saw himself sitting on a corral fence watching his men working green horses in the enclosure. In the dream, which he would look at during the day as well as at night, Diego Luz was manager of the Maricopa Cattle Company. He lived with his family in the whitewashed adobe off beyond the corral, where the cedars stood against the sky: a house with trees and a stone well in the yard and a porch to sit on in the evening. Sometimes he would picture himself on the porch with his family about him, his three sons and two daughters, his wife and his wife’s mother and whatever relatives might be visiting them. But his favorite dream was to see himself on the corral fence with his eldest son, who was almost a man, sitting next to him.

The hands were very nervous when he watched them with the horses because they knew he was the greatest mustanger and horsebreaker who ever lived. They knew he could subdue the meanest animals and they were afraid to make mistakes in his presence. He had told them how to do it, what they must do and not do, and he liked to watch them at work.

In the dream Diego and his son would watch R. L. Davis hanging on to the crow-hopping bronc until finally they saw him thrown and land hard on his shoulder. His son would shake his head and say, “Should I do it, Papa?” But he would say no, it was good for the man. He made R. L. Davis ride only the rough string, the outlaws and spoiled horses, when they were on roundup or a drive, and made R. L. Davis call him Senor Luz.

R. L. Davis mounted the bronc and was thrown again and this time he went after the horse with a loaded quirt and began beating the animal over the head. At this point in the dream Diego Luz walked over to R. L. Davis and said to him, “Hey,” and when R. L. Davis looked around Diego Luz hit him in the face with one of his big fists. R. L. Davis went down and the eldest son poured a bucket of water on him and when the man shook his head and opened his eyes, he said, “What did I do?” Diego Luz said, “You hit the horse.” R. L. Davis frowned, holding his jaw. “But you hit them when you broke horses,” he said. And Diego Luz smiled and said, “Maybe, but now I hit whoever I want to.”

R. L. Davis was a good one to hit. Once in a while though, he would leave R. L. Davis alone and hit Mr. Malson, not hitting him too hard, but letting him know he was hit. And sometimes he would fire Mr. Malson, call him over and say, “It’s too bad, but you’re too goddam weak and stupid to do this work anymore so we got to get rid of you. And don’t come back.”

Diego Luz would think of these things as he worked his land and broke the mustangs he and his eldest son drove down out of the high country. His place was southeast of Lanoria, well off the road to St. David and only a few miles from the village of Mimbreno, though there was no wagon road in that direction, only a few trails if a man knew where to find them.

His place was adobe with straw blinds that rolled down to cover the doorway and windows and an open lean-to built against the house for cooking. There were a few chickens and two goats in the yard with the three youngest children and a brown mongrel dog that slept in the shade of the house most of the day. There was a vegetable garden for growing beans and peppers, and the peppers that were drying hung from the roof of the ramada that shaded the front of the house, which faced north, on high ground. Down the slope from the house was the well, and beyond it, on flat, cleared ground, the mesquite-pole corral where Diego Luz broke and trained the mustangs he flushed out of the hills. He worked here most of the time. Several times a year he drove a horse string down to the Maricopa spread near Lanoria, and he would go down there at roundup time and when they drove the cattle to Willcox.

When Bob Valdez appeared, circling the corral – two days following the incident at the pasture – Diego Luz and his eldest son were at the well, pulling up buckets of water and filling the wooden trough that ran to the corral. They stood watching Bob Valdez walking his horse toward them and waited, after greeting him, as he stepped down from the saddle and took the dipper of water Diego’s son offered him.

There was no hurry. If a man rode all the way here he must have something to say, and it was good to wonder about it first and not ask him questions. Though Diego Luz had already decided Bob Valdez had not come to see them but was passing through on his way to Mimbreno. And who lived in Mimbreno? Frank Tanner. There it was. Simple.

They left the boy and climbed the slope to the house, Bob Valdez seeing the children in the yard, Diego’s wife and her mother watching them from the lean-to where they were both holding corn dough, shaping tortillas. The small children ran up to them and the eldest daughter appeared now in the doorway of the house. Hey, a good looking girl now, almost a woman. Anita. She would be maybe sixteen years old. Valdez had not been up here in almost a year.

When they were in the shade and had lighted cigarettes, Diego Luz said, “There’s something different about you. What is it?”

Valdez shrugged. “I’m the same. What are you talking about?”

“Your face is the same.” Diego Luz squinted, studying him. Slowly then his face relaxed. “I know what it is. You don’t have your collar on.”

Valdez’s hand went to his neck where he had tied a bandana.

“Or your suit. What is this, you’re not dressed up?”

“It’s too hot,” Valdez said.

“It’s always hot,” Diego Luz said. His gaze dropped to Valdez’s waist. “No gun though.”

Valdez frowned. “What’s the matter with you? I don’t have a coat on, that’s all.”

“And you’re going to see Mr. Tanner.”

“Just to say a few things to him.”

“My son rode to Lanoria yesterday. He heard about the few things you said the other night.”

Valdez shook his head. “People don’t have anything to talk about.”

“Listen, the woman doesn’t need any money. She doesn’t know what it is.”

“But we know,” Valdez said. “I just want to ask you something about Tanner.”

Diego Luz drew on his cigarette and squinted out into the sunlight, down the slope to the horse corral. “I know what others know. That’s all.”

“He lives in Mimbreno?”

“For about two years maybe.”

“How do the people like him?”

“There are no people. Most of them left at the time of the Apache. The rest of them left when Frank Tanner come. He’s there with his men,” Diego Luz said, “and some of their women.”

“How many men?”

“At least thirty. Sometimes more.”

“Do they ever come here?”

“Sometimes they pass by.”

“What do they do, anything?”

“They have a drink of water and go on.”

“They never make any trouble?”

“No, they don’t bother me. Never.”

“Maybe because you work for Maricopa.”

Diego Luz shrugged. “What do I have they would want?”

“Horses,” Valdez said.

“Once they asked to buy a string. I told them to see Mr. Malson.”

“Did Tanner himself come?”

“No, his segundo and some others.”

“Do you know any of them?”

“No, I don’t think any of them are from around here.”

“Do you think that’s strange?”

“No, these are guns he hires, not hands. I think they hear of Tanner and what he pays and they come from all over to get a job with him.”

“He pays good, uh?”

“You see them sometimes in St. David,” Diego Luz said. “They spend the money. But you see different ones each time, so maybe he lose some in Mexico or they get a stomach full of it and quit.”

“What, driving cattle?”

“Cattle and guns. He gets the guns somewhere and sneaks them over the border to people who are against Diaz and want to start a revolution. So over there the rurales and federal soldiers look for him and try to stop him. Everybody knows that.”

“I’ve been learning the stageline business,” Valdez said.

“Keep doing it,” Diego Luz said, “and live to be an old man.”

“Sometimes I feel old now.” He watched the chickens pecking the hard ground and heard Diego Luz’s children calling out something and laughing as they played somewhere on the other side of the house. What do you need besides this? he was thinking. To have a place, a family. Very quiet except for the children sometimes, and no trouble. No Apaches. No bandits raiding from across the border. Trees and water and a good house. The house could be fixed up better. A little work, that’s all. He said, “I’ll trade you. I become the horsebreaker, you work for the stage company.”

Diego Luz was looking out at the yard. “You want this?”

“Why not? It’s a good place.”

“If I had something to do I wouldn’t be here.”

“You do all right,” Valdez said.

“Do it forever,” Diego Luz said. “See how you like it.”

“Maybe sometime. After I see this Tanner.”

Diego Luz was studying Valdez’s horse. “You don’t have a rifle either.”

“What do I need it for?”

“Maybe you meet a couple of them on a trail, they don’t like your face.”

“I’ll talk to them,” Valdez said.

“Maybe they don’t let you talk.”

“Come on, they know who I am. I’m going there to talk, that’s all.”

“You talk better with a rifle,” Diego Luz said. “I give you mine.”

From habit, approaching the top of the rise – before he would be outlined for a moment against the sky – Bob Valdez looked back the way he had come, his eyes, half-closed in the sun’s glare, holding on the rock shapes and darker patches of brush at the bottom of the draw. He sat motionless until he was sure of the movement, then dismounted and led his claybank mare off the trail to one side, up into young pinon pines.

For a few moments he did not think of the rider coming up behind him; he thought of his own reaction, the caution that had stopped him from topping the rise. There were no more Chiricahuas or White Mountain bands around here. There was nothing to worry about to keep him alert and listening and looking back as well as to the sides and ahead. But he had stopped. Sure, habit, he thought. Something hanging on of no use to him now.

What difference did it make who the man was? The man wasn’t following him. The man was riding southeast from the St. David road and must have left the road not far back to cut cross-country toward Mimbreno maybe, or to a village across the border. Sure, it could be one of Tanner’s men. You can ride in with him, Valdez thought, and smiled at the idea of it. He would see who it was and maybe he would come out of the pines, giving the man some warning first, or maybe he wouldn’t.

Now, as the man drew nearer, for some reason he was sure it was one of the Maricopa riders: the slouched, round-shouldered way the man sat his saddle, the funneled brim of his hat bobbing up and down with the walking movement of the horse.

Maybe he had known all the time who it was going to be. That was a funny thing. Because when he saw it was R. L. Davis, looking at the ground or deep in thought, the stringy, mouthy one who thought he was good with the Winchester, Valdez was not surprised, though he said to himself, Goddam. How do you like that?

He let him go by, up over the rise and out of sight, while he stayed in the pines to shape a cigarette and light it, wondering where the man was going, curious because it was this one and not someone else, and glad now of the habit that had made him look around when he did. He was sure the man had not been following him. The man would have been anxious and looking around and would have stopped before he topped the rise. But the question remained, Where was he going?

When Valdez moved out, keeping to the trees over the crest of the rise, he hung back and let the distance between them stretch to a hundred yards. He followed R. L. Davis this way for several miles until the trail came to open grazing land, and as R. L. Davis crossed toward the scrub trees and hills beyond the flats, a column of dust came down the slope toward him.

You look around, Bob Valdez thought. That habit stays with you. But you don’t bring the field glasses.

He remained in the cover of the trees and, in the distance, watched three riders meet R. L. Davis and stand close to him for some time, forming a single shape until the group came apart and the riders, strung out now, one in front of Davis and two behind, rode with him into the deep shadow at the base of the far hills. He saw them briefly again up on the slope and at the crest of the hill.

They wonder about him too, Valdez thought. What do you want? Who do you want to see? They ask questions and take their jobs very seriously because they feel they’re important. They should relax more, Valdez thought. He mounted the claybank again and rode out into the sunlight, holding the horse to a walk, keeping his eyes on the slope the riders came down and wondering if they had left someone there to watch.

No, they did it another way. One of them who had been with R. L. Davis came back. When Valdez was little more than halfway up the trail, following the switchbacks that climbed through the brush, he saw the mounted rider waiting for him, his horse standing across the trail.

As Valdez came on, narrowing the distance between them, he recognized the rider, the Mexican who had brought him into the yard of the stage station.

“Far enough,” the Mexican said. He held a Winchester across his lap, but did not raise it. He studied Valdez, who reined in a few feet from him. “You come back again.”

“I didn’t finish talking to him,” Valdez said.

“I think he finish with you, though.”

“Let’s go ask him.”

“Maybe he don’t want to see you,” the Mexican said.

“It’s about money again.”

“You said that before. For the woman. He don’t care anything about the woman.”

“Maybe this time when I tell him.”

“What do you have on you?”

“Nothing.” Valdez raised his hands and dropped one of them to the stock of Diego Luz’s rifle in its leather boot. “Only this.”

“That could be enough,” the Mexican said.

“You want it?” Valdez smiled. “You don’t trust me?”

“Sure, I trust you.” The Mexican raised the Winchester and motioned Valdez up the grade. “But I ride behind you.”

Valdez edged past him up the trail and kept moving until he reached the top of the slope. Now he could see the village of Mimbreno across the valley, a mile from them beyond open land where Tanner’s cattle grazed. Valdez had been to this village once before, the day after White Mountain Apaches had raided and killed three men and carried off a woman and burned the mission church. He remembered the blackened walls; the roof had collapsed into the church and the beams were still smoking. He remembered the people in the square when they rode in, the people watching the Apache scouts and company of cavalry and saying to themselves, Why weren’t you here yesterday, you soldiers? What good are you?

As they crossed the grazing land Valdez recognized the church, the roofless shell that had never been repaired. It stood at the end of the single street of adobes where the street widened into a square and there was a well with a pump and a stone trough for watering the horses. Beyond the cluster of buildings was a stand of cottonwood trees and a stream that came down out of the high country to the east. Valdez saw the women in the trees, some of them walking this way carrying baskets of clothes. Then he was entering the street, the Mexican next to him now, with the dogs barking and the smell of wood fires, seeing the freight wagons along the adobe fronts and more horses than would ever be in a village this size. It was a village preparing to make war. It was a military camp, the base of a revolutionary army. Or the base of a heavily armed scouting force that would stay here until they were driven out. But at the same time it was not a village. Yes, there were people. There were women among the armed men, women in front of the adobes and a group of them at the well with gourds and wooden pails. But there were no children; no sound of children nor a sign of children anywhere.

“He’s there waiting for you,” the Mexican said.

Valdez was looking at the church. A gate of mesquite poles had been built across the arched opening of the doorway, and there were horses penned inside the enclosure. He felt the Mexican close to him, moving him to the east side of the square, to the two-story adobe with the loading platform across the front, the building that had been the village’s general store and mill and grain warehouse.

Frank Tanner stood at the edge of the loading platform looking down at a group of riders, standing over them with his hands on his hips. A woman was behind him near the open doorway, not a Mexican woman, a blond-haired woman, golden hair in the sunlight hanging below her shoulders to the front of her white dress. Valdez looked at the woman until they were close to the platform and the riders sidestepped their horses to let the Mexican in, Valdez holding back now; and as they moved in among the riders he saw that one of them was the segundo. He saw R. L. Davis, then, mounted on a sorrel next to the segundo. He didn’t look at Davis, who was watching him, but up at Tanner now, the man so close above him that he had to bend his head back, feeling awkward and unprotected and foolish with the woman watching him, to look at Tanner.

Tanner stared down at Valdez as if this would be enough, no words necessary. Valdez did not want to smile because he knew he would feel foolish, but he eased his expression to show he was sincere and had come here as an honest man with nothing to hide.

He said, “I’d like to talk to you once more.”

“You’ve talked,” Tanner said. “You get one time and you’ve had yours.”

Maybe he was joking, so Valdez smiled a little bit now, though he didn’t want to smile with the woman watching him. “I know you’re a busy man,” he said, “but you must be a fair man also, uh? I mean you have all these people working for you. You recognize the worth of things and pay a just wage. A man like that would also see when someone is owed something.”

Goddam, it didn’t sound right, hearing himself speaking with his goddam neck bent back and Tanner looking down at him like God in black boots and a black hat over his eyes.

“I mean if the woman was to go to the courthouse and say some men have killed my husband, by mistake, as an accident. So I think somebody should pay me for that – don’t you think the court would say sure and order that we pay her something?”

“Jesus Christ,” R. L. Davis said. Valdez did not look at him, but he knew it was Davis. He saw Tanner’s eyes shift to the side, slide over and back to him again.

“I’m talking about what’s fair,” Valdez said. “I’m not trying to cheat anybody – if you think I want to take the money and run off. No, you can give it to the woman yourself. I mean have one of your men do it. I don’t care who gives it to her.”

Tanner continued to stare at him until finally he said, “You don’t learn. I guess I have to keep teaching you.”

“Tell me why you don’t think she should have something,” Valdez said. “You explain it to me, I understand it.”

“No, I think there’s only one thing you’ll understand.” Tanner’s gaze went to his segundo. “You remember that one tried to run off with the horses?”

Valdez lowered his head to look at the segundo, who was nodding, picturing something. “The one who liked to walk,” the segundo said.

Valdez heard Tanner say, “That one,” and the segundo continued to nod his head, then raised it and gazed about the square.

“We can use the poles from the gate,” the segundo said, looking toward the church, “and have some more cut.”

Tanner was saying, “All right,” and the segundo was looking at Valdez now. He nodded once.

Valdez felt the hand at his shoulder, fingers clawing into his neck as the hand clutched his bandana, and his own hands went to the horn of his saddle. He felt the Mexican’s horse tight against his left leg, then moving away and the Mexican pulling him, choking him, until his hands slipped from the saddle horn and he was dragged from his horse, stumbling but not able to fall, held up by the Mexican’s fist twisted in the tight fold of his neckerchief. They were around him and someone hit him in the face with a fist. It didn’t hurt him, but it startled him; he was struck again on the back of the neck, then in the stomach, seeing the man close to him swing his fist and not being able to turn away from it. He went down and was kicked in the back, pushed over and pressed flat to the hard-packed ground. His hat was off now. A foot came down on his neck, pinning him, face turned to the side against the ground. Now they pulled his arms straight out to the sides and he felt a sharp pain through his shoulder blades as he was held in this position. Several minutes passed and he rested, breathing slowly to relax and not be tensed if they hit him again. Boots were close to his face. The boots moved and dust rose into his nostrils, but no one kicked him.

They placed a mesquite pole across his shoulders that extended almost a foot on either side beyond his outstretched hands and tied it with leather thongs to his wrists and neck. They placed another pole down the length of his back, from above his head to his heels, and lashed this one to the crosspole and also around his neck and body. When this was done the segundo told him all right, stand up.

Valdez could not press his hands to the ground. He raised his head, turning it, and pushed his forehead against the hardpack, arching against the pole down his spine, straining the muscles of his neck, and gradually, kicking and scraping the ground, worked his knees up under him.

“The other one didn’t get up so quick,” the segundo said.

Valdez was on his knees raising his body, and he was kicked hard from behind and slammed onto his face again.

“This one don’t get up either,” the Mexican said.

Valdez heard Tanner’s voice say, “Get him out of here,” and this time they let him work his way to his knees and stand up. But as he straightened, the bottom of the vertical pole struck the ground and held him in a hunched position, a man with a weight on his back, his eyes on the ground, unable to raise his head. Someone put his hat on his head, too low and tight on his forehead.

“That way,” the segundo said, nodding across the square. “The way you came.”

“My horse,” Valdez said.

“Don’t worry about the horse,” the segundo said. “We take care of.”

There was nothing more to say. Valdez turned and started off, hunched over, raising his eyes and able to see perhaps twenty feet in front of him, but not able to hold his gaze in this strained position.

The segundo called after him. “Hey, don’t fall on your back. You’ll be like a turtle.” He laughed, and some of the others laughed with him.

Frank Tanner watched the stooped figure circle the water pump and move down the street past the women who had come out of the adobes to look at him.

“You fixed him,” R. L. Davis said.

Tanner’s eyes shifted to Davis, sliding on him and away from him, as he had looked at him before. “I don’t remember asking you here,” Tanner said.

“Listen,” R. L. Davis began to say.

Tanner stopped him. “Watch your mouth, boy. I don’t listen to you. I don’t listen to anybody I don’t want to listen to.”

R. L. Davis squinted up at him. “I didn’t mean it that way. I come here to work for you.”

Tanner’s gaze dropped slowly from the bent figure down the street to Davis. “Why do you think I’d hire you?”

“You need a gun, I’m your man.”

“I didn’t see you hit anything the other day.”

“Jesus Christ, I wasn’t aiming at her. You said yourself just make her jump some.”

“Are you telling me what I said?”

“I thought that’s what it was.”

“Don’t think,” Tanner said. “Ride out.”

“Hell, you can always use another man, can’t you?”

“Maybe a man,” Tanner said. “Ride out.”

“Try me out. Put me on for a month.”

“We’ll put some poles on your back,” Tanner said, “if you want to stay here.”

“I was just asking,” R. L. Davis lifted his reins and flicked them against the neck of his sorrel, bringing the animal around and guiding it through the group of riders, trying to take his time.

Tanner watched Davis until he was beyond the pump and heading down the street. The small stooped figure was now at the far end of the adobes.

The woman, Gay Erin, who had been married to the sutler at Fort Huachuca and had been living with Frank Tanner since her husband’s death, waited for Tanner to turn and notice her in the doorway behind him. But he didn’t turn; he stood on the edge of the platform over his men.

She said, “Frank?” and waited again.

Now he looked around and came over to her, taking his time. “I didn’t know you were there,” he said.

She kept her eyes on him, waiting for him to come close. “I don’t understand you,” she said.

“I don’t need that boy. Why should I hire him?”

“The other one. He asks you a simple thing, to help someone.”

“We won’t talk about it out here,” Tanner said. They went into the dimness of the warehouse, past sacks of grain and stacked wooden cases, Tanner holding her arm and guiding her to the stairway. “I let you talk to me the way you want,” Tanner said, “but not in front of my men.”

Upstairs, in the office that had been made into a sitting room, Gay Erin looked out the window. She could see R. L. Davis at the end of the street; the hunched figure of Bob Valdez was no longer in sight.

“You better keep up here from now on,” Tanner said, “unless I call you down.”

She turned from the window. “And how long is that?”

“I guess as long as I want.” Tanner went into the bedroom. He came out wearing his coat, strapping on a gunbelt. “I’m going to Nogales; I’ll be back in the morning.” He looked down at his belt, buckling it. “You can come if you want a twenty-mile ride.”

“Or sit here,” the girl said.

He looked up at her. “What else?”

“If you say sit I’m supposed to sit.” Her expression and the sound of her voice were mild, but her eyes held his and hung on. “No one can be that sure,” she said. “Not even you.”

“Well, you’re not going to leave,” Tanner said. He moved toward her, settling the gunbelt on his hips. “You don’t have anything at Huachuca. You don’t have anything left at Prescott. Whatever you have is here.”

“Whatever I have,” the girl said, “as your woman.”

“Aren’t I nice enough to you?”

“Sometimes.”

“Take what you get.”

“Sometimes you act like a human being.”

“When I’m in my drawers,” Tanner said. “When I’m in my boots that’s a different time.”

“You had them on outside.”

“You bet I did, lady.”

“He was trying to help a woman who’d lost her husband; that’s all he was doing.”

“And I’m helping one already,” Tanner said. “One poor widow woman’s enough.” He was close to her, looking into her face, and he touched her cheek gently with his hand. He said, “I guess I could stay a few more minutes if you like.”

“Frank, send someone to cut him loose.”

Tanner shook his head, tired of it. “Lady, you sure can break the spell…” He moved away from her toward the door, then looked back as he opened it. “Nobody cuts him loose. I don’t want to see that man again.”

You’ve looked at the ground all your life, Valdez thought at one point. But never this close for so long.

The pain reached from the back of his neck down into his shoulders. He would try to arch his back, and the pole, with a knot in it, would press against his head and push his hat forward. The hat was low and stuck to his forehead and sweat stung his eyes. He told himself, The hell with it; don’t think about it. Go home. You’ve walked home before.

God, but he had never walked home like this. The ground across the grazing land was humped and spotted with brush, but he had little trouble with his footing. No, God, he could see where he was going all right. He could hear Tanner’s cattle and he thought once, What if some bull with swords on his head sees you and doesn’t like you? God, he said to himself, give that bull good grass to eat or a nice cow to do something with.

A mile across the grazing land and then up into the foothills, following a gully and angling out of it, climbing the side of a brush slope, not finding the trail and taking a longer way to the top, trying to look up to see where he was going with the pole pressed against his head. He couldn’t go straight up. He couldn’t lose his footing and fall backward on the crossed poles. He remembered what the segundo had said about the turtle, and at that time he had pictured himself lying on his back in the sun of midday and through the afternoon. No, he would take longer and he wouldn’t fall. It was the pain in his legs that bothered him now; it turned his thighs into cords and pulled so, as he neared the top, that his legs began to tremble.

They’re old legs, he said to himself. Be good to them. They have to walk twenty miles. Or over to Diego Luz, he thought then. Ten miles. Twenty miles, ten miles, what was the difference?

He wished he could wipe the sweat and dust from his face. He wished he could loosen his hat and rub his nose and bring his arms down and straighten up just for a minute.

Before he reached the crest of the slope he crouched forward and gradually lowered himself to his knees, bending over and twisting his body as he fell forward so that a tip of the crosspole touched the slope first; but this did little to break his fall, and with his head turned, his cheekbone struck the ground with the force of a heavy, solid blow. It stunned him and he lay breathing with his mouth open. His hat, tight to his forehead, had remained on; good. Now he rested for perhaps a quarter of an hour, until the pain through his shoulder blades became unbearable. Valdez got to his feet and continued on.

R. L. Davis waited for him in the trees, across the meadow on the far side of the slope. He had watched Valdez work up through the ravine and down the switchback trail on this side. He had waited because maybe Tanner’s men were also watching – the lookouts up on the slope – and he had waited because he wasn’t sure what they’d do. He thought they might come out and push Valdez down the trail, have some fun with him; but no one appeared, and Valdez had come all the way down to the meadow now and was coming across, hurrying some as he saw the shade of the trees waiting for him.

R. L. Davis moved his sorrel into heavy foliage. There wasn’t any hurry: watch him a while and then play with him.

Goddam, now what was he doing, kicking at the leaves? Clearing a spot, R. L. Davis decided. He could hear Valdez in the silence, the sound of the leaves scuffing, and could see him through the pale birch trunks, the bent-over hunched-back figure in the thin shafts of sunlight. He watched Valdez go to his knees; he winced and then smiled as Valdez fell forward on the side of his face. That was pretty good. But as Valdez lay there not moving, R. L. Davis became restless and started to fidget and tried to think of something. You could trample him some, he thought. Ride over him a few times. He decided maybe that was the thing to do and raised his reins to flick the sorrel.

But now the man was stirring, arching onto his head and getting his knees under him.

Valdez rose and stood there, trying to turn his head to look about him. He moved forward slowly, shuffling in the leaves. He turned sideways to edge between trees that grew close together. Farther on he stopped and placed one end of the crosspole against a birch trunk and waved the other end of the pole toward a tree several feet from him but the pole was too short. R. L. Davis watched him move on, touching a trunk and trying to reach another with the crosspole until finally there it was, and R. L. Davis saw what he was trying to do.

Valdez stood between two trees that were a little less than six feet apart. Now, with the ends of the crosspole planted against the trunks, holding him there, he tried to move forward, straining, digging in with his boots and slipping in the leaves. He bent his wrists so that his hands hung down and were out of the way. Now he moved back several steps and ran between the two trees. The ends of the crosspole struck the trunks and stopped him dead. He strained against the pole, stepping back and slamming the pole ends against the trunks again and again. Finally he moved back eight or ten feet and again ran at the space between the trees and this time as the ends struck, R. L. Davis heard a gasp of breath in the silence.

He moved the sorrel out of the foliage. Valdez must hear him, but the man didn’t move; he hung there on the crosspole leaning against the trunks, his arms seeming lower than they were before.

R. L. Davis saw why as he got closer. Sure enough, the pole had splintered. And it looked like a sharp end had pierced his back. R. L. Davis sat in his saddle looking down at the blood spreading over Valdez’s back. He reined the sorrel around the near birch tree and came up in front of him.

“I swear,” R. L. Davis said, “you are sure one dumb son of a bitch, aren’t you? When that pole broke, where did you suppose it was going to go?” He saw Valdez try to raise his head. “It’s your old amigo you tried to swing a scatter gun at the other day. You remember that? You went and shot the wrong coon and you was going to come at me for it.”

Davis sidestepped the sorrel closer to Valdez, pulling his coiled reata loose from the saddle thong and playing out several feet of it. He reached over, looping the vertical pole above Valdez’s head and snugged the knot tight. “You’re lucky a white man come along,” Davis said.

Valdez tried to raise his eyes to him. “Look at my back,” he said.

“I saw it. You cut yourself.”

“God, I think so,” Valdez said. “Cut my wrists loose first, all right?”

“Well, not right yet,” Davis said. He moved away, letting out rope, and when he was ten feet away dallied the line to his saddle horn. “Come on,” he said.

Valdez had to move to the side to free an end of the crosspole and was almost jerked from his feet, stumbling to get between the trees and keep up with the short length of rope. He was pulled this way, through the birch trees and through the brush that grew along the edge of the grove, and out into the glare of the meadow again.

“You must ache some from stooping over,” R. L. Davis said.

“Cut my hands and I’ll tell you about it.”

“You know I didn’t like you trying to hit me with that scatter gun.”

“I won’t do it anymore,” Valdez said. “How’s that?”

“It made me sore, I’ll tell you.”

“Cut me loose and tell me, all right?”

R. L. Davis moved in close in front and lifted the loop from the upright pole. He kept the sorrel close against Valdez as he coiled the rope and thonged it to his saddle again.

“Your animal doesn’t smell so good,” Valdez said.

“Well, I’ll give you some air,” R. L. Davis said. “How’ll that be?” He moved the sorrel tight against Valdez, kicking the horse’s left flank to sidestep it and keep it moving.

Valdez said, “You crazy, you put me over. Hey!” He could feel the bottom of the upright pole pushing into the ground, wedged tight, and his body lifting against R. L. Davis’ leg. The sorrel jumped forward, sidestepping, swinging its rump hard against Valdez, and he went over, seeing Davis above him and seeing the sky and tensing and holding the scream inside him and gasping as his spine slammed the ground and the splintered pole gouged into his back.

After a moment he opened his eyes. His hat was off. It was good, the tight band gone from his forehead. But he had to close his eyes again because of the glare and the pain in his body, the sharp thing sticking into his back that made him strain to arch his shoulders. A shadow fell over him and he opened his eyes to see R. L. Davis far above him on the sorrel, the funneled hat brim and narrow face staring down at him.

“A man ought to wear his hat in the sun,” R. L. Davis said.

Valdez closed his eyes and in a moment the sun’s glare pressed down on his eyelids again. He heard the horse break into a gallop that soon faded to nothing.