Valdez Is Coming

7

“You don’t have to tie me,” the Erin woman said. “I’ll wait for you; I won’t run.”

Valdez said nothing. Maybe he had to tie her and maybe he didn’t, but a mile from Diego Luz’s place now and the smoke gone from the sky an hour, he tied her and left her in the arroyo, marking the place in his mind: willows on the bank and yellow brittlebrush in the dry bed. He left her in deep shade, not speaking or looking at her face.

Though he looked at her over and over as he made his way to Diego Luz’s place, picturing her in the darkness of the high meadow, the woman lying with him under the blanket, holding her and feeling her against him and for a long time, after she was asleep, staring up at the cold night sky, at the clouds that moved past the moon.

In the morning the sky was clear, until he saw the smoke in the distance, seven miles northwest, and knew what it was as he saw it. Valdez packed their gear without a word and they moved out, across the meadow and down through the foothills toward the column of smoke. At one point she said to him, “What if they’re waiting for you?” And he answered, “We’ll see.”

They could be waiting or not waiting. Or he could have not seen the smoke. Or he could have continued with the woman southeast and been near the twin peaks by this evening. Or he never could have asked Diego Luz to help him. Or he never could have started this. Or he never could have been born. But he was here and he was pointing northwest instead of southeast because he had no choice. At first he had thought only about Diego Luz and his family. But when there was no sign of Tanner, no dust rising through the field glasses, he began to think of the woman more. When she was still with him when they reached the arroyo, he knew he wanted to keep her and tied her up to make sure of it.

Following the dry stream bed north, Valdez saw the tracks where Tanner’s men had crossed; he noticed the prints of several horses leading south. He continued on a short distance before climbing out of the arroyo to move west. This way he circled Diego Luz’s place and approached from a thicket beyond the horse pasture, studying the house and yard for some time before he moved into the open.

It might have been a dozen years ago after an Apache raid, the look of the place, the burned-out house and the dog lying in the yard; but there were people here, alive, and a team hitched to a wagon, and that was the difference. They waited for him by the wagon, Diego Luz and his family.

Valdez dismounted. “What did they do to you?”

“What you see,” Diego Luz said. He raised his hands in front of him, his hands open, the swollen, discolored fingers apart.

“Did they harm your family?”

“A little. If they did any more I wouldn’t be here.”

“I’m sorry,” Valdez said.

“We’re friends. They would have come with or without Mr. R. L. Davis.”

“He was with them?”

“He saw me in Lanoria with your clothes. Jesus, my hands hurt.”

“Let me look at them.”

“No looking today. Get out of here.”

“What did they ask you?”

“Where you are. Man, what did you do to them?”

“Enough,” Valdez said.

“They want you bad.”

“They could have followed me.”

“But Mr. Davis brought them here. Listen,” Diego Luz said, “if you see him, give him something for me.”

“For myself too,” Valdez said. “You’re going to Lanoria?”

“My son is taking me to get these fixed.” He looked at his hands again.

“Will they be all right?”

“How do I know? We’ll see. I just need to get one finger working.”

“I’ll take you,” Valdez said.

“Go to hell. No, go where they can’t find you,” Diego Luz said. “I have my boy and my family.”

R. L. Davis came across the Erin woman because he was hot and tired of riding in the sun.

He had moved south along the arroyo with the three riders who would watch with him. “If he comes he’ll come from the southeast,” the segundo had said. But after the segundo left, R. L. Davis thought, Who says he’ll come in a straight line? He could work around and come from any direction. He told this to the three riders with him and one of them, the bony-faced one who’d picked up the little girl and who’d broken Diego Luz’s hands, said sure, it was a waste of time; he’d like to get a shot at this Valdez, but it didn’t have to be today; the greaser was in the hills and they’d find him.

That one, God, when he’d picked up the little girl, R. L. Davis wasn’t sure he could watch what the man wanted to do. Her being a tiny girl.

After a while he said well, he’d double back and take a swing to the north. The others said they’d get up on the banks and look around and head back pretty soon. Good. He was glad to get away from the bony-faced one, a face like a skeleton face, only with skin.

So R. L. Davis moved back up the arroyo. He wasn’t looking for anything in particular; there was nothing out here but the hot sun beating down on him. He saw the willow shade up ahead and the bright yellow blossoms of the brittlebush growing along the cutbank. The shade looked good. He headed for it. And when he found the Erin woman in there, sitting in the brush, tied up, he couldn’t believe his eyes.

It was a lot to think about all at once. Valdez was here. Had been here. He’d put the woman here out of the way and gone to see Diego Luz. And if he left her like this, tied hand and foot, with a bandana over her mouth, then he was coming back for her. The woman was looking at him and he had to make up his mind fast.

He could pull her up behind him on the sorrel and deliver her to Tanner and say, “Here you are, Mr. Tanner. What else you need done?”

Or he could wait for Bob Valdez. Throw down on him and bring him in as well as the woman. Or gun him if that’s the way Valdez wanted it.

The woman looked good. He’d like to slip the bandana from her mouth and get a close look at her. But he’d better not. There was a little clearing in here and rocks that had come down the cutbank. There was room in here to face him. There was room deeper in the brittlebush for his horse, if the son of a bitch didn’t make any noise.

God Almighty, R. L. Davis thought. How about it? Bring them both in.

Once he’d moved the sorrel into the brush, he got his Winchester off the saddle and settled down behind the woman, behind some good rock cover. He saw her twist around to the side to look at him, her eyes looking but not saying anything. Probably scared to death. He motioned her to turn around and put one finger to his mouth. Shhhh. Don’t worry; it won’t be long.

Crossing the pasture from Diego Luz’s place, Valdez saw the willows in the distance marking the arroyo. There had been some luck with him so far, coming in and going out, though he didn’t know Tanner and he wasn’t sure if it was luck or not. He didn’t know yet how the man thought, if he was intelligent and could anticipate what the other man might do, or if he ran in all directions trusting only to luck. Luck was all right when you had it, but it couldn’t be counted on. It worked good and bad, but it worked more good than bad if you knew what you were doing, if you were careful and watched and listened. He shouldn’t be here, but he was here, and if the luck or whatever it was continued, he would be in high country again late this afternoon, letting Tanner find him and follow him, but not letting him get too close until the time was right for that.

When he talked to Tanner again it had to be on his own ground, not Tanner’s.

The sawed-off Remington was across his lap as he approached the willows and entered the cavern of shade formed by the hanging branches. Holding the Remington, he dismounted and stood still to listen. There was no sound in the trees. He moved along the bank of the arroyo, beyond the thick brush below, to a place where the bank slanted down in deep slashes to the dry bed. He worked his way down carefully. At the bottom, as he entered the brittlebush, he cocked the right barrel of the Remington.

The Erin woman sat where he had placed her. She did not hear him or look this way. The bandana covered the side of her face and pulled her long hair behind her shoulders, which sagged with the weariness of sitting here for nearly an hour. You hold her all night and tie her in the morning, he thought. You make love to her, but you’ve never said her name. Now she turned her head this way.

He saw the startled expression jump into her eyes. He moved toward her, watching her eyes, wide open; her head moved very slightly to the side and then her eyes moved in that direction. Off to the right of her or behind her. Valdez shifted his gaze to the rocks and deep brush.

He moved forward again, a half step, and a voice he recognized said, “That’s far enough!”

“Hey!” Valdez said. “Is that Mr. R. L. Davis?”

“Put down the scattergun and unfasten your belt.”

Valdez’s gaze shifted slightly. There. He could see the glint of the Winchester barrel in the brush and part of Davis’s hat. He was behind an outcropping of rock, looking out past the left side, which meant he would have to expose half of his body to fire from that place. If he’s right-handed, Valdez thought. He remembered Davis firing at the Lipan woman across the Maricopa pasture and he said to himself, Yes, he’s right-handed.

“You hear me? I said put it down!”

“Why don’t you come out?” Valdez said.

The sawed-off Remington was in his right hand, pointed down, but with his finger curled on the trigger. He looked at the brush and the edge of the rock outcropping, judging the distance. He imagined swinging the shotgun up and firing, deciding how high he would have to swing it. You get one time, Valdez thought. No more.

“I’m going to count to three,” R. L. Davis said.

“Listen,” Valdez called. “Why don’t you cut out this game and use your gun if you want to use it? What’re you hiding in the bushes for?”

“I’m warning you to put it down!”

“Come on, boy, use the gun. Hey, pretend I’m an Indian woman, you yellow-ass son of a bitch.”

There. His shoulder and the rifle barrel sliding higher on the outcropping, more of him in the brush, and Valdez swung up the Remington, squeezing his hand around the narrow neck and seeing the brush fly apart with the explosion.

“Hey, you still there?” He shifted the gun to his left hand and drew the Walker. There was a silence. He glanced at the woman, seeing her eyes on him, and away from her.

“I’m hit!” Davis called out.

“What do you expect?” Valdez said. “You want to play guns.”

“I’m bleeding!”

“Wipe it off and try again.”

Silence.

“Boy, I’m coming in for you. You ready?”

He saw Davis at the edge of the rock again, seeing him more clearly now with part of the brush torn away. Davis came out a little more, his left hand covering his ear and the side of his face.

“Don’t shoot. Listen to me, don’t.”

“The first one was for Diego,” Valdez said. “The next one’s from me. I owe you something.”

“I didn’t leave you, did I? I didn’t let you die. I could’ve, but I didn’t.”

“Pick up your gun.”

“Listen, I cut you loose!”

Valdez paused, letting the silence come over the clearing. He heard another sound, far away, off behind him, but his gaze held on Davis.

“Say it again.”

“After I pushed you over. That night I come back and cut you loose, didn’t I?”

“I didn’t see you that night.”

“Well, who do you think did it?”

His gaze dropped to the woman, to her eyes looking at him above the bandana. He heard the sound again and knew it was a horse approaching, coming fast up the arroyo.

“I left you my canteen. I can prove it’s mine, it’s got my initials scratched in the tin part, inside.”

Valdez raised his Walker to shut him up and motion him out of the brush. Davis started out, then stopped. He could hear the horse.

“Come on,” Valdez hissed.

But Davis hesitated. The sound was louder down the arroyo, rumbling toward them. Davis waited another moment then yelled out, “He’s in here!” throwing himself behind the outcropping. “Get him! He’s in here!”

Valdez reached the woman and pushed her over. He turned, moving crouched through the brittlebush, at the edge of it now, and stepping out of it as the first rider came at him from thirty yards away, drawing his revolver as he saw Valdez and the barrels of the Remington, then seeing nothing as the ten-bore charge rocked him from the saddle. The second rider was down the arroyo coming fast, low in the saddle and spurring his horse, his handgun already drawn, firing it from the off side of his horse. Valdez raised the Walker. He thumbed the hammer and fired and thumbed and fired and saw the horse buckle and roll, the rider stiff, with his arms outstretched in the air for a split moment, and Valdez shot him twice before he hit the ground. The horse was on its side, pawing with its forelegs, trying to rise. Valdez looked down the arroyo, waiting, then stepped to the horse and shot it through the head. He walked over to the man, whose death’s head face looked up at him with sunken mouth and open eyes.

“I hope you’re one of them Diego wanted,” Valdez said. He turned toward the yellow brittlebush, loading the Remington.

“Where was he?” the segundo asked.

“He must have been in them bushes and fired on them as they come by,” the rider said. “I was back a piece, up on the west side looking for his sign. When I heard the gunfire I lit up this way and they was coming out of the draw.”

The segundo held up his hand. “Wait. You don’t want to tell it so many times.” He squinted under his straw hat brim toward Tanner, mounted on his bay, looking down at them in the arroyo.

Tanner saw the two bodies sprawled in the dry bed. He saw the dead horse and the yellow-baked ground stained dark at the horse’s head. He saw the segundo and a man standing next to him and a half dozen mounted men and a riderless horse nibbling at the brittlebush. Tanner kicked the bay down the bank to the stream bed. He stared at the dead men, then at the segundo, a stub of a cigar clamped in his jaw.

“This man,” the segundo said, “is one of the four we left.”

“You left,” Tanner said.

“I left. He says they went south looking for a sign of him. Then after a while the piss-ant you hired, something Davis, he come back this way.”

“Let him tell it,” Tanner said, judging the man next to the segundo as he looked at him.

“Well, as he says we worked south a ways,” the rider said. “Davis come back first and we spread out some. Then these two here must have started back. I was down there a mile and a half, two miles” – he pointed south, more at ease now, a thumb hooked in his belt – “when I heard the shots and come on back.”

“Where were they?” Tanner said.

“When I come back? They were laying there. He must have been in the bushes and fired on them as they come by. As I got close they was coming up out of the draw and going west.”

“Who’s they?” Tanner asked him.

“Two men and a woman.”

“You saw them good?”

“Well, I was off a ways, but I could see her hair, long hair flying in the wind.”

“You’re saying it was Mrs. Erin?”

“Yes sir, I’d put my hand on the Book it was.”

“You see Valdez?”

“Not his face, but it must have been him. One of these boys here was blowed off by a scatter gun.”

“That one,” the segundo said. “This one, I don’t know, forty-four or forty-five, in the chest twice, close together.”

“That’s five men he’s killed,” Tanner said. He drew on the cigar stub; it was out, and he threw it to the ground. “What about Davis?”

The rider looked up. “I figured he was the other one with them. Once I saw he wasn’t around here.”

“That’s the strange thing,” the segundo said. “Why would the man want to take him? He’s worth nothing to him.”

“Unless he went with him on his own,” Tanner said. “Mark him down as another one, a dead man when we catch up with them.”

“We’ll get him for you,” the rider said.

Tanner looked down at him from the bay horse. “Did you fire at them?”

“Yes sir, I got down and laid against the cutbank for support and let go till they was out of range.”

“Did you hit anybody?”

“I don’t believe so.”

“But you might have.”

“Yes sir, I might’ve.”

“That range you couldn’t tell.”

“They was two hundred yards when I opened up.”

“You could have hit one though.”

“Yes sir.”

“You could have hit the woman,” Tanner said to him.

“No sir, I wasn’t aiming at her. No, I couldn’t have hit her. There wasn’t any chance I could’ve. See, I was aiming just at Valdez and he was a good piece from the woman.”

Tanner looked at the segundo. “Put him against the bank and shoot him.”

The rider said, “Mr. Tanner, there was no chance I could’ve hit her! I swear to God that’s the truth!”

The segundo felt the tobacco in his cheek, rolling it with his tongue as his eyes moved from the rider to Frank Tanner, looking at Tanner now but aware of the mounted men behind him and those up on the bank watching. The segundo said, “We lost five now. We shoot our own, that’s six, but the same as Valdez killed him. How many you want to give for this man?”

“As many as it takes,” Tanner said.

“Instead of shoot him,” the segundo said, “we make him ride point. The first one Valdez sees if he’s up there waiting. What do you think of that?”

The rider was watching Tanner. “I’ll ride point. Mister, I’ll cut his sign, too, and get him for you.”

Tanner stared down from his judgment seat on the bay horse. He let the man hang on the edge for a long moment before he said, “All right, this time,” saying no more than that, but holding his eyes on the man to let him know how close he had come.

The segundo said to the rider, “Start now, come on.” He was aware of the men on the bank, beyond Tanner, moving in their saddles, a man wiping his hand across his mouth and another loosening his hat and putting it on again. They were glad it was over. They had killed men, most of them had, but they didn’t want to put this one against the bank and shoot him. That would be the end of it. In a few days they would all be gone.

So that was done. The segundo walked over to Tanner’s bay; he touched the horse’s withers, feeling the smooth flesh quiver and patting it gently. “We have him now,” the segundo said, in a voice only for Tanner. “Yesterday he could take us where he wants with plenty of time. Today he has maybe an hour. He has to run and now he doesn’t have no more time.”

“Say it,” Tanner said.

The segundo’s hand remained on the horse, patting the firm flesh. “I was thinking to myself, we got eighteen men here. We got six at Mimbreno. We could send eight or ten back and they could start south with the drive. Then when we finish with him we catch up, maybe lose only two days.”

Tanner waited. “You through?”

“I mean we don’t need so many,” the segundo said, but he knew by the way the man was looking at him his words had been wasted.

“I’m going up the mountain,” Tanner said. “You’re going up the mountain, and all my men are going up the mountain. My men, segundo. You savvy that?”

“If you say it.”

“I say it,” Tanner said.

Through the field glasses he watched them come up the slope: small dots that he could not count yet, spread in a line, all of them moving this way, one dot ahead of the others, far in front, the only one that he could identify through the field glasses as a mounted rider.

It wasn’t happening the way it was supposed to happen. There was open country behind him and he needed more time, a bigger space between them, if he expected to reach the twin peaks. But they were driving him now, running him and making sure he wasn’t going to move around them.

It was late afternoon, three hours and a little more until sunset. Three hours to hold them here – if he could hold them – before he could take his two people and slip out. He lay on the ground with good rock cover in front of him and all along the ridge. Next to him were his guns and Davis’s Winchester. Looking at the dots coming up he thought, The Winchester or the Sharps? And said to himself, The Sharps. You know it better. You know what it can do.

Well, he had better let them know. Pretty soon now.

He rolled slightly to look at the Erin woman and R. L. Davis. Gay Erin, he said in his mind. Aloud he said, “Mr. R. L. Davis, I would like you to come over here, please, and go down there about fifty feet. You see where those rocks are?”

Davis stood up awkwardly, his wrists tied to his belt with pieces of rope. His elbows pointed out and he looked as though he was holding his stomach. There was dried blood on the side of his face and in his hair and down the arm of his jacket, which was torn and shredded.

“What do you want me down there for?”

“I want you in front of me,” Valdez said. “So I can see you.”

“What if they come?”

“They’re already coming.”

Davis gazed down the slope, squinting. “I don’t see nothing.”

“Take my word,” Valdez said.

“Well listen now, if they start shooting I’m going to be in the line of fire.”

“Behind the rocks, you’ll be all right.”

Davis stood his ground. “You still don’t believe me, do you? I can prove it by my canteen.”

“I don’t have your canteen.”

“You had it. It’s somewhere.”

“And we’re here,” Valdez said. “Let’s talk some other time.”

“If I didn’t cut you loose, who did?”

“You can walk down or I can throw you down,” Valdez said.

He looked toward the woman. Say it, he thought. He said, “Gay Erin. Gay. That’s your name? Come over here.” He watched Davis moving hunch-shouldered down the slope to the cover of low rocks. He felt the woman near him. As she sank to the ground, he handed her the field glasses. “Count them for me.”

He raised up to take Davis’s Colt out of his belt. The barrel was cutting into his hip. He placed it on the ground next to him and took the heavy Sharps, the Big Fifty, and laid it on the flat surface of the rock in front of him. He would load from the cartridge belt across his chest. With the stock against his cheek, aware of the oiled metal smell of the gun, he sighted down the barrel. Nothing. Not without the glasses.

“Seventeen,” the Erin woman said.

He took the glasses from her. Putting them to his eyes the lower part of the slope came up to him.

They were still far enough away that he could see all of them without sweeping the glasses. He estimated the distance, the first man, the point rider, at six hundred yards, the rest of them at least two hundred yards behind him. The brave one, Valdez thought. Maybe the segundo. Maybe Tanner. He held the glasses on the man until he knew it was not Tanner. Nor the segundo, because of the man’s dark hat.

Valdez lowered the glasses. He said, “Nineteen. You missed two of them, but that’s very good.” He looked at her, at her hair in the afternoon sunlight, the bandana pulled down from her face, loose around her neck now. He reached over and touched the bandana, feeling the cotton cloth between his fingers. “Put this on your head.”

“The sun doesn’t bother me,” she said. She had not spoken since they left the arroyo.

“I’m not thinking of the sun. I’m thinking how far you can see yellow hair.”

As she untied the knot behind her neck she said, “You believed I cut you loose. I didn’t tell you I did.”

“But you let me believe it.”

“How do you know he did?”

“Because he told me. Because if someone else did it, he would think I knew who did it and he wouldn’t bother to lie. I think I was dreaming of a woman giving me water,” Valdez said. “So when I tried to remember what happened, I thought it was a woman.”

“I didn’t mean to lie to you,” she said. “I was afraid.”

“I can see it,” Valdez said. “If you saved my life, I’m not going to shoot you. Or if you get under a blanket with me.”

“I tried to explain how I felt,” she said.

“Sure, you’re all alone, you need somebody. Don’t worry anymore. I know a place you can work, make a lot of money.”

“If you think I’m lying,” the woman said, “or if you think I’m a whore, there’s nothing I can do about it. Think what you like.”

“I’ve got something else to think about,” Valdez said. He studied the slope through the field glasses, past Davis lying behind the rock looking up at him, to the point rider. He raised up then and said to Davis, “If you call out, I give you the first one.”

He put the glasses on the point man again, three hundred yards away, and held him in focus until he was less than two hundred yards and he could see the man’s face and the way the man was squinting, his gaze inching over the hillside. I don’t know you, Valdez said to the man. I have nothing against you. He put down the field glasses and turned the Sharps on the point rider. He could still see the man’s face, his eyes looking over the slope, not knowing it was coming. You shouldn’t have looked at him. Valdez thought.

Then take another one and show them something. But not Tanner. Anyone else.

Through the field glasses he picked out Tanner almost four hundred yards away and put the glasses down again and placed the front sight of the Sharps on the man next to Tanner, not having seen the man or thinking about him now as a man. He let them come a little more, three hundred and fifty yards, and squeezed the trigger. The sound of the Sharps cracked the stillness, echoing across the slope, and the man, whoever he was, dropped from the saddle. Valdez looked and fired and saw a horse go down with its rider. He fired again and dropped another horse as they wheeled and began to fall back out of range. The Sharps echoed again, but they were moving in confusion and he missed with this shot and the next one. He picked up the Winchester, getting to his knees, and slammed four shots at the point rider, chasing him down the slope, and with the fourth shot the man’s horse stumbled, throwing him from the saddle. He fired the Winchester twice again, into the distance, then lowered it, the ringing aftersound of the gunfire in his ears.

“Now think about it,” Valdez said to Tanner.

He would think and then he would send a few, well out of range, around behind them. Or he would have some of them try to work their way up the slope without being seen.

Or they would all come again.

As they did a few minutes later, spread out and running their horses up the slope. Valdez used the Sharps again. He hit the first man he aimed at, dumping him out of the saddle, and dropped two horses. Before they had gotten within two hundred yards they were turning and falling back. He looked for the two riders whose horses he had hit. One of them was running, limping down the hill, and the other was pinned beneath his dead animal.

“You’d better move back or work around,” Valdez said to Tanner, “before you lose all your horses.”

Make him believe you.

He raised the angle of the Sharps and fired. He fired again and saw a horse go down at six hundred yards. They pulled back again.

Now, Valdez thought, get out of here.

They could wait until dark, but that would be too late if Tanner was sending people around. He had to be lucky to win and he had to take chances in order to try his luck.

He could leave R. L. Davis.

But he looked at him down there with his wrists tied to his belt, and for some reason he said to himself, Keep him. Maybe you need him sometime.

He called to Davis, “Come up now. Slowly, along the brush there.”

The woman sat on the ground watching him. The woman who was alone and needed someone and wanted to be held and got under the blanket. In this moment before they made their run, Valdez looked at her and said, “What do you want? Tell me.”

“I want to get out of here,” she said.

“Where? Where do you want to be?”

“I don’t know.”

“Gay Erin,” Valdez said, “think about it and let me know.”

Tanner and the men with him had gotten to the ridge and were looking at the ground and back down the slope to where they had been, seeing it as Valdez had seen it. Now they heard the gunfire in the distance, to the south.

They stopped and looked that way, all of them, out across the open, low-rolling country to the hills beyond.

“They caught him,” one of them said.

Another one said, “How many shots?”

They listened and in the silence a man said, “I counted five, but it could’ve been more.”

“It was more than five,” the first man said. “It was all at once, like they were firing together.”

“That’s it,” a man said. “The four of them got him in their sights and all fired at once to finish him.”

The segundo was standing at the place where Valdez had positioned himself belly-down behind the rocks to fire at them. He picked up an empty brass cartridge and looked at it – fifty-caliber big bore, from a Sharps or some kind of buffalo gun. He noticed the.44 cartridges that had been fired from the Winchester. A Sharps and a Winchester, a big eight- or ten-bore shotgun and a revolver; this man was armed and he knew how to use his guns. The segundo counted fourteen empty cartridges on the ground and tallied what the bullets had cost them: two dead on the slope, two wounded, five horses shot. Now seven dead in the grand total and, counting the men without horses, who would have to walk to Mimbreno and come back, twelve men he had wiped from the board, leaving twelve to hunt him and kill him.

He said to Mr. Tanner, “This is where he was, if you want to see how he did it.”

Tanner walked over, looking at the ground and down the slope. “He had some luck,” Tanner said, “but it’s run out.”

The segundo said nothing. Maybe the man had luck – there was such a thing as luck – but God in heaven, he knew how to shoot his guns. It would be something to face him, the segundo was thinking. It would be good to talk to him sometime, if this had not happened and if he met the man, to have a drink of mescal with him, or if they were together using their guns against someone else.

How would you like to have him? the segundo thought. Start over and talk to him different. He remembered the way Valdez had stood at the adobe wall as they fired at him, shooting close to his head and between his legs. He remembered the man not moving, not tightening or pleading or saying a word as he watched them fire at him. You should have known then, the segundo said to himself.

Tanner had sent four to circle around behind Valdez on the ridge and close his back door. A half hour after they heard the gunfire in the distance, one of them came back.

The man’s horse was lathered with sweat, and he took his hat off to feel the evening breeze on the ridge as he told it.

“We caught them, out in the open. They had miles to go yet before they’d reach cover, and we ran them, hard,” the man said. “Then we see one of the horses pull up. We know it must be him and we go right at him, getting into range to start shooting. But he goes flat on the ground, out in the open but right flat, and doesn’t give us nothing to shoot at. He opened up at about a hunnert yards, and first one boy went down and then he got the horse of this other boy. The boy run toward him and he cut him clean as he was a-running. So two of us left, we come around. We see Valdez mount up and chase off again for the hills. We decide, one of us will follow them and the other will come back here.”

Tanner said, “Did you hit him?”

“No sir, he didn’t look to be hit.”

“You know where he went?”

“Yes sir, Stewart’s out there. He’s going to track them and leave a plain enough trail for us to follow.”

Tanner looked at the segundo. “Is he any good?”

The segundo shrugged. “Maybe he’s finding out.”

They moved out, south from the ridge, across the open, rolling country. In the dusk, before the darkness settled over the hills, they came across the man’s horse grazing, and a few yards farther on the man lying on his back with his arms flung out. He had been shot through the head.

Ten, the segundo thought, looking down at the man. Nine left.

“Take his guns,” Tanner said. “Bring his horse along.”

It was over for this day. With the darkness coming they would have to wait until morning. He took out a cigar and bit off the end. Unless they spread out and worked up into the hills tonight. Tanner lighted the cigar, staring up at the dim, shadowed slopes and the dark mass of trees above the rocks.

He said to the segundo, “Come here. I’ll tell you what we’re going to do.”