Valdez Is Coming

  They moved into a canyon, between walls that rose steeply and were darkly shadowed with brush. Valdez knew the place and the horses snorted and threw their heads when they smelled the water, the pool of it lying still, undercutting one side of the canyon.

  The Erin woman moved around the pool while Valdez stripped off the bridles and saddles to let the horses drink and graze freely. He watched her, looking past the horses, watched her kneel down at the edge of the water and drink from her cupped hands. Valdez took off his hat and slipped the heavy Sharps cartridge belt over his head. A time to rest at dawn, before the day brought whatever it would bring. He moved around the pool toward her.

  "Are you hungry?"

  She looked up at him, shaking her head, then brushing her hair from her face. "No, not really. Are you?"

  "I can wait."

  "Are you going to sit down?"

  "If you're not going to stand up," Valdez said. He went down next to her, touching her hair, feeling his finger brush her cheek and seeing her eyes on him.

  He said, "Gay Erin. That's your name, uh? What was it before?"

  "Gay Byrnes."

  He took her face gently, his palm covering her chin, and kissed her on the mouth. "Gay Erin. That's a good name. You like it?"

  "It's my name because I was married to him."

  "What do you want to talk about that for?"

  "I don't want to talk about it."

  "Then don't. Do you know my name?"

  "Valdez."

  "Roberto Valdez. How do you like Roberto?"

  "I think it's fine."

  "Or Bob. Which do you like better?"

  "Roberto."

  "It's Mexican."

  "I know it is."

  "Listen, I've been thinking about something."

  She waited.

  "You heard me tell him I don't know if I'm going to give you back or not."

  "I told you before," the Erin woman said. "I don't want to go back."

  "That's what you told me." Valdez nodded. "All right, I believe you. Do you know why? Because it's easier if I believe you. If I think about you too much, then I don't have time to think about other things."

  "What do you think about me?"

  "I think I'd like to live with you and be married to you."

  She waited. "We've been together two days."

  "And two nights," Valdez said. "How long does it take?" He could see her face more clearly now in the dawn light.

  Her eyes did not leave his. "You'd marry me?"

  "I think I know you well enough."

  "I killed my husband."

  "I believe you."

  "I've been living with Frank Tanner."

  "I know that."

  "But you want to marry me."

  "I think so, yes."

  "Tell me why."

  "Listen, I don't like this. I don't feel right, but I don't know what else to say. I believe you because I want to believe you. I say to myself, You want her? I say, Yes. Then I say, What if she's lying? And then I say, Goddam, believe her and don't think anymore. Listen, I couldn't do anything to you. I mean if he says, I won't give you the money, shoot her, you think I'd shoot you?"

  She shook her head. "No, I didn't think you would."

  "So don't worry about that."

  "I never have," the Erin woman said. "I may have been feeling sorry for myself, but I didn't lie down with you just because I wanted to be held."

  "Why did you then?"

  She hesitated again. "I don't know. I wanted to be with you. I still want to be with you. If I'm in love with you then I'm in love with you. I don't know, I've never loved a man before."

  "I've never been married," Valdez said.

  She took his hand and brought it up to her face. "I haven't either, really."

  "Maybe we can talk about it again. When there's time, uh?"

  "I hope so," she said.

  Believe that, Valdez thought, and don't think about it. He gave her R. L. Davis's Colt revolver and that sealed it. If she was lying to him she could shoot him in the back. She had already killed one man.

  Still, it was easier in his mind now. Much easier.

  They found R. L. Davis a little after sunup, a hunched-over figure on the brush slope, dragging a saddle and a thin trail of dust. The two men who found him cut him loose. One of them took the saddle and the other pulled R. L. Davis up behind him and they rode double over to where Mr. Tanner had spent the night. He was alone; all the others were still out on scout.

  He looked different. Mr. Tanner had not shaved for two or three days, and the collar of his shirt was dirty and curled up. His moustache looked bigger and his face thinner.

  R. L. Davis noticed this, though God Almighty, his back ached from dragging the goddam saddle all over the countryside.

  "I wouldn't mind a drink of water from somebody."

  The rider who'd brought him in was about to hand him a canteen, but Tanner stopped him.

  "Wait'll we're through."

  "I haven't had no water since last night."

  "You won't die," Tanner said. "Less I see I should kill you."

  "Mr. Tanner, look at me. He drew down with that scattergun, like to took my head off."

  "Where are they?"

  "He let me go about four hours ago and headed south."

  "Mrs. Erin was with him?"

  "Yes sir."

  "How is she?"

  "She looks fine to me. I mean I don't think he's mistreated her any."

  "God help him," Tanner said. "Did you speak to her?"

  "No, he was right there all the time. There wasn't nothing I could say he wouldn't've heard."

  "Then she didn't say anything to you."

  "No sir. He said something he wanted me to tell you, though."

  Tanner waited. "Well, goddam it, go ahead."

  "He said, 'Tell him he still has to pay the Indin, but I'm not sure now I'm giving him his woman back.' "

  Frank Tanner hit him. He clubbed Davis in the face with his right fist and the man sprawled on his back in the dust.

  "I didn't say it -- he said it! Them are his words."

  "Tell it again."

  "I swear it's what he said."

  "Tell it!"

  "He said you're to pay the Indin, but he wasn't so sure he was going to give you your woman back. Them words exactly."

  "Did she say anything?"

  "No sir, not a word, the whole time I was there."

  "He keep her tied?"

  "When she was in the draw, but not when he's around. I mean riding or when he's made camp."

  "Why'd he let you go?" Davis hesitated and Tanner said, "I asked you a question."

  "Well, I reckon to tell you what he said. There's no other reason I know of."

  "God help you if there is," Tanner said.

  He was mounting his bay horse, when two riders came in with a string of fresh horses. They had walked all night back to Mimbreno from the place where they had left their dead mounts on the slope.

  Tanner looked at R. L. Davis. "Put your saddle on one of them," he said. "I want you present when we run him down."

  During the early morning the segundo, whose name was Emilio Avilar but who had been called only segundo for the past six years, found three of his men in the mountain wilderness and signaled them, gathering them in. The men were tired and their horses were worn and needed water. They were ready to head back, and Frank Almighty Tanner could whistle out his ass if he didn't like it. They were paid to drive cattle and freight wagons and shoot rurales; they had not signed on to chase a man who'd run off with Tanner's woman. That was his lookout if he couldn't keep her home. After all night in the saddle, it was time to unroll the blankets.

  The segundo said, "You think he doesn't want to sleep? Man, he has to stay awake, doesn't he? He got to watch the woman, he got to watch for us. Man, ask him what it's like to be tired."

  Two of the riders were American and one Mexican, the Mexican a young man who had been hired only a few
months before by the segundo.

  One of the Americans said it was none of their business. And the segundo said maybe not, but look, the sooner they caught this crazy man the sooner they could ride to Mexico and have a good time.

  "You want some fresh water, uh?" the segundo said. "Don't you think he want some fresh water?"

  "If he know where it was," one of the Americans said.

  "Listen, when are you going to understand what kind of man he is?" the segundo said. "Sure he's crazy, but he knows what he's doing. You think he come down this way if he don't know there's water? Where it is? He's not that crazy."

  "Well, him knowing doesn't help us," the other American said.

  The segundo took his hat off and wiped his forehead with his sleeve and set the Sonora hat over his eyes again. He shook his head and said to the man, "Where do I get people like you? You think I work around here six years I don't know where the goddam water is? What kind of segundo doesn't know where the water is?"

  "Well, let's go get it," the rider said.

  Emilio Avilar, the segundo, smiled. "Sure, I thought that was what you want."

  A little later that morning, watering their horses at the pool, the cliffs and sloping canyon walls reflected in the still water, the three riders looked at the segundo and the segundo smiled again. God, there were fresh tracks all over the place close to the bank, two horses and two people: no doubt about it, a man and a woman. They filled their canteens and wiped down their horses and at this moment were willing to follow the segundo anyplace he wanted to go. Hell, let's get him!

  "Which way would you go?" the segundo asked.

  "Follow their tracks."

  "But that take too long," the segundo said. "What if we know where they going?"

  "How could you figure that?"

  "Two days ago," the segundo said, "he told Senor Tanner to approach the two peaks. You remember?" He lifted his gaze. "We come from a different way now, but there are the two peaks. Why should he change his mind and not go there? The only difference is now he don't have so much time."

  The two American riders thought about it and nodded and one of them said, "What's up there?"

  The segundo answered, "We find out."

  This is all, he thought, watching the three men move out, slouched in their saddles, heads bobbing, sweat staining a column down their spines. No more. He watched them another moment before calling out, "Hey, Tomas!" The riders looked around and the young Mexican he had hired a few months before reined in to wait for him.

  In Spanish the segundo said, "You have a ride the other way. Bring Senor Tanner."

  The young Mexican picked up his reins, getting ready. "How will I know where to bring him?"

  "You'll hear us," the segundo said.

  Chapter 9

  The twin peaks reached above them, beyond the slope that was swept with owl clover and cholla brush, beyond the scrub oak and dark mass of timber, stone pinnacles against the sky, close enough to touch in the clean, clear air.

  "Up there," Valdez said. "We go through the trees and come out in a canyon. At the end of the canyon is a little trail that goes up through the rocks and passes between the two peaks and down the other side. You stand in there and look straight up and the peaks look like they're moving in the wind."

  The Erin woman's eyes were half closed in the glare; she shielded her eyes with her hand.

  "Once we go through there, we see if we can make a slide to block the trail," Valdez said. "Then we don't hurry anymore. We take our time because it takes them a few days to find a way around."

  Her gaze lowered and she looked at him now. "A few days. Is that all we'll have?"

  "It's up to us," Valdez said. "Or it's up to him. We can go to Mexico. We can go to China if there's a way to go there. Or we can go to Lanoria."

  "Where do you want to go?" she asked him.

  "To Lanoria."

  "He'll come for us."

  "If he wants to," Valdez said. "I run today, but not forever. Today is enough."

  "Whatever you want to do," the Erin woman said, "I want to do."

  Valdez looked at her and wanted to reach over to touch her hair and feel the skin of her sun-darkened cheek and move the tips of his fingers gently over her cracked lips. But he kept his hand in his lap, around the slender neck of the Remington.

  He said, "If you want to go back now, you can. I let you go, you're free. Go wherever you want. Tell him you got away from me."

  Next to him, sitting in their saddles, their legs almost touching, she said again, "Whatever you want to do."

  "We'll go," he said, reaching back and flicking the rope that trailed from his saddle to R. L. Davis's sorrel horse.

  They left the trail and started up across the slope on an angle, moving through the owl clover and around the cholla bushes that were like dwarf trees, Valdez leading, aware of the woman behind him, wanting to turn to look at her, but only glancing at her as his gaze swept the hillside and back the way they had come.

  Roberto Valdez kept watch up the slope and Bob Valdez, inside him, pictured the woman coming out of an adobe into the front yard: a place like Diego Luz's, alone in the high country, but larger than Diego's, with glass in the windows and a plank front porch beneath the ramada. The woman in a white dress open at the throat and her hair hanging below her shoulders, her hair shining in the sunlight. He would be coming up from the horse pasture and see her and she would raise her arm to wave. God, he would like to ride up to her, twisting out of the saddle, and take hold of her with her arm still raised, his hands moving under her arms and around her and hold her as tightly as a man can hold a woman without injuring her. But he would stop at the pump and have a drink of water and wash himself and then go to the yard, walking his horse, because he would have the rest of his life to do this.

  As Bob Valdez pictured this, finally reaching the yard and the woman, Roberto Valdez saw the riders far below them starting across the slope in single file. Six of them and three horses in a string.

  Valdez took the field glasses from his saddlebag. He picked out Frank Tanner and R. L. Davis. He saw them looking up this way and saw one of the men pointing, saying something.

  Come on, Valdez thought, as they spread apart now and spurred their horses up through the brush. When you get here we'll be gone. But still watching them, counting them again, he thought, If Tanner is here, where is his segundo?

  Emilio Avilar watched from above, from the shadowed edge of the timber.

  They had the man almost in their sights, Valdez coming across the slope through the scrub oak, leading the horse and the woman behind him, coming at a walk and angling directly toward them, walking into their guns, and now Tanner the Almighty, the white barbarian, had ruined the ambush and was running him again.

  God, the man would have been dead in a moment, shot out of his saddle, but now with the woman behind him, kicking their mounts straight up the grade, Valdez had reached the top of the slope and was entering the timber. Not here, where the segundo had waited with his two Americans for almost an hour, but more than a hundred yards away: a last glimpse of Valdez and the woman disappearing into the trees.

  The segundo had scouted the timber and the canyon beyond, studying the canyon and the narrow defile at the end of it, and known at once Valdez was coming here. Where else? This man knew the ground and the water sinks and fought like an Apache. Sure Valdez was coming here: to escape through the defile or to stand in it and shoot them one at a time as they came for him.

  Don't let him get in the canyon, the segundo had thought. Don't take a chance with him. Wait for him at the canyon mouth and shoot him as he enters. But Valdez would be coming through the cover of the trees and maybe his nose or his ears would tell him something, warn him, and he would run off another way. You have to think of him as you would a mountain lion, the segundo thought. Trap him in the open, away from cover.

  So the segundo had gone back through the timber to the edge overlooking the slope and had told his two men
very carefully what they would do: how they would watch for him, then study his angle of approach from the cover of the trees, and be waiting for him to walk into it, waiting until he was close to the trees but still in the open, and kill him before he saw them.

  But now Valdez was already in the timber. The segundo had told his men to be quiet and keep their horses quiet and listen.

  One of them said, "You know he's going for the canyon."

  "He reached it, that's all," the other one said. "Once he gets in the hole ain't nobody going in after him."

  "Not this child," the first man said. "Tanner can go in himself he wants him so bad."

  Christ Jesus, the segundo said to himself. "Will you be quiet!"

  They listened.

  "I don't hear him," one of them said. "I don't hear a sound."

  The segundo drew the two men closer to him, listening, and they listened with him. "Do you know why?" he said. "Because he's not moving, he's listening. He knows we're in here with him."

  "He didn't see us."

  "When are you going to know him?" the segundo said. "He doesn't have to see you."

  "He's got to move sometime," one of them said.

  The segundo nodded. "Before Tanner and the others come up. All right, we separate, spread out a little. But all of us move toward the canyon." His voice dropped to a hushed tone. "Very quietly."

  There were open patches where sunlight streaked through the pine branches a hundred feet above, and there were thickets of scrub oak and dense brush. There was an occasional sound close to them, a small scurrying sound in the brush, and there were the shrill faraway cries of unseen birds in the treetops. The birds would stop and in the shadowed forest, high in the Santa Ritas, a silence would settle.