Valdez Is Coming

“In the back,” she said. “The only way you could kill this one.” She looked at Diego Luz. “Who shot him? I didn’t hear anything.”

“A tree,” Diego Luz said. “Listen, get something to clean him and talk after.”

Valdez heard the woman close the door. He was comfortable and he knew he would be asleep again in a moment. He said, “Hey,” bringing Diego Luz close to the side of the bed. “I’m going to leave you everything I have when I die.”

“You’re not going to die. You got a little cut.”

“I know I’m not going to die now. I mean when I die.”

“Don’t talk about it,” Diego Luz said.

“I leave you everything I have if you do one more thing for me, all right?”

“Go to sleep,” Diego Luz said, “and shut up for a while.”

“If you get me something from my room at the boardinghouse.”

“You want me to go now?”

“No, this time of night that old lady’ll shoot you. During the day. Tomorrow.”

“What is it you want?”

“In the bottom drawer of the dresser,” Valdez said. “Everything that’s there.”

Goddam, he wished he could tell somebody about it.

R. L. Davis stood at the bar in the Republic Hotel drinking whiskey. He didn’t have anything to do. He’d been fired for not being where he was supposed to be, riding fence and not riding all over the goddam country, Mr. Malson had said. He’d told Mr. Malson he’d gone to see Diego Luz about a new horse, but Mr. Malson didn’t believe him, the tight-butt son of a bitch. Sure he had gone off to Ta

He could go over to De Spain’s. At least he’d been paid off. Maybe there was somebody over there he could tell. God, it was hard to keep something that good inside you. But he wasn’t sure how everybody would take it, telling how he’d pushed Valdez over like a goddam turtle in the sun. The segundo had mentioned the turtle and it had given him the idea, though he thought one of Ta

Maybe if he told Ta

No, Ta

He was a hard man to talk to. He looked right through you without any expression. But it would be something to ride for him, down into old Mexico with guns and beef and shoot up the federals.

R. L. Davis finished his whiskey and had another and said to himself all right, he’d go over to De Spain’s. Maybe there was a way of telling it that it wouldn’t sound like he’d done it to him deliberately. Hell, he hadn’t killed him, he’d pushed him over, and there were seven hundred miles between pushing and killing. If the son of a bitch was still out there it was his own fault.

Outside, he mounted the sorrel and moved up the street. He came to the corner and looked around, seeing who was about, not for any reason, just looking. He saw Diego Luz coming out of the boardinghouse two doors from the corner: Diego Luz coming toward him, carrying something wrapped up in newspaper, a big bundle that could be his wash. Except a Mexican horsebreaker wasn’t going to have any wash done in there. He had his own woman for that.

He waited for him to reach the corner. “Hey, Diego, what you got there, your laundry?”

The Mexican looked fu

Dumb Mexican. He was all right; just a dumb chilipicker. Christ, R. L. Davis thought, it’d be good to tell him what he’d done to Bob Valdez. And then he thought, Hey, that’s the boardinghouse Bob Valdez lives in, isn’t it?

Each of the seven doors in the upstairs hall bore the name of a girl in a flowery pink and blue scroll – Anastacia, Rosaria, Evita, Elisaida, Maria, Tranquilina, and Edith. The names were a nice touch and Inez liked them, though only one of the original seven girls was still here. Because of the turnover during the past two years, and because the Mexican sign painter had moved away, Inez had not bothered to have the doors relettered. Maybe she would sometime, though none of her customers seemed to mind that the name on the door didn’t match the girl. They didn’t care what the girls’ names were, long as they were there.

Inez tiptoed down the hall, but the floor still creaked beneath her weight. It was semidark, with one lamp lit at the end of the hall and a faint light coming from the stairway landing. Polly followed her, carrying a tray of ham and greens and fried potatoes and coffee: Bob Valdez’s supper if he was awake and felt like eating. He had been here since yesterday morning: two days and going on the second night, sleeping most of the time and sitting up drinking water out of the pitcher when he wasn’t sleeping. She had never seen a man drink so much water. Diego Luz had come yesterday afternoon with a bundle of clothes – at least what looked to be clothing – and hadn’t been back since then. Diego Luz never came here ordinarily, unless he was looking for someone for Mr. Malson, so it would seem strange if he were seen coming in and out. This was why Bob Valdez told him to stay away. No one was to know he was here. “As far as anybody thinks, I have disappeared,” Bob Valdez had said. He had told Inez what happened to him, but she had the feeling he didn’t tell her everything. That was all right; it was his business. He told what he wanted, but he always told the truth.

At Rosaria’s door Inez paused, listening, taking a key from the folds of her skirt. She turned it in the lock and opened the door quietly, in case he was asleep.

She was surprised to see light from the overhead lamp; she was even more surprised to see Bob Valdez standing by the dresser. She got Polly into the room and locked the door and saw the look on Polly’s face as she stared at Bob Valdez.

“Put it down,” Inez said. “Before you drop it.”

“Over here,” Valdez said. “If you will.”

Crossing the room, Polly kept her eyes on him as he moved aside the newspaper and oil can and revolver so she could place the tray on the dresser. He was holding his sawed-off ten-bore Remington shotgun, wiping it with a cloth that two days before had been his shirt.

Inez smiled a little watching him, noticing the shotgun shells now on the dresser, the shells standing upright with their crimped ends peeled open. “Roberto Valdez returned,” she said.

He smiled back at her. “Bob is easier.”

“Bob wears a starched collar,” Inez said. “Roberto makes war.”

“Just a little war, if he wants it,” Valdez said.

“You get crazier every day.”

“I ask him once more; that’s all.”

“You’ve asked him twice.”

“But this time will be different.”

“You expect to fight him?”

“If he wants a little. We’ll see.”

“We. There’s one of you.”

“The ham smells good. Potatoes, fresh vegetables.” He smiled at Polly, then moved his gaze back to Inez. “You got any beef tallow?”

“I’ll look,” Inez said. “Or maybe you can use ham fat.”

“I cut lean slices specially,” Polly said. She was frowning, trying to understand why a man would want beef tallow when he had a plate of baked ham in front of him.

“He doesn’t want it to eat,” Inez said, watching Valdez. “He puts the tallow in the shotgun shell; it holds the charge together so it doesn’t fly all over the place. How far would you say, Roberto?”

Bob Valdez shrugged. “Maybe a hundred and fifty feet.”

“Boom, like a ca