Valdez Is Coming

“But if he doesn’t give you the money-”

“Let’s see what happens,” Valdez said. He got to his knees and spread his blanket so that his feet would be toward the fire.

Gay Erin didn’t move. She said, “Why do you think I cut you loose?”

“I don’t know. Because you felt sorry for me?”

“Maybe.” She watched him. “Or maybe because of Frank. To do something against him.”

“You’re going to marry him,” Valdez said.

“He says I’m going to marry him.”

“Well, if you don’t want to, why didn’t you leave?”

“Because I’ve no place to go. So I’ll marry him whether I want to or not.” She looked into the fire, moving her hair from the side of her face gently, with the tips of her fingers. “I have no family to go to. People I used to know are scattered all over the territory. I think even when I was married to Jim I felt alone. I stayed with him, I guess, for the same reason I’m going to marry Frank.”

Valdez knelt on his blanket, half turned to look at her. “You want to get married so bad, there are plenty of men.”

“Are there?” She got up and smoothed her skirt, standing close to the fire. “Where should I spread my blanket?”

“Where do you want to?”

Looking down at him she said, “Wherever you tell me.”

Look at him again as he looked at himself that night. His name was Roberto Eladio Valdez, born July 23, 1854, in an adobe village on the San Pedro, where the valley land climbed into the Galiuros. His father was a farmer until they moved to Tucson and his father went to work for a freight company and sent his children to the mission school. Roberto Eladio Valdez, born of Mexican parents in the United States Territory of Arizona, a boy who lived in the desert and knew of many people who had been killed by the Apaches, boy to man in the desert and in the mountains, finally working for the Army, leading the Apache trackers when the hostiles jumped San Carlos and went raiding, and finally through with that and deciding it was time to work the land or work for a company, as most men did, and do it now if it wasn’t already too late. Roberto Eladio Valdez worked for Hatch and Hodges, and they put him on the boot with the shotgun because he was good with it. He asked the municipal committee of Lanoria for a town job and they made him a part-time constable and put a shotgun in his hands because he was good with it and because he was quiet and because everybody liked him or at least abided him, because he was one of the good ones who kept himself clean and neat, even wearing the starched collar and the suit when everybody else was in shirtsleeves, and never drank too much or was abusive. Remember, there is the Bob Valdez who knew his place, and the one looking for a normal life and a home and a family.

Now this one is inside the one at the high camp above the mountain meadow at the edge of the timber. Bob and Roberto both there, both of them looking at the woman across the firelight, but Roberto doing the thinking now, saying to himself but to the woman, “All right, that’s what you want.”

He was not smiling now or holding open the coach door or touching his hat and saying yes, ma’am. He was on his own ground and he was un-buckling the Walker Colt from his leg.

He said, “Bring it over here.”

He rose to his feet as she came around the fire with the rolled blanket, now taller and bigger than she was. She spread the blanket next to his, and when she straightened, he took her shoulders in his hands, not feeling her pull back, feeling only the soft firmness of her arms. He said, “You don’t want to be alone, uh?”

She said nothing.

“You want somebody to hold you and take care of you. Is that it?”

Her face was close, her eyes looking at him, her lips slightly parted.

“What else do you want? You want me to let you go?”

Slowly her hands came up in front of her and she began unbuttoning her shirt, her hands working down gradually from her throat to her waist. She said, “I told you I killed my husband. I told you I don’t want to marry Frank Ta

“I heard something,” Diego Luz said.

His wife lay beside him with her eyes closed. He knew she was awake because sunlight filtered through the straw blind covering the window, the way the early morning sunlight looked each day when they rose to work in the yard and the fields and the horse corral until the sun left for the night. Without opening her eyes his wife said, sleep in her voice and on her face, “What did you hear?”

Diego Luz sat up now. “I heard something.”

“Your horses,” his wife said.

“Horses, but not my horses.”

“The chickens,” she said.

“Horses.” Diego Luz got out of the bed Bob Valdez had slept in a few days before. He looked at the two children on the mat beneath the window; they were asleep. He went into the front room and looked at his daughter and his youngest child and his wife’s mother in the bed. His mother-in-law lay on her back staring at the ceiling. Diego Luz said, “What is it?”

“Outside,” his wife’s mother said.

“What outside? What did you hear?”

“They killed the dogs,” the old woman said.

He turned to look at his oldest son, sleeping, and said to himself, Wake him. But he let the boy sleep. Diego Luz pushed aside the straw mat covering the doorway and went outside, out under the mesquite-pole ramada, and saw them in the yard.

An army of them, a half-circle of armed men in their saddles. No sound now, not even from the horses. A dozen of them or more. A dog lying on its side in the yard with a saddle blanket covering its head. The dog smothered. Twelve riders looking at him, staring at him or at the ramada or at the house, facing him and not moving. He heard hooves on the hardpack and two riders appeared from the side of the house. Diego Luz looked that way and saw more of them at the corral and coming up from the horse pasture. They were all around the place; they had been everywhere; they had closed in from all sides and now they were here.

Diego Luz moved to the edge of the ramada shade looking out. He said nothing because there was nothing for him to say; he didn’t ask them here; they came. But he said to himself, He did something to them and they’re looking for him.

He saw Mr. Ta

Diego Luz, the horsebreaker, who they said broke horses with his fists, looked out at them and said in his mind to them, Go out to the corral and eat horseshit, goddam you sitting there. But he thought of his wife and his children and his oldest daughter and he said, Jesus, son of God, help me. Jesus, if you listen to anything or have listened to anything. Jesus, from now on-

The segundo said in Spanish, “How are you, friend? How is your family? Are they awake?”

Goddam him, Diego Luz thought and said, “How does it pass with you? Come down and have something with us. I’ll wake up the old woman.”

“Good,” the segundo said, “Bring the woman out. Bring out your daughter.”

Over from him several riders, R. L. Davis said, “Mr. Ta

The segundo looked at R. L. Davis from under the straw brim of his Sonora hat. R. L. Davis saw the look, not moving his eyes to Mr. Ta

“Now they come,” the segundo said pleasantly, smiling, touching the brim of his hat.

Diego Luz could hear them behind him. He thought, Jesus, make them stay inside. But they were out and coming out: his wife and his son and his daughter, standing close to him now; he could hear one of the smaller children, the high questioning voice, and heard the witch voice of his wife’s mother, the too-loud a