Valdez Is Coming

Diego Luz tried to be calm and let this happen, what was going to happen. He wet his lips and tried not to wet his lips. He did not see the segundo motion or hear him speak, but now a rider dismounted, letting his reins trail, and came toward them.

He was an American, a bony man who had not shaved for several days and wore boots to his knees and spurs that chinged as he came forward. He moved past Diego Luz and took his son by the arm and brought him out several strides into the yard. He positioned the boy, moving him by his shoulders, to face his family as the boy looked up at him. The man glanced at the segundo. His gaze dropped slowly to the boy and when he was looking at him, standing a stride in front of him, he stepped in swinging his gloved right fist and slammed it into the boy’s face.

Diego Luz did not move. He looked at his boy on the ground and at the man who had struck him and at the segundo.

The segundo said, “We ask you one time. Where is Valdez?”

Diego Luz did not hesitate or think about it. He said, “I don’t know.” He added then, “No one here knows.” And then, because he had said this much, he said, “He hasn’t been here in four days.” He saw the segundo looking at him and he wished he had said only that he didn’t know.

The American with the bony face and the high boots walked over to the ramada. Diego Luz glanced aside and then half turned as he saw his small children out of the doorway. The American picked up the littlest girl, his three-year-old, and held her up in front of him. The man gri

Diego Luz screamed, “I don’t know!”

Now several men dismounted and came toward him. One of them pushed him aside and they brought his daughter out into the yard. She was wearing only a nightdress, and in the sunlight he could see the shape of his daughter’s hips and legs beneath the cotton cloth and saw the men by the ramada looking at her. The man who brought her out was behind her now. He took her nightdress at the neck and pulled down on it. The girl twisted, wrenching away from him, screaming. Some of the men laughed, staring at her now as she tried to hold up her shredded nightdress to cover herself.

The segundo said to Diego Luz, “Maybe we take her inside and mount her one at a time. Or maybe we do it out here so your family can see.”

“I don’t know where he is,” Diego Luz said.

The segundo looked at Mr. Ta

He said to the segundo in Spanish, “Tell him to put my little girl down.”

“He’s talking,” the segundo said.

“Not that one.”

“He’s a little crazy maybe.”

“Tell him to put her down.”

“I won’t let him do it,” the segundo said. “She’s too young. Maybe she grow up to be something, like your daughter.”

Diego Luz said, “If you touch her you’d better kill me.”

“We can do that,” the segundo said.

“I don’t know where he is. Man, who do you think I put first, him?”

“We only asking you,” the segundo said. “Maybe you give us a lot of shit and we believe it. That’s a nice-looking girl,” he said, looking at the man’s daughter. “I like a little more up there, but first one of the day, maybe it’s all right.”

“Shoot her first,” Diego Luz said. “You’d do it to a corpse, you filthy son of a whore.”

The segundo said, “Man, hold on to yourself if you can do it. Just tell us.”

“I don’t know where he is,” Diego Luz said.

“Listen, leave Maricopa, you can ride for me.”

“I don’t know where he is,” Diego Luz said.

“I don’t care where he is,” the segundo said. “I mean it, ride for me.”

Diego Luz said, “Come here alone to ask me, I’d try to kill you.”

The segundo nodded, smiling. “You’d try it, wouldn’t you? That’s why I want you.”

R. L. Davis came out of his saddle. He walked part way toward Ta

“Mr. Ta

“Go ahead,” Ta

“I want to ask Diego about seeing him in town with Bob Valdez’s clothes three days ago.”

Ta

Diego Luz nodded his head up and down. “I was taking his clothes to him.”

“Where?” Ta

“He was hiding.”

“I said where.”

“In the line shack. At the Maricopa pasture.”

To the segundo Ta

“I’ll find out,” the segundo said.

“If he wasn’t there,” Ta

“He brought him his clothes,” R. L. Davis said, “and he must’ve brought him his guns too.”

“We’ve stayed long enough,” Ta

R. L. Davis was standing in the yard. He wanted to say more, but it was passing him by. “Mr. Ta

But Ta

Two men and then a third one brought Diego Luz out in the yard. They bent his arms behind him, forcing him to his knees and this way got him facedown on the hardpack, spreading his arms, a man sitting on him and a man clamping each of his arms flat to the ground with a boot.

The segundo went to one knee at Diego Luz’s head. He worked the tobacco from one side of his mouth to the other with his tongue and spit a brown stream close to Diego Luz. He said, “I believe you; you don’t know where he is. But maybe you’re lying. Or maybe you lie some other time to us. You understand?”

The American with the bony face and the high boots went down to his knees close to Diego Luz’s left hand that was palm-flat on the ground. The man drew his Colt revolver and flipped it, catching it by the barrel, and brought the butt down hard on Diego Luz’s hand. The hand clenched to protect itself as Diego Luz screamed and the gun butt came down on the tight white knuckles and Diego Luz screamed again. This way they broke both of the horsebreaker’s hands while his family watched from the shade of the ramada.

“I mean it,” the segundo said, as Diego Luz lay there after the men holding him had moved away. “You come work for me sometime.”

They herded the family into the yard to get them out of the way while they destroyed the house and burned everything that would burn, begi

They were a good mile from the place, moving single file down the bank of an arroyo, the riders milling in the dry stream bed as they moved one at a time up the other side.

R. L. Davis looked back, squinting at the gray smoke rising in the near distance – not a lot of smoke now; the house would be burned out and most of the smoke was probably coming from the corn crib. He turned in his saddle. Ta