Valdez Is Coming

“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?” Ta

“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?” Ta

“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,” Ta

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,” Ta

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

Ta

“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,” Ta

“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.”

Ta

The rider said, “Mr. Ta

The segundo felt the tobacco in his cheek, rolling it with his tongue as his eyes moved from the rider to Frank Ta

“As many as it takes,” Ta

“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 Ta

Ta

The segundo said to the rider, “Start now, come on.” He was aware of the men on the bank, beyond Ta

So that was done. The segundo walked over to Ta

“Say it,” Ta

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.”

Ta

“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,” Ta

“If you say it.”

“I say it,” Ta

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, ru

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.