Valdez Is Coming

“Seventeen,” the Erin woman said.

He took the glasses from her. Putting them to his eyes the lower part of the slope came up to him.

They were still far enough away that he could see all of them without sweeping the glasses. He estimated the distance, the first man, the point rider, at six hundred yards, the rest of them at least two hundred yards behind him. The brave one, Valdez thought. Maybe the segundo. Maybe Ta

Valdez lowered the glasses. He said, “Nineteen. You missed two of them, but that’s very good.” He looked at her, at her hair in the afternoon sunlight, the bandana pulled down from her face, loose around her neck now. He reached over and touched the bandana, feeling the cotton cloth between his fingers. “Put this on your head.”

“The sun doesn’t bother me,” she said. She had not spoken since they left the arroyo.

“I’m not thinking of the sun. I’m thinking how far you can see yellow hair.”

As she untied the knot behind her neck she said, “You believed I cut you loose. I didn’t tell you I did.”

“But you let me believe it.”

“How do you know he did?”

“Because he told me. Because if someone else did it, he would think I knew who did it and he wouldn’t bother to lie. I think I was dreaming of a woman giving me water,” Valdez said. “So when I tried to remember what happened, I thought it was a woman.”

“I didn’t mean to lie to you,” she said. “I was afraid.”

“I can see it,” Valdez said. “If you saved my life, I’m not going to shoot you. Or if you get under a blanket with me.”

“I tried to explain how I felt,” she said.

“Sure, you’re all alone, you need somebody. Don’t worry anymore. I know a place you can work, make a lot of money.”

“If you think I’m lying,” the woman said, “or if you think I’m a whore, there’s nothing I can do about it. Think what you like.”

“I’ve got something else to think about,” Valdez said. He studied the slope through the field glasses, past Davis lying behind the rock looking up at him, to the point rider. He raised up then and said to Davis, “If you call out, I give you the first one.”

He put the glasses on the point man again, three hundred yards away, and held him in focus until he was less than two hundred yards and he could see the man’s face and the way the man was squinting, his gaze inching over the hillside. I don’t know you, Valdez said to the man. I have nothing against you. He put down the field glasses and turned the Sharps on the point rider. He could still see the man’s face, his eyes looking over the slope, not knowing it was coming. You shouldn’t have looked at him. Valdez thought.

Then take another one and show them something. But not Ta

Through the field glasses he picked out Ta

“Now think about it,” Valdez said to Ta

He would think and then he would send a few, well out of range, around behind them. Or he would have some of them try to work their way up the slope without being seen.

Or they would all come again.

As they did a few minutes later, spread out and ru

“You’d better move back or work around,” Valdez said to Ta

Make him believe you.

He raised the angle of the Sharps and fired. He fired again and saw a horse go down at six hundred yards. They pulled back again.

Now, Valdez thought, get out of here.

They could wait until dark, but that would be too late if Ta

He could leave R. L. Davis.

But he looked at him down there with his wrists tied to his belt, and for some reason he said to himself, Keep him. Maybe you need him sometime.

He called to Davis, “Come up now. Slowly, along the brush there.”

The woman sat on the ground watching him. The woman who was alone and needed someone and wanted to be held and got under the blanket. In this moment before they made their run, Valdez looked at her and said, “What do you want? Tell me.”

“I want to get out of here,” she said.

“Where? Where do you want to be?”

“I don’t know.”

“Gay Erin,” Valdez said, “think about it and let me know.”

Ta

They stopped and looked that way, all of them, out across the open, low-rolling country to the hills beyond.

“They caught him,” one of them said.

Another one said, “How many shots?”

They listened and in the silence a man said, “I counted five, but it could’ve been more.”

“It was more than five,” the first man said. “It was all at once, like they were firing together.”

“That’s it,” a man said. “The four of them got him in their sights and all fired at once to finish him.”

The segundo was standing at the place where Valdez had positioned himself belly-down behind the rocks to fire at them. He picked up an empty brass cartridge and looked at it – fifty-caliber big bore, from a Sharps or some kind of buffalo gun. He noticed the.44 cartridges that had been fired from the Winchester. A Sharps and a Winchester, a big eight- or ten-bore shotgun and a revolver; this man was armed and he knew how to use his guns. The segundo counted fourteen empty cartridges on the ground and tallied what the bullets had cost them: two dead on the slope, two wounded, five horses shot. Now seven dead in the grand total and, counting the men without horses, who would have to walk to Mimbreno and come back, twelve men he had wiped from the board, leaving twelve to hunt him and kill him.

He said to Mr. Ta

Ta

The segundo said nothing. Maybe the man had luck – there was such a thing as luck – but God in heaven, he knew how to shoot his guns. It would be something to face him, the segundo was thinking. It would be good to talk to him sometime, if this had not happened and if he met the man, to have a drink of mescal with him, or if they were together using their guns against someone else.

How would you like to have him? the segundo thought. Start over and talk to him different. He remembered the way Valdez had stood at the adobe wall as they fired at him, shooting close to his head and between his legs. He remembered the man not moving, not tightening or pleading or saying a word as he watched them fire at him. You should have known then, the segundo said to himself.