Valdez Is Coming

The woman did not move or speak.

“I don’t know how much you pay a woman for killing her husband, but we’ll think of something, all right? There were many men there; I don’t know them all. But the ones I know I go to and ask them to give me something for you. A hundred dollars. No, five hundred dollars we get and give it to you so you can do what you want with it. Have your baby and go home, wherever your home is, or stay here. Buy some, I don’t know, something to grow, and a cow and maybe some goats, uh? You know goats?”

Christ, let her buy what she wants. Get it done.

“Look,” Valdez said then. “We get in the wagon and go back to town. I see the men and talk to them – you stay in town also. I find a place for you, all right?”

The woman’s gaze rose from the fire, her dark face glistening in the light, the shapeless, flat-faced Lipan Apache woman looking at him. A person, but Christ, barely a person.

Why did Rincon choose this one? Valdez thought. He smiled then. “How does that sound? You stay in town, sleep in a bed. You don’t have to worry or think about it. We pay for everything.”

A Maricopa rider came into De Spain’s, where Mr. Beaudry and Mr. Malson were playing poker with another gentleman and the house man, and told them it was the goddamnedest thing he’d seen in a while: Bob Valdez walking into the Republic Hotel with that blown-up Indian woman.

R. L. Davis came over from the bar and said, “What about the Indian woman? Hell, I could have knocked her flat if I’d wanted. Nobody believes that then they never seen me shoot.”

Mr. Malson told him to shut up and said to the Maricopa rider, “What’s this about Bob Valdez?”

“He’s in the Republic registering that nigger’s squaw,” the rider said. “I saw them come up in the team and go inside, so I stuck my head in.”

Mr. Beaudry was squinting in his cigar smoke. “What’d the clerk do?”

“I guess he didn’t know what to do,” the rider said. “He went and got the manager, and him and Bob Valdez were talking over the counter, but I couldn’t hear them.”

Mr. Malson, the manager of Maricopa, looked at Mr. Beaudry, the government land agent, and Mr. Beaudry said, “I never heard of anything like that before.”

Mr. Malson shook his head. “They won’t give her a room. Christ Almighty.”

Mr. Beaudry shook his head too. “I don’t know,” he said. “Bob Valdez. You sure it was Bob?”

“Yes sir,” the Maricopa rider said. He waited a minute while the men at the poker table thought about it, then went over to the bar and got himself a glass of whiskey.

Next to him, R. L. Davis said, “Were you out there today?” The rider shook his head, but said he’d heard all about it. R. L. Davis told him how he had taken the Winchester and put four good ones right behind the woman when she came out for water and one smack in the door as she went back inside. “Hell,” R. L. Davis said, “I’d wanted to hit her I’d have hit her square.”

The Maricopa rider said, “Goddam, I guess she’s a big enough something to shoot at for anybody.”

“I was two hundred yards off!” R. L. Davis stiffened up and his face was tight. “I put them shots right where I aimed!”

The Maricopa rider said, “All right, I believe you.” He was tired and didn’t feel like arguing with some stringy drunk who was liable to make something out of nothing.

For a Saturday night there was only a fair crowd in De Spain’s, the riders and a few town merchants lined up and lounged at the bar and some others played poker and faro, with tobacco smoke hanging above them around the brass lamps. They were drinking and talking, but it didn’t seem loud enough for a Saturday. There had been more men in here earlier, right after supper, a number of them coming in for a quick glass or a jug to take with them, heading back to their spreads with their families, but now it was only a fair-sized crowd. The moment of excitement had been Mr. Ta

Frank Ta

The houseman saw him and nudged Mr. Malson under the table. Mr. Malson looked at him fu

“I buried him,” Valdez said.

Mr. Malson nodded. “Good. There were enough witnesses, I didn’t see any need for an inquest.” He looked up at Bob Valdez. “Everybody knows how he died.”

“Unless his wife wants him buried at home,” Valdez said.

Mr. Beaudry said, “Let her move him if she wants. Phew, driving that team in the sun with him on the back. How’d you like to do that?”

R. L. Davis, who had moved over from the bar, said, “I guess that boy stunk enough when he was alive.” He looked around and got a couple of the riders to laugh at it.

“I haven’t asked her if she wants to,” Valdez said. “It’s something she’ll think about later when she’s home. But I told her one thing,” he said then. “I told her we’d pay her for killing her husband.”

There was a silence at the table. Mr. Beaudry fooled with the end of his moustache, twisting it, and Mr. Malson cleared his throat before he said, “We? Who’s we?”

“I thought everybody who was there,” Bob Valdez said. “Or everybody who wants to give something.”

Mr. Malson said, “You mean take up a collection? Pass the hat around?”

Valdez nodded. “Yes sir.”

“Well, I suppose we could do that.” He looked at Beaudry. “What do you think, Earl?”

Mr. Beaudry shrugged. “I don’t care. I guess it would be all right. Give her a few dollars for a stake.”

Mr. Malson nodded. “Enough to get home. Where does she live?”

“Their place is north of here,” Valdez said.

“No, I mean where is she from?”

“I don’t know.”

“Probably across the border,” Mr. Beaudry said. “She could collect about ten dollars and it’d be more than any of her kin had ever seen before.”

Mr. Malson said, “I suppose we could do it.”

“I was thinking of more than ten dollars,” Valdez said.

Mr. Malson looked up at him. “How much more?”