Valdez Is Coming: A Novel Read online

  Valdez drew on his cigarette, letting the smoke out slowly. “You haven’t told Frank Tanner?”

  “No. I almost did. But I thought better of it.”

  “Then why did you tell me?”

  Her eyes raised now in the firelight. “I don’t know,” she said softly. “Maybe it’s this place. Maybe it’s because I wanted to tell somebody so bad. I just don’t know.” She paused, and with the soft sound gone from her voice said, “Maybe I told you because you’re not going to live long enough to tell anyone else.”

  “You want to stay alive,” Valdez said. “Everybody wants to stay alive.”

  She was staring at him again. “Do you?”

  “Everybody,” Valdez said.

  “Well, remember that when you close your eyes,” she said. “I killed a man to be free of him, to stay alive.”

  “I’ll remember that,” Valdez said. “I’ll remember something else, too, a man lying on his back tied to a cross and someone cutting him loose and giving him water.”

  He watched closely but there was no change of expression on her face. He said, “The man believes a woman did this. He thought the woman had dark hair, because he had been thinking of a woman with dark hair. But maybe he thought it was dark hair because it was night. Maybe it was a woman with light hair. A woman who lived near this place and knew where he was and could find him.”

  She was listening intently now, hunched forward, her long hair hanging close to her face. She said, “It could have been one of the Mexican women.”

  “No, it wasn’t one of them, I know that. They live with those men and they would be afraid.”

  She waited, thoughtful, but still did not move her eyes from his. She said, almost cautiously, “You believe I’m the woman?”

  “There’s no one else.”

  She said then, still thoughtful, watching him, “If you believe I saved you, why are you doing this to me?”

  Valdez took a last draw on the cigarette and dropped it in the fire. “I’m not doing it to you. I’m doing it to Frank Tanner.”

  “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 Tanner. I told you I have nothing. You decide what I want.”

  “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. Tanner and his segundo and several people that he recognized who had been by here. He saw R. L. Davis and this puzzled him, R. L. Davis being with them; but the way they were here, not passing by and stopping for water, here, made him too afraid to wonder about R. L. Davis.

  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. Tanner, you want me to ask him? I’ll get it from him.”

  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. Tanner, knowing better, and decided to keep his mouth shut for a while.

  “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 annoying sound telling them to be silent; God bless the toothless hag this time, now, Jesus, give her power to keep them inside.

  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 grinned with no teeth, with his mouth sunken. He said, “How’re you, honey?” The little girl smiled as he carried her out into the yard. The American looked out toward the mounted men and he said, “Mr. Tanner, I could swing this young’n by her feet and bash her head agin the wall.”

  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. Tanner, who was mounted on a bay horse. The segundo stepped out of his saddle. He took a plug of tobacco and bit off a corner as he walked up to Diego Luz, who watched him, feeling his hands hanging heavily at his sides.

  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 Tanner and stopped. He eased his funneled hat up and pulled it down again.

  “Mr. Tanner, I’d like to ask him something.”

  “Go ahead,” Tanner said. He brought a cigar out of a vest pocket and bit off the tip.

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

  Tanner lit his cigar and blew out the smoke. “You hear that?”

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

  “Where?” Tanner said.

  “He was hiding.”

  “I said where.”

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

  To the segundo Tanner said, “They look in the shack?”

  “I’ll find out,” the segundo said.

  “If he wasn’t there,” Tanner said to Diego Luz, “you’re a dead man.”

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

  “We’ve stayed long enough,” Tanner said. “Tend to the horsebreaker.”

  R. L. Davis was standing in the yard. He wanted to say more, but it was passing him by. “Mr. Tanner, I could talk to him some——”

  But Tanner wasn’t paying any attention to him.

  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 L
uz’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, beginning inside, pouring kerosene on the beds and the furniture, while outside two mounted men were fixing their ropes to the support posts of the ramada. The flames took the straw blinds covering the windows; the men inside poured out with smoke, and as they cleared the doorway, the mounted men spurred away to bring the mesquite-pole awning down over the front of the house. They burned the ramada and the outbuildings and the corn crib. They pulled his corral apart, scattering the horses, and came back across the yard, gathering and riding out southeast, leaving their dust hanging in the air and the sound of them fading in the early morning sunlight.

  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. Tanner was already up the cutbank, but he saw the segundo still in the dry stream bed, waiting for the file of riders to move up. R. L. Davis walked his horse over to him.