Valdez Is Coming Read Free Page A

thinking. Maybe he was kidding, but the hell with him. He was also thinking that maybe he could get a drink from that bottle. Maybe there would be a half inch left nobody wanted and Mr. Malson would tell him to kill it.
    But it was already finished. R. L. Davis was playing with the bottle, holding it by the neck and flipping it up and catching it as it came down. Beaudry was saying, “What about after dark?” And looking at Mr. Tanner, who was thinking about something else and didn’t notice.
    R. L. Davis stopped flipping the bottle. He said, “Put some men on the rise right above the hut; he comes out, bust him.”
    “Well, they should get the men over there,” Mr. Beaudry said, looking at the sky. “It won’t be long till dark.”
    “Where’s he going?” Mr. Malson said.
    The others looked up, stopped in whatever they were doing or thinking by the suddenness of Mr. Malson’s voice.
    “Hey, Valdez!” R. L. Davis yelled out. “Where you think you’re going?”
    Bob Valdez had circled them and was already below them on the slope, leaving the pines now and entering the scrub brush. He didn’t stop or look back.
    “Valdez!”
    Mr. Tanner raised one hand to silence R. L. Davis, all the time watching Bob Valdez getting smaller, going straight through the scrub, not just walking or passing the time but going right out to the pasture.
    “Look at him,” Mr. Malson said. There was some admiration in his voice.
    “He’s dumber than he looks,” R. L. Davis said, then jumped a little as Mr. Tanner touched his arm.
    “Come on,” Mr. Tanner said. “With the rifle.” And he started down the slope, hurrying and not seeming to care if he might stumble on the loose gravel.
    Bob Valdez was now halfway across the pasture, the shotgun pointed down at his side, his eyes not leaving the door of the line shack. The door was probably already open enough for a rifle barrel to poke through. He guessed the Army deserter was covering him, letting him get as close as he wanted; the closer he came the easier to hit him.
    Now he could see all the bullet marks in the door and the clean inner wood where the door was splintered. Two people in that little bake-oven of a place. He saw the door move.
    He saw the rag doll on the ground. It was a strange thing, the woman having a doll. Valdez hardly glanced at it but was aware of the button eyes looking up and the discomforted twist of the red wool mouth. Then, just past the doll, when he was wondering if he would go right up to the door and knock on it and wouldn’t that be a crazy thing, like visiting somebody, the door opened and the Negro was in the doorway filling it, standing there in pants and boots but without a shirt in that hot place, and holding a long-barreled dragoon that was already cocked.
    They stood twelve feet apart looking at each other, close enough so that no one could fire from the slope.
    “I can kill you first,” the Negro said, “if you raise it.”
    With his free hand, the left one, Bob Valdez motioned back over his shoulder. “There’s a man there said you killed somebody a year ago.”
    “What man?”
    “Said his name is Tanner.”
    The Negro shook his head, once each way.
    “Said your name is Johnson.”
    “You know my name.”
    “I’m telling you what he said.”
    “Where’d I kill this man?”
    “Huachuca.”
    The Negro hesitated. “That was some time ago I was in the Tenth. More than a year.”
    “You a deserter?”
    “I served it out.”
    “Then you got something that says so.”
    “In the wagon, there’s a bag there my things are in.”
    “Will you talk to this man Tanner?”
    “If I can hold from busting him.”
    “Listen, why did you run this morning?”
    “They come chasing. I don’t know what they want.” He lowered the gun a little, his brown-stained tired-looking eyes staring intently at Bob Valdez. “What would you do? They come on the run. Next thing I know they firing at us.”
    “Will you go with me and talk to