Valdez Is Coming Read Free Page B

him?”
    The Negro hesitated again. Then shook his head. “I don’t know him.”
    “Then he won’t know you.”
    “He didn’t know me this morning.”
    “All right,” Bob Valdez said. “I’ll bet your paper says you were discharged. Then we’ll show it to this man, uh?”
    The Negro thought it over before he nodded, very slowly, as if still thinking. “All right. Bring him here, I’ll say a few words to him.”
    Bob Valdez smiled a little. “You can point that gun some other way.”
    “Well…” the Negro said, “if everybody’s friends.” He lowered the revolver to his side.
    The wagon was in the willow trees by the creek. Off to the right. But Bob Valdez did not turn right away in that direction. He backed away, watching Orlando Rincón for no reason that he knew of. Maybe because the man was holding a gun and that was reason enough.
    He had backed off six or seven feet when Orlando Rincón shoved the revolver down into his belt. Bob Valdez turned and started for the trees.
    It was at this moment that he looked across the pasture. He saw Mr. Tanner and R. L. Davis at the edge of the scrub trees but wasn’t sure it was them. Something tried to tell him it was them, but he did not accept it until he was off to the right, out of the line of fire, and by then the time to yell at them or run toward them was past. R. L. Davis had the Winchester up and was firing.
    They say R. L. Davis was drunk or he would have pinned him square. As it was, the bullet shaved Rincón and plowed past him into the hut.
    Bob Valdez saw Rincón half turn and he saw Rincón’s accusing eyes as Rincón pulled the long-barreled dragoon from his belt.
    “They weren’t supposed to,” Bob Valdez said, holding one hand out as if to stop Rincón. “Listen, they weren’t supposed to do that!”
    The revolver was free, and Rincón was cocking it. “Don’t!” Bob Valdez said. “Don’t do it!” Looking right into the Negro’s eyes and seeing it was no use, that Rincón was going to shoot him, and suddenly hurrying, he jerked the shotgun up and pulled both triggers so that the explosions came out in one blast and Orlando Rincón was spun and thrown back inside.
    They came out across the pasture to have a look, some going inside where they found the woman and brought her out, everybody noticing she would have a child in about a month. Those by the doorway made room as Mr. Tanner and R. L. Davis approached.
    Diego Luz came over by Bob Valdez, who had not moved. Valdez stood watching them and he saw Mr. Tanner look down at Rincón and after a moment shake his head.
    “It looked like him,” Mr. Tanner said. “It sure looked like him.”
    He saw R. L. Davis squint at Mr. Tanner. “It ain’t the one you said?”
    Mr. Tanner shook his head again. “I’ve seen him before though. I know I’ve seen him somewheres.”
    Bob Valdez saw R. L. Davis shrug. “You ask me, they all look alike.” He was yawning then, fooling with his hat, and then his eyes swiveled over to Bob Valdez standing with the empty shotgun.
    “Constable,” R. L. Davis said. “You went and killed the wrong coon.”
    Bob Valdez started for him, raising the shotgun to swing it like a club, but Diego Luz caught him from behind and locked a big arm around his neck, under his chin, until he was still and Mr. Tanner and the others had moved off.
     
2
     
    A man can be in two different places and he will be two different men. Maybe if you think of more places he will be more men, but two is enough for now. This is Bob Valdez washing his hands in the creek and resting in the willows after digging the hole and lowering Orlando Rincón into it and covering him with dirt and stones, resting and watching the Lipan Apache woman who sat in silence by the grave of the man whose child she would have in a month.
    This is one Bob Valdez. The forty-year-old town constable and stage-line shotgun rider. A good, hardworking man. And hard looking, with a dark hard face that was creased