“You fixed him,” R. L. Davis said.
Tanner’s eyes shifted to Davis, sliding on him and away from him, as he had looked at him before. “I don’t remember asking you here,” Tanner said.
“Listen,” R. L. Davis began to say.
Tanner stopped him. “Watch your mouth, boy. I don’t listen to you. I don’t listen to anybody I don’t want to listen to.”
R. L. Davis squinted up at him. “I didn’t mean it that way. I come here to work for you.”
Tanner’s gaze dropped slowly from the bent figure down the street to Davis. “Why do you think I’d hire you?”
“You need a gun, I’m your man.”
“I didn’t see you hit anything the other day.”
“Jesus Christ, I wasn’t aiming at her. You said yourself just make her jump some.”
“Are you telling me what I said?”
“I thought that’s what it was.”
“Don’t think,” Tanner said. “Ride out.”
“Hell, you can always use another man, can’t you?”
“Maybe a man,” Tanner said. “Ride out.”
“Try me out. Put me on for a month.”
“We’ll put some poles on your back,” Tanner said, “if you want to stay here.”
“I was just asking,” R. L. Davis lifted his reins and flicked them against the neck of his sorrel, bringing the animal around and guiding it through the group of riders, trying to take his time.
Tanner watched Davis until he was beyond the pump and heading down the street. The small stooped figure was now at the far end of the adobes.
The woman, Gay Erin, who had been married to the sutler at Fort Huachuca and had been living with Frank Tanner since her husband’s death, waited for Tanner to turn and notice her in the doorway behind him. But he didn’t turn; he stood on the edge of the platform over his men.
She said, “Frank?” and waited again.
Now he looked around and came over to her, taking his time. “I didn’t know you were there,” he said.
She kept her eyes on him, waiting for him to come close. “I don’t understand you,” she said.
“I don’t need that boy. Why should I hire him?”
“The other one. He asks you a simple thing, to help someone.”
“We won’t talk about it out here,” Tanner said. They went into the dimness of the warehouse, past sacks of grain and stacked wooden cases, Tanner holding her arm and guiding her to the stairway. “I let you talk to me the way you want,” Tanner said, “but not in front of my men.”
Upstairs, in the office that had been made into a sitting room, Gay Erin looked out the window. She could see R. L. Davis at the end of the street; the hunched figure of Bob Valdez was no longer in sight.
“You better keep up here from now on,” Tanner said, “unless I call you down.”
She turned from the window. “And how long is that?”
“I guess as long as I want.” Tanner went into the bedroom. He came out wearing his coat, strapping on a gunbelt. “I’m going to Nogales; I’ll be back in the morning.” He looked down at his belt, buckling it. “You can come if you want a twenty-mile ride.”
“Or sit here,” the girl said.
He looked up at her. “What else?”
“If you say sit I’m supposed to sit.” Her expression and the sound of her voice were mild, but her eyes held his and hung on. “No one can be that sure,” she said. “Not even you.”
“Well, you’re not going to leave,” Tanner said. He moved toward her, settling the gunbelt on his hips. “You don’t have anything at Huachuca. You don’t have anything left at Prescott. Whatever you have is here.”
“Whatever I have,” the girl said, “as your woman.”
“Aren’t I nice enough to you?”
“Sometimes.”
“Take what you get.”
“Sometimes you act like a human being.”
“When I’m in my drawers,” Tanner said. “When I’m in my boots that’s a different time.”
“You had them on outside.”
“You bet I did, lady.”
“He was trying to help a woman who’d lost her husband; that’s all he was doing.”
“And I’m helping one already,” Tanner said. “One poor widow woman’s enough.” He was close to her, looking into her face, and he touched her cheek gently with his hand. He said, “I guess I could stay a few more minutes if you like.”
“Frank, send someone to cut him loose.”
Tanner shook his head, tired of it. “Lady, you sure can break the spell…” He moved away from her toward the door, then looked back as he opened it. “Nobody cuts him loose. I don’t want to see that man again.”
You’ve looked at the ground all your life, Valdez thought at one point. But never this close for so long.
The pain reached from the back of his neck down into his shoulders. He would try to arch his back, and the pole, with a knot in it, would press against his head and push his hat forward. The hat was low and stuck to his forehead and sweat stung his eyes. He told himself, The hell with it; don’t think about it. Go home. You’ve walked home before.
God, but he had never walked home like this. The ground across the grazing land was humped and spotted with brush, but he had little trouble with his footing. No, God, he could see where he was going all right. He could hear Tanner’s cattle and he thought once, What if some bull with swords on his head sees you and doesn’t like you? God, he said to himself, give that bull good grass to eat or a nice cow to do something with.
A mile across the grazing land and then up into the foothills, following a gully and angling out of it, climbing the side of a brush slope, not finding the trail and taking a longer way to the top, trying to look up to see where he was going with the pole pressed against his head. He couldn’t go straight up. He couldn’t lose his footing and fall backward on the crossed poles. He remembered what the segundo had said about the turtle, and at that time he had pictured himself lying on his back in the sun of midday and through the afternoon. No, he would take longer and he wouldn’t fall. It was the pain in his legs that bothered him now; it turned his thighs into cords and pulled so, as he neared the top, that his legs began to tremble.
They’re old legs, he said to himself. Be good to them. They have to walk twenty miles. Or over to Diego Luz, he thought then. Ten miles. Twenty miles, ten miles, what was the difference?
He wished he could wipe the sweat and dust from his face. He wished he could loosen his hat and rub his nose and bring his arms down and straighten up just for a minute.
Before he reached the crest of the slope he crouched forward and gradually lowered himself to his knees, bending over and twisting his body as he fell forward so that a tip of the crosspole touched the slope first; but this did little to break his fall, and with his head turned, his cheekbone struck the ground with the force of a heavy, solid blow. It stunned him and he lay breathing with his mouth open. His hat, tight to his forehead, had remained on; good. Now he rested for perhaps a quarter of an hour, until the pain through his shoulder blades became unbearable. Valdez got to his feet and continued on.
R. L. Davis waited for him in the trees, across the meadow on the far side of the slope. He had watched Valdez work up through the ravine and down the switchback trail on this side. He had waited because maybe Tanner’s men were also watching – the lookouts up on the slope – and he had waited because he wasn’t sure what they’d do. He thought they might come out and push Valdez down the trail, have some fun with him; but no one appeared, and Valdez had come all the way down to the meadow now and was coming across, hurrying some as he saw the shade of the trees waiting for him.
R. L. Davis moved his sorrel into heavy foliage. There wasn’t any hurry: watch him a while and then play with him.
Goddam, now what was he doing, kicking at the leaves? Clearing a spot, R. L. Davis decided. He could hear Valdez in the silence, the sound of the leaves scuffing, and could see him through the pale birch trunks, the bent-over hunched-back figure in the thin shafts of sunlight. He watched Valdez go to his knees; he winced and then smiled as Valdez fell forward on the side of his face. That was pretty good. But as Valdez lay there not moving, R. L. Davis became restless and started to fidget and tried to think of something. You could trample him some, he thought. Ride over him a few times. He decided maybe that was the thing to do and raised his reins to flick the sorrel.