But he had a feeling they wouldn’t believe a word of it.
All right, three days ago he’d left Valdez in the meadow. And this evening Tanner’s men come in looking for him and write his death sentence. So Valdez must have gone back and done something to them.
Valdez hadn’t been here; at least nobody remembered seeing him. So where would he have been the past three days? Not at his boardinghouse.
But, goddam, Diego Luz had been to his boardinghouse! He could see Diego again coming out of it and the funny look on the man’s face when he realized he’d been spotted.
What would Frank Tanner say about that? R. L. Davis said to himself. If you could hand him Bob Valdez he’d hire you the same minute, wouldn’t he?
Go up to Tanner and cock the Walker in his face and say, All right, give me the money, Valdez was thinking. Not asking him, telling him this time. A hundred dollars or five hundred or whatever he had. Take it and get out and don’t think about later until later. He would have to leave Lanoria and go someplace else and maybe worry about Tanner the rest of his life – because he had wanted to help the woman; because he had started it and gotten into it and now was so far in he couldn’t turn around and walk out. You must be crazy, Valdez thought. Like Inez had said. Or an idiot. But he was here and was going through with it and he wasn’t going to think about why he was here.
He was behind the church, bringing the buckskin along close to the wall, then into the alley that led to the yard of the church. At the far end of the yard was the building with the loading platform. Past the low wall of the churchyard he could see the square and the water pump and stone trough. There was no one in the square now. Farther down the street, in the dusk, he could make out people in front of the adobes, a few of the women sitting outside to talk; he could hear voices and laughter, the sound clear in the silence.
Valdez left the buckskin in the yard. He went over the wall and through the narrow space between the platform and two freight wagons that stood ready for loading. He mounted the steps at the far end. On the platform he looked out at the square again and at the church doorway and the fence across the opening. There were a few horses inside; he wondered if one of them was his claybank. Maybe after, he would have time to look. He crossed the platform and went into the building, into the room crowded with wooden cases and sacks of grain. Maybe this wasn’t Tanner’s place. Maybe he would have to work his way down the street, hurrying before it was full dark and they gave up looking for him. It was already dark in the room. He had to feel his way at first, moving between the cases to the stairway. The boards creaked and his boots on the stairs made a hard, sharp sound that Tanner would hear if he was upstairs; he would be ready or he would think it was one of his men. Valdez reached the hall and opened the door in front of him.
The room was still and seemed empty, until the woman moved and he saw her profile and the soft curve of her hair against the window. She watched him cross the room and open the door to the bedroom, waiting for him to look toward her again.
“He’s not here.”
Valdez walked toward her. He stopped to look out the window at the square below. “He went with them?”
“I guess he did,” the woman said. “He didn’t say.”
“Are you his wife?”
She didn’t answer for a moment, and Valdez looked at her.
“I will be his wife, soon.”
“Do you know him?”
“That’s a strange question. I guess I know him if I’m going to marry him.”
“Well, it’s up to you.”
There was a silence between them until she said, “Are you going to wait for him?”
“I don’t know yet – wait or come back another time.”
“He won’t give you another time. You killed one of his men.”
“He died. I thought he would die,” Valdez said. “Unless you had a doctor.”
She watched him look out the window again. “Did you come here to kill Frank?”
“It would be up to him,” Valdez said.
“Then what do you want?”
“The same thing as before. Something for the woman.”
“Why? I mean why do you bother?”
“Listen,” Valdez said. He hesitated. “If I tell you what I think, it doesn’t sound right. It’s something I know. You understand that?”
“Maybe you’ll kill him,” the woman said, “but you won’t get anything out of him.”
Valdez nodded slowly. “I’ve been thinking of that. If he doesn’t want to give me anything, how do I make him? I push a gun into him and tell him, but if I have to shoot him, then I don’t get anything.”
“If he doesn’t kill you first,” the woman said.
“I’ve been thinking,” Valdez said. “If I have something he wants, then maybe we make a trade. If he wants it bad enough.”
She watched him and said nothing. He was looking at her now.
“Like I say to him, ‘You give me the money and I give you your woman.’ ”
She continued to look at him, studying him. “And if he doesn’t give you the money?” she said finally.
“Then he doesn’t get his woman,” Valdez said.
“You’d kill me?”
“No, the question would be how much does he like you?”
“He’ll outwait you. He’ll put his men around the building and sooner or later you’ll have to go out.”
“Not if I’m already out,” Valdez said. His face went to the window before he looked at her again. “Listen, if you want to take something with you, get it now.”
A woman who belonged to one of Tanner’s men saw them leave. She had gone to the water pump in the square and stood looking at them as they came out to the loading platform: the woman of Mr. Tanner with a blanket roll and the man carrying a grain pack with something in it and an empty water skin. She looked at them and they looked at her, but she didn’t call out. She told Mr. Tanner she was afraid the man would do something to her or to the woman of Mr. Tanner.
“Go on,” Tanner said. “Then what?” He was still mounted, standing with his segundo and several of his men in the lantern glow of the square – the lantern on the seat of a freight wagon so Tanner could see the woman while she told what had happened.
“They went to the yard of the church,” the woman said to Tanner. Then the man came over the wall toward her and told her to get a horse from the church, asking for a particular claybank horse if it was there. The woman brought out a horse but was not sure of its color in the darkness of the church and it wasn’t the claybank but a brown horse. Then he told her to bring a saddle and bridle and a half sack of dried corn.
While this was taking place, the woman of Mr. Tanner was astride a horse in the churchyard, sitting in the saddle as a man does, though she was wearing a dress. “I think a white or a gray dress,” the woman said. When Valdez was ready and had mounted the brown horse, he rode into the churchyard and told the woman of Mr. Tanner to follow him.
“Did she say anything to him?” Tanner asked.
“Not that I heard,” the woman said.
They left through the alley next to the church. The woman waited until they were in the alley and followed, but by the time she reached the back of the church they were gone.
“Could you hear them?” Tanner asked.
“I think going toward the river,” the woman said.
“To reach cover,” the segundo said. He was sitting his horse close to Frank Tanner. “Then maybe south into the mountains.”
“How long ago?” asked Tanner.
The woman thought about it and said, “Not long. They would be maybe two or three miles away only. Or a little more if they ran their horses.”
“You know what to do,” Tanner said to the segundo. “Whoever’s here, send them out again.”
“In the dark,” the segundo said, “how do we see them?”
“You listen,” Tanner said. “Somebody could run into them.”
The segundo waited, about to speak, but looked at Tanner and then only nodded. It was Tanner’s business. No, his business was in the morning with the arms and grain and cattle, taking it all across the border and coming back without being killed. That was his business.
But in the morning the freight wagons stood empty, and Frank Tanner waited on the loading platform for his men to come in. Some of the women stood in the square, watching him, waiting to see what he was going to do. The men came in singly and in small groups and would talk to the segundo while they watered their horses and while the women watched. It was almost midmorning when the three trackers came in. One of them was dead, the other two were wounded.