Mr. Malson said, “Then you didn’t talk to him.”
“Listen,” Mr. Tanner said, “I’ve kept that man’s face before my eyes this past year.”
Bob Valdez, somewhat behind Mr. Tanner and to the side, moved in a little closer. “You know this is the same man?”
Mr. Tanner looked around. He stared at Valdez. That’s all he did, just stared.
“I mean, we have to be sure,” Bob Valdez said. “It’s a serious thing.”
Now Mr. Malson and Mr. Beaudry were looking up at him. “We,” Mr. Beaudry said. “I’ll tell you what, Roberto. We need help we’ll call you. All right?”
“You hired me,” Bob Valdez said, standing alone above them. He was serious, but he shrugged and smiled a little to take the edge off the words. “What did you hire me for?”
“Well,” Mr. Beaudry said, acting it out, looking up past Bob Valdez and along the road both ways. “I was to see some drunk Mexicans, I’d point them out.”
After that, for a while, the men with the whiskey bottle forgot Bob Valdez. They stayed in the shade of the hollow watching the line shack, waiting for the Army deserter to realize it was all over for him. He would realize it and open the door and be cut down as he came outside. It was a matter of time only.
Bob Valdez stayed on the open part of the slope that was turning to shade, sitting now like an Apache with a suit on and every once in a while making a cigarette and smoking it slowly and thinking about himself and Mr. Tanner and the others, then thinking about the Army deserter, then thinking about himself again.
He didn’t have to stay here. He didn’t have to be a town constable. He didn’t have to work for the stage company. He didn’t have to listen to Mr. Beaudry and Mr. Malson and smile when they said those things. He didn’t have a wife or any kids. He didn’t have land that he owned. He could go anywhere he wanted.
Diego Luz was coming over. Diego Luz had a wife and a daughter almost grown and some little kids and he had to stay, sure.
Diego Luz squatted next to him, his arms on his knees and his big hands that he used for breaking horses hanging in front of him.
“Stay near if they want you for something,” Bob Valdez said. He was watching Beaudry tilt the bottle up. Diego Luz said nothing.
“One of them bends over,” Bob Valdez said then, “you kiss it, uh?”
Diego Luz looked at him, patient about it. Not angry or stirred. “Why don’t you go home?”
“He says get me a bottle, you run.”
“I get it. I don’t run.”
“Smile and hold your hat, uh?”
“And don’t talk so much.”
“Not unless they talk to you first.”
“You better go home,” Diego said.
Bob Valdez said, “That’s why you hit the horses.”
“Listen,” Diego Luz said. “They pay me to break horses. They pay you to talk to drunks and keep them from killing somebody. They don’t pay you for what you think or how you feel. So if you take their money keep your mouth shut. All right?”
Bob Valdez smiled. “I’m kidding you.”
Diego Luz got up and walked away, down toward the hollow. The hell with him, he was 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 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 Rincon 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 Rincon shoved the revolver down into his belt. Bob Valdez turned and started for the trees.