Mr. Beaudry said, “That’s as much as most men make in a year.”
“Yes sir,” Bob Valdez said. “But her husband won’t earn anything anymore. Not this year or any year. So maybe five hundred is not so much.”
Mr. Beaudry said, “Giving that much is different than giving her a few dollars. I don’t mean the difference in the amount. I mean you give her a sum like five hundred dollars it’s like admitting we owe it to her. Like we’re to blame.”
“Well?” Bob Valdez said. “Who else is to blame?”
Mr. Beaudry said, “Now wait a minute. If you’re anxious to fix blame then I’ll have to go along with what this man said.” He nodded toward R. L. Davis. “You killed him. We didn’t. We were there to help flush him out, a suspected murderer. We weren’t there to kill anybody unless we had to. But you took it on yourself to go down and talk to him and it was you that killed him. Am I right or wrong?”
Bob Valdez said, “Everybody was shooting-”
Mr. Beaudry held up his hand. “Wait just a minute. Shooting isn’t killing. Nobody’s shot killed him but yours and there are ninety, a hundred witnesses will testify to it.”
“I said it before,” R. L. Davis said. “He killed the coon. Nobody else. The wrong coon at that.”
A few of them laughed and Bob Valdez looked over at R. L. Davis standing with his funneled hat over his eyes and his thumbs hooked in his belt trying to stand straight but swaying a little. He was good and drunk, his eyes watery looking and the corners of his mouth sticky. But it would be good to hit him anyway, Bob Valdez was thinking. Come in from the side and get his cheek and rip into his nose without hitting those ugly teeth and maybe cut your hand. With gloves on hit the mouth, but not without gloves. He could see R. L. Davis sitting on the floor of De Spain’s saloon with his nose bleeding and blood down the front of him. That would be all right.
And who else? No, he should be able to talk to Mr. Malson and Mr. Beaudry, the manager of a cattle company and a government land agent, but he was having one son of a bitch of a hard time because they didn’t see it, what he meant, or they didn’t want to see it.
He said, “I mean this way. What if she went to court-”
“Jesus Christ,” R. L. Davis said, shaking his head.
“What if she went there” – Valdez kept his eyes on Mr. Beaudry now – “with a lawyer and said she wanted to sue everybody that was out there, or this city?”
“Bob,” Mr. Beaudry said, “that woman doesn’t know what a lawyer is.”
“But if she did and they went to court, wouldn’t she get some money?”
The houseman said, “I thought we were playing cards.”
“Since she’s never heard of a lawyer or a county seat,” Mr. Beaudry said, “you’re talking straight into the wind, aren’t you?”
“I mean if she did. Like if you drive cattle over a man’s property and damage something,” Bob Valdez went on, holding on, “and the man goes to court, then the cattle company has to pay him for the damage. Isn’t that right?”
Mr. Malson smiled. He said, “That doesn’t sound like much of a cattle company to me,” and the others laughed. “I was to get involved in court suits, a man would be out from Chicago and I’d be out of a job.”
“But it’s happened,” Valdez said, staying with it. “The person or persons responsible have had to pay.”
Mr. Beaudry said, “I wouldn’t worry about it, Bob.”
“The person has to stand up and prove damage,” Mr. Malson said. “You don’t go to court, even if you know where it is, without a case. And by that I mean evidence.”
“All right,” Valdez said. “That’s what I mean. The woman doesn’t know anything about court, but we know about the evidence, uh? Because we were there. If we weren’t there her husband would be alive.”
“Or if he hadn’t opened the door,” Mr. Beaudry said. “Or if you hadn’t pulled the trigger.”
“Or,” Mr. Malson said, “if he hadn’t come to town this morning and if Frank Tanner hadn’t seen him.”
“Goddam, I was there,” R. L. Davis said. “We was on the steps of the Republic.”
“There you are,” Mr. Beaudry said. “If Frank Tanner hadn’t been here this morning it never would have happened. So maybe it’s his fault. Tanner’s.”
Somebody in the group behind Mr. Beaudry said, “Go tell him that,” and some of the men laughed, picturing it.
“Now that’s not so funny,” Mr. Beaudry said. “If this happened because of Frank Tanner, then maybe he’s to blame. What do you think, Bob?” he asked him seriously, patiently, as he would ask a stupid, thick-headed person.
“I guess so,” Bob Valdez said.
“Well, if you think he’s to blame,” Mr. Beaudry said, “why don’t you ask him for the money? And I’ll tell you what. If he agrees to the five hundred dollars, we will too. How’s that?”
Valdez kept his eyes on Mr. Beaudry. “I don’t know where he is.”
“He’s south of town,” Mr. Beaudry said. “Probably at the relay station for the night if his cattle got that far. Or he might have gone on.”
“He mentioned stopping there,” Mr. Malson said.
“All right,” Valdez said because there was nothing else he could say. “I’ll go talk to him.”
“Do that,” Mr. Beaudry said.
Mr. Malson waited until Bob Valdez was turning and the men who had crowded in were stepping aside. “Bob,” he said, “that Apache woman – somebody said she was over to the hotel trying to get a room.”
“No.” Valdez shook his head. “The manager said they were full up.”
“Uh-huh,” Mr. Malson said. “Well, where is she now?”
“I took her to Inez’s place,” Valdez said. “She’s staying there tonight.”
Nobody said anything until he was gone. Then R. L. Davis, as drunk as he was, said, “Je-sus H. Christ. Now he’s turned that Indin creature into a whore.”
He went unarmed, riding south through the darkness, feeling the chill of night settling on the land. He didn’t want to go; he was tired. He had come up this road this morning from St. David on the bouncing, bucking, creaking boot of the Hatch and Hodges stage, throwing gravel at the wheelers and yelling, urging the horses on as the driver held the heavy reins and snapped them over the teams. Sun and dust this morning, and sweat soaking his body under the dark suit; now cold darkness over the same ruts that stretched across the mesquite flats and climbed through barrancas to crest a hill and drop curving into the endless flats again, forever, it seemed, on the boot or now in the saddle of a stage company horse.
He said in his mind, Mr. Tanner, I’m Bob Valdez. You remember, I was out at the pasture today when the man was killed.
When the man was killed. When you killed him, he said to himself.
We were talking about doing something for his wife and Mr. Beaudry, the land agent, said-
He said go out and try to get it from Frank Tanner; you dumb Mexican son of a bitch. That’s what he said. Do you know it?
He knew it. Sure. But what was he supposed to do? Forget about the woman? He had told her they would give her money. God, it would be easy to forget about her. No, it would be good, but it wouldn’t be easy. But with all of them watching him he had had to walk out and get a horse and he would have to ride the ten goddam miles or more to the goddam swing station and, getting it over with, smile and be respectful and ask Mr. Tanner if he would please like to give something for this fat squaw who had lived with Rincon and was having his child.
And Frank Tanner, like the rest of them, would say-
No, they said this Tanner had a lot of money. Maybe he would say, “Sure, I’ll give you something for her. How much do you want?” Maybe it would be easy to talk to him. Maybe now, at night, after it was over and the man had had time to think about it, maybe he would talk a little and say yes.
A mile or a little more from the stage station he saw low shapes out among the brush patches, cattle grazing, bedded for the night, and among them, the taller shape of a rider. But they were well off from the stage road and none of the cattle he saw or the mounted man came near him. During the last mile he was certain a rider was behind him, but he didn’t stop or slow down to let the horse sound catch up with him. It could be somebody on the road, anybody, or one of Tanner’s men watching him; but he had nothing to say to whoever it was. His words were for Tanner, even if he didn’t know how to put the words to convince the man. It would be easier to say it in Spanish. Or in Chiricahua.