Bob Valdez did not want to move. He wanted to run and he could feel the sweat on his face, but he couldn’t move a hand or an elbow or turn his head. He had to stay rigid without appearing to be rigid. He edged his left foot back and the heel of his boot touched the wall close behind him. He did that much, touching something solid and holding on, as the men faced him across the fires, five or six strides away from him, close enough to put the bullets where they wanted to put them – if all of the men knew how to shoot and if they hadn’t had too much mescal or tequila since coming to the station. Valdez held on and now kept his eyes on the segundo for a place to keep them, a point to fix on while they played their game with him.
The first few men fired in turn, calling their shots; but now the rest of them were anxious and couldn’t wait and they began firing as they decided where to shoot, raising the revolvers in front of them but not seeming to aim, pulling the triggers in the noise and smoke and leaning in to see where their bullets struck. Valdez felt his hat move and felt powder dust from the adobe brick in his eyes and in his nose and felt chips of adobe sting his face and hands and felt a bullet plow into the wall between his knees and a voice say, “A little higher you get him good.” Another voice, “Move up a inch at a time and watch him poop his drawers.”
He kept his eyes on the segundo in the Sonora straw, not telling the segundo anything with his gaze, looking at him as he would look at any man, if he wanted to look at a man, or as he would look at a horse or a dog or a steer or an object that was something to look at. But as he saw the segundo staring back at him he realized that he was telling the segundo something after all. Good. He had nothing to lose and now was aware of himself staring at the segundo.
What can you do? he was saying to the segundo. You can kill me. Or one of them can kill me not meaning to. But what else can you do to me? You want me to get down on my knees? You don’t have enough bullets, man, and you know it. So what can you do to me? Tell me.
The segundo raised his hand and called out, “Enough!” in English and in Spanish and in English again. He walked between the fires to Bob Valdez and said, “You ride out now.”
Bob Valdez took his hat off, adjusting it, loosening it on his head. He didn’t touch his face to wipe away the brick dust and sweat or look at his hands, though he felt blood on his knuckles and running down between his fingers.
He said, “If you’re through,” and walked away from the segundo. He mounted the company horse and rode out the gate, the segundo watching him until he was into the darkness and only a faint sound of him remained.
The men were talking and reloading, spinning the cylinders of their revolvers, sitting by the fires to rest and to tell where they had put their bullets. The segundo walked away from them out into the yard, listening to the silence. After a few minutes he went under the ramada to enter the adobe.
The station man, Gregorio Sanza, behind the plank bar and beneath the smoking oil lamp, raised a mescal bottle to the segundo, pale yellow in the light; but the segundo shook his head; he walked over to the long table where Tanner was sitting with the woman. She was sipping a tin cup of coffee.
The woman had gone into a sleeping room shortly after they had arrived in the buggy and had remained there until now. The segundo saw she was still dressed and he wondered what she had been doing in the room. In the months she had been with them – since Tanner had brought her over from Fort Huachuca – the segundo could count the times he had spoken to her on his hands. She seldom asked for anything; she never gave the servants orders as the woman of the house was supposed to do. Still, she had the look of a woman who would be obeyed. She did not seem afraid or uneasy; she looked into your eyes when she spoke to you; she spoke loud enough yet quietly. But something was going on in her head beneath the long gold-brown hair that hung past her shoulders. She was a difficult woman to understand because she did not give herself away. Except that she smiled only a little, and he had never seen her laugh. Maybe she laughed when she was alone with Senor Tanner.
If she was my woman, the segundo was thinking, I could make her laugh and scream and bite.
He said to Tanner, “The man’s gone.”
“How did he behave?”
“He stood up.”
Tanner drew on the fresh cigar he was smoking. “He did, uh?”
“As well as a man can do it.”
“He didn’t beg?”
The segundo shook his head. “He said nothing.”
“He shot the nigger square,” Tanner said. “He did that well. But outside, I thought he would crawl.”
The segundo shook his head again. “No crawling or begging.”
“All right, tell that man to close his bar and go to bed.”
The segundo nodded and moved off.
Tanner waited until the segundo had stopped at the bar and had gone outside. “Why don’t you go to bed, too,” he said to the woman.
“I will in a minute.” She kept her finger in the handle of the coffee cup.
“Go in and pretty yourself up,” he said then. “I’ll take a turn around the yard and be in directly.”
“What did the man do?”
“He wasted my time.”
“So they put him against the wall?”
“It was the way he spoke to me,” Tanner said. “I can’t have that in front of them.” He sat close to her, staring into her face, at the gray-green eyes and the soft hair close to her cheek. His hand came up to finger the end strands of her hair. Quietly, he said, “Gay, go on in the room.”
“I’ll finish my coffee.”
“No, right now would be better. I’ll be there in a minute.”
She waited until he was out of the door before rising and going into the sleeping room. In the dim lamplight she began to undress, stepping out of her dress and dropping it on the bed next to her nightgown. The light blue one. Thin and limp and patched beneath one arm. There had been a light blue one and a light green one and a pink one and a yellow one, all with the white-scrolled monogram GBE she had embroidered on the bodice when she was nineteen years old and living in Prescott, a girl about to be married. The girl, Gay Byrnes, had brought the nightgowns and her dresses and linens to Fort Huachuca to become the bride of James C. Erin. During five and a half years as his wife she discarded the nightgowns one by one and used them as dust rags. When her husband was killed six months ago, and she left Huachuca with Frank Tanner, she had only the light blue one left.
Gay Erin slipped the nightgown over her head, brushed her hair and got into the narrow double bed, pulling the blanket up over her shoulder as she rolled to her side, her back to the low-burning lamp.
When Tanner came in and began to undress, she remained with her back to him. She could see him from times before: removing his boots, his shirt and trousers, standing in his long cotton underwear as he unfastened the buttons. He would stand naked scratching his stomach and chest, then go to the wall hook and take his revolver from the holster, making sure the hammer was on an empty chamber as he moved toward the bed.
She felt the mattress yield beneath his weight. The gun would be at his side, under the blanket and next to his hip. He would lie still for a few moments, then roll toward her and put his hand on her shoulder.
“What have you got the nightgown on for?”
“I’m cold.”
“Well now, what do you think I’m for?”
“Tell me,” Gay Erin said.
“I’ll show you.”
“As a lover or a husband?”
Tanner groaned. “Jesus Christ, are you going to start that?”
“Six months ago you said we’d be married in a few weeks.”
“Most people probably think we already are. What’s the difference?”
She started to get up, to throw back the blanket, and his hand tightened on her arm.