Valdez Is Coming by Elmore Leonard Page A

mesquite-pole corral where Diego Luz broke and trained the mustangs he flushed out of the hills. He worked here most of the time. Several times a year he drove a horse string down to the Maricopa spread near Lanoria, and he would go down there at roundup time and when they drove the cattle to Willcox.
    When Bob Valdez appeared, circling the corral — two days following the incident at the pasture — Diego Luz and his eldest son were at the well, pulling up buckets of water and filling the wooden trough that ran to the corral. They stood watching Bob Valdez walking his horse toward them and waited, after greeting him, as he stepped down from the saddle and took the dipper of water Diego’s son offered him.
    There was no hurry. If a man rode all the way here he must have something to say, and it was good to wonder about it first and not ask him questions. Though Diego Luz had already decided Bob Valdez had not come to see them but was passing through on his way to Mimbreño. And who lived in Mimbreño? Frank Tanner. There it was. Simple.
    They left the boy and climbed the slope to the house, Bob Valdez seeing the children in the yard, Diego’s wife and her mother watching them from the lean-to where they were both holding corn dough, shaping tortillas. The small children ran up to them and the eldest daughter appeared now in the doorway of the house. Hey, a good looking girl now, almost a woman. Anita. She would be maybe sixteen years old. Valdez had not been up here in almost a year.
    When they were in the shade and had lighted cigarettes, Diego Luz said, “There’s something different about you. What is it?”
    Valdez shrugged. “I’m the same. What are you talking about?”
    “Your face is the same.” Diego Luz squinted, studying him. Slowly then his face relaxed. “I know what it is. You don’t have your collar on.”
    Valdez’s hand went to his neck where he had tied a bandana.
    “Or your suit. What is this, you’re not dressed up?”
    “It’s too hot,” Valdez said.
    “It’s always hot,” Diego Luz said. His gaze dropped to Valdez’s waist. “No gun though.”
    Valdez frowned. “What’s the matter with you? I don’t have a coat on, that’s all.”
    “And you’re going to see Mr. Tanner.”
    “Just to say a few things to him.”
    “My son rode to Lanoria yesterday. He heard about the few things you said the other night.”
    Valdez shook his head. “People don’t have anything to talk about.”
    “Listen, the woman doesn’t need any money. She doesn’t know what it is.”
    “But we know,” Valdez said. “I just want to ask you something about Tanner.”
    Diego Luz drew on his cigarette and squinted out into the sunlight, down the slope to the horse corral. “I know what others know. That’s all.”
    “He lives in Mimbreño?”
    “For about two years maybe.”
    “How do the people like him?”
    “There are no people. Most of them left at the time of the Apache. The rest of them left when Frank Tanner come. He’s there with his men,” Diego Luz said, “and some of their women.”
    “How many men?”
    “At least thirty. Sometimes more.”
    “Do they ever come here?”
    “Sometimes they pass by.”
    “What do they do, anything?”
    “They have a drink of water and go on.”
    “They never make any trouble?”
    “No, they don’t bother me. Never.”
    “Maybe because you work for Maricopa.”
    Diego Luz shrugged. “What do I have they would want?”
    “Horses,” Valdez said.
    “Once they asked to buy a string. I told them to see Mr. Malson.”
    “Did Tanner himself come?”
    “No, his segundo and some others.”
    “Do you know any of them?”
    “No, I don’t think any of them are from around here.”
    “Do you think that’s strange?”
    “No, these are guns he hires, not hands. I think they hear of Tanner and what he pays and they come from all over to get a job with him.”
    “He pays good, uh?”
    “You see them sometimes in St. David,” Diego Luz said.