Valdez Is Coming by Elmore Leonard Page B

“They spend the money. But you see different ones each time, so maybe he lose some in Mexico or they get a stomach full of it and quit.”
    “What, driving cattle?”
    “Cattle and guns. He gets the guns somewhere and sneaks them over the border to people who are against Díaz and want to start a revolution. So over there the rurales and federal soldiers look for him and try to stop him. Everybody knows that.”
    “I’ve been learning the stageline business,” Valdez said.
    “Keep doing it,” Diego Luz said, “and live to be an old man.”
    “Sometimes I feel old now.” He watched the chickens pecking the hard ground and heard Diego Luz’s children calling out something and laughing as they played somewhere on the other side of the house. What do you need besides this? he was thinking. To have a place, a family. Very quiet except for the children sometimes, and no trouble. No Apaches. No bandits raiding from across the border. Trees and water and a good house. The house could be fixed up better. A little work, that’s all. He said, “I’ll trade you. I become the horsebreaker, you work for the stage company.”
    Diego Luz was looking out at the yard. “You want this?”
    “Why not? It’s a good place.”
    “If I had something to do I wouldn’t be here.”
    “You do all right,” Valdez said.
    “Do it forever,” Diego Luz said. “See how you like it.”
    “Maybe sometime. After I see this Tanner.”
    Diego Luz was studying Valdez’s horse. “You don’t have a rifle either.”
    “What do I need it for?”
    “Maybe you meet a couple of them on a trail, they don’t like your face.”
    “I’ll talk to them,” Valdez said.
    “Maybe they don’t let you talk.”
    “Come on, they know who I am. I’m going there to talk, that’s all.”
    “You talk better with a rifle,” Diego Luz said. “I give you mine.”
    From habit, approaching the top of the rise — before he would be outlined for a moment against the sky — Bob Valdez looked back the way he had come, his eyes, half-closed in the sun’s glare, holding on the rock shapes and darker patches of brush at the bottom of the draw. He sat motionless until he was sure of the movement, then dismounted and led his claybank mare off the trail to one side, up into young piñon pines.
    For a few moments he did not think of the rider coming up behind him; he thought of his own reaction, the caution that had stopped him from topping the rise. There were no more Chiricahuas or White Mountain bands around here. There was nothing to worry about to keep him alert and listening and looking back as well as to the sides and ahead. But he had stopped. Sure, habit, he thought. Something hanging on of no use to him now.
    What difference did it make who the man was? The man wasn’t following him. The man was riding southeast from the St. David road and must have left the road not far back to cut cross-country toward Mimbreño maybe, or to a village across the border. Sure, it could be one of Tanner’s men. You can ride in with him, Valdez thought, and smiled at the idea of it. He would see who it was and maybe he would come out of the pines, giving the man some warning first, or maybe he wouldn’t.
    Now, as the man drew nearer, for some reason he was sure it was one of the Maricopa riders: the slouched, round-shouldered way the man sat his saddle, the funneled brim of his hat bobbing up and down with the walking movement of the horse.
    Maybe he had known all the time who it was going to be. That was a funny thing. Because when he saw it was R. L. Davis, looking at the ground or deep in thought, the stringy, mouthy one who thought he was good with the Winchester, Valdez was not surprised, though he said to himself, Goddam. How do you like that?
    He let him go by, up over the rise and out of sight, while he stayed in the pines to shape a cigarette and light it, wondering where the man was going, curious because it was this one and not someone else, and glad now