When he was alone again, Lyall looked at Valdez sitting on the bunk. Even after the words were ready he waited a good ten minutes before saying them. 'The nearest church is down to White Sands,' he told Valdez. 'You can't blame the marshal for not wanting to ride you all the way down there.'
Valdez looked up.
'It's so far,' Lyall Quinlan said. He looked toward the window at the end of the hallway, then back to Valdez. 'I appreciate you telling the marshal I was awake all night. I think something like that sets pretty good with him.' Bobby Valdez looked at Lyall curiously. Then his expression softened to a smile, as if he'd suddenly become aware of a new interest, and he said, 'Anytime, friend.'
When Bohannon came back he sent Lyall across the street to the Regent to get Valdez's breakfast.
After he'd given the tray to Valdez, Bohannon deputized him, but mentioned how it was a temporary appointment until the Citizens Committee passed on it. 'Now, if you was to keep an extra special eye on Brother Valdez, I'd have to recommend you as fit, wouldn't I?' He patted Lyall's shoulder and said now was as good a time as any to start the new appointment. 'We'll see how you handle yourself alone.'
Lyall thought it was a funny way to do things, but he'd have plenty of time for sleep later on.
When opportunity knocks on the door you got to open it, he told himself. So he stayed on at the jail, sitting downstairs this time, until midafternoon when Bohannon came back.
'Now get yourself some shut eye, boy,' the marshal told him, 'so you'll be in fit shape for tonight.'
Lyall's mother told him they were making a fool out of him, but Lyall didn't have time to argue. He just said this was what he always wanted to do a hell of a lot better than working behind a store counter, though he didn't use quite those words.
Lyall's mother used mother arguments, but finally there was nothing she could do but shake her head and let him go to bed.
He went back on duty at nine, sitting in the canebottom chair, not hearing a sound from Barney Groom downstairs. Bobby Valdez was more talkative. He talked about horses and girls and the terrible fact that he hadn't gotten to church that day; then made a big to do admiring Lyall for the way he could go so long without sleep. That was fine.
But pretty soon Bobby Valdez went to sleep and that night Lyall walked up and down the little hallway even more than he had the first night. Two or three times he almost went to sleep, but he kept moving and blinking his eyes. He found a way of propping the shotgun between his leg and the chair arm, so that the trigger guard dug into his thigh and that kept him awake whenever he sat down to rest.
In the morning Bohannon came up the stairs quietly, but Lyall heard him and said, 'Hi, Mr. Bohannon,' when the marshal tiptoed in.
Lyall slept all day Monday and after that he was all right, not having any trouble keeping awake that night. Bobby Valdez talked to him until late and that helped.
Tuesday he ate his supper at the Regent Cafe before going to work. He mentioned weather to Elodie and how the food was getting better, but didn't once refer to the silver deputy star on his shirtfront. Elodie tried to be unconcerned, too, but finally she just had to ask him, and Lyall answered, 'Why, sure, Elodie, I've been a deputy marshal since last Saturday. Didn't you know that?'
Elodie had to describe how Bobby Valdez came in for dinner the night he shot Tanner. 'He sat right on that very stool you're on and ate tacos like he didn't have a worry in the world. Real calm.'
Lyall said, 'Uh huh, but he's kind of a little squirt, ain't he?' and walked out casually, knowing Elodie was watching after him with her mouth open.
Tuesday night Valdez told Lyall how his being in the cell had all come about how he'd started out an honest vaquero down in Sonora, but got mixed up with some unprincipled men who were chousing other people's cows. Bobby Valdez said, by the name of a saint, he didn't know anything about it, but the next thing the rurales were chasing him across the border. About a year later, in Contention, Arizona, he killed a man. It was in selfdefense and he was acquitted; but the man had a friend, so he ended up killing the friend too. And after that it was just one thing leading to another.
Everybody seemed to take him wrong . . . couldn't get an honest job . . . so what was a young man supposed to do?
The way he described it made Lyall Quinlan shake his head and say it was a shame.
Wednesday night Bobby Valdez only nodded to Lyall when he came on duty. The Mexican was sitting on the edge of the bunk, elbows on his knees, staring at his hands as he washed them together absently.
He's finally realizing he's going to die, Lyall thought. You have to leave a man alone when he's doing that. So for over an hour no one spoke.
When Lyall did speak it was because he wanted to make it a little easier for Valdez. He said, 'All people have to die. That's the best way to look at it.'
Valdez looked up, then nodded thoughtfully.
'You got to look at it,' Lyall went on, 'like, well, just something that happens to everybody.'
'I've done that,' the Mexican said. 'What torments me now is that I have not confessed.'
'You didn't have to,' Lyall said. 'Judge Metairie found out the facts without you confessing.'
'No, I mean to a priest.'
'Oh.'
'It is a terrible thing to die without absolution.'
'Oh.'
It was quiet then, Lyall frowning, the Mexican looking at his hands. But suddenly Bobby Valdez looked up, his face brightening, and he said, as if it had just occurred to him, 'My friend, would you bring a priest to me?'
'Well I'll tell Mr. Bohannon in the morning.
I'm sure he'll '
'No!' Valdez stood up quickly. 'I cannot take the chance of letting him know!' His voice calmed as he said, 'You know how he makes fun of things spiritual that about the holy water, and calling me 'Brother.' What if he should refuse this request?
Then I would die in the state of mortal sin just because he does not understand. My friend,' he said just above a whisper, 'surely you can see that he must not know.'
'Well ' Lyall said.
'In White Sands,' Valdez said quickly, 'there is a man called Sixto Henriquez who knows the priest well. At the mescal shop they'll tell you where he lives. Now, all you would have to do is tell Sixto to send the priest late Friday night after it is very quiet, and then it will be accomplished.'
Lyall hesitated.
'Then,' Valdez said solemnly, 'I would not die in sin.'
Lyall thought about it some more and finally he nodded.
He woke up at noon for the ride to White Sands.
He'd have to hurry to be back in time to go on duty; but he would have hurried anyway because he didn't feel right about what he was doing, as if it was something sneaky. At the mescal shop the proprietor directed him, in as few words as were necessary, to the adobe of Sixto Henriquez. Lyall was half afraid and half hoping Sixto wouldn't be home. But there he was, a thin little man in a striped shirt who didn't open the door all the way until Lyall mentioned Valdez.
After Lyall had told why he was there, Henriquez took his time rolling a cigarette. He lit it and blew out smoke and then said, 'All right.'
Lyall rode back to Tularosa feeling a lot better.
That hadn't been hard at all.
When he went on duty that night he said to Bobby Valdez, 'You're all set,' and would just as soon have let it go at that, but Valdez insisted that he tell him everything. He told him. There wasn't much to it how the man just said, 'All right.' But Valdez seemed to be satisfied.
Friday morning Lyall stopped at the Regent Cafe for his breakfast. Elodie was serving the counter.
She was frowning and muttering about being switched to mornings just the day before Bobby Valdez's hanging.
Lyall told her, 'A nice girl like you don't want to see a hanging.'
'It's the principle of it,' she pouted. The principle being everybody in Tularosa was excited about Bobby
