across the pasture again, indifferent.
'I wondered if maybe he's already dead,' Valdez said.
Mr. Malsom, standing heavier and taller and twenty years older than Bob Valdez, said, 'Why don't you find out?'
'I was thinking,' Valdez said, 'if he was dead we could stand here a long time.'
R. L. Davis adjusted his hat, which he did often, grabbing the funneled brim, loosening it on his head and pulling it down close to his eyes again and shifting from one cocked hip to the other. 'This constable here's got better things to do,' R. L. Davis said. 'He's busy.'
'No,' Bob Valdez said. 'I was thinking of the man, Rincon. He's dead or he's alive. He's alive maybe he wants to give himself up. In there he has time to think, uh? Maybe--' He stopped. Not one of them was listening. Not even R. L. Davis.
Mr. Malsom was looking at the whiskey wagon; it was on the road above them and over a little ways with men standing by it, being served off the tailgate. 'I think we could use something,' Mr. Malsom said. His gaze went to Diego Luz the horsebreaker, and Diego straightened up; not much, but a little. He was heavy and very dark and his shirt was tight across the thickness of his body. They said that Diego Luz hit green horses on the muzzle with his fist and they minded him. He had the hands for it; they hung at his sides, not touching or fooling with anything. They turned open, gestured, when Mr. Malsom told him to get the whiskey and as he moved off, climbing the slope, one hand held his holstered revolver to his leg.
Mr. Malsom looked up at the sky, squinting and taking his hat off and putting it on again. He took off his coat and held it hooked over his shoulder by one finger, said something, gestured, and he and Mr.
Beaudry and Mr. Tanner moved a few yards down the slope to a hollow where there was good shade. It was about two or two-thirty then, hot, fairly still and quiet considering the number of people there. Only some of them in the pines and down in the scrub could be seen from where Bob Valdez stood wondering whether he should follow the three men down to the hollow. Or wait for Diego Luz, who was at the whiskey wagon now, where most of the sounds that carried came from: a voice, a word or two that was suddenly clear, or laughter, and people would look up to see what was going on. Some of them by the whiskey wagon had lost interest in the line shack. Others were still watching, though: those farther along the road sitting in wagons and buggies. This was a day, a date, uh? that people would remember and talk about. Sure, I was there, the man in the buggy would be saying a year from now in a saloon over in Benson or St. David or somewhere. The day they got that army deserter, he had a Big-Fifty Sharps and an old Walker and I'll tell you it was ticklish business.
Down in that worn-out pasture, dusty and spotted with desert growth, prickly pear and brittlebush, there was just the sun. It showed the ground cleanly all the way to just in front of the line shack where now, toward the midafternoon, there was shadow coming out from the trees and from the mound the hut was set against.
Somebody in the scrub must have seen the door open. The shout came from there, and Bob Valdez and everybody on the slope was looking by the time the Lipan Apache woman had reached the edge of the shade. She walked out from the hut toward the willow trees carrying a bucket, not hurrying or even looking toward the slope.
Nobody fired at her; though this was not so strange. Putting the front sight on a sod hut and on a person are two different things. The men in the scrub and in the pines didn't know this woman. They weren't after her. She had just appeared. There she was; and no one was sure what to do about her.
She was in the trees a while by the creek, then she was in the open again, walking back toward the hut with the bucket and not hurrying at all: a small figure way across the pasture almost without shape or color, with only the long skirt reaching to the ground to tell it was the woman.
So he's alive, Bob Valdez thought. And he wants to stay alive and he's not giving himself up. He thought about the woman's nerve and whether Orlando Rincon had sent her out or she had decided this herself. You couldn't tell about an Indian woman. Maybe this was expected of her. The woman didn't count; the man did. You could lose the woman and get another one.
Mr. Tanner didn't look at R. L. Davis. His gaze held on the Lipan Apache woman, inched along with her toward the hut; but must have known R. L. Davis was right next to him.
'She's saying she don't give a goddamn about you and your rifle,'
Mr. Tanner said.
R. L. Davis looked at him funny. Then he said, 'Shoot her?' Like he hoped that's what Mr. Tanner meant.
'Well, you could make her jump some,' Mr. Tanner said.
Now R. L. Davis was onstage and he knew it and Bob Valdez could tell he knew it by the way he levered the Winchester, raised it, and fired all in one motion, and as the dust kicked behind the Indian woman, who kept walking and didn't look up, R. L. Davis fired and fired and fired as fast as he could lever and half aim and with everybody watching him, hurrying him, he put four good ones right behind the woman. His last bullet socked into the door just as she reached it and now she did pause and look up at the slope, staring up like she was waiting for him to fire again and giving him a good target if he wanted it.
Mr. Malsom laughed out loud. 'She still don't give a goddamn about your rifle.'
It stung R. L. Davis, which it was intended to do. 'I wasn't aiming at her!'
'But she doesn't know that.' Mr. Malsom was grinning, turning then and reaching out a hand as Diego Luz approached them with the whiskey.
'Hell, I wanted to hit her she'd be laying there, you know it.'
'Well, now, you go tell her that,' Mr. Malsom said, working the cork loose, 'and she'll know it.' He took a drink from the bottle and passed it to Mr. Beaudry, who drank and handed the bottle to Mr. Tanner. Mr.
Tanner did not drink; he passed the bottle to R. L. Davis, who was standing, staring at Mr. Malsom. Finally R. L. Davis jerked the bottle up, took a long swallow, and that part was over.
Mr. Malsom said to Mr. Tanner, 'You don't want any?'
'Not today,' Mr. Tanner answered. He continued to stare out across the pasture.
Mr. Malsom watched him. 'You feel strongly about this army deserter.'
'I told you,' Mr. Tanner said, 'he killed a man was a friend of mine.'
'No, I don't believe you did.'
'James C. Baxter of Fort Huachuca,' Mr. Tanner said. 'He come across a tulapai still this nigger soldier was working with some Indians.
The nigger thought Baxter would tell the army people, so he shot him and ran off with a woman.'
'And you saw him this morning.'
'I had come in last night and stopped off, going to Tucson,' Mr.
Tanner said. 'This morning I was getting ready to leave when I saw him; him and the woman.'
'I was right there,' R. L. Davis said. 'Right, Mr. Tanner? Him and I were on the porch by the Republic and Rincon goes by in the wagon. Mr.
Tanner said, 'You know that man?' I said, 'Only that he's lived up north of town a few months. Him and the woman.' 'Well, I know him,' Mr. Tanner said. 'That man's an army deserter wanted for murder.' I said, 'Well, let's go get him.' He had a start on us and that's how he got to the hut before we could grab on to him. He's been holed up ever since.'
Mr. Malsom said, 'Then you didn't talk to him.'
'Listen,' Mr. Tanner said, 'I've kept that man's face before my eyes this past year.'
Bob Valdez, somewhat behind Mr. Tanner and to the side, moved in a little closer. 'You know this is the same man, uh?'
Mr. Tanner looked around. He stared at Valdez. That's all he did--just stared.
'I mean, we have to be sure,' Bob Valdez said. 'It's a serious thing.'
Now Mr. Malsom and Mr. Beaudry were looking up at him. 'We,'
Mr. Beaudry said. 'I'll tell you what, Roberto. We need help we'll call you. All right?'
'You hired me,' Bob Valdez said, standing alone above them. He was serious but he shrugged and smiled a little to take the edge off the words. 'What did you hire me for?' 'Well,' Mr. Beaudry said, acting it out, looking past Bob Valdez and along the road both ways, 'I was to see some drunk Mexicans I'd point them out.'
A person can be in two different places and he will be two different people. Maybe if you think of some more places the person will be more people, but don't take it too far. This is Bob Valdez standing by himself with the
