shotgun and having only the shotgun to hold on to.
This is one Bob Valdez. About twenty years old. Mr. Beaudry and others could try and think of a time when Bob Valdez might have drunk too much or swaggered or had a certain smart look on his face, but they would never recall such a time. This Bob Valdez was all right.
Another Bob Valdez inside the Bob Valdez at the pasture that day worked for the army one time and was a guide when Crook chased Chato and Chihuahua down into the Madres. He was seventeen then, with a Springfield and Apache moccasins that came up to his knees. He would sit at night with the Apache scouts from San Carlos, eating with them and talking some as he learned Chiricahua. He would keep up with them all day and shoot the Springfield one hell of a lot better than any of them could shoot. He came home with a scalp but never showed it to anyone and had thrown it away by the time he went to work for Maricopa. Shortly after that he was named town constable at twenty-five dollars a month, getting the job because he got along with people: the Mexicans in town who drank too much on Saturday night liked him and that was the main thing.
The men with the whiskey bottle had forgotten Valdez. They stayed in the hollow where the shade was cool watching the line shack and waiting for the army deserter to realize it was all up with him. He would realize it and open the door and be cut down as he came outside. It was a matter of time only.
Bob Valdez stayed on the open part of the slope that was turning to shade, sitting now like an Apache and every once in a while making a cigarette and smoking it slowly as he thought about himself and Mr.
Tanner and the others, then thinking about the army deserter.
Diego Luz came and squatted next to him, his arms on his knees and his big hands that he used for breaking horses hanging in front of him.
'Stay near if they want you for something,' Valdez said. He was watching Beaudry tilt the bottle up. Diego Luz said nothing.
'One of them bends over,' Bob Valdez said then, 'you kiss it, uh?'
Diego Luz looked at him, patient about it. Not mad or even stirred up. 'Why don't you go home?'
'He says Get me a bottle, you run.'
'I get it. I don't run.'
'Smile and hold your hat, uh?'
'And don't talk so much.'
'Not unless they talk to you first.'
'You better go home,' Diego said.
Bob Valdez said, 'That's why you hit the horses.'
'Listen,' Diego Luz said, scowling a bit now. 'They pay me to break horses. They pay you to talk to drunks on Saturday night and keep them from killing somebody. They don't pay you for what you think or how you feel, so if you take their money, keep your mouth shut. All right?'
Diego Luz got up and walked away, down toward the hollow. The hell with this kid, he was thinking. He'll learn or he won't learn, but the hell with him. He was also thinking that maybe he could get a drink from that bottle. Maybe there'd be a half inch left nobody wanted and Mr. Malsom would tell him to kill it.
But it was already finished. R. L. Davis was playing with the bottle, holding it by the neck and flipping it up and catching it as it came down. Beaudry was saying, 'What about after dark?' Looking at Mr.
Tanner, who was thinking about something else and didn't notice. R L.
Davis stopped flipping the bottle. He said, 'Put some men on the rise right above the hut; he comes out, bust him.'
'Well, they should get the men over there,' Mr. Beaudry said, looking at the sky. 'It won't be long till dark.'
'Where's he going?' Mr. Malsom said.
The others looked up, stopped in whatever they were doing or thinking by the suddenness of Mr. Malsom's voice.
'Hey, Valdez!' R. L. Davis yelled out. 'Where do you think you're going?'
Bob Valdez had circled them and was already below them on the slope, leaving the pines now and entering the scrub brush. He didn't stop or look back. 'Valdez!'
Mr. Tanner raised one hand to silence R. L. Davis, all the time watching Bob Valdez getting smaller, going straight through the scrub, not just walking or passing the time but going right out to the pasture.
'Look at him,' Mr. Malsom said. There was some admiration in the voice.
'He's dumber than he looks,' R. L. Davis said. Then jumped a little as Mr. Tanner touched his arm.
'Come on,' Mr. Tanner said. 'With a rifle.' And started down the slope, hurrying and not seeming to care if he might stumble on the loose gravel.
Bob Valdez was now halfway across the pasture, the shotgun pointed down at his side, his eyes not leaving the door of the line shack. The door was probably already open enough for a rifle barrel to poke through. He guessed the army deserter was covering him, letting him get as close as he wanted; the closer he came, the easier to hit him.
Now he could see all the bullet marks in the door and the clean inner wood where the door was splintered. Two people in that little bakeoven of a place. He saw the door move.
He saw the rag doll on the ground. It was a strange thing, the woman having a doll. Valdez hardly glanced at it but was aware of the button eyes looking up and the discomforted twist of the red wool mouth. Then, just past the doll, when he was wondering if he would go right up to the door and knock on it and wouldn't that be a crazy thing, like visiting somebody, the door opened and the Negro was in the doorway, filling it, standing there in pants and boots but without a shirt in that hot place and holding a long-barreled Walker that was already cocked.
They stood ten feet apart looking at each other, close enough so that no one could fire from the slope.
'I can kill you first,' the Negro said, 'if you raise that.'
With his free hand, the left one, Bob Valdez motioned back over his shoulder. 'There's a man there said you killed somebody a year ago.'
'What man?'
'Said his name is Tanner.'
The Negro shook his head, once each way.
'Said your name is Johnson.'
'You know my name.'
'I'm telling you what he said.'
'Where'd I kill this man?'
'Huachuca.'
The Negro hesitated. 'That was some time ago I was in the Tenth.
More than a year.'
'You a deserter?'
'I served it out.'
'Then you got something that says so.'
'In the wagon, there's a bag there my things are in.'
'Will you talk to this man Tanner?'
'If I can hold from hitting him one.'
'Listen, why did you run this morning?'
'They come chasing. I don't know what they want.' He lowered the gun a little, his brown-stained-looking tired eyes staring intently at Bob Valdez. 'What would you do? They came on the run. Next thing I know they a- firing at us. So I pop in this place.'
'Will you come with me and talk to him?'
The Negro hesitated again. Then shook his head. 'I don't know him.'
'Then he won't know you, uh?'
'He didn't know me this morning.'
'All right,' Bob Valdez said. 'I'll get your paper says you were discharged. Then we'll show it to this man, uh?'
The Negro thought it over before he nodded, very slowly, as if still thinking. 'All right. Bring him here, I'll say a few words to him.'
