Valdez Is Coming Read Online Free Page B

poker and faro, with tobacco smoke hanging above them around the brass lamps. They were drinking and talking, but it didn’t seem loud enough for a Saturday. There had been more men in here earlier, right after supper, a number of them coming in for a quick glass or a jug to take with them, heading back to their spreads with their families, but now it was only a fair-sized crowd. The moment of excitement had been Mr. Tanner coming in. He had stood at the bar and lit a cigar and sipped two glasses of whiskey while Mr. Malson stood with him. Those who were out at the Maricopa pasture pointed out Mr. Tanner to those who hadn’t been there. The reactions to seeing him were mostly the same. So that was Frank Tanner. He didn’t look so big. They expected a man with his name and reputation to look different — a man who traded goods to Mexican rebels and had a price on his head across the border and two dozen guns riding for him. Imagine paying all those men. He must do pretty well. He was a little above average height and was straight as a post, thin, with a thin, sunken-in face and a heavy moustache and eyes in the shadow of his hatbrim. He made a person look at him when he walked in, but once the person had looked, Tanner wasn’t that different from anybody else. That was the reaction to Frank Tanner. That he was not so much after all. Still, while he was in De Spain’s, it seemed quieter, like everybody was holding back, though most of the men were trying to act natural and somebody would laugh every once in a while. Frank Tanner stayed fifteen minutes and left. He’d gone over to the Republic and shortly after, he and his wife were seen riding out of Lanoria in their buggy with a mounted Mexican trailing them, everyone coming to doors and windows to get a look at them. The men said boy, his wife was something — a nice young thing and not too frail either, and the women admitted yes, she was pretty, but she ought to knot or braid her hair instead of letting it hang down like that; it made her look awful bold.
    Frank Tanner had left De Spain’s over two hours ago. Now, the next one to come in, just a little while after the Maricopa rider, was Bob Valdez.
    The houseman saw him and nudged Mr. Malson under the table. Mr. Malson looked at him funny, frowning — What was the little bald-headed son of a bitch up to? — then saw the houseman looking toward the door. Bob Valdez was coming directly toward their table, his gaze already picking out Mr. Malson, who looked at him and away from him and back again, and Bob Valdez was still looking right at him.
    “I buried him,” Valdez said.
    Mr. Malson nodded. “Good. There were enough witnesses, I didn’t see any need for an inquest.” He looked up at Bob Valdez. “Everybody knows how he died.”
    “Unless his wife wants him buried at home,” Valdez said.
    Mr. Beaudry said, “Let her move him if she wants. Phew, driving that team in the sun with him on the back. How’d you like to do that?”
    R. L. Davis, who had moved over from the bar, said, “I guess that boy stunk enough when he was alive.” He looked around and got a couple of the riders to laugh at it.
    “I haven’t asked her if she wants to,” Valdez said. “It’s something she’ll think about later when she’s home. But I told her one thing,” he said then. “I told her we’d pay her for killing her husband.”
    There was a silence at the table. Mr. Beaudry fooled with the end of his moustache, twisting it, and Mr. Malson cleared his throat before he said, “We? Who’s we?”
    “I thought everybody who was there,” Bob Valdez said. “Or everybody who wants to give something.”
    Mr. Malson said, “You mean take up a collection? Pass the hat around?”
    Valdez nodded. “Yes sir.”
    “Well, I suppose we could do that.” He looked at Beaudry. “What do you think, Earl?”
    Mr. Beaudry shrugged. “I don’t care. I guess it would be all right. Give her a few dollars for a stake.”
    Mr.