Trail of the apache, p.14
Trail of the Apache,
p.14
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!”
Only Good Ones 191
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 bake-oven 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.”
Only Good Ones 193
“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.”
Bob Valdez smiled a little. “You can point that gun some other way.”
“Well . . .” the Negro said, “if everybody’s friends.” He lowered the Walker to his side.
The wagon was in the willow trees by the creek. Off to the right. But Bob Valdez did not turn right away in that direction. He backed away, watching Orlando Rincon for no reason that he knew of. Maybe because the man was holding a gun and that was reason enough.
He had backed off six or seven feet when Orlando Rincon shoved the Walker down into his belt. Bob Valdez turned and started for the trees.
This was when he looked across the pasture. He saw Mr. Tanner and R. L. Davis at the edge of the scrub trees but wasn’t sure it was them. Something tried to tell him it was them, but he did not accept it until he was off to the right, out of the line of fire, and by then the time to yell at them or run toward them was past, for R. L. Davis had the Winchester up and was firing.
They say R. L. Davis was drunk or he would have pinned him square. As it was the bullet shaved Rincon and plowed past him into the hut.
Bob Valdez saw him half turn, either to go inside or look inside, and as he came around again saw the man’s eyes on him and his hand pulling the Walker from his belt.
“They weren’t supposed to,” Bob Valdez said, holding one hand out as if to stop Rincon. “Listen, they weren’t supposed to do that!”
The Walker was out of Rincon’s belt and he was cocking it. “Don’t!” Bob Valdez yelled. “Don’t!” Looking right in the man’s eyes and seeing it was no use and suddenly hurrying, jerking the shotgun
Only Good Ones 195
up and pulling both triggers so that the explosions came out in one big blast and Orlando Rincon was spun and thrown back inside.
They came out across the pasture to have a look at the carcass, some going inside where they found the woman also dead, killed by a rifle bullet. They noticed she would have had a child in a few months. Those by the doorway made room as Mr. Tanner and R. L. Davis approached.
Diego Luz came over by Bob Valdez, who had not moved. Valdez stood watching them and he saw Mr. Tanner look down at Rincon and after a moment shake his head.
“It looked like him,” Mr. Tanner said. “It sure looked like him.”
He saw R. L. Davis squint at Mr. Tanner. “It ain’t the one you said?”
Mr. Tanner shook his head again. “I’ve seen him before, though. Know I’ve seen him somewheres.”
Valdez saw R. L. Davis shrug. “You ask me, they all look alike.” He was yawning then, fooling with his hat, and then his eyes swiveled over at Bob Valdez standing with the empty shotgun.
“Constable,” R. L. Davis said, “you went and killed the wrong coon.”
Bob Valdez started for him, raising the shotgun to swing it like a club, but Diego Luz drew his revolver and came down with it and Valdez dropped to the ground.
Some three years later there was a piece in the paper about a Robert Eladio Valdez who had been hanged for murder in Tularosa, New Mexico. He had shot a man coming out of the Regent Hotel, called him an unprintable name, and shot him four times. This Valdez had previously killed a man in Contention and two in Sands during a bank holdup, had been caught once, escaped from the jail in Mesilla before trial, and identified another time during a holdup near Lordsburg.
“If it is the same Bob Valdez used to live here,” Mr. Beaudry said, “it’s good we got rid of him.”
“Well, it could be,” Mr. Malsom said. “But I guess there are Bob Valdezes all over.”
“You wonder what gets into them,” Mr. Beaudry said.
The stories contained in this volume originally appeared in the following publications: “Trail of the Apache,” Argosy, December 1951 “You Never See Apaches ...,” Dime Western Magazine, September 1952 “The Colonel’s Lady,” Zane Grey’s Western, November 1952 “The Rustlers,” Zane Grey’s Western, February 1953 “The Big Hunt,” Western Magazine, April 1953 “The Boy Who Smiled,” Gunsmoke, June 1953 “Only Good Ones,” Western Roundup, New York, Macmillan, 1961 (Western Writers of America Anthology)
Resounding praise for the incomparable western fiction of New York Times bestselling Grand Master
ELMORE LEONARD
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“Leonard began his career telling western stories. He knows his way onto a horse and out of a gun fight as well as he knows the special King’s English spoken by his patented, not-so-lovable urban lowlifes.”
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“In cowboy writing, Leonard belongs in the same A-list shelf as Louis L’Amour, Owen Wister, and Zane Grey.”
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Books by Elmore Leonard
Trail of the Apache and Other Stories Three-Ten to Yuma and Other Stories Blood Money and Other Stories Moment of Vengeance and Other Stories
The Complete Western Stories of Elmore Leonard
Mr. Paradise When the Women Come
Out to Dance Tishomingo Blues Pagan Babies Be Cool The Tonto Woman &
Other Western Stories Cuba Libre Out of Sight Riding the Rap Pronto Rum Punch Maximum Bob Get Shorty Killshot Freaky Deaky Touch Bandits Glitz LaBrava Stick Cat Chaser Split Images City Primeval Gold Coast Gunsights The Switch The Hunted Unknown Man No. 89 Swag Fifty-two Pickup Mr. Majestyk Forty Lashes Less One Valdez Is Coming The Moonshine War The Big Bounce Hombre Last Stand at Saber River Escape from Five Shadows The Law at Randado The Bounty Hunters
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About the Author
ELMORE LEONARD has written more than forty novels during his highly successful career, including the bestsellers The Hot Kid, Mr. Paradise, Tishomingo Blues, Be Cool, Get Shorty, and Rum Punch, and the critically acclaimed collection of short stories When the Women Come Out to Dance, which was named a New York Times Notable Book of 2003. Many of his books have been made into movies, including Get Shorty and Out of Sight. He was named a Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America. He lives with his wife, Christine, in Bloomfield Village, Michigan.
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Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
TRAIL OF THE APACHE. Copyright © 2007 by Elmore Leonard, Inc. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
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Elmore Leonard, Trail of the Apache
