The Complete Western Stories of Elmore Leonard - Elmore Leonard [235]
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 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.
29
The Tonto Woman
Roundup, Garden City, Doubleday, 1982
(Western Writers of America Anthology)
A TIME WOULD COME, within a few years, when Ruben Vega would go to the church in Benson, kneel in the confessional, and say to the priest, “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It has been thirty-seven years since my last confession…. Since then I have fornicated with many women, maybe eight hundred. No, not that many, considering my work. Maybe six hundred only.” And the priest would say, “Do you mean bad women or good women?” And Ruben Vega would say, “They are all good, Father.” He would tell the priest he had stolen, in that time, about twenty thousand head of cattle but only maybe fifteen horses. The priest would ask him if he had committed murder. Ruben Vega would say no. “All that stealing you’ve done,” the priest would say, “you’ve never killed anyone?” And Ruben Vega would say, “Yes, of course, but it was not to commit murder. You understand the distinction? Not to kill someone to take a life, but only to save my own.”
Even in this time to come, concerned with dying in a state of sin, he would be confident. Ruben