Read Online Valdez Is Coming by Elmore Leonard - Free Book Online

of the habit that had made him look around when he did. He was sure the man had not been following him. The man would have been anxious and looking around and would have stopped before he topped the rise. But the question remained, Where was he going?
    When Valdez moved out, keeping to the trees over the crest of the rise, he hung back and let the distance between them stretch to a hundred yards. He followed R. L. Davis this way for several miles until the trail came to open grazing land, and as R. L. Davis crossed toward the scrub trees and hills beyond the flats, a column of dust came down the slope toward him.
    You look around, Bob Valdez thought. That habit stays with you. But you don’t bring the field glasses.
    He remained in the cover of the trees and, in the distance, watched three riders meet R. L. Davis and stand close to him for some time, forming a single shape until the group came apart and the riders, strung out now, one in front of Davis and two behind, rode with him into the deep shadow at the base of the far hills. He saw them briefly again up on the slope and at the crest of the hill.
    They wonder about him too, Valdez thought. What do you want? Who do you want to see? They ask questions and take their jobs very seriously because they feel they’re important. They should relax more, Valdez thought. He mounted the claybank again and rode out into the sunlight, holding the horse to a walk, keeping his eyes on the slope the riders came down and wondering if they had left someone there to watch.
    No, they did it another way. One of them who had been with R. L. Davis came back. When Valdez was little more than halfway up the trail, following the switchbacks that climbed through the brush, he saw the mounted rider waiting for him, his horse standing across the trail.
    As Valdez came on, narrowing the distance between them, he recognized the rider, the Mexican who had brought him into the yard of the stage station.
    “Far enough,” the Mexican said. He held a Winchester across his lap, but did not raise it. He studied Valdez, who reined in a few feet from him. “You come back again.”
    “I didn’t finish talking to him,” Valdez said.
    “I think he finish with you, though.”
    “Let’s go ask him.”
    “Maybe he don’t want to see you,” the Mexican said.
    “It’s about money again.”
    “You said that before. For the woman. He don’t care anything about the woman.”
    “Maybe this time when I tell him.”
    “What do you have on you?”
    “Nothing.” Valdez raised his hands and dropped one of them to the stock of Diego Luz’s rifle in its leather boot. “Only this.”
    “That could be enough,” the Mexican said.
    “You want it?” Valdez smiled. “You don’t trust me?”
    “Sure, I trust you.” The Mexican raised the Winchester and motioned Valdez up the grade. “But I ride behind you.”
    Valdez edged past him up the trail and kept moving until he reached the top of the slope. Now he could see the village of Mimbreño across the valley, a mile from them beyond open land where Tanner’s cattle grazed. Valdez had been to this village once before, the day after White Mountain Apaches had raided and killed three men and carried off a woman and burned the mission church. He remembered the blackened walls; the roof had collapsed into the church and the beams were still smoking. He remembered the people in the square when they rode in, the people watching the Apache scouts and company of cavalry and saying to themselves, Why weren’t you here yesterday, you soldiers? What good are you?
    As they crossed the grazing land Valdez recognized the church, the roofless shell that had never been repaired. It stood at the end of the single street of adobes where the street widened into a square and there was a well with a pump and a stone trough for watering the horses. Beyond the cluster of buildings was a stand of cottonwood trees and a stream that came down out of the high country to the east.