“How do you feel?” Valdez asked.

The Mexican said nothing, staring up at him with a dazed expression.

Valdez dismounted and went to his knees over the man, raising his arm gently to look at the wound. The shotgun charge had torn through his side at the waist, ripping away his belt and part of his shirt and leather chaps.

“You should have this taken care of,” Valdez said. “You know somebody can sew you up?”

The Mexican’s eyes were glazed, wet looking. “What do you put in that thing?”

“I told you, something for rabbits. Listen, I’m going to get your horse and put you on it.”

“I can’t ride anywhere.”

“Sure you can.” Valdez lowered the Mexican’s arm and gave his shoulder a pat. The Mexican winced and Valdez smiled. “You ride to Mr. Tanner, all right? Tell him Valdez is coming. You hear what I said? Valdez is coming. But listen, friend, I think you better go there quick.”

5

“He’s dying,” the segundo said. “Maybe before tonight.”

The Mexican was on his back at the edge of the loading platform where they had taken him off his horse and laid him on his back. His eyes looked up at the segundo and at Frank Tanner standing over him. He could hear the people in the street, but he did not have the strength or the desire to turn his head to look at them. He heard the segundo say he was dying and he knew he was dying, now, as the sun went down. He was thinking, I should have gone past him and turned and shot him. Or I should have shot him as he came up, before he saw me. Or I could have gone higher and used the rifle. He wished he could begin it again, do it over from the time Valdez started up the trail, but it was too late. He could see Valdez raising the gun, the blunt double barrels looking at him; he could see Mr. Tanner looking at him, the mouth beneath the moustache barely moving.

“What else did he say?”

The Mexican who was dying stared up at Mr. Tanner, and the segundo said, “Valdez is coming. That’s all.”

“How do we know it’s the same one?”

“It’s his name.”

“There are a hundred Valdezes.”

“Maybe, but it must be the same one,” the segundo said. “You said he killed the Negro with a shotgun.”

“A farmer gun,” Tanner said.

“I don’t know,” the segundo said. “The way he used it.”

Tanner looked up from the Mexican, his gaze lifting beyond the square, beyond the adobes to the ridge of hills in the distance, to the cold red slash of sky above the shadowed slopes. This Valdez killed one of his men up there and said he was coming. For what? It couldn’t be to help any dead nigger’s Indian woman. He couldn’t come in and pull a gun to get money. He’d never get in or out. Then what was he doing? Who was he?

The segundo followed Tanner’s gaze to the hills. “He’s gone. He wouldn’t be there waiting.”

“Send somebody and make sure.”

“He could be anywhere.”

“Well, goddam it, you’ve got people who read signs?”

“We’ve got some, sure.”

“Then send them,” Tanner said. “I want people all over those hills, and if he’s there I want him brought in, straight up or facedown. I don’t care. I want some men sent to Lanoria to look every place he might be and talk to anybody knows him. I want a sign put up on the main street that says Bob Valdez is a dead man and anybody known to be helping him is also dead. You understand me?”

“We start the drive tomorrow,” the segundo said.

Tanner looked at him. “We start the drive when I tell you we start it.”

The man lying on his back dying, with the wet stain of his blood on the platform now – thinking that this shouldn’t have happened to him because of the life in him an hour ago and because of the way he saw himself, aware of himself alive and never thinking of himself dying – looked up at the sky and didn’t have to close the light from his eyes. He saw the beard on the segundo’s face and the under-brim of his straw hat, and then he didn’t see the segundo. He saw Mr. Tanner’s face and then he didn’t see Mr. Tanner anymore. He saw the open sky above him and that was all there was to see. But the sky wasn’t something to look at. If he wasn’t on the hill tonight he would be in the adobe that was the cantina, with the oil smoke and the women coming in, lighting a cigar as he looked at them and feeling his belly beneath his gunbelts full of beef and tortillas, bringing a woman close to him and drinking mescal with his hand on the curve of her shoulder, touching her neck and feeling strands of her hair between his fingers. But he had done it the wrong way. He should have looked at the three guns on the man and known something. But he had thought of the man as he had remembered him from before, against the wall and with the cross on his back, and he had listened to the man talk even while he planned to kill the man, being careful not being careful enough, not giving the man enough. He should have thought more about the way the man stood at the wall and watched them shoot at him. He should have remembered the way the man got up with the cross on his back and was kicked down and got up again and walked away. Look – someone should have said to him, or he should have told himself – the man wears three guns and hangs a Remington from his saddle. What kind of man is that? And then he thought, You should know when you’re going to die. It should be something in your life you plan. It shouldn’t happen but it’s happening. He tried to raise his left arm but could not. He had no feeling in his left side, from his chest into his legs. His side was hanging open and draining his life as he looked at the sky. He said to himself, What is the sky to me? He said to himself, What are you doing here alone?

“Ask him if he’s sure it’s the same one,” Tanner said.

The segundo stepped close to the Mexican again. He knew he was dead as he looked at him, though the man’s eyes were open, staring at the sky.

The Mexican had reached the village, his head hanging, letting the horse take him, but he seemed to be still alive as he entered the street between the adobes.

You can die any time after you tell them, Valdez had thought, watching through the field glasses at the top of the trail. He had nothing against the man except a kick in the back and the certainty the man had wanted to kill him. He knew the man would die, and it would be better if he did; but he didn’t wish the man dead. It would happen, that was all.

Soon they would come out. They would come out in all directions or they would come strung out across the graze toward the trail into the hills. As the Mexican had reached the adobes, Valdez had climbed higher, off the trail now, leading the buckskin up into the rocks. From here he watched the three riders coming first, letting their horses out across the open land. They came up through the ravines and went down the switchbacks on the other side, not stopping. Three more came behind them, but not running their horses, taking their time. They climbed over the trail looking at the ground; coming to the place where Valdez had shot the Mexican they dismounted.

There were others coming out from the village, fanning out, not knowing where they were going. They were nothing. The three looking for his sign were little better than nothing; they had less than an hour of light and no chance of catching up with him. He counted seventeen men who had come out of the village. There would be others with the herd and perhaps others somewhere else. There was no way of knowing how many still in the village. There was no way of knowing if Tanner had come out or was still in the village. He would have to go there to find out. And if Tanner was not in the village he would have to think of another way to do it and come back another time. There was no hurry. It wasn’t something that had to be done today or tomorrow or this week. It could be done any time. But you’d better do it tonight, Valdez said to himself, before you think about it too much. Do it or don’t do it.