He looked toward the dead man and the man who was lying on the ground shot through the lungs. They went for theirs with the sound of his piece, and he brings up this little scatter gun in his left hand and lets go both barrels and them two boys take it square. This here boy partly in front of the other, a little closer, and it killed him in his boots.
Then he says to me, You tell him, he wants his woman, come out here with five hundred dollars.
I say to him, Well, wheres Mr. Tanner supposed to come? You going to have signs put up? And then he points.
The man with the shattered arm, standing by the loading platform, turned half around and raised his
right arm, his finger extended; he moved it gradually southwest.
There, you can see it, the man said, though it was closer where we were at and you could see it better twin peaks, the one a little higher than the other. He says for you to point to them and hell get in touch with you.
I say to him, Well, what if Mr. Tanner dont feel like coming?
And he says, standing there with the shotgun and the Colt gun, Then I kill his woman.
Frank Tanner stared at the twin peaks ten miles in the distance. After a few minutes, when he became aware that he was sitting in a rocking chair on the loading platform and his people were below him in the square, waiting for him to say something, he waved his hand and they cleared out, taking the dead man and the lung-shot man and the man with the shattered left arm, who thought Mr. Tanner might say something to him personally. But he didnt just the wave of the hand.
The segundo stayed; he was the only one. He waited awhile, getting the words straight in his mind. When he was ready he said, You go after him, we dont make the trip.
He waited, giving Mr. Tanner a chance to say something, but the only sound was someone working the pump handle, a rattly metal sound in the heat settling over the village.
We go out there and look for him, the segundo said. Sure, we find him, but maybe it take us a few days, a week, if he knows what hes doing. Were out there, were not in Sonora giving the man the things hes paying for. How much is he paying? The segundo waited again. He said then, He pay plenty, but nobody pay you to go up in those mountains.
The segundo stood in the sun waiting for Mr. Tanner to say something. He could stand here all day and this son of a bitch Mr. Tanner might never say anything. The segundo was hot and thirsty. Hed like a nice glass of mescal and some meat and peppers, but he was standing here waiting for this son of a bitch Americano to make up his mind.
So he said, smiling a little, Hey, what if you dont go out? You let him kill her. His smile broadened and he gestured as if to say, Do you see how simple it is? He said, Then what? You get another woman.
Frank Tanner, sitting in the rocker, looked at his segundo. He said, If you were up here Id bust your face open. And if you wanted any more Id give you that too. Do you see the way it is?
The segundo had killed five men in his life that he knew of and had probably killed more if some of them died later or if he wanted to count Apaches. He had hanged a man he caught stealing his horses. He had killed a man with a knife in a cantina. He had shot a man who once worked for him and insulted him and drew his revolver. He had killed two Federales when the soldiers set an ambush to take the goods they were delivering in Sonora. And with others he had wiped out an Apache rancheria , shooting or knifing every living person they found, including the old people and the children. But the segundo was also a practical man. He had a wife in this village and two or three more wives in villages south of here, in Sonoita and Naco and Nogales. He had nine children that he knew of. Maybe he had eleven or twelve. Maybe he had fifteen. He had not wanted to kill the Apache children, but they were Apache. He also liked mescal and good horses and accurate rifles and revolving pistols. He was number two and Mr. Tanner was number one. He was thinking, Shit . But he smiled at Mr. Tanner and said, Why didnt you say so? You want to get this man, we go get him for you.
Frank Tanner nodded, thinking about the woman.
The time he was in Yuma he thought about women every day. Hed thought about women before that, but not the same way he did in that stone prison overlooking the river. He remembered how the men smelled at Yuma, breaking rocks for twelve hours in the sun, working on the road, and coming back in to eat the slop. Thats when theyd start talking about women. Frank Tanner would think, They dont know a real woman if they see one, except for some whore whod smile and laugh and give them everything and rot their insides. No, when he was at Yuma he pictured a blond-haired girl, real long hair and a pretty face and big round breasts, though she wouldnt be too big in the gut or the hips. The hips could be more than a handful, but shed have to have a nice sucked-in white gut. Thats the one he pictured at Yuma, after he and Carlisle Baylor got caught with the goddam branded cows they were running into old Mexico without any bill of sale. Three years picturing the blond golden-haired woman. Two years more raising money and buying stock to sell across the border, buying and selling horses and cattle and dynamite and about anything he could lay his hands on they didnt have down there. Hed bought twenty-five-year-old Confederate muskets