I can see it, Valdez said. If you saved my life, Im not going to shoot you. Or if you get under a blanket with me.
I tried to explain how I felt, she said.
Sure, youre all alone, you need somebody. Dont worry anymore. I know a place you can work, make a lot of money.
If you think Im lying, the woman said, or if you think Im a whore, theres nothing I can do about it. Think what you like.
Ive got something else to think about, Valdez said. He studied the slope through the field glasses, past Davis lying behind the rock looking up at him, to the point rider. He raised up then and said to Davis, If you call out, I give you the first one.
He put the glasses on the point man again, three hundred yards away, and held him in focus until he was less than two hundred yards and he could see the mans face and the way the man was squinting, his gaze inching over the hillside. I dont know you, Valdez said to the man. I have nothing against you. He put down the field glasses and turned the Sharps on the point rider. He could still see the mans face, his eyes looking over the slope, not knowing it was coming. You shouldnt have looked at him. Valdez thought.
Then take another one and show them something. But not Tanner. Anyone else.
Through the field glasses he picked out Tanner almost four hundred yards away and put the glasses down again and placed the front sight of the Sharps on the man next to Tanner, not having seen the man or thinking about him now as a man. He let them come a little more, three hundred and fifty yards, and squeezed the trigger. The sound of the Sharps cracked the stillness, echoing across the slope, and the man, whoever he was, dropped from the saddle. Valdez looked and fired
and saw a horse go down with its rider. He fired again and dropped another horse as they wheeled and began to fall back out of range. The Sharps echoed again, but they were moving in confusion and he missed with this shot and the next one. He picked up the Winchester, getting to his knees, and slammed four shots at the point rider, chasing him down the slope, and with the fourth shot the mans horse stumbled, throwing him from the saddle. He fired the Winchester twice again, into the distance, then lowered it, the ringing aftersound of the gunfire in his ears.
Now think about it, Valdez said to Tanner.
He would think and then he would send a few, well out of range, around behind them. Or he would have some of them try to work their way up the slope without being seen.
Or they would all come again.
As they did a few minutes later, spread out and running their horses up the slope. Valdez used the Sharps again. He hit the first man he aimed at, dumping him out of the saddle, and dropped two horses. Before they had gotten within two hundred yards they were turning and falling back. He looked for the two riders whose horses he had hit. One of them was running, limping down the hill, and the other was pinned beneath his dead animal.
Youd better move back or work around, Valdez said to Tanner, before you lose all your horses.
Make him believe you.
He raised the angle of the Sharps and fired. He fired again and saw a horse go down at six hundred yards. They pulled back again.
Now, Valdez thought, get out of here.
They could wait until dark, but that would be too late if Tanner was sending people around. He had to be lucky to win and he had to take chances in order to try his luck.
He could leave R. L. Davis.
But he looked at him down there with his wrists tied to his belt, and for some reason he said to himself, Keep him. Maybe you need him sometime.
He called to Davis, Come up now. Slowly, along the brush there.
The woman sat on the ground watching him. The woman who was alone and needed someone and wanted to be held and got under the blanket. In this moment before they made their run, Valdez looked at her and said, What do you want? Tell me.
I want to get out of here, she said.
Where? Where do you want to be?
I dont know.
Gay Erin, Valdez said, think about it and let me know.
Tanner and the men with him had gotten to the ridge and were looking at the ground and back down the slope to where they had been, seeing it as Valdez had seen it. Now they heard the gunfire in the distance, to the south.
They stopped and looked that way, all of them, out across the open, low-rolling country to the hills beyond.
They caught him, one of them said.
Another one said, How many shots?
They listened and in the silence a man said, I counted five, but it couldve been more.
It was more than five, the first man said. It was all at once, like they were firing together.
Thats it, a man said. The four of them got him in their sights and all fired at once to finish him.
The segundo was standing at the place where Valdez had positioned himself belly-down behind the rocks to fire at them. He picked up an empty brass cartridge and looked at it fifty-caliber big bore, from a Sharps or some kind of buffalo gun. He noticed the.44 cartridges that had been fired from the Winchester. A Sharps and a Winchester, a big eight- or ten-bore shotgun and a revolver; this man was armed and he knew how to use his guns. The segundo counted fourteen empty cartridges on the ground and tallied what the bullets had cost them: two dead on the slope, two wounded, five horses shot. Now seven dead in the grand total and, counting the men without horses, who would have to walk to Mimbreno and come back, twelve men he had wiped from the board, leaving twelve to hunt him and kill him.