“I’ve said it,” Valdez answered.
Tanner’s eyes held on Valdez. He said, “Put this man against the wall over there and shoot him.”
He waited and said then, “Emilio!”
“I hear you,” the segundo said.
“Take him.”
The segundo did not make a move or seem about to speak.
“Number two”—Tanner’s voice rose—“I’m telling you something!”
The segundo looked at Tanner now, directly at him. He said, “It’s not my woman.”
Valdez’s eyes shifted to the man, hung there, and returned to Tanner. His hand gripped the Remington lightly, feeling the weight of the gun, the sawed-off barrel hanging at his knee.
Tanner turned his head slowly to the left, to the three men standing off from him, then to the right, to R. L. Davis and the two men beyond him.
“I’m going to give the word,” Tanner said.
“Wait a minute!” R. L. Davis said. “I’m no part of this.” He saw Tanner looking at him as he edged back a few steps, bumping against his horse and pushing it. “I don’t even have a gun.”
“I give you mine,” the segundo said.
“I don’t want one!” Davis was edging back, taking himself out of the group, his eyes holding on the Remington at Valdez’s side. “I don’t have any fight with him.”
In Spanish, the segundo said to the young Mexican on Tanner’s left, “Tomás, go home. This isn’t yours.”
The young man wasn’t sure. “I work for him,” he said.
“Not anymore. I let you go.”
Tanner’s head jerked toward the segundo. “What’re you telling him?”
“That she’s your woman,” the segundo said easily. “A man holds his woman or he doesn’t. It’s up to him, a personal thing between him and the man who took the woman. All these men are thinking, What have we got to do with it?”
“You do what I tell you. That’s what you’ve got to do with it.” Tanner glanced both ways and said, “I’m talking to everybody present. Everybody hears me and I’m telling you now to shoot him. Now!”
He looked at his men again, not believing it, seeing them standing watching him, none of them ready to make a move.
“You hear me—I said shoot him!”
Valdez waited in the silence that followed. He waited as Tanner looked at his men, from one to the next. He drew on the cigarette, finishing it, and dropped it and said, “Hey.”
As Tanner turned to him, Valdez said, “I got an idea, Frank,” and waited another moment. “You have a gun in your hand. Why don’t you shoot me?”
Tanner faced him, the Colt revolver at his side. He stared at Valdez and said nothing, eyes sunken in the shadow of his hat brim, dusty and beard stubbled, still looking like he was made of gristle and hard to kill.
But he’s not looking at himself, Valdez was thinking, and it isn’t an easy thing to raise and fire a Colt at someone. So he jabbed at Tanner saying, “See if your gun is as good as mine. What do you think of something like that? You and I, that’s all, uh? What do you need anybody else for?”
Tanner stood stiffly, no part of him moving.
“Let me say it to you this way,” Valdez said. “You give me money for the Lipan woman whose husband was killed or you use the gun. One or the other, right now. Make up your mind.”
Tanner’s hand tightened on the Colt and his thumb lifted to the hammer. He could feel the move he would make and he was looking squarely at Valdez twenty feet away from him, looking at him dead center where the cartridge belt crossed his chest. The moment was there, now, but his gaze flickered to the stubby barrel of the Remington and lingered there and the moment was past. His thumb came off the hammer.
“Not today,” Tanner said. “Another time.”
Valdez shook his head slowly. “No, that was your time. You get one time, mister, to prove who you are.”
“I should have killed you three days ago,” Tanner said. “I should have killed you, but I let you go.”
“No”—the segundo started past him toward the horses, pausing to take the Colt from Tanner’s hand—“three days ago you should have started for Mexico.”
“Or paid the Lipan woman,” Valdez said. “It wouldn’t have cost you so much.”
About the Author
ELMORE LEONARD has written more than three dozen books during his highly successful writing career, including the bestsellers Mr. Paradise, Tishomingo Blues, Be Cool, Get Shorty, and Rum Punch. Many of his books have been made into movies, including Get Shorty and Out of Sight. He is the recipient of the Grand Master Award of the Mystery Writers of America. He lives with his wife, Christine, in Bloomfield Village, Michigan.
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Praise for Valdez is Coming
“AN ESSENTIAL NOVEL…THE BEST OF ELMORE LEONARD’S WESTERNS.”
Toronto Globe & Mail
and the Western Fiction of Elmore Leonard
“ALTHOUGH KNOWN FOR HIS MYSTERIES, LEONARD HAS PENNED SOME OF THE BEST WESTERN FICTION EVER.”
USA Today
“LEONARD WROTE WESTERNS, VERY GOOD WESTERNS…THE WAY HE IMAGINED HEMINGWAY, HIS MENTOR, MIGHT WRITE WESTERNS.”
Baton Rouge Sunday Advocate
“THE PROSE IS AS TAUT…AS IN SUCH LATER NOVELS AS STICK AND GET SHORTY.”
Washington Post Book World
“LEONARD’S SPECIAL KIND OF TOUGH GUYS WERE BORN IN THE OLD WEST, WHERE HE POLISHED HIS WISECRACKING VIEW OF VIOLENCE AND MORALITY ON THE WORKINGS OF FRONTIER JUSTICE.”
Chicago Sun-Times
“CLASSIC WESTERN FARE.”
San Francisco Chronicle
Books by Elmore Leonard
Tishomingo Blues
Pagan Babies
Be Cool
The Tonto Woman & Other Western Stories
Cuba Libre
Out of Sight
Riding the Rap
Pronto
Rum Punch
Maximum Bob
Get Shorty
Killshot
Freaky Deaky
Touch
Bandits
Glitz
LaBrava
Stick
Cat Chaser
Split Images
City Primeval
Gold Coast
Gunsights
The Switch
The Hunted
Unknown Man No. 89
Swag
Fifty-two Pickup
Mr. Majestyk
Forty Lashes Less One
Valdez Is Coming
The Moonshine War
The Big Bounce
Hombre
Last Stand at Saber River
Escape from Five Shadows
The Law at Randado
The Bounty Hunters
A Coyote’s in the House
Credits
Front Cover art by Tim Cox (www.TimCox.com)
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
VALDEZ IS COMING. Copyright © 1970 by Elmore Leonard, Inc. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub Edition © SEPTEMBER 2004 ISBN: 9780061835773
First HarperTorch paperback printing: February 2002
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About the Publisher
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Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
About the Author
Praise
Books by Elmore Leonard
Credits
Copyright
About the Publisher
Valdez Is Coming: A Novel Page 16