“Will you go with me and talk to him?”

The Negro hesitated again. Then shook his head. “I don’t know him.”

“Then he won’t know you.”

“He didn’t know me this morning.”

“All right,” Bob Valdez said. “I’ll bet your paper says you were discharged. Then we’ll show it to this man, uh?”

The Negro thought it over before he nodded, very slowly, as if still thinking. “All right. Bring him here, I’ll say a few words to him.”

Bob Valdez smiled a little. “You can point that gun some other way.”

“Well…” the Negro said, “if everybody’s friends.” He lowered the revolver to his side.

The wagon was in the willow trees by the creek. Off to the right. But Bob Valdez did not turn right away in that direction. He backed away, watching Orlando Rincon for no reason that he knew of. Maybe because the man was holding a gun and that was reason enough.

He had backed off six or seven feet when Orlando Rincon shoved the revolver down into his belt. Bob Valdez turned and started for the trees.

It was at this moment that he looked across the pasture. He saw Mr. Tanner and R. L. Davis at the edge of the scrub trees but wasn’t sure it was them. Something tried to tell him it was them, but he did not accept it until he was off to the right, out of the line of fire, and by then the time to yell at them or run toward them was past. R. L. Davis had the Winchester up and was firing.

They say R. L. Davis was drunk or he would have pinned him square. As it was, the bullet shaved Rincon and plowed past him into the hut.

Bob Valdez saw Rincon half turn and he saw Rincon’s accusing eyes as Rincon pulled the long-barreled dragoon from his belt.

“They weren’t supposed to,” Bob Valdez said, holding one hand out as if to stop Rincon. “Listen, they weren’t supposed to do that!”