Mr. Malson said, “You mean take up a collection? Pass the hat around?”

Valdez nodded. “Yes sir.”

“Well, I suppose we could do that.” He looked at Beaudry. “What do you think, Earl?”

Mr. Beaudry shrugged. “I don’t care. I guess it would be all right. Give her a few dollars for a stake.”

Mr. Malson nodded. “Enough to get home. Where does she live?”

“Their place is north of here,” Valdez said.

“No, I mean where is she from?”

“I don’t know.”

“Probably across the border,” Mr. Beaudry said. “She could collect about ten dollars and it’d be more than any of her kin had ever seen before.”

Mr. Malson said, “I suppose we could do it.”

“I was thinking of more than ten dollars,” Valdez said.

Mr. Malson looked up at him. “How much more?”

Bob Valdez cleared his throat. He said, “I was thinking five hundred dollars.”

The silence followed again. This time R. L. Davis broke it. He moved, shifting his weight, and there was a chinging sound of his spurs. He said, “I would like to know something. I would like to know why we’re listening to this greaser. It was him killed the nigger. What’s he coming to us for?”

“R. L.,” Mr. Malson said, “keep your mouth closed, all right?”

“Why can’t I say what I want?” R. L. Davis said, drunk enough to tell the manager of Maricopa to his face, “He killed him. Not us.”

Mr. Malson said, “Shut up or go to bed.” He took his time shifting his gaze to Bob Valdez, then holding it there, staring at him. “That’s a lot of money, five hundred dollars.”

“Yes sir,” Bob Valdez nodded, speaking quietly. “I guess it is, but she needs it. What does she have now? I mean, we take her husband from her and now she doesn’t have anything. So I thought five hundred dollars.” He smiled a little. “It just came to me. That much.”

Mr. Beaudry said, “That’s as much as most men make in a year.”