Mr. Tanner looked at him, but did not shake hands. His gaze shifted as Mr. Malson said, “Bob’s a town constable. He works a few nights a week in the Mexican part of town.”

“The nights I’m here,” Bob Valdez said. “Not on a stage run. See, I work for Hatch and Hodges too.”

This time Mr. Tanner turned to say something to R. L. Davis, a couple of words that could have been about anything, and R. L. Davis laughed. Bob Valdez was a grown man; he was forty years old and as big as Mr. Tanner, but he stood there and didn’t know what to do. He gripped the shotgun and was glad he had something to hold on to. He would have to stay near Mr. Tanner because he was the center of what was going on here. Soon they would discuss the situation and decide what to do. As the law-enforcement man he, Bob Valdez, should be in on the discussion and the decision. Of course. If someone was going to arrest Orlando Rincon or Johnson or whatever his name was, then he should be the one to do it; he was a town constable. They were out of town maybe, but where did the town end? The town had moved out here now; it was the same thing.

He could wait for Rincon to give up. Then arrest him.

If he wasn’t dead already.

“Mr. Malson.” Bob Valdez stepped toward the cattle company manager, who glanced over but looked out across the pasture again, indifferent.

“I wondered if maybe he’s already dead,” Valdez said.

Mr. Malson said, “Why don’t you find out?”

“I was thinking,” Valdez said, “if he was dead we could stand here a long time.”

R. L. Davis adjusted his hat, which he did often, grabbing the funneled brim, loosening it on his head and pulling it down close to his eyes again and shifting from one cocked hip to the other. “Valdez here’s got better things to do,” R. L. Davis said. “He’s busy.”

“No,” Bob Valdez said. “I was thinking of the one inside there, Rincon. He’s dead or he’s alive. He’s alive, maybe he wants to give himself up. In there he has time to think, uh? Maybe-” He stopped. Not one of them was listening. Not even R. L. Davis.