Valdez Is Coming

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Picture the ground rising on the east side of the pasture with scrub trees thick on the slope and pines higher up. This is where everybody was. Not all in one place but scattered in small groups, about a dozen men in the scrub, the front line, the shooters who couldn’t just stand around. They’d fire at the shack when they felt like it, or when Mr. Tanner passed the word, they would all fire at once.

Others were up in the pines and on the road that ran along the crest of the hill, some three hundred yards from the shack across the pasture. Those watching made bets whether the man in the shack would give himself up or get shot first.

It was Saturday and that’s why everybody had the time. They would arrive in Lanoria, hear about what happened, and shortly after, head out to the cattle company pasture. Most of the men went out alone, leaving their families in town, though there were a few women who came. The other women waited. And the people who had business in town and couldn’t leave waited. Now and then a few would come back from the pasture to have a drink or their dinner and would tell what was going on. No, they hadn’t got him yet. Still inside the line shack and not showing his face. But they’d get him. A few more would go out from town when they heard this. Also a wagon from De Spain’s went out with whiskey. That’s how the saloon was set up in the pines overlooking the pasture. Somebody said it was like the goddam Fourth of July.

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