Free Valdez Is Coming by Elmore Leonard

before. “I don’t remember asking you here,” Tanner said.
    “Listen,” R. L. Davis began to say.
    Tanner stopped him. “Watch your mouth, boy. I don’t listen to you. I don’t listen to anybody I don’t want to listen to.”
    R. L. Davis squinted up at him. “I didn’t mean it that way. I come here to work for you.”
    Tanner’s gaze dropped slowly from the bent figure down the street to Davis. “Why do you think I’d hire you?”
    “You need a gun, I’m your man.”
    “I didn’t see you hit anything the other day.”
    “Jesus Christ, I wasn’t aiming at her. You said yourself just make her jump some.”
    “Are you telling me what I said?”
    “I thought that’s what it was.”
    “Don’t think,” Tanner said. “Ride out.”
    “Hell, you can always use another man, can’t you?”
    “Maybe a man,” Tanner said. “Ride out.”
    “Try me out. Put me on for a month.”
    “We’ll put some poles on your back,” Tanner said, “if you want to stay here.”
    “I was just asking,” R. L. Davis lifted his reins and flicked them against the neck of his sorrel, bringing the animal around and guiding it through the group of riders, trying to take his time.
    Tanner watched Davis until he was beyond the pump and heading down the street. The small stooped figure was now at the far end of the adobes.
    The woman, Gay Erin, who had been married to the sutler at Fort Huachuca and had been living with Frank Tanner since her husband’s death, waited for Tanner to turn and notice her in the doorway behind him. But he didn’t turn; he stood on the edge of the platform over his men.
    She said, “Frank?” and waited again.
    Now he looked around and came over to her, taking his time. “I didn’t know you were there,” he said.
    She kept her eyes on him, waiting for him to come close. “I don’t understand you,” she said.
    “I don’t need that boy. Why should I hire him?”
    “The other one. He asks you a simple thing, to help someone.”
    “We won’t talk about it out here,” Tanner said. They went into the dimness of the warehouse, past sacks of grain and stacked wooden cases, Tanner holding her arm and guiding her to the stairway. “I let you talk to me the way you want,” Tanner said, “but not in front of my men.”
    Upstairs, in the office that had been made into a sitting room, Gay Erin looked out the window. She could see R. L. Davis at the end of the street; the hunched figure of Bob Valdez was no longer in sight.
    “You better keep up here from now on,” Tanner said, “unless I call you down.”
    She turned from the window. “And how long is that?”
    “I guess as long as I want.” Tanner went into the bedroom. He came out wearing his coat, strapping on a gunbelt. “I’m going to Nogales; I’ll be back in the morning.” He looked down at his belt, buckling it. “You can come if you want a twenty-mile ride.”
    “Or sit here,” the girl said.
    He looked up at her. “What else?”
    “If you say sit I’m supposed to sit.” Her expression and the sound of her voice were mild, but her eyes held his and hung on. “No one can be that sure,” she said. “Not even you.”
    “Well, you’re not going to leave,” Tanner said. He moved toward her, settling the gunbelt on his hips. “You don’t have anything at Huachuca. You don’t have anything left at Prescott. Whatever you have is here.”
    “Whatever I have,” the girl said, “as your woman.”
    “Aren’t I nice enough to you?”
    “Sometimes.”
    “Take what you get.”
    “Sometimes you act like a human being.”
    “When I’m in my drawers,” Tanner said. “When I’m in my boots that’s a different time.”
    “You had them on outside.”
    “You bet I did, lady.”
    “He was trying to help a woman who’d lost her husband; that’s all he was doing.”
    “And I’m helping one already,” Tanner said. “One poor widow woman’s enough.” He was close to her, looking into her face, and he touched her