And Is He Pissed

Valdez Is Coming a novel by Elmore Leonard.  From Elmore Leonard: Westerns.  Library of America.  pp. 279-414.  *****

I shouldn’t make too much of Elmore Leonard.  I probably already have.  He was a genre writer who didn’t care what genre he was in, switched from Westerns to Crime novels when the Western market fizzled out.  He even took time out to write advertising copy when he needed money (or when his confidence failed him).  He was a great plotter and a superb storyteller, but his prose was just serviceable, though by the end of his career he was a crack dialogue writer, whom others emulated.  Valdez Is Coming was his own favorite among his Westerns, and I can see why; it’s unique.  But also, I picked the novel up right after the election, when I didn’t think anything else would hold my attention, and it happens to be about an ordinary man who defeats a bully.  He more or less makes him eat shit.  There was something profoundly satisfying about reading it when I did.

Bob Valdez (whose real name is Roberto, the mix of Mexican/American is fascinating in this novel) rides shotgun for the local stagecoach and, in order to make a little more money, works as a constable in the town of Lanoria, which I believe is in Arizona, in least in Leonard’s imagination (because it is near Maricopa).  In the course of his duties he comes across a bunch of the town’s movers and shakers—especially a wealthy man named Frank Tanner—taking potshots at a cabin where they believe a murderer is hanging out.  They intend to keep doing that until he shows himself and they can kill him.

The man is black, a fact which they constantly bring up in crude and vulgar ways.  He was riding in a wagon with a woman; no one knows who she is.  Tanner has a beautiful young wife (who is not present), but he believes that this man killed the woman’s previous husband, who was his friend.  He glimpsed him in town when he and his henchmen were drinking and took off after him.  Various other town bigshots came along, mostly to toady up to Tanner.  This whole situation looks unseemly to Valdez, who represents the law.  He walks toward the cabin, asks the man to come out, and promises him a fair trial.  The man is armed, however, and gets frightened when men keep taking potshots at him.  He thinks Valdez is part of the plot, so he raises his weapon at him, and Valdez has to kill him.  He doesn’t have a choice.

It is only then that Tanner realizes this isn’t the guy he thought it was.  Doesn’t matter to him, since he sees black men as beneath contempt.  The woman with the man is an Apache who speaks almost no English and is pregnant with the man’s child.  All the guys from Lanoria head home, since the excitement is over.  It’s left to Valdez to clean up the mess.

He’s an unlikely hero, really just a journeyman employee, trying to get by on two jobs.  The only recurring problem in Lanoria is Mexican men getting drunk and rowdy; the town hired Valdez because he’s friendly with everyone and can usually calm things down.  He frequents the local bordello, Inez’s, and is a favorite there because he’s courteous to the women.  He’s hardly a knight in shining armor.  But it galls him that the was manipulated into killing this man, and he wants to do something for the widow.  He decides to raise $500—a huge sum in those days—because she has no other resources.

The locals in Lanoria, the few of them who would have that kind of money, are incredulous that he’s even asking.  It’s all they can do to keep from laughing in his face, though his moral position is impeccable (the local hotel refused to take the Apache woman in, so Valdez has parked her at the brothel.  The women will take care of her).  They tell him to go out and ask Tanner, who lives out of town; if he’s willing to kick in that kind of money, they’ll do the same.

Valdez isn’t naïve.  He knows who he’s dealing with, that rich men don’t like to part with their money and don’t give a damn about people of color, including him.  But he knows he’s right, and feels horrible about killing the man.  Tanner lives outside of town with a crew of henchmen, American and Mexican, who raise horses, maybe steal horses, and sell them to the rurales in Mexico who are staging a revolution.  It’s not a political move for him, strictly business.  The men who work for him may have different motives, but they’re all working for an autocratic bully.

I won’t detail the way Tanner treats this challenge to his authority.  I’ll just say it’s unnecessarily brutal and cruel (and hard to read about).  Valdez goes to Tanner twice, and the treatment is much worse—and nearly kills him—the second time.  It’s after that—after the whole thing has become personal—that Valdez changes his tactics.  He lets them know that Valdez Is Coming, though they don’t know what that means.  They soon find out.

In a way Valdez is a less mysterious version of John Russell, the hero of Hombre.  He’s battling huge odds; Tanner has over twenty men in his encampment, and they’re all after him.  But like Russell, he’s an ingenious guerilla fighter, who knows how to use the terrain to his advantage.  He also kidnaps Tanner’s woman, who actually isn’t his wife, doesn’t really want to be with him, and doesn’t especially like him.  The ending, though, reminds me more of Last Stand at Saber River.  What Tanner hasn’t counted on is that his supposed wife, and his men, ultimately see right through him.  And at a certain point they admire Valdez more, not because of his moral position, but because he’s the superior man.

The whores were right all along.  They like Valdez too.