“No.” Holding the glass near the floor, he poured out most of the contents of the bottle. “He was long before your time, Betty.”
“It’s not Betty,” she said. “It’s Gin.”
“Gin? I beg your pardon. I surely beg your pardon.” He added in a dull tone, “Ginny, Wally’s dead.”
“What?” Her hand went up to her mouth. “Wally? Wally’s dead? You’re kidding me.” He drooped his head again and she jumped up and shook his arm. “Tom! Please answer me. Did you say that Wally was dead?”
“Sure he’s dead.” He looked at her with red-shot eyes. “He was shot. Them damned Indians in Mexico must a done it. Down at the border: he was missing a couple of days and his horse came home without the saddle. They went out looking and found a Yaqui with his outfit—saddle and gun and all. They couldn’t get anything out of him. He claimed he bought it. Wally’s dead all right, and buried.”
“God.” Her eyes filled with tears, mechanical reactions. Inside her head she did not feel ready for tears. She was only shocked and stunned; she was inadequate. “I can’t believe it,” she said truthfully. “He can’t be dead. Why, I knew him!”
“Why not? He had a good outfit and he was American.” He slumped down to the cot again and sat in an attitude of maudlin grief, almost theatrical. “Three weeks ago, I gave him hell for leaving Pinto tied by a rope in his mouth. He was always forgetful. I said I’d skin him alive if he did it again while I was anywheres around. Now he’s dead and buried.”
Gin stood motionless, seeing Wally outlined in clay like the prehistoric skeletons at the Museum. Fragments of coffin strewed the ground around him and he lay stiff, with one arm above his head and his sunken eyes closed and withered. She thought of his arms again. They were huge arms that had often caught her as she jumped off her horse, they smelled of horses and perspiration, and he was fond of a certain checked shirt that he often wore. It was that same shirt that he was wearing now, buried in the clay. No, he would not be wearing his shirt. The checked shirt was in a Yaqui’s bundle now, flung into the corner of a hut in Mexico, with a bloody hole in it. Wally was naked and dead and buried. Buried.
Tom had slipped down to the table; his head, clutched in his arms, was sideways on the table and his eyes were closed. Asleep? She poured a drink out for herself and swallowed it. She patted his head.
“You go to sleep,” she said. “I’m going home.”