Valdez Is Coming - Elmore Leonard

Elmore Leonard may be best known for his crime novels, many of which were made into successful Hollywood films, but he actually began his literary career writing Western short stories for the pulp magazines of the 1950s. Hollywood movies based on Leonard’s westerns include Hombre, 3:10 to Yuma, and Valdez Is Coming. Anyone interested in reading an Elmore Leonard western or two should consider the Library of America volume entitled Elmore Leonard: Westerns published in 2018 because it includes four novels (Last Stand at Saber River, Hombre, Valdez Is Coming, and Forty Lashes Less One) plus eight of his most outstanding western short stories. For those more inclined to short stories, there is also The Complete Western Stories of Elmore Leonard published by William Morrow in 2004.

Valdez Is Coming is the story of a man who was known for most of his life as Roberto Valdez. Roberto was an army scout and an Apache-killing machine who was known to have taken a few scalps of his own (among other atrocities) in battle. But now he prefers to be known as Bob Valdez, a stagecoach security guard who also serves as town constable for a small community when he’s actually in town. Bob is still deadly with a shotgun or a Winchester, but the white men who employ him in town do so only to have someone stand between them and any Mexicans who come to town to cause trouble. They have no respect for Bob Valdez; he is just a tool they use for a job they are afraid to do for themselves. Valdez knows that, but to him it’s all just part of the job.

Then one day, during his role as town constable, Bob Valdez turns back into Roberto Valdez. 

It happens when Valdez arrives back in town just in time to find that a group of townspeople, led by a prominent cattleman, have trapped a black man and his Indian wife inside a sod cabin not far out of town. The cattleman claims that the man inside is wanted for a murder that occurred six months earlier, and the men are taking turns shooting into the cabin to see if the supposed killer will surrender. Valdez tries to defuse the situation, but Tanner, the cattleman, puts Valdez into a situation where he ends up killing the innocent man in self-defense. Now, Bob Valdez wants to do right by the man’s pregnant woman. It seems only right to him that the men involved collect $500 for the woman before she returns to her people to have the child. Unfortunately for Bob (and ultimately for the men), no one agrees with him.

Bottom Line: At roughly 240 pages, Valdez Is Coming is a relatively short novel, but it still manages to pack a punch. Roberto/Bob Valdez is a memorable character who has come to know right from wrong, and he will not take no for an answer when it comes to helping the wronged woman. Tanner is an evil man who surrounds himself with dozens of men willing to do most anything to impress him. The clash between the two men is memorable, but this is more than a revenge novel; this is a story about all the shades of grey between good and evil, and how one man deals with them. It is action-filled from the beginning, but it ends with a rather unexpected twist that lends depth to several of the characters. This is a good, old-fashioned western, for sure.