He moved the sorrel out of the foliage. Valdez must hear him, but the man didnt move; he hung there on the crosspole leaning against the trunks, his arms seeming lower than they were before.
R. L. Davis saw why as he got closer. Sure enough, the pole had splintered. And it looked like a sharp end had pierced his back. R. L. Davis sat in his saddle looking down at the blood spreading over Valdezs back. He reined the sorrel around the near birch tree and came up in front of him.
I swear, R. L. Davis said, you are sure one dumb son of a bitch, arent you? When that pole broke, where did you suppose it was going to go? He saw Valdez try to raise his head. Its your old amigo you tried to swing a scatter gun at the other day. You remember that? You went and shot the wrong coon and you was going to come at me for it.
Davis sidestepped the sorrel closer to Valdez, pulling his coiled reata loose from the saddle thong and playing out several feet of it. He reached over, looping the vertical pole above Valdezs head and snugged the knot tight. Youre lucky a white man come along, Davis said.
Valdez tried to raise his eyes to him. Look at my back, he said.
I saw it. You cut yourself.
God, I think so, Valdez said. Cut my wrists loose first, all right?
Well, not right yet, Davis said. He moved away, letting out rope, and when he was ten feet away dallied the line to his saddle horn. Come on, he said.
Valdez had to move to the side to free an end of the crosspole and was almost jerked from his feet, stumbling to get between the trees and keep up with the short length of rope. He was pulled this way, through the birch trees and through the brush that grew along the edge of the grove, and out into the glare of the meadow again.
You must ache some from stooping over, R. L. Davis said.
Cut my hands and Ill tell you about it.
You know I didnt like you trying to hit me with that scatter gun.
I wont do it anymore, Valdez said. Hows that?
It made me sore, Ill tell you.
Cut me loose and tell me, all right?
R. L. Davis moved in close in front and lifted the loop from the upright pole. He kept the sorrel close against Valdez as he coiled the rope and thonged it to his saddle again.
Your animal doesnt smell so good, Valdez said.
Well, Ill give you some air, R. L. Davis said. Howll that be? He moved the sorrel tight against Valdez, kicking the horses left flank to sidestep it and keep it moving.
Valdez said, You crazy, you put me over. Hey! He could feel the bottom of the upright pole pushing into the ground, wedged tight, and his body lifting against R. L. Davis leg.
The sorrel jumped forward, sidestepping, swinging its rump hard against Valdez, and he went over, seeing Davis above him and seeing the sky and tensing and holding the scream inside him and gasping as his spine slammed the ground and the splintered pole gouged into his back.
After a moment he opened his eyes. His hat was off. It was good, the tight band gone from his forehead. But he had to close his eyes again because of the glare and the pain in his body, the sharp thing sticking into his back that made him strain to arch his shoulders. A shadow fell over him and he opened his eyes to see R. L. Davis far above him on the sorrel, the funneled hat brim and narrow face staring down at him.
A man ought to wear his hat in the sun, R. L. Davis said.
Valdez closed his eyes and in a moment the suns glare pressed down on his eyelids again. He heard the horse break into a gallop that soon faded to nothing.
4
But not today you couldnt call it Brother Sun, Bob Valdez thought.
It was strange the things he thought about, lying in the meadow on a pole like a man crucified, remembering his older sister reading to him a long time ago about St. Francis of Assisi and his prayer, or whatever it was, The Canticle of the Sun. Yes, because he had pictured the sun moving, spinning and doing things, the sun smiling, as his sister read it to him. Today the sun filled the sky and had no edges. It wasnt smiling; this day the sun was everything over him, white hot pressing down on him and dancing orange, red, and black dots on his closed eyelids.
He remembered a man who had no eyelids, who had been staked out in the sun and his eyelids cut off. And his ears cut off also and his right hand. He remembered finding the mans hand and finding the mans son in the burned-out farmhouse on the Gila River south of San Carlos, after Geronimo had jumped the reservation and raided down into old Mexico. They didnt find the mans wife. No, he didnt remember a woman there. Maybe she had been away visiting relatives. Or they had taken her. No, they had been moving fast and she wouldnt have been able to keep up with them. It was funny, he wondered what the woman looked like.
She could look like the Lipan Apache woman and have a child inside her. She could look like the woman with Tanner standing on the loading platform he remembered her blond hair and her eyes watching him, a blond-haired woman in that village of guns and horses and freight wagons. Her face was brown and she looked good with the sun on her hair, but she should be inside in a room with furniture and gold statue lamps on the tables.