He remembered turning his head against the thong holding him to the upright post, the thong cutting his neck as he strained to twist his face away from the white heat pressing him and the colors dancing in his eyes. He remembered thinking that if the thong was wet with his sweat it would shrink when it dried and perhaps strangle him to death if he was still alive. Then he wouldn’t be thirsty anymore and it wouldn’t matter if his eyes were burned out. It wouldn’t matter if Brother Wolf came to see him; he wouldn’t have to talk to any Brother Wolf and ask him to go away.
He remembered the knife pain in his shoulders and back. He remembered feeling sick and trying to calm himself and breathe slowly so he wouldn’t vomit and drown in his own bile in a mountain meadow. He remembered the worst, the heat and the pain and the thirst, and he remembered opening his eyes to a blue sky turning gray and streaked with red. He remembered a numbness in his body, looking at his hands and unable to move them.
He remembered darkness, opening his eyes and seeing darkness and hearing night sounds coming from the birch trees. He remembered the breeze moving the grass close to his face. He remembered pieces of the whole, sleeping and opening his eyes: the girl from Inez’s place over him, lifting his head and holding a canteen to his lips. Why would she use a canteen when the pitcher was on the table? He remembered getting up, standing and falling and the girl holding his arms, bending them carefully, working the joints and feeling a sweet pain that would have made his eyes water if he had water left in him to come out. He remembered stretching and walking and falling and walking and crawling on his hands and knees. He remembered voices, the voices of children and a voice that he knew well and an arm that he knew helping him.
Diego Luz said, “Are you awake?”
Valdez lay with his eyes open, his eyes moving slowly from the ceiling of the room to Diego Luz, a white figure in the dimness. “I think so,” he said. “I woke up before, I think; but I didn’t know where I was.”
“You were saying some crazy things.”
“How did you find me?”
“Find you? You crawled into the yard last night. I heard the dogs; I almost shot you.”
“I came here myself?”
Diego Luz moved closer to the bed. “What happened to you?”
“Maybe I’m dead,” Valdez said. “Am I dead?” He could see the children of Diego Luz behind their father, in the doorway.
“You looked near to it. Somebody stabbed you in the back.”
“No, a tree did that.”
Diego Luz nodded. “A tree. What kind of a tree is it does that?”
His daughter came into the room with a gourd and a tin cup, and the small children followed her, crowding up to the bed. Valdez smiled at them and at the girl and got up on his elbow to sip the water. He could see the wife of Diego Luz and his wife’s mother in the doorway, staying in the other room but raising their faces to look at him on the bed.
“I don’t see your boy,” Valdez said.
“He’s watching.”
“For what?”
“To see if they follow you. Or whoever it was.”
“Don’t worry,” Valdez said. “I’m leaving when I find my pants.”
“I don’t worry,” the horsebreaker said. “I’m careful. I wonder when I see a man crawl in half dead.”
Valdez handed the cup to the girl. “Have you got some whiskey?”
“Mescal.”
“Mescal then.”
“You haven’t eaten yet.”
“I want to sleep, not eat,” Valdez said. “In the back of your wagon when you take me to Lanoria.”
“Stay here, you be better.”
“No,” Valdez said. “You said they come by here. Maybe they come by again.”
“Maybe they know where you live too.”
“I’m not going where I live.” He motioned Diego Luz closer and whispered to him as his children and his wife and his wife’s mother watched.
Diego Luz straightened, shaking his head. “Half dead and you want to go to that place.”
“Half alive,” Valdez said. “There is a difference.”
Diego Luz brought him in through the kitchen at almost four in the morning. Valdez had passed out in the wagon, his wound beginning to bleed again. But as they dragged him up the stairs and along the dark hallway, Diego Luz and the large woman, Inez, supporting him between them, he hissed at them. “Goddam, put my arms down!”
“We carry you and you swear at us,” Inez hissed back.
“God and St. Francis, put me down!”
“Now he prays,” Inez said. She opened a door, and inside they lowered him gently to the bed, settling him on his stomach and hearing him let out his breath. Inez bent over him, lifting his shirt to look at the bloodstained bandage.
“In the back,” she said. “The only way you could kill this one.” She looked at Diego Luz. “Who shot him? I didn’t hear anything.”
“A tree,” Diego Luz said. “Listen, get something to clean him and talk after.”
Valdez heard the woman close the door. He was comfortable and he knew he would be asleep again in a moment. He said, “Hey,” bringing Diego Luz close to the side of the bed. “I’m going to leave you everything I have when I die.”
“You’re not going to die. You got a little cut.”
“I know I’m not going to die now. I mean when I die.”
“Don’t talk about it,” Diego Luz said.
“I leave you everything I have if you do one more thing for me, all right?”
“Go to sleep,” Diego Luz said, “and shut up for a while.”
“If you get me something from my room at the boardinghouse.”
“You want me to go now?”
“No, this time of night that old lady’ll shoot you. During the day. Tomorrow.”
“What is it you want?”
“In the bottom drawer of the dresser,” Valdez said. “Everything that’s there.”
Goddam, he wished he could tell somebody about it.
R. L. Davis stood at the bar in the Republic Hotel drinking whiskey. He didn’t have anything to do. He’d been fired for not being where he was supposed to be, riding fence and not riding all over the goddam country, Mr. Malson had said. He’d told Mr. Malson he’d gone to see Diego Luz about a new horse, but Mr. Malson didn’t believe him, the tight-butt son of a bitch. Sure he had gone off to Tanner’s place to see about working for him, figuring the chance of getting caught and fired was worth it. What surprised him was Tanner not hiring him. Christ, he could shoot. Probably good or better than any man Tanner had. He saw himself riding along with Tanner’s bunch, riding into Lanoria, stampeding in and swinging down in front of the Republic or De Spain’s.
He could go over to De Spain’s. At least he’d been paid off. Maybe there was somebody over there he could tell. God, it was hard to keep something that good inside you. But he wasn’t sure how everybody would take it, telling how he’d pushed Valdez over like a goddam turtle in the sun. The segundo had mentioned the turtle and it had given him the idea, though he thought one of Tanner’s men would do it first.
Maybe if he told Tanner what he did-
No, Tanner would look at him and say, “You come all the way out here to tell me that?”
He was a hard man to talk to. He looked right through you without any expression. But it would be something to ride for him, down into old Mexico with guns and beef and shoot up the federals.
R. L. Davis finished his whiskey and had another and said to himself all right, he’d go over to De Spain’s. Maybe there was a way of telling it that it wouldn’t sound like he’d done it to him deliberately. Hell, he hadn’t killed him, he’d pushed him over, and there were seven hundred miles between pushing and killing. If the son of a bitch was still out there it was his own fault.
Outside, he mounted the sorrel and moved up the street. He came to the corner and looked around, seeing who was about, not for any reason, just looking. He saw Diego Luz coming out of the boardinghouse two doors from the corner: Diego Luz coming toward him, carrying something wrapped up in newspaper, a big bundle that could be his wash. Except a Mexican horsebreaker wasn’t going to have any wash done in there. He had his own woman for that.