Free Valdez Is Coming by Elmore Leonard Page B

watched Valdez go to his knees; he winced and then smiled as Valdez fell forward on the side of his face. That was pretty good. But as Valdez lay there not moving, R. L. Davis became restless and started to fidget and tried to think of something. You could trample him some, he thought. Ride over him a few times. He decided maybe that was the thing to do and raised his reins to flick the sorrel.
    But now the man was stirring, arching onto his head and getting his knees under him.
    Valdez rose and stood there, trying to turn his head to look about him. He moved forward slowly, shuffling in the leaves. He turned sideways to edge between trees that grew close together. Farther on he stopped and placed one end of the crosspole against a birch trunk and waved the other end of the pole toward a tree several feet from him but the pole was too short. R. L. Davis watched him move on, touching a trunk and trying to reach another with the crosspole until finally there it was, and R. L. Davis saw what he was trying to do.
    Valdez stood between two trees that were a little less than six feet apart. Now, with the ends of the crosspole planted against the trunks, holding him there, he tried to move forward, straining, digging in with his boots and slipping in the leaves. He bent his wrists so that his hands hung down and were out of the way. Now he moved back several steps and ran between the two trees. The ends of the crosspole struck the trunks and stopped him dead. He strained against the pole, stepping back and slamming the pole ends against the trunks again and again. Finally he moved back eight or ten feet and again ran at the space between the trees and this time as the ends struck, R. L. Davis heard a gasp of breath in the silence.
    He moved the sorrel out of the foliage. Valdez must hear him, but the man didn’t 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 Valdez’s 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, aren’t you? When that pole broke, where did you suppose it was going to go?” He saw Valdez try to raise his head. “It’s 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 Valdez’s head and snugged the knot tight. “You’re 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 I’ll tell you about it.”
    “You know I didn’t like you trying to hit me with that scatter gun.”
    “I won’t do it anymore,” Valdez said. “How’s that?”
    “It made me sore, I’ll 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.