Redeye by Clyde Edgerton Page A

felt like it had been hit with a maul, but I didn’t know it was so bad till I pulled off my glove. My thumb was hanging down, kind of. It was starting to swell and turning a real light blue. I just sat there in the dust, hurting pretty bad. I remember I was thinking that it was a good thing it was my left thumb instead of the right, and had started to get up when I heard a horse coming from upriver. It was Mr. Pittman. He rode up and stopped. I tried to act like nothing had happened. He didn’t say nothing, just sitting there on this big mule he rides. I started to put the glove back on but that hurt, so I stuck the glove in my pocket, and felt that thing I’d put in there. I’d completely forgot it.
    â€œWhat’d you do—forget to use your saddle horn?”
    â€œYessir.”
    â€œWell, use it now before he takes a notion to head off again.Let me see your hand.” He clicked to his mule and took a few steps over close.
    I held it out.
    Jake snorted and did that damn little jump.
    â€œWrap the goddamned rope on the saddle horn,” he said.
    I did. Jake dropped his head and started backing off. Sandy knew to hold. I felt pretty stupid.
    â€œYou bench-legged bastard,” said Mr. Pittman. He got down off his mule, walked right up to Jake and hit him upside the head with the heel of his open hand—hard, real hard—and then did it again. Jake’s head jerked back both times. Then he walked over to my saddle, untied the rope from the saddle horn, tied it to his saddle, got his rope, and then with one hand on the taut rope followed it to Jake’s head, which was rearing up and down considerable, and here he does this maneuver which went something like this. He looped his rope around Jake’s near front leg, went under Jake’s head to his other side, pulled the slack outen the rope, and grabbed the other front leg beneath the knee, lifted and pushed against Jake’s shoulder with his own so that Jake went right down onto his side with a thud and dust flying up and then and there he stomped twice on Jake’s neck while Jake is jerking his rear around trying to stand up.
    â€œYou goddamn hinny-head,” he yells. Then he walks over to me. “Let’s see your hand,” he says. I was a little scared of him. He’d gone kind of crazy, kind of in this mad-crazy way. Like something had took him over.
    I held out my hand. “It’s out of joint,” he said. He told me toturn around and face away. I did, and he held my hand behind my back. “Look up toward that ridge there and start counting back from a hundred.”
    He was holding my wrist and sort of rubbing my hand, getting the thumb in the right place, I reckon. I’d got down to about ninety-five when he jammed it back in place. I hollered. It hurt bad, but I could tell it was back in. But hurting. Then he got my wipe and wrapped and tied it so it was tight around my wrist and hand and held the thumb solid. So I couldn’t get in my pocket where that little pouch was.
    â€œIt’ll be tender for a while,” he said. “You learned a lesson—about as cheap as can be learned. There’s right many cowboys with nine digits. Fellow I used to know’d stick his nub in his ear and you’d think he’d sunk his whole finger in there.”
    I didn’t say nothing about the thumb all afternoon, and that night I got the fire going like I had done the nights before. Zack cooked up some bacon and biscuits and opened some canned tomatoes. We ate good, then cleaned up, and went to lay down while Mr. Pittman talked to Redeye. I was finally able to dig the little pouch out of my pocket, given some time. When I went to untie the leather string that held it, it more or less crumbled. I pulled out a . . . a
frog
—a dull jet black, and the eyes were made from turquoise. I put my shirttail to it and in no time it was shined up considerable. I put it back in my pocket. I