Once the shadows came Scull could risk more looks--he saw that almost all the people in the camp were leaving, unnerved by the unexpected execution of Goyeto.

Then, once it was dark, Ahumado suddenly appeared and began to push the cage toward the pit.

He didn't speak; Scull didn't either. The two had contested in silence so far; let it stay silent, Scull thought, though he was disturbed by what was occurring. He had seen men hurled into the pit and had heard their dying screams. He didn't know how deep the pit was--perh he would be killed or crippled by the drop. He knew there were snakes in the pit because he could hear them buzzing; but he didn't know how many snakes, or what else might be there. Once Ahumado appeared there was no time to reflect or plan.

Ahumado didn't even glance at him, or speak ^ws of hatred and triumph. He just pushed the cage a few feet and, without ceremony, shoved it over the edge of the pit.

The darkness Scull fell into was soon matched by the darkness in his head. He heard snakes buzzing and then he heard nothing. The cage turned in the air--he landed upside down and struck his head sharply on one of the wooden bars.

When he came to, it was night--in the moonlight he could see the opening of the pit above him. Scull didn't move. He heard no buzzing, but didn't consider it prudent to move.

If there was a snake close by he didn't want to disturb it. In the morning he could assess matters more intelligently. There was dried blood on his cheek; he assumed he had cut his head when the cage hit bottom. But he was alive.

At the moment his worst affliction was the stench.

The rich Mexicans who had died in the pit were still there, of course, and they were fragrant. But he was alive, Bible and sword; under the circumstances, phenomenal luck. It could easily have been himself, and not Goyeto, at the skinning post.

The pistoleros, the vaqueros, the young men of the camp, and the young women seemed to have gone. Always at night there would be singing around the campfires; there would be laughter, quarrels, the sounds of flirtation, drunkenness, strife. Sometimes guns were fired; sometimes women shrieked.

But now the camp above him was silent, a fact which bothered Scull considerably. To be alive, after such a drop, was exhilarating; but after relief and euphoria came terrible thoughts.

What if they had all left? The old man might just have pushed him into the cage and left him to starve. The walls of the pit looked sheer. What if he couldn't scale then? What would he survive on? What if no rains came and he had no water?

From exhilaration he slid toward hopelessness; he had to will himself to stop, to collect his thoughts.

Intelligence, intelligence, he told himself.

Think! The fact that he was in a hard situation didn't mean the final doom was come. At least in the pit he could shade himself, and the rangers might be well on their way with the cattle. With Ahumado gone all they would have to do was ride in and hoist him out of the pit.

Slowly, Scull's panic subsided. He reminded himself that in the pit there was shade; the torture of sunlight would be avoided.

Finally a gray light began to filter into the air above the pit. The stars faded. Scull looked first for the snakes and saw none. Perhaps they were hiding in crevices. The dead men were far gone in rot. Fortunately his cage had splintered and he soon freed himself of it. The stench all but overcame him; he thought his best bet to contain it would be to scoop dirt over the bodies. If he could cover them over with dirt it would cut at least some of the smell. He pulled loose a couple of bars, from his cage, to use as digging instruments.

He could dig at the side of the pit until he had enough dirt to cover the bodies. Though not particularly fastidious, he felt that a day or two of the stench might unhinge his mind.

He was just about to begin digging at the wall of the pit when he heard the buzzing again and realized he had been wrong about the snakes. The light was gray and so was the dust in the pit--in the gray dust the snakes were almost invisible. One large rattler had been resting not a yard from where he stood. The snake started to crawl away, only rattling a little, not coiling, but Scull leapt at it and crushed its head with his stick. He knew he had to be careful. His eyes were apt to water when he focused too long on one thing. He couldn't see well enough to spot the snakes. He edged around the perimeter of the pit and killed three more snakes before he was done. Then he began to dig at the walls. By noon, when he had to quit and hide his eyes, the dead Mexicans lay buried under sizable mounds of earth. Before burying the men Scull held his nose with one hand and forced himself to investigate their pockets. He was hoping Ahumado had overlooked a pocketknife, or another file, but in that he was disappointed. All he got off the corpses was their belts.

From time to time he dug, heaping more dirt on the corpses, but his time in the cage had weakened him; he could not dig long at a stretch, and no matter how careful he was, dirt got into his lidless eyes. The dust and dirt felt as painful as if it were gravel. Finally he took off his shirt, tied it over his eyes, and dug at the walls blindly.

By the afternoon, exhausted, he huddled in the shade.

One of his ankles was inflamed. He had seen several scorpions and wondered if he had been bitten by one during the night, when he was unconscious. He saw no sign of a bite, but the ankle was very sore, which chastened him. The pit seemed to be only fifteen feet deep, only some three times his size. Perhaps he could dig a few handholds and pull himself out. But his throbbing ankle, coupled with his exhaustion and the beginnings of a fever, brought home to him again the desperate character of the situation. No sound at all came from what had been, only the day before, a bustling camp.

There might be no one left to bring him water or food. The rangers might not have been able to get the cattle; no help might be coming. The pit he was in, though not really deep, was just deep enough to constitute the perfect trap for a man in his condition. Even if he could dig the handholds, he might not have the strength to climb out; his ankle would scarcely bear his weight. He could eat the snakes he had killed, but, after that, he would have nothing. Every day he would get a little weaker, and have less and less hope of effecting his own escape.

Barring a miracle, Ahumado had beaten him after all. The old man had even robbed him of time. As soon as Ahumado noticed that Scull was keeping a little calendar of twigs, he moved the cage and scattered the twigs. It was a thing to brood about. Ahumado had known that time meant something special to his prisoner. Now and then he would approach the cage and say, "Do you know what day it is, Captain?" Scull refused to answer--but Ahumado knew that Scull's hold on time had been broken.

"I know what day it is," he would say quietly, before returning to his blanket.