Ahumado did not approve of him skinning unconscious men.

"Two Comanches are coming," Tudwal said quickly. "They are almost to the Yellow Canyon now." Ahumado was disappointed by the quality of news from the north. Two Comanches were worthless. He had been hoping that Tudwal might have spotted a party of rich travellers, or perhaps a small troop of federales. The rich people might have money and jewels with them; the soldiers they could torture.

He motioned for Goyeto to get on with things, so Goyeto pricked the caballero's cojones with the knives until he woke up. Soon he was screaming again, though not so loudly.

Of course Tudwal had known that Ahumado would not be excited to hear about the two Comanches; he decided to spring the news that he had been holding back.

"One of the Comanches is riding the Buffalo Horse," he said. "Scull's horse." Ahumado had been watching the practiced way Goyeto twisted the boy's foot up and held it between his knees as he continued to peel the strip of skin across the sole. Goyeto's expert knife work was a pleasure to watch. It took a moment for Tudwal's information to register with him. The boy was screaming more loudly again.

"Scull's horse?" Ahumado asked.

"Scull's horse," Tudwal said. "I have more news too." "You are a braggart," Ahumado informed him.

"You are no better than a crow." The old man's face was thin. His eyes were as flint when he was displeased, and he was often displeased.

"But I am the Crow Who Sees," Tudwal said. "I have seen the two Comanches and I have seen Scull. He is following the Comanches on foot, and he is alone." "Scull wants to kill me," Ahumado mentioned. "If he is alone, why didn't you catch him?" "I am only a crow," Tudwal said. "How can I be expected to catch such a fierce man?" "I think Scull wants his horse back," Ahumado said. "There is no other horse like the Buffalo Horse." "Maybe he wants his horse back, I don't know," Tudwal said. "Maybe he just wants to visit you." Ahumado watched as Goyeto worked the strip of skin up the boy's leg. He worked with such delicacy that the wound hardly bled.

Nonetheless, when the peel reached his hip, the young caballero fouled himself. Then, for the second time, he fainted.

"I am going to sell this boy as a slave, when he wakes up," Ahumado said. "He is too cowardly to work for me. If the federales caught him and squeezed his cojones he might betray me." Tudwal agreed. Only a little skinning had reduced the young caballero to a sorry state.

"What do you think those Comanches want?" Ahumado asked. "I am asking you because you are the Crow Who Sees." Tudwal knew he had better be careful.

When Ahumado was disappointed in one of his men, his disappointment could turn into fury, but a cold fury. The old man kept his eyes hidden and spoke in soft tones, so that the man he was angry with could not see, until it was too late, that his eyes were like those of a striking snake. Someone would be struck, usually to the death, when Ahumado began to question things.

"One of the Comanches is a man called Kicking Wolf," Tudwal ventured. "He took the Buffalo Horse. Maybe he means to sell him to you." The old man, the Black Vaquero, said nothing. Tudwal was scared, and when he was scared, he spoke nonsense. Ahumado did not buy horses from the Comanches, or do anything else with them except kill them. The best any Comanche could expect from him was a quick death. The Comanche who was bringing him the Buffalo Horse was doing a foolish thing, or else he was playing a trick.

The man could well be a trickster of some sort, allied with a witch. If he was just a plain man with horse trading on his mind, he was making a foolish mistake.

"Go eat," he told Tudwal. "Goyeto has to finish his work." Relieved, Tudwal left at once.

Goyeto peeled the strip of skin up the unconscious caballero's chest and up his neck to his chin. Then he cut it off and walked away with the thin, light strip. He meant to peg it out, salt it a little, and hang it in the big cave, with all the other human skins he had taken for Ahumado. On little pegs in the cave were more than fifty skins, a collection any skinner could be proud of. From time to time Ahumado would come into the big cave for a few minutes, take down the skins one by one, and admire them. He and old Goyeto would reminisce about the behaviour of this captive or that. Some men, like the German who had tried to steal the rocks, behaved very bravely, but others, weak like the young caballero, were disappointing to work on. They broke down, fouled themselves, and bawled like babies.

Outside on his blanket, with the winter sun reflecting off the yellow walls of the canyon, Ahumado sat, thinking about the three men who were coming from the north--Big Horse Scull and the two Comanches. The notion that they had come for a visit was amusing. No one visited him in the canyon of the Yellow Cliffs.

When the time came for a visit, he would visit them.

"What will you say to the Black Vaquero when he catches us?" Three Birds asked.

They were camped in a long canyon with high walls, a place Three Birds didn't like.

He had lived his life on the open prairie and didn't like sleeping beneath a cliff of rocks.

Someone with the power to shake the earth could make one of the cliffso fall on them and bury them, a thing that could never happen on the plains. In his dream he had seen a great cliff falling and had awakened in a sweat.

Kicking Wolf had killed a small pig with spiky hair, a javelina, and was too busy roasting its bones to respond to Three Birds.

Then Three Birds remembered another bad story he had heard about the Black Vaquero, this one having to do with snakes. It was said that the old man had such power that he had persuaded the rattlesnake people to give up their rattles. It was said that Ahumado had many snakes with no rattles, who could crawl among his enemies and bite them without making a sound. Though Three Birds normally didn't fear the snake people, he didn't like the thought of rattlesnakes that made no sound. The pig they were eating was tasty, but not tasty enough to make him forget that the Black Vaquero had a number of evil ways.

"Have you heard about the snakes without rattles?" Three Birds asked. "There might be a few of them living in this canyon right here." "If you are going to talk all night I wish you would go home," Kicking Wolf said. "I don't want to sleep tonight--I want to stay up and sing. If you want to sleep you had better go somewhere else." "No, I will sing too," Three Birds said, and he did sing, far into the night. He had the feeling that they would be dead very soon and he wanted to sing as much as possible before death closed his throat.