Call saw that the house where Maggie lived was partially burned but still standing, which was a relief. He thought he glimpsed someone at her window but could not be quite positive. Maggie was ever discreet. She would never lean out her window and look down at him--she didn't feel it was right.

He quickly crossed the street and saw her coming down the steps behind the house. She looked so glad to see him that he had to dismount and hug her; when he did she cried so hard that she wet the front of his shirt, just as she had when he was leaving.

"Now hush, I'm back," he said.

He had never before touched her outside her room. After a moment he got nervous, and Maggie did too.

"They didn't get you ... that's good ... and they didn't get Pearl, either ... Bill's been about worried to death," he said.

Maggie's face clouded, for a moment. "They shot four arrows into her, and that ain't all," she said. "But they didn't touch me--I hid where you told me, Woodrow." "I'm glad you hid," Call said. Maggie didn't say more. She still had tears in her eyes.

Call went back to the rangers, who were still in the street, where he had left them. Gus had dismounted and was sitting on the steps in front of the Forsythe store, a dejected look on his face.

"We ought to get the boys settled and see to the horses," Call said. Jake Spoon and Pea Eye Parker both looked as if they might go to sleep in their saddles. Even Deets, who seldom flagged, looked very weary.

"You do it, Woodrow," Gus said. He stood up and handed his bridle reins to Deets as he went by him. Call turned and followed Gus a step or two, curious as to what was the matter.

"I guess you're going drinking," he said.

"By God, you're a genius, Woodrow," Augustus said. "I ain't even close to a saloon, but you figured it out." Call knew it was Clara, or the fact that she was absent, that caused Gus to look so low. It was usually Clara at the bottom of Gus's dark moods.

"She's alive, at least," he said. "You ought to be glad she's alive." "Oh, I am glad she's alive," Gus said. "I'm mighty glad. But the point is, she ain't here. Your girl is here, Billy's wife is alive, but my girl's married and gone to Nebraska." Call didn't argue--there would be no point. He turned back to the rangers, and Augustus McCrae went on across the street.

Ahumado had never had a captive who behaved like the small americano, Captain Scull. Most captives despaired once they realized they were in a place they could never get out of, except by death. In his experience, Americans made poor captives. He had had old Goyeto try to skin several Americans--traders, miners, travellers who happened to travel the wrong road--but they all died before Goyeto had got very far with the skinning.

Even if he only skinned an arm or a leg the Americans usually died. They were weak captives, the whites. Once he had had a small Tarahumara Indian from the north who had stood at the skinning post without making a sound while Goyeto took his whole skin off--t Tarahumara had been an exceptional man.

Ahumado decided to shelter him and feed him well--he thought it was possible that the man might grow a new skin; but the man took no food and didn't profit much from the shade he was given.

He died after three days, without having grown any new skin.

Once or twice Ahumado had tried sticking Americans on the sharpened trees, but there again they had turned out to be disappointing captives, dying after much screaming before the sharpened tree had penetrated very far into their bowels. The Comanches and Apaches he captured on the whole did much better, although it was not unknown for one of them to disgrace himself. Once, though, he put an Apache who had stolen a woman on the sharpened tree and the Apache lived for two days even after the sharp point of the tree had come out behind his shoulder blade. No Comanche and so far no whites had done so well.

It was clear, though, that the white man Scull, the ranger, was an americano of a different order. Scull had mettle, so much mettle that Ahumado was surprised; and surprise was a thing he rarely experienced.

As for men in the cage, the best survivor had been an old Yaqui man who had been both exceptionally tough and exceptionally lucky. It had rained often while the old man was in the cage, so the man had moisture. Also, since he was a Yaqui of the hot desert, he wasn't used to eating much. In his days in the cage he cleverly peeled all the bark off the bars of his cage and ate it--the old Yaqui seemed to like the taste of dry bark better than the taste of raw bird meat. Later the blind woman Hema, the curandera, told Ahumado that the bark kept the old man from feeling hunger.

Even this Yaqui, skilled at going without food, was not as adept at living in the cage as the white man Scull. No one before Scull had ever put his legs through the cage and wiggled them.

Ahumado spent a good deal of time watching Scull through some binoculars he had taken off a dead federale. Once he even let old Goyeto look through the binoculars and Goyeto was so astonished at what he saw that he did not want to give the binoculars back to Ahumado.

He called them the Two Eyes That Made Things Large--theirthe ability to make things large left Goyeto speechless, and he was a man who usually chattered a lot. Even when Goyeto was skinning a person and the person was screaming, Goyeto would often be running on, talking about things of little interest or importance. Goyeto had always lived in the mountains, close to the Yellow Canyon. Though he was an old man he had only seen Jaguar once. Sometimes it amused Ahumado to startle Goyeto with trinkets he had stolen from the whites. Some whites carried watches that made sounds, and these sounds never failed to impress Goyeto, who thought they were magical.

Goyeto did not understand mechanical things; even guns were too complicated for him. He understood only knives--with knives he was better than anyone Ahumado had ever known.

Once Ahumado had even had Goyeto skin a great rattlesnake alive--a snake that was more than eight feet long. The reason for skinning the snake alive was that it had bitten Ahumado's favorite mare, a fleet gray filly that could outrun the Comanche horses. The snake had bitten the filly right in the nose; when the nose swelled up her air could not get through. She struggled so hard to breathe that her heart gave way.

Ahumado saw the old snake lying insolently only a few yards from where he had killed the mare. Because the old snake was insolent Ahumado caught him with a crooked stick and nailed him to the ground. Then he instructed Goyeto to skin him, and Goyeto did, turning the snake carefully until it was naked of skin.

Then, once it was skinned, Ahumado threw it into a pit of hot coals and cooked it. He did not want to turn it loose because snakes were better than humans at growing new skins. If he let the snake go it might grow a new skin and kill another filly. Some of the pistoleros were made nervous by this treatment of the snake. Many of them feared the vengeance of the snake people, and, indeed, the very next day, a pistolero was bitten when he rolled on a rattlesnake in his sleep.