But Ahumado was indifferent to such worries.

Any man should be able to watch out for snakes. He had the skin of the big snake made into a fine quirt.

After Scull had been in the cage three days Ahumado noticed that he had acquired a small tool of some kind. By watching closely with the glasses he saw that it was a small file that Tudwal had once used to sharpen things. It did not surprise Ahumado that Scull had managed to kill Tudwal, who was not a smart man; but he was curious as to what Scull meant to do with the file now that he had it. Of course he could use the file to saw through the bindings of the cage, but where would that leave him? He would either fall to his death or have to climb the rope to the top of the cliff.

Ahumado suspected that climbing was what Scull had in mind--he immediately sent ^w to the dark men to watch the rope carefully, day and night. If Scull did make it to the top of the cliff the dark men were instructed to chop off his feet with their machetes. A lack of feet would quickly put an end to his travels.

Ahumado noticed, though, that Scull did not seem to be interested in filing through the bindings, at least not in daylight. One day Scull spent the whole day scratching at the rock face with his file. It was the most puzzling thing he had done since his capture--Ahumado watched closely but could not make out the purpose of the scratching.

Scull was so absorbed by his scratching that he did not even try to catch several fat pigeons that lit on the cage while he was working. Most men, once in the cage, made desperate efforts to catch any bird that came near, fearing that they would starve if they didn't. But Scull seemed confident that he could catch birds when he needed them. Hunger didn't seem to worry him.

It occurred to Ahumado one day that Scull might be a witch. He had had that suspicion from the beginning, but the suspicion increased when Parrot appeared one day from the south and soared close to Scull's cage. Ahumado was not one who thought much about witches. He didn't believe there were very many witches--most vision people, in his view, were just charlatans, full of foolish talk.

That did not mean, though, that there were no witches at all. Ahumado believed there were only a few witches, but those few possessed powers that enabled them to do very unusual things. It was possible that the small ranger, Scull, was just such a rare thing: a witch.

Fortunately the old blind curandera, Hema, knew something about witches. Hema was a woman of the desert who knew more than anyone else about plants that could heal. Ahumado went to her and asked her what she thought Scull might be doing, scratching on the rock with Tudwal's file. Hema of course could not see Scull but she had an acquaintance with witches. Her own sister had been a famous witch who had been taken by the Apache Gomez many years before.

Hema was not a witch herself, but she was skilled with herbs and plants. She could help barren women, and old men who could no longer couple pleasantly with their wives. One woman, barren for years, had come to Hema and borne four babies, one of which was carried off by a she-wolf. She was able to brew concoctions that made the organs of aging men stiffenough again when they went to their wives.

Sometimes Ahumado talked to Hema when he needed to know about things which were beyond sight. Scull, of course, was not really beyond sight; Ahumado could see him clearly, through the binoculars he had secured by killing the federale. But the fact that Scull was scratching on the rock with a file was worrisome. Why did he scratch on the mountain?

Ahumado knew that whites could find things in the earth that others couldn't see. Sometimes they would dig into a mountain at a certain place and come out with gold. Some Indians believed that whites could make the earth shake; they might even be able to make whole mountains fall. In the war with the americanos Ahumado himself had seen the little cannons of the whites knock down a great church and several smaller buildings. When the cannonballs hit the earth they tore it up terribly. Ahumado was a child of the earth; he didn't like the way the guns of the whites could scar it and disturb it.

Now the fact that Captain Scull chose to scratch on the mountain annoyed Ahumado. The more he watched it and wondered about it, the more it annoyed him. What if the white man knew how to open a hole or tunnel into the mountain? Then he could simply file through the bindings on the cage and escape. He knew that the whites opened great holes in the mountains when they mined; then they walked into the earth, through the holes. A white man such as Scull might even be able to make the whole cliff fall all at once, like the church that had been knocked down during the war.

Ahumado soon developed such a strong curiosity about what Scull was doing on the cliff that he considered having himself lowered down beside him in one of the other cages, in order to watch Scull closely. He himself had no fear of heights and would not have minded being in a cage. But he soon rejected the notion of having himself lowered in a cage because of the dark men. Though they were obedient if he ordered them to chop off someone's feet, the truth was that they hated him. Once they got him in a cage they might simply cut the rope and let him fall; or they might just leave him in the cage to starve and go home to their villages in the south. Though very curious about what Scull was up to, Ahumado was not so foolish as to put himself at the mercy of the dark men.

One day he went to the hut where blind Hema sat, and told her his fears about the white man Scull opening a hole in the mountain. He wanted her to go up to the top and be lowered to the place where Scull was, in hopes that she could determine what he was doing. Though blind, Hema had hearing so sharp that she could tell what sort of bird was flying just by listening to its wing beats.

Ahumado wanted her to listen to the rock and see if the rock was all right. If she thought the earth might be about to move he would have to shift his campsite. Ahumado had become convinced that Scull was not a normal man. He did not put men in cages so that they could enjoy themselves, and yet Scull seemed to be enjoying himself. While Scull scratched on the rock he sang and whistled so loudly that everyone looked up at him. That in itself was highly unusual. Most of the men put in the cages quickly lost their spirit; they did not sing and whistle. They might yell down pleas, and beg for a day or two, but after that they usually sat quietly and waited for their deaths.

Blind Hema listened closely to what Ahumado said. Then she got up and moved slowly to the base of the cliff. She moved along the cliff for an hour or more, putting her ear close to the rock and listening. The longer she moved along, listening to the cliff, the more agitated she became. When she came back to where Ahumado waited, she was trembling--in a moment her teeth began to chatter and froth came out of her mouth.

Ahumado had known the old blind woman for many years and had never seen her so upset that froth came out of her mouth.

"He is calling the Serpent," old Hema said. "That is what he is doing when he scratches on the rock. He is sending signals to the great snake that lives in the earth.