to the skinning post his vision became a blur--he could distinguish motion and outlines but not much else. The rains had stopped and the sun was blinding, but Ahumado only now and then tied him to the skinning post. Often he would be left for three or four days in his cage--when free to shade his eyes, his vision gradually cleared.
Also, to his puzzlement, Ahumado instructed the women to feed him well. Every day he was given tortillas, frijoles, and goat meat. Ahumado himself ate no better. Scull suspected that the old man wanted to build him up for some more refined torture later, but that was just a guess and not one that impeded his appetite.
Live while you're alive, Bible and sword, he told himself. He observed that from time to time the Black Vaquero was racked with coughing, now and then bringing up a green pus. It was enough to remind Scull that the old bandit was mortal too. He might yet die first.
That was not a thought likely to bring comfort to the fat new captives. As soon as Ahumado had inspected the booty he had the four prisoners lined up in the center of the camp. He did not speak to them or question them; he just made them stand there, through the hot hours of a long day. The people of the village stared at them, as they went about their work.
Vaqueros or pistoleros who rode in from time to time stared at them.
Scull judged the captives to be gentry of some sort--theirthe dusty garments had once been expensive. Provincial gentry, perhaps, but still from a far higher sphere than the peasants who peopled the camp. The prisoners were used to being pampered; they spent their lives sitting, eating, growing fatter. They were unaccustomed, not merely to being prisoners, but to being required to stand up at all. They were too scared to move, and yet they longed to move. They were offered neither food nor drink. Mu@noz, a thin man with a pocked face, was clearly proud of his catch. He stood close to them, waiting for Ahumado's order. The standing was a torture in itself, Scull observed. In the afternoon the woman, desperate, squatted and made water; she was well concealed behind heavy skirts but still Mu@noz laughed and made a crude joke.
Later the three men made water where they stood, in their pants.
Scull watched Ahumado--he wanted to know what the old man would do with his prize catches.
The old skinner, Goyeto, sat beside him, clicking his finely sharpened knives, one of them the knife that had taken off Scull's eyelids.
A little before sundown, trembling with fatigue, the woman passed out. She simply fell facedown--in a faint, Scull supposed.
Ahumado did not react. Mu@noz had just filled his plate with food; he went on eating.
A few minutes later the three men were prodded at knifepoint to the edge of the pit of snakes and scorpions and pushed in. The bottom of the pit was in darkness by this time. The captives had no idea how deep the pit was. They were merely led to the edge of a hole and pushed off the edge. All of them screamed as they fell, and two of them continued screaming throughout the night. One of the men screamed that his leg was broken. He pleaded and pleaded but no one listened. The peasants in the camp made tortillas and sang their own songs. Scull decided that the third captive must have broken his neck in the fall--there were only two voices crying out for help.
In the morning, when Ahumado and Goyeto went to look in the pit, Scull heard the old skinner complaining.
'I thought you were going to let me skin one of them,' he said.
Ahumado ignored the complaint--he usually ignored Goyeto, who complained often. He stood on the edge of the pit, looking down at the captives and listening to them beg him and plead with him; then he returned to his blanket.
When an old woman brought Scull a little coffee and two tortillas, he asked her about the men in the pit. He had noticed several of the women peeking in.
'Is one of the men dead?' he asked.
'S@i, dead,' the old woman said.
The woman who fainted lay through the night in the place she had fallen. It had grown cold; Scull noticed that someone had brought her a blanket during the night. She was not tied. After the sun had been up awhile the woman rose and hobbled hesitantly over to one of the little campfires. The poor women of the camp made a place for her and gave her food. She thanked them in a low voice. The women did not respond, but they allowed her to sit by the fire.
Ahumado took no further interest in her. A week later, when all three of the men in the pit were dead, the woman was still there, unmolested, eating with the women of the camp.
When Blue Duck saw that his father was angry, he thought it might be because of the captive woman. The woman, who was young and frail, had been found dead that morning; but in fact she had been sickly when they took her. There had been some beating and raping but not enough to kill her. She had been sick all along, spitting blood night after night on the trail--now she had died of her sickness, which was not his doing or his fault.
As a chief, Buffalo Hump had always been touchy about the matter of captives; he expected to control the disposal of all captives. He might order them tortured or killed, he might sell them into slavery with another tribe, or he might let them live and even on occasion treat them well. The fate of a captive brought to Buffalo Hump's camp depended on reasoning Blue Duck did not understand. Even though he felt blameless in the matter of the dead woman, he was also scared. Everyone feared Buffalo Hump's anger, andwith good reason.
The ^ws his father said, though, shocked him. They were not what he had expected, not at all.
'You should have left Famous Shoes alone, as I ordered,' Buffalo Hump said. 'Now you have to leave the tribe. You can take five horses but you cannot come back to my camp again. If you do I will kill you myself.' At first Blue Duck could not believe his father meant what he was saying. Was he going to banish him from the tribe because of a little foolery with a Kickapoo tracker? The Kickapoo had not even been harmed. Blue Duck had fought bravely on the great raid, killing several Texans in close combat. No young warrior had done better on the great raid, or fought more bravely.
He said as much, but Buffalo Hump merely stood and looked at him, a chill in his eye.
'We didn't hurt the Kickapoo,' Blue Duck said. 'We merely teased him a little. I thought Slow Tree might want him but he didn't so we let him go.' Buffalo Hump didn't change expression.
He was not interested in arguments or explanations.
