'Tudwal will know you are there before you know it yourself,' Famous Shoes assured him.
'No, that's too cryptic, what do you mean?' Scull asked, but Famous Shoes would not say more. He had given Scull a warning, but would not elaborate, other than to say that Tudwal rode a paint horse and carried two rifles.
Scull put the man's reticence down to professional jealousy. Famous Shoes missed no track, and, evidently, Tudwal didn't either.
Meanwhile, dusk was turning into night and Scull had a horse and an unconscious man to decide what to do about. The Comanche very likely was the man Kicking Wolf, the thief who had stolen Hector. In other circumstances Kicking Wolf was a man he would immediately kill, or try to kill. But now the man was unconscious, bound, helpless. With or without Scull he might not live. With one swipe of his knife Scull knew that he could cut the man's throat and rid the frontier of a notable scourge, but when he did take out his knife it was merely to sever the rawhide rope that attached the man to the horse.
Then he quickly walked on toward the mountains, leaving the unconscious man tied but not dead.
'Tit for tat ... Bible and sword,' he said aloud, as he walked. Kicking Wolf; daring theft had freed him of a command he was tired of, presenting him with a fine opportunity for pure adventure--solitary adventure, the kind he liked best. He could match his skill against an unforgiving country and an even more unforgiving foe.
That was why he had come west in the first place: adventure. The task of harassing the last savages until they were exterminated was adventure diluted with policy and duty.
The man who had been tied to the horse was a mystery, and Scull preferred to leave him a mystery. He didn't want to nurse him, nor did he want to kill him. He might be Kicking Wolf or just some wandering Indian old Ahumado had caught. By cutting the rope Scull had secured the man a chance.
If he came to he could chew his way free and try to make it to water.
But Inish Scull didn't intend to waste any of the night worrying the issue. The man could go if he was able. He himself had ten hours of fast walking to do and he wanted to be at it. The thought of what was ahead stirred his blood and quickened his stride. He had only himself to consider, only himself to depend on, which was exactly how he liked things to be. By morning, if he kept moving, he should be in the canyon of the Yellow Cliffs. Then he could lie under a rock and wait for the sun to complete its short winter arc. Perhaps when night fell again, if he made good progress, he could crawl through Ahumado's guard and work his way into the cliffso, where he might find a cave deep enough to shelter him for a day. If he could find a suitable cave he would then need to be sure that his rifle was in good order--he had walked a long distance with the rifle over his shoulder. The sights might well need adjusting. Ahumado was said to be quick, despite his age. Certainly he had been quick the first time Scull went after him. It was not likely that the old man would linger long in plain view, once Scull started shooting at him.
He needed to cripple him, at least, with the first shot--killing him outright would be better still.
A brisk, nipping north wind rose during the night, but Scull scarcely noticed it. He walked rapidly, rarely slowing for longer than it took him to make water, for ten hours. Twice he startled small herds of javelina and once almost stumbled over a sleeping mule deer.
Normally he would have shot the deer or one of the pigs for meat, but this time he refrained, remembering Tudwal, the scout who would know he was there even before he knew it himself. It would not do to go shooting off guns with such a man on patrol.
Toward dawn, Scull stopped. The closer he got to danger, the keener he felt. For a moment, pissing, he remembered his wife, Inez --the woman thought she could hold him with her hot lusts, but she had failed. He was alone in Mexico, in the vicinity of a merciless enemy, and yet he found it possible to doubt that there was a happier man alive.
At the entrance to the camp in the Yellow Cliffso was a pile of human heads. Three Birds would have liked to stop and look through the heads for a while to see if any friends of his were represented in the pile. Ahumado had killed many Comanches, some of them his friends. Probably a few of their heads were in the pile. Many of the heads still had the hair on them, from what he could see.
Three Birds was curious. He had never seen a pile of heads before and would have liked to know how many heads were in the pile, but it didn't seem a polite thing to ask.
'Those are just some heads he has cut off people,' Tudwal said, in a friendly voice.
Three Birds didn't comment. His view was that Tudwal wasn't really as friendly as he sounded.
He might be the man who skinned people. Three Birds didn't want to banter idly about cut-off heads with a man who might skin him.
'He won't take your head though,' Tudwal said. 'For you it will be the pit or else the cliff.' Three Birds soon observed that the camp they were coming to was poor. Two men had just killed a brown dog and were skinning it so that it could be put in the cook pot. A few women who looked very tired were grinding corn. An old man with several knives strung around his belt came out of a cave and looked at him.
'Is he the one who skins people?' Three Birds asked.
'We all skin people,' Tudwal said. 'But Goyeto is old, like Ahumado. Goyeto has had the most practice.' Three Birds thought it all seemed very odd.
Ahumado was supposed to have stolen much treasure, in his robberies, but he didn't seem rich. He just seemed like an old, dark man who was cruel to people. It was all puzzling. Three Birds broke into his death song while puzzling about it.
He wondered if Kicking Wolf would die from being pulled behind the horse they had tied him to.
Three Birds was soon taken off the horse and allowed to sit by one of the campfires, but nobody offered him food. Around him were the Yellow Cliffso, pocked with caves. Eagles soared high above the cliffso, eagles and buzzards as well. Three Birds was startled to see so many great birds, high above the cliffso. On the plains where he lived he seldom saw many eagles.
He had expected to be tortured as soon as he was brought into the camp, but no one seemed in any hurry to torture him. Tudwal went into a cave with a young woman and was gone for a long time. The great force of pistoleros that Ahumado was said to command were nowhere in evidence. There were only five or six men there. Ahumado walked over and sat on a blanket. Three Birds stopped singing his death song. It seemed foolish to sing it when no one was paying any attention to him at all. Two old women were making tortillas, which gave off a good
