didn't relish hanging there for days or weeks, surviving on the occasional bird he could yank through the bars. Ahumado, an old Mayan come north to prey on ignorant people, white and brown, had not proved susceptible to Harvard charm; but Tudwal, the blinking man, did not seem overly intelligent. If he kept talking he might yet fool him into making a mistake. He had obediently held his feet near the bars and Tudwal had freed his ankles.
His wrists came next, and there lay the opportunity.
Tudwal looked puzzled when Scull mentioned the mellow tone. Actually, the man had a nasal voice with little mellowness in it.
'Yes sir, I've been sung to often by Ohio maidens--some of them may not quite have been maidens at the time. The whores in the fine town of Cincinnati have lullabied me to sleep many times.
Have you heard this old tune, sir?' He struck up the old ballad of Barbara Allen:
In London town where I was born There was a fair maid dwelling ...
Tudwal nodded. Someone far back in his life had once sung that song, a grandmother or an aunt, he was not sure. He forgot, for a moment, that Captain Scull was about to be dangled to his death. The song took him away, into memory, into thoughts of his mother and his sister, when he had led a gentler life.
As Scull sang he held his hands close to the bars so that Tudwal could cut the rawhide thongs. He sang softly, so that Tudwal would lean forward as he cut. The moment the bonds parted Scull grabbed Tudwal's wrist and whacked it so hard against the mesquite bars that he broke it.
The knife fell into the cage: he had one weapon. Then he caught Tudwal by the throat and pulled him close enough to the cage that he could reach with the other hand and yank the man's Colt pistol out of its holster. Now he had two weapons. He would have preferred to conserve bullets by strangling Tudwal, but the man was too strong. Before Scull could get his other hand on Tudwal's throat he twisted away, forcing Scull to shoot him dead, the sound echoing through the Yellow Canyon.
The four dark men who had been waiting to lower the cage immediately took their machetes and trotted away. Ahumado was still back at the crater, where the feast was being held, waiting on his blanket; he would have heard the shot.
'There, you Cincinnati fool, I warbled you to death,' Scull said.
His situation had improved dramatically. He had a knife and a gun, and five bullets. On the other hand he was in a flimsy cage, on top of a five-hundred-foot cliff, and he was naked.
The bindings that held the mesquite cage together were hardened rawhide. Scull began to hack at them but the knife was dull and the rawhide hard as iron. Tudwal's horse stood near. If he could cut himself free he might have a chance, but the rawhide was so resistant and the knife so dull that it might take an hour to free himself--and he didn't have an hour.
'You goddamned fool, why didn't you sharpen your knife?' Scull said. 'Not only did you have a Cincinnati voice, you had a goddamned weak Kentucky brain.' It annoyed him. He had worked a miracle, killed his captor, and yet he wasn't free.
Then, with a moment to breathe, he remembered another of Papa Franklin's fine sayings: 'Haste makes waste.' He looked more closely at the jointure of the wrappings. He didn't need to hack the cage apart--if he could just break the wrappings at one corner of the cage he could squeeze out and run. He still had five bullets; it seemed good policy to sacrifice one or two of them to free himself. He immediately tested the decision and was well pleased with the result: two bullets and the wrappings blew apart, and he squeezed through and stood up.
His fighting spirit rose; by God, he was out! He squatted briefly over the body of Tudwal, but found only two more bullets, in a pocket of the man's dirty tunic. But the man at least wore clothes; Scull hastily stripped him and pulled on his filthy pants and tunic. They were too large, but they were clothes!
The paint horse stood not thirty feet away. Its ears were up--it looked at Scull nervously. Steady the yardarm, light on the throttle, Scull told himself. Haste makes waste. He had to approach calmly and slowly; he could not afford to spook the skittish animal. Without the horse the dark men would soon run him to earth.
The fact that he wore Tudwal's clothes was an advantage. The man's smell lingered in the filthy garments; he could plainly smell it, and no doubt the horse could too.
'Bible and sword, that's good of you, boy,' he said, walking slowly toward the horse. 'Be a good nag now, be a good nag. You're an ugly nag but I'll overlook that if you'll just carry me to Texas.' The horse pawed the ground once, but did not retreat. Scull came on, steadily, and soon had the bridle rein in his hand. In another moment he had Tudwal's rifle out of its scabbard and was in the saddle. Then, to his intense annoyance, the horse began to crow-hop. Scull had no skill with broncos, as the Texans called bucking horses. He had to grab the horse's mane, to keep from being thrown, and in the process, to his intense vexation, dropped the rifle.
Finally the crow-hopping stopped but by then Scull was not sure where the rifle was--he saw a line of men on the horizon and knew that he had no time to search for the gun. He sawed the reins until he had the paint pointed north, and then urged him into a dead run. I'm gone, he thought--I'm gone.
But then he heard the whirl of bolas as the dark men rose up from behind a low ridge. The running horse went down hard--Scull flew a good distance and lit on his shoulder. As he rose, more bolas were flying at him. One wrapped around his legs. He quickly shot two of the dark men but a third dashed in and hit him on the head with the flat side of a machete. The sky swirled above him as it might if he were on a fast carousel.
This time Ahumado supervised the caging.
The three other cages were pulled up and the pecked-at corpses in them flung over the cliff. Scull was put in the strongest cage.
He was dazed from the blow to his head and made no resistance. Ahumado let him keep the clothes he had taken from Tudwal.
'I have no one to put in these cages,' the old man said. 'You will be alone on the cliff.' 'It's a fine honor, I'm sure,' Scull said. His head rang so that it was a chore to talk.
'It is no honor--but it means that many birds will come to you. If you are quick you can catch these birds. You might live a long time.' 'I'll be quick but you ain't smart, se@nor,' Scull said. 'If you were smart you'd ransom me. I'm a big jefe. The Texans might give you a thousand cattle if you'd send me back.
'Your people could live a good spell on a thousand cattle,' he added.
