first by the height and the space and the constant swaying of the cage--the lightest wind seemed to move it--Inish Scull gradually persuaded himself that the old man wanted him to live. Why else the water? Perhaps upon consideration the notion of a large ransom became more appealing; though, in view of Ahumado's searing contempt, to think thus was probably to think too optimistically.
Far from wanting him to live, Ahumado may only have wanted him to starve more slowly--thus the fresh, cool water. The first jug tasted as good as a meal.
In thinking about his situation--hung off a cliff, a two-hundred-foot drop below him, and an infinite space before him--Scull soon concluded that, whatever the Black Vaquero might want, he wanted to live. He was in good health, had sustained no wounds, was of sound mind.
Thinking about the matter soberly, he realized that he had often felt more hopeless in his wife's arms than he did in Ahumado's cage. He was of the mental temperament to relish extreme situations --in fact, had spent much of his career seeking them out. Now he had found himself in as extreme a situation as any man could well want. Few of his Harvard brethren had sought the extreme quite so successfully; it would make a good story to tell in the Yard, next time he was there.
Of course, in order to have the pleasure of telling, he first had to meet the challenge of surviving. In practical terms that meant securing the food most likely to be available, which meant birds. The only possible alternative was worms. His experience as a naturalist taught him that earthworms were to be found almost everywhere--he might be able to scratch a few out of Ahumado's cliff, but probably too few.
Of birds there was no scarcity. The cage attracted them, not merely eagles and vultures but others. On the first morning he caught a pigeon and two mourning doves. The pants he wore, once Tudwal's, were ragged things.
Scull unravelled one leg a bit and hung the three birds with threads from the pants leg; in the Scull family game was always hung before it was consumed, the customary period of hanging being three days. There was no reason to abandon the family's standards, that he saw.
Far below, he could see the people of the village; few of them looked up. They had, no doubt, seen many people hang and die in the cages.
Every day Ahumado sat on his blanket, and he did look up, not with his naked eye, though.
Scull saw the glint of sun on glass and realized Ahumado was watching him through binoculars, no doubt taken from some murdered officer or traveller. This knowledge perked him up.
Contempt or no contempt, at least he had caught the old man's interest. Scull had a spectator now; he meant to give the man on the ground a good show.
When Scull searched the pockets of Tudwal's filthy garments he found a small tool that he had missed when searching the clothes for bullets. The tool was a file of the sort used to improve the sights on a rifle or cut the head off a nail. It wasn't much, but it was something. Although the cage he swung in had a solid bottom, there were cracks in it. Scull took great care not to drop his file--z long as he had it there were ways he could employ his mind.
He could keep a calendar by scratching lines on the rock of the cliff, and he immediately began to do so.
Scull knew a bit of geology. He had heard Mr. Lyell lecture on his first visit to America and had even sat with the great man at a luncheon in Washington. It occurred to him there might be fossils or other geological vestiges in the stony cliff behind him--vestiges he could investigate. To make sure that he didn't drop the file he unthreaded another cord from his pants leg and used it to secure the little tool, tying one end of the thread to the file and the other end to a bar of the cage.
Fortunately he was small enough to get his legs through the bars of the cage--wiggling them vigorously was the best he could do by way of exercise. It amused him to consider what Ahumado must think, watching him wiggle his legs. He had caught a curious prisoner this time, one a little more resourceful than the miscreant peasants he had been wont to cage.
If his diet was limited, Scull told himself, at least his view was magnificent. In the morning he could see the mist lift off the distant peak as the red sun rose. The nights, though chilly, produced a fine starlight. Scull had not made much progress in astronomy, but he did know his constellations, and they were there to be viewed, in sharp and peaceful clarity, every night.
The fourth day was cloudy--it sprinkled in the morning, which was welcome; it allowed Scull to wash himself. But a mist ensued so thick that he could not see the ground, a fact which dampened his spirits considerably. He liked to look down, observe the life of the camp, and watch Ahumado watch him. It was a competition they were in, the Bostonian and the Mayan, as he saw it. He needed to observe his opponent every day. Now and then, through the mist, he would see one of the great vultures sail by. One vulture flew so close that he saw the bird turn its head and look at him--the bird's old eye reminded him in that instance of Ahumado's. The resemblance was so sharp that it spooked Scull, for a moment. It was as if the old Mayan had turned himself into a bird and flown by to taunt him.
Scull felt sour all day, sour and discouraged. For all his skill at catching birds, his calendar keeping, his feet wiggling, he was still hung in a cage off a cliff, with no way down. The contest wasn't for a day or a week; it was for as long as he could convince himself it was worth it to hang in a cage and eat raw birds, at the whim of an old man who sat on a blanket, far below.
The next day, though, was one of brilliant sunlight and Scull's spirits improved. He spent much of the morning in close inspection of the cliff above him. They had lowered him some seventy feet, he judged, and the rope that held the cage seemed sound. But the ascent, if he decided to try one, was sheer. He could saw the bindings of the cage with his precious file and break out; but if he chose the climb he knew he had better do it quickly, while he still had his strength. In a week or two poor diet and cramped quarters would weaken him to such an extent that he could never make the climb, or escape the dark men and their machetes if he did.
For most of the day Scull weighed his chances.
He studied the cliff face; he looked down at Ahumado. In the afternoon he saw some young women filing out of camp with laundry on their heads, making for a little stream not far from camp. Some vaqueros were there, watering their horses. The young women took the laundry far upstream from the men and the horses. Now and then Scull would hear a rill of laughter as the young women pounded the clothes on the wet rocks. The vaqueros mounted and rode away. As soon as they were gone the women began to sing as they worked. Scull could only faintly catch the melody, but the sight of the young women cheered him, nonetheless. It was a fine joke, that his adventuring had finally got him hung off a cliff in Mexico, but it didn't stop the laughter of women, or their flirtations with men.
As the day waned Scull fingered his file, wondering how long it would take him to file through the bindings of
