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fought to keep his consciousness.
    “I would if it wasn’t yellow,” said Joel. “Of course, I could tell them back home that it was taken off a blond Navaho. They say there are some. But I think they might find that hard to swallow. Besides, it wouldn’t be right, would it?”
    Laughing, he turned and walked away and began the business of cutting and peeling back the dead men’s scalps. When he had four hanging from a belt he’d taken off a Navaho, he put on one of the men’s loincloths. He selected a horse, the best bow and arrows, a spear, and the best knife. He unhobbled the other animals, too, saying, “Couldn’t leave them there to die of starvation or be caught by the lions.”
    Benoni watched him make preparations to move on. One thing he was determined not to do was to beg for help. It was obvious that Vahndert meant to give him none. Even if Vahndert would, he was not going to get Benoni Rider to plead. Benoni would rather die. Probably would die, too.
    After putting the choicest food in the saddle bags of his horse, Joel returned to Benoni. “By rights, I should put a spear through you,” he said. “You’re no damn good, and you might possibly live. Though I doubt it. However, I’m a very forgiving person, I’ll let you make it on your own.”
    He paused, then said, teeth bared in hatred, “Not before I pay you back for what you did on the way home from the Iron Mountains.”
    He drew his foot back and kicked Benoni between the legs. Benoni felt agony, then he fainted.
    When he came to, he found himself sitting up on his knees, bent over, and clutching at the source of pain. Blood was running down his side from the two wounds, and the flies were swarming on that side of his body, forming an almost solid mat of blackness and buzzing. Benoni scraped them away, then began crawling towards a pile of goods beside a Navaho. Painfully, he made the short distance, though he had to stop four times to fight off unconsciousness. Once at the pile, he chose two ceramic water bottles. These were not filled; the water that Joel had poured from them was fast drying on the rocks. However, Joel had not bothered the food. Benoni chose strips of dried meat, mesquite beans, and some hard dry bread. Then, he put on one of the dead men’s pants. They were tight, but they covered him.
    He wrapped several bandannas around the wounds in a very clumsy but effective job to stanch the blood. Armed with a knife, a bow, and a quiver of arrows, and carrying a sack of food, he managed to mount a horse. He almost fell off from weakness and dizziness, but he held on. And he urged the horse down the slope and across a wash and back onto the trail. Then he rode back to the lake, where he dismounted and filled the water bottles.
    After these preparations, he had only one thing to do. That was to find a cave in the mountains where it was cool, where he could command a view of the trail below, where he could recover from his wounds. He hated to loose the horse, for he could use it when he felt well enough to go back on the warpath. But if another band of Navahos found a hobbled horse, they would search the territory and might unearth him. He could not take a chance.
    He took the saddle and reins off and gave the beast its freedom. Then, slowly, panting, full of pain, he climbed the mountain. And, within three hours, he had found one of the caves that pockmarked the face of the mountain. He crawled into its entrance over a pile of dried choya branches left there by rats, ignoring the pain of many little barbed needles. At the rear of the cave, he collapsed. He did not come out of his sleep until early next morning.
    He drank some water and ate some smoked meat and the sweet beans. He waited for a fever to come, knowing that if he became infected from the wounds, he would probably die. But the fever did not come.
    And, on the evening of the third day, he left the cave. He was very weak and stiff from the wounds and thirsty because he had