“You don’t mean you’ll . . . leave me here?” she cried in horror.

“Sure,” he exulted.  “If I pulled you out of there, like as not you’d have me beat up again.  None o’ my business!  That’s what yore folks have been drilling into me.  I reckon they’re right.  Anyhow, I’ll play it safe.”

“But—­Oh, you can’t do that.  Even you can’t do such a thing,” she cried desperately.  “Why, men don’t do things like that.”

“Don’t they?  Watch me, missie.”  He leaned over the pit, his broken, tobacco-stained teeth showing in an evil grin.  “Just keep an eye on yore Uncle Dan.  Nobody ever yet done me a meanness and got away with it.  I reckon the Rutherfords won’t be the first.  It ain’t on the cyards,” he boasted.

“You’re going away . . . to leave me here . . . to starve?”

“Who said anything about going away?  I’ll stick around for a while.  It’s none of my business whether you starve or live high.  Do just as you please about that.  I’ll let you alone, like I promised Jeff I would.  You Rutherfords have got no call to object to being starved, anyhow. Whad you do to Dave Dingwell in Chicito?”

After all, she was only a girl in spite of her little feminine ferocities and her pride and her gameness.  She had passed through a terrible experience, had come out of it to apparent safety and had been thrown back into despair.  It was natural that sobs should shake her slender body as she leaned against the quartz wall of her prison and buried her head in her forearm.

When presently the sobs grew fewer and less violent, Beulah became aware without looking up that her tormentor had taken away his malignant presence.  This was at first a relief, but as the hours passed an acute fear seized her.  Had he left her alone to die?  In spite of her knowledge of the man, she had clung to the hope that he would relent.  But if he had gone—­

She began again to call at short intervals for help.  Sometimes tears of self-pity choked her voice.  More than once she beat her brown fists against the rock in an ecstasy of terror.

Then again he was looking down at her, a hulk of venom, eyes bleared with the liquor he had been drinking.

“Were you calling me, missie?” he jeered.

“Let me out,” she demanded.  “When my brothers find me—­”

“If they find you,” he corrected with a hiccough.

“They’ll find me.  By this time everybody in Huerfano Park is searching for me.  Before night half of Battle Butte will be in the saddle.  Well, when they find me, do you think you won’t be punished for this?”

“For what?” demanded the man.  “You fell in.  I haven’t touched you.”

“Will that help you, do you think?”

His rage broke into speech.  “You’re aimin’ to stop my clock, are you?  Take another guess, you mischief-making vixen.  What’s to prevent me from emptying my forty-four into you when I get good and ready, then hitting the trail for Mexico?”