“Better,” the other replied. “I’ll snake him. You bring one of the hides. We’ll have to get a wiggle on, too, or it’ll be daylight.” The noose of a rope was slipped over Charlie’s feet. He was yanked along over the grass. Once a clump of prickly pear raked his cheek. Otherwise he suffered no bruise. The ground was smooth. The thick hide protected his body. Behind him the second horse plodded, dragging his burden by the saddle horn. Again Charlie heard that mysterious, slithering, whispering sound, like a huge snake scraping over dry grass. Only, now, he himself was helping to make this noise in the night. His two horses loomed in the draw. The cavalcade stopped. “Here’s his outfit,” said one. “What’ll we do with ’em?” “Turn ’em loose when we’re through,” the other replied. “They’ll amble off to their own range, an’ whoever finds ’em will have to guess. Simplest.” They moved on. The draw flattened out to the level of the plains, and the flicker of the burning lignite showed ahead. They drew up twenty yards back from the crevice. A wind blew faintly out of the west. Charlie could smell the gas wafted from that underground furnace. A very neat incinerator. It would not be the first time that thieves, surprised red-handed, had acted on the principle that dead men tell no tales. Yet in his shroud of green rawhide, Charlie made no protest and lifted no plea for mercy when the riders dismounted and stood over him. A wavering tongue of fire lifted above the crevice, casting a fitful glow on horses and men. They dragged the bundle of hide and offal to the rim and dumped it in. A strong odor of scorching hair and hide wafted up. They came back to Charlie. “Take his head,” one muttered. “I’ll get him by the feet.” They stooped. When the head of one bent over, and his fingers touched the hide, something went _pow!_ in his face. He fell backward, as if clouted with a hammer. Simultaneously Charlie’s arm thrust straight at the man reaching for his feet, and that outstretched hand held a six-shooter. “Hands up!” he commanded, and the man obeyed. Charlie sat up. The rawhide fell away from him, parted at the lacings. He wiggled his legs out of the narrow pocket. “Keep ’em up, too,” he said cheerfully, “unless you’d rather join your partner.” Charlie stretched his legs casually. He glanced at the body behind him. Not much need to look. The muzzle of the gun had been fairly in the man’s face when he fired. He stepped behind the other man, disarmed him, and then ordered him to walk over beside his horse and mount. With the fellow’s own reata he tied both wrists securely behind his back. “Next time you sew a man in a cowhide and figure to dump him in a burning coal seam to roast alive,” Charlie said, “you’d better search him to make sure he hasn’t got a gun in a Texas holster under his armpit. And try to remember that green hide stretches quite a lot if a man has any strength in his arms, and he has an hour or so to work it loose.”