After a time Beck struggled to a sitting position, back against a rock. The searing sun beat down on his bared head, his wrists were puffing, fingers numb and swollen from the ropes cutting into his flesh. His body ached miserably, but he would not betray that. His throat burned for water and there was water on his saddle, but he would not mention thirst. There yet was danger! He must keep the other impressed with his inferiority.... "That your pet buzzard, Sam?" he asked once, squinting upward at the wheeling scavenger. "Somebody said you kept one ... to pick up after you...." "You wait! You'll have less to say after a while," McKee growled and stared off toward the heights to the eastward, feigning expectancy. And then, as McKee paced back and forth, covering his helplessness and his fear to make another move, by the sham of watching for other arrivals, Beck's mind began working on a theory. Two-Bits had been shot down the day he had driven McKee off HC range. He had been shot from behind. McKee was the only one in the country who had a personal quarrel with the homely cowboy. It was clear enough to him but he feared that an accusation, bringing some demonstration of guilt, might bring other things that he dared not risk. He played a game that was desperate enough. He lived by the grace of McKee's cowardice and that cowardice had permitted this triumph by the scantest possible margin. To provoke the desperation that he knew was latent in Sam's heart would be the rankest folly. Noon, with blistering heat. McKee drank greedily, water running down his chin and spattering over his boots. It was agony for Beck but he fought against betraying evidence of it, holding his eyes on the other and smiling a trifle and wondering how long he could keep back the groans. McKee squatted in the shade of a rock for a time. Once he looked at Beck while Tom was staring across the desert and that hate flickered up in his eyes again; then Tom looked back and he got up and walked, licking his lips. Two o'clock: "I don't guess they're comin' today, Sam. Maybe you misunderstood 'em." Three: "Sure is too bad to have your plans all go to hell, isn't it, Sam?" The sensation had entirely gone from hands and lower arms. His biceps and shoulders ached as though they had been mauled; his back was shot with hot stabs of pain. But at four o'clock he said: "You'd ought to have killed me, Sam. That'd surprised 'em for sure!"