no more insane than a fox is insane. How she would adjust herself to her new life he did not know. Was it possible that with certain skills, if you didn't learn them young, you could never learn them?

He welded a cage from pipe the Ventura settlers left and carried her out to it. Trying to ignore her screams, he bundled her in and welded the last two bars in place. After he dexterously freed her hands without being bitten, he was disappointed, for she seemed too stupid to untie her feet. The first time he tried to help her, he leaped away with blood streaming down his cheek; she had come within a half inch of taking his eye.

When the breeze came up, he saw she bristled with cold. She shrank from the blanket he proffered. What did she do, burrow in the leaves? After pacing up and down and swearing to himself, he got a hammer and crowbar and pried a wall off his room. He dragged her cage inside and nailed the wall up again, while she shrieked and shook the bars so the little cage thumped on the floor.

When he set a cup of water inside the bars, she shrank into the far corner of the cage. When he drank from it himself and smacked his lips, she squawled and turned her face away. He replaced the cup and waited outside. He heard her knock it over. With raised eyebrows, he fitted a frying pan through the bars and poured water into that, but all day she did not drink.

When he went out to the land he was spading, he heard her strike the pan as she had the cup, then scream with pain. Then he heard the pan clanging against the bars. Apparently she was not so weak as she looked. He was searching for excuses to put off what he would have to do if she would not eat.

The next day his attempts at forcefeeding netted him a finger bitten to the bone and numerous scratches even though he had drawn her tightly against the bars with a coiled sheet. Whether she had taken anything he could not tell. What had gone down when he held her nostrils seemed about equal to what leaped out against his shirt front.

The third day she was weaker, more a huge-eyed, painful what-ever-it-was than the fierce, stinking animal he found in the snare. She would not eat. He considered loosing her, but he knew under best conditions her margin of survival must be slight. She would crawl away and die. She was his fault.

With considerable imagination, he rummaged in his kit until he found some rubber gloves. After tying her against the bars, he forced a sleeping pill between her jaws and 

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