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“Maybe we can wedge ourselves up?” Joe said “Use our hands and feet and sort of force ourselves upward”

Kurt stretched his arenerate enough force to go up like that”

He looked around In addition to the three bodies, the well seemed to be a repository of junk and trash Tin cans, plastic bottles, even a thin bald tire sat piled and strewn about Suessed they were from animals that had fallen in or someone’s dinner tossed down here when they were finished with the edible parts

Kurt looked at the tire, then at the walls, then at the dead men

“I have an idea,” he said

He searched the thug he’d shoved over the edge, pulling a knife, a Luger-style pistol and a set of compact binoculars from the man’s kit

He found a canteen on his belt It was three-quarters e, no more than a mouthful really, and handed it to Joe

“To your health”

Joe drank the otherthe old tire out of the sand

“Tidying up?” Joe asked

“Very funny”

He dropped down beside the other deadHe untied the rope that bound theonna need this”

“Don’t suppose they have a grappling hook on them?”

“No,” Kurt said “But we don’t need one”

He piled the bodies up in the center of the well, stacking them one on top of the other