What was hell for pursuers, they realized, couldn’t be a whole lot nicer for the pursued. Whatever happened to the fugitives in there—starvation, jaguar attack, dementia, a life sentence of voluntary solitary confinement—was probably more ghastly than anything the Mexican court system would have meted out. So, often as not, the federales would rein in their horses and allow any bandit who reached the canyons to try his luck in the prison of his own making.
