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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Bloom of Cactus, by Robert Ames Bennet
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Bloom of Cactus
+
+Author: Robert Ames Bennet
+
+Illustrator: Ralph Pallen Coleman
+
+Release Date: August 8, 2007 [EBook #22270]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BLOOM OF CACTUS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+[Illustration: "Lennon elevated his rifle and sent a parting shot over
+the heads of the fleeing riders"]
+
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+BLOOM OF CACTUS
+
+By
+ROBERT AMES BENNET
+
+Frontispiece by
+RALPH PALLEN COLEMAN
+
+Garden City New York
+DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
+1920
+
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+Copyright, 1919, by Doubleday, Page & Company
+All Rights Reserved, including that of translation into
+foreign languages, including the Scandinavian
+
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+CONTENTS
+
+CHAPTER                               PAGE
+
+I. Ambushed                              3
+II. Off Trail                           13
+III. The Gila Monster                   24
+IV. Pards in Peril                      35
+V. Dead Hole                            47
+VI. Her Folks                           55
+VII. Craft and Cruelty                  62
+VIII. Cactus Carmena                    75
+IX. The Man Who Was                     85
+X. The Setter of Traps                  95
+XI. Cross Currents                     107
+XII. A Bargain                         117
+XIII. The Blossoming                   127
+XIV. The Prowler                       136
+XV. Crooked Ways                       145
+XVI. The Drop                          156
+XVII. Death Play                       168
+XVIII. The Attack                      180
+XIX. Out of the Frying Pan--           192
+XX. Into the Fire                      201
+XXI. Treachery                         211
+XXII. The Sacrifice                    222
+XXIII. Out of the Past                 234
+XXIV. His Daughter's Father            245
+
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+
+
+
+BLOOM OF CACTUS
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+AMBUSHED
+
+
+As Lennon drove his heavily packed burro over the round of the ridge
+above the camp spring, all the desolate Arizona waste around him was
+transformed by the splendour of dawn. Up out of mysterious velvety
+blue-black valleys loomed the massive purple-walled fortresses and
+cities of the mountain giants, guarded by titanic skyward towering
+pyramids and turrets of exquisite rose pink.
+
+The burro was not interested in scenery or light effects. He topped the
+ridge and plodded slowly down the steep trail on the far side. Lennon
+lingered to enjoy the glorious illusion of the view.
+
+All too soon, as the glaring sun cleared the high plateau on the eastern
+horizon, the ethereal colours of daybreak faded. The magic towers and
+pyramids lowered and shrank in bulk until they became only bald rugged
+peaks and buttes.
+
+No less remorselessly the flood of hot white sunrays burned away the
+shadow tapestry of the valleys. In place of the cool mysterious vales
+there were left only scorched gulleys and dry washes sparsely set with
+greasewood and sagebrush and cactus.
+
+Yet the interest in Lennon's alert gray eyes increased rather than
+lessened as he swung away down slope after his burro. The trail he was
+following was very old. Above almost every arable valley bottom the
+heights were crested with the stone ruins of ancient pueblos. Not
+improbably, Coronado or others of the early Spanish explorers had ridden
+this trail, west and north around the great bend, into the territory of
+the Moquis and Navahos.
+
+Within the memory of settlers not yet white-haired, more than one
+war-party of renegade Apaches had sneaked along the ancient way in
+search of victims. Every few yards of the bad lands offered perfect
+lurking places for liers-in-wait along the trail.
+
+Lennon glanced at the butt of his rifle in its sheath on the burro's
+pack. He recalled the tales of the old prospector whose copper mine he
+was seeking to rediscover. But his glance was only momentary. He knew
+that twenty-seven years had passed since the last murderous Indian
+outbreak in this land of desolation.
+
+In those days a lone prospector would never have thought of tramping
+this trail without his rifle ready in hand, and the hammer at half cock.
+Lennon began to whistle a dance tune as he sauntered unconcernedly at
+the heels of his slow-moving burro up a rise and along a badly broken
+rocky slope.
+
+They came down into a sandy wash that curved out of the mass of jagged
+ridges on the north. When midway across the bottom of the arroyo Lennon
+heard a sharp ping close above his ear--his sombrero whirled from his
+head. Before the hat struck the sand the rocky sides of the wash
+reverberated with the report of a rifle shot.
+
+Lennon had never before been under fire, yet his reaction to the shot
+was almost instantaneous. One jump brought him alongside the burro. He
+crouched below the level of the pack and clutched the butt of his
+sheathed rifle. Again the gulley walls reverberated. The burro dropped
+dead, with a bullet through his head.
+
+As the beast fell, Lennon hit the sand almost at the same moment, his
+rifle gripped in his right hand. Flattened out behind the inert body of
+the burro, he peered around the end of the pack. A bullet thwacked in
+the sand close at his right. He thought he could see a haze of
+semi-smokeless powder vapour above a jagged crag up-slope where the wash
+twisted in a sharp bend. He fired four shots in quick succession at
+promising notches in the crag.
+
+Immediately after his fourth shot an arm and rifle were thrust up above
+the rock in a convulsive gesture, then suddenly disappeared. No more
+bullets came pinging down the arroyo.
+
+Lennon gathered himself together and bounded on across the bottom of the
+wash to where the trail ran up a small side gully. From the gully he
+started to creep with cautious slowness up the left bank of the arroyo,
+under cover of the rocks and jutting points.
+
+Now crawling, now springing from rock to rock, he worked his way half up
+to the crag, yet failed to catch a single glimpse of the lier-in-wait or
+to draw another shot. His conviction that he had killed the lurker
+became so firm that he stood erect to cover the remaining distance at a
+rush.
+
+From down across the arroyo came a sharp clatter of hoofs. He whirled,
+with his rifle at his shoulder. Over the barrel he saw a scraggy pony
+loping down into the wash along the trail of the burro. The pony's rider
+was armed with a rifle. Lennon took quick aim--only to drop the muzzle
+of his weapon. The rider had flung up a gauntleted hand, palm outward. A
+musical feminine hail rang aslant the arroyo:
+
+"_Wa-hoo!_ Friend! Don't shoot!"
+
+Lennon had already perceived that the rider was a woman. He jumped clear
+of the bank and sprinted down the rocky, sandy bed of the wash.
+
+"Get off!" he shouted. "Hide behind your horse--quick! Danger."
+
+The rider brought her pony to an abrupt halt below the dead burro and
+dropped out of her saddle on the far side. Only her old cowboy sombrero,
+the bottom of her khaki divided-skirt and her high laced boots were
+visible to Lennon.
+
+With a startled snort, the ewe-necked pony plunged and backed around,
+clear of his motionless mistress. Lennon's first glance showed him that
+she was young and more than pretty. He was already leaping over the dead
+burro and brought up close before the girl to shield her with his body.
+
+"Down!" he cried. "Down, before he fires!"
+
+The dark eyes of the girl met his anxious look with a cool, level gaze.
+Her cheeks were ruddy with rich colour under their deep coat of tan. The
+corners of her rather large, but shapely mouth quirked in an amused half
+smile.
+
+"Don't tell me you're not a tenderfoot," she rallied, in a softly
+vibrant, contralto voice. "I heard shots, so came a-running. Your
+attacker must have vamosed, else you'd have collected lead on the
+jump."
+
+"That's so," agreed Lennon. "Only I really think I nailed the beggar.
+Yet you must take no chances. Get under cover while I make sure."
+
+"You've already done that--standing here ten seconds without drawing a
+shot. When a mountain lion misses his game first crack, he sometimes is
+so shamed he clears out. Same way with a broncho Apache."
+
+"Apache? But I thought all Indians were now on reservations."
+
+The girl dropped the reins of her skittish, snorting pony and picked up
+Lennon's new sombrero. Through the middle of the high peak was a neatly
+drilled bullet hole.
+
+"Poor shot--for an Apache," she said. "Good, though, for ventilation."
+
+The dry humour of this brought a twinkle into the Easterner's gray eyes.
+He took the hat from her outstretched gloved hand, but paused with it
+half raised to his close-cropped head.
+
+"If you'll permit me ... my name is Lennon--Jack Lennon--mining
+engineer."
+
+"Engineer is all right, but can you shoot?" queried the girl.
+
+"I have had pretty good luck with running deer. This is my first man."
+
+"All right, Mr. Lennon. I'm going up to look for signs. Come along if
+you want to."
+
+"No, you must stay here. I insist----"
+
+But the girl was already swinging away up the bed of the arroyo, her
+spurs jingling on the stones. Lennon started to block the way but
+changed his mind when he perceived her amused smile. Instead of trying
+to stop her, he attempted to take the lead. The girl quickened her pace.
+
+He had lowered more than one record in his college track meets; but the
+girl was accustomed to rough ground, and he was not. She was still side
+by side with him when he dashed up around the bend in the arroyo.
+
+Both held their rifles ready to fire as they rushed the rear ledges of
+the jagged crag. From the upper side the slopes around were all open to
+view. Lennon came to a panting halt and stared about in frank surprise.
+He had fully expected to see the limp form of a dead Apache lying on the
+rocks.
+
+The girl sprang past him into a niche of the crag and bent to pick up a
+cartridge shell.
+
+"A thirty-two," she said. "Same calibre as my rifle.... And look at this
+track--Apache-made moccasin. Easy to tell the print from that of a Pima
+or Moqui."
+
+To Lennon the track was only a small narrow blur.
+
+"I was right," added the girl. "No trace of blood. You scored a clean
+miss and the bird has flown. All safe around here now, but may be
+dangerous on the trail ahead. Happens I know that a bunch of bronchos
+are loose over this way. They're looking for trouble."
+
+"Bronchos? You mean wild horses--mustangs?"
+
+"No--Apaches. Renegades are called bronchos. What do you figure on doing
+now, with your burro dead? Out prospecting, I noticed by your outfit.
+What were you heading up this way for, anyhow? The agents don't want
+prospectors on the Moqui or Navaho reservations."
+
+"But I didn't intend to cross the boundary," explained Lennon. "About
+seventy miles on around this trail bend, I was to strike in eastward to
+a three-towered mountain. Old friend of mine discovered a big copper
+vein there in the early 'Nineties. A party of Indians ran him out of the
+country and so maimed him that he never could return."
+
+"Why, that must be Cripple Sim and his----" The girl checked herself and
+tightened her lips. "Well, what you going to do about it? Hike back to
+the railroad?"
+
+"Certainly--to get another burro. We might return together for mutual
+protection, unless you'd rather trust to your pony's heels."
+
+The girl looked him up and down with sharp appraisal.
+
+There was no hint of timidity in his smile.
+
+"Don't figure there's any joke about a bunch of bronchos," she said.
+"They like to kill just for pure devilment, and when they can make it
+without risk, their choice of game is a white man."
+
+"Or woman," put in Lennon, no longer smiling.
+
+"Choicer still. But a man will do. How about that hole in your hat?
+Hadn't you better catch the first train East, and keep going?"
+
+Lennon flushed, rallied himself, and smiled.
+
+"I didn't come to Arizona for my health. I might say it was on business,
+but I've no objection to a bit of sport on the side."
+
+The dark eyes of the girl flashed with a look of almost fierce
+intensity.
+
+"I'll call your bluff," she challenged. "We'll see if you're
+four-flushing. Dead Hole--Dad's ranch--is only a few miles southeast of
+Triple Butte, the mountain you're headed for. I know the short cut
+across the Basin. Want to come along?"
+
+"The Indians," protested Lennon. "No, do not misunderstand me, please.
+It is all right for a man to take chances. But a girl like you----"
+
+"Like me? Well, the kind of girl I am is this--I'm going home. I've no
+mind to back up. Good-bye, Mr. Jack Lennon."
+
+He was beside her again before she had reached the bed of the arroyo.
+
+"I have a compass," he said. "Perhaps I'll get to your ranch even if
+your pony outruns me. Only trouble, I can't lug both tools and food."
+
+The girl stopped short to draw off her glove and offer him her strong
+white hand.
+
+"I'm Carmena Farley. I don't like rattlers, coyotes, or quitters."
+
+"I may prove to be a quitter, Miss Farley, but I'd like at least to be
+entered for the game."
+
+The dark-eyed daughter of Arizona looked at him searchingly.
+
+"You will be risking the highest of all stakes--your life," she warned.
+
+Lennon smiled. "Oh, no; not the highest. There are other things more
+precious."
+
+"Maybe," she assented. "But not everybody would agree with you."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+OFF TRAIL
+
+
+By the time the two reached the dead burro again the somber mood of the
+girl had lightened.
+
+"First thing is to sort over your pack," she said. "We'll cull out
+what's not needed."
+
+The girths of the packsaddle were cut loose, and the animal was dragged
+clear of the pack. When Lennon's very creditable diamond-hitch had been
+thrown off, the girl overhauled the pack and made quick decisions.
+
+"We'll leave most of the flour. You can stock up at the ranch with
+cornmeal. Same with your cooking outfit. Throw out all but one drill and
+all the giant powder--no, keep half a dozen sticks."
+
+"But, Miss Farley, I can't begin to lug a quarter of----"
+
+"Don't forget my pony," cut in Carmena.
+
+"He can't carry you and all this truck of mine," remonstrated Lennon.
+"I'll not permit you to walk. You must have hurt your foot. I saw you
+limp."
+
+"I'm not asking your permission, thanks."
+
+As she unbuckled her spurs Lennon noticed that the girl's boots were not
+built with the usual cowboy high heels. They would be suitable for
+walking.
+
+The pony had wandered some distance down the wash, cunningly twitching
+his trailing reins to one side, clear of his hoofs. While Lennon started
+to cache his packsaddle and the other discarded articles of his outfit,
+Carmena went after her would-be stray, limping and gingerly picking her
+steps when she saw that the young man's back was turned. After catching
+her pony she crouched down behind a corner of rock to unlace her boots.
+They came off with difficulty.
+
+Inside the boots, she had been wearing a pair of curious high-top
+boot-moccasins with thick back-doubled toes. In a twinkling she stripped
+off the moccasins and thrust them down into the bottom of one of the
+saddlebags. With her feet uncramped and easy in her relaced boots, she
+sprang into the saddle and loped back up the trail.
+
+Lennon's cache was a cavity under an overhanging ledge. Before he had
+blocked the opening to his satisfaction with fragments of rock the rest
+of his outfit had been securely packed upon the pony by Carmena. Nothing
+was left out except rifles, cartridge-belts and two half-gallon canteens
+of water.
+
+"Keep your gun loaded and never put all your water on your horse." The
+girl gave her companion the two first maxims of desert travel. "Come
+along. No use trying to hide your cache or your trail from Apaches. Only
+another Apache can do that. It's high time we hit out, anyhow."
+
+To the surprise of Lennon, she started up the arroyo. When he joined
+her, the pony, whose reins had been tied to the pack, snorted and shied.
+But at a call from Carmena, the skittish beast followed his mistress up
+the arroyo like a dog.
+
+"How about the chance of running into that murderous savage if we go
+this way?" Lennon inquired.
+
+"You might be safer if you hurried back to the railroad," replied
+Carmena, and she swung the steepening side of the arroyo.
+
+Lennon's lips tightened. He did not again question his guide's choice of
+route. But, like her, he held his rifle ready as they came up over the
+round of a stony ridge. Though neither could see the slightest sign of
+lurking Indians, Carmena hastened to lead her pony across the ridge
+crest and down the other side.
+
+When safe below the skyline the girl broke into a dog trot. She held to
+the pace, on a long slant along the ridge side, until they came up into
+the mouth of a small cañon. Between the bald ledges of the dry channel
+were bars of sand and gravel. Lennon pointed to the hoofprints of a
+horse that had come down the cañon at a gallop.
+
+"This must be the trail of our renegade," he said.
+
+Carmena paused to fix him with a somber gaze.
+
+"The whole bunch of bronchos may be up here, but it's the only way into
+the Basin; and, once in, they may get behind us. Now's your chance to
+quit--your last chance."
+
+This time Lennon was ready for her.
+
+"Lead on, Miss Macduff, and--perhaps you know the rest of the
+quotation."
+
+"Yes," gloomily retorted the girl. "Don't blame me if we meet up with
+those broncs. The joke will be on you."
+
+"How about your safety? Wouldn't you have a better chance if mounted?"
+
+"Want to back out, do you?"
+
+"By no means. My idea is to dump the pack from your pony. Then, if we
+are attacked, I may be able to hold the renegades while you gallop off."
+
+The girl's rich colour deepened into a flush. The thick fringe of her
+lashes swept down to hide the glow in her eyes. Without a word she swung
+ahead, on up the cañon. Though not a little puzzled over her abruptness,
+Lennon felt certain that she had been far from displeased by his
+matter-of-fact suggestion.
+
+He had no chance to urge the desirability of his plan. At his first
+rather loud-spoken remonstrance Carmena flung back at him a curt gesture
+for silence and led on at a quickened pace. Her swift ascent slackened
+only at the twists of the narrowing cañon; at these she would swing in
+close to the inner side of the bends and creep around, with her rifle
+half raised.
+
+By mid-morning the bed of the cañon had become much rougher and steeper.
+The pony, for all his goat-like agility and sure-footedness, found
+difficulty in scrambling up some of the ledges.
+
+Neither the rapid pace nor the climbing bothered Lennon. But between the
+burning heat and his very natural excitement over Carmena's stealthy
+bearing at the turns, he became keyed to rather a high pitch.
+
+After a last sharp turn, the cañon broadened and flared out in a
+trough-like valley at the top of a high, cedar-clad, ridge-rimmed mesa.
+
+"Wait!" Lennon exclaimed. "Look ahead, Miss Farley--all bare and open!
+Not a bit of shelter until we cross to the trees!"
+
+The girl faced about, her red lips twisted in a smile of contempt, but
+her eyes clouded with disappointment.
+
+"I told you, down at the lower end, it was your last chance to quit."
+
+"Quite true. I've burnt my bridges. The question now is one of advance,
+not retreat. What if there are Indian watchers on those ridges? Would it
+not be best for me to hold their attention by going straight up the open
+valley, while you take the horse around through the cedars?"
+
+Carmena met his proposal with a chuckle that brought a flush into
+Lennon's lean face. But her troubled eyes had cleared and there was a
+note of relief underlying her mirth.
+
+"What's the matter with you, too, keeping under cover?" she rallied.
+"Besides, we don't go to the head of the valley. We slant up to the left
+through that notch in the ridge."
+
+This banter, coupled with the assurance that the girl knew exactly what
+she was about, cooled Lennon's excitement. His high strung nerves
+relaxed.
+
+"No need to remind you I'm a tenderfoot," he jibed at himself. "Coming
+up the cañon I've been shooting Apaches at every bend."
+
+The mirth left Carmena's face. Her lips straightened in hard lines and
+her eyes flashed.
+
+"It's no joke," she said. "I'm right glad you're steadying down. If we
+meet that bunch of bronchos, there's just one thing to do--shoot first.
+It'll be time enough to ask questions afterward. Is that clear?"
+
+"Perfectly, Miss Farley. I have you to consider, and I presume no
+peaceful Indians come into these bad lands."
+
+"Pimas and Moquis cut their hair square across the forehead. If you see
+any others, shoot--to kill!"
+
+"I will," said Lennon, certain that he understood the cause of the
+girl's almost fierce insistence. He knew that the treatment of captured
+women by renegade Indians is a far worse fate than death.
+
+Carmena took note of his set jaw, drew in a deep breath, and swung
+around to angle up the slope at the side of the cañon head. Half an hour
+of winding advance through the midst of the scraggly low-growing trees
+brought them to the notch in the rim-ridge. Below this break the mesa
+side pitched steeply into a great basin that was blotched with white
+alkali flats, wave-marked with sand dunes, and broken with jagged hills
+and skeleton-like ridges.
+
+The air was so dry and clear that even far out in the Basin, many miles
+away, Lennon could distinguish patches of green. Nearer at hand appeared
+blurs of a grayish vegetation. But at his pleased exclamation Carmena
+told him that he was looking at no oasis. What he saw was only the green
+of mesquite and palo verde, the fluted columns of the giant sahuaro, and
+the gray of sagebrush. In all that wide waste of desolation no
+trickling rill or even the smallest of pools glinted under the fierce
+rays of the mid-day sun.
+
+Over beyond the north side of the Basin, above the lesser peaks and
+buttes, appeared a higher mountain. The top, dwarfed by distance but as
+clear cut in outline as a cameo, was divided into three thick tower-like
+masses.
+
+"There's your Triple Butte," said Carmena.
+
+"What! So near as that? We can make it by mid-afternoon."
+
+The girl smiled. "You might, if you hurried enough. It's only forty
+miles away on a beeline."
+
+Lennon stared, openly incredulous: "Forty miles?"
+
+"Near fifty-five by way of the water-holes--forty to the ranch. We'll
+strike for the nearest tank. I've noticed your canteen has been empty
+some time. Here's mine."
+
+Though Lennon's throat was parched, he sought to refuse the offered
+canteen, which was still half full. Carmena dropped it at his feet and
+began to zigzag down the mesa side.
+
+Noon had passed before they gained the foot of the steep slope. Carmena
+followed out along a ridge of bare rock, past scattered growths of
+thornscrub and cactus, to where windblown sand lay in sterile drifts
+alongside the ledges. Here she turned up a narrow cleft of the ridge and
+entered the mouth of a small cave.
+
+She knelt to dip her hat down a hole in the bottom of the cave. The hat
+came up brimful of water. She drank deeply, refilled the hat, and backed
+out past Lennon to water the eager pony.
+
+"I'll thank you to fill the canteens and give the bronc as much more as
+he can drink," she directed. "There's firewood on around that point of
+rocks. Keep your gun handy."
+
+Lennon was already drinking from a refilled canteen. He found the
+cliff-shaded water of the spring pure and deliciously cool. The watering
+of the pony took no little time and patience. Though the beast was too
+thirsty to show any of his former skittishness, Lennon's sombrero was
+leaky from the bullet holes.
+
+When at last he drove the pony on along Carmena's trail, he noticed tiny
+cloudlets of dark smoke, like the puffs of a giant's pipe, rising
+straight up in the still air from behind the point of rocks. By the time
+he rounded the corner the smoke had thinned and lightened to an almost
+invisible haze.
+
+A bright little fire of dry sticks was blazing in a sandy hollow.
+Carmena knelt beside it, leaning on the muzzle of her rifle. Her dark
+eyes were gazing off across the desert basin in a look that betrayed
+both eagerness and dread.
+
+"Hello. Ready for the frying pan?" sang out Lennon. Then he perceived
+the tenseness of the girl's attitude and hastened to swing up his rifle.
+"What is it? Sighted another Apache?"
+
+"No. But I put greasewood on the fire. You saw the smoke?"
+
+"A few puffs--yes."
+
+The girl rose and eyed him somberly.
+
+"Few puffs, you say.... If that bunch of bronchos is anywhere within
+fifteen miles--with a clear view this way--we can expect a visit."
+
+"Should we not cut and run?"
+
+"Why? We couldn't hide our tracks. Even if the devils aren't mounted,
+they'd soon overtake us. An Indian can lope along all day, like a
+coyote."
+
+Lennon looked deliberately around at the ridge and sat down to clean and
+reload his rifle. Carmena's eyes flashed.
+
+"You've got the idea," she said. "We'll eat and back up to the spring.
+The cave is an easy place to hold. You said you can shoot?"
+
+"Rather well. Very long range rifle, too. I've knocked over a caribou
+with it at nearly a mile, up on Hudson Bay."
+
+Carmena glanced at the high-power weapon and then raised her flashing
+eyes to gaze over the bent head of its owner. Midway out across the
+desolate Basin, from the top of a craggy hill to the right of the line
+of Triple Butte, puffs of smoke were rising into the cloudless
+steel-blue sky.
+
+The girl hastened to loosen her pony's pack and take from her saddlebags
+a frying pan, several slices of bacon, and a big chunk of corn pone.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE GILA MONSTER
+
+
+The bacon was ready almost as soon as Lennon's rifle. Carmena rose from
+beside the embers of the fire with the pan and corn bread.
+
+"Fetch the canteens," she directed. "We'll eat over here under that
+overhanging rock."
+
+But at the edge of the shade, below the outjutting cliff ledge, she
+stopped short with her gaze fixed upon an object close to the
+sand-sculptured wall of rock.
+
+"Ever see a Gila monster?" she queried.
+
+"No. You don't mean to say--really----"
+
+Lennon had sprung forward beside her. His curious eyes at once perceived
+the hideous, thickset lizard that lay flattened upon the shadowed sand
+as if in a torpor. The reptile's dirty orange-mottled black body was as
+loathsome as its venomous blunt-nosed head.
+
+"Big specimen--almost two feet long," remarked Carmena. "Hold on. Don't
+shoot. That sure would tell the bronchos where we are."
+
+"But if we are to eat here?" questioned Lennon. "I don't fancy the
+company of this sweet wiggler--not that I believe the wild yarns about
+them. All lizards are non-poisonous. No poison glands have ever been
+found in the mouth of these so-called monsters."
+
+"Just look and see," rejoined the girl. "But look in the lower jaw.
+Trouble is, you science sharps expected to find hollow fangs and the
+sacs above, like a rattler's. Do you know why a Gila monster flops on
+his back when he bites? It's to let the loose poison in his lower jaw
+drain into the hollow teeth."
+
+"Really?"
+
+The girl faced him with a challenging look.
+
+"If they turn over, it's as bad as being struck by a six-foot
+diamond-back. They lock their jaws, and the poison---- But I've seen a
+man snap the head off one of those big snakes. Let's see if you have the
+nerve to toss this little lizard outside."
+
+Lennon's smile faded as he perceived that the girl was in sober earnest.
+Very naturally he hesitated. He was not given to bravado, and even
+without her assertion that the reptile was deadly poisonous, he would
+have loathed to touch so repulsive a creature.
+
+But there is no spur so galling as the derisive smile of a comely young
+woman. Lennon dropped his rifle, walked in beside the Gila monster, and
+suddenly clutching the lizard in mid-body, flung it several yards out
+upon the sun-scorched sand. The girl's scorn gave place to a look of
+grave approval.
+
+"You'll do," she said. "Fact is, they're so sluggish in the shade you
+didn't run the slightest risk. You couldn't know that, though. Yes,
+you'll do. Only don't try playing with the fellow out there in the sun.
+The light livens them up."
+
+The advice was needless. Lennon felt quite ready to sit down beside the
+girl and start eating, though he first rubbed his hands thoroughly in
+the sand. Neither had much to say. They were alike intent upon
+satisfying their keen hunger and keeping a sharp lookout against the
+chance of an attack.
+
+After a time Lennon noticed that the Gila monster had crawled up on a
+little sand ridge in the full glare of the mid-day sun. It was viciously
+snapping its jaws and twitching its thick head from side to side.
+Carmena gave no heed to the angered reptile. She was gazing off toward
+the jagged hill from which had risen the distant smoke puffs.
+
+As the girl finished her share of the hearty food she leaned sideways,
+with her ungloved hand on the sand at the edge of the cliff shadow. Like
+the hand, her wrist was white and well rounded. She drew off her old
+sombrero.
+
+Lennon's gaze lifted to the wealth of dark hair that lay coiled about
+her shapely head. The girl was neither pretty nor beautiful, yet there
+was a certain handsomeness about her strong features.
+
+Out of the tail of his eye Lennon caught a glimpse of a black and orange
+blur streaking toward them over the hot sand. He had seen many darting
+lizards that day. But none had moved more swiftly than the clumsily
+built Gila monster now darted at the disturbers of his torpor. There was
+no time for thought. Lennon sensed that the reptile aimed to strike at
+Carmena's bared wrist.
+
+"Jump!" he cried, and flung himself forward to block the attack with his
+out-thrust right hand.
+
+An instant later the Gila monster snapped its gaping jaws together on
+the fleshy edge of Lennon's palm. It whirled over upon its back. Caught
+outstretched and almost prone upon the ground, Lennon sought to wrench
+his hand free and draw away. The heavy lizard was dragged along with its
+crooked legs futilely clawing the air. But its powerful jaws remained
+clenched on the hand with bulldog tenacity.
+
+A voice shrilled in Lennon's ear: "Hold still! Hold still!"
+
+Carmena stooped over the writhing monster to thrust the muzzle of a
+small revolver against the side of its lower jaw. The bullet shattered
+the jaw and blew it half off. A vigorous kick hurled the now harmless
+reptile aside.
+
+Lennon had started to raise himself to a sitting position. Carmena flung
+herself upon her knees and caught up his torn hand to her red lips. She
+sucked hard at the wounds----
+
+With the suddenness of a dropped veil, the hot, white glare of the
+desert noon went black before Lennon's eyes. He sank down upon the sand,
+unconscious.
+
+When the light of returning life glimmered back into his brain, he first
+was dimly aware of a pale Madonna face that appeared to hover close
+above him. His clearing gaze gradually made out the girl's features.
+There was no colour even in her lips. Her eyes were wide with grief and
+dread.
+
+She saw the dawning consciousness in his eyes.
+
+"Jack!" she whispered--"Jack!--You haven't left me--you won't leave me!"
+
+"Who--what's the matter?---- Oh, that----"
+
+He sought to raise his right arm. It was strangely numb and heavy. The
+girl lifted it from her lap, where it had been lying. He saw that her
+silk handkerchief had been knotted around his bared forearm and twisted
+very tight with the barrel of the little revolver. From the tourniquet
+down, the arm and wrist and hand were black, and beginning to swell.
+The lacerations torn in the side of the palm by the Gila monster's
+fangs appeared to be clotted with purple blood.
+
+"I rubbed in snake medicine--permanganate of potash crystals," quavered
+the girl. "That'll kill the poison and not hurt you a bit. You're all
+right now--only we'll have to ease off a little on your arm. Take some
+good deep breaths."
+
+Though sick and giddy and still faint, Lennon forced himself to obey. He
+rallied sufficiently to sit up. Carmena loosened the tourniquet and
+briskly rubbed his swollen hand and arm. The tingling pain of returning
+circulation roused him like a stimulant. But the poison had not all been
+sucked from the wounds or counteracted in the veins by the permanganate.
+Before the girl could again twist tight the tourniquet he sank down for
+the second time, unconscious.
+
+Out of the utter blankness of oblivion he first dreamed that he was
+alternately swimming through a rough sea and rocking in a wave-tossed
+boat---- A gush of water dashed into his face--then the sea appeared to
+solidify into dry sand. He became conscious that Carmena was violently
+rolling him from side to side and slapping his face. She paused in this
+punishment to pump his arms above his head, forcing the air in and out
+of his lungs.
+
+He struggled feebly to free himself. The girl jerked him to a sitting
+position and, with a desperate output of lithe strength, grasped his
+body from behind to heave him upright. He gained his feet, but was far
+too giddy to stand alone. The girl clasped his left arm about her neck
+and rushed him out beside the pony.
+
+"Brace up!" she breathlessly implored him. "Grip hold of his mane with
+your good hand. We'll have to hit out. The broncs are coming."
+
+She ran back to snatch up Lennon's sombrero, the rifles and one of the
+canteens. The other had been emptied into Lennon's face. Out again she
+darted to clap the sombrero on his drenched head and steady him with a
+hand on the tourniquet. A guttural command started the pony off at a
+walk. The direction chosen by his mistress was northwest, aslant the
+Basin, almost at right angles to the jagged hill where she had seen the
+smoke puffs.
+
+For a while Lennon tottered and reeled like a drunken man. Time and
+again he stumbled and would have sunk down upon the hot sand but for the
+convulsive clutch of his left hand on the pony's mane and the strong
+support of Carmena at his other side. He was giddy and nauseated and
+leaden-footed. Every step required an agonized effort of will power.
+
+Yet the exertion of walking proved the best of treatment for him.
+Before half a mile had been covered, his head had cleared and his
+strength was fast returning. To offset this benefit, his arm was now
+blacker than ever and rapidly swelling. Carmena gave him a copious drink
+from the canteen, hesitated, glanced toward the smoke hill, and came to
+a desperate decision.
+
+"We can't let that arm go," she said. "The tie must come off. Get ready
+for a rush."
+
+At her command, the pony quickened his pace to a jog trot. As they ran
+along beside him Carmena untwisted her revolver from the tourniquet.
+This time Lennon did not lose consciousness. Either the remaining poison
+had been almost destroyed by the permanganate or else his previous
+reactions to the venom had rendered him partly immune.
+
+Though the nausea and giddiness again threatened to overcome him, the
+support of Carmena and her pony kept him steadied. Very soon the run
+under the hot sun had him panting for breath. His highly oxygenized
+blood gushed through his arteries in a veritable stream of life. His
+face glistened with a profuse sweat.
+
+Carmena held to the pace until he fell down, gasping for water and
+completely exhausted. The wonder was that he had been able to do so much
+after the terrible shock of the Gila monster poison. They had come into
+the midst of scattered mesquite trees, which offered a degree of cover.
+Carmena first tied up the pony, then opened the half gallon canteen for
+Lennon.
+
+While he sought to quench his fierce thirst, she hastily threw off the
+pony's loosened pack. Silk tent, blankets, prospector's tools,
+packsacks, bacon, flour--all were discarded. From her saddlebags she
+dumped half of her own bacon and all but a pint of cornmeal. Into its
+place she slipped the half dozen sticks of dynamite, with their fuses
+and caps.
+
+One of Lennon's full gallon canteens was slung to the saddlehorn,
+opposite the horsehair rope. From its mate the girl refilled the smaller
+canteen, which Lennon had already more than half emptied. She took a
+deep drink and then carefully closed both canteens.
+
+"Sorry, but we must cut it close on water," she said. "The bronchos have
+us headed off from the other tanks. With your hand useless, we can't
+fight. We'll have to swing around through the dry side of the Basin. No
+time to lose! They'll be on our trail before long."
+
+Lennon sprang to his feet.
+
+"Mount your horse and ride as fast as you can," he ordered. "I'll trot
+along after you. Don't bother about me. I can shoot well enough
+left-handed to hold off the beggars until dark."
+
+Carmena suddenly came close to him, her eyes aglow with soft radiance.
+She caught up his injured hand. It was still swollen and bleeding, but
+the purple-black discoloration had lightened to red; her deft fingers
+tore a strip from her handkerchief and bound up the ragged wounds.
+
+"There. Now you'll get on and ride," she said. "You don't suppose I'll
+leave you to those devils, after you saved my life!"
+
+"But it is you who have saved mine, Miss Farley."
+
+"To say that--when you jammed your hand into the monster's mouth! If he
+had bit me I'd have had no show at all. You didn't know how to treat the
+poison. No. Either the bronchos will get us both, or we're going to win
+through to the ranch together."
+
+"But, Miss Farley----"
+
+The heat-flush in the girl's tanned cheeks deepened to rose.
+
+"I never before knew a man like you, Jack. Won't you call me Carmena?"
+
+The candid directness of this rather took Lennon's breath. But the girl
+was of the desert--efficient, resolute, crude in dress, yet rich
+coloured as the bloom of the red-flowered cactus. She had saved him
+from the horrible death of the Gila monster's poison and was now intent
+upon saving him from even worse fate at the hands of the murderous
+Apaches.
+
+He caught up her willing hand in an eager clasp.
+
+"Carmena!--To have a girl like you for pal--it's simply ripping!"
+
+"Pal?" she repeated the word after him, as if not quite certain of its
+meaning. "Oh, you mean pard. Yes, we're partners now--for this deal at
+least--whether it means life or death."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+PARDS IN PERIL
+
+
+As Lennon's clasp relaxed, the girl's tightened. She drew him toward the
+pony.
+
+"You've got to ride," she said. "You can't stand the pace. That poison
+is no joke. Don't want to hold me back, do you?"
+
+The question overcame Lennon's reluctance. The girl had refused to leave
+him, and she was right about the poison. He could endure the severe pain
+of his wounded hand, but he was still weak and badly shaken from the
+effects of the venom. Unless he rode he would be a drag upon her.
+
+"Very well," he agreed, and he permitted her to help him clamber up into
+the saddle.
+
+No time was lost over lengthening the stirrup leathers. Carmena handed
+him his rifle and the half-emptied gallon canteen, caught up the small
+one and her own rifle, and started off in lead of the pony. Her easy
+swinging stride, though seemingly unhurried, covered the ground faster
+than the pony could walk. Every little while the animal had to break
+into a jog to catch up with her.
+
+At the far end of the scattered mesquite growth Carmena edged off to the
+left, down a shallow wash that brought them around to the west side of a
+ridge. Under cover of the gaunt earth-rib of worn rock she headed north,
+straight for the distant towers of Triple Butte.
+
+The deceptive green of occasional palo-verde bushes now gave place to
+the columns of the giant sahuaro. The fluted, leafless stems of these
+high-towering cactus candelabras bristled with fierce thorns, yet each
+was crowned with the glory of a gorgeous foot-wide blossom.
+
+Over the loose hot sand, amidst this shadeless mockery of a forest,
+Carmena swung steadily along at her graceful stride. Her movements
+seemed as lacking in effort as the lope of a coyote or the bound of a
+cat. Lennon would not have realized how greatly she was exerting herself
+had he not seen how frequently she drank from her canteen.
+
+No one of white blood, however thoroughly inured to thirst, can walk
+fast under the blistering sun, in the bone-dry air of the desert,
+without need of much water. Lennon, though riding, was no less parched
+than the girl. He was fresh from a moist climate, and the Gila monster
+poison had put him into a feverish condition. Hard as he tried, he could
+not resist drinking. His canteen was emptied even sooner than
+Carmena's.
+
+This was little past mid-afternoon. They had left the sahuaros behind
+and were coming down among widely scattered salt bushes to the border of
+an utterly barren alkali flat. For the first time since the stop in the
+mesquite, Carmena halted her quick advance. But it was not to rest. The
+feverish crimson of Lennon's face sobered her reassuring smile. She
+peered searchingly back along the trail, glanced at the sun, and hastily
+transferred to their empty canteens all but a quart from the full
+canteen on the saddlehorn.
+
+"We've got to make it last till sundown, Jack," she warned. "Then, if
+only we can hold our lead, we'll be able to keep going all night."
+
+Lennon drew out two half dollars. "How about trying these in our
+mouths?"
+
+"They'll help," she replied, and she took one. "Be ready to tie your
+neckerchief over your nose, soon as we strike the alkali."
+
+The wisdom of this advice was evident when they started out across the
+snow-white flat. Every step stirred up clouds of alkali dust that hung
+about the fugitives like thick smoke. The impalpable powder penetrated
+their clothes, smarted in their eyes, and all but choked them, even
+behind the veiling neckerchiefs.
+
+Before they had half crossed the fearful dust flat Carmena was walking
+as slowly as the pony. At the far side she sank down beside a
+thick-stemmed cactus. Lennon, half delirious from fever, sought to
+spring off, with the vague idea of forcing her to ride. He succeeded
+only in tumbling upon the sand. The startled pony shied clear. With a
+smothered cry, Carmena leaped up to grasp his bridle.
+
+"Close call!" she gasped at Lennon. "If he'd made off--no show for us at
+all."
+
+Lennon was too far gone for speech. His canteen was already half empty.
+Carmena gave him a sip from her own and dragged him around until his
+head lay in the small blot of shade made by a cactus stem. Half an hour
+passed before he was able to get back into the saddle. But the rest
+appeared to have fully restored the girl's strength. She set off at a
+pace that again forced the pony into an occasional jog.
+
+After a time the sheltering ridge ran down into the sandy level of the
+desert. Yet Carmena continued to find a route protected by inequalities
+of the ground or by growths of cactus and thorn scrub from any eyes that
+might be peering across the Basin. As the sun sank nearer to the western
+rim of buttes and mesas she kept an ever closer watch to the rear. Her
+own and Lennon's canteens were again empty and her seemingly tireless
+stride was at last beginning to flag.
+
+By the time the lower edge of the sun touched the rim of the Basin the
+fugitives had come opposite a long range of broken hills. Carmena
+dragged herself wearily up over an out-thrust spur ridge. Lennon was
+swaying in the saddle, and his tongue, like hers, had begun to swell.
+But the girl did not offer to open the canteen on the saddlehorn.
+
+At the top of the ridge she hurried the pony down below the skyline and
+crept back to peer over a ledge. Far to the rear, across the
+shadow-streaked waste, her anxious eyes sighted a group of moving dots.
+She ran to seize the pony's bridle and urge him into a jog.
+
+"Must hurry!" she rasped in a thirst-harshened voice. "They're trailing
+us--on the lope!"
+
+The alarm shocked Lennon out of his semi-delirium. His relaxing grip on
+the rifle tightened. He straightened in the saddle. Carmena did not look
+back at him. She was turning into the mouth of a wash that appeared to
+head over toward the far side of the hills. Half a mile up the wash the
+gravelly bottom changed to loose stones. Carmena smashed the smaller
+canteen and tossed it off to one side.
+
+Some distance farther along the footing became all rock. Carmena stopped
+on a flat ledge and flung the big canteen she was carrying as far as she
+could up the arroyo. She then changed from her boots to the long-legged
+moccasins that she had hidden in one of the saddlebags. No less hastily
+she cut strips from the Navaho saddleblanket to tie over the pony's
+lightly shod hoofs.
+
+The sun had now been down for several minutes, and the clear desert
+twilight was beginning to fade. Carmena turned the pony and carefully
+led him at an easy angle up a flight of solid step ledges on the side of
+the arroyo. Half circling a hill, she descended another arroyo that ran
+northwest, back down into the level desert.
+
+By the time the edge of the broken ground had been reached dusk was
+deepening into night. Carmena halted and eased Lennon down out of the
+saddle. Water, trickled a few drops at a time between his cracked lips,
+gradually soothed his swollen tongue and parched throat. His fever was
+already subsiding in the coolness of nightfall.
+
+Carmena gave him almost half of the remaining quart of water. A half
+pint more she used to rinse her own mouth and moisten the nostrils of
+the pony. The few sips left were held in reserve.
+
+Scant as was the water ration, it enabled both the girl and Lennon to
+suck at lumps of raw bacon. They lay silently mouthing and chewing the
+greasy fat, their rifles ready and their ears alert for the slightest
+thud of approaching hoofs. But no sound broke the deathlike stillness of
+the desert night.
+
+"Looks like we fooled 'em," whispered Carmena. "They must have found the
+canteens--figured we'd gone desperate with thirst and headed on across
+for the nearest water hole. Can you mount again?"
+
+Lennon dragged himself to his feet.
+
+"You're wonderful!" he murmured. "If you'd leave me here--I'm only a
+drag. You could ride at a gallop----"
+
+She grasped his arm and pushed him around beside the horse.
+
+"Don't be looney. We can go all night without a drop. Count on me to
+out-travel the pony till sun-up. Get on. You don't suppose I'm going
+back on my pard, do you?"
+
+There was no room for argument. Lennon's condition was still so serious
+that she had to help him into the saddle. With the pony in lead, she set
+out straight toward the North Star.
+
+Before many miles Lennon caught himself lapsing into a doze. He had
+almost dropped his rifle. To make certain against its loss, he thrust it
+into his cartridge belt like a pistol. After this he drowsed off again
+into a half torpor of sleep and exhaustion. Some automatic functioning
+of his subconscious mind kept him balanced in the saddle.
+
+When at last he roused from the stupor it was to a miserable
+realization of pain and weariness and cold. A bleak gray light was
+filtering over the eastern rim of mesas down into the blackness of the
+Basin. Dry as was this land of desolation, it was not so utterly arid as
+the sea-level deserts of the lower Colorado.
+
+Lennon shivered and forced open his heavy eyelids. He first made out the
+bowed figure of Carmena plodding along, with one backward-dragged hand
+noosed in the reins of the weary pony. The gray light gradually
+brightened. He saw that the girl was swaying, almost staggering. He
+forced out a hoarse cry:
+
+"Stop!"
+
+The call broke the hypnotic spell of motion that alone had enabled the
+girl to keep placing one leaden foot before the other. She tottered and
+sank down and lay still. Lennon dropped out of the saddle to bend over
+her. Like the knees of the pony, the girl's moccasins were torn with the
+thorns of cacti and desert bushes, against which they had struck in the
+dark.
+
+She had not fainted. Her dark eyes gazed up at Lennon, wide with an
+anguish of self-reproach.
+
+"Used up--can't make it," she whispered. "No chance for both--after
+sun-up. Ride hard toward Triple Butte."
+
+Lennon's reply was to open the canteen and hold it to her lips. Only a
+few drops were left when she managed to thrust it away. He put his
+uninjured arm about her slender waist and lifted her to her feet.
+
+"Ride--your turn," he commanded. "I walk. Never say die!"
+
+Her sunken eyes lighted with a faint glow. A last flicker of strength
+enabled her, with his help, to pull herself into the saddle. Lennon
+caught up her rifle and started off toward Triple Butte in desperate
+haste.
+
+An hour after sunrise found him still staggering forward almost at a dog
+trot. The northern border mesas of the Basin were now only a short
+distance ahead. But already his swollen tongue was beginning to blacken
+in his mouth. When at last he came to the foot of the lower mesa he
+could barely totter.
+
+Carmena rode up alongside. She huskily whispered for him to hand over
+her rifle and grasp the stirrup leather. He had not dragged along beside
+the pony more than a hundred paces when a jerk on the reins headed the
+weary beast around into the mouth of a broad cañon. Carmena uttered a
+sharp cry and pointed ahead. Near the base of the canon wall a dark
+patch on the ledges was shimmering in the sunrays.
+
+Hope flared high in the hearts of the perishing fugitives--only to
+flicker and die out again in utter despair. The black patch was
+water--a tiny spring that seeped from a horizontal crevice between the
+stratas of rock--but its trickle was spread out in a paper-thin sheet
+down the sloping lower ledges. At their foot it vanished in the dry sand
+of the cañon bed.
+
+They could cool their swollen tongues and so obtain temporary relief
+from their suffering. But they could not suck up enough water to quench
+their terrible thirst. Nor could they collect in the canteen even a gill
+of water to take with them.
+
+Lennon, however, was an engineer. Even while hope fled from him, his
+eyes were peering around with the scrutiny of a trained observer and
+thinker.
+
+His roving gaze fixed upon a bank a little way out from the cañon mouth.
+He staggered down to it and came back with a handful of dry clay. This
+he spread out upon the least tilted of the wet ledges. By patting and
+scraping he soon had a little ball that kneaded like putty in his eager
+fingers.
+
+Carmena already had perceived his purpose and was hurrying to fetch a
+heaping hatful of the dry clay. Before many minutes they had built a
+little concave dam, in which the down-seeping water slowly but steadily
+collected.
+
+When at last they had quenched their thirst Lennon took his rifle and
+went to sit under a shady ledge where he could look out into the Basin.
+Carmena lingered at the spring to water the pony and fill the canteen.
+She then gave all the cornmeal to the beast and brought slices of raw
+bacon to share with Lennon.
+
+He clasped the hand in which she held out his first slice.
+
+"So we made it, after all. Good work?"
+
+"Yes, we made it, Jack!" she exulted. "Close shave--but worth the risk.
+I know now for sure you're a man, a real man!"
+
+Her glowing eyes brought a deeper red into Lennon's sunburnt face.
+
+"I'm still pretty much of a tenderfoot," he protested. "And there's this
+game arm. I'd rather run than fight."
+
+The girl smiled.
+
+"That's all right till you get back the use of your hand. But it won't
+hurt to show those bronchos the range of your rifle. They're coming a
+bit too fast to suit us."
+
+Lennon stared out across the open plain. Rather more than a mile away a
+dozen or more riders were loping along the trail of the fugitives.
+
+The sights slid up on Lennon's rifle. He put the butt to his left
+shoulder and rested the barrel across a rock. The first bullet raised a
+puff of dust a little to the left of the Indians. The second must have
+shrieked close over their heads. They wheeled their ponies and scattered
+out in fanlike formation.
+
+Lennon's fourth shot caught one of the ponies broadside. The beast
+tumbled over and lay motionless. Its rider dashed behind a cactus. The
+rest of the Apaches wrenched their ponies about and raced to get back
+beyond range. They had not bargained on a rifle that could shoot so far.
+A renegade prefers to kill without risk to himself.
+
+"That's enough," chuckled Carmena. "There's no cover for 'em unless they
+crawl up afoot. Some will ride around and climb the mesa. Time we were
+moving. Come on. We'll beat 'em into the Hole."
+
+Lennon elevated his rifle and sent a parting shot over the heads of the
+fleeing riders. When he came running back into the cañon mouth Carmena
+had the canteen swung to the saddlehorn and was lacing on her boots, in
+place of the torn moccasins.
+
+After a last deep drink from the pool and another sombreroful for the
+pony, the little dam was carefully scraped off the ledge and the clay
+covered with a loose boulder. The Apaches would be able to lap the wet
+stone but not to drink. They were not engineers or dam builders.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+DEAD HOLE
+
+
+The race up the cañon was far different from the terrible flight of the
+previous day and the misery of the night. The cool spring water had been
+very refreshing, lofty cliffs shadowed the cañon bed from the hot
+morning sunrays, and the pain of Lennon's lacerated hand had eased to a
+dull ache. He took turn about with Carmena, riding and running.
+
+The cañon bottom was fairly smooth. For more than an hour the fugitives
+raced up the great cleft between the towering precipices and past narrow
+side cañons. At last they came to a break in the sheer walls. The cliff
+on the right leaned back in a series of terraces that formed a broken
+giant stairway to the top of the mesa.
+
+Carmena led the pony up a sloping shelf ledge. The line of ascent picked
+out by her practised eye proved unexpectedly easy. As they climbed in
+steep zigzags from terrace to terrace Lennon trailed behind. Carmena
+noticed his frequent glances down into the cañon bottom.
+
+"Don't worry," she said. "They didn't rush the cañon mouth--they
+crawled. If any circled and climbed the mesa, the side cañons cut 'em
+off from us. We'll beat 'em to the Hole."
+
+"The Hole--we'll find help there?" queried Lennon.
+
+"Slade is away. But I figure we'll be safe enough, once we get in.
+There's Dad and--my sister."
+
+"If they are at all like you, Carmena!"
+
+The girl paused on a ledge to gaze down at him with a somber, clouded
+look that brightened into a tender smile.
+
+"Elsie is as much like me as a lily is like a cactus. No thorns about
+_her_. She's cuddlier than a kitten. Eyes bluer than forget-me-nots,
+Jack; hair yellow as corn silk. She's only eighteen and sweet as honey."
+
+"I'm picturing an angel," bantered Lennon. "Your father must be a fine
+man to have two such daughters."
+
+The flush in the girl's tanned cheeks deepened. But the soft glow of her
+eyes faded and left them dull and haggard.
+
+"Dad's been unlucky all 'round," she murmured. "Not his fault, either.
+He came West for his health--almost died--one lung gone."
+
+"Hard lines," sympathized Lennon. "Ranch work can't be easy for a sick
+man."
+
+The girl climbed to another terrace before she replied:
+
+"That's not the worst of it. Slade came six years ago--when we were
+starving. Dad got in with him. He can't break loose. If only we could
+get away, Dad would be all right."
+
+"Yes?" said Lennon.
+
+Carmena remained silent until he came panting up after her to the top of
+the steepest ascent. While he paused to catch his breath she opened the
+canteen. They were by now badly in need of a drink. Before starting on
+up the ledges she met Lennon's smiling gaze with a look of tremulous
+appeal.
+
+"Dad used to be a lawyer," she faltered. "If only you'll try to like him
+and--and help."
+
+"Of course!" exclaimed Lennon. "Aren't we pals? You're pulling me
+through this scrape. Perhaps I can pull him out of his hole. You called
+it Dead Hole, didn't you?"
+
+"Yes," murmured the girl. "That's the name and--it fits."
+
+"You've stood by me. I'll stand by you," Lennon pledged himself. "We'll
+look for that copper mine together. I'm working for a big copper
+syndicate. If I relocate the mine I am to receive twenty thousand in
+cash and ten per cent. of the stock. Your half of the cash should pull
+your dad out of his hole."
+
+The girl's eyes dilated.
+
+"Don't--don't tell Dad!" she gasped. "It's not the money I want. You
+don't sabe. Promise you won't say a word to Dad about the money--or the
+mine?"
+
+"Why, if you do not wish me----"
+
+"Not a word--not the barest hint! Promise!"
+
+"Very well. Only----"
+
+"You'll learn all too soon!" she murmured, and she started quickly up
+the last ascent.
+
+When they rounded the brink, twelve hundred feet above the cañon bed,
+the girl did not linger to talk. She dropped the pony's reins and
+started off at a jog across the hot, level, cedar-dotted top of the
+mesa.
+
+Lennon galloped ahead of her, tied the pony, and ran on afoot. Carmena
+copied the maneuver. In this manner, taking turn about, they covered the
+ground almost as fast as if both had been mounted. As each drank from
+the canteen at every stop and Carmena twice wet the nostrils of the
+pony, none was yet exhausted when, at the end of five or six miles, the
+girl headed down into a quickly narrowing valley.
+
+The funnel-shaped trough pinched to a steep chute between precipices
+that leaned closer together overhead the deeper the fugitives descended.
+The bed of the narrow mountain crack became even more steep. In places
+the pony had to jump like a goat down five and six-foot ledges. Time and
+again he slid on his haunches. At the worst place of all the beast was
+saved from certain destruction only by snubbing his horsehair picket
+rope around a corner of rock and so easing his descent to better
+footing.
+
+But, as Carmena remarked, the steeper the grade the sooner it was ended.
+They came down into the bottom of the lower cañon, bruised and exhausted
+but with no bones broken.
+
+"Almost there," panted Carmena, and she reeled ahead along the
+boulder-strewn bed of the chasm.
+
+At the second turn the cliff ended in a vertical slit-glare of sunlight.
+The pony whinnied. Carmena led the way out into an oval cliff-walled
+valley, two or three miles long and half as broad.
+
+First to strike Lennon's desert-starved eyes was the vivid grateful
+verdure of irrigated cornfields. Beyond, in browning hay meadows, grazed
+a herd of cattle and twenty or thirty head of horses. Three quarters of
+a mile to the left, in a cavity forty feet up the rock wall and well
+under an overhang of the towering precipices, nestled a group of stone
+ruins.
+
+Lennon pointed toward the ancient buildings.
+
+"Cliff dwellings, I take it."
+
+"Yes--I told Elsie to be ready with the ladder. We'll make it in time
+for the call of Cochise."
+
+Before Lennon could inquire the meaning of this, she sprang upon the
+pony and loped along the cliff foot toward the cliff ruins. As Lennon
+jogged after her he saw a rope ladder slide down the under cliff,
+followed by a rope reeved through a crane that thrust out from another
+opening in the façade of the cliff building.
+
+Carmena's saddle and bags, saddle blanket and rifle, and the
+canteen--all were fast to the hoisting rope when Lennon came staggering
+and panting up beside the girl. She pointed toward the head of the
+valley and caught the rifle from him to tie it on the load.
+
+"A miss is as good as a mile," she said. "We'll just have time to get
+up. Cochise and Pete must have ridden over around and come down Hell
+Cañon. Ours was Devil's Chute."
+
+Lennon frowned at the pair of riders who were racing swiftly down aslant
+from the head of the valley.
+
+"We'll be ready to pick them off," he said. "There's no cover under
+here."
+
+"Too late for that," sighed Carmena. "Dad won't let us.
+Besides--Pete----"
+
+"But when the murderers have tried to kill you!--And they'll steal all
+his cattle."
+
+The girl winced and looked down.
+
+"No. You see Dad--he is friends with all the--Indians hereabouts. I'll
+be safe enough now, soon as Cochise cools off. It's only a question of
+you."
+
+"I see!" exclaimed Lennon. "You know the renegades. You would have been
+safe at the first. You have risked your own life just to save mine. I'll
+never forget that, Carmena."
+
+"If only--if only you'll remember--when you know!" she whispered, and
+she turned to start up the rope ladder.
+
+As Lennon stepped forward after her he noticed that the saddle load had
+already been hoisted above his reach and was rapidly going higher.
+
+A rope ladder draped upon the face of a smooth rock wall and unfastened
+below is at best not easy to climb. Lennon had to crook his right elbow
+through the rungs to get any use of his injured arm. But the riders
+racing swiftly across the head of the valley would soon be within short
+rifle range. Lennon's left hand was only a few rungs below Carmena's
+boot heels all the way up the ladder.
+
+At the top the girl pulled herself in over the worn stone sill of a
+massive-walled doorway. As Lennon scrambled up and through the deep
+entrance after her he glimpsed a thin gray face, with bleary red eyes
+and loose lips, leering at him out of the darkness of an inner room.
+
+To the right, a little way back from the next opening, a small
+fair-haired girl was rapidly winding in on a miner's windlass. She
+stopped to tug at a rope. The crane swung around into the entrance with
+the saddle and rifles.
+
+Carmena had already faced about to haul the ladder up the cliff. Lennon
+caught hold with his left hand to help her. They had gathered in less
+than ten yards when a bullet whizzed between their heads and splattered
+on the stone wall at the rear of the room. Carmena hooked the ladder
+over a peg at the side of the doorway and forcibly dragged Lennon out of
+the opening.
+
+Two more bullets whizzed in, one of them angling up close over the sill.
+Had it come a moment sooner Lennon must have been struck. Carmena's hand
+shook and her voice quavered, though she sought to speak in an
+unconcerned tone:
+
+"That's warmer than I expected at this stage of the game. Guess Cochise
+is feeling pretty bad in his heart. We'll have to let him cool down
+awhile."
+
+"Why not return his compliments?" suggested Lennon. "We can easily pick
+off both of the devils without exposing ourselves."
+
+"And get the rest of the bunch down on us! No, Jack, they've got us
+holed up. We might slip away before the others came but they'd make a
+clean sweep of the stock and everything else. Come and meet Elsie.
+Cochise will soon tire of wasting cartridges."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+HER FOLKS
+
+
+The fair-haired girl was cowering behind the massive front wall of the
+cliff house. At every shot from the rifles of the infuriated Apaches she
+crouched lower. Carmena held out reassuring arms to her.
+
+"There, there, Blossom," she soothed. "You've no need to be scared."
+
+The trembler sprang to clasp the neck of the older girl.
+
+"Oh, Mena, Mena!" she sobbed. "I'm so glad you're back! It's been awful!
+Dad had one of his spells; and now, with Cochise angry----"
+
+"We'll manage him--never fear. He's stopped shooting already. Quit your
+shaking. I don't want Jack to think you a silly little rabbit."
+
+For the first time the panic-stricken girl appeared to realize that
+Lennon was a stranger. She lifted her head from Carmena's bosom to stare
+at him with innocent childish wonderment. Her piquant little face was
+flowerlike in its delicate contours and apricot tinting; her big blue
+eyes were the pure intense blue of alpine forget-me-nots. No line of her
+pretty face bore the slightest resemblance to Carmena's comely but
+strong features.
+
+"O-o-oh!" she voiced her amazement. "He's new--and he's white!"
+
+"Yes, but he and I are pards," Carmena reassured her. "Shake hands. He
+has come to help us."
+
+"To help us?" The young girl held out a timid hand. "You--you won't side
+with Cochise? You won't let him take me?"
+
+"'Course he won't," put in Carmena. "Didn't I tell you we're pards? His
+name is Jack Lennon, and he's a real man."
+
+Lennon was pressing the soft little hand of the younger girl.
+
+"So you are Sister Elsie," he said. "Carmena is right. I will not side
+with Cochise--if that's our hot friend down below."
+
+The girl's rosebud lips parted in a smile of wondering delight.
+
+"You called me sister! Then you'll be my brother--my Brother Jack!"
+
+Lennon was astonished that any girl more than fourteen could be so
+naïve. Yet the effect was more than charming.
+
+"I'll be only too happy, if Carmena has no objection."
+
+He glanced up into the face of the older girl and surprised a look not
+meant for him to see. As the down-drooping lashes veiled her dark eyes a
+deep blush glowed under the tan of her dust-grimed, haggard face. The
+realization of the meaning of that blush and glance sobered Lennon.
+
+The girl had known him a scant seven-and-twenty hours. But in that full
+day had been packed more intense peril and emotion than many couples
+share in a lifetime. He had saved her and she him. Together they had
+suffered agonies of thirst and exhaustion, and together they had cheated
+the murderous Apaches. Even now, down beneath them at the foot of this
+ancient cliff refuge, the leader of the renegades was futilely cursing.
+
+Lennon was a white man, and he had proved himself not a quitter. The
+girl had been overwrought by their terrible flight. That she should
+fancy herself beginning to fall in love with him was quite
+understandable. The discovery of the fact set his jaded nerves to
+tingling with a pleasant thrill even as he realized the awkwardness of
+the situation.
+
+By way of diversion, he stepped around to take his rifle from the
+saddle. As he straightened up with it the muzzle of a double-barreled
+shotgun thrust out at him from a small slit window in the end wall of
+the room. Behind the gun, framed deep by the thick stone of the window
+casing, he saw the leering gray face that he had first caught a glimpse
+of in another opening at the opposite end of the room.
+
+A thin dry voice that was shrill with fear snarled at him:
+
+"Hands up! Drop that gun!"
+
+Carmena flung herself between Lennon and the threatening muzzle.
+
+"Don't shoot, Dad! He's a friend!" she cried.
+
+Over her shoulder Lennon saw the reddened eyes blink and the muscles of
+the gray face twitch. The muzzle of the shotgun wavered.
+
+"Put your gun down, Dad," Carmena ordered. "Mr. Lennon and I are
+partners. Come out here and meet him."
+
+Both face and gun disappeared. After several moments a smallish
+gray-haired man shuffled out through the doorway on the right of the
+window and scurried across the opening into which the crane had swung
+its load. As he unbent his emaciated body to face the visitor his breath
+was heavy with the fumes of whiskey.
+
+Lennon knew without looking that Carmena's eyes were fixed upon him in
+mute appeal. He had given her his promise to help her father. There was
+no betrayal of repugnance in the friendly offer of his hand.
+
+"My name is Lennon, Mr. Farley. Your daughter tells me you were a
+lawyer. I'm a professional man myself--engineer."
+
+Farley stiffened to a show of dignity.
+
+"I am still a lawyer," he rasped. "I must stipulate that you are
+received here with reservations. Your presence is a trespass. This ranch
+is private property and----"
+
+"All right, Dad. That lets you out with Slade and Cochise," interrupted
+Carmena. "We'll all bear witness. Come in now. We're both half dead for
+want of food and sleep. Those devils ran us clear across the Basin."
+
+Lennon glanced at his rifle.
+
+"How about the two below?"
+
+"We might send down a pie to them," suggested the timid Elsie. "That
+would make Cochise feel better."
+
+To the vast surprise of Lennon Carmena took this preposterous proposal
+seriously.
+
+"All right, Blossom. But not a drop of tizwin, mind. This way, Jack."
+
+The doorway opened into a large living-room, homelike with bright-hued
+Navaho rugs, a quantity of cliff-dweller pottery, and a sufficiency of
+heavy, comfortable furniture hewn out of cedar. The chairs were seated
+and backed with tightly stretched rawhide. Several artistic pictures
+from periodicals were pasted on the stone walls. In one corner a pot was
+boiling over a charcoal brazier.
+
+As the fair-haired Elsie thrust a big pie into a loop-handled basket and
+hurried out, Carmena fetched two large bowls brimming with soup. While
+her back was turned Farley winked leeringly at the visitor and offered
+him a half-emptied whiskey flask. Carmena was in time to see Lennon
+refuse the drink. Her fatigue-bent shoulders straightened to a
+deep-drawn breath, and her sunken eyes glowed softly.
+
+Cool water from a sweating jar and rich meat broth thickened with beans
+and corn were, at last, equal to the task of satisfying even so ravenous
+a hunger and thirst as Lennon's. Elsie had come back with her basket
+empty. She set to waiting upon Carmena and "Brother Jack" with shy
+delight.
+
+The other visitors, down below, evidently had not been displeased by the
+gift of the pie. There was no resumption of the firing. Lennon felt that
+he understood the reason, when the girl divided another pie between him
+and Carmena. It was made of dewberries, sweetened with honey.
+
+Lennon found his eyelids beginning to droop. At a word from Carmena,
+Farley led him to a cool dark inner room. He curtly pointed out a rude
+bed-frame across which had been stretched a rawhide. Lennon fell asleep
+the moment he lay down upon the elastic bed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+CRAFT AND CRUELTY
+
+
+When Lennon wakened he was at first so stiff and sore that he could
+hardly turn over. Yet his strength had in good part returned to him, and
+he was aware of a grateful feeling of refreshment and well-being.
+
+Someone had covered him over with a finely woven old Navaho rug. In
+pushing it off he noticed a fresh bandage on his wounded hand and the
+arm above. Under the cloth was an aromatic resinous salve. He next
+discovered that his boots and socks had been taken off and his badly
+blistered feet washed and treated with a healing powder.
+
+He sat up on the side of the bedstead. Before him stood a chair draped
+with a towel and a change of coarse, but clean clothes. On the
+clean-swept floor were a pair of soft moccasins, a dishpan, a bar of
+soap, and a large jar of water.
+
+When he limped out of his bedroom he had "tubbed" himself as thoroughly
+as an Englishman and felt as ravenous as a wolf. Elsie was alone in the
+living room, deftly handling pots and pans on the charcoal brazier.
+
+"Good morning," he hailed. "Glad I'm just in time for breakfast."
+
+The girl upturned her wide blue eyes to him in a look of shy delight.
+
+"I heard you splashing about and I hustled," she replied. "But it's not
+breakfast--it's dinner."
+
+"So early as this?"
+
+"So late! You've slept all the rest of yesterday and all night and all
+morning. I thought you'd never wake. Sit down."
+
+"How about the others?"
+
+"Oh, Dad just nibbles when he has his tizwin spells, and Mena ate hers
+mid-morning."
+
+The table top had been scrubbed. Lennon sat down at the nearest corner
+and fell to on the omelette and fried chicken, cream cheese, salad,
+cornbread and honey that she set before him. The food was all served in
+bowls and jugs of quaintly beautiful ancient cliff-dweller pottery.
+
+"There's no cream for your coffee," the girl apologized. "The milk
+soured. Mena was asleep, and I dassn't go down to the goats alone.
+Cochise has come back with all the bunch. Dad was cross not to get
+cream. He's cranky over his food."
+
+"You say those red devils are all down there?"
+
+The girl cringed.
+
+"Don't--don't speak so loud. Cochise might hear you. He's stopped
+swearing. I lowered a whole basketful of pies to them. Carmena is
+getting ready to give him a big talking to. She--she won't let them get
+us."
+
+"That's good news," rallied Lennon.
+
+For the first time he was able to look away from his food long enough to
+notice that Elsie was wearing a fresh pretty frock of blue-dotted
+calico. He smiled at her amusedly.
+
+"Didn't you promise to be a sister to me--or something like that? Why
+not sit down with me and celebrate our escape?"
+
+The girl clasped her hands together in childlike delight.
+
+"Oh, do you want me to be, really and truly? Only I don't know how to
+act to a brother. Sisters are different. They kiss each
+other--sometimes. If you don't mind, I'll just sit and watch. I had mine
+with Mena."
+
+With unconscious grace, she perched on the edge of the table.
+
+"You eat ever so much nicer than Cochise."
+
+"I should hope so--a wild Indian!"
+
+"But he isn't. He's educated--he went to the Reservation school. He
+knows a whole lot. That's why he's never been sent up. They caught him
+only once. But Dad got him off. Dad's a lawyer, you know. He didn't want
+to go out and leave us, but he's so scarey he does everything Slade
+tells him."
+
+Lennon recalled Carmena's plea for him to help her father and sister. He
+thought he understood the situation.
+
+"So this Slade and the Indians are keeping all of you prisoners, here in
+the Hole, are they? Yet Carmena got out. Why hasn't she taken you and
+your Dad?"
+
+Elsie's big blue eyes rounded.
+
+"But they won't let us out--only one at a time, and I'm 'fraid to go
+alone, 'cause of Cochise. Besides, the Hole is Dad's ranch. He won't
+give it up and Slade keeps promising him his share of the profits, and
+it's a mighty flourishing business."
+
+"What, farming in a place like this?"
+
+"Course not. That's just for fodder. We're stockholders, Dad says. We
+con--conduct a stock exchange. Slade sells what the bunch maverick and
+brand-blot."
+
+The terms brought no enlightenment to Lennon. He was from the Atlantic
+coast.
+
+"You mean they deal in cattle?" he inquired.
+
+"Cattle and horses--and tizwin," added Elsie, screwing up her luscious
+little mouth over the last word as if it had a bad taste.
+
+Lennon caught a half glimmer of the truth. But the girl's thoughts had
+flitted butterfly-fashion----
+
+"I hope your feet don't hurt. Mena's were even rawer--awful bad. She
+just couldn't help crying when I sopped them with the tizwin. She says
+that's all it's good for. _I_ never knew her to cry before. But you were
+too dead asleep to feel the smart. I'll have your boots oiled and your
+clothes cleaned before you need 'em."
+
+Quite naturally, Lennon inferred from this chatter that Elsie had first
+made Carmena comfortable and then, with innocent concern for him, had
+ventured into his room alone to treat his injured hand and feet.
+
+He laid down his fork to clasp one of her plump, capable little hands
+with grateful warmth.
+
+"It was most kind of you, Elsie, to care for my injuries."
+
+The grown-up child beamed at him radiantly.
+
+"I think you awful nice, Jack! I just knew I'd like you, the minute I
+set eyes on you."
+
+"My word!--when I looked like a dying tramp," teased Lennon.
+
+Carmena had not exaggerated. Elsie was sweet as honey and cuddlier than
+a kitten. He felt tempted to put a finger under her dainty up-tilted
+chin.
+
+"Now that I look more like a matinee idol, just how much more do you
+like me?" he bantered.
+
+"Oh, heaps more than I liked the first pard Mena brought in. He was a
+cowman, and after they made him pay a whole lot to get loose, Mena set
+Cochise on him 'cause he wanted me to go away to live with him--like
+Slade. They filled him up with tizwin and left him out in the middle of
+the Basin, with only tizwin in his canteen. Mena said it served him
+right and dead men tell no tales."
+
+Lennon stiffened.
+
+"You can't mean to say your father and sister were parties to such an
+outrage--that they helped to rob a man and then abandon him to die of
+thirst?"
+
+"Why not?" demanded Elsie, with unexpected spirit. "He wasn't what Mena
+thought him. He was a _bad_ cowman. He wanted to bring his bunch and
+shoot up the Hole and kill us all and make me go with him. You see how
+it was, don't you?"
+
+"Yes," agreed Lennon, certain that he understood.
+
+His surmise was that Carmena had sought help from a neighbouring
+rancher, and the man had proved himself a scoundrel. Elsie had not
+mentioned any proposal of marriage. Whatever the lawlessness of
+Farley's Indian associates, they had apparently put the guilty man to
+ransom and then turned him loose to die in the desert, merely by way of
+vengeance for his attempted wrong against the girl.
+
+Yet both of the girls had given out that the partnership with the
+Apaches and the unknown Slade was by no means satisfactory. Farley
+feared his associates, and they would permit him and Carmena to leave
+the Hole only one at a time.
+
+On the other hand, when he first met Carmena, she had been alone on the
+trail, only a few miles from the railway. Why had she not galloped to
+the nearest station and led a sheriff's posse to free her father and
+sister? She knew that Cochise and his fellows were "bronchos."
+
+Across the train of Lennon's thoughts fell a black shadow of suspicion.
+Was it possible that the girl had acted as a decoy to lure him into this
+ill-omened Dead Hole? She had previously brought in another man, who had
+in effect been murdered, after paying ransom.
+
+In his own case, the girl had herself suffered far too much during their
+flight from the Apaches for the pursuit to have been a sham. But she may
+very well have had an arrangement with the renegades to lure a victim
+into the Basin; and then, untrustful of their bloodthirsty instincts,
+had fled with her prize to the Hole, so that he might be put to ransom.
+
+The more Lennon pondered the situation, the more everything related to
+it appeared in a worse and worse light--everything and everybody, except
+the open-eyed innocent little Elsie. The Apaches admittedly were
+renegades. The absent Slade had been mentioned by no means favourably.
+Farley was far from prepossessing either in appearance or words or
+actions. As for Carmen, even the tender glances that he had surprised
+might be explained by the coquetry of a Delilah.
+
+Lennon rose from his chair with an appearance Of calm deliberation.
+
+"Would you be so kind as to bring me my rifle, Elsie?" he asked. "With
+smokeless powder a gun needs frequent cleaning and oiling."
+
+"Yes. Carmena always keeps hers clean as a whistle. But Dad put yours
+away. He said he apprehended that you might become per--perturbed and
+commit an assault with a deadly weapon. He and Mena are talking things
+over now---- No, they're coming out. Want to hear Mena give it to
+Cochise?"
+
+The girl darted through the largest doorway. Lennon, still affecting
+cool indifference, stepped out after her into the long, bare anteroom
+whose rear wall Cochise and his mate had so angrily splashed with
+bullets.
+
+Farley was crouched at the far side of the rope-ladder doorway. Carmena
+had bent her head to pass under the massive lintel. Lennon followed
+Elsie to the side of the doorway opposite Farley. The lawyer-ranchman
+appeared to cringe, yet he held to his position and even attempted an
+ingratiating smile as he rasped out a half-whispered, "G'day."
+
+Lennon gave him a curt nod and bent down to peer into the deep entrance.
+Carmena did not glance around. If she heard him, she gave no heed. She
+had seated herself upon a Navaho rug and was leaning forward to look
+over the cliff, with her hands on the sillstone at the brink. Down below
+Lennon could see only a single swarthy face, bound about the forehead
+with a wide cloth band. The other Indians were in nearer the base of the
+cliff.
+
+Instead of crouching in tense readiness to dodge back out of danger,
+Carmena gazed over at her late pursuers with serene fearlessness. Her
+rich contralto voice, no longer harsh from thirst, rang mockingly down
+the cliff:
+
+"Howdy, boys. Glad you've begun to cool off. Quite a warm run, wasn't
+it?"
+
+From below came an explosion of thick gutturals and hissings. Carmena
+flung out a hand in a gesture of refusal.
+
+"No, I won't, Cochise. I'll talk American, and so will you---- And
+you'll speak decently, or we chop off. Sabe?"
+
+There followed a silence of several moments. Carmena's patience soon
+reached its snapping point. She frowned and started to draw back. The
+voice below called up, still thick and guttural, but speaking clear-cut
+English:
+
+"You lied. You said you catch another sucker."
+
+"I said I would fetch another man to the Hole, and I have done it. Any
+lie about that?" countered the girl.
+
+"Dam' plenty," came back an angry shout. "You knew what we want him
+for."
+
+"How about Slade? What'll he want him for? Haven't you any sense any
+more, Cochise? Have you forgotten how Dad had to get you loose? Don't
+you see you've got to keep on playing the game our way? Yours is out of
+date. Even in the days of your Uncle Cochise and Geronimo it didn't
+work."
+
+"They got a heap of fun."
+
+"Well, let me tell you one thing--the new man is my game, not yours. You
+had your chance and missed it. He stood up full of Gila monster poison
+and got away from you--threw you off his trail--tricked a bunch of
+Apache trailers--out-ran and out-thirsted you. Want me to tell that to
+Slade?"
+
+The taunt was followed by another prolonged silence. Carmena smiled and
+tossed down first a bare corn cob and then a full ear.
+
+"Which will you have?" she asked. "Your way, you'll get the cob. My way,
+we'll all have a share of corn. A man who could fool and out-game you
+wouldn't make a poor partner to take into our business. We'll wait for
+Slade to decide."
+
+"You give me my woman, I wait," bargained the unseen Cochise.
+
+Carmena fairly blazed with anger. She hurled down another bare corncob.
+
+"She's not your woman. You sha'n't have her! We'll see what Slade says
+about that and about your running me across the Basin. You know you
+can't scare me. Now, is it fight, or do you back up?"
+
+The reply was a jabber of hissings and gutturals. Carmena jerked her
+hand about in swift signs and cried back in uncouth thick-tongued Apache
+words. The dispute at last ended in a sullen mutter from below and a
+sudden thudding of hoofs. The Apaches dashed out from under the cliff,
+loping their horses toward a corral over across to the left of the
+cornfields.
+
+Carmena drew back out of the deep doorway, with a look of profound
+relief. At sight of Lennon she smiled and caught up his wounded hand.
+
+"I've made Cochise back up," she said. "We're safe from the bunch till
+Slade returns--only none of us can leave the Hole. How's your arm
+feeling?"
+
+The dark eyes were very clear and straightforward in their gaze. Lennon
+flushed with shame over his black suspicions. These renegade Apaches,
+and Slade as well, probably were bad men. Farley no doubt was in with
+them. But he appeared to be an unwilling associate, barred from escape
+by sickness, drink, and fear. Carmena had begged for help to get him and
+Elsie out of the Hole.
+
+Lennon permitted his hand to linger in her gentle clasp.
+
+"It seems to be much better," he replied to her question.
+
+"That's good. Let's hope it will be all right before Slade gets back.
+You heard me bluff off Cochise with the partnership talk?"
+
+Farley was backing across the room, gray-faced and trembling like a very
+old man.
+
+"Slade will be angered," he quavered. "I'll lose all--all!"
+
+"Leave him to me. I'll handle him," promised Carmena. "Remember what you
+agreed. Jack is to be a full partner."
+
+Lennon felt a sudden rekindling of suspicion.
+
+"May I ask you to explain all this about a partnership?" he queried.
+
+"Why, of course," replied the girl. She drew close to him and lowered
+her voice.
+
+"Dad refuses to give up everything and leave the Hole. So I've allowed
+him to think you'll come in with the bunch. My idea is to bring about a
+split between Slade and Cochise. We'll then have a fighting chance. All
+we can do now is take things easy and get your hand in shape."
+
+"My rifle was taken by your father. I would rather like to----"
+
+"Dad, hand over Jack's rifle," called the girl.
+
+Elsie glided across to the dark doorway through which Farley was
+disappearing. Within a few moments the missing rifle was thrust out to
+her. She brought it to Carmena, who handed it over to Lennon. A
+seemingly casual examination showed him that it had not been tampered
+with.
+
+His last flicker of suspicion died away.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+CACTUS CARMENA
+
+
+Immediately after the armistice Carmena and Elsie went down to attend
+the goats and chickens that were penned in small enclosures a short
+distance up-valley from the cliff house. The girls also gathered a
+supply of fresh vegetables from a nearby kitchen garden. At dusk the
+rope ladder was hauled up.
+
+In the morning Carmena took Lennon to see the valley. She had roped a
+pair of ponies near the garden enclosure. Though the rifles were
+carried, no occasion arose that called for use of the weapons. The
+Apaches in charge of the stock merely grunted in response to Carmena's
+friendly greeting and stared stolidly as she and Lennon rode by.
+
+All the other Indians seemed to have left the valley. But Carmena said
+that guards were always posted in the two main exits. Escape up Devil's
+Chute with a horse was impossible.
+
+Beyond the narrow mouth of the Chute cañon the two skirted along the
+edge of the flourishing cornfields and the hay pastures of the lower
+valley. All the way they followed an irrigation canal of the ancient
+cliff dwellers that had been restored to use. It curved and twisted
+along the higher ground under the towering cliff walls.
+
+At the foot of the Hole the valley narrowed, funnel-like, into a rather
+wide box cañon. The cañon bed offered a broad level runway down which a
+horse could have sprinted at top speed.
+
+Carmena caught the glance of pleased surprise that Lennon fixed upon a
+heavy farm wagon that stood inside the mouth of the cañon.
+
+"It's not so easy as you think," she said. "There's a thirty-foot cliff
+about a mile down. Nothing has ever come in or gone out that way except
+by rope, and the windlass is always guarded. Hell Cañon is no easier. It
+forks, and the forks both fork twice, and there's only one branch you
+can get out through. We might be able to make it, either route. But
+there's Dad and Elsie."
+
+"You spoke of bringing about a difference between Cochise and Slade,"
+said Lennon. "What is your plan?"
+
+"It all depends. I have several ideas. One is to offer Slade a share in
+your copper-mine deal. But we'll hold that back. He knows that matters
+must soon come to a show-down with the bunch. Cochise has been getting
+harder to hold for the past three years. You know, he claims that Elsie
+belongs to him."
+
+Lennon stared in amazement.
+
+"What! your sister--that little pink and white blossom?"
+
+"But she's not really my sister. That's the pinch. Cochise brought her
+with him when he first came to the Hole, two years before Slade. He
+claimed he had found her over beyond Triple Butte. She was crazed from
+thirst--never has been able to remember what had happened or anything
+about her life before she came here."
+
+"My word! Has no inquiry ever been made for her? Did you not advertise?
+What were her clothes like?"
+
+"Rags and tatters. No one came. Nobody outside knows there is such a
+place as Dead Hole, except by vague report. Dad and I just happened to
+stumble into it. About advertising Elsie, we tried that some. There was
+no answer. We think she belonged to a stray family, out prospecting. The
+others must have died of thirst."
+
+"Or were murdered by Cochise," put in Lennon.
+
+Carmena's eyes narrowed.
+
+"Maybe--maybe not. It was just after he jumped the Reservation. But he
+was only a sulky schoolboy then, playing hookey. Besides, he had not
+harmed the child. He worked for Dad and was right decent, till he got in
+with Slade and the--business started."
+
+Lennon was not to be diverted to another subject. The mystery of Elsie's
+parentage intrigued him. With the realization that the two girls were
+not of blood kin, Lennon found himself dwelling upon the differences
+between them. Elsie, cleared of any kinship to Farley, at once became in
+his thoughts a being of finer nature than her foster-sister.
+
+In contrast, Carmena now seemed to show distinctly the taint of Farley's
+blood. Her frank manner took on the tinge of boldness. Her vigour and
+strength now seemed mannish, if not coarse.
+
+Might not what he had taken for high spirit and courage be no more than
+callous hardihood? Was there not a certain garishness about her rich
+colouring? And was all the brown of her skin on the outside? Both her
+hair and eyes were dark, and there was her Spanish name--Carmena. Was
+she not, in part, of Mexican blood?
+
+Some hint of Lennon's thoughts may have shown in his expression.
+Otherwise the girl's next remark was pure coincidence:
+
+"Ever since Slade added tizwin to the business, I've had to be pretty
+much the man of the family. He persuaded us that Dad would die without a
+lot of stimulant. That's how he got hold of Dad. Once the habit was
+fixed, I couldn't break Dad of it. With you here, I'm hoping he may
+remember his old grit and pride, and brace up."
+
+"But about your--foster-sister," said Lennon.
+
+"Isn't she just too sweet for anything!" broke in Carmena. "I've tried
+to be the cactus fence to guard her against the trampling beasts."
+
+"Such as this Cochise. You say he claims her?"
+
+"For the last three years. Indian girls marry young. He'd have kicked a
+way through the cactus fence before this, if it hadn't been for Slade.
+You know, Slade has his own bunch of Navaho punchers. So, you see,
+Cochise has to----"
+
+Carmena stopped to point across the upper end of the valley.
+
+"Talk of the devil----" she exclaimed.
+
+Over below the cliff house Lennon saw a small group of mounted men
+waiting for the basket that was being lowered to them on the hoist rope.
+
+"If it's only Elsie's pies; if only they haven't bluffed Dad into
+sending down a jug of tizwin!" murmured Carmena.
+
+"We've been outplayed. We can't get back," said Lennon. "Shall I drive
+them off again with my rifle?"
+
+"No. Cochise agreed to wait for Slade. I'm going to make him stick to
+it. We'll ride on around. Maybe they'll not wait."
+
+The two had loped along under the precipices on the northwest side of
+the valley and were already near Hell Cañon, at the upper end. The mouth
+of the cañon belied its name. The bed, though rocky, was neither steep
+nor broken. Along the ledges of the cliff foot a canal had been chiseled
+in the solid rock by the cliff-dwellers. A small stream was flowing
+through it, down around the left corner of the cañon mouth.
+
+Carmena noticed the look of professional interest that Lennon fixed upon
+the ancient water way.
+
+"You're an engineer," she said. "Pretty good piece of irrigation work
+for those old mummies, isn't it? All we had to do was rebuild the intake
+dam and clean out the ditch. Here's the tank."
+
+The ponies slowed to a walk up the side of an enormous natural pothole,
+which the ancient builders had converted into a storage reservoir by
+means of an earthen dam.
+
+Carmena jumped her pony across the intake canal and loped ahead toward
+the cliff house. Lennon was too intent upon overtaking her to more than
+glance at the stand of rough-made beehives, the kitchen garden, and the
+goat and chicken sheds, past which his pony galloped.
+
+Carmena reined in to jerk her thumb at a tumbledown brush hut.
+
+"Our home, till Slade got up the cliff."
+
+"How?"
+
+"Piecing ladders together, one a-top the other. There are our callers;
+and it's pie, thank goodness. Keep your gun down. Shake hands, if they
+offer; but let me do the talking."
+
+"If you wish."
+
+"I do. The one all in white man's clothes is Cochise. Next him, with the
+Mex sombrero, is Pete. He's one of Slade's Navahos. He stands in with
+Cochise, and I stand in with him. Sabe?"
+
+"You mean he's your man--tips you off--all that?"
+
+"Yes. I think we'll be able to count on him later, when it comes to the
+show-down. Don't forget now: That run 'cross the Basin never happened.
+We're all heap good friends and pards."
+
+Lennon nodded. He did not fancy the situation, but he was willing for
+the time being to trust to his companion's lead. Side by side they rode
+up and stopped before the seven Indians. Lennon looked them over with
+the cool direct gaze of the dominant white man.
+
+Five of them were replicas of the herdsmen down the valley. Pete the
+Navaho--he of the Mexican sombrero--also wore Mexican leg-buttoned
+breeches and a red cotton shirt, the tails of which hung outside. He
+looked to be the youngest of the group. He and Cochise were the only
+ones who did not avoid Lennon's eye.
+
+Cochise the Apache leader proved a surprise to Lennon. He was as young
+as the white man and far from ugly. Though his head, under his old
+cowboy hat, was as square and massive as the cloth-bound heads of the
+other Apaches, and his shoulders were still broader, his face might have
+belonged to a Sicilian or Andalusian aristocrat--swarthy, bold-featured,
+and handsome.
+
+Carmena raised her voice in cheerful greeting: "How, boys!--_Bueno
+amigo_, Pete. Howdy, Cochise. Fine day. Hope the pie was good. Shake
+with Jack, our new partner."
+
+The Apache leader wiped the pie juice from his short, small hands upon
+his leather chaps, and replied with a show of geniality:
+
+"Howdy. Fine day. Glad to meet new pard. Shake."
+
+Lennon offered his left hand. His bridle reins and rifle were loosely
+held in his bandaged right. Carmena was thrusting her rifle into its
+saddle-sheath. Instead of clasping hands, palm to palm, Cochise clutched
+Lennon's wrist in a grip that almost crushed the bones. His other hand
+closed on the hilt of a knife.
+
+"Sit still, Jack," murmured Carmena.
+
+The warning was needless. Lennon had not stirred in his saddle or made
+the slightest attempt to struggle.
+
+"Who's the liar now, Cochise?" reproached Carmena. "You said you'd wait
+till Slade came."
+
+"I catch your pard. I keep him till Slade come. Then I have my fun. You
+swap my woman for him, I let him go now."
+
+The girl smiled.
+
+"Maybe you'll let him go anyway, _amigo_. I've got you covered, and I
+figure the first bullet will go through that pie you just ate."
+
+The glittering black eyes of the Apache shot a sidelong glance down
+toward the girl's right hand. It had slipped into a pocket in the fold
+of her divided skirt. Her smile widened.
+
+"Think it over," she advised. "What happens to us won't be any fun to
+you after you've got yours."
+
+The steel-sinewed fingers that were clutched about Lennon's wrist
+opened.
+
+"All dam' good joke--arm handshake," the Apache sought to explain away
+his treacherous attempt. "Make sure you got nerve. Sabe? Guess I got to
+go. Good-bye."
+
+"Oh, do stay and visit a bit longer," Carmena smilingly urged him. "We
+can talk a while with you and Pete. But the others may as well be
+starting, don't you think?"
+
+Something in her pocket thrust up the fold of her skirt. Cochise
+muttered a word or two that sent the other Apaches loping off down the
+valley. When they were some distance away, Carmena nodded almost gaily:
+
+"Well, boys, I suppose the pie is all gone. So, if you feel you have to
+go, too.... Good-bye, Pete. Maybe you know, Cochise, it's sometimes a
+sign of bad luck to look back or drop off your horse."
+
+The two Indians wheeled their ponies and loped after the others.
+
+Cochise did not look back.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+THE MAN WHO WAS
+
+
+Lennon sprang from his pony and steadied his rifle across the saddle.
+Carmena drew in a deep breath.
+
+"That's right," she approved. "Keep him covered. Shoot if he turns--but
+not Pete."
+
+The Navaho had drawn rein to tail in behind the pony of his leader. He
+thrust a hand overhead in a swift sign gesture.
+
+"You see, Jack. I knew we could count on Pete. The boy thinks a good
+deal of me. He was ready to shoot Cochise in the back."
+
+"But you!" exclaimed Lennon. "That was ripping the way you--what d'you
+say?--got the drop on Cochise. My right hand is still too weak for a
+knockout blow."
+
+Carmena gravely drew a sheath knife from the pocket of her skirt.
+
+"He knows I usually carry my revolver," she said.
+
+Lennon stared.
+
+"Your revolver wasn't in your pocket? Yet you sheathed your rifle!"
+
+"Didn't you notice his men had their guns pointed at us across their
+laps? Sheathing mine was what gave me the chance to bluff him. It's all
+right now. He won't try any more tricks this time."
+
+She sent a clear call ringing up the cliff. At once the hoist rope began
+to reeve down through the pulley of the crane. The rope ladder soon
+lowered from the other opening. Both saddles were fastened to the hoist
+hook. But Lennon thrust his rifle through the back of his cartridge
+belt.
+
+They found Farley in the doorway, nervously peering down the valley
+after the Indians.
+
+"Cochise was hiding in Devil's Chute until you rode out of sight," he
+quavered. "He demanded tizwin. I convinced him that Slade took away
+every drop. He then threatened to seize you for his woman and torture
+Mr. Lennon, if I did not send down Elsie. I postponed the decision until
+your return."
+
+"All right, Dad. We persuaded him to let us come up. But now we're here,
+I think we'll take no more rides till Slade comes."
+
+Lennon freed his rifle from the belt and stepped in through the doorway
+after the father and daughter. His first glance inside the cliff house
+showed him Elsie labouring at the windlass. He hastened to take the
+crank out of her plump little hands. His one-armed winding soon hoisted
+the saddles to the crane. The moment the load was safe, Elsie
+tremblingly lifted his hand to look at the blackening bruises left by
+Cochise's steel grip.
+
+"Does it--does it hurt much, Jack?" she whispered. "Once I saw him snap
+a dog's leg."
+
+Lennon smilingly denied the sharp pain of the strained ligaments. But
+inwardly his anger against Cochise hardened into enmity as he looked
+into the girl's innocent eyes and recalled that the brutal Apache
+considered her his woman.
+
+His reassurance brought instant relief to her volatile mind. She began
+to chatter gaily about how she and Carmena would entertain him during
+the wait for Slade. In this the older girl joined with cordial
+heartiness. Elsie displayed a high stack of women's magazines, for which
+Carmena was a regular subscriber. Every three or four months they were
+brought in from the nearest post office by Slade.
+
+Elsie fairly showered Lennon with naïve questions about the faraway land
+of cities and green trees and vast stretches of water. Aside from the
+magazines and what had been told her by Farley and Carmena, she had no
+knowledge of the world outside the Hole.
+
+Beneath Carmena's quiet manner Lennon discovered an interest as keen as
+that of her foster-sister and very much more intelligent. She had
+childhood memories of Ohio. Much to his distaste, she persuaded Farley
+to remain most of the day with them in the living room.
+
+But as the wreck that once had been a man listened to Lennon's talk,
+his bent shoulders began to straighten and his drink-bleared eyes
+cleared. By evening he was talking as one man of culture to another. He
+even showed occasional flashes of a once brilliant mind.
+
+Carmena took care to keep her father stimulated with frequent cups of
+coffee. The whiskey flask appeared to be quite forgotten. After supper,
+at his suggestion, Elsie brought out an old dog-eared set of
+Shakespeare. In the flaring light of a homemade tallow candle he read
+parts of "King Lear" and "Hamlet," with his rapt eyes frequently off the
+page for a dozen lines or more.
+
+Lennon's aversion to the broken old drunkard had by now mellowed to
+tolerance and a degree of pity. He realized what the man had been before
+sickness had pulled him down and drink degraded him. At times Farley's
+whiskey-shattered mind tended to wander. But Lennon good-humouredly
+helped Carmena to bridge the gaps. When her father's face became gray
+and drawn, the girl said he was sleepy and took him off to bed.
+
+She returned, to find Elsie perched on the arm of Lennon's chair. They
+were both peering at a magazine illustration, with their heads so close
+together that Elsie's yellow curls brushed Lennon's cheek.
+
+The warm glow in Carmena's eyes faded; her smiling lips tightened. Her
+voice vibrated with a touch of sharpness:
+
+"Sleep time, Blossom."
+
+Elsie sprang to her light feet with docile obedience. But she lingered
+to eye Lennon wistfully as he stood up to meet Carmena's level glance.
+
+"Aren't you going to say good night, Jack?" she coaxed. "Don't--don't
+brothers ever kiss their sisters good night?"
+
+Lennon cast a half-doubtful glance at the girl's unsmiling
+foster-sister, hesitated, caught Elsie's golden head between his hands
+and bent to kiss her forehead. She drew back, overcome with sudden
+shyness.
+
+Carmena held out a firm hand to Lennon.
+
+"Good night, Jack--and thank you for--Dad. It's two years since he has
+been anything like to-day."
+
+"The pleasure was mine," replied Lennon.
+
+His tone was not uncordial, but his eyes had turned to watch Elsie dance
+across to one of the inner doorways that led into a short passage.
+Carmena swung around after her foster-sister, with her head well up and
+her boot heels briskly clicking on the stone floor.
+
+The discovery at his bedside of his own clothes thoroughly cleaned and
+his boots well oiled added a touch of gratitude to his tender,
+compassionate, delightful thoughts of Elsie. He lay awake for an hour or
+more, dwelling upon her dainty beauty and fascinating innocence.
+
+But the bleak gray light of dawn brought sober reflections. What
+interest could he have in the young girl other than to help her escape
+from the savage Cochise? She was a waif, of unknown parentage. Mentally
+she was little more than a child, and all her conscious experience had
+been confined to the environment of this crude desert valley.
+
+Lennon came out to breakfast with scant appetite. But his moodiness had
+company. Elsie sat at table tearful-eyed and drooping. Carmena's eyes
+were somber and her expression was hard. In reply to Lennon's polite
+inquiry for Farley she coldly replied that her father was not hungry.
+
+Through one of the outer slit windows of the living room Lennon saw a
+thin column of smoke down the valley toward the corral. Carmena answered
+his unspoken question:
+
+"They're brand-blotting the last bunch of cattle brought into the Hole."
+
+"Brand-blotting?"
+
+"Yes. You wouldn't care to see it--especially when Cochise takes part."
+
+Elsie uttered a smothered little gasp that quickened again all of
+Lennon's repressed tenderness and compassion. He looked around, trying
+to think of some means to divert her. His glance fell upon one of the
+bowls of ancient pottery.
+
+"May I ask you to show me the rest of this cliff house? Or are the other
+rooms in ruins?"
+
+Elsie instantly brightened.
+
+"Oh, no, course not. Only some of the top ones have tumbled in. Dad
+won't mind if we show Jack the mummies, will he, Mena?"
+
+"Fetch candles," directed Carmena, clearly as relieved as the others at
+the thought of diversion.
+
+They started to ramble through the interior of the cliff house, taking
+with them a light ladder to climb to the upper stories. In the lower
+rooms at the near end were stored quantities of corn on the cob, dried
+fruit, and vegetables, honey, dried beef, bacon, and other foods. The
+family was sufficiently stocked to withstand a half year's siege.
+
+The upper rooms were for the most part empty. Others showed only
+fragments of broken pottery. Some had been broken in through their side
+walls or were open above and littered with the débris of their roofs.
+Lennon surmised the existence of several sealed lower chambers, at the
+back.
+
+Carmena led the way down again and zigzagged through connected rooms
+toward the far end of the great community house. To the rear of the
+front row of rooms was a large chamber heaped with cliff-dweller
+mummies.
+
+"Slade had them all dumped in here," explained Carmena. "Like the
+Indians, Elsie is still scared of them. But they have been dead a long
+time, poor things. They'll not hurt anybody. They'd protect you,
+Blossom, if Cochise should get up the cliff and you hid in that corner.
+He thinks them bad medicine. Slade laughs at Indian spirits. He says
+that corn spirits are the only ones that can put a spell on a man."
+
+"They--they're an awful hold on Dad," quavered Elsie. "He didn't ever
+used to speak cross to me."
+
+In the flickering candle light Carmena's eyes glinted with a look that
+Lennon thought to be fierce resentment. She thrust past him to the
+doorway.
+
+"Wait. I'll be back," she called.
+
+Elsie was tremblingly eager to follow, but Lennon lacked her fear of the
+desiccated builders of the cliff house. At one end of the room he had
+come upon what to him was a very interesting heap of their no less
+ancient possessions. Most of the beautiful old pottery had been smashed,
+but among the fragments Lennon found several ceremonial stones and
+tablets, a bone awl, many obsidian arrowheads, and a few broken
+turquoise ornaments.
+
+His search was cut short by the return of Carmena. She carried a modern
+Indian basket-vase that would have been very convenient for holding
+Lennon's collection. But she gave him no chance to ask for it. She
+stared in at him and Elsie from the doorway, her dark eyes glittering
+strangely in the candle light. Her lips were hardset in a bitter smile.
+
+"He's--asleep. Come," she said.
+
+Lennon followed the eager Elsie, who was vastly relieved to leave the
+mummy vault. Yet she was no less mystified than Lennon by her
+foster-sister's manner. She shrank back behind him when, after passing
+through two corn-stacked rooms near the far end of the cliff house,
+Carmena stopped before an entrance that had been closed with a door of
+heavy planks. The thick iron hasp was secured with a big padlock.
+
+Carmena handed her candle to Lennon and took a key from her basket.
+
+"Oh, Mena!" whispered Elsie. "Oh, you can't be going to--to---- You know
+how angry Dad--and Slade----"
+
+For answer, Carmena thrust the key into the padlock.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+THE SETTER OF TRAPS
+
+
+The unlocked door squeaked shrilly on its hinges as it swung in before
+the heave of Carmena's shoulder. Elsie peeped fearfully back past
+Lennon. Carmena pushed on into the secret room.
+
+Lennon had expected to see some kind of treasure chamber. He stared
+blankly at the big object in the centre of the room--a complex object
+that somehow reminded him of his laboratory experiments in college. A
+step nearer, with his own and Carmena's candles upraised, gave him a
+clear view of the bulging copper boiler, the tubes and worm and
+fermenting vats. The air of the room was pervaded with a sour smell.
+
+At his exclamation Carmena gave him a sombre glance.
+
+"You see now?"
+
+"A still," he said. "This tizwin you've been talking about--it's
+moonshine whiskey. Your father----"
+
+"No--Slade!" broke in the girl with passionate emphasis. "He brought the
+thing into the Hole and forced Dad to run it. He's the one to
+blame--not Dad. He bootlegs it to the Indians."
+
+"Indians? That's a Federal penitentiary offense!"
+
+"What could we do? If he's convicted, he'll swear that Dad is just as
+guilty. You see why I couldn't go for the sheriff?"
+
+"Yes," said Lennon; but he looked at Elsie.
+
+Carmena's face whitened.
+
+"If it hadn't been for Dad, there's no telling what Cochise would have
+done with her. Anyhow, he's my father."
+
+To this Lennon could make no answer. He turned again to stare at the big
+still. Fuel had been placed in the firebox, ready for lighting. Carmena
+knelt down before it and dipped her hand into the Indian basket. One
+after the other, she laid out the six sticks of dynamite and the caps
+and fuses that she had saved from Lennon's prospecting outfit.
+
+She looked up at him, gravely expectant.
+
+"You said you'd help us, Jack. I want this whole thing fixed so it will
+never make another drop of poison."
+
+"At once?"
+
+"No. They'd be sure we did it, and I figure---- Can you fix it so it
+will go off a quarter minute after the fire is lighted?"
+
+"Oh-h, Mena!" cried Elsie. "What you going to do? You know Dad always
+lights the fire."
+
+"Never fear, Blossom. I'll take good care of Dad. If Jack does what I
+want, there'll be no more of the nasty tizwin to make Dad cross and
+sick."
+
+Lennon found himself regarding the girl with rekindled admiration for
+her ingenuity and daring.
+
+"So this is why you saved the dynamite?" he remarked. "Will it not be
+dangerous--I mean, to anger that man Slade, you know?"
+
+"Anything to save Dad---- If you're afraid, just tell me how to fix it.
+I'll do the work and take all blame--if it fails. You can go back with
+Elsie and be able to swear you didn't have a hand in it."
+
+The girl's tone was as contemptuous as when, at their first meeting on
+the trail, she had jeered him into cutting across the desert with her.
+He looked the still over with a professional eye.
+
+The chimney stones were laid in mud plaster. But the stones of the
+firebox, or furnace, were loose. On one side they extended out in a
+rough platform that held the water-cooled vat of the condensation worm.
+From the two-foot space between the furnace hole and the vat Lennon
+began to pull out the stones. He was able to make a hole down to the
+solid stone floor.
+
+A crack gave opening enough to thrust the stiff fuse from the firebox
+into the hole. To make certain of results, Lennon used three pieces of
+fuse, which were attached with caps to the sticks of dynamite, in the
+bottom of the hole. He then put the stones back in their places. The
+ends of the fuses were hidden by the tinder of the fuel in the firebox.
+
+When Lennon stood up and dusted off his hands, no slightest sign was
+left to betray that the charge of dynamite had been planted.
+
+"There you are," he said. "The fuses are cut for fifteen seconds, and
+they will start burning as soon as the tinder is fired."
+
+"You're sure the boiler will be blown up?" queried Carmena. "Your
+dynamite is out from under it, and there's all the rock in the way."
+
+Lennon smiled at her ignorance of explosives.
+
+"The stones will double the destruction. After that charge detonates,
+there will be a hole in the floor, a good deal of shattered stone, and
+some splinters and shreds of metal. Everything in the room will be
+smashed. Is that satisfactory?"
+
+Carmena shuddered as if seized with a fever chill, but pulled herself
+together. "All right. We'll go now."
+
+She picked up her basket and backed out after the others, scrutinizing
+the floor to make certain they had left nothing to tell of their visit.
+
+"It's a secret, Blossom," she cautioned. "Promise you'll never tell any
+one?"
+
+"But--you'll have to tell Dad, Mena. He always goes in with Slade and
+Cochise to measure the mash--And you know he sometimes goes in first to
+start the cooking."
+
+"Didn't I say I'd take care of Dad?" reassured Carmena.
+
+Lennon stepped before her, his gray eyes wide with dread.
+
+"Wait," he demanded. "What is it you plan to do? Elsie says your
+father's partners---- But I have told you the dynamite will destroy
+everything in the room. If you scheme to get those men in there, give me
+that key. I shall not permit such a trap to remain."
+
+"Why not? You promised to help."
+
+"Not this way. It would be cold-blooded murder."
+
+"You say that when they----?"
+
+Carmena checked her indignant protest and gazed down at her
+foster-sister.
+
+"Well, then, how if I use that blast to blow Slade and Cochise apart?"
+she inquired. "Suppose I make each think the other put the giant power
+in the furnace?"
+
+"Too great a risk. We will explode the charge at once, or draw it."
+
+Carmena's eyes flashed.
+
+"No. They shall not make another drop of poison in that devilpot. But if
+we blew it up now, Slade will put the blame on us---- Tell you
+what--I'll just misplace the key. That will give us time to act after
+Slade comes."
+
+"Have I your promise you will not try to get him into that death trap?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Back in the living room they became aware that the day was almost gone.
+Carmena asked Lennon to cover her from above with his rifle while she
+went down to milk the goats. He offered to change places with her, but
+had to confess that he did not know how to milk.
+
+The ladder had been drawn up. To save time, the girl directed Lennon to
+lower her by means of the hoist rope. Though there was no sign of an
+Indian nearer than the corral and she smiled at the suggestion of
+danger, he saw her slip her small revolver into the bosom of her dress.
+
+The moment the slackening of the hoist rope told him she had reached the
+ground he hurried with his rifle to an embrazured window in the living
+room. He looked down and saw her calmly walking away toward the goat
+pens. The goats flocked to nibble the salt that she had brought for
+them. She knelt down and started milking.
+
+Elsie had already busied herself at the charcoal brazier. After a time,
+when her pots were simmering, she came to cuddle up in the window beside
+Lennon.
+
+"My goodness, but hasn't it been an awful nice day, Jack," she sighed in
+heartfelt contentment. "Mena is--is the best sister in all the whole
+world. But it's doubly nice to have a brother like you. Isn't it, just?"
+
+She snuggled her head against Lennon's right shoulder. He reached across
+and stroked her silky hair without looking away from the valley.
+
+"I am glad you like me, Blossom. You know, Carmena brought me to help
+her get you away from this place."
+
+"Me--and Dad, Jack. Don't forget Dad. Mena never does. And Dad won't
+ever give up the Hole, 'cause he said so. That's why Mena shot your
+burro to make you fight Cochise."
+
+Lennon chuckled.
+
+"Carmena came along after the Apache shot my burro."
+
+"Oh, but that's the joke," tittered the girl, in her turn. "Mena was the
+'Pache. She shot your hat off and your burro to see how you'd behave,
+and when you didn't scare, she rode 'round to make you come with her."
+
+The enlarged version struck Lennon as just so much the more
+preposterous.
+
+"To be sure," he made mock agreement. "Only, by the way, what was the
+point of the joke?"
+
+"You mean, why did she do it?"
+
+"Yes. Why ruin a twelve-dollar sombrero and a ten-dollar burro?"
+
+"So's you'd get mad and fight Cochise, of course. She was desp'rit, so
+she told him she'd get another man into the Basin to be caught and made
+to pay. But she planned, when she signalled them, to warn you and slip
+away while you fought them."
+
+"Ripping!" praised Lennon. "Wonderful flight of fancy. And after the
+fight?"
+
+"Oh, that depends. You'd prob'ly been dead. But if you'd killed all that
+part of the bunch, Mena would have brought you into the Hole to shoot up
+the rest and make Slade quit."
+
+"I see. Quite in keeping with the burro. But why, then, did she help me
+run away?"
+
+Elsie's playful tone sobered.
+
+"Why, 'cause you couldn't fight, of course. After she signalled Cochise
+you went and got bit by the Gila monster and saved her life. Course she
+had to save you then."
+
+"Saved!" bantered Lennon. "A fact--a solid fact at last, in this sea of
+fiction. What a slip! I was beginning to fancy you quite a consistent
+fairy-tale tinker, Blossom. Take that last touch about her signalling
+Cochise. She sent a message by wireless, I presume."
+
+"Wireless? Is that what you call smoke signalling?"
+
+"Smoke?"--Before Lennon's mental vision flashed a vivid picture of the
+puffs of smoke rising into the noontime desert sky from the ridge near
+the waterhole--"Smoke signalling!"
+
+What a dupe he had been! Even now, when the truth had been spread out
+before his eyes, he had taken it for pure fiction. Yet every seeming
+absurdity in Elsie's account became credible the moment he considered
+the facts he knew, in the light of understanding.
+
+Though Carmena had made much of probable danger from the "bronchos," she
+had sent up those telltale puffs of smoke. During the flight across the
+Basin she had changed from boots to moccasins, which he now knew to be
+of Apache style, if not of Apache make. They would account for the
+moccasin print behind the crag from which his hat had been shot off and
+his burro killed. For her to cut down to her pony, pull on her boots,
+and ride around to the wash along the trail had been easy.
+
+The purpose of her strange attack clearly had been to break up his
+prospecting trip by the death of the burro and to test whether he could
+and would fight. No less clear, now, was the subtle manner in which she
+had both spurred his daring with her derision and appealed to his
+chivalry for protection against the murderous bronchos. All the time
+Cochise and his band were over in the Basin, waiting for her to lure a
+victim within their power.
+
+On this point was it not probable that Elsie was mistaken? Had not
+Carmena's intention been to have her savage accomplices capture him and
+hold him for ransom? The game might well have included a pretended
+capture of herself, so that chivalry would lead him to pay a larger
+ransom.
+
+No--Elsie's explanation was the more probable. And he could trust her
+truthfulness. Whatever he might think of Carmena, this child-minded girl
+at least was absolutely innocent of any scheming. Her dread of Cochise
+could not possibly have been feigned.
+
+Even Carmena must be given her due. She had been driven desperate by the
+threats of Cochise to take Elsie as his squaw; and the partnership of
+her father in the illicit making and bootlegging of moonshine whiskey
+had prevented her from appealing to the law for protection. But, on the
+other hand, she had deliberately taken the risk of killing the first
+chance stranger that came along the Moqui trail----
+
+Lennon frowned as he pictured the hole through the crown of his
+sombrero. That had been an uncomfortably close shot. Why had not the
+girl met him face to face on the trail and frankly asked for his aid?
+Instead of that straightforward, above-board procedure, she had risked
+shooting him, had deceived him, had led him into a trap where he would
+have had to kill all the bronchos or be killed. In the first case,
+according to Elsie, she would have had him help her attack the rest of
+the Apaches in the Hole. But if he had been killed she undoubtedly had
+planned to put all the blame on him.
+
+He was no coward. As he mulled over the situation his eyes sparkled at
+the thought of how, with his long-range rifle, he might have out-fought
+Cochise and his followers. But that was not the rub. Carmena had treated
+him as a blind dupe--had thrown dust in his eyes and beguiled him into
+the double snare that she had set for him and Cochise.
+
+He would have been only too glad to take the venture with her if she had
+told him beforehand. But she had not trusted him. The accident of the
+Gila monster's bite alone had blocked her scheme to make him chance the
+sacrifice of his life in complete ignorance of her real purpose.
+
+With his hand disabled, he of course had become valueless at the time as
+a tool to rid her of Cochise. Yet there was the chance that he could be
+used in the Hole. That would account for the seeming devotion and
+self-sacrifice by which she had saved him from the Gila monster poison,
+from death by thirst, and from Apache torture.
+
+The prejudice that had been first implanted in Lennon's mind by the
+repulsiveness of the girl's drunken father now prevented him from making
+any allowances for her difficult position. Had it not been for her
+relationship to that weak-faced besotted moonshiner, Lennon might have
+stopped to consider how love for her foster-sister had driven her
+desperate, and how desperation might have kept her from telling the
+truth of the situation to the stranger on the trail.
+
+The average stranger would have referred her to the sheriff--and she
+loved her father. But Lennon could see only her lack of trust in him and
+her deceit.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+CROSS CURRENTS
+
+
+Elsie's childlike eyes had been watching the evening shadow of the
+cliffs creep along the valley after the retreating sunlight. Drawn at
+last by Lennon's tense silence, she looked up and saw his frown.
+
+"Oh! oh, Jack!" she cried. "What is it? You look so cross! Is it--is it
+'cause what I told about Mena? Oh, it is! I know it is, the way you
+look! Oh, dear! Oh, dear! I'm 'fraid! It's a secret, and I promised not
+to tell. Mena was 'splaining all about you to Dad, and I heard--and now
+she'll be so cross at me if she knows I told! Please, please Jack,
+promise you won't tell her I told you!"
+
+Lennon put a comforting arm about the shoulders of the panic-stricken
+girl.
+
+"You dear little frightened bird! Don't be afraid, I will not tell. And
+remember, I am to be a real brother to you. No matter what any one says,
+you are to trust in my care and protection."
+
+One of Elsie's arms timidly stole up about his neck. From across the
+room sounded a hiccough that ended in a dry hacking cough. Lennon jerked
+his head around. The besotted face of Farley, ghastly white and
+blear-eyed, was leering at them through a hole in the rear wall.
+
+Before Lennon could free himself from the soft clasp of the girl's arm
+and dash across the room, the eavesdropper had disappeared. Elsie darted
+after Lennon to clutch his half-raised rifle.
+
+"Don't shoot--don't shoot!" she begged. "It's only Dad. He's having one
+of his spells. But he won't hurt you--not if you keep by me."
+
+Lennon peered through the hole in the wall. He made out the flaccid form
+of Farley, outstretched upon the stone floor in a drunken stupor. The
+man evidently had been on the verge of unconsciousness when he leered
+through the hole. The chance was slight that he would ever remember
+anything of what he had seen or heard.
+
+With a feeling of disgust that was not unmingled with relief, Lennon
+started back to the outer window. An odour of scorched food sent Elsie
+flying to her neglected pots. As half in the deep window embrazure,
+Lennon paused to watch her, the overhanging cliff ledges reverberated
+with an impatient call. He reluctantly turned his gaze away from the
+graceful little cook to look down below the window. Carmena stood
+waiting, with the end of the hoist rope looped about her.
+
+Lennon's steady winding at the windlass soon brought up the living load
+to the crane. Elsie darted out to swing her foster-sister around into
+the opening and take from her the brimming pail of goat's milk. Carmena
+looked down at Lennon's bandaged hand, which was gripped upon the crank
+of the windlass.
+
+"You ought to be careful," she gravely warned him. "Working won't help
+your hurt."
+
+"On the contrary, the wounds are fast healing, and use of the hand tends
+to bring back its strength. It is already much improved."
+
+"Good."
+
+"I shall leave off the bandages after to-night."
+
+Carmena's eyes narrowed.
+
+"No. You're to keep them on, and don't let any one else--even Dad--see
+your hand. The more helpless Slade and Cochise think you are, the
+better."
+
+To this Lennon readily agreed. His knowledge of the completeness with
+which the girl had duped him only added to his realization of her
+ability. But he promised himself that any advantage gained by his
+pretense of helplessness should be used only with a view to Elsie's
+benefit.
+
+Such pity as he had felt for Farley before the discovery of the illicit
+whiskey-still was now smothered in disgust. He would fight for Elsie,
+but he would not lift a finger to help rid Dead Hole of Farley's
+boot-leg confederates.
+
+Carmena had turned about to peer down the half-shadowed valley.
+
+"I thought sure Slade would get here to-night," she said. "He's overdue
+already. Well, we can count on him for to-morrow. Maybe you had better
+let me hide your rifle."
+
+"Is that necessary?"
+
+Lennon's tone was more curt than he had intended. The girl entered the
+living room and went on through into a rear room.
+
+She did not come out again that evening, but sent word by Elsie that
+Farley was sick and needed nursing. Lennon was only too pleased to sup
+and visit alone with the younger girl. Elsie's piquant daintiness was
+more than ever fascinating to him. He spent a delightful evening, though
+at times his enjoyment was dampened by remembrance of the danger that
+threatened her.
+
+Carmena came to the breakfast table pale and weary-eyed. From her
+laconic remarks to Elsie, Lennon gathered that she had spent the night
+waiting upon her father. After forcing herself to eat a hasty meal, she
+came around the table and laid an old short-barreled revolver beside
+Lennon's bowl-plate.
+
+"It's Dad's," she said. "He's too sick to use it, anyhow. Put it in your
+pocket out of sight and have Elsie hide your rifle where either of you
+can readily get it. I saw the signal. Slade is coming."
+
+Elsie almost dropped the pot of fresh coffee that she was settling.
+Carmena took it and a kettle of hot water and went out without looking
+at Lennon.
+
+In the extreme corner of the room was a dutch-oven built of stone slabs.
+Elsie started a fire in it, placed large kettles of food on her brazier,
+and began to mix white flour dough.
+
+"Slade likes pies as much as Cochise--and white biscuits. That's why he
+brings us flour. He says he's going to make me his cook. It always gets
+Cochise awful mad."
+
+The bare suggestion that the doubtful partners of Farley were accustomed
+to imply ownership in the innocent, helpless girl brought an angry flush
+into Lennon's lean face. He unloaded the short-barreled revolver, made
+careful test of its action, and as carefully reloaded the old style
+cylinder. The weapon was well suited for hip-pocket wear. At the
+suggestion of Elsie, he hung his rifle under his bed.
+
+Carmena half carried her father into the living-room and seated him in
+one of the big chairs. He was very white and shaky but rational. He had
+been bathed and dressed, and his eyes showed proof of soothing
+treatment. Though the sight and odour of the cooking nauseated him, he
+was braced by a drink made from some bitter desert herb known to the
+girls for its tonic effect.
+
+"Now, Dad, remember you're sick. Just sit here quietly and leave all the
+business to me," said Carmena. "Jack will keep you company."
+
+She looked at Lennon, cool-eyed and self-possessed.
+
+"Watch your bad arm, Mr. Lennon," she advised. "You don't want to go
+around with it loose like that. Elsie will fetch you a sling. I'm going
+to lower the ladder. Slade doesn't enjoy being made to wait."
+
+Elsie brought one of her floursack dish-towels, which Lennon, with mock
+seriousness, permitted her to knot over his shoulder in a sling. The
+loop of cloth extended along his arm from elbow to finger tips without
+hiding the bandages.
+
+Farley glowed at the sling with sour suspicion.
+
+"You climbed the ladder with that arm when you first came," he snapped.
+"There has been all this time for it to improve."
+
+"Do such poison wounds always improve?" parried Lennon. "I was willing
+to risk using the arm. But you heard what your daughter said."
+
+He went across the room to look from an outer window. A large band of
+horsemen was racing full tilt up the valley. They were already near. At
+their head rode Cochise and a big red-faced white man. As Lennon looked
+out at them Carmena swung down the rope ladder.
+
+The tall rangy American horse of the white man forged ahead of the
+Indian ponies and brought his rider under the cliff as Carmena reached
+the foot of the ladder. She called out to him in a tone of joyful
+greeting and hastened forward to offer her hand. The man ignored her
+welcome and jerked a thumb up at the window from which Lennon was
+looking.
+
+Cochise came galloping to the cliff foot with his band of Apaches and
+four or five Navahos. All reined their ponies to one side except
+Cochise. He sprang off to confront Carmena, with denunciatory words and
+gestures. The white man leisurely swung out of his saddle and took the
+attitude of a judge between the girl and Cochise. After no little
+disputing, he silenced the young Apache with a curt gesture and entered
+into a low-voiced conference with Carmena. Now and then Cochise broke in
+with guttural objections.
+
+At last the three seemed to reach some kind of an agreement. They
+started up the ladder, Carmena waiting until the last. The white man,
+who undoubtedly was the partner called Slade, led Cochise. The crisis
+over Lennon's presence in Dead Hole had come to a head. He felt certain
+that the period of waiting was about to end in some definite action
+either against himself or against the Apache leader.
+
+The meeting was by no means unpleasant. After a short pause Carmena led
+the visitors in from the big anteroom. Cochise cast a covert glance at
+Elsie, and with an air of stolid indifference to the others sat down at
+the table. Slade was neither silent nor stolid. He stared hard about the
+living room and bellowed over to Elsie, who was raking her pies out of
+the dutch oven:
+
+"Ho, howdy, Cookie Gal! 'Most ready to feed me, huh? Won't have to herd
+me to it. Lord, but I'm sick of Injun grub! Guess this trip I'll sure
+have to rope and brand you for my home corral!"
+
+Carmena broke in on this coarsely jovial banter with smiling deference:
+
+"You see it's as I told you, Mr. Slade--Dad is almost used up. But I'll
+act for him and----"
+
+Slade's ham-like hand came down upon Farley's stooped shoulder in a
+thwack that doubled the invalid over and set him to coughing.
+
+"Brace up, Dad," the trader-cowman rallied him in his bull voice.
+"You're not dead yet. Good thing for us your bark's worse'n your bite.
+Huh, Cochise?"
+
+His massive body shook with a roar of laughter at the joke.
+
+"This is Mr. Lennon--our guest," Carmena again interposed.
+
+The big trader swung around to stare down upon the guest. Lennon stood a
+good six feet in his boots, but Slade over-topped him by two or three
+inches and was no less thickset than tall. He looked Lennon straight in
+the eyes, crushed his left hand in a hearty grip, and greeted him in a
+tone of bluff cordiality.
+
+"So you're Carmena's new pard. Glad to see you in Dead Hole. She says
+you want to dicker with us."
+
+"I said he might want to," murmured the girl.
+
+Slade grinned genially at the guest's bandaged arm.
+
+"No might about it, Carmena. Your dad came into Dead Hole for his
+health. But I figger Lennon here knows it ain't no general health
+resort."
+
+"Miss Farley will tell you, I was in urgent need of a change from the
+Basin," drawled Lennon, as he languidly sank back into his chair. "Deuce
+take it! The results of a Gila monster's bite are more serious than I
+would have anticipated."
+
+"Sure--apt to be mighty serious, son, if you don't look out what you
+do," agreed Slade. "Guess, though, Carmena got you started off right.
+We'll see about it soon's I've fed. Here's my Cookie Gal dishing up."
+
+He thumped down at the table and voraciously fell to upon the food that
+Elsie hastened to serve him and Cochise. While he plied knife and spoon
+he chaffed the blushing girl with a familiarity that made Lennon's blood
+boil. Elsie's forced smile and murmured responses did not conceal the
+painfulness of her embarrassment.
+
+Yet Lennon's hot impulse to interpose was checked and cooled when he
+thought to look at Carmena. Like her father, she was smiling at Slade
+and at the same time covertly watching Cochise. The handsome face of the
+young Apache seemed utterly blank of all expression except gluttonish
+enjoyment of the food he was wolfing. But under the edge of the table
+Lennon saw his hand steal down and fondle the hilt of his sheath knife.
+
+The game was now evident. If the rivals were permitted to attack each
+other, one or both would almost certainly be killed. A murderous feud
+between their men would as certainly follow. Lennon's anger against the
+unpleasant pair was intense enough for him to consider the scheme
+justified, though its suggestion of treachery deepened his prejudice
+against Carmena.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+A BARGAIN
+
+
+During the meal prepared by Elsie a solemn avowal by Slade that the cook
+must go home with him brought the knife of Cochise half out of its
+sheath.
+
+Slade either did not see the movement, or, if he did, he contemptuously
+disregarded its menace. He had turned to Farley, his big red face and
+pale blue eyes suddenly sober.
+
+"Well, Dad," he boomed, "guess we'd better hold a seance and git Brother
+Cochise back into a proper spiritual frame of mind. I got some
+converting work for him to go out and do."
+
+Cochise shot a side glance at Elsie.
+
+"You leave my woman--I go. Sabe?"
+
+The trader burst into his hoarse laugh.
+
+"Go to hell! Can't you take a joke? We're pards, ain't we? Can't I josh
+the gal without you gitting rattlesnakey? Don't suppose I meant it, do
+you? Come on, Dad. Git a hustle on you. We got to hold that seance."
+
+He looked at Lennon with a hard smile.
+
+"We run a lodge here---- Spirits Order Secret Scotch Rites. We'll go
+into a seance and find out whether to initiate you."
+
+"Dad is too sick," interposed Carmena. "He can't help any. I'll take his
+place."
+
+"No. He's going to come, and you'll stick here," ordered Slade.
+
+Farley rose and tottered out into the anteroom with him and Cochise.
+Lennon sprang up beside the coolly smiling girl.
+
+"You've permitted them to go--knowing what will happen!"
+
+"Nothing will happen. I changed keys on Dad. He'll come back. Then I
+will go in his place."
+
+"You shall not," forbade Lennon. "I told you it would be murder."
+
+"How about Blossom?" queried the girl. "Slade isn't joking and you know
+now what he is like."
+
+Lennon looked at the prospective victim, hesitated, and tightened his
+jaw.
+
+"I must hold you to your promise. Set them upon each other, if you
+wish---- But it shall not be that other way."
+
+"If you hold me to my promise," said Carmena, her eyes hot with scorn.
+
+She started to help Elsie clear the food-splattered table.
+
+Before many minutes Farley reeled in, speechless from terror. He
+collapsed into the first chair and held out a key in his wavering hand.
+Carmena looked at it, nodded understandingly, and hastened out, with a
+significant glance for Lennon.
+
+He was not altogether reassured. After a few moments he followed her
+along the front row of the cliff house rooms. He was close enough to
+hear the talk that followed when she joined Cochise and Slade at the
+padlocked door. The trader gruffly accepted her excuses for her father,
+but swore violently when the two keys that she had brought failed to
+open the lock.
+
+She explained how she had changed her father's clothes, and took upon
+herself all the blame with regard to the misplacing of the key. After
+much soothing talk, she at last quieted Slade by promising to have a
+given quantity of whiskey distilled before his next visit.
+
+"That'll do," he conceded. "Look out you don't forgit it, though, or
+I'll take it out of Dad's hide. Now, Cochise, you hit the high places
+for them hosses. Don't do no shooting this time. Just natchelly have 'em
+drift off. Git a move on you."
+
+Had not Lennon been wearing moccasins, he must have been caught. As it
+was, he glided back through the many rooms, undetected.
+
+Farley had crept into his own room. His absence gave Lennon opportunity
+to calm Elsie's fears and comfort her with the promise that he would
+save her from both Slade and Cochise. The tread of heavy boots sent her
+scurrying out of the living room.
+
+Slade strode in after Carmena and jerked a chair around to where he
+could look close into Lennon's face.
+
+"Now, young man, what's this bunk about you and Carmena being pards?" he
+demanded. "What business you got in Dead Hole, anyhow? Cochise says you
+shot a hoss of hisn."
+
+"I told you how that started," interposed Carmena. "It wasn't our fault
+that Cochise flew off the handle. Jack had to shoot to save me as well
+as himself."
+
+Slade stared hard at the girl and then at Lennon.
+
+"Well, supposing the young devil did break loose. What of it? How about
+this pard bunk? That's what I want to know."
+
+"I fear that Miss Farley has found me rather a disappointment," put in
+Lennon, and he looked at his trussed arm.
+
+"Not at all--just the other way 'round," Carmena glowingly asserted.
+"Figure it out for yourself, Mr. Slade. A man who could follow up a Gila
+monster bite by outrunning Cochise and his bunch across the Basin, and
+then make them back up. Can you wonder I think he's a man for us to tie
+to?"
+
+"If we needed a new pard," qualified Slade. "Fact is, we don't, and you
+know it. We got enough a'ready to do the work and split up our profits."
+
+Carmena cast a significant glance toward Elsie, who had ventured back to
+renew the fire in her oven.
+
+"How about Cochise getting out of hand? All the time it's harder to hold
+him. He's beginning to bristle up even to you."
+
+Slade's tobacco-stained teeth showed in a grin of contemptuous
+indifference.
+
+"Bah. I'll pull his head off if he gits sassy, and he knows it."
+
+"Of course. He'd have no show--unless a pot-shot or a knife in your
+back---- If only he was white!"
+
+"Surely you do not mean to say, Miss Farley, that Cochise would attack
+his own partner," Lennon backed up the girl's play. "I saw him pull out
+that long knife of his under the table, but imagined it was merely the
+Indian way of easing his feelings against Mr. Slade."
+
+"Pulled his knife on me, did he?" bellowed the trader, in a sudden burst
+of anger.
+
+"And just because you dared speak kindly to Elsie," sympathized Carmena.
+
+Strange enough, the barbed sting appeared to quiet rather than enrage
+Slade. He laughed.
+
+"No four-flushing, Mena. Needn't try to pull the wool over my eyes. I
+can't run my business without Cochise, and you know it. You got to show
+me a deal with more in it, before you talk about a shift of pards. I'm
+running this shebang. There ain't no place for Lennon 'round Dead Hole.
+He best hit out back the way he come."
+
+Carmena's look told Lennon that he must make the next play. He thought
+quickly. If the girl was not mistaken, Slade would take Elsie away with
+him and chance the revenge of Cochise. The Apache might be appeased by
+permission to follow his intended victim back into the Basin.
+
+Had Lennon considered only himself he would have been willing to chance
+a fight with the renegade. But the mere thought of abandoning Elsie to
+either the Apache or this brutal trader was altogether unbearable.
+
+"Indeed, yes--to be sure, Mr. Slade," he blandly made reply. "If you do
+not desire me as a partner, I have no wish to remain here. Doubtless I
+shall not require your aid to find the mine for which I am looking."
+
+"Mine?" queried Slade, his pale eyes narrowing. "What mine?"
+
+"It's the lost lode," cut in Carmena, her rich voice quivering with
+eagerness. "I couldn't say anything until Jack spoke. He was headed for
+the mine when his burro was shot and we had to leave his outfit--thanks
+to Cochise. But he knows where to find the lost lode. Got it from
+Cripple Sim--back East. It's somewhere over near Triple Butte. You see
+now why I thought you'd be glad to have me bring Jack in as a partner?"
+
+The red face of the trader fairly glowed with geniality. He held out his
+beefy hand to Lennon.
+
+"Shake, pard. Why didn't you speak up sooner? I might have knowed you
+was O.K. But Carmena is only a gal, and we got to be careful of
+strangers in these parts. Bad place for hoss thieves and brand-blotters.
+That's why I put up with a mean Injun like Cochise. He and his bunch see
+to it we don't lose no stock."
+
+"Yes, they're great on rounding up, and so far they have never committed
+any murders--that can be proved against them," put in Carmena, with an
+ironical smile. "Just the same, it wasn't their fault they didn't get
+Jack. Do you wonder he won't have them in on this lost-lode deal? Either
+he plays a lone hand, or we run Cochise out of the country."
+
+"My offer is ten thousand in cash," said Lennon. "The copper company
+pays me twice that and----"
+
+"Copper, huh? What's a copper company got to do with a gold lode?"
+demanded Slade.
+
+"But Jack says the lost lode is copper, not gold," said Carmena. "Maybe
+we've been mistaken all these years. Sim told Jack it was a copper mine,
+and Sim ought to know."
+
+Lennon caught the significant glance that the girl covertly gave to
+Slade. He was seized with black doubt whether her scheming was against
+Slade or with Slade against himself. Yet he continued to play to her
+lead----
+
+"Yes, the discoverer of the mine should know whether it was gold or
+copper."
+
+After some argument, Slade finally admitted that the old rumour about
+Cripple Sim's fabulously rich lost gold mine might be an "exaggeration."
+With much hemming and hawing, he then agreed that if the lost mine were
+rediscovered he would accept ten thousand dollars and rid Dead Hole of
+Cochise.
+
+"We might git up a company our own selves, Lennon, but we couldn't bring
+in any railroad to develop a _copper_ mine," he repeated what Carmena
+had already remarked. "Take what you can git and be thankful, is my
+motto. Soon's we find that mine, you can count on me to run Cochise
+clean out of the country."
+
+Carmena drew in a deep quavering breath.
+
+"That's such a relief, Mr. Slade! I've been so afraid for Elsie. I know
+that Cochise figures on making off with her at the first chance."
+
+"He does, does he?" growled the trader. "Well, then, you're going to
+stick here and see he don't git no chance, while I go with our new pard.
+How's that, Lennon?"
+
+"Good enough," agreed Lennon.
+
+"Elsie and I will hunt up some tools," said Carmena and she hurried her
+foster-sister out into the store-rooms before Slade could voice an
+objection.
+
+He at once began to give Lennon a pessimistic account of the small
+profits and many risks and hardships of a trader's life in this arid
+land of mesas and cañons. As for the cattle business, there was more
+work than money in it, what with mountain lions, wolves, and
+brand-blotters.
+
+Lennon checked himself on the point of asking the meaning of the strange
+term. He recalled that Elsie had said something about mavericking and
+brand-blotting by the Apaches. Unless Farley and the girls were
+conniving with Cochise, the Indian could not be carrying on any work in
+the Hole unknown to Slade, and he had just intimated that brand-blotting
+was some kind of harmful or criminal action.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+THE BLOSSOMING
+
+
+At the supper table Slade returned to his jovial praises of Elsie as a
+cook. Under his bold admiring gaze the girl blushed much and ate little.
+Lennon kept his head with difficulty. To sit quiet and feign
+indifference required all his self-control.
+
+Farley had been brought in by Carmena. Toward the end of the meal Slade
+began to browbeat the abject, liquor-poisoned man. Lennon had no pity to
+spare for his broken-spirited host, but his compassion for Elsie and his
+growing anger against Slade soon received fresh stimulation.
+
+The trader made blunt demand that Farley should agree to give Elsie to
+him in marriage--Indian marriage. After considerable bullyragging,
+Farley weakly gave way. Carmena continued strongly to protest, but her
+plea was only for a legal marriage.
+
+Slade contended that one kind of marriage was as good as another. But he
+finally said he would wait and take Elsie out to where they could get a
+license and a minister. This would be immediately after the relocation
+of the mine and the driving off of Cochise.
+
+Lennon was more than satisfied over the final agreement. Once rid of
+Cochise and out of the Hole with Slade and Elsie, he felt certain of his
+ability to save the girl from a forced marriage. In keeping with his
+assumed indifference to the affair he changed the subject by inquiring
+when the start for Triple Butte would be made.
+
+"Daybreak," muttered Slade, and he fixed an intent gaze upon Elsie.
+"I'll be ready by then. I'll bunk with you to-night, Dad. Come in and
+we'll check up on business accounts."
+
+The moment the two older men left the living room Elsie burst into tears
+and began piteously imploring Lennon and Carmena to save her. Carmena
+clapped a hand over the quivering lips of the terrified girl and rushed
+her out of hearing of Slade.
+
+At the same time Lennon stepped out after the trader to keep him from
+turning back. The massive bulk of Slade shadowed the light of the candle
+that Farley was carrying into a second of the inner rooms.
+
+The trader looked back, but failed to see Lennon, who had stepped to one
+side of the living-room doorway. The bull voice rumbled in what was
+evidently intended for a murmur:
+
+"Well, Dad, I guess Carmena ain't such a fool as you might expect from
+her being your gal. She sure got that tenderfoot roped mighty slick.
+Just wait and watch me hogtie the cripple. All I got to do is let him
+lead me to that there gold mine. Then I figger he's apt to git lost.
+Mebbe he believes that bunk about the lode being copper, and mebbe he
+don't. The point is, I git the mine, and he----"
+
+The rest of the prediction was lost to Lennon. He went back into the
+living room and pulled his arm out of the sling to test his grip on
+Farley's short-barrelled revolver. His wounded hand had almost regained
+its full strength. As he replaced the arm in the sling Elsie peeped
+timidly into the room. She saw that he was alone and darted out to clasp
+his arm.
+
+"Oh, Jack, dear Jack!" she panted. "You--you won't let Slade take me
+either, will you? You promised about Cochise. But Carmena--she says
+Slade--that maybe I'll have to marry him--unless you have heaps of grit.
+He's no better than Cochise. But at least he's not an Indian, Mena
+says."
+
+Lennon patted the yellow locks of the girl's back-flung head.
+
+"Never fear, Blossom. We will take care of you. Where is Carmena?"
+
+"She's still looking for Dad's old pick for you. We found the pan and
+spade. Mena says Dad stumbled into Dead Hole 'cause he was looking for
+that lost gold mine of Cripple Sim's you're after. Then he went into
+stock."
+
+"Was he--did he--er--brand-blot before Slade came?"
+
+"Oh, no. Slade and Cochise started the business. Cochise rounds up the
+hosses and cattle when Slade tells him of a good chance, and the 'Paches
+rustle 'em and bring 'em into the Hole and make the brands over, and
+then they run 'em out Hell Cañon, and Slade sells 'em under his other
+name. Dad's share is for the feed and the use of the Hole."
+
+For the first time Lennon's suspicions of the Dead Hole partners were
+clarified and confirmed. The gang were not only moonshiners but horse
+and cattle thieves. Slade was the ringleader and brains of the gang,
+while Cochise and his followers were the crafty and probably murderous
+rustlers and brand-blotters.
+
+Farley was a more or less willing accomplice. He may have been forced
+into the criminal partnership, but now refused to attempt an escape.
+Rather than give up his share of the loot, he chose to risk the great
+danger to his little foster-daughter.
+
+The realization that Slade was even more of a criminal than the
+moonshining and bootlegging had indicated, quickened Lennon's
+compassion for the girl. She was so artless and clinging and
+helpless----
+
+He put his free arm about her quivering shoulders. In a twinkling her
+hands were clasped about his neck and she was smiling up into his face
+in naïve delight.
+
+"Dear, dear Jack!" she whispered. "You're just awful nice to me. I
+believe, really and truly, I love you even more than Mena."
+
+The girl was too childlike in mind to realize the meaning of her sweet
+emotion. Lennon made allowance for her innocence, but her allusion to
+Carmena startled him, though the words were ambiguous. Elsie may only
+have meant that she loved him more than she loved Carmena--not that she
+loved him more than Carmena loved him.
+
+The girl's upturned piquant face was more than tempting. Its flowerlike
+delicacy and prettiness and the glow in her wide blue eyes were more
+than he could withstand. He bent down and pressed a kiss upon her
+half-parted lips.
+
+"You darling!" he said. "You adorable little Blossom!"
+
+She sought shyly to draw away from him. He held her fast. The kiss had
+put an end to his last doubt.
+
+"Wait, dear, do not try to get away from me," he commanded. "I am going
+to keep you--always. Until I get you out of here--safe from Slade and
+Cochise--I shall be just your Brother Jack. But I love you, dear, and
+when we reach a town we shall be married."
+
+"O-o-oh! Then I'll belong to you--I'll be your woman?"
+
+"You will be my darling little wife. I will be good to you and take care
+of you--always."
+
+"Oh, you dear, nice Jack! And Mena--she'll go along too and help take
+care of me and love us? Won't she? You know I couldn't ever bear to go
+away and leave Mena."
+
+Along with his amusement over the child's naïve suggestion Lennon was
+conscious of an odd thrill. He remembered the look in Carmena's dark
+eyes when she saved him from the poison of the Gila monster and at the
+end of their desperate flight across the Basin. They had risked death
+together--and _she_ was not a child.
+
+But close upon these pleasantly disquieting remembrances of the older
+girl came the harsh afterthought of his suspicions against her. He bent
+to kiss Elsie with almost aggressive fervour.
+
+From the doorway behind him came a stifled cry that might have been a
+sob. He held fast to Elsie and glanced over his shoulder. Carmena was
+standing in the doorway, with her head bent. As Lennon looked, she
+straightened and came toward him, cold-eyed and determined.
+
+"What are you doing, Jack Lennon?" she demanded. "I trusted you. I
+believed that you were not the kind to take advantage of Blossom. I
+thought you----"
+
+Elsie struggled free from Lennon to fling her arms about her
+foster-sister.
+
+"Oh, Mena, please, please don't be cross with Jack! I love him so,
+and--and he loves me back!"
+
+Lennon met Carmena's hard stare with a gaze no less cool and resolute.
+
+"Elsie is to be my wife," he declared. "I shall marry her as soon as
+possible."
+
+"Your wife? Marry her? You mean that?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Carmena's fixed gaze wavered and sank. But almost immediately she looked
+up again, her eyes lustrous with soft radiance.
+
+"She is very precious to me, Jack. She deserves to be safe and happy all
+the rest of her life."
+
+Before Lennon could reply, the girl gently freed herself from Elsie and
+turned to go.
+
+"Pardon me--one moment, Miss Farley," appealed Lennon. "There is
+something I must tell you. I happened to overhear Slade speak to your
+father. He insists that the lost mine is a gold lode and proposes to
+take possession when I have led him to it."
+
+The girl smiled a bit mockingly.
+
+"What else could you expect?" she asked. "If he hadn't believed it a
+gold lode he wouldn't have made the deal with you. When you show him the
+copper, it will be up to you to hold him to his bargain. We have no
+chance unless he splits with Cochise."
+
+"Why not persuade your father to slip out of the Hole with us--start
+immediately? The Apaches have gone off. I'll engage to tie up Slade. We
+would have an all-night lead."
+
+"No," refused Carmena. "The Hole belongs to Dad. He will not leave it.
+Besides, there are at least three Apaches on watch in Hell Cañon."
+
+Lennon realized the uselessness of arguing with the girl. If, as he
+still half suspected, she was scheming with Slade, the less said about
+her father's share in the stock stealing the better.
+
+"Very well," he acquiesced. "I shall try to manage Slade. If he is
+unreasonable, I will do as I think best."
+
+"So will I," replied Carmena, her eyes sombre.
+
+"Come on, Blossom. Slade said he would leave at daybreak."
+
+She abruptly turned away, and made no remonstrance when Elsie offered
+her lips to Lennon for a good-night kiss.
+
+Left alone, he sat down in one of the big chairs and fell to planning
+how, after the relocation of the copper lode, he would make his escape.
+He would bring a sheriff's posse to arrest Slade and his fellow
+criminals. Elsie would then be freed from all danger, and the mine could
+be developed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+THE PROWLER
+
+
+From his plans for the breaking up of the criminal gang Lennon's
+thoughts drifted into pleasant reveries about his adorable little
+wife-to-be. Drowsiness crept upon him. When the lone candle on the table
+burned down, flickered, and went out, he was too sound asleep to waken.
+But his sleep was troubled with uneasy dreams.
+
+In the midst of a nightmare that lived over his flight from the bronchos
+across the desert, he was roused with a start to alert wakefulness. Some
+heavy-breathing creature was stealthily shuffling about in the black
+night of the unlighted room. A thump, followed by a muttered curse,
+betrayed the identity of the prowler. With utmost caution Lennon slipped
+his arm from the sling, drew Farley's revolver, and barricaded himself
+behind the chair. Slade shuffled nearer--so near that his
+whiskey-poisoned breath struck in Lennon's face. Again came a thud and a
+curse. The prowler had stubbed his stockinged toe against a chair leg.
+
+Lennon aimed the revolver toward the sound, in expectation of an
+upflaring match. Discovery would mean instant attack by the huge-framed
+scoundrel. Of that he had no doubt. Slade would not be groping about in
+the dark in this stealthy manner unless intent upon an evil purpose.
+
+But no match flamed. The shuffling feet moved past Lennon to the wall
+and along the wall toward the doorway that opened upon the short passage
+to the girl's room. No door barred the passage at either end. The
+purpose of the prowler was now unmistakable.
+
+For the second time Lennon had cause to be thankful that he had not
+changed to his boots. His moccasined feet noiselessly felt their way
+after the heavy-footed shuffler. Slade was already through the doorway
+into the passage. Lennon followed. The finger-tips of his outgroping
+left hand touched the back of the prowler.
+
+A startled grunt warned Lennon to dodge back a step and crouch. A
+heavier grunt told him of a violent out-clutch or blow, which, meeting
+only empty air, had wrenched the breath from the big body of the
+striker.
+
+Again Lennon pointed his revolver--and again the expected match failed
+to crackle and flare. Slade stood silent for several seconds, holding
+his breath. But Lennon was no less still. The tense listener expelled
+his pent-up breath in a grunt of disgust.
+
+"Huh! Must 'a' been the tizwin. Fools a man."
+
+Lennon straightened up and again groped with his hand as he heard Slade
+shuffle on along the passage. There was need of utmost caution. He did
+not wish to shoot. But he knew that the grip of Slade's thick arms would
+be as dangerous as the hug of a grizzly.
+
+This time the outstretched finger-tips barely grazed the prowler's
+shirt. Lennon took a quick step forward, clutched the back of Slade's
+neck as a guide for his blow, and struck him with the butt of the
+revolver under the right ear. The massive body of the trader slumped
+down as if hit by a sledge.
+
+The weight of the falling man dragged Lennon after. But the utter
+limpness of the body under him stayed his hand from a second blow. He
+thrust the revolver back into his pocket and grasped Slade under the
+armpits. The body remained flaccid even when dragged out of the passage.
+
+Lennon struck a match and bent low over the ghastly face of the man he
+had felled. The scoundrel was only stunned. Lennon's look of anxiety
+gave place to a stern smile. Though certain of the man's guilty
+intentions, he could not put an end to him.
+
+He again grasped the unconscious man and dragged him across the living
+room and out beside the crane of the hoist. A loop of the rope-end about
+the clumsy ankles, and two or three turns of the windlass lifted the
+inert body so that it dangled head downward.
+
+To swing the crane out through the opening and lower away on the rope
+was the easiest part of the undertaking. Lennon reversed the crank of
+the windlass, around and around, with purposeful deliberation. He hoped
+that Slade would recover consciousness while still swinging in mid-air.
+There was grim pleasure in the thought of how the scoundrel would first
+become aware of the dim starlit precipice beside him and then would
+rouse to the shame and danger of his hanging.
+
+When the rope was rather less than half unwound from the windlass Lennon
+paused to shift his grip on the crank. At the same moment a candle that
+had been masked by a blanket glowed out at him from the doorway of the
+living room. The muzzle of a small revolver thrust forward above the
+candle.
+
+"Hands up--quick--or I'll shoot," threatened a vibrant, low-pitched
+voice.
+
+The menace was very real. Most men would have obeyed the command and let
+Slade drop to a head-foremost smash on the cliff foot. Lennon cried back
+at the threatener without releasing his hold on the windlass:
+
+"Pardon me, Miss Farley--I----"
+
+"You!" Holding up the candle, Carmena stepped in to peer about the big
+anteroom. "Way you were stooped over I mistook you for---- Almost fired.
+What you doing?"
+
+The query was charged with suspicion. Lennon thrust in the crank peg,
+folded his arms, and leaned against the windlass.
+
+"I met your father's partner wandering about, and thought he needed an
+airing."
+
+The girl stared from the windlass out along the taut rope.
+
+"You don't mean----"
+
+"Yes, dangling head down."
+
+"Dead?"
+
+"Merely knocked out--worse luck! But one way of restoring consciousness
+is to raise the feet above the head. He may wake up any moment and
+appreciate the situation."
+
+"Any moment?" cried Carmena. She half dropped her candlestick on the
+stone floor and sprang to the windlass. "Quick! We must haul him up
+before he comes to."
+
+Lennon did not budge.
+
+"No, Miss Farley. That beast shall not again set foot in this place
+until Elsie is safe away."
+
+The girl's eyes widened. Her hand clutched and drew close across her
+rounded bosom the folds of the blanket that she had flung about her
+shoulders to cover her night gown. Her face paled and as quickly flushed
+scarlet.
+
+"I thought I heard sounds in the passage, but the rug curtain muffled
+them," she murmured. "Was he trying to--to----"
+
+"Had been drinking," replied Lennon. "My regret now is that the blow did
+not kill him."
+
+"And leave us no chance against Cochise? He's the only living creature
+that Cochise fears. Can't you see we must make believe--must keep up
+with him until we are rid of the Apaches? Bad as he is, he's a white
+man. Cochise is a--devil! When he tired of Blossom, he'd give her to his
+men."
+
+Convinced against his will, Lennon began to wind in on the windlass.
+Carmena went to the edge of the cliff. When the body of Slade came
+spinning and swinging up out of the gloom she held down the light and
+peered anxiously at the knot that held the rope about his thick ankles.
+It showed no signs of slipping. His down-hung head wobbled up into the
+flickering light of the candle. The face was purple; the bloodshot eyes
+were glazed.
+
+Carmena swung in the crane and freed the rope the moment Lennon eased
+off. Slade was wheezing as if almost suffocated. At Carmena's urging,
+Lennon helped her drag the stupefied man back into the living room. The
+girl ran to fetch a bowl of water.
+
+"Loosen your clothes," she whispered in Lennon's ear. "Hide your
+moccasins--look as if you'd just jumped out of bed--get your arm back in
+the sling. That's it. Now lift his head and shoulders up against this
+chair."
+
+As Lennon raised the flaccid upper body, Carmena began to dash water
+into the purple face. The blotched skin gradually lightened to its
+natural red. The pale eyes lost their fishy glaze. They stared dazedly
+up into the deeply concerned face of Carmena. She flung the last cupful
+of water from the bowl. Slade roused enough to mumble virulent curses.
+
+"Oh!" exclaimed Carmena, in a tone of sympathetic relief. "He's not
+dead--he's coming to. Oh, Mr. Slade, what happened? Did you fall against
+the table? Or was it a fit? You looked terribly black in the face, as if
+you'd had a fit. That's why I used the water. Jack held you up to drain
+the blood out of your head."
+
+Slade scowled at his helpers. Lennon frowned back at him but followed up
+the girl's lead.
+
+"Once saw a man taken with apoplexy--stroke of paralysis, you know. Not
+paralyzed are you? Try lifting your arms and legs?"
+
+Slade glowered morosely, but caught the look of concern in Carmena's
+face and stiffened with sudden alarm. She watched with an intent
+scrutiny as he gingerly lifted one limb after another.
+
+"Bunk!" he growled. "I ain't paralyzed. Needn't think you can con me."
+
+"Wait--your face!" warned the girl. "It looked queer. Try smiling."
+
+"No, it's all right now," said Lennon. "Sometimes these first strokes of
+apoplexy paralyze only for a few moments."
+
+Carmena changed her look of sympathy to one of sharp reproof.
+
+"I don't think it's that at all. You've just been working on our
+sympathies, Mr. Slade. Own up now. You took too much tizwin to know what
+you were about. You came in here for a drink of water and fell against
+the table corner."
+
+The glaring eyes of the trader narrowed in a look of crafty calculation.
+Lennon followed the man's thoughts by his expression. The effects of the
+moonshine whiskey, of the blow under his ear, and of the suffocation had
+not yet passed. They had left him lax and shaken and rather muddled. He
+had been given his fill for one night. Carmena's reproaches disarmed
+his suspicion that she and Lennon knew what he had been about. His
+guilty anger at the two subsided into derision of their blindness.
+
+"Well, what if I did git tanked up?" he growled. "It's my tizwin as much
+as Dad's, ain't it? I'm going back to bed to sleep it off."
+
+Lennon took the candle from Carmena.
+
+"Permit me to carry the light for you, Slade. Your hand is too unsteady.
+I'm not so sure about Miss Farley's explanation of your mishap. I still
+believe you had a stroke--not as heavy a stroke as it might have
+been--not fatal, you know, but heavy enough to put you down and out."
+
+Slade was staggering to his feet. Lennon followed him to the room where
+Farley lay sprawled in drunken slumber beside an empty whiskey jug. As
+soon as Slade had dropped upon the bed Lennon took the candle back to
+the living room. Carmena had gone.
+
+He gathered up an armful of Navaho rugs and moved one of the heavy
+chairs around to the doorway of the passage into the girl's room.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+CROOKED WAYS
+
+
+At gray dawn Elsie started to go out into the living room. Midway of the
+dusky passage her foot struck against a roundish object. She bent down
+to look. A dim form was lying in the passage, with feet against the
+chair that blocked the outer doorway.
+
+The girl's half shriek brought Lennon up at a bound, his revolver out.
+
+"Who's there?" he demanded.
+
+"Oh--oh, Jack!" the girl sobbed her relief.
+
+He clasped her to him protectingly.
+
+"All right, sweetheart--all right," he said, soothingly. "You see I have
+been here on watch. Slade---- But that is past. I see light outside. He
+will soon be leaving with me."
+
+Elsie clutched him, in renewed panic.
+
+"But I'm afraid! I don't want you to leave me, Jack. You'll never, never
+come back! I want to go along, too. If you leave me, I'm awful afraid
+Cochise'll catch me!"
+
+"You dear little frightened Blossom! But I cannot take you now. You must
+stay with Carmena. She will keep you up here, safe from Cochise. I will
+come back--never fear. I will come back and take you away."
+
+"Take me--away from Dead Hole? Oh, how wonderful! Mena says I came from
+outside, where are all the book things and people--like you. I can't
+remember, but I'll just love to go out and see the wide world with
+you--and Mena--and Dad. Only Dad doesn't want to leave the Hole at all."
+
+"You shall go with me out of this place," replied Lennon. "I will bring
+the sheriff and have him arrest every member of this band of outlaws."
+
+The rug curtains of the inner room flung apart. Carmena sprang out into
+the passage. She drew her foster-sister away from Lennon with a grasp as
+resolute as it was gentle.
+
+"Go and start breakfast, Blossom," she directed. "The sooner they leave
+the better."
+
+Elsie darted to the doorway and disappeared. Lennon started after her.
+He was checked by a low-spoken command from Carmena:
+
+"Stop. I want a show-down from you, Jack Lennon. I heard what you said
+about the sheriff. Good thing Slade wasn't in earshot. You'd have a
+bullet in you by now. You may yet. What are you aiming to do?"
+
+"You say you heard me," said Lennon. "I spoke clearly."
+
+"Do you count Dad in the gang?"
+
+"Don't you?"
+
+In the brightening light of red dawn Lennon saw the girl's eyes cloud
+with anguish. At sight of her grief and suffering a wave of compassion
+surged up within him. The flood overwhelmed and submerged all his
+prejudice against her.
+
+He started to express his pity and sympathy--only to be checked before
+the words could leave his lips. The girl's eyes were ablaze. Her mouth
+straightened in resolute lines.
+
+"All right, Mr. Lennon," she said. "You've shown your hand. Here's mine:
+You'll give your pledge to leave the sheriff out of this deal, or you'll
+never reach the trail."
+
+"Very kind of you, indeed, to warn me, Miss Farley. I presume you will
+tell Slade and Cochise to be ready if I attempt to escape."
+
+Though the girl's lips remained firm, her eyes again dilated with
+anguish. She turned about and groped her way into the inner room. Lennon
+felt an odd mingling of shame and regret, of anger and an emotion that
+went far beyond sympathy.
+
+Elsie soon came with a bowl of coffee, which Carmena had sent for Lennon
+to give to Slade. There was no need of words to make clear her wish to
+be rid of the visitors. Lennon found Slade lying as torpid as Farley.
+But the hot coffee roused him to morose alertness.
+
+Breakfast was served by Carmena, though her excuse for the absence of
+Elsie failed to satisfy the surly-tempered trader. The younger girl did
+not appear until Slade dropped the rope ladder and went scrambling down
+the cliff face. Carmena was already lowering Lennon's outfit to the
+trader's Navaho followers, who had come at dawn.
+
+With a last word to Elsie to be brave but careful until his return,
+Lennon gently freed himself from her clinging embrace, put his arm back
+in the sling, and stepped into the loop of the hoist rope. The girls
+lowered him to the cliff foot.
+
+The Navahos, who were dressed as Mexicans, already had the prospecting
+outfit lashed on a pack horse. At Lennon's request, Slade derisively
+ordered one of them to hold the tenderfoot's pony. Lennon nursed his arm
+and climbed into his saddle with a show of difficulty. The more awkward
+and disabled he could make himself appear to his travelling companions
+the better would be his chances later.
+
+Slade put spurs to his big horse and galloped off down the valley,
+leaving Lennon to trail behind with the Navahos. The pace did not
+slacken until the party raced down into the lower cañon and around a
+double turn to the drop in the bed.
+
+On the brink of the cliff was set a crane similar in design to the one
+at the cliff house but much larger. Hauled back, it was hidden from
+below by a corner of rock. Swung out, its block and tackle, operated by
+a one-pony windlass, could hoist or lower a two-pony load in the light
+basket cage woven of wire and withes. One of the three Apache guards
+hitched his pony to the windlass.
+
+Slade went down first, with his horse and Lennon and one of the Apaches.
+Before the horse was led through the cage door out upon the smooth
+ledges at the foot of the cliff the Apache fastened thick pads of
+rawhide upon his hoofs. This was also done for the ponies as they swung
+down, two by two, in the cage.
+
+Lennon had noted the arrangement and working of the crane and hoist with
+the eye of an engineer. When he turned his attention to the hoof pads,
+Slade gratuitously explained that the rawhide was needed to keep the
+horses from slipping on the ledges of the cliff. Lennon took this with a
+careless nod.
+
+He had already inferred the true reason for the practice. The ledges
+were neither slippery nor steep. But scratches made by ironshod hoofs on
+the rocks might have led expert trackers to suspect the hoisting of
+stolen stock up the cliff.
+
+Down where the bed was of loose stones and gravel a rough trail from the
+lower cañon twisted up a side gorge. Pursuers trailing a bunch of stolen
+cattle or horses would of course turn up the gorge. A glance or two at
+the sheer thirty-foot wall of the upstep in the bed of the main cañon
+would convince the most astute of cowboys that not even a puma could go
+up that way.
+
+At the edge of the trail the Apache took off the hoof-pads and returned
+to the cage. He was being hoisted up the cliff when Lennon loped after
+Slade down-trail around a sharp bend in the cañon.
+
+A hard ride down the cañon for five miles or more, then up a steep break
+and across cedar-dotted mesas, brought the party out to the Moqui trail
+shortly after mid-morning. Lennon frowned at the clear-marked trail.
+
+His plans as first made had been to cut and run for the railway the
+moment he should reach the main trail. But he had discovered that his
+pony was the slowest of the mounts and that the four Navahos always kept
+behind him. He could neither drop to the rear nor race ahead of Slade's
+big American thoroughbred.
+
+Slade turned to the right, away from the railway, and pushed the pace
+for another hour. The trail led through a rather wide valley. Near the
+head they came to a well-watered oasis of corn and bean fields. Across
+from the trail stood an abandoned Moqui pueblo.
+
+The ruins had been sufficiently restored to house Slade's trading
+establishment and the score or more families of his Navaho cowpunchers.
+The small storeroom was crowded with bales and boxes, but Lennon noticed
+that behind the front piles many of the boxes were empty. This
+legitimate business was more or less of a sham to cover the whiskey
+running.
+
+Slade's quarters in a half-detached group of stone rooms were somewhat
+incongruously furnished. A rather handsome but sad-eyed young Indian
+woman in a dirty blue wrapper covertly "dished up" a noon meal for her
+master and Lennon on the fly-covered table.
+
+The greasy warmed-over chile con carne, the half-cooked tortillas and
+the muddy coffee accounted for Slade's praises of Elsie as a cook. The
+Indian girl slunk and cowered under his curses. Whenever she passed him
+she cringed as if expectant of a blow. Lennon was doubly relieved when
+Slade's impatience to be off on the search for the lost lode hurried him
+out into the clean open air.
+
+The horses had been fed and watered and were waiting near the spring,
+beside a young peach tree. Slade paused to bellow guttural commands at a
+Navaho sheepherder who was driving a small flock down the valley.
+
+Lennon hastened ahead toward the spring, eager to seize his opportunity.
+He had only to secure his rifle, leap on Slade's big thoroughbred, and
+race away down the back trail. The American horse could easily outrun
+the Indian ponies. Once beyond rifle range of the pueblo his escape
+would be certain.
+
+The horses were soon only a few steps away. Lennon nerved himself for
+the dash. From behind a scraggly bunch of scrub that appeared too thin
+to screen even a coyote rose all four of Slade's personal retainers.
+Though they were as stolid and silent as wooden Indians, each had his
+rifle in hand. Lennon thought he caught a glitter of suspicion in their
+covert glances.
+
+Bitter as was his disappointment, he was quick to make the best of the
+situation. A sharp command and jerk of his thumb toward Slade led them
+to believe he had come for them at the order of their master.
+
+Slade hailed the tenderfoot with bluff cordiality when the mounted party
+loped up the slope to him.
+
+"Gitting het up, huh? You act like an old-timer on a gold stampede.
+Never before knew a prospector to go loco over copper."
+
+"You should bear in mind I am an engineer, not a prospector," replied
+Lennon. "If I am successful over this copper project and it proves to be
+as large as I have been led to expect, I shall have won a place well up
+in my profession."
+
+Slade grunted contemptuously and spurred his horse into a gallop. Within
+a mile he turned off trail to cut across country. Beyond the first
+mesas, which were a part of the trader-cowman's cattle range, came a
+jumbled waste of crags and broken ridges.
+
+On the edge of this devil's dooryard of bare rocks and no less dry and
+sterile ravines Slade gave over the lead to the oldest of his Navahos. A
+white man could have found his way only by blind chance through the maze
+of twisted clefts that seamed the unscalable cliffs and crags.
+
+Lennon soon lost all sense of direction. He realized that he could not
+hope to find his way out of these worst of bad lands without a guide. He
+must put off his plans to escape until the return to the trail. He began
+to surmise that Cripple Sim's inability to relocate the lost lode may
+not have been due altogether to his maiming by Apache arrows.
+
+But this jagged waste that had kept the secret of the mine hidden for a
+generation would offer an impassable barrier to any railway. Unless an
+easier route could be found, the entire project was already proved
+hopeless. Even a vein of solid copper could not be worked at a profit if
+the metal had to be packed out on burros.
+
+Yet there remained the chance of another route to the lode; and Lennon
+was not minded to confide his disappointment to Slade. He spurred his
+pony to keep pace with the others. The sooner the mine was relocated and
+the party back at the trail, the sooner he could make his attempt to
+escape. After Elsie had been freed from her dangerous prison in Dead
+Hole he could take time to search for a feasible route to the mine.
+
+Toward sundown the old Navaho led the party clear of the shattered rock
+maze and up the side of a small mesa. From the table top Lennon saw the
+mighty towers of Triple Butte startlingly close ahead. Slade reined in
+to stare hard-eyed at the engineer.
+
+"There's your butte," he rumbled. "Which side do we head?"
+
+"North," replied Lennon, without a moment's hesitation.
+
+Though he had been lost since leaving the trail, he clearly remembered
+all the directions given by the old prospector as to the position of the
+lode in relation to Triple Butte. From the top of the mesa practical
+railway routes appeared to offer to the east and north of the great
+butte.
+
+Lennon studied the landscape until he noticed that the Navaho leader had
+headed south of east instead of north. Certain that his reply to Slade
+had been misunderstood, he spurred forward to explain that they were
+veering away from the lost lode.
+
+Slade rode on without a word of acknowledgment. The presence of the
+Navahos made his contemptuous silence doubly galling. Lennon took it as
+a foretaste of what was to come and masked his chagrin. For Elsie's
+sake, he could not afford to quarrel with Slade at this stage of the
+dangerous game that must be played.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+THE DROP
+
+
+At sunset the reason for the guide's choice of route disclosed itself.
+The party came to a group of small springs.
+
+Lennon's throat had been parched for the last two hours. He spurred his
+jaded pony forward to the mesquite bushes where the Navahos were
+unsaddling, and slipped off to dip his empty canteen in the largest
+spring.
+
+The guide muttered gutturally to Slade who was staring up narrow-eyed at
+the broken shoulder of Triple Butte. He wrenched himself about to scowl
+at Lennon. The engineer had straightened and was raising the half-filled
+canteen to drink.
+
+"Hey, you!" bellowed Slade. "Drop that!"
+
+The bullying command was more than Lennon could endure. He waved the
+canteen ironically at the trader, turned half away, and put the opening
+to his mouth. Slade whipped out his revolver and fired. The canteen flew
+out of Lennon's hand and thumped down upon the stone beside the spring.
+
+For a moment Lennon was so astonished that he stood motionless, staring
+down at the canteen. The water gushed and gurgled through the holes
+pierced through the middle of the vessel by the heavy bullet.
+
+The first coherent thought of the engineer was that Slade had intended
+to murder him. He put his hand to the pocket that held Farley's revolver
+and turned to face Slade. The trader's weapon was already back in its
+holster. His stained teeth showed in a wide grin.
+
+"May I ask what you mean by shooting at me?" demanded Lennon.
+
+Slade's mirth burst out in a roar of laughter.
+
+"Shooting at you--shooting _now_?" he jibed when he could speak. "You
+must figger I'm plumb loco. Any fool ought to know anybody would hold
+off till you located the mine. Even supposing I was going to plant you,
+I'd wait, wouldn't I, huh?"
+
+Lennon saw the point even clearer than the trader intended. He was
+supposed to take the piece of grim humour as a reassurance. The derisive
+banter was an unintentional notification that he could expect to be
+murdered immediately after the finding of the lost lode. But until then
+he must continue to play the dupe.
+
+"I must confess I do not fancy your Western jokes," he said. "You have
+spoiled a perfectly good canteen."
+
+"Happens you're worth more to me than it; and you was dead set on
+filling up with that poison water," rejoined Slade.
+
+"Poison?"
+
+The old Navaho was drinking from the second spring, less than two paces
+away from the first. Lennon pointed at him.
+
+"Sure," said Slade. "It's not the only case I know of finding good water
+'longside arsenic, in a copper district."
+
+The actions of the Indians bore out the truth of their master's
+assertion, or at least proved that they believed the first spring
+poisonous. The horses were picketed well away from it and from the joint
+rill of the two springs, which trickled down slope a few yards before
+seeping away among the stones.
+
+The camp supper of bacon and flapjacks was soon followed by the
+spreading of blankets on the nearest stretches of sand. The Navahos went
+off to one side. Slade ordered Lennon to keep near him and carefully
+encircled their bedding-down place with the coils of a horsehair lariat.
+
+The purpose of the lariat became apparent to Lennon when he was roused
+by the chill of dawn. He saw one of the Navahos rake out of the embers
+of the evening's fire a torpid tarantula as big as his hand.
+
+Lennon thought of Elsie's daintiness and soft ways. The girl was utterly
+out of keeping with this fierce land of desolation and thirst, of thorns
+and poison springs, of venomous reptiles and insects, of ferocious
+beasts and men. She did not belong and never would. She was a garden
+flower.
+
+Carmena was different. Her rich bloom was more like the flowers of the
+desert growths--the thorn-guarded yucca and needled cactus. There was
+nothing soft and cuddly about _her_.
+
+At the realization of where his thoughts were drifting, Lennon wrenched
+his mental focus back to Elsie. What concern could the fate of Carmena
+be to him? She belonged with her drunken, criminal father in Dead Hole.
+All thought and effort must be centred on the rescue of Elsie.
+
+After a hasty meal of flapjacks, bacon, and coffee, the party started
+out to work north around Triple Butte. The country was now unknown
+ground even to the old Navaho guide. But he showed great craft in
+puzzling out the directions given to him.
+
+An inner pocket hid the map that Lennon had brought from the East. He
+took care that Slade and the Navahos thought he was going by memory. Had
+he told of the map at any time after reaching Dead Hole he now felt
+certain that he never would have lived to get this near the mine. Slade
+would have taken the map and killed him out of hand. So at least Lennon
+believed.
+
+Once the party rounded upon the northern slopes of Triple Butte, the
+points described on the map became easily recognizable. All that
+remained to do was to ride around a spur ridge and slant into the valley
+that headed up between the western and central towers of the great
+butte. Here the searchers came upon trees and grass and running water.
+Farther up stood a small cabin, near a spring that had been blasted out
+and rimmed with rock to form a convenient basin.
+
+Lennon spurred forward beside Slade.
+
+"Promising. What?" he remarked.
+
+"Not what, but where?" growled the trader. "Hold on--that looks like an
+old burro trail."
+
+"Yes. Up first ravine toward left edge of middle butte, half a mile to
+lode," Lennon quoted the last directions that he had read on the map.
+
+Slade signed for the Navahos to wait at the spring. A brutal jab of the
+spurs sent his horse bounding off at top speed. Lennon's pony was left
+behind until the leader wheeled into the first ravine and came up
+against a steep slide of loose rock. To force even the nimblest of
+mounts to attempt such an ascent would have meant risking a bad fall.
+
+As Lennon loped his pony into the ravine the trader swore blasphemously
+and swung out of his saddle to scramble up the slide. Great as was his
+strength, it was offset by the fact that his weight tended to bring the
+loose stones sliding down at every step. Lennon was not only lighter and
+more agile but had the advantage of better wind.
+
+He was but a few steps below when Slade reached the head of the slide.
+Close above them the ascent was barred by high ledges that dropped off
+from the upper part of the ravine. Slade stared savagely at the dull
+reddish-brown face of the ledges. The metallic surface plainly showed
+the use of pick and dynamite. He uttered a furious oath as he turned
+upon Lennon.
+
+"You lying skunk!" he bellowed. "This ain't no gold mine!"
+
+All the way up the slide Lennon had perceived the copper in the float
+rock. He was prepared for the trader's outburst. Farley's revolver lay
+ready in his grasp, behind the sling on his right arm.
+
+"Have you--what do you call it?--gone loco?" he asked. "I told you
+distinctly my search was for a copper mine. The gold lode was your own
+fancy. You will now apologize for that term you used."
+
+Had one of his Navahos made the demand, Slade could not have been more
+amazed. He gaped, dumbfounded. Then his rage burst out again with
+redoubled fury. But the sight of Lennon's revolver muzzle put an abrupt
+end to his violent curses.
+
+"Good enough," said Lennon. "Now my apology, if you please."
+
+The cool politeness of the request emphasized its deadly earnestness.
+Lennon was keen for an excuse to shoot the big scoundrel. The look in
+his eye was unmistakable.
+
+"All right," grunted Slade. "Have it your own way. I back up."
+
+"You apologize?"
+
+"Sure. Even a tenderfoot is entitled to that--when he gits the drop on
+you."
+
+"Quite true," agreed Lennon, and he thrust the revolver into his pocket.
+"Now, with regard to the lode, our next step will be----"
+
+"What'd you say you was to git from your copper company?" broke in
+Slade, suddenly straight-eyed and cordial.
+
+"Twenty thousand bonus for relocating the lode, and----"
+
+"You can draw on 'em for it?"
+
+"For half, at least. You shall have your ten thousand as soon as you
+rid the Farleys of Cochise and his gang. That was the agreement."
+
+The trader thwacked his beefy hand down on Lennon's shoulder.
+
+"That's a go, pard. I own up honest I figgered your talk of copper was
+all bunk. But I aim to stand by my bargains. Only you're sure now this
+here lode ain't no blind, are you? You ain't got that gold mine, too,
+hiding out hereabouts?"
+
+"I give you my word, Slade, this is the only mine or lode of which I
+know."
+
+Slade's look was more profane than a spoken curse.
+
+"Huh--another El Dorado lie roped and branded. Only thing to do is to go
+after that bonus of yours."
+
+"I must take samples and measurements for my report," said Lennon. "The
+company does not pay for the guesses of its engineers."
+
+None too willingly Slade took the end of the small steel-ribbon
+engineer's tape that was held out to him. Lennon measured the width of
+the copper ledges, noted the trend and dip of the immense lode, and
+calculated its thickness where exposed. Samples were then gathered.
+
+Upon the return down the slide the trader suddenly paused to point at
+the skull of a half-buried human skeleton.
+
+"Huh," he grunted. "Cripple Sim didn't have no pard. But look at the
+pick--another prospector. Must 'a' stumbled on the mine. Lots of good it
+done him. See that hole? His pard plugged him through the head, streaked
+out, got lost, died. That's how I figger it."
+
+"Poor chap!" Lennon murmured his pity for the murdered man, and he
+lingered to cover over the skeleton with a pile of loose stones.
+
+At the spring he found the Indians cooking another round of flapjacks,
+bacon, and coffee. After the meal the party waited through the heat of
+mid-day while the horses cropped the grass along the banks of the spring
+rill.
+
+At first there seemed nothing of interest about the old cabin. The
+thatch had half blown off; the adobe-plastered stone fireplace and
+chimney had tumbled down, and sand had drifted in past the broken wattle
+door. But when Lennon went in to take advantage of the patch of shade
+that was offered, he was shocked to find the skeleton of a woman huddled
+in the far corner.
+
+Summoned by his call, Slade eyed the skeleton with callous indifference.
+
+"Well, what you kicking up such a fuss about?" he growled. "Mebbe it's a
+squaw--mebbe a white woman. What's the difference? Been dead eight or
+ten years, by the look of things. Must 'a' got hers same time as the
+man. We're lucky they didn't git our mine."
+
+The start back was made so late that the party did not reach the arsenic
+spring until dusk. Lennon had convinced himself that Slade planned to
+return to Dead Hole and at least make a pretense of earning the ten
+thousand dollars.
+
+His own scheme was to seize Slade's horse and make a run for the
+railway. But first he must wait to be guided back through the devil's
+dooryard of crags and clefts.
+
+He fell asleep with his hand upon the butt of his revolver and the
+revolver under his body. He awoke at dawn to find his wrists lashed
+together. One of the Navahos stood on guard beside him. The revolver was
+gone. Slade and the others were already eating.
+
+No food was brought to Lennon. But after he had been roughly tossed into
+his saddle by the Navahos, Slade brought a drink of water from the
+arsenic spring and offered it with mock hospitality.
+
+"It's a dry ride," he urged. "Take a good swaller, son. It'll keep you
+from gitting thirsty."
+
+Lennon looked at him steady-eyed.
+
+"May I ask what you expect to gain by this, Slade?"
+
+"Gain?--me?" The trader stared back no less unwaveringly. "I just done
+it to save you gitting in trouble. You're too careless--way you handle a
+gun. Might hurt somebody one of these here days. Anyhow, this'll help
+you think things over. Sabe?"
+
+The poison water splashed down upon the dry rocks. Slade mounted, to
+ride off after the guide. The other Navahos lashed Lennon to his saddle
+and drove his pony before them, along with the pack horse.
+
+Though the old Navaho found a rather shorter way out through the jumble
+maze of the bad lands, Lennon's mouth and throat were dust dry and his
+tongue swollen before the party reached the trail.
+
+The thirst torture continued until the arrival at the pueblo. There
+Slade at last gave drink to his prisoner and disclosed his purpose, with
+a pretense of indignation.
+
+"You ought to be strung up for trying to shoot me, Lennon. But I'm an
+easy-going man--easy and forgiving. You only got to make out your report
+and send for that twenty thousand. When it comes on, I'll let you go."
+
+"Very kind of you, I'm sure," replied Lennon, after he had drained the
+last drop of water from the jar. "However, I am in no hurry to make my
+report. I shall send it on and draw your half of the money--after you
+have kept your bargain with regard to Cochise."
+
+Slade deliberately drew his revolver and aimed it between Lennon's eyes.
+
+"Just remember, your riding in the way you did was to set you to
+thinking," he reminded. "This ain't no joke. Guess you'll agree now to
+git started on that report, huh?"
+
+Lennon smiled at the revolver and the still more menacing steel-white
+eyes that glared at him along the barrel.
+
+"Is it not time you set to thinking yourself, Slade?" he suggested.
+"Alive, I am worth ten thousand dollars to you, as soon as you keep your
+bargain. Dead, I would not be worth a penny to you or any one else."
+
+The brick red of the trader's big face purpled and the hand that gripped
+the revolver shook with the excess of his rage as he jammed the weapon
+back into its holster.
+
+"Wait," he said. "We'll see what Cochise can do to make you behave."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+DEATH PLAY
+
+
+Fresh horses were saddled, and Lennon was tied on as before. His last
+hope of escape went glimmering. He realized that he had missed his one
+chance when the party first reached the main trail, coming out of Dead
+Hole.
+
+To have attacked even then would have been a desperate undertaking--one
+man against five. But he would have had at least a fighting chance. Now
+he was unarmed and bound, unable even to shift in the saddle.
+
+Slade set a hot pace that fast ate up the hard miles of the return
+trail. But no pony could carry his massive weight as had the horse.
+Before the main cañon was reached, his mount began to flag. Only the
+most merciless of rowelling could goad the jaded beast out of a jog
+except for short spurts. In the descent to the cañon the pony began to
+stumble badly. But Slade held him up with an iron grip on the
+jaw-breaking Spanish ring-bit.
+
+The smooth cañon bed was only a few yards below when, at the last sharp
+twist in the descent, the still air vibrated with a sibilant rattle.
+Slade's pony snorted and jumped sideways, leaving Lennon a clear view of
+the big diamond-back rattlesnake that lay coiled in the middle of the
+trail. The gaping jaws of the angry snake and the peculiar billowing of
+its body so fixed Lennon's gaze that he only half glimpsed the final
+stumble of Slade's pony.
+
+Unable to keep his footing among the loose stones of the side slope, the
+exhausted animal plunged headlong. Slade managed to fling himself clear,
+but fell prone on the sharp-edged stones. His nose was skinned and one
+cheek gashed. He bounded up, fairly beside himself with rage, and began
+to kick the head of the fallen pony.
+
+The luckless beast struggled to rise, got half to his feet, screamed,
+and fell over. Something about his hindquarters had been wrenched or
+torn or broken. Slade swore furiously and jerked out his revolver to
+fire repeatedly into the body of the struggling beast. The fourth shot
+was through the head.
+
+At the sudden stilling of his victim's struggles, the trader's half
+insane rage cooled from its mad heat without losing any of its
+virulence. One of the Navahos had dismounted and run forward to stone
+the rattlesnake. Slade uttered a guttural hissing command. Instead of
+crushing the snake, the Indian teased it with the butt of his leather
+quirt.
+
+The reptile lashed out in a vicious stroke. An instant later the Navaho
+straightened up with his hand gripped about the snake's neck close
+behind the deadly triangular head. He gave no heed to its five-foot body
+writhing and coiling about his bare arm.
+
+Slade swung up into the path and looked from the new prisoner to Lennon
+with a glint in his pale eyes as malignant as the cold glare of the
+snake.
+
+"You're one of these here science sharps," he jeered. "We'll have you
+test out if a Gila monster bite fixes a man against rattler poison."
+
+"Rather a costly experiment for you if I prove not to be immune,"
+rallied Lennon. "You must have a keen interest in science so to risk
+your ten thousand."
+
+"Mebbe. It ain't much of a gamble, though. I stand to rake in twenty
+thousand if I win, and you ain't liable to let it go as far as the
+bite."
+
+"Twenty thousand?" questioned Lennon. "If you take Cochise in on this
+blackmailing scheme, you will have to divide the proceeds with him. Why
+not keep your bargain and earn your half of the bonus without this risk
+of losing all?"
+
+The trader's eyes narrowed in crafty calculation. He looked about at the
+snake and then down at the slaughtered horse. A sudden grin twisted his
+coarse mouth.
+
+"You're right, son," he chuckled. "Why split the twenty with a dam'
+Apache? Ain't time now to make the Hole 'fore dark, anyhow--and here's
+our rawhide. We'll try out that science experiment right here."
+
+He signed for the man with the snake to go on down into the cañon bed.
+The other Indians were already unsaddling the dead burro. Slade muttered
+a command to them in the thick indistinct intonations of their language.
+They at once started to flay the pony.
+
+Slade led Lennon's mount down where the snake holder had halted beside a
+sangre de dragon tree. One of the Indians followed and began to cut
+stakes from the tree. The sap of the tree was as red as blood and so
+astringent that when Slade dabbed a little on his cheek the wound at
+once ceased to bleed.
+
+The flayers soon came with the limp rawhide. Slade turned along the
+cañon to a spot where the rays of the low western sun still slanted down
+between the cliffs. He spoke again in the Navaho tongue. The Indians
+drove a stake firmly into the sand and tied the rattlesnake to it with a
+three-foot thong cut from the pony skin.
+
+Lennon was now pulled from his pony and stretched out, face down, just
+beyond reach of the snake. Regardless of the bandage on his hand, his
+arms were jerked out sideways and fastened with yard-long thongs to
+stakes driven at right angles to a point a foot or so in front of his
+head. From stakes set on the opposite side of the snake several lines
+cut from the raw pony hide were flung across past the snake and bound to
+Lennon's arms at the shoulder.
+
+By hauling on the lines from ahead, the Indians dragged Lennon an inch
+at a time toward the snake. He heard the sharp ominous rattle, and
+twisted his head up out of the sand to face the danger. The snake had
+coiled in front of the first stake. Though its venomous head was drawn
+back, the long curved fangs of the gaping jaws were less than three feet
+before Lennon's eyes.
+
+Even as he looked up, the reptile shot forward straight at his face. He
+involuntarily blinked. In the same instant a drop of fluid spattered
+against his closed eyelid and he heard a soft thud in the sand close
+before his chin. A puff of dust whiffed up into his nostrils. It clotted
+the dew-like drop of liquid on his eyelid.
+
+He opened his eyes in a wide stare. The head of the big rattlesnake lay
+flat on the sand, less than eight inches before his face. It had lashed
+out to the full length of the thong. Had the thong broken, or even had
+its loop about the reptile's neck slipped, the poison-dripping fangs
+must have lashed Lennon's face.
+
+Intense as were the heat and dryness of the cañon bed, Lennon suddenly
+felt his skin bathed in clammy sweat. For the first time in his life he
+knew terror. He glared into the cold, malignant eyes of the snake and
+saw death, certain and horrible. Panic seized him. He writhed and dug
+his fingers and boot toes into the sand in a frantic attempt to work
+himself back away from the hideous forward-straining reptile.
+
+The desperate struggle was utterly futile. The lines ahead had been
+stretched taut and knotted fast to their stakes. With his arms
+outstretched he could get very little purchase for thrusting himself
+back against the elastic pull of the rawhide ropes.
+
+But he was no coward. Realization of his helplessness brought him the
+resignation of despair. With resignation came a stilling of his wild
+panic. Frantic terror gave way to reasoning thought.
+
+Had his torturer been Cochise, there might have been no room for hope.
+But Slade was a white man. He might prefer gold to the lust of torture.
+The death of his victim would mean the loss of the ransom money.
+Lennon's tense nerves and rigid muscles relaxed. He allowed his
+upward--and backward-strained head to sink down until one cheek rested
+upon the hot sand. The change of position brought the top of his head
+very close to the snake. But he trusted to Slade's avarice to see that
+he escaped the fangs.
+
+Slade and the Indians had been gloating upon the struggles and terror of
+their victim. At Lennon's quieting down the trader burst into a derisive
+laugh.
+
+"Sort of wilted a'ready, huh?" he jeered. "Well, you're wise to take a
+rest while you still got time. Rawhide shrinks a whole lot when it gits
+to drying. Only question is how much slower the rattler's whang strap'll
+shorten up than your lines."
+
+For the first time a clear perception of the real devilishness of the
+torture flashed into Lennon's abnormally active mind. He was to lie
+outstretched through the long hours, without food or water, while the
+shrinking rawhide dragged him with frightful slowness closer and closer
+to those fangs of death.
+
+The thong of the snake also would be contracting. But it was much the
+shorter, and therefore would shrink less. The uncertainty of how fast
+and how much the different fastenings would contract doubled the
+torturing knowledge that the shrinking must inevitably pull him within
+reach of the snake.
+
+Physical agony would then soon be added to the mental anguish of dread.
+For, once the snake's horny snout grazed the top of his head, he would
+be forced to keep his head raised, on penalty of being pierced by the
+fangs if he should seek to rest.
+
+Then was when Slade no doubt felt certain that the overstrained nerves
+of his victim would give way. Lennon foresaw that if worse came to
+worst, he must agree to terms. After holding up his head as long as his
+strength lasted, he would be forced to yield. Why not yield at once and
+save all the torture?
+
+As he asked himself the question, a grateful shadow swept down the
+cañon. The sun was setting. Lennon reconsidered his half-formed
+decision. During the night the rawhide might continue to shrink a little
+in the dry air, but the darkness and chill would quiet the snake. It
+would lie still until sunrise. Time enough to yield when yielding should
+become inevitable!
+
+"If you'll pardon me, Slade," he said, "I believe I'll take a nap. Good
+night. Pleasant dreams."
+
+Slade started to curse but ended in a derisive laugh.
+
+"Think you'll four-flush, huh? Well, we'll see after sun-up."
+
+He turned his back on the prisoner and walked over to where the old
+Navaho was starting a fire for the inevitable flapjacks, bacon, and
+coffee. The thought of food nauseated Lennon. But he would have given a
+thousand dollars for one of the canteens of water. Regardless of a hiss
+from the half-strangled snake, he laid his other cheek over on the
+cooling sand.
+
+After a time Slade came with a blazing stick for torch to wish him a
+mocking good night. Lennon smiled back at him with a show of confidence.
+The trader cursed but soon went off to roll in his blankets. This proved
+Lennon's surmise that the real test would not come before morning.
+
+He lay for a long time wide-eyed, forcing himself to consider in detail
+every aspect of the situation and to calculate his chances. Beyond
+question, Slade intended to murder him. But there was first the ransom
+money to be secured. Would he wait for it, as in the case of the cowman
+whom Elsie had told about? Or might he not fall into a rage and destroy
+his victim as he had killed the pony?
+
+If he could keep his temper, the probabilities were that he would
+prolong the torture until he had gained his end. After that might come a
+short respite for the victim.
+
+Lennon next recalled all he knew about snakes and their poison glands.
+After that he closed his eyes and relaxed both mentally and physically.
+The cool of nightfall had somewhat eased his thirst and the ache from
+the strain of the rawhide lines on his shoulders. He dozed off to
+sleep.
+
+He was so far spent and his last thought so calm that he slept soundly
+all night. But the chill damp of dewfall roused him at the first graying
+of dawn. To the shivering of his cramped body from the cold was soon
+added a shudder of fear and loathing. Against his head, just above the
+forehead, was pressed a cold hard object--the snout of the rattlesnake.
+
+But the reptile was too torpid from the cold to strike. After a time the
+slight moistening of the rawhide by the dew enabled Lennon to force
+himself back nearly an inch. This was at sunrise. Slade came to gloat at
+his struggle.
+
+"Go it," he mocked. "Wiggle while you can. Both them lines and the
+rattler'll git busy soon's the sun hets up a bit. Excuse me while I
+feed. I'll git back in time for the fun."
+
+The breakfast fire was beside a patch of thorn scrub several yards away.
+Lennon watched until his enemy had sat down on the sand opposite the
+Navahos. He then lifted his head.
+
+The first rays of the sun had begun to warm the snake. At Lennon's
+movement it stirred sluggishly. The dull eyes began to brighten with the
+glare of returning life and anger. Lennon dropped his head forward.
+
+Enraged by the feigned attack, the snake struck. The long fangs came so
+near their mark that Lennon felt them or the snout pass through his
+hair. Spurts of venom from the overcharged poison glands sprayed in
+against his scalp.
+
+For the second time since being pegged out Lennon felt his skin go
+clammy with cold sweat. His flesh crept with horror. Death had grazed
+him by a fraction of an inch. Another stroke might break or loosen the
+snake's bond. Yet he nerved himself again and shook his head from side
+to side.
+
+The movement roused the snake to fury. It lashed out in stroke after
+stroke. But the very excess of the reptile's anger quickly exhausted its
+strength. The hideous head flattened down on the sand.
+
+A sideward glance told Lennon that his deadly play had not been heeded
+by Slade and the Navahos. But he knew he had no time to spare. He filled
+his parched mouth with sand and raised his head. The snake did not move.
+
+Lennon blew sand into the glaring eyes of the rattler. The jaws gaped
+angrily. He blew all the remaining sand in between the high-curved
+fangs. The snake struck viciously and sank down, inert. A film closed
+over the sand-filled eyes.
+
+By pulling himself forward, Lennon gained a little relaxing of the
+thongs that held his arms outstretched. He drew up his knees and flung
+his body up and forward. From a height of several inches his breast came
+down squarely upon the head of the snake, with all the weight of his
+body in the blow.
+
+When Slade rushed cursing from the fire, Lennon lay in what appeared to
+be a swoon, with the body of the rattlesnake writhing about his head. At
+the angry bellow of the trader the Indians came running to slash
+Lennon's bonds and jerk him away from the snake.
+
+Slade ripped out an astounded oath.
+
+"He's beaten the game!" he cried.
+
+The head of the reptile had been crushed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+THE ATTACK
+
+
+The trader possibly may have been overcome with admiration for his
+victim's courage. More probably he was moved by the need to keep him
+alive for further torture. He signed one of the Navahos to use his
+canteen. Lennon had feigned unconsciousness in the hope of this result.
+
+He permitted a good quart of water to trickle down his parched throat
+before he showed signs of reviving. Even after he thought best to feign
+stupor no longer he made a show of great weakness. When jerked to his
+feet by the Indians, he tottered and crumpled down again. Slade swore,
+but ordered food and coffee brought.
+
+Lennon's tongue was still too swollen for him to eat much of the greasy
+solids. The strong coffee, however, both stimulated him and completed
+the quenching of his thirst. The old Navaho held the spout of the big
+tin coffee pot to his lips and poured until the last drop of muddy black
+fluid drained from the grounds.
+
+The ponies were saddled, and Lennon was lifted upon his mount none too
+gently. He swayed in the saddle and clutched the horn. Slade made a sign
+for the prisoner's hands to be left unbound. During the ride up the
+cañon Lennon continued to feign weakness, lurching and swaying in the
+saddle.
+
+Slade had taken the pinto pony of the youngest Navaho, who rode double
+with one of the other men. The five miles to the cliff break in the
+cañon bed, down which they had been lowered in the basket, was covered
+at a lope.
+
+As the party came galloping to the under ledges Slade bellowed a
+deep-chested hail that boomed in loud reverberations upon the lofty
+precipices of the cañon sides. But no answering cry came down from the
+cliff, nor was there any sign of the hoist cage basket.
+
+The old Navaho raised a shrill quavering wail that carried like the howl
+of a coyote. Again the reverberating echoes ran up the precipices and
+slowly died out far above, and again no response came from the top of
+the cross barrier.
+
+"The lazy skunks!" growled Slade. "Off watch, huh? Keep me waiting, will
+they? I'll tan their dirty hides for 'em."
+
+He rode down cañon a few yards and emptied his revolver into the air,
+firing the shots in couples. This time the echoes had not died out
+skyward before a dark face with cloth-bound forehead peered down from
+the brink of the cross cliff. Slade roared up an angry command--and
+abruptly fell silent.
+
+The downlooker was making some quick gestures. Slade flung up his hand
+in an answering gesture. The signaller disappeared. Slade shouted an
+order to the best mounted of his men. The Navaho wheeled his pony and
+raced away down cañon on the back trail.
+
+The basket cage of the lift swung out over the cliff brink. It began to
+lower. Regardless of hoof marks, Slade spurred his pony up the foot
+ledges. Lennon followed with the others.
+
+A glance at the trader's face had told him danger was toward.
+
+Lennon could think of but two explanations. Either a band of vengeful
+cattlemen had discovered and attacked the rustlers' secret stronghold,
+or Cochise had returned and taken advantage of Slade's absence to carry
+out his designs against Elsie.
+
+The man sent back by Slade evidently was riding to summon reinforcements
+of Navahos from the pueblo. Whether they were to be used against the
+Apaches or to aid them against an outside posse was the question. If
+the first were the case, Lennon felt that he must be armed to fight.
+
+The thought of either Elsie or Carmena in the clutches of Cochise filled
+him with dread and horror. The suspense of the uncertainty was
+unbearable. He forced his pony up beside the trader's pinto while the
+basket cage was yet several feet overhead.
+
+"See here, Slade," he said, "you've given me a rough deal. But we're
+both white men. We can't permit Cochise to have Farley's girls. That is
+unthinkable. I'll agree to forget the snake. Give me my rifle and we'll
+go through with our bargain."
+
+"Like hell we will!" growled the trader. "Minute I turned my back you'd
+pot me."
+
+"No," pledged Lennon. "I give you my word."
+
+Slade continued to scowl with surly suspicion.
+
+"Guess we'll take a look first. Git a move on you. Pile in. No time to
+hoist the hosses."
+
+He swung from his saddle, with Lennon's rifle in one hand and his own in
+the other. Both cartridge belts were buckled about his massive body. He
+sprang into the wicker cage of the lift as it bumped upon the ledge.
+Lennon and the three Navahos crowded in after him.
+
+The Indian above peered over the cliff brink. At a signal from the
+Navaho he again vanished. The hoist rope tautened. With a creak, the
+cage scraped on the ledge and began to swing up the cliff face above
+the abandoned horses.
+
+To Lennon the ascent seemed maddeningly slow. The Navahos leaned against
+the wicker sides of the cage in stolid silence, their faces more than
+ever like bronze images. None cast a glance upward. But Slade could not
+hide his mingled uneasiness and anger.
+
+"Didn't think the young devil had the gall," he muttered. "Acting like
+he'd been bit by a hydrophoby skunk. Nothing meaner 'n a mad wolf. I'd
+'a' give him Carmena quick enough.... Learn her not to pass up a white
+man agin when she had her chance. But the young gal---- Blast Cochise.
+When I told him flat----"
+
+The cage crept up over the brink of the cliff. One of the Navahos leaped
+high to grasp the guy rope of the crane. His pull swung crane and cage
+around toward the horse windlass. The moment the occupants jumped from
+the cage the Navaho allowed the crane to swing out again over the cliff
+edge. The pony that was hitched to the bar of the windlass started to
+lower the cage by reversing at a jog trot.
+
+Though the Indian with the pony wore an Apache head cloth, Lennon
+recognized his ugly young face at the first clear view. He was Pete, the
+Navaho who had been with the Apaches under the cliff house on the day
+that Cochise had trapped Lennon and Carmena. Slade's manner toward him
+was that of a half-distrustful master. He questioned him hastily in
+English.
+
+Pete answered haltingly, with frequent lapses into the gutturals and
+hissings of his native tongue. His eyes glittered with fierce
+excitement. Lennon gathered that Cochise and his men were in the midst
+of an attack on the cliff house. This would seem to prove that the girls
+were still safe--and would remain safe. How could the Apaches hope to
+scale the sheer cliff without aid from above?
+
+But Slade's scowl showed that the situation by no means pleased him. He
+mounted Pete's pony and rushed the party up to the head of the cañon.
+Instead of preparing to hold this position until the arrival of his
+reinforcements, he kept on up the valley at a jog trot. Once clear of
+the cañon, Lennon could make out the sound of distant shots echoing down
+the valley along the cliffs.
+
+Within the first half mile the rescuers came upon a drove of big
+American horses. Every one showed signs of cruel driving over rocks and
+through thornscrub and cactus. When they scented the Navahos they
+snorted with terror, and all but two managed to bolt clear.
+
+In a trice the Indians had each of the frightened pair bridled with a
+leather thong fast about the lower jaw. Pete mounted the better animal.
+Slade drew rein beside the other horse and glowered at Lennon.
+
+"How about it?" he demanded. "You said you'd back me up. How do I know I
+can count on you not knifing me?"
+
+"You have my word," replied Lennon, striving hard to repress his
+eagerness.
+
+The irregular firing up the valley became more rapid. Slade scowled and
+thrust out Lennon's high-power rifle.
+
+"It's a go--that new deal. Take your belt, too. Guess I can count on you
+till Cochise is made a good Indian."
+
+With the white men and Pete mounted and the unmounted Navahos each
+gripping the mane of a horse, the party rushed up the valley at
+redoubled speed. Midway Slade angled down into the bed of an arroyo that
+curved around on the right of the corral and up to the mouth of Hell
+Cañon. Though the horses were kept at a fast trot, the Navahos ran along
+beside them, seemingly without effort.
+
+As the head of the valley was neared, the irregular crackling roar of
+the rifle shots abruptly ceased. Lennon's heart skipped a beat. The
+sudden hush might mean that Cochise had given up his attack on the
+cliff house. On the other hand, it might be due to an overwhelming of
+the defense.
+
+Slade sent one of his men springing up the side of the arroyo. The
+Navaho glanced over the edge of the bank toward the cliff house and
+dashed obliquely back into the dry channel, his hand twisting in swift
+signs. Slade held on up the arroyo. Near the mouth of Hell Cañon he
+flung himself off and motioned Lennon to follow.
+
+The old Navaho led the way up the side of the reservoir, with Pete a
+close second. Near the top the leaders flattened down to crawl over the
+round of the ancient dam. The others crept after them. A muttered
+command from Slade had kept Lennon in the rear. But a sudden fresh
+outburst of shots cut short his frightful suspense. The Apaches had
+neither abandoned their attack nor had they yet captured the cliff
+house.
+
+Elation, mingled with renewed fear for the girls, sent Lennon scrambling
+up beside the leaders. He came to where they were peering over the crest
+of the dam. Slade growled a command for the fool tenderfoot to get down
+out of sight. But after Lennon's first look across the top of the
+embankment main force would have been required to drag him back.
+
+He had already guessed that Pete had stolen away down into the lower
+cañon, unknown to the Apaches. The only other explanation was that the
+Navaho had been posted as guard at the cross cliff. This was improbable,
+as the only need for watchers was to help in-comers up the otherwise
+impassable barrier. That Pete had not been missed was evident from the
+failure of the Apaches to oppose the rush of the rescuers up the valley.
+
+The mystery of how Cochise hoped to take the cliff house became clear to
+Lennon at the first glance. The ancient stronghold was less than half a
+mile away from the reservoir. In the crystal-clear air Lennon made out a
+crooked line of poles and what appeared to be three or four sacks of
+corn lying upon the cliff foot. Above these objects eight or nine
+Apaches were raising a long ladder of spliced poles against the face of
+the rock wall. The fallen poles were the shattered remains of a first
+ladder that had collapsed.
+
+The ladder raisers were protected in their work by the incessant
+shooting of the other members of the band. From a crescent of positions
+well out in the valley the riflemen poured a cross-fire of bullets into
+all the openings of the cliff house. The Indian at the nearest end of
+the crescent lay not more than a hundred yards beyond the far side of
+the reservoir.
+
+Even as Lennon grasped the plan of attack, the heavy-butted ladder came
+to an upright position directly under the main doorway of the cliff
+house. On the instant a pair of nimble Apaches scrambled to the top,
+dragging with them a shorter ladder. They hoisted it above them and
+spliced its foot to the head of the main one.
+
+No less swiftly, another ladder was passed up and lashed to the top of
+the second. The new top reached within two yards of the brink of the
+forty-foot cliff. A third Apache started to carry up a short ladder.
+After he passed the middle of the ascent, his weight, added to that of
+the men above, made the much-spliced main ladder bow and sway.
+
+One of the upper men crawled through the rungs to wedge himself between
+the top and the cliff. The third man handed up the short ladder and
+began to creep down again. The second topman gingerly hoisted the last
+link in the shaky line of ascent.
+
+The Apaches lying out from the cliff concentrated their fire on the
+opening above the ladder. For any one in the cliff house to have
+ventured into the doorway would have meant certain death.
+
+Protected by the storm of bullets, the topmost Apache held up the last
+ladder while his mate against the cliff spliced it fast. The top rung
+stood level with the sill of the doorway.
+
+The third man had stopped his descent ten or fifteen feet below. As soon
+as the splicing was secure, the first man drew something from the belt
+of his breech-clout and started up the last rungs.
+
+Lennon could restrain himself no longer. He thrust his rifle forward to
+take aim. From beside him a big hairy red hand reached out to clutch the
+barrel. Slade's deep voice growled a command:
+
+"Wait! If they ain't got Carmena a'ready----"
+
+"But if once he gets in!" cried Lennon. "He must have a revolver!"
+
+"Knife too," added Slade. "Wait, though. We'll all put our sights on
+him. But don't shoot unless he gits half through the door."
+
+A glance at the Navahos showed Lennon that they were already taking aim.
+The trader clearly had some good reason for waiting. Lennon nodded.
+
+"Very well," he agreed.
+
+Slade drew back his hand. As Lennon again took aim he saw the first of
+the Apache attackers thrust up an arm to grasp the corner of the sill
+stone. The man paused while the riflemen poured an extra violent volley
+of bullets into the doorway. He then made a quick gesture.
+
+The shots continued, but they were aimed high. Otherwise the attacker
+must have been struck as he flung himself up before the opening. The
+catlike movement brought him head and shoulders above the sill. He
+twisted forward to writhe into the doorway. Lennon's finger started to
+crook against the trigger of his rifle. But he did not fire.
+
+Instead of thrusting forward, the Apache straightened upright with
+convulsive suddenness. His out-clutching arms beat the empty air. He
+toppled sideways and plunged headlong.
+
+"Through the brain!" chuckled Slade. "No, they ain't got Carmena--yet."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+OUT OF THE FRYING PAN----
+
+
+Before the falling Apache smashed down upon the cliff foot the man who
+had last climbed the long ladder made an upward rush. He was within half
+a dozen rungs of the top when a large round object rolled out of the
+doorway. With the quickness of a puma he swung off to one side.
+
+The big missile grazed past the dodger. Three or four yards farther down
+it crashed upon the ladder. All the mid section of the wobbly structure
+was shattered to flinders. The lower part slithered sideways along the
+cliff face, the upper part and the two climbers plunged downward.
+
+The cliffs rang with the yells of the ladder holders as they leaped
+away. They bounded like startled deer. But one was struck in the back by
+the splintered end of a falling ladder pole. He pitched on his face,
+rolled over, and lay as still as the fallen climbers.
+
+"Four!" exultantly exclaimed Slade. "Four--done up by a keg of water.
+And the three first"--Lennon had thought them sacks of corn at the foot
+of the ladder--"seven, and Pete with us--leaves less 'n twenty of 'em,
+counting Cochise. And mebbe Carmena has potted one or two more out in
+the scrub."
+
+"You'll attack?" asked Lennon.
+
+"Sure. No chance of holding Cochise after him losing them men. The
+others would turn on him like mad coyotes if he backed up. Just hold
+your hosses a bit, though, till I tell you."
+
+Lennon impatiently glanced away from his rifle sights. For the first
+time he saw that the Navahos were no longer alongside him. Pete was
+creeping aslant the dam toward the cliffs. The three others had circled
+to the left and were disappearing into the irrigation canal where it
+curved down valley below the reservoir.
+
+"Got to flush them snakes in the grass," explained Slade. "Pick your
+mark and wait. I'll start off with this here devil across the tank."
+
+The scattered ladder raisers were bunching again close under the cliff,
+to one side of the cliff house openings. One of them made signs to the
+outlying riflemen. The others began to work on the broken ladders. The
+firing had almost ceased.
+
+Slade moved a few yards along the dam. Lennon drew back his rifle,
+looked carefully at the lock and magazine, and took up a position from
+which he could fire with the greatest rapidity. He had been ready only
+a few minutes when from the irrigation canal, down the valley behind the
+Apache riflemen, came the reports of three shots, fired in rapid
+succession.
+
+A fourth shot roared from Slade's rifle. Lennon began to fire as fast as
+he could take aim. His mark was the group of Apaches on the cliff foot.
+One fell and lay motionless. Another tumbled over, but rebounded to join
+in the dash of his companions down the slope.
+
+The bare ledges of the cliff foot offered no shelter. The nearest cover
+was the ruined Farley ranch hut, a hundred yards or more away, in the
+direction of the reservoir. But as the Apaches raced for the refuge
+first one of their leaders and then another pitched to the ground.
+
+The others swerved and went flying out toward the irrigation canal. A
+burst of shots from the canal again forced them to swerve. They fled
+toward a patch of rocks and cactus in the direction of Devil's Chute.
+Only four reached the cover.
+
+As Lennon had emptied his magazine during the first few seconds, he knew
+that he could not have shot more than one of the fugitives. The three
+Navahos had spread out along the canal, and Pete had hidden at the
+ruined hut. They had the Apaches under fire from flank and rear. Slade
+had dodged down to run around the head of the reservoir and leap the
+inlet canal.
+
+The thwack and screech of a glanced bullet that flicked a spurt of
+gravel into Lennon's face, warned him that the Navahos were not doing
+all the firing. Though so many of the Apaches had been killed in the
+surprise of the counter attack, the survivors of the band still
+outnumbered the rescuers two or three to one.
+
+Lennon knew enough to creep back under the round of the dam. Once safe
+below the crest, he sprinted after Slade at top speed. He was under
+cover until he leaped the inlet canal and skirted along the natural rock
+rim on the far side of the reservoir.
+
+The problem now was to find a sheltered way from the brink of the rim
+over and down into the Farleys' kitchen garden. Slade had somehow made
+the crossing. He was safe in a position of vantage at the goat pens.
+
+Before Lennon could locate the sheltered line of descent he noticed that
+some of the shots sounded from farther down the valley. His first
+thought was that more Apaches were coming to join in the fight. Slade's
+reinforcements from the pueblo could not be expected before late in the
+day.
+
+For a moment the situation appeared truly desperate. The odds were
+already heavy enough, without the addition of more Apaches. But a
+cautious peep over the rock rim disclosed to Lennon the happy truth.
+Out-manoeuvred and cut off from the best cover, the Apaches were
+beginning to fall back down the valley.
+
+By close scrutiny, Lennon made out a brown form wriggling away behind a
+clump of cactus that shut off the view of Slade and the Navahos. At the
+second bullet from the high-power rifle the creeping Apache rolled over.
+There was no need for a third shot.
+
+After this hit Lennon saw not the slightest sign of the retreating band.
+But he continued to rake the rocks and cactus clumps with frequent
+shots, while the Navahos in the ditch followed along the flank of their
+half-exposed enemies.
+
+Lennon became aware that shots were being fired from the cliff house.
+Soon afterward he saw Slade rush boldly along the cliff foot. The
+Apaches were too intent upon flight to fire at the now distant enemies
+in their rear. One glance at the trader sent Lennon bounding up over the
+rim of rock and down the slope.
+
+The rope ladder dropped from the cliff house doorway. By the time Lennon
+reached the tumbledown ranch hut Slade was at the top of the ladder and
+Pete was beginning to climb. Lennon dashed on along the cliff foot. He
+gave no heed to the dead Apaches that lay huddled or sprawled amidst the
+wreckage of the wooden ladder poles and rungs. At the foot of the rope
+ladder he thrust his rifle through the back of his belt and swung up as
+fast as he could climb.
+
+Before he had ascended twenty feet a half-spent bullet thudded against
+the cliff face at his elbow. Another grazed his side. At least one of
+the distant Apaches had turned about and was making uncomfortably close
+shots at the climber. Lennon stopped short. A bullet struck less than a
+span above his head. He hurried on up by irregular jerks and dashes.
+
+More bullets struck around him. One seared his thigh. Owing, however,
+either to sheer good fortune or to his jerky ascent, he reached the top
+of the ladder without a serious wound.
+
+Pete lay flattened out in the doorway behind a sack of corn. He was
+firing down the valley. Lennon flung himself in past the young Navaho.
+Safe within the cliff house, he reeled against the massive wall and
+stood panting for breath.
+
+From the doorway of the living room came a happy cry. Elsie darted out
+to fling her arms about Lennon.
+
+"Oh! oh! oh! You did get up, Jack--you did!" she cried. "Mena was
+dreadfully afraid for you. The 'Paches have killed one of Slade's
+punchers and are chasing the others back."
+
+Lennon kissed the quivering girl and thrust her from him to grasp his
+rifle.
+
+"We're safe now, Blossom. But I must help to cover the retreat of our
+men."
+
+He ran to the crane-hoist opening. Slade was crouched behind a barricade
+of corn-filled sacks, hotly blazing away down the valley. Lennon hurried
+on into the living room.
+
+Beside the nearest outer window Farley lay upon a pile of rugs very
+white and still. His neck and right leg were swathed in bandages. The
+rifle under the window showed that the broken drunkard had not lacked
+courage to join in the defense of his home.
+
+Carmena stood at the next window, too intent upon her firing to heed her
+exposed position. A bullet had grazed the side of her head. At sight of
+the blood trickling down on her cheek Lennon felt an almost irresistible
+impulse to run over and draw her out of danger.
+
+But the angle of the girl's rifle barrel told him that the fight was
+rapidly coming back up the valley. He sprang to Farley's window. As he
+looked down, the two Navahos broke from the last scant cover and came
+leaping and zigzagging up toward the cliff foot.
+
+Lennon thrust out his rifle and began to pump shots at the scrub and
+cactus clumps above which rose thin puffs of semi-smokeless powder. A
+bullet nipped the point of his shoulder. He jumped back to refill his
+magazine. Before he could again empty it, another bullet seared across
+the top of his head. He reeled and fell senseless.
+
+When he recovered consciousness he was first aware of the face of
+Carmena. In his first daze, he fancied that he was out on the far side
+of the Basin, lying upon the sand under the cliff where the Gila monster
+had bitten his hand. The girl's eyes were clouded with the same look of
+profound concern that he had then seen in their shadowy depths.
+
+But as his own gaze cleared he noticed two marked differences in her
+appearance. One of her pale cheeks was streaked with crimson, and the
+dark eyes were wide not with dread alone. They gazed down at him heavy
+with the anguish of mingled grief and yearning. He knew that he was
+looking into the girl's inmost heart.
+
+A hand was thrust between their faces--a little dimpled hand that held a
+bowl of red liquid. Elsie's voice quavered urgently:
+
+"Let me fix your hurt with the dragon sap, Mena. He's alive again."
+
+Carmena's long lashes drooped upon her white cheeks. She drew back.
+Lennon turned aside his violently aching head. Across the living room he
+saw Pete cauterizing a bullet wound on the bare arm of a fellow Navaho
+with the astringent red sap of the sangre de dragon tree.
+
+Elsie noticed Lennon's roving look of inquiry.
+
+"They shot the other one on the ladder," she explained. "But Slade isn't
+hurt, and he hauled the ladder up. Cochise can't get us now."
+
+"Not now," whispered Carmena. "But if Slade----"
+
+Her low-pitched voice broke and hushed to a frightened silence.
+
+Slade swaggered in from the anteroom and stood grinning as if very well
+satisfied with what he saw.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+INTO THE FIRE
+
+
+Carmena rallied and smiled up at the big trader with a show of trustful
+confidence. "I knew you'd keep your part of the deal, Mr. Slade," she
+said. "You've fought off Cochise and saved us, and there's a good big
+hole in his bunch. All we need do now is wait for your punchers to come
+in and wipe out the rest."
+
+"Sure!" agreed Slade. "I done it. Now I got a dead cinch all 'round."
+
+He drew his revolver and twirled the cylinder as if to make certain that
+it had been fully reloaded.
+
+"Yep--a dead cinch. With me up here, Cochise won't try no more pole
+ladders. You and my Cookie Gal better hustle up some feed. Ain't had
+nothing but bacon and flapjacks since I left."
+
+Elsie fluttered across to light her charcoal brazier. But Carmena
+lingered beside Lennon.
+
+"Huh," muttered Slade. "Where'd sonny boy git hit? Ain't plunked bad, is
+he?"
+
+"Oh, no. I----"
+
+"No, not fatal," Carmena broke in on Lennon's disclaimer of serious
+injury. She gave Slade a significant side glance.
+
+"No, I'm sure it won't prove fatal--just cut the bone a bit. Jack'll get
+over it all right if he keeps perfectly quiet."
+
+Slade's big face took on a look of solemn concern.
+
+"Quiet--huh? Can't let him take no risks. He's worth ten thousand to me.
+Here, you, Pete--and you----"
+
+A guttural command in Navaho and a careless wave of the revolver brought
+Pete and his wounded but still active companion hurrying forward.
+
+Carmena sprang up and held out her arms to the trader. Lennon failed to
+see her face. He saw only how Slade swept his left arm about the girl
+and swung her around in a bearlike embrace. Lennon sought to leap up.
+The Navahos seized him on either side and forced him down again.
+
+He caught a glimpse of Carmena futilely clutching for Slade's throat.
+The big man burst into a bellow of contemptuous laughter and flung her
+from him.
+
+"Bah!" he jeered. "What you bucking about? Don't figger I want _you_ any
+more, do you?"
+
+"No--no, of course not. I---- But Jack's head--If you hogtie him----"
+
+"Got to be kept quiet, ain't he? You said it yourself. What you hanging
+fire for, Pete?"
+
+The heavy revolver swung around in another seemingly careless gesture.
+Pete and the wounded Navaho hogtied Lennon with expert quickness.
+
+Slade shifted around to nudge Farley in the ribs with the toe of his
+cowhide boot. The badly wounded man stirred and opened his haggard eyes
+to blink at the disturber.
+
+"Has--Cochise---- What! you?" he murmured. "You have run off the devils?
+Girls safe?"
+
+"You bet they're safe, Dad. How you feeling? Looks like they plugged you
+pretty bad."
+
+"Very--very bad," gasped Farley. "I--do not expect to--survive."
+
+"Aw, keep a stiff upper lip. You'll pull through."
+
+Farley's discoloured eyelids quivered and drooped. Slade had been
+peering sideways at the rigidly posed Carmena. He laughed
+good-humouredly, put up his revolver, and grinned toward Elsie.
+
+"I smell grub--real grub. Carmena, you git over to the far window and
+keep a lookout while I feed up. Just leave your gun lie. We don't want
+to rile up Cochise till we git him cornered."
+
+The girl looked at Lennon and hesitated. Slade rested his hand on his
+hip. She hurried off to the window toward which he had pointed.
+
+Seated alone at the table, the trader feasted upon the food set before
+him by Elsie. While he gormandized he tormented the shrinking girl with
+his coarse gallantry. When at last his gluttonous appetite was satisfied
+he called for another pie. Elsie obediently brought the last of her
+baking and bent over the corner of the table to set it before him.
+
+With the quickness of a striking grizzly, Slade lunged forward and
+clutched her soft round arm. At her startled shriek he wrenched his
+massive body half around and menaced everyone in the room with a
+sweeping wave of his revolver.
+
+Lennon had been bound too tightly to do more than writhe. Pete and his
+fellow Navaho stood as if turned to stone. But Farley had twisted about
+on the floor, and Carmena was springing away from her outlook window
+toward the table. The revolver barrel paused in line with her
+forward-rushing figure.
+
+"Stop!" bellowed Slade.
+
+The savage roar threatened instant death. Carmena came to a sudden halt.
+She stood panting and quivering, her face white, her eyes dilated with
+horror.
+
+"Huh! Thought you'd rush me, did you?" growled the trader. "You didn't
+stop any too soon to save your bacon, you she-wildcat. Stand still now,
+or you'll git gentled with a club."
+
+"But--but, Mr. Slade----" gasped the horror-stricken girl.
+"Blossom--she's only a child. She's so young and--and innocent! Oh,
+won't you--won't you please take me instead?"
+
+"You?" sneered the trader. "Jealous, are you? Well, you're too late now.
+Wouldn't take me when you had the chance. Now I wouldn't have you even
+if I couldn't git her."
+
+"But she--little Blossom! Oh, you can't--you can't be so heartless! You
+promised to wait----"
+
+"Wait?" Slade jerked the half-fainting Elsie around the corner of the
+table.
+
+"Ain't I waited all this time? This is same as Injun country, and squaws
+mate-up young. I'm going to take my Cookie Gal now. Sabe? Injun marriage
+is good enough 'round these parts for any woman, white or red."
+
+"You--beast!" cried Carmena, and she flung herself at him in a fury of
+despair.
+
+A few seconds before he would have shot her down. Now, instead of
+firing, he released his hold on Elsie's arm and thrust out to meet the
+frantic rush of her foster-sister. The big red hand clutched fast on
+Carmena's throat and held her off at arm's length. Contemptuously
+heedless of her frenzied struggles, he fixed a hard stare on Pete.
+
+"You," he ordered, "git a hustle on. Rope this hellcat, pronto."
+
+Though Pete's hesitancy was almost imperceptible, Slade's revolver swung
+up toward him. The young Navaho sprang forward, jabbering to his fellow
+tribesman. As the two seized and started to bind Carmena, Slade grinned
+at her, derisively.
+
+"Guess you wish you hadn't," he jeered. "I'll learn you who's boss. How'll
+you like being let down to Cochise, huh?"
+
+The danger to Elsie had horrified and enraged Lennon no less than
+Carmena. He had been writhing in his rawhide bonds, in a furious
+struggle to break loose. Now he lay exhausted and hopeless, his wrists
+and ankles cut and bleeding from the cruelly tight thongs. Even the
+hideous threat against Carmena could not goad his flaccid muscles to
+renewed efforts.
+
+Behind him he heard a peculiar wheezing. He twisted his head about to
+look. Farley was creeping along the floor. As Lennon caught sight of
+him, the desperately wounded man clutched his rifle and straightened up
+on his knees. His ghastly face was blotched with angry purple. His
+sunken eyes flamed with vengeful fire. He raised the muzzle of the rifle
+toward Slade with the last flare of his failing strength.
+
+"You scoundrel!" he shrilled. "Harm my daughter, would you?"
+
+Slade's savage bellow was drowned in the crash of the rifle. The
+bull-like roar of the trader sharpened to a yell of pain. An instant
+later two answering shots came back at the swaying avenger.
+
+Farley fell upon his back, with his arms outflung crosswise and his
+glazing eyes upturned. As he lived, so he had died--futilely. Yet he had
+at least made the attempt to rise above his weakness and degeneracy. He
+had died like a man.
+
+Slade stood at the end of the table, mopping the base of his neck with
+his dirty neckerchief. The rifle had missed his jugular vein by little
+more than an inch. He cauterized the wound with sangre de dragon sap,
+cursing blasphemously and barking commands at the Navahos.
+
+Pete ran to signal from the nearest window. His companion hurried to
+make certain that Farley was dead. Slade shouldered past the half-bound
+Carmena and came to stare gloatingly down at Lennon. Between his thick
+legs Lennon saw Carmena twist about and roll over toward her
+terror-stricken sister. Slade was too intent upon mocking his other
+prisoner to look about at the girls.
+
+"Well, son, you seen what happened to Dad, trying to murder his pard,"
+he admonished. "Hope it'll be a warning to you. I'm a peaceful man. I
+got to have law and order. Cochise ripped loose with his bunch. You seen
+how I smashed his play. 'Fore night my Navahos'll clean up what's left
+of 'em all."
+
+Lennon choked down his rage and loathing. Not he alone was in the power
+of this brutal scoundrel. For the sake of the girls he must play for
+time.
+
+"Yes, to be sure!" he said. "That was clever generalship on your part,
+Slade. As for Farley--you of course had to shoot him, in self-defense.
+But now all is settled. You will keep your word to go through with your
+bargain."
+
+"I will, will I, huh?"
+
+"How else? We have had our little misunderstandings. But you are a white
+man and you gave your word to go through with our deal."
+
+The trader's face blackened with a ferocious scowl.
+
+"Try to be funny with me, will you? I'll skin you alive!"
+
+"You misunderstood me, quite," said Lennon, soothingly. "How could I
+think other than that you intend to keep your bargain. I mentioned it
+because I wish to suggest an addition to the terms. If you will release
+Carmena and postpone your marriage to Elsie until we can get a license
+and a minister, I shall be pleased to give five thousand toward the
+bride's trousseau."
+
+For a long moment Slade stood glowering, morosely suspicious of the
+proposal. When he sensed its precise meaning, he burst into mocking
+laughter.
+
+"So that's what you're after, huh? Think you can bribe me, do you? Well,
+just let me tell you, sonny boy--when I want a squaw I take her. As for
+that she-wildcat, she's going down to Cochise right now. What's more,
+you're going with her if you don't agree to write that mine report and
+shell out the whole twenty thousand."
+
+"You devil!" cried Lennon. "I'll give you all--everything I possess--to
+save the girls from you. But if you harm either one of them--if you
+refuse to set them both free--you shall not have a dollar of my money."
+
+"Huh--I sha'n't, sha'n't I?"
+
+"Not a cent! You are a thief, a murderer, a liar--and you know it. Your
+word is not to be trusted. Take your choice. Kill me, or accept my
+pledge to pay you the money when you have brought me and the girls safe
+to the nearest town."
+
+The corner of Slade's coarse lip drew up in a wolfish snarl.
+
+"Kill you? Just wait and see. Killing's a heap too easy. Wait till
+Cochise has had a little fun with you. Mebbe you won't agree to be
+reasonable then, huh?"
+
+The pale eyes of the trader glittered with cold malevolence as he swung
+around to the window from which Pete was signalling. He boldly thrust
+his head out and shouted to the Apaches in their own tongue. From below
+came an answering shout. Slade called down to them for several moments
+in hissing thick-tongued gutturals.
+
+When at last he drew back and faced about, his mouth was twisted in a
+grin of evil satisfaction. He stared across the room, blinked, and
+stared again, with his grin distorted into an angry grimace.
+
+Carmena lay where he had last seen her. But Elsie was nowhere in sight.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+TREACHERY
+
+
+The inaction of the trader was brief. At his harsh question the wounded
+Navaho thrust out a slim finger toward one of the rear exits from the
+living room. Slade spoke a fierce command to Pete in the Navaho tongue
+and rushed out through the opening to which the Indian had pointed.
+
+Carmena uttered a horrified cry and sought to struggle up on her bound
+feet. As she fell, Pete and the other Navaho caught hold of her. They
+carried her out into the anteroom, without paying the slightest heed to
+Lennon's threats and pleadings. He writhed and twisted himself toward
+the doorway. Before he had reached the opening, the wounded Navaho
+bounded back into the room. He seized Lennon and dragged him out.
+
+Pete had squatted down to fasten a loop of the hoist rope about Carmena,
+who lay behind the sacks of corn that barricaded the crane-hoist
+entrance. She was speaking rapidly to the young Navaho in mingled
+Spanish and English. At sight of the other Navaho and Lennon she paused.
+
+Pete took the opportunity to mutter a sullen reply:
+
+"_Basta._ Slade, him bad med'cine. Me no fight him. You go Cochise, _muy
+pronto_."
+
+"Wait!" urged the girl. "You want me to be your woman. Remember what I
+promised if you'd help Slade to get up the cañon against Cochise. I'll
+promise more now. I'll give you all those horses and cattle--and I'll
+give you myself. Sabe? I'll be your woman."
+
+The Indian's eyes gleamed with avid desire. But he did not falter.
+
+"Woman no good, me dead."
+
+"Afraid--you girl!" taunted Carmena. "He's only a man. A single shot
+will kill him. You have only to----"
+
+"_Basta._ Him big devil. Me no shoot him. Him say you go Cochise, _muy
+pronto_."
+
+The stubborn coward turned away toward the windlass. Carmena glared
+after him in agonized desperation.
+
+"All right--all right, Pete!" she cried. "Lower me to Cochise. But
+listen! You needn't fight Slade or any one. You heard how he fooled
+Cochise--made him feel good by promising him me and Jack?"
+
+"Me send you down, pronto."
+
+"Yes--yes. Only first, if you want me to be your woman, listen. You
+lower me, I make bargain with Cochise and----"
+
+The rest of the fiercely urgent proposal was in Spanish. Pete came to a
+pause and cast a stealthy glance at his fellow Navaho. The man had
+dragged Lennon out past the windlass and turned back to grasp the crank
+handle.
+
+"You damn sure Cochise him no kill me? You no lie?" demanded Pete.
+
+"Won't you be proving you are his friend?" countered the girl. "You know
+Slade only half trusts you. He'll be sure to shoot you, soon as his
+punchers come. How about it? Do you promise? It's your only chance to
+get me, so long as you daren't tackle Slade yourself."
+
+"Slade, him big devil. Injun no can----"
+
+"Just wait and see," broke in Carmena. "Remember, there'll be tizwin for
+you--all you can drink--heaps of tizwin!"
+
+"Ugh!" grunted Pete. "Slade no come. _Bueno_--me do him you say."
+
+He grunted to the other Navaho and swung the crane outward as the
+tightening rope lifted the girl above the sacks of corn. She disappeared
+from view below the barrier. The Navaho lowered away with a
+deliberation that set Lennon's teeth on edge. The strain on his nerves
+was not lessened by the total silence of the waiting Apaches down below.
+
+At last the rope slackened. After a brief pause it was rapidly wound in
+on the barrel of the windlass. Pete had already dragged Lennon to the
+opening and heaved him up on the barricade. When the rope loop came up
+to the crane, he jerked it in, made fast to Lennon, and shoved him off
+into space.
+
+Lennon plunged down nearly a dozen feet before the tautened rope stopped
+his fall with a violent jerk. He hung dangling, with nothing between him
+and the wreckage-strewn ledges of the cliff foot, thirty feet beneath.
+
+The first jerk had started his body to gyrating. The rapidity with which
+he was lowered increased the movement. By the time he reached the cliff
+foot he was spinning like a roast before an old-time fireplace.
+
+At first he had been able to make out Carmena standing in the midst of a
+close group of Apaches. But she and the Indians and the cliff wall had
+all merged into a blurred whirl before his dizzy eyes by the time he
+struck the cliff foot. With the slackening of the rope he rolled over,
+too giddy even to attempt to steady himself with his bound hands.
+
+While his eyes were yet too dazed for clear vision, he heard Carmena's
+voice, low-pitched and vibrant with passionate pleading:
+
+"... And him too, Cochise. I'm not asking you to give up your fun with
+him. Only wait till you've made sure of Slade. There's not a second to
+lose. You have us. We can't get away. But if you don't do what I ask,
+you won't get Slade. He'll be up there--safe--with your woman! And his
+Navahos will trap you here in the Hole."
+
+"You lie!" grunted the young Apache. "Slade send you down to git his
+noose on me. I haul up pony lift--hit out Hell Cañon--take you and white
+fool. Heap fun with you and him!"
+
+"What then?" queried Carmena. "You know you'll have Slade on your
+trail--Slade and a posse and the soldiers. Slade will have to wipe you
+out to cover up what we've been doing here. He'll lay it all on you and
+your bunch--all the stealing. Can't you see? If he can't wipe you out
+himself, he'll set the soldiers on your trail."
+
+Lennon looked up and saw before his clearing eyes the dark evilly
+handsome face of the Apache leader. It was as stolid as the faces of his
+incomprehending followers. But his black eyes were fierce with hate.
+
+"You lie!" he repeated. "You say, kill Slade. You say you no care what
+become of you."
+
+"Because I know you, Cochise," cajoled the girl, her voice soft and
+confiding. "Weren't we friends before Slade came? Weren't we good to
+you? Remember how we kept you hid in the Hole and never told the Indian
+Agent? You'll not forget that. You'll treat me and Jack, my new pard,
+all right when I've helped you kill Slade."
+
+"Dam' friend--you," jeered the Indian. "You kept my woman."
+
+"What if I did? How about now? Do you want Slade to have her? You know
+he has been scheming all along to take her from you. Are you going to
+let him do it? Think about her--and about the tizwin--that tizwin hidden
+from you by Slade--barrels of tizwin! All yours if only you have the
+nerve to go up after Slade!"
+
+Cochise looked up the cliff, with a sudden ferocious scowl. Lennon was
+gasping for breath against the frightfulness of what he had heard. To
+save herself, Carmena was betraying her foster-sister to the fiendish
+savage. Elsie's fate in the hands of Slade was fearful enough without
+the added horror of what she would suffer in the hands of Cochise.
+
+"Carmena!" he cried. "Carmena, are you mad? Think of Blossom! What does
+it matter if we are tortured? Surely you can't intend----"
+
+"Why not?" cried back the girl, her face aflame with vengeful anger.
+"That big beast first ruined my father; now he has murdered him.
+Cochise, you'll have to choose quickly. Run off with us and have your
+fun, and have Slade trail you down; or kill him and get your woman and
+the tizwin--barrels of tizwin!"
+
+The young Apache plucked out his knife and sprang at the girl. A stroke
+slashed through the thongs that bound her wrists. Her ankles had already
+been freed. Cochise made a sharp upward gesture. Carmena shook her head
+and pointed to Lennon.
+
+"Let him lead the way up--unarmed," she suggested.
+
+The advantage of the plan was instantly grasped by the crafty Apache. At
+his command, two of his men cut loose Lennon's bonds and jerked him to
+his feet.
+
+"Wait, Carmena! Wait!" begged Lennon. "Think of Elsie!"
+
+But the girl had already signalled to those above. The rope ladder came
+slipping down the cliff face. Lennon fell silent. Protests were now
+useless. The lowering of the ladder laid the cliff stronghold open to
+the merciless Apaches.
+
+He turned away from the girl, full of loathing. Slade might possibly
+have refrained at the last moment from wronging Elsie. But Cochise----
+
+There was no need of the Apache's prodding knife point to start him up
+the ladder. Though he did not relish having to act as a living shield
+for the attackers, he was more than willing to go first. Unluckily the
+tightness of his bonds had so bruised the ligaments of his wrists and
+ankles and left his limbs so numb that he had to climb with painful
+slowness.
+
+Cochise, following at his heels, cursed and jabbed his knife into
+Lennon's leg. The cruel goading stung the benumbed muscles to quicker
+action. Lennon sprinted up the ladder, clear of his torturer. A glance
+down the rungs showed him three Apaches below Cochise, and Carmena at
+the foot, waiting with the remainder of the band. The ladder would not
+safely bear more than five climbers at a time.
+
+Spurred even more by the plan that he had in mind than by the threat of
+the knife, Lennon sought to increase his lead over Cochise. But the
+Indian's wrists were not strained, and his flexible moccasins gave a
+better hold on the ladder rungs than Lennon's stiff boot soles. With the
+knife between his teeth, the young Apache swung up in swift pursuit.
+
+Instead of gaining, Lennon lost his lead. Another downward glance, as he
+grasped the last rung below the sill of the cliff house doorway, showed
+him that Cochise was again at his heels. He must change the tactics of
+his plan. He uttered a startled cry and pretended to slip down a rung.
+
+Cochise let go the ladder with one hand to jab his knife at Lennon's
+leg. Lennon jerked up the leg and kicked down with all his strength. The
+heel of his boot struck squarely in the upturned face of the Apache. The
+downward and outward force of the blow jerked loose Cochise's one-handed
+grip on the ladder. But even as he toppled backward, he crooked a leg
+with catlike quickness over one of the rungs.
+
+Lennon saw only that his enemy was falling. His hand had already groped
+over the edge of the sill. Without another downward glance, he flung
+himself up and into the doorway. The wild scramble and plunge all but
+drove him headlong over the sack of corn and against the menacing muzzle
+of Pete's rifle.
+
+That double traitor stood crouched at the inner side of the thick-walled
+entrance, torn between fear of Cochise and terror of Slade. Lennon had
+counted upon this dread and uncertainty of the young Navaho. He flung
+out his hands to him in urgent gestures.
+
+"Quick--quick!" he cried. "Cut loose the ladder! Cochise will kill you!
+He's coming! Cut the ladder!"
+
+The Indian shrank back to peer at the inner openings of the cliff
+house.
+
+"Carmena--him no lie," he muttered. "Cochise kill 'um Slade."
+
+"But you first!" urged Lennon. "He will----"
+
+The band of an Apache headress shot up above the edge of the door sill.
+Lennon sprang at Pete to clutch his knife. The Navaho flung up his
+rifle. A chance blow of the barrel sent Lennon staggering half across
+the anteroom.
+
+The Apache writhed up into the doorway and bounded over the sack of
+corn, his knife poised to strike. Pete whirled and fired from the hip.
+An instant later he was locked in the clutch of the yelling, slashing
+Apache. As they crashed down together in a furious death grapple, a
+second Apache came scrambling in over the cliff edge. Side by side with
+him appeared Cochise, the print of Lennon's boot-heel already blackening
+on his ferociously scowling forehead.
+
+Pete's rifle had fallen outward into the doorway, alongside the sack of
+corn. Lennon was unarmed. There was no time for him to wrest the knife
+from the wounded Apache and slash the ladder ropes. Cochise clutched
+Pete's rifle and started to swing it around. His companion thrust out a
+revolver.
+
+The shot missed Lennon by inches as he leaped to the side opposite the
+living room. He dashed out the first opening and started to run through
+the front row of rooms, shouting at the top of his voice.
+
+"Slade! Slade!" he yelled. "Cochise--Apaches! Defend yourself!"
+
+From the inner rooms on his right came back an angry bellow. "What the
+devil?"
+
+Lennon twisted aside through a black doorway. Farther in he saw a
+glimmer of light. Sharp turns through two more doorways brought him into
+a kiva, or sacred chamber of the cliff dwellers, that was lighted by a
+pair of candles. Slade stood beside the broken-edged entrance hole with
+drawn revolver. The wounded Navaho was peering down from a hole in the
+ceiling.
+
+"Elsie!" panted Lennon. "Hide her! Pete betrayed you! All the
+Apaches--coming up the ladder!"
+
+Slade sprang sideways along the figure-decorated wall of the kiva. He
+leaped to grasp the edge of the ceiling hole. The Navaho helped him draw
+up into the dark room above. As his feet swung clear Lennon leaped in
+turn to grasp the edge of the hole.
+
+"Give me a hand up," he called. "I'll help you defend Elsie."
+
+"Sure. You'll serve for wolf bait," jeered Slade.
+
+His big hand thrust down and tapped the butt of the heavy revolver on
+the top of Lennon's head.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+THE SACRIFICE
+
+
+The treacherous blow was just hard enough to stun Lennon. His
+unconsciousness probably lasted only a few seconds. He roused to the
+sound of heavy firing and the pungent odour of powder. He opened his
+eyes.
+
+One of the candles had been extinguished. The other showed one wounded
+and two dead Apaches lying upon the floor of the kiva. At the entrance
+other attackers were stealthily thrusting in to fire at the hole in the
+ceiling. The flash of answering shots spewed out of the black space
+above the hole.
+
+Lennon had enough presence of mind to lie still. Dislodged by the
+fusillade of bullets, the dry materials of the ancient ceiling showered
+upon him. In the room above he heard the shriek of a mortally struck
+man. Another fusillade followed. Then a revolver came whirling down out
+of the darkness.
+
+The Apaches yelled and burst into the kiva. They rushed toward the hole,
+firing upward as fast as they could pump their magazines. Unnoticed in
+the excitement, Lennon rolled clear of their trampling feet and sought
+to grasp Slade's fallen revolver. A chance kick sent it out of his
+reach.
+
+Wild with blood-thirst, the last Apaches were trying to climb up the
+backs of those who had first leaped to seize the edge of the ceiling
+hole. Under the strain of their jerking weight one of the ancient beams
+gave way.
+
+Down crashed a part of the floor above. With it came Slade, bellowing
+with rage, bleeding from several wounds, and his right arm shattered.
+His massive body fell upon and knocked down two of the crowding Apaches.
+He staggered up and struck out with his maul-like fist.
+
+The voice of Cochise sounded above the din of the fight. The Apaches
+flung themselves at Slade like wolves attacking a maimed bull. But they
+used neither rifles nor knives. The trader was borne down by the weight
+of numbers and his left arm lashed fast to his backward twisted feet.
+
+Cochise had caught up the flickering candle. He sprang upon the back of
+another man and peered into the room above. When at last he jumped down
+his face was distorted with anger. He shook his knife in Slade's face.
+
+"Where you hide my woman?" he demanded.
+
+"She hid herself," growled Slade. "I was still looking for her."
+
+"Big mouth--big lie!" scoffed Cochise, and he thrust the flame of the
+candle against Slade's nose.
+
+The trader puffed out the light. Lennon had been edging around toward
+the door. He took instant advantage of the darkness to slip out and run
+toward the living room. There he might hope to find a rifle and die
+fighting.
+
+In the anteroom he came face to face with a pair of Apaches, who stood
+on guard over Carmena. At their gestures, emphasized by half-raised
+rifles, he backed into the corner beside the girl. She flashed him a
+look of profound relief and put a tremulous hand on his arm.
+
+"Jack--I thought they'd killed you. Slade?"
+
+"Prisoner, like ourselves. But they've still to find Elsie--no thanks to
+you!"
+
+He drew away as if her touch were a pollution. She flushed, hesitated,
+and opened her lips to speak. With a burst of yells, the Apaches rushed
+in, dragging Slade in their midst.
+
+At sight of Lennon, Cochise wrinkled his bruised forehead in a scowl of
+evil satisfaction. But when he swaggered forward he looked only at
+Carmena.
+
+"Slade swear you hide my woman," he said.
+
+"How could I?" replied Carmena. "He had me tied up and lowered to you.
+He was up here with her all that time."
+
+The face of the young Apache became impassive. He turned about and spoke
+softly to Slade. The trader, half dead from his wounds, raised his big
+head to mumble a denial.
+
+At a word from Cochise, one of his men ran to fetch Elsie's brazier from
+the living room. In the bottom of the brazier was still a bed of glowing
+coals. The Apaches cut free one of Slade's feet and started to thrust it
+in upon the fire.
+
+Carmena flung up her hands before her eyes.
+
+"No!--no, Cochise!" she cried. "Kill him--he deserves to be killed! But
+not the torture--I can't bear it! I'll try to find Elsie for you. I
+think I know where she's hidden."
+
+Lennon stared, more than ever filled with horror of her treachery.
+
+"You--you!" he grasped. "That child--give her, to save that scoundrel?"
+
+"And ourselves," added Carmena, her lips curved in a cajoling smile at
+Cochise. "When I've found her--and the tizwin--we'll be friends. Won't
+we, Cochise?"
+
+"Sure. Dam' good friends," smoothly agreed the Apache. "You find my
+woman quick, I let you go. Sabe?"
+
+"_And_ the tizwin--the barrels of tizwin," added Carmena. "Come on, all
+of us together---- You, too, Jack."
+
+She signed to the Apaches and called out a few words in their own thick
+guttural tongue.
+
+Lennon did not hang back. Great as was his abhorrence of the girl, he
+started forward beside her. Probably owing to his ready advance, he was
+not again bound, though Cochise ordered a pair of his followers to guard
+the white man. The other Apaches pressed close after the leaders, drawn
+by their fierce craving for tizwin.
+
+Regardless of Lennon's look of loathing, Carmena lighted a candle and
+led the way direct to the mummy room. From a ceiling beam of the room
+had been hung a crudely stuffed horned owl with wide-spread wings. At
+sight of the big gray-white bird and of the mummies even Cochise
+advanced less than a step inside the entrance.
+
+Carmena went in with the candle and methodically peered among and behind
+all the heaps of rubbish. When she came back to the entrance her dark
+brows were drawn together in a frown, as if she were puzzled and trying
+to think of another hiding place. She looked at Lennon with a level
+glance.
+
+"Hereafter you will recall that the quick and the dead are associated,"
+she murmured.
+
+She faced about to the superstitious Apaches.
+
+"You see, Cochise. Your woman doesn't like these old dried spirits any
+more than you do. Come on."
+
+Cochise and his men drew back before her advancing candle. They had no
+fancy to be left in the darkness with the bird of night and the "dried
+spirits" of the ancient cliff dwellers. They were not so backward,
+however, in the other inner rooms to which Carmena led them. Where there
+was a ceiling hole, one or more readily mounted with the candle to
+search the space above.
+
+But nowhere was trace found of Elsie, though the candle had burned to a
+stub when the searchers reached the last inner room. They came from it
+into a front room, one exit of which was closed with a padlocked door of
+heavy planks. Lennon recognized the entrance to the still-room.
+
+Carmena handed a key to Cochise and stood shielding the flickering flame
+of the candle.
+
+"Maybe we'll find both together," she said. "It would have been just
+like Slade to lock your woman in with the tizwin."
+
+She added a guttural murmur in Apache. The Indians pushed forward as
+their leader snapped open the padlock. The heavy door swung open. All
+surged into the still-room except one of Lennon's guards, and he craned
+his neck to gape at the still. Into Lennon's ear breathed a faint
+whisper: "Keep back."
+
+A moment later Carmena was darting in after the Apaches. She took her
+shielding hand away from the candle to point at a pile of jugs behind
+the still. With the gesture she called out in Apache. Cochise and all
+the others rushed to dig into the pile of jugs. Carmena glided to the
+still and bent down. She thrust the candle into the opening of the
+firebox.
+
+For the first time Lennon grasped what the girl was about. And with that
+he realized in a flash all the cool courage and cleverness and
+self-sacrifice of the plan that she had schemed out against the brute
+force of Slade and the cruel cunning of Cochise. Elsie was safe hidden
+in the mummy room, Slade was dying or dead, and now she had lured
+Cochise and his murderous followers into the death trap!
+
+He saw the flare of the lighted tinder in the firebox. The fuse must
+already be burning. Yet the girl remained stooped before the still. She
+would be blown to pieces no less certainly than the Apaches.
+
+Lennon glanced desperately at his guard, who stood beside him in the
+doorway. The almost naked Apache was a mass of sinewy muscle, and his
+beady eyes were fixed upon the prisoner in alert watchfulness. Yet he
+was not quick enough to dodge Lennon's uppercut. He sprawled backward
+and struck his shock head upon the stone floor.
+
+Carmena had straightened and faced about. At sight of Lennon bounding
+toward her she thrust out her hands in a repellant gesture.
+
+He clutched her outflung hands and dragged her toward the door. From
+behind the still came an answering yell. Cochise and another Apache
+rushed around at the couple. Carmena lunged forward, to thrust Lennon at
+the doorway. Unbalanced by the shove, he stumbled over the Apache whom
+he had knocked senseless.
+
+Carmena fell, rolled to one side, and struggled to her knees as Cochise
+leaped to the doorway after Lennon. Behind them roared a deafening
+detonation.
+
+Though Lennon was out in the anteroom, he was hurled down by the force
+of the explosion. He staggered to his feet and faced about. In the thick
+of the smoke that spumed from the still-room Cochise bounded from the
+floor and came at him with upraised knife. Lennon barely saved himself
+by the quickest of side-stepping.
+
+Cochise shot past, whirled, and closed in with the fury of a wildcat.
+Lennon's parry of the knife stab was sheer luck, but not the blow that
+he drove to the solar plexus. Superb as was the physical condition of
+the young Apache, that solid jolt sent him reeling back, gasping for
+breath.
+
+Lennon closed and sought to wrest away the knife. He twisted down on the
+Apache's wrist. The knife fell to the floor. He bent to grasp it.
+Cochise dropped upon him and seized his throat. The slender sinewy hands
+tightened with frightful force. A few seconds of that throttling
+pressure would have brought unconsciousness to Lennon. In vain he sought
+to tear loose the strangle hold.
+
+He was on the verge of frantic flurry when his failing reason fixed upon
+the fact that there was a lump under his down-pressed back. By great
+effort he wrenched his body around. His groping hand grasped the fallen
+knife.
+
+At the second stroke the terrible clutch on his throat relaxed. Cochise
+twisted convulsively and rolled over on his back.
+
+Lennon wheezed, felt his throat, and jerked himself over, ready to drive
+the knife into the heart of his merciless enemy. Cochise lay inert, his
+mouth agape and his eyes rolled up so that only the whites could be
+seen. Lennon's deep-drawn sigh of satisfaction over that death-mask
+face caught in the midst and turned into a gasp. He flung himself about
+to the doorway of the still-room. Where the still had stood was now only
+a hole in the stone floor. He did not look too closely at the general
+wreckage.
+
+His half-dazed roving gaze fell upon Carmena. She lay as inert as
+Cochise and the Apache guard. Yet she was not dead. A fragment of stone
+or metal, or the shock of the explosion, had injured her back.
+
+He carried her out into the anteroom. She revived. But when she sought
+to rise, she sank back with an ominous limpness.
+
+"Carmena!" he cried. "Carmena--what is it? You're hurt!"
+
+She smiled up at him, her dark eyes radiant with infinite tenderness and
+devotion.
+
+"It's all right, Jack--all right," she murmured. "I wanted to do it--for
+Blossom--and you, dear. Now you are safe. The way up the cañon is clear.
+Take the right fork, then, each time, the left of the next forks. The
+trail is only a few miles west, over the mesas. You'll find Blossom in
+the mummy room. Hurry off with her before Slade's men come. Hurry--don't
+linger----"
+
+"You----" broke in Lennon. "Can you think I would leave you here?"
+
+"There's no other way. My back--I can't sit up, and my legs are numb. I
+can't move them."
+
+"I'll carry you, and there's the hoist rope."
+
+"No use. I couldn't ride."
+
+"I'll carry you," repeated Lennon.
+
+The girl laid a gently caressing hand on his arm.
+
+"Don't you understand, dear? My back--it must be broken. We must think
+of Blossom. You must hurry off with her while there is time. Isn't it
+good that you love her?"
+
+Lennon uttered a choking cry and caught the girl up in his arms. He
+clasped her to him in an agony of love and remorse.
+
+"Carmena! To have thought so wrong of you--of you who were giving your
+life! I've been a fool--a blind fool. Forgive me! That child---- My God!
+I can't give you up--I'll _not_ give you up!"
+
+"Then--you do--love me, Jack," sighed the girl. Her arms crept up about
+his neck. "You do love me--I'm glad now you did not let me die--at
+once--in there."
+
+"Not at all!" vowed Lennon. "Even though your back---- You'll not die."
+
+"I can't live--like this, dear. And there's Blossom. You must get her
+away before Slade's men---- But first find me my little pistol. I gave
+it to Blossom--to use if there was no other way left. Leave it with me,
+and hurry off with her while there's time. Hurry!"
+
+Lennon's clasp tightened.
+
+"No. I'll never leave you--never while----"
+
+From the inner rooms of the cliff house came a burst of piercing
+childish shrieks. Carmena twisted about in Lennon's suddenly loosened
+embrace. There was a sound like the snap of a dry twig. Carmena screamed
+and fell over sideways in a deathlike faint.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+OUT OF THE PAST
+
+
+As Lennon knelt beside the swooning girl the shrieks rang nearer. Elsie
+came flying through the rear opening, in wild fright. Her dress was torn
+and her yellow hair full of dust and wooden bits. Lennon sprang up,
+certain that the Apache who had been wounded in the kiva was pursuing
+her.
+
+In her flurry she appeared to heed nothing until almost upon the body of
+Cochise. But one glance at the ghostly whites of the Apache's upturned
+eyes sent her shrinking backward, stricken to horrified silence. Her
+wild stare fixed first upon Carmena and then shifted to Lennon. With a
+shriek, she flung herself upon him, clutching him about the body in
+frantic terror.
+
+"Oh! oh! Papa! Papa! Papa!" she screamed, in a childish treble. "Bad
+Indian! He's hurting mamma! He's choking mamma!"
+
+Lennon pressed her face hard against his breast to stifle her shrieks.
+
+"Be still," he shouted. "Stop that noise. You're safe. Be still. Hear
+me? You're safe."
+
+Checked by the sternness of his voice the distracted girl hushed her
+hysterical cries. When he repeated that she was safe, she at last seemed
+to grasp the fact. Yet she continued to cling fast to him.
+
+"Tell me quick," he demanded. "Is an Indian following you?"
+
+"No-no-no!" she babbled. "It's mamma--he's choking her! He----"
+
+The tremulous words broke off in a gasp of astonishment. The wild blue
+eyes stared up at Lennon in bewildered lack of recognition.
+
+"Why--why, you're not my papa!" she cried.
+
+"Of course not, Blossom. I'm Jack--Brother Jack. Don't you know me?"
+
+The girl shrank back.
+
+"You're not my brother. Let me go. I haven't any brother. I never saw
+you before."
+
+"Oh, Blossom!" came a cry beside them.
+
+Lennon's glance darted aslant.
+
+Carmena had risen to a sitting position with her arms outstretched
+toward Elsie. Her face was white from pain, and she was swaying--but she
+was sitting upright. Realization of what that meant burst upon Lennon
+like a flood of golden sunshine.
+
+He dropped on his knees to fling a supporting arm about the girl's
+shoulders.
+
+"Dearest, it's not true--not true that you---- Your back! You're able to
+rise!"
+
+Carmena lowered her gaze from her bewildered sister.
+
+"What, I----" she murmured. "Why, so I am! There was a snap, and then,
+oh, such a pain! It must be the bone had only slipped. That twist
+snapped it back into place."
+
+"But the pain, dear?"
+
+"It's getting better. It's good pain. It proves I'm alive again--all
+alive. Raise me up, Jack. I want to see if I can stand."
+
+He lifted her with utmost gentleness. Her teeth clenched upon her lip.
+But, once she was upright, the pain again eased. She was delighted to
+find that she could stand with no more than half support from him.
+
+"Yes--all alive," she repeated and she turned to Elsie. "With a brace
+I'll be able to rise. Blossom, you can bind on----"
+
+"I'm not Blossom. I'm--I'm Elsie Lane," faltered the younger girl. "And
+you're not my mamma, no more than he's my papa."
+
+Lennon and Carmena stared at each other questioningly. The girl seemed
+rational, yet clearly she recognized neither of them. Carmena was first
+to catch an inkling of the truth.
+
+"No, dear," she soothed. "Of course we're not your papa and mamma. Of
+course you're Elsie Lane. But we want to help you. We are your friends,
+dear. What has happened? Tell us."
+
+The girl stared from them to her surroundings, more than ever
+bewildered. But the hideous gape of Cochise's mouth and his upturned
+glassy eyes drew from her a whimpering cry. She shrank around to hide
+behind Lennon and clutch his arm.
+
+"Oh! That man--that bad Indian--he came after papa found old Sim's mine,
+and mamma fed him, and--and then he choked her, and I ran to get papa,
+and papa was lying down at the bottom, with an awful red hole in his
+head--and I ran back to mamma--and she was dead. The bad Indian was
+chasing our ponies. I was 'fraid he'd kill me, too, and I ran and ran
+and ran, right up past the middle tower of the giant's castle and down
+the other side, and I got awful thirsty. Then--then I went to sleep--and
+when I woke up the roof was falling on me and it was night, and when I
+got out here, you weren't my papa and mamma, but there was that bad
+Indian."
+
+Lennon needed no verification of the tragedy that the girl evidently
+remembered as having occurred only a few hours past. Before his mental
+vision rose the gruesome images of the skeleton at the foot of the mine
+slide and the skeleton in the cabin.
+
+"I've been blind," he murmured to Carmena. "Sim told me that nine years
+ago he gave maps of his mine and the Triple Butte region to a doctor
+named Lane."
+
+Carmena was gazing yearningly at the unresponsive Elsie.
+
+"All these years!" she sighed. "First her childhood all a blank to her,
+and now all the years with me lost! I'm a stranger to her--to my little
+Blossom! Oh, Jack!"
+
+"Give her time. She will remember. Such cases are not unknown,"
+comforted Lennon. He turned to Elsie.
+
+"Listen, dear. I found your papa and mamma and buried them. Now I have
+killed the bad Indian. But you have been sick--out of your head--a long
+time. This lady--Carmena--has taken care of you and she loves you."
+
+The child-minded girl peered up at her foster-sister.
+
+"You--you love me? But I know it. You look at me like mamma does."
+
+Carmena smiled radiantly. Lennon hastened to add an urgent appeal.
+
+"She is hurt, Elsie, and more bad Indians are coming. Won't you help me
+get her safe away from here?"
+
+The request diverted the girl's thoughts before she could yield again to
+panic. Instead of going frantic and becoming a drag upon Lennon's
+efforts, she helped support Carmena through to the hoist room.
+
+Slade was lying as the Apaches had left him, beside the charcoal
+brazier, his left arm still lashed behind to his right foot. He had died
+from his wounds. As they passed by, Lennon shielded Elsie from the
+unpleasant sight. But Carmena looked full at the big twisted body of the
+man who had ruined and murdered her father.
+
+"He deserved it all and more--far more," she murmured. "First to make
+Dad believe the brand-blotting was a part of his honest cattle business,
+and then----"
+
+"What's that?" interrupted Lennon. "You mean he deceived your father? I
+did not understand it that way."
+
+"Yes. He lied. Dad was an Easterner like yourself. Slade had him
+incriminated before he knew it was stock stealing. Then he forced tizwin
+making upon us. You know the consequences to poor Dad. And what if the
+big beast had found Blossom! Oh, I should have waited for Cochise to
+torture him. But I could not bear it."
+
+"Because you are yourself, Carmena--as tender-hearted as you are strong
+and brave and wise."
+
+"Silly, you mean--to lose a single moment now in talk. Put me down here.
+I can get to the hoist. Hurry with Elsie--get saddles, food, your rifle.
+Hurry! We must get out of the Hole before Slade's punchers come."
+
+Lennon eased the girl to the floor and ran into the living room. Elsie
+darted after him. Nor did she stop to be directed. She went straight to
+her food cupboard, without paying the slightest heed to the outstretched
+body of the luckless Farley. Lennon threw a rug over the pitiful form
+and hastened to drag three saddles and as many canteens out to the
+hoist.
+
+Carmena had crept back close to the body of Slade. She waved Lennon to
+hurry. He ran back for his rifle and the food. Elsie already had packed
+two pairs of saddlebags with flour, bacon, and dried meat, and was
+unlashing the broad stiff hair girth from another saddle.
+
+"Here's just the thing to brace Mena's back," she said.
+
+"Good enough. It will go round her two or three times and----"
+
+Lennon stopped short to stare at the eager girl.
+
+"Why Blossom, you call her Mena--and you went direct to the food
+cupboard. You've remembered all!"
+
+The girl gazed up at him, wide-eyed.
+
+"Oh, did I? Have I! I did it without thinking. It just seemed natural.
+But my name isn't Blossom--and it's--it's awful queer--I never saw this
+place before."
+
+"You have," contradicted Lennon. "It has been a long, long dream, little
+Blossom. You are beginning to remember it now."
+
+"O-oh--like a dream---- It does seem as if everything--and you--you're
+Brother Jack, who was going to marry me. But how silly--when I'm only
+ten years old! Of course it's just all a dream."
+
+Lennon caught at the point----
+
+"Yes, yes, that's a dream, only a dream about our marrying. You've been
+dreaming for years, and now you're much older than ten--much older. But
+that other is only a fancy--a mistake. It's Mena I'm to marry, and
+you're to be our dear little sister. Remember, I'm to be your
+brother--your Brother Jack."
+
+"I'll remember," promised Elsie. "You're good, like her. You buried papa
+and mamma and you killed that bad Indian."
+
+A cry from Carmena sent Lennon bounding out into the anteroom, with his
+rifle ready to fire. The girl had crouched low behind the massive body
+of Slade. She pointed to the far corner of the room and shrilled
+warningly:
+
+"Look out, Jack! Cochise!--there in the window!"
+
+Lennon dashed straight at the dark opening where he had seen the gray
+face of Farley on his first coming to the cliff house. He thrust in the
+muzzle of his rifle and then his head. Though shadowed, the inner room
+was light enough for him to see that it was empty. He went back to
+Carmena.
+
+"No one there," he said. "Just your fancy, dear. You're
+nervous--overwrought. But no wonder. The sooner we're down and away from
+here, the better."
+
+"Wait. First take this," replied Carmena. She held up a thick-padded
+leather belt.
+
+"Slade's," she explained. "I guessed he might be carrying it. It's his
+money-belt, stuffed with big bills. He lied about the partnership
+bank-account. Take it, Jack--for Elsie and me. It's ours by rights. He
+cheated us of our heritage. We have to leave Dad's ranch."
+
+The belt was already fast about Lennon's waist. Elsie appeared, dragging
+the saddlebags and the girth. Lennon brought the wide cinch to wrap
+around Carmena's waist. The double fold lashed fast with the straps made
+a broad stiff corsage support for her wrenched back.
+
+In quick succession, Lennon then lowered, over the sacks of corn in the
+hoist opening, first Elsie, then the outfit, and lastly Carmena. She
+asked to see her father, but Lennon dissuaded her. He thought best that
+her last impression of Slade's victim should be the broken man's
+redeeming flare of vengeful love and fatherhood.
+
+The moment the slackening hoist rope told him that Elsie had steadied
+her foster-sister down upon the cliff foot, Lennon ran to descend the
+rope ladder. Time was passing, and there was still much to be done. He
+must catch and saddle three good horses. Slade's punchers might not come
+for four or five hours. But the earlier the start of the fugitives, the
+better would be their chance of escape if the Navahos should seek to
+track them down.
+
+Elsie had drawn Carmena away from the heap of saddles and bags to a seat
+on a ledge. As Lennon sprang toward them from the foot of the shaking
+ladder Carmena called out and pointed over his head. One rope of the
+ladder had sagged as if broken. A moment later the ladder came
+slithering down the cliff face.
+
+"Cut--That face in the window--Cochise! He's not dead!" cried Carmena.
+"Oh, Jack, if you hadn't come down fast! He tried to make you fall!"
+
+Lennon was already running out to aim his rifle at the doorway from
+which the ladder had fallen. There was no sign of the ladder-cutter. Out
+of the side of his eye Lennon saw the crane swing back into the other
+opening and the hoist rope jerk upward. He swung his rifle to that side.
+
+The top sack of corn in the barricade slewed out over the brink. It
+toppled and came plunging downward. Above it a dark head came into
+sight, half out-thrust over the top of the other sacks.
+
+Lennon fired up past the falling bag of grain. The head jerked upward,
+twisted, and lay still on the edge of the barricade, as the sack of corn
+thudded and burst on the cliff foot within two feet of the saddles. To
+make doubly certain, Lennon sent up another bullet, as well-aimed as the
+first.
+
+His lips were set in a smile of stern satisfaction as he came to where
+Elsie was cowering in the arms of Carmena.
+
+"You were right--as usual," he said. "The knife could only have knocked
+him out for a time. He must have played 'possum. But he was disabled.
+Crawled after us--couldn't get a gun till we left and too eager to
+wait--thought we'd be under the hoist. Yet why he should have exposed
+himself----"
+
+"His wounds," divined Carmena. "The strain of heaving over the sack was
+too much for him. He collapsed. You're sure you didn't miss him, Jack?"
+
+"No. Through the head--same as he shot Blossom's father."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+HIS DAUGHTER'S FATHER
+
+
+Carmena stroked the dishevelled Elsie's yellow locks.
+
+"There, there, sweetheart," she said soothingly. "The fighting is all
+over. The bad Indian really is dead this time. You've no more need to be
+frightened. Brother Jack and I will take care of you."
+
+Elsie gazed up into the loving dark eyes of her comforter.
+
+"Why, of course, Mena, when you've always----"
+
+The blue eyes suddenly widened.
+
+"But--but not always--papa and mamma--it seems only yesterday---- No,
+you--all these years---- But then I can't be only ten! My goodness, what
+a funny rumbly-wumble in my head--just like two dreams mixed up--only
+they're real--both of them!"
+
+"Yes, both real--all real, Blossom."
+
+"Except one thing," hastily put in Lennon. "It is Carmena whom I am
+going to marry, Elsie. Remember that."
+
+The girl looked at him, blushing and dimpling with shy delight.
+
+"Oh, it'll be ever so much nicer, 'cause then I can be just your dear
+little sister, and Mena loves you a thousand times more."
+
+Carmena's cheeks flooded with scarlet, but she faced Lennon with a look
+of unflinching candour.
+
+"Yes, Jack, I do. I tricked you into the Basin. For Dad's sake, I was
+ready to lead you to almost certain death from Cochise and his bunch.
+But after that Gila monster I loved you--I put you above all else except
+Blossom's safety and Dad's good name."
+
+Lennon glowed back at her, proud that he had won the love of such a
+woman, yet humble over the consciousness of how he had misjudged her.
+
+"You had no thought for yourself," he said. "You would have given your
+life--and more. You failed to save your father's life, but we shall save
+his name. Did Slade's Navahos share in the stock stealing?"
+
+"Only Pete. Of the others, Slade's four bodyguards alone knew about the
+Hole. But, once in, any of the punchers can trail us."
+
+"No," declared Lennon. "To be sure, there is one of the four left. But
+what if he does bring the punchers? All I need do is catch a pony, ride
+down the valley, and haul up the lift in the lower cañon."
+
+"Of course!" agreed Carmena. "What a loon I've been not to think of it
+myself! Of course, Cochise would have done it if we hadn't got the bunch
+up the cliff when we did. It will take the Navahos till noon to-morrow
+to ride all the way back and round to the head of Hell Cañon."
+
+"Good enough," said Lennon. "That solves all our difficulties. We can go
+out the cañon to-night and have a long start for the railway. There we
+will report how Slade and your father have been killed in a fight with a
+band of Apache stock thieves."
+
+"Oh, Jack! And Slade's Navahos will scatter when they hear he is dead,
+and they'll never talk. They're Indians. But the stock here in the Hole,
+what if the sheriff wants to investigate?"
+
+Lennon pointed upward.
+
+"If he should manage to get into the cliff house, there's nothing
+incriminating left. The dynamite obliterated the still. As for the
+stock, we will drive it out with us and deliver it up as part of the
+loot retaken by us from the thieves."
+
+Carmena put Elsie aside and rose to lay her hands on Lennon's shoulders.
+
+"Now I know for sure you love me," she said. "You love me enough to
+forget Dad as you knew him and to remember only that he was my father.
+You would shield his good name as you would shield your own. Yet I am
+the daughter of a rustler, of a moonshiner, of a drunken criminal."
+
+"No," denied Lennon. "You are the daughter of an unfortunate gentleman,
+who paid bitterly for his mistakes--who gave his life in an attempt to
+save you and the child whom he had taken in and sheltered. Let God judge
+whether he was not far more victim than wrongdoer."
+
+"But the daughter of a weak man----"
+
+Lennon smiled into her troubled eyes.
+
+"You glory of the desert--you cactus blossom! It was your very strength
+that repelled me, like the spines of the cactus. I never had known your
+like. I thought a woman must be weak and clinging."
+
+He cast a smiling glance at the wide-eyed Elsie.
+
+"But now, dear, I know that the bloom of the desert thorn may be even
+more fragrant and lovely than any garden flower."
+
+THE END
+
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+The Country Life Press--Garden City, N. Y.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Bloom of Cactus, by Robert Ames Bennet
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+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
+  <head>
+    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=iso-8859-1" />
+    <title>
+      The Project Gutenberg eBook of Bloom of Cactus, by Robert Ames Bennet.
+    </title>
+  <style type="text/css">
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+    a                 {text-decoration: none;}
+    .smcap            {font-variant: small-caps;}
+    table p           {text-align: center; margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0;}
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+    .figcenter        {margin: auto; text-align: center;}
+    .center           {text-align:center;}
+    .pagenum          {position: absolute; left: 92%; font-size: x-small;
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Bloom of Cactus, by Robert Ames Bennet
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Bloom of Cactus
+
+Author: Robert Ames Bennet
+
+Illustrator: Ralph Pallen Coleman
+
+Release Date: August 8, 2007 [EBook #22270]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BLOOM OF CACTUS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<div class="figcenter" style='width:300px'>
+<a name="illus-000" id="illus-000"></a>
+<a href="images/illus-fpc.jpg">
+<img src="images/illus-fpc.jpg" alt="&#34;Lennon elevated his rifle and sent a parting shot over the heads of the fleeing riders&#34;" title="" width="300" /></a><br />
+<span class="caption">&#34;Lennon elevated his rifle and sent a parting shot over the heads of the fleeing riders&#34;</span>
+</div>
+
+<hr class='dashed' />
+
+<table style="margin: auto; border: black 1px solid; width:25em" summary=""><tr><td>
+<p style="font-size:2.0em; margin-top:1em;; margin-bottom:1.5em;">BLOOM OF CACTUS</p>
+<p style="font-size:1.4em;">BY</p>
+<p style="font-size:1.6em; margin-bottom:2em;">ROBERT AMES BENNET</p>
+<div class='center'>
+<img src='images/illus-emb.png' alt="" />
+</div>
+<p style=" font-size:1em; margin-top:2em; font-style:italic;">Frontispiece by</p>
+<p style=" font-size:1em; margin-bottom:5em;">RALPH PALLEN COLEMAN</p>
+<p style=" font-size:1em;">Garden City&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;New York</p>
+<p style=" font-size:1.2em;">DOUBLEDAY, PAGE &amp; COMPANY</p>
+<p style=" font-size:1em; margin-bottom:2em;">1920</p>
+</td></tr></table>
+
+<hr class='dashed' />
+
+<p class='center' style='font-size:small'>COPYRIGHT, 1919, BY<br />
+DOUBLEDAY, PAGE &amp; COMPANY<br />
+ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF<br />
+TRANSLATION INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES,<br />
+INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN</p>
+
+<hr class='dashed' />
+
+<h2 class="toc"><a name="Contents" id="Contents"></a>Contents</h2>
+<table border="0" width="500" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" summary="Contents" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto">
+<col style="width:15%;" />
+<col style="width:5%;"  />
+<col style="width:70%;" />
+<col style="width:10%;" />
+<tr>
+    <td align='right'><span style='font-size:x-small'>CHAPTER</span></td>
+    <td></td>
+    <td></td>
+    <td align='right'><span style='font-size:x-small'>PAGE</span></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td align="right">I.</td>
+  <td></td>
+  <td align="left">Ambushed</td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#AMBUSHED_72">3</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align="right">II.</td>
+  <td></td>
+  <td align="left">Off Trail</td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#OFF_TRAIL_332">13</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align="right">III.</td>
+  <td></td>
+  <td align="left">The Gila Monster</td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#THE_GILA_MONSTER_617">24</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align="right">IV.</td>
+  <td></td>
+  <td align="left">Pards in Peril</td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#PARDS_IN_PERIL_890">35</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align="right">V.</td>
+  <td></td>
+  <td align="left">Dead Hole</td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#DEAD_HOLE_1200">47</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align="right">VI.</td>
+  <td></td>
+  <td align="left">Her Folks</td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#HER_FOLKS_1431">55</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align="right">VII.</td>
+  <td></td>
+  <td align="left">Craft and Cruelty</td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#CRAFT_AND_CRUELTY_1593">62</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align="right">VIII.</td>
+  <td></td>
+  <td align="left">Cactus Carmena</td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#CACTUS_CARMENA_1949">75</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align="right">IX.</td>
+  <td></td>
+  <td align="left">The Man Who Was</td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#THE_MAN_WHO_WAS_2209">85</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align="right">X.</td>
+  <td></td>
+  <td align="left">The Setter of Traps</td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#THE_SETTER_OF_TRAPS_2454">95</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align="right">XI.</td>
+  <td></td>
+  <td align="left">Cross Currents</td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#CROSS_CURRENTS_2774">107</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align="right">XII.</td>
+  <td></td>
+  <td align="left">A Bargain</td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#A_BARGAIN_3038">117</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align="right">XIII.</td>
+  <td></td>
+  <td align="left">The Blossoming</td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#THE_BLOSSOMING_3289">127</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align="right">XIV.</td>
+  <td></td>
+  <td align="left">The Prowler</td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#THE_PROWLER_3514">136</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align="right">XV.</td>
+  <td></td>
+  <td align="left">Crooked Ways</td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#CROOKED_WAYS_3745">145</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align="right">XVI.</td>
+  <td></td>
+  <td align="left">The Drop</td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#THE_DROP_4015">156</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align="right">XVII.</td>
+  <td></td>
+  <td align="left">Death Play</td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#DEATH_PLAY_4326">168</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align="right">XVIII.</td>
+  <td></td>
+  <td align="left">The Attack</td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#THE_ATTACK_4621">180</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align="right">XIX.</td>
+  <td></td>
+  <td align="left">Out of the Frying Pan&mdash;&mdash;</td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#OUT_OF_THE_FRYING_PANmdashmdash_4907">192</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align="right">XX.</td>
+  <td></td>
+  <td align="left">Into the Fire</td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#INTO_THE_FIRE_5125">201</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align="right">XXI.</td>
+  <td></td>
+  <td align="left">Treachery</td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#TREACHERY_5388">211</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align="right">XXII.</td>
+  <td></td>
+  <td align="left">The Sacrifice</td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#THE_SACRIFICE_5671">222</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align="right">XXIII.</td>
+  <td></td>
+  <td align="left">Out of the Past</td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#OUT_OF_THE_PAST_5976">234</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align="right">XXIV.</td>
+  <td></td>
+  <td align="left">His Daughter's Father</td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#HIS_DAUGHTERS_FATHER_6275">245</a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<hr class='major' />
+
+<h1>BLOOM OF CACTUS</h1>
+
+<div style="margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 1em">
+<a class="pagenum" name="page_3" id="page_3" title="3"></a>
+<a name="AMBUSHED_72" id="AMBUSHED_72"></a>
+<h2>CHAPTER I</h2>
+<h3>AMBUSHED</h3>
+</div>
+
+<p>As Lennon drove his heavily packed burro over the round of the ridge
+above the camp spring, all the desolate Arizona waste around him was
+transformed by the splendour of dawn. Up out of mysterious velvety
+blue-black valleys loomed the massive purple-walled fortresses and
+cities of the mountain giants, guarded by titanic skyward towering
+pyramids and turrets of exquisite rose pink.</p>
+
+<p>The burro was not interested in scenery or light effects. He topped the
+ridge and plodded slowly down the steep trail on the far side. Lennon
+lingered to enjoy the glorious illusion of the view.</p>
+
+<p>All too soon, as the glaring sun cleared the high plateau on the eastern
+horizon, the ethereal colours of daybreak faded. The magic towers and
+pyramids lowered and shrank in bulk until they became only bald rugged
+peaks and buttes.<a class="pagenum" name="page_4" id="page_4" title="4"></a></p>
+
+<p>No less remorselessly the flood of hot white sunrays burned away the
+shadow tapestry of the valleys. In place of the cool mysterious vales
+there were left only scorched gulleys and dry washes sparsely set with
+greasewood and sagebrush and cactus.</p>
+
+<p>Yet the interest in Lennon's alert gray eyes increased rather than
+lessened as he swung away down slope after his burro. The trail he was
+following was very old. Above almost every arable valley bottom the
+heights were crested with the stone ruins of ancient pueblos. Not
+improbably, Coronado or others of the early Spanish explorers had ridden
+this trail, west and north around the great bend, into the territory of
+the Moquis and Navahos.</p>
+
+<p>Within the memory of settlers not yet white-haired, more than one
+war-party of renegade Apaches had sneaked along the ancient way in
+search of victims. Every few yards of the bad lands offered perfect
+lurking places for liers-in-wait along the trail.</p>
+
+<p>Lennon glanced at the butt of his rifle in its sheath on the burro's
+pack. He recalled the tales of the old prospector whose copper mine he
+was seeking to rediscover. But his glance was only momentary. He knew
+that twenty-seven years had passed since the last murderous Indian
+outbreak in this land of desolation.<a class="pagenum" name="page_5" id="page_5" title="5"></a></p>
+
+<p>In those days a lone prospector would never have thought of tramping
+this trail without his rifle ready in hand, and the hammer at half cock.
+Lennon began to whistle a dance tune as he sauntered unconcernedly at
+the heels of his slow-moving burro up a rise and along a badly broken
+rocky slope.</p>
+
+<p>They came down into a sandy wash that curved out of the mass of jagged
+ridges on the north. When midway across the bottom of the arroyo Lennon
+heard a sharp ping close above his ear&mdash;his sombrero whirled from his
+head. Before the hat struck the sand the rocky sides of the wash
+reverberated with the report of a rifle shot.</p>
+
+<p>Lennon had never before been under fire, yet his reaction to the shot
+was almost instantaneous. One jump brought him alongside the burro. He
+crouched below the level of the pack and clutched the butt of his
+sheathed rifle. Again the gulley walls reverberated. The burro dropped
+dead, with a bullet through his head.</p>
+
+<p>As the beast fell, Lennon hit the sand almost at the same moment, his
+rifle gripped in his right hand. Flattened out behind the inert body of
+the burro, he peered around the end of the pack. A bullet thwacked in
+the sand close at his right. He thought he could see a haze of
+semi-smokeless powder vapour above a jagged crag up-slope where the wash
+twisted in a sharp bend. He<a class="pagenum" name="page_6" id="page_6" title="6"></a> fired four shots in quick succession at
+promising notches in the crag.</p>
+
+<p>Immediately after his fourth shot an arm and rifle were thrust up above
+the rock in a convulsive gesture, then suddenly disappeared. No more
+bullets came pinging down the arroyo.</p>
+
+<p>Lennon gathered himself together and bounded on across the bottom of the
+wash to where the trail ran up a small side gully. From the gully he
+started to creep with cautious slowness up the left bank of the arroyo,
+under cover of the rocks and jutting points.</p>
+
+<p>Now crawling, now springing from rock to rock, he worked his way half up
+to the crag, yet failed to catch a single glimpse of the lier-in-wait or
+to draw another shot. His conviction that he had killed the lurker
+became so firm that he stood erect to cover the remaining distance at a
+rush.</p>
+
+<p>From down across the arroyo came a sharp clatter of hoofs. He whirled,
+with his rifle at his shoulder. Over the barrel he saw a scraggy pony
+loping down into the wash along the trail of the burro. The pony's rider
+was armed with a rifle. Lennon took quick aim&mdash;only to drop the muzzle
+of his weapon. The rider had flung up a gauntleted hand, palm outward. A
+musical feminine hail rang aslant the arroyo:</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Wa-hoo!</i> Friend! Don't shoot!"<a class="pagenum" name="page_7" id="page_7" title="7"></a></p>
+
+<p>Lennon had already perceived that the rider was a woman. He jumped clear
+of the bank and sprinted down the rocky, sandy bed of the wash.</p>
+
+<p>"Get off!" he shouted. "Hide behind your horse&mdash;quick! Danger."</p>
+
+<p>The rider brought her pony to an abrupt halt below the dead burro and
+dropped out of her saddle on the far side. Only her old cowboy sombrero,
+the bottom of her khaki divided-skirt and her high laced boots were
+visible to Lennon.</p>
+
+<p>With a startled snort, the ewe-necked pony plunged and backed around,
+clear of his motionless mistress. Lennon's first glance showed him that
+she was young and more than pretty. He was already leaping over the dead
+burro and brought up close before the girl to shield her with his body.</p>
+
+<p>"Down!" he cried. "Down, before he fires!"</p>
+
+<p>The dark eyes of the girl met his anxious look with a cool, level gaze.
+Her cheeks were ruddy with rich colour under their deep coat of tan. The
+corners of her rather large, but shapely mouth quirked in an amused half
+smile.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't tell me you're not a tenderfoot," she rallied, in a softly
+vibrant, contralto voice. "I heard shots, so came a-running. Your
+attacker must have vamosed, else you'd have collected lead on the
+jump."<a class="pagenum" name="page_8" id="page_8" title="8"></a></p>
+
+<p>"That's so," agreed Lennon. "Only I really think I nailed the beggar.
+Yet you must take no chances. Get under cover while I make sure."</p>
+
+<p>"You've already done that&mdash;standing here ten seconds without drawing a
+shot. When a mountain lion misses his game first crack, he sometimes is
+so shamed he clears out. Same way with a broncho Apache."</p>
+
+<p>"Apache? But I thought all Indians were now on reservations."</p>
+
+<p>The girl dropped the reins of her skittish, snorting pony and picked up
+Lennon's new sombrero. Through the middle of the high peak was a neatly
+drilled bullet hole.</p>
+
+<p>"Poor shot&mdash;for an Apache," she said. "Good, though, for ventilation."</p>
+
+<p>The dry humour of this brought a twinkle into the Easterner's gray eyes.
+He took the hat from her outstretched gloved hand, but paused with it
+half raised to his close-cropped head.</p>
+
+<p>"If you'll permit me ... my name is Lennon&mdash;Jack Lennon&mdash;mining
+engineer."</p>
+
+<p>"Engineer is all right, but can you shoot?" queried the girl.</p>
+
+<p>"I have had pretty good luck with running deer. This is my first man."<a class="pagenum" name="page_9" id="page_9" title="9"></a></p>
+
+<p>"All right, Mr. Lennon. I'm going up to look for signs. Come along if
+you want to."</p>
+
+<p>"No, you must stay here. I insist&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>But the girl was already swinging away up the bed of the arroyo, her
+spurs jingling on the stones. Lennon started to block the way but
+changed his mind when he perceived her amused smile. Instead of trying
+to stop her, he attempted to take the lead. The girl quickened her pace.</p>
+
+<p>He had lowered more than one record in his college track meets; but the
+girl was accustomed to rough ground, and he was not. She was still side
+by side with him when he dashed up around the bend in the arroyo.</p>
+
+<p>Both held their rifles ready to fire as they rushed the rear ledges of
+the jagged crag. From the upper side the slopes around were all open to
+view. Lennon came to a panting halt and stared about in frank surprise.
+He had fully expected to see the limp form of a dead Apache lying on the
+rocks.</p>
+
+<p>The girl sprang past him into a niche of the crag and bent to pick up a
+cartridge shell.</p>
+
+<p>"A thirty-two," she said. "Same calibre as my rifle.... And look at this
+track&mdash;Apache-made moccasin. Easy to tell the print from that of a Pima
+or Moqui."<a class="pagenum" name="page_10" id="page_10" title="10"></a></p>
+
+<p>To Lennon the track was only a small narrow blur.</p>
+
+<p>"I was right," added the girl. "No trace of blood. You scored a clean
+miss and the bird has flown. All safe around here now, but may be
+dangerous on the trail ahead. Happens I know that a bunch of bronchos
+are loose over this way. They're looking for trouble."</p>
+
+<p>"Bronchos? You mean wild horses&mdash;mustangs?"</p>
+
+<p>"No&mdash;Apaches. Renegades are called bronchos. What do you figure on doing
+now, with your burro dead? Out prospecting, I noticed by your outfit.
+What were you heading up this way for, anyhow? The agents don't want
+prospectors on the Moqui or Navaho reservations."</p>
+
+<p>"But I didn't intend to cross the boundary," explained Lennon. "About
+seventy miles on around this trail bend, I was to strike in eastward to
+a three-towered mountain. Old friend of mine discovered a big copper
+vein there in the early 'Nineties. A party of Indians ran him out of the
+country and so maimed him that he never could return."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, that must be Cripple Sim and his&mdash;&mdash;" The girl checked herself and
+tightened her lips. "Well, what you going to do about it? Hike back to
+the railroad?"<a class="pagenum" name="page_11" id="page_11" title="11"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Certainly&mdash;to get another burro. We might return together for mutual
+protection, unless you'd rather trust to your pony's heels."</p>
+
+<p>The girl looked him up and down with sharp appraisal.</p>
+
+<p>There was no hint of timidity in his smile.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't figure there's any joke about a bunch of bronchos," she said.
+"They like to kill just for pure devilment, and when they can make it
+without risk, their choice of game is a white man."</p>
+
+<p>"Or woman," put in Lennon, no longer smiling.</p>
+
+<p>"Choicer still. But a man will do. How about that hole in your hat?
+Hadn't you better catch the first train East, and keep going?"</p>
+
+<p>Lennon flushed, rallied himself, and smiled.</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't come to Arizona for my health. I might say it was on business,
+but I've no objection to a bit of sport on the side."</p>
+
+<p>The dark eyes of the girl flashed with a look of almost fierce
+intensity.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll call your bluff," she challenged. "We'll see if you're
+four-flushing. Dead Hole&mdash;Dad's ranch&mdash;is only a few miles southeast of
+Triple Butte, the mountain you're headed for. I know the short cut
+across the Basin. Want to come along?"</p>
+
+<p>"The Indians," protested Lennon. "No, do not<a class="pagenum" name="page_12" id="page_12" title="12"></a> misunderstand me, please.
+It is all right for a man to take chances. But a girl like you&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Like me? Well, the kind of girl I am is this&mdash;I'm going home. I've no
+mind to back up. Good-bye, Mr. Jack Lennon."</p>
+
+<p>He was beside her again before she had reached the bed of the arroyo.</p>
+
+<p>"I have a compass," he said. "Perhaps I'll get to your ranch even if
+your pony outruns me. Only trouble, I can't lug both tools and food."</p>
+
+<p>The girl stopped short to draw off her glove and offer him her strong
+white hand.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm Carmena Farley. I don't like rattlers, coyotes, or quitters."</p>
+
+<p>"I may prove to be a quitter, Miss Farley, but I'd like at least to be
+entered for the game."</p>
+
+<p>The dark-eyed daughter of Arizona looked at him searchingly.</p>
+
+<p>"You will be risking the highest of all stakes&mdash;your life," she warned.</p>
+
+<p>Lennon smiled. "Oh, no; not the highest. There are other things more
+precious."</p>
+
+<p>"Maybe," she assented. "But not everybody would agree with you."</p>
+
+<hr class="major" />
+<div style="margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 1em">
+<a class="pagenum" name="page_13" id="page_13" title="13"></a>
+<a name="OFF_TRAIL_332" id="OFF_TRAIL_332"></a>
+<h2>CHAPTER II</h2>
+<h3>OFF TRAIL</h3>
+</div>
+
+<p>By the time the two reached the dead burro again the somber mood of the
+girl had lightened.</p>
+
+<p>"First thing is to sort over your pack," she said. "We'll cull out
+what's not needed."</p>
+
+<p>The girths of the packsaddle were cut loose, and the animal was dragged
+clear of the pack. When Lennon's very creditable diamond-hitch had been
+thrown off, the girl overhauled the pack and made quick decisions.</p>
+
+<p>"We'll leave most of the flour. You can stock up at the ranch with
+cornmeal. Same with your cooking outfit. Throw out all but one drill and
+all the giant powder&mdash;no, keep half a dozen sticks."</p>
+
+<p>"But, Miss Farley, I can't begin to lug a quarter of&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't forget my pony," cut in Carmena.</p>
+
+<p>"He can't carry you and all this truck of mine," remonstrated Lennon.
+"I'll not permit you to walk. You must have hurt your foot. I saw you
+limp."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not asking your permission, thanks."<a class="pagenum" name="page_14" id="page_14" title="14"></a></p>
+
+<p>As she unbuckled her spurs Lennon noticed that the girl's boots were not
+built with the usual cowboy high heels. They would be suitable for
+walking.</p>
+
+<p>The pony had wandered some distance down the wash, cunningly twitching
+his trailing reins to one side, clear of his hoofs. While Lennon started
+to cache his packsaddle and the other discarded articles of his outfit,
+Carmena went after her would-be stray, limping and gingerly picking her
+steps when she saw that the young man's back was turned. After catching
+her pony she crouched down behind a corner of rock to unlace her boots.
+They came off with difficulty.</p>
+
+<p>Inside the boots, she had been wearing a pair of curious high-top
+boot-moccasins with thick back-doubled toes. In a twinkling she stripped
+off the moccasins and thrust them down into the bottom of one of the
+saddlebags. With her feet uncramped and easy in her relaced boots, she
+sprang into the saddle and loped back up the trail.</p>
+
+<p>Lennon's cache was a cavity under an overhanging ledge. Before he had
+blocked the opening to his satisfaction with fragments of rock the rest
+of his outfit had been securely packed upon the pony by Carmena. Nothing
+was left out except rifles, cartridge-belts and two half-gallon canteens
+of water.</p>
+
+<p>"Keep your gun loaded and never put all your water<a class="pagenum" name="page_15" id="page_15" title="15"></a> on your horse." The
+girl gave her companion the two first maxims of desert travel. "Come
+along. No use trying to hide your cache or your trail from Apaches. Only
+another Apache can do that. It's high time we hit out, anyhow."</p>
+
+<p>To the surprise of Lennon, she started up the arroyo. When he joined
+her, the pony, whose reins had been tied to the pack, snorted and shied.
+But at a call from Carmena, the skittish beast followed his mistress up
+the arroyo like a dog.</p>
+
+<p>"How about the chance of running into that murderous savage if we go
+this way?" Lennon inquired.</p>
+
+<p>"You might be safer if you hurried back to the railroad," replied
+Carmena, and she swung the steepening side of the arroyo.</p>
+
+<p>Lennon's lips tightened. He did not again question his guide's choice of
+route. But, like her, he held his rifle ready as they came up over the
+round of a stony ridge. Though neither could see the slightest sign of
+lurking Indians, Carmena hastened to lead her pony across the ridge
+crest and down the other side.</p>
+
+<p>When safe below the skyline the girl broke into a dog trot. She held to
+the pace, on a long slant along the ridge side, until they came up into
+the mouth of a small ca&ntilde;on. Between the bald ledges of the dry channel
+were bars of sand and gravel. Lennon pointed<a class="pagenum" name="page_16" id="page_16" title="16"></a> to the hoofprints of a
+horse that had come down the ca&ntilde;on at a gallop.</p>
+
+<p>"This must be the trail of our renegade," he said.</p>
+
+<p>Carmena paused to fix him with a somber gaze.</p>
+
+<p>"The whole bunch of bronchos may be up here, but it's the only way into
+the Basin; and, once in, they may get behind us. Now's your chance to
+quit&mdash;your last chance."</p>
+
+<p>This time Lennon was ready for her.</p>
+
+<p>"Lead on, Miss Macduff, and&mdash;perhaps you know the rest of the
+quotation."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," gloomily retorted the girl. "Don't blame me if we meet up with
+those broncs. The joke will be on you."</p>
+
+<p>"How about your safety? Wouldn't you have a better chance if mounted?"</p>
+
+<p>"Want to back out, do you?"</p>
+
+<p>"By no means. My idea is to dump the pack from your pony. Then, if we
+are attacked, I may be able to hold the renegades while you gallop off."</p>
+
+<p>The girl's rich colour deepened into a flush. The thick fringe of her
+lashes swept down to hide the glow in her eyes. Without a word she swung
+ahead, on up the ca&ntilde;on. Though not a little puzzled over her abruptness,
+Lennon felt certain that she had been far from displeased by his
+matter-of-fact suggestion.<a class="pagenum" name="page_17" id="page_17" title="17"></a></p>
+
+<p>He had no chance to urge the desirability of his plan. At his first
+rather loud-spoken remonstrance Carmena flung back at him a curt gesture
+for silence and led on at a quickened pace. Her swift ascent slackened
+only at the twists of the narrowing ca&ntilde;on; at these she would swing in
+close to the inner side of the bends and creep around, with her rifle
+half raised.</p>
+
+<p>By mid-morning the bed of the ca&ntilde;on had become much rougher and steeper.
+The pony, for all his goat-like agility and sure-footedness, found
+difficulty in scrambling up some of the ledges.</p>
+
+<p>Neither the rapid pace nor the climbing bothered Lennon. But between the
+burning heat and his very natural excitement over Carmena's stealthy
+bearing at the turns, he became keyed to rather a high pitch.</p>
+
+<p>After a last sharp turn, the ca&ntilde;on broadened and flared out in a
+trough-like valley at the top of a high, cedar-clad, ridge-rimmed mesa.</p>
+
+<p>"Wait!" Lennon exclaimed. "Look ahead, Miss Farley&mdash;all bare and open!
+Not a bit of shelter until we cross to the trees!"</p>
+
+<p>The girl faced about, her red lips twisted in a smile of contempt, but
+her eyes clouded with disappointment.</p>
+
+<p>"I told you, down at the lower end, it was your last chance to quit."<a class="pagenum" name="page_18" id="page_18" title="18"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Quite true. I've burnt my bridges. The question now is one of advance,
+not retreat. What if there are Indian watchers on those ridges? Would it
+not be best for me to hold their attention by going straight up the open
+valley, while you take the horse around through the cedars?"</p>
+
+<p>Carmena met his proposal with a chuckle that brought a flush into
+Lennon's lean face. But her troubled eyes had cleared and there was a
+note of relief underlying her mirth.</p>
+
+<p>"What's the matter with you, too, keeping under cover?" she rallied.
+"Besides, we don't go to the head of the valley. We slant up to the left
+through that notch in the ridge."</p>
+
+<p>This banter, coupled with the assurance that the girl knew exactly what
+she was about, cooled Lennon's excitement. His high strung nerves
+relaxed.</p>
+
+<p>"No need to remind you I'm a tenderfoot," he jibed at himself. "Coming
+up the ca&ntilde;on I've been shooting Apaches at every bend."</p>
+
+<p>The mirth left Carmena's face. Her lips straightened in hard lines and
+her eyes flashed.</p>
+
+<p>"It's no joke," she said. "I'm right glad you're steadying down. If we
+meet that bunch of bronchos, there's just one thing to do&mdash;shoot first.
+It'll be time enough to ask questions afterward. Is that clear?"<a class="pagenum" name="page_19" id="page_19" title="19"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Perfectly, Miss Farley. I have you to consider, and I presume no
+peaceful Indians come into these bad lands."</p>
+
+<p>"Pimas and Moquis cut their hair square across the forehead. If you see
+any others, shoot&mdash;to kill!"</p>
+
+<p>"I will," said Lennon, certain that he understood the cause of the
+girl's almost fierce insistence. He knew that the treatment of captured
+women by renegade Indians is a far worse fate than death.</p>
+
+<p>Carmena took note of his set jaw, drew in a deep breath, and swung
+around to angle up the slope at the side of the ca&ntilde;on head. Half an hour
+of winding advance through the midst of the scraggly low-growing trees
+brought them to the notch in the rim-ridge. Below this break the mesa
+side pitched steeply into a great basin that was blotched with white
+alkali flats, wave-marked with sand dunes, and broken with jagged hills
+and skeleton-like ridges.</p>
+
+<p>The air was so dry and clear that even far out in the Basin, many miles
+away, Lennon could distinguish patches of green. Nearer at hand appeared
+blurs of a grayish vegetation. But at his pleased exclamation Carmena
+told him that he was looking at no oasis. What he saw was only the green
+of mesquite and palo verde, the fluted columns of the giant sahuaro, and
+the gray of sagebrush. In all that wide waste<a class="pagenum" name="page_20" id="page_20" title="20"></a> of desolation no
+trickling rill or even the smallest of pools glinted under the fierce
+rays of the mid-day sun.</p>
+
+<p>Over beyond the north side of the Basin, above the lesser peaks and
+buttes, appeared a higher mountain. The top, dwarfed by distance but as
+clear cut in outline as a cameo, was divided into three thick tower-like
+masses.</p>
+
+<p>"There's your Triple Butte," said Carmena.</p>
+
+<p>"What! So near as that? We can make it by mid-afternoon."</p>
+
+<p>The girl smiled. "You might, if you hurried enough. It's only forty
+miles away on a beeline."</p>
+
+<p>Lennon stared, openly incredulous: "Forty miles?"</p>
+
+<p>"Near fifty-five by way of the water-holes&mdash;forty to the ranch. We'll
+strike for the nearest tank. I've noticed your canteen has been empty
+some time. Here's mine."</p>
+
+<p>Though Lennon's throat was parched, he sought to refuse the offered
+canteen, which was still half full. Carmena dropped it at his feet and
+began to zigzag down the mesa side.</p>
+
+<p>Noon had passed before they gained the foot of the steep slope. Carmena
+followed out along a ridge of bare rock, past scattered growths of
+thornscrub and cactus, to where windblown sand lay in sterile drifts<a class="pagenum" name="page_21" id="page_21" title="21"></a>
+alongside the ledges. Here she turned up a narrow cleft of the ridge and
+entered the mouth of a small cave.</p>
+
+<p>She knelt to dip her hat down a hole in the bottom of the cave. The hat
+came up brimful of water. She drank deeply, refilled the hat, and backed
+out past Lennon to water the eager pony.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll thank you to fill the canteens and give the bronc as much more as
+he can drink," she directed. "There's firewood on around that point of
+rocks. Keep your gun handy."</p>
+
+<p>Lennon was already drinking from a refilled canteen. He found the
+cliff-shaded water of the spring pure and deliciously cool. The watering
+of the pony took no little time and patience. Though the beast was too
+thirsty to show any of his former skittishness, Lennon's sombrero was
+leaky from the bullet holes.</p>
+
+<p>When at last he drove the pony on along Carmena's trail, he noticed tiny
+cloudlets of dark smoke, like the puffs of a giant's pipe, rising
+straight up in the still air from behind the point of rocks. By the time
+he rounded the corner the smoke had thinned and lightened to an almost
+invisible haze.</p>
+
+<p>A bright little fire of dry sticks was blazing in a sandy hollow.
+Carmena knelt beside it, leaning on the muzzle of her rifle. Her dark
+eyes were gazing off<a class="pagenum" name="page_22" id="page_22" title="22"></a> across the desert basin in a look that betrayed
+both eagerness and dread.</p>
+
+<p>"Hello. Ready for the frying pan?" sang out Lennon. Then he perceived
+the tenseness of the girl's attitude and hastened to swing up his rifle.
+"What is it? Sighted another Apache?"</p>
+
+<p>"No. But I put greasewood on the fire. You saw the smoke?"</p>
+
+<p>"A few puffs&mdash;yes."</p>
+
+<p>The girl rose and eyed him somberly.</p>
+
+<p>"Few puffs, you say.... If that bunch of bronchos is anywhere within
+fifteen miles&mdash;with a clear view this way&mdash;we can expect a visit."</p>
+
+<p>"Should we not cut and run?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why? We couldn't hide our tracks. Even if the devils aren't mounted,
+they'd soon overtake us. An Indian can lope along all day, like a
+coyote."</p>
+
+<p>Lennon looked deliberately around at the ridge and sat down to clean and
+reload his rifle. Carmena's eyes flashed.</p>
+
+<p>"You've got the idea," she said. "We'll eat and back up to the spring.
+The cave is an easy place to hold. You said you can shoot?"</p>
+
+<p>"Rather well. Very long range rifle, too. I've knocked over a caribou
+with it at nearly a mile, up on Hudson Bay."<a class="pagenum" name="page_23" id="page_23" title="23"></a></p>
+
+<p>Carmena glanced at the high-power weapon and then raised her flashing
+eyes to gaze over the bent head of its owner. Midway out across the
+desolate Basin, from the top of a craggy hill to the right of the line
+of Triple Butte, puffs of smoke were rising into the cloudless
+steel-blue sky.</p>
+
+<p>The girl hastened to loosen her pony's pack and take from her saddlebags
+a frying pan, several slices of bacon, and a big chunk of corn pone.</p>
+
+<hr class="major" />
+<div style="margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 1em">
+<a class="pagenum" name="page_24" id="page_24" title="24"></a>
+<a name="THE_GILA_MONSTER_617" id="THE_GILA_MONSTER_617"></a>
+<h2>CHAPTER III</h2>
+<h3>THE GILA MONSTER</h3>
+</div>
+
+<p>The bacon was ready almost as soon as Lennon's rifle. Carmena rose from
+beside the embers of the fire with the pan and corn bread.</p>
+
+<p>"Fetch the canteens," she directed. "We'll eat over here under that
+overhanging rock."</p>
+
+<p>But at the edge of the shade, below the outjutting cliff ledge, she
+stopped short with her gaze fixed upon an object close to the
+sand-sculptured wall of rock.</p>
+
+<p>"Ever see a Gila monster?" she queried.</p>
+
+<p>"No. You don't mean to say&mdash;really&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Lennon had sprung forward beside her. His curious eyes at once perceived
+the hideous, thickset lizard that lay flattened upon the shadowed sand
+as if in a torpor. The reptile's dirty orange-mottled black body was as
+loathsome as its venomous blunt-nosed head.</p>
+
+<p>"Big specimen&mdash;almost two feet long," remarked Carmena. "Hold on. Don't
+shoot. That sure would tell the bronchos where we are."</p>
+
+<p>"But if we are to eat here?" questioned Lennon. "I don't fancy the
+company of this sweet wiggler&mdash;not<a class="pagenum" name="page_25" id="page_25" title="25"></a> that I believe the wild yarns about
+them. All lizards are non-poisonous. No poison glands have ever been
+found in the mouth of these so-called monsters."</p>
+
+<p>"Just look and see," rejoined the girl. "But look in the lower jaw.
+Trouble is, you science sharps expected to find hollow fangs and the
+sacs above, like a rattler's. Do you know why a Gila monster flops on
+his back when he bites? It's to let the loose poison in his lower jaw
+drain into the hollow teeth."</p>
+
+<p>"Really?"</p>
+
+<p>The girl faced him with a challenging look.</p>
+
+<p>"If they turn over, it's as bad as being struck by a six-foot
+diamond-back. They lock their jaws, and the poison&mdash;&mdash; But I've seen a
+man snap the head off one of those big snakes. Let's see if you have the
+nerve to toss this little lizard outside."</p>
+
+<p>Lennon's smile faded as he perceived that the girl was in sober earnest.
+Very naturally he hesitated. He was not given to bravado, and even
+without her assertion that the reptile was deadly poisonous, he would
+have loathed to touch so repulsive a creature.</p>
+
+<p>But there is no spur so galling as the derisive smile of a comely young
+woman. Lennon dropped his rifle, walked in beside the Gila monster, and
+suddenly clutching the lizard in mid-body, flung it several yards<a class="pagenum" name="page_26" id="page_26" title="26"></a> out
+upon the sun-scorched sand. The girl's scorn gave place to a look of
+grave approval.</p>
+
+<p>"You'll do," she said. "Fact is, they're so sluggish in the shade you
+didn't run the slightest risk. You couldn't know that, though. Yes,
+you'll do. Only don't try playing with the fellow out there in the sun.
+The light livens them up."</p>
+
+<p>The advice was needless. Lennon felt quite ready to sit down beside the
+girl and start eating, though he first rubbed his hands thoroughly in
+the sand. Neither had much to say. They were alike intent upon
+satisfying their keen hunger and keeping a sharp lookout against the
+chance of an attack.</p>
+
+<p>After a time Lennon noticed that the Gila monster had crawled up on a
+little sand ridge in the full glare of the mid-day sun. It was viciously
+snapping its jaws and twitching its thick head from side to side.
+Carmena gave no heed to the angered reptile. She was gazing off toward
+the jagged hill from which had risen the distant smoke puffs.</p>
+
+<p>As the girl finished her share of the hearty food she leaned sideways,
+with her ungloved hand on the sand at the edge of the cliff shadow. Like
+the hand, her wrist was white and well rounded. She drew off her old
+sombrero.</p>
+
+<p>Lennon's gaze lifted to the wealth of dark hair that<a class="pagenum" name="page_27" id="page_27" title="27"></a> lay coiled about
+her shapely head. The girl was neither pretty nor beautiful, yet there
+was a certain handsomeness about her strong features.</p>
+
+<p>Out of the tail of his eye Lennon caught a glimpse of a black and orange
+blur streaking toward them over the hot sand. He had seen many darting
+lizards that day. But none had moved more swiftly than the clumsily
+built Gila monster now darted at the disturbers of his torpor. There was
+no time for thought. Lennon sensed that the reptile aimed to strike at
+Carmena's bared wrist.</p>
+
+<p>"Jump!" he cried, and flung himself forward to block the attack with his
+out-thrust right hand.</p>
+
+<p>An instant later the Gila monster snapped its gaping jaws together on
+the fleshy edge of Lennon's palm. It whirled over upon its back. Caught
+outstretched and almost prone upon the ground, Lennon sought to wrench
+his hand free and draw away. The heavy lizard was dragged along with its
+crooked legs futilely clawing the air. But its powerful jaws remained
+clenched on the hand with bulldog tenacity.</p>
+
+<p>A voice shrilled in Lennon's ear: "Hold still! Hold still!"</p>
+
+<p>Carmena stooped over the writhing monster to thrust the muzzle of a
+small revolver against the side of its lower jaw. The bullet shattered
+the jaw and<a class="pagenum" name="page_28" id="page_28" title="28"></a> blew it half off. A vigorous kick hurled the now harmless
+reptile aside.</p>
+
+<p>Lennon had started to raise himself to a sitting position. Carmena flung
+herself upon her knees and caught up his torn hand to her red lips. She
+sucked hard at the wounds&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>With the suddenness of a dropped veil, the hot, white glare of the
+desert noon went black before Lennon's eyes. He sank down upon the sand,
+unconscious.</p>
+
+<p>When the light of returning life glimmered back into his brain, he first
+was dimly aware of a pale Madonna face that appeared to hover close
+above him. His clearing gaze gradually made out the girl's features.
+There was no colour even in her lips. Her eyes were wide with grief and
+dread.</p>
+
+<p>She saw the dawning consciousness in his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Jack!" she whispered&mdash;"Jack!&mdash;You haven't left me&mdash;you won't leave me!"</p>
+
+<p>"Who&mdash;what's the matter?&mdash;&mdash; Oh, that&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>He sought to raise his right arm. It was strangely numb and heavy. The
+girl lifted it from her lap, where it had been lying. He saw that her
+silk handkerchief had been knotted around his bared forearm and twisted
+very tight with the barrel of the little revolver. From the tourniquet
+down, the arm and wrist and hand were black, and beginning to swell.
+The<a class="pagenum" name="page_29" id="page_29" title="29"></a> lacerations torn in the side of the palm by the Gila monster's
+fangs appeared to be clotted with purple blood.</p>
+
+<p>"I rubbed in snake medicine&mdash;permanganate of potash crystals," quavered
+the girl. "That'll kill the poison and not hurt you a bit. You're all
+right now&mdash;only we'll have to ease off a little on your arm. Take some
+good deep breaths."</p>
+
+<p>Though sick and giddy and still faint, Lennon forced himself to obey. He
+rallied sufficiently to sit up. Carmena loosened the tourniquet and
+briskly rubbed his swollen hand and arm. The tingling pain of returning
+circulation roused him like a stimulant. But the poison had not all been
+sucked from the wounds or counteracted in the veins by the permanganate.
+Before the girl could again twist tight the tourniquet he sank down for
+the second time, unconscious.</p>
+
+<p>Out of the utter blankness of oblivion he first dreamed that he was
+alternately swimming through a rough sea and rocking in a wave-tossed
+boat&mdash;&mdash; A gush of water dashed into his face&mdash;then the sea appeared to
+solidify into dry sand. He became conscious that Carmena was violently
+rolling him from side to side and slapping his face. She paused in this
+punishment to pump his arms above his head, forcing the air in and out
+of his lungs.<a class="pagenum" name="page_30" id="page_30" title="30"></a></p>
+
+<p>He struggled feebly to free himself. The girl jerked him to a sitting
+position and, with a desperate output of lithe strength, grasped his
+body from behind to heave him upright. He gained his feet, but was far
+too giddy to stand alone. The girl clasped his left arm about her neck
+and rushed him out beside the pony.</p>
+
+<p>"Brace up!" she breathlessly implored him. "Grip hold of his mane with
+your good hand. We'll have to hit out. The broncs are coming."</p>
+
+<p>She ran back to snatch up Lennon's sombrero, the rifles and one of the
+canteens. The other had been emptied into Lennon's face. Out again she
+darted to clap the sombrero on his drenched head and steady him with a
+hand on the tourniquet. A guttural command started the pony off at a
+walk. The direction chosen by his mistress was northwest, aslant the
+Basin, almost at right angles to the jagged hill where she had seen the
+smoke puffs.</p>
+
+<p>For a while Lennon tottered and reeled like a drunken man. Time and
+again he stumbled and would have sunk down upon the hot sand but for the
+convulsive clutch of his left hand on the pony's mane and the strong
+support of Carmena at his other side. He was giddy and nauseated and
+leaden-footed. Every step required an agonized effort of will power.</p>
+
+<p>Yet the exertion of walking proved the best of treatment<a class="pagenum" name="page_31" id="page_31" title="31"></a> for him.
+Before half a mile had been covered, his head had cleared and his
+strength was fast returning. To offset this benefit, his arm was now
+blacker than ever and rapidly swelling. Carmena gave him a copious drink
+from the canteen, hesitated, glanced toward the smoke hill, and came to
+a desperate decision.</p>
+
+<p>"We can't let that arm go," she said. "The tie must come off. Get ready
+for a rush."</p>
+
+<p>At her command, the pony quickened his pace to a jog trot. As they ran
+along beside him Carmena untwisted her revolver from the tourniquet.
+This time Lennon did not lose consciousness. Either the remaining poison
+had been almost destroyed by the permanganate or else his previous
+reactions to the venom had rendered him partly immune.</p>
+
+<p>Though the nausea and giddiness again threatened to overcome him, the
+support of Carmena and her pony kept him steadied. Very soon the run
+under the hot sun had him panting for breath. His highly oxygenized
+blood gushed through his arteries in a veritable stream of life. His
+face glistened with a profuse sweat.</p>
+
+<p>Carmena held to the pace until he fell down, gasping for water and
+completely exhausted. The wonder was that he had been able to do so much
+after the<a class="pagenum" name="page_32" id="page_32" title="32"></a> terrible shock of the Gila monster poison. They had come into
+the midst of scattered mesquite trees, which offered a degree of cover.
+Carmena first tied up the pony, then opened the half gallon canteen for
+Lennon.</p>
+
+<p>While he sought to quench his fierce thirst, she hastily threw off the
+pony's loosened pack. Silk tent, blankets, prospector's tools,
+packsacks, bacon, flour&mdash;all were discarded. From her saddlebags she
+dumped half of her own bacon and all but a pint of cornmeal. Into its
+place she slipped the half dozen sticks of dynamite, with their fuses
+and caps.</p>
+
+<p>One of Lennon's full gallon canteens was slung to the saddlehorn,
+opposite the horsehair rope. From its mate the girl refilled the smaller
+canteen, which Lennon had already more than half emptied. She took a
+deep drink and then carefully closed both canteens.</p>
+
+<p>"Sorry, but we must cut it close on water," she said. "The bronchos have
+us headed off from the other tanks. With your hand useless, we can't
+fight. We'll have to swing around through the dry side of the Basin. No
+time to lose! They'll be on our trail before long."</p>
+
+<p>Lennon sprang to his feet.</p>
+
+<p>"Mount your horse and ride as fast as you can," he ordered. "I'll trot
+along after you. Don't bother<a class="pagenum" name="page_33" id="page_33" title="33"></a> about me. I can shoot well enough
+left-handed to hold off the beggars until dark."</p>
+
+<p>Carmena suddenly came close to him, her eyes aglow with soft radiance.
+She caught up his injured hand. It was still swollen and bleeding, but
+the purple-black discoloration had lightened to red; her deft fingers
+tore a strip from her handkerchief and bound up the ragged wounds.</p>
+
+<p>"There. Now you'll get on and ride," she said. "You don't suppose I'll
+leave you to those devils, after you saved my life!"</p>
+
+<p>"But it is you who have saved mine, Miss Farley."</p>
+
+<p>"To say that&mdash;when you jammed your hand into the monster's mouth! If he
+had bit me I'd have had no show at all. You didn't know how to treat the
+poison. No. Either the bronchos will get us both, or we're going to win
+through to the ranch together."</p>
+
+<p>"But, Miss Farley&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>The heat-flush in the girl's tanned cheeks deepened to rose.</p>
+
+<p>"I never before knew a man like you, Jack. Won't you call me Carmena?"</p>
+
+<p>The candid directness of this rather took Lennon's breath. But the girl
+was of the desert&mdash;efficient, resolute, crude in dress, yet rich
+coloured as the bloom of the red-flowered cactus. She had saved him
+from<a class="pagenum" name="page_34" id="page_34" title="34"></a> the horrible death of the Gila monster's poison and was now intent
+upon saving him from even worse fate at the hands of the murderous
+Apaches.</p>
+
+<p>He caught up her willing hand in an eager clasp.</p>
+
+<p>"Carmena!&mdash;To have a girl like you for pal&mdash;it's simply ripping!"</p>
+
+<p>"Pal?" she repeated the word after him, as if not quite certain of its
+meaning. "Oh, you mean pard. Yes, we're partners now&mdash;for this deal at
+least&mdash;whether it means life or death."</p>
+
+<hr class="major" />
+<div style="margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 1em">
+<a class="pagenum" name="page_35" id="page_35" title="35"></a>
+<a name="PARDS_IN_PERIL_890" id="PARDS_IN_PERIL_890"></a>
+<h2>CHAPTER IV</h2>
+<h3>PARDS IN PERIL</h3>
+</div>
+
+<p>As Lennon's clasp relaxed, the girl's tightened. She drew him toward the
+pony.</p>
+
+<p>"You've got to ride," she said. "You can't stand the pace. That poison
+is no joke. Don't want to hold me back, do you?"</p>
+
+<p>The question overcame Lennon's reluctance. The girl had refused to leave
+him, and she was right about the poison. He could endure the severe pain
+of his wounded hand, but he was still weak and badly shaken from the
+effects of the venom. Unless he rode he would be a drag upon her.</p>
+
+<p>"Very well," he agreed, and he permitted her to help him clamber up into
+the saddle.</p>
+
+<p>No time was lost over lengthening the stirrup leathers. Carmena handed
+him his rifle and the half-emptied gallon canteen, caught up the small
+one and her own rifle, and started off in lead of the pony. Her easy
+swinging stride, though seemingly unhurried, covered the ground faster
+than the pony could walk. Every little while the animal had to break
+into a jog to catch up with her.<a class="pagenum" name="page_36" id="page_36" title="36"></a></p>
+
+<p>At the far end of the scattered mesquite growth Carmena edged off to the
+left, down a shallow wash that brought them around to the west side of a
+ridge. Under cover of the gaunt earth-rib of worn rock she headed north,
+straight for the distant towers of Triple Butte.</p>
+
+<p>The deceptive green of occasional palo-verde bushes now gave place to
+the columns of the giant sahuaro. The fluted, leafless stems of these
+high-towering cactus candelabras bristled with fierce thorns, yet each
+was crowned with the glory of a gorgeous foot-wide blossom.</p>
+
+<p>Over the loose hot sand, amidst this shadeless mockery of a forest,
+Carmena swung steadily along at her graceful stride. Her movements
+seemed as lacking in effort as the lope of a coyote or the bound of a
+cat. Lennon would not have realized how greatly she was exerting herself
+had he not seen how frequently she drank from her canteen.</p>
+
+<p>No one of white blood, however thoroughly inured to thirst, can walk
+fast under the blistering sun, in the bone-dry air of the desert,
+without need of much water. Lennon, though riding, was no less parched
+than the girl. He was fresh from a moist climate, and the Gila monster
+poison had put him into a feverish condition. Hard as he tried, he could
+not resist drinking. His canteen was emptied even sooner than
+Carmena's.<a class="pagenum" name="page_37" id="page_37" title="37"></a></p>
+
+<p>This was little past mid-afternoon. They had left the sahuaros behind
+and were coming down among widely scattered salt bushes to the border of
+an utterly barren alkali flat. For the first time since the stop in the
+mesquite, Carmena halted her quick advance. But it was not to rest. The
+feverish crimson of Lennon's face sobered her reassuring smile. She
+peered searchingly back along the trail, glanced at the sun, and hastily
+transferred to their empty canteens all but a quart from the full
+canteen on the saddlehorn.</p>
+
+<p>"We've got to make it last till sundown, Jack," she warned. "Then, if
+only we can hold our lead, we'll be able to keep going all night."</p>
+
+<p>Lennon drew out two half dollars. "How about trying these in our
+mouths?"</p>
+
+<p>"They'll help," she replied, and she took one. "Be ready to tie your
+neckerchief over your nose, soon as we strike the alkali."</p>
+
+<p>The wisdom of this advice was evident when they started out across the
+snow-white flat. Every step stirred up clouds of alkali dust that hung
+about the fugitives like thick smoke. The impalpable powder penetrated
+their clothes, smarted in their eyes, and all but choked them, even
+behind the veiling neckerchiefs.</p>
+
+<p>Before they had half crossed the fearful dust flat Carmena was walking
+as slowly as the pony. At the<a class="pagenum" name="page_38" id="page_38" title="38"></a> far side she sank down beside a
+thick-stemmed cactus. Lennon, half delirious from fever, sought to
+spring off, with the vague idea of forcing her to ride. He succeeded
+only in tumbling upon the sand. The startled pony shied clear. With a
+smothered cry, Carmena leaped up to grasp his bridle.</p>
+
+<p>"Close call!" she gasped at Lennon. "If he'd made off&mdash;no show for us at
+all."</p>
+
+<p>Lennon was too far gone for speech. His canteen was already half empty.
+Carmena gave him a sip from her own and dragged him around until his
+head lay in the small blot of shade made by a cactus stem. Half an hour
+passed before he was able to get back into the saddle. But the rest
+appeared to have fully restored the girl's strength. She set off at a
+pace that again forced the pony into an occasional jog.</p>
+
+<p>After a time the sheltering ridge ran down into the sandy level of the
+desert. Yet Carmena continued to find a route protected by inequalities
+of the ground or by growths of cactus and thorn scrub from any eyes that
+might be peering across the Basin. As the sun sank nearer to the western
+rim of buttes and mesas she kept an ever closer watch to the rear. Her
+own and Lennon's canteens were again empty and her seemingly tireless
+stride was at last beginning to flag.</p>
+
+<p>By the time the lower edge of the sun touched the<a class="pagenum" name="page_39" id="page_39" title="39"></a> rim of the Basin the
+fugitives had come opposite a long range of broken hills. Carmena
+dragged herself wearily up over an out-thrust spur ridge. Lennon was
+swaying in the saddle, and his tongue, like hers, had begun to swell.
+But the girl did not offer to open the canteen on the saddlehorn.</p>
+
+<p>At the top of the ridge she hurried the pony down below the skyline and
+crept back to peer over a ledge. Far to the rear, across the
+shadow-streaked waste, her anxious eyes sighted a group of moving dots.
+She ran to seize the pony's bridle and urge him into a jog.</p>
+
+<p>"Must hurry!" she rasped in a thirst-harshened voice. "They're trailing
+us&mdash;on the lope!"</p>
+
+<p>The alarm shocked Lennon out of his semi-delirium. His relaxing grip on
+the rifle tightened. He straightened in the saddle. Carmena did not look
+back at him. She was turning into the mouth of a wash that appeared to
+head over toward the far side of the hills. Half a mile up the wash the
+gravelly bottom changed to loose stones. Carmena smashed the smaller
+canteen and tossed it off to one side.</p>
+
+<p>Some distance farther along the footing became all rock. Carmena stopped
+on a flat ledge and flung the big canteen she was carrying as far as she
+could up the arroyo. She then changed from her boots to the long-legged
+moccasins that she had hidden in one of the<a class="pagenum" name="page_40" id="page_40" title="40"></a> saddlebags. No less hastily
+she cut strips from the Navaho saddleblanket to tie over the pony's
+lightly shod hoofs.</p>
+
+<p>The sun had now been down for several minutes, and the clear desert
+twilight was beginning to fade. Carmena turned the pony and carefully
+led him at an easy angle up a flight of solid step ledges on the side of
+the arroyo. Half circling a hill, she descended another arroyo that ran
+northwest, back down into the level desert.</p>
+
+<p>By the time the edge of the broken ground had been reached dusk was
+deepening into night. Carmena halted and eased Lennon down out of the
+saddle. Water, trickled a few drops at a time between his cracked lips,
+gradually soothed his swollen tongue and parched throat. His fever was
+already subsiding in the coolness of nightfall.</p>
+
+<p>Carmena gave him almost half of the remaining quart of water. A half
+pint more she used to rinse her own mouth and moisten the nostrils of
+the pony. The few sips left were held in reserve.</p>
+
+<p>Scant as was the water ration, it enabled both the girl and Lennon to
+suck at lumps of raw bacon. They lay silently mouthing and chewing the
+greasy fat, their rifles ready and their ears alert for the slightest
+thud of approaching hoofs. But no sound broke the deathlike stillness of
+the desert night.<a class="pagenum" name="page_41" id="page_41" title="41"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Looks like we fooled 'em," whispered Carmena. "They must have found the
+canteens&mdash;figured we'd gone desperate with thirst and headed on across
+for the nearest water hole. Can you mount again?"</p>
+
+<p>Lennon dragged himself to his feet.</p>
+
+<p>"You're wonderful!" he murmured. "If you'd leave me here&mdash;I'm only a
+drag. You could ride at a gallop&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>She grasped his arm and pushed him around beside the horse.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't be looney. We can go all night without a drop. Count on me to
+out-travel the pony till sun-up. Get on. You don't suppose I'm going
+back on my pard, do you?"</p>
+
+<p>There was no room for argument. Lennon's condition was still so serious
+that she had to help him into the saddle. With the pony in lead, she set
+out straight toward the North Star.</p>
+
+<p>Before many miles Lennon caught himself lapsing into a doze. He had
+almost dropped his rifle. To make certain against its loss, he thrust it
+into his cartridge belt like a pistol. After this he drowsed off again
+into a half torpor of sleep and exhaustion. Some automatic functioning
+of his subconscious mind kept him balanced in the saddle.</p>
+
+<p>When at last he roused from the stupor it was to a<a class="pagenum" name="page_42" id="page_42" title="42"></a> miserable
+realization of pain and weariness and cold. A bleak gray light was
+filtering over the eastern rim of mesas down into the blackness of the
+Basin. Dry as was this land of desolation, it was not so utterly arid as
+the sea-level deserts of the lower Colorado.</p>
+
+<p>Lennon shivered and forced open his heavy eyelids. He first made out the
+bowed figure of Carmena plodding along, with one backward-dragged hand
+noosed in the reins of the weary pony. The gray light gradually
+brightened. He saw that the girl was swaying, almost staggering. He
+forced out a hoarse cry:</p>
+
+<p>"Stop!"</p>
+
+<p>The call broke the hypnotic spell of motion that alone had enabled the
+girl to keep placing one leaden foot before the other. She tottered and
+sank down and lay still. Lennon dropped out of the saddle to bend over
+her. Like the knees of the pony, the girl's moccasins were torn with the
+thorns of cacti and desert bushes, against which they had struck in the
+dark.</p>
+
+<p>She had not fainted. Her dark eyes gazed up at Lennon, wide with an
+anguish of self-reproach.</p>
+
+<p>"Used up&mdash;can't make it," she whispered. "No chance for both&mdash;after
+sun-up. Ride hard toward Triple Butte."</p>
+
+<p>Lennon's reply was to open the canteen and hold it to her lips. Only a
+few drops were left when she managed<a class="pagenum" name="page_43" id="page_43" title="43"></a> to thrust it away. He put his
+uninjured arm about her slender waist and lifted her to her feet.</p>
+
+<p>"Ride&mdash;your turn," he commanded. "I walk. Never say die!"</p>
+
+<p>Her sunken eyes lighted with a faint glow. A last flicker of strength
+enabled her, with his help, to pull herself into the saddle. Lennon
+caught up her rifle and started off toward Triple Butte in desperate
+haste.</p>
+
+<p>An hour after sunrise found him still staggering forward almost at a dog
+trot. The northern border mesas of the Basin were now only a short
+distance ahead. But already his swollen tongue was beginning to blacken
+in his mouth. When at last he came to the foot of the lower mesa he
+could barely totter.</p>
+
+<p>Carmena rode up alongside. She huskily whispered for him to hand over
+her rifle and grasp the stirrup leather. He had not dragged along beside
+the pony more than a hundred paces when a jerk on the reins headed the
+weary beast around into the mouth of a broad ca&ntilde;on. Carmena uttered a
+sharp cry and pointed ahead. Near the base of the canon wall a dark
+patch on the ledges was shimmering in the sunrays.</p>
+
+<p>Hope flared high in the hearts of the perishing fugitives&mdash;only to
+flicker and die out again in utter despair.<a class="pagenum" name="page_44" id="page_44" title="44"></a> The black patch was
+water&mdash;a tiny spring that seeped from a horizontal crevice between the
+stratas of rock&mdash;but its trickle was spread out in a paper-thin sheet
+down the sloping lower ledges. At their foot it vanished in the dry sand
+of the ca&ntilde;on bed.</p>
+
+<p>They could cool their swollen tongues and so obtain temporary relief
+from their suffering. But they could not suck up enough water to quench
+their terrible thirst. Nor could they collect in the canteen even a gill
+of water to take with them.</p>
+
+<p>Lennon, however, was an engineer. Even while hope fled from him, his
+eyes were peering around with the scrutiny of a trained observer and
+thinker.</p>
+
+<p>His roving gaze fixed upon a bank a little way out from the ca&ntilde;on mouth.
+He staggered down to it and came back with a handful of dry clay. This
+he spread out upon the least tilted of the wet ledges. By patting and
+scraping he soon had a little ball that kneaded like putty in his eager
+fingers.</p>
+
+<p>Carmena already had perceived his purpose and was hurrying to fetch a
+heaping hatful of the dry clay. Before many minutes they had built a
+little concave dam, in which the down-seeping water slowly but steadily
+collected.</p>
+
+<p>When at last they had quenched their thirst Lennon took his rifle and
+went to sit under a shady ledge<a class="pagenum" name="page_45" id="page_45" title="45"></a> where he could look out into the Basin.
+Carmena lingered at the spring to water the pony and fill the canteen.
+She then gave all the cornmeal to the beast and brought slices of raw
+bacon to share with Lennon.</p>
+
+<p>He clasped the hand in which she held out his first slice.</p>
+
+<p>"So we made it, after all. Good work?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, we made it, Jack!" she exulted. "Close shave&mdash;but worth the risk.
+I know now for sure you're a man, a real man!"</p>
+
+<p>Her glowing eyes brought a deeper red into Lennon's sunburnt face.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm still pretty much of a tenderfoot," he protested. "And there's this
+game arm. I'd rather run than fight."</p>
+
+<p>The girl smiled.</p>
+
+<p>"That's all right till you get back the use of your hand. But it won't
+hurt to show those bronchos the range of your rifle. They're coming a
+bit too fast to suit us."</p>
+
+<p>Lennon stared out across the open plain. Rather more than a mile away a
+dozen or more riders were loping along the trail of the fugitives.</p>
+
+<p>The sights slid up on Lennon's rifle. He put the butt to his left
+shoulder and rested the barrel across a<a class="pagenum" name="page_46" id="page_46" title="46"></a> rock. The first bullet raised a
+puff of dust a little to the left of the Indians. The second must have
+shrieked close over their heads. They wheeled their ponies and scattered
+out in fanlike formation.</p>
+
+<p>Lennon's fourth shot caught one of the ponies broadside. The beast
+tumbled over and lay motionless. Its rider dashed behind a cactus. The
+rest of the Apaches wrenched their ponies about and raced to get back
+beyond range. They had not bargained on a rifle that could shoot so far.
+A renegade prefers to kill without risk to himself.</p>
+
+<p>"That's enough," chuckled Carmena. "There's no cover for 'em unless they
+crawl up afoot. Some will ride around and climb the mesa. Time we were
+moving. Come on. We'll beat 'em into the Hole."</p>
+
+<p>Lennon elevated his rifle and sent a parting shot over the heads of the
+fleeing riders. When he came running back into the ca&ntilde;on mouth Carmena
+had the canteen swung to the saddlehorn and was lacing on her boots, in
+place of the torn moccasins.</p>
+
+<p>After a last deep drink from the pool and another sombreroful for the
+pony, the little dam was carefully scraped off the ledge and the clay
+covered with a loose boulder. The Apaches would be able to lap the wet
+stone but not to drink. They were not engineers or dam builders.</p>
+
+<hr class="major" />
+<div style="margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 1em">
+<a class="pagenum" name="page_47" id="page_47" title="47"></a>
+<a name="DEAD_HOLE_1200" id="DEAD_HOLE_1200"></a>
+<h2>CHAPTER V</h2>
+<h3>DEAD HOLE</h3>
+</div>
+
+<p>The race up the ca&ntilde;on was far different from the terrible flight of the
+previous day and the misery of the night. The cool spring water had been
+very refreshing, lofty cliffs shadowed the ca&ntilde;on bed from the hot
+morning sunrays, and the pain of Lennon's lacerated hand had eased to a
+dull ache. He took turn about with Carmena, riding and running.</p>
+
+<p>The ca&ntilde;on bottom was fairly smooth. For more than an hour the fugitives
+raced up the great cleft between the towering precipices and past narrow
+side ca&ntilde;ons. At last they came to a break in the sheer walls. The cliff
+on the right leaned back in a series of terraces that formed a broken
+giant stairway to the top of the mesa.</p>
+
+<p>Carmena led the pony up a sloping shelf ledge. The line of ascent picked
+out by her practised eye proved unexpectedly easy. As they climbed in
+steep zigzags from terrace to terrace Lennon trailed behind. Carmena
+noticed his frequent glances down into the ca&ntilde;on bottom.<a class="pagenum" name="page_48" id="page_48" title="48"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Don't worry," she said. "They didn't rush the ca&ntilde;on mouth&mdash;they
+crawled. If any circled and climbed the mesa, the side ca&ntilde;ons cut 'em
+off from us. We'll beat 'em to the Hole."</p>
+
+<p>"The Hole&mdash;we'll find help there?" queried Lennon.</p>
+
+<p>"Slade is away. But I figure we'll be safe enough, once we get in.
+There's Dad and&mdash;my sister."</p>
+
+<p>"If they are at all like you, Carmena!"</p>
+
+<p>The girl paused on a ledge to gaze down at him with a somber, clouded
+look that brightened into a tender smile.</p>
+
+<p>"Elsie is as much like me as a lily is like a cactus. No thorns about
+<i>her</i>. She's cuddlier than a kitten. Eyes bluer than forget-me-nots,
+Jack; hair yellow as corn silk. She's only eighteen and sweet as honey."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm picturing an angel," bantered Lennon. "Your father must be a fine
+man to have two such daughters."</p>
+
+<p>The flush in the girl's tanned cheeks deepened. But the soft glow of her
+eyes faded and left them dull and haggard.</p>
+
+<p>"Dad's been unlucky all 'round," she murmured. "Not his fault, either.
+He came West for his health&mdash;almost died&mdash;one lung gone."</p>
+
+<p>"Hard lines," sympathized Lennon. "Ranch work can't be easy for a sick
+man."</p>
+
+<p>The girl climbed to another terrace before she replied:<a class="pagenum" name="page_49" id="page_49" title="49"></a></p>
+
+<p>"That's not the worst of it. Slade came six years ago&mdash;when we were
+starving. Dad got in with him. He can't break loose. If only we could
+get away, Dad would be all right."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes?" said Lennon.</p>
+
+<p>Carmena remained silent until he came panting up after her to the top of
+the steepest ascent. While he paused to catch his breath she opened the
+canteen. They were by now badly in need of a drink. Before starting on
+up the ledges she met Lennon's smiling gaze with a look of tremulous
+appeal.</p>
+
+<p>"Dad used to be a lawyer," she faltered. "If only you'll try to like him
+and&mdash;and help."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course!" exclaimed Lennon. "Aren't we pals? You're pulling me
+through this scrape. Perhaps I can pull him out of his hole. You called
+it Dead Hole, didn't you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," murmured the girl. "That's the name and&mdash;it fits."</p>
+
+<p>"You've stood by me. I'll stand by you," Lennon pledged himself. "We'll
+look for that copper mine together. I'm working for a big copper
+syndicate. If I relocate the mine I am to receive twenty thousand in
+cash and ten per cent. of the stock. Your half of the cash should pull
+your dad out of his hole."</p>
+
+<p>The girl's eyes dilated.<a class="pagenum" name="page_50" id="page_50" title="50"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Don't&mdash;don't tell Dad!" she gasped. "It's not the money I want. You
+don't sabe. Promise you won't say a word to Dad about the money&mdash;or the
+mine?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, if you do not wish me&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Not a word&mdash;not the barest hint! Promise!"</p>
+
+<p>"Very well. Only&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"You'll learn all too soon!" she murmured, and she started quickly up
+the last ascent.</p>
+
+<p>When they rounded the brink, twelve hundred feet above the ca&ntilde;on bed,
+the girl did not linger to talk. She dropped the pony's reins and
+started off at a jog across the hot, level, cedar-dotted top of the
+mesa.</p>
+
+<p>Lennon galloped ahead of her, tied the pony, and ran on afoot. Carmena
+copied the maneuver. In this manner, taking turn about, they covered the
+ground almost as fast as if both had been mounted. As each drank from
+the canteen at every stop and Carmena twice wet the nostrils of the
+pony, none was yet exhausted when, at the end of five or six miles, the
+girl headed down into a quickly narrowing valley.</p>
+
+<p>The funnel-shaped trough pinched to a steep chute between precipices
+that leaned closer together overhead the deeper the fugitives descended.
+The bed of the narrow mountain crack became even more steep. In places
+the pony had to jump like a goat down five and six-foot ledges. Time and
+again he slid on his<a class="pagenum" name="page_51" id="page_51" title="51"></a> haunches. At the worst place of all the beast was
+saved from certain destruction only by snubbing his horsehair picket
+rope around a corner of rock and so easing his descent to better
+footing.</p>
+
+<p>But, as Carmena remarked, the steeper the grade the sooner it was ended.
+They came down into the bottom of the lower ca&ntilde;on, bruised and exhausted
+but with no bones broken.</p>
+
+<p>"Almost there," panted Carmena, and she reeled ahead along the
+boulder-strewn bed of the chasm.</p>
+
+<p>At the second turn the cliff ended in a vertical slit-glare of sunlight.
+The pony whinnied. Carmena led the way out into an oval cliff-walled
+valley, two or three miles long and half as broad.</p>
+
+<p>First to strike Lennon's desert-starved eyes was the vivid grateful
+verdure of irrigated cornfields. Beyond, in browning hay meadows, grazed
+a herd of cattle and twenty or thirty head of horses. Three quarters of
+a mile to the left, in a cavity forty feet up the rock wall and well
+under an overhang of the towering precipices, nestled a group of stone
+ruins.</p>
+
+<p>Lennon pointed toward the ancient buildings.</p>
+
+<p>"Cliff dwellings, I take it."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes&mdash;I told Elsie to be ready with the ladder. We'll make it in time
+for the call of Cochise."</p>
+
+<p>Before Lennon could inquire the meaning of this,<a class="pagenum" name="page_52" id="page_52" title="52"></a> she sprang upon the
+pony and loped along the cliff foot toward the cliff ruins. As Lennon
+jogged after her he saw a rope ladder slide down the under cliff,
+followed by a rope reeved through a crane that thrust out from another
+opening in the fa&ccedil;ade of the cliff building.</p>
+
+<p>Carmena's saddle and bags, saddle blanket and rifle, and the
+canteen&mdash;all were fast to the hoisting rope when Lennon came staggering
+and panting up beside the girl. She pointed toward the head of the
+valley and caught the rifle from him to tie it on the load.</p>
+
+<p>"A miss is as good as a mile," she said. "We'll just have time to get
+up. Cochise and Pete must have ridden over around and come down Hell
+Ca&ntilde;on. Ours was Devil's Chute."</p>
+
+<p>Lennon frowned at the pair of riders who were racing swiftly down aslant
+from the head of the valley.</p>
+
+<p>"We'll be ready to pick them off," he said. "There's no cover under
+here."</p>
+
+<p>"Too late for that," sighed Carmena. "Dad won't let us.
+Besides&mdash;Pete&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"But when the murderers have tried to kill you!&mdash;And they'll steal all
+his cattle."</p>
+
+<p>The girl winced and looked down.</p>
+
+<p>"No. You see Dad&mdash;he is friends with all the&mdash;Indians hereabouts. I'll
+be safe enough now, soon as Cochise cools off. It's only a question of
+you."<a class="pagenum" name="page_53" id="page_53" title="53"></a></p>
+
+<p>"I see!" exclaimed Lennon. "You know the renegades. You would have been
+safe at the first. You have risked your own life just to save mine. I'll
+never forget that, Carmena."</p>
+
+<p>"If only&mdash;if only you'll remember&mdash;when you know!" she whispered, and
+she turned to start up the rope ladder.</p>
+
+<p>As Lennon stepped forward after her he noticed that the saddle load had
+already been hoisted above his reach and was rapidly going higher.</p>
+
+<p>A rope ladder draped upon the face of a smooth rock wall and unfastened
+below is at best not easy to climb. Lennon had to crook his right elbow
+through the rungs to get any use of his injured arm. But the riders
+racing swiftly across the head of the valley would soon be within short
+rifle range. Lennon's left hand was only a few rungs below Carmena's
+boot heels all the way up the ladder.</p>
+
+<p>At the top the girl pulled herself in over the worn stone sill of a
+massive-walled doorway. As Lennon scrambled up and through the deep
+entrance after her he glimpsed a thin gray face, with bleary red eyes
+and loose lips, leering at him out of the darkness of an inner room.</p>
+
+<p>To the right, a little way back from the next opening, a small
+fair-haired girl was rapidly winding in on a<a class="pagenum" name="page_54" id="page_54" title="54"></a> miner's windlass. She
+stopped to tug at a rope. The crane swung around into the entrance with
+the saddle and rifles.</p>
+
+<p>Carmena had already faced about to haul the ladder up the cliff. Lennon
+caught hold with his left hand to help her. They had gathered in less
+than ten yards when a bullet whizzed between their heads and splattered
+on the stone wall at the rear of the room. Carmena hooked the ladder
+over a peg at the side of the doorway and forcibly dragged Lennon out of
+the opening.</p>
+
+<p>Two more bullets whizzed in, one of them angling up close over the sill.
+Had it come a moment sooner Lennon must have been struck. Carmena's hand
+shook and her voice quavered, though she sought to speak in an
+unconcerned tone:</p>
+
+<p>"That's warmer than I expected at this stage of the game. Guess Cochise
+is feeling pretty bad in his heart. We'll have to let him cool down
+awhile."</p>
+
+<p>"Why not return his compliments?" suggested Lennon. "We can easily pick
+off both of the devils without exposing ourselves."</p>
+
+<p>"And get the rest of the bunch down on us! No, Jack, they've got us
+holed up. We might slip away before the others came but they'd make a
+clean sweep of the stock and everything else. Come and meet Elsie.
+Cochise will soon tire of wasting cartridges."</p>
+
+<hr class="major" />
+<div style="margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 1em">
+<a class="pagenum" name="page_55" id="page_55" title="55"></a>
+<a name="HER_FOLKS_1431" id="HER_FOLKS_1431"></a>
+<h2>CHAPTER VI</h2>
+<h3>HER FOLKS</h3>
+</div>
+
+<p>The fair-haired girl was cowering behind the massive front wall of the
+cliff house. At every shot from the rifles of the infuriated Apaches she
+crouched lower. Carmena held out reassuring arms to her.</p>
+
+<p>"There, there, Blossom," she soothed. "You've no need to be scared."</p>
+
+<p>The trembler sprang to clasp the neck of the older girl.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Mena, Mena!" she sobbed. "I'm so glad you're back! It's been awful!
+Dad had one of his spells; and now, with Cochise angry&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"We'll manage him&mdash;never fear. He's stopped shooting already. Quit your
+shaking. I don't want Jack to think you a silly little rabbit."</p>
+
+<p>For the first time the panic-stricken girl appeared to realize that
+Lennon was a stranger. She lifted her head from Carmena's bosom to stare
+at him with innocent childish wonderment. Her piquant little face was
+flowerlike in its delicate contours and apricot tinting;<a class="pagenum" name="page_56" id="page_56" title="56"></a> her big blue
+eyes were the pure intense blue of alpine forget-me-nots. No line of her
+pretty face bore the slightest resemblance to Carmena's comely but
+strong features.</p>
+
+<p>"O-o-oh!" she voiced her amazement. "He's new&mdash;and he's white!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, but he and I are pards," Carmena reassured her. "Shake hands. He
+has come to help us."</p>
+
+<p>"To help us?" The young girl held out a timid hand. "You&mdash;you won't side
+with Cochise? You won't let him take me?"</p>
+
+<p>"'Course he won't," put in Carmena. "Didn't I tell you we're pards? His
+name is Jack Lennon, and he's a real man."</p>
+
+<p>Lennon was pressing the soft little hand of the younger girl.</p>
+
+<p>"So you are Sister Elsie," he said. "Carmena is right. I will not side
+with Cochise&mdash;if that's our hot friend down below."</p>
+
+<p>The girl's rosebud lips parted in a smile of wondering delight.</p>
+
+<p>"You called me sister! Then you'll be my brother&mdash;my Brother Jack!"</p>
+
+<p>Lennon was astonished that any girl more than fourteen could be so
+na&iuml;ve. Yet the effect was more than charming.<a class="pagenum" name="page_57" id="page_57" title="57"></a></p>
+
+<p>"I'll be only too happy, if Carmena has no objection."</p>
+
+<p>He glanced up into the face of the older girl and surprised a look not
+meant for him to see. As the down-drooping lashes veiled her dark eyes a
+deep blush glowed under the tan of her dust-grimed, haggard face. The
+realization of the meaning of that blush and glance sobered Lennon.</p>
+
+<p>The girl had known him a scant seven-and-twenty hours. But in that full
+day had been packed more intense peril and emotion than many couples
+share in a lifetime. He had saved her and she him. Together they had
+suffered agonies of thirst and exhaustion, and together they had cheated
+the murderous Apaches. Even now, down beneath them at the foot of this
+ancient cliff refuge, the leader of the renegades was futilely cursing.</p>
+
+<p>Lennon was a white man, and he had proved himself not a quitter. The
+girl had been overwrought by their terrible flight. That she should
+fancy herself beginning to fall in love with him was quite
+understandable. The discovery of the fact set his jaded nerves to
+tingling with a pleasant thrill even as he realized the awkwardness of
+the situation.</p>
+
+<p>By way of diversion, he stepped around to take his rifle from the
+saddle. As he straightened up with it<a class="pagenum" name="page_58" id="page_58" title="58"></a> the muzzle of a double-barreled
+shotgun thrust out at him from a small slit window in the end wall of
+the room. Behind the gun, framed deep by the thick stone of the window
+casing, he saw the leering gray face that he had first caught a glimpse
+of in another opening at the opposite end of the room.</p>
+
+<p>A thin dry voice that was shrill with fear snarled at him:</p>
+
+<p>"Hands up! Drop that gun!"</p>
+
+<p>Carmena flung herself between Lennon and the threatening muzzle.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't shoot, Dad! He's a friend!" she cried.</p>
+
+<p>Over her shoulder Lennon saw the reddened eyes blink and the muscles of
+the gray face twitch. The muzzle of the shotgun wavered.</p>
+
+<p>"Put your gun down, Dad," Carmena ordered. "Mr. Lennon and I are
+partners. Come out here and meet him."</p>
+
+<p>Both face and gun disappeared. After several moments a smallish
+gray-haired man shuffled out through the doorway on the right of the
+window and scurried across the opening into which the crane had swung
+its load. As he unbent his emaciated body to face the visitor his breath
+was heavy with the fumes of whiskey.</p>
+
+<p>Lennon knew without looking that Carmena's eyes<a class="pagenum" name="page_59" id="page_59" title="59"></a> were fixed upon him in
+mute appeal. He had given her his promise to help her father. There was
+no betrayal of repugnance in the friendly offer of his hand.</p>
+
+<p>"My name is Lennon, Mr. Farley. Your daughter tells me you were a
+lawyer. I'm a professional man myself&mdash;engineer."</p>
+
+<p>Farley stiffened to a show of dignity.</p>
+
+<p>"I am still a lawyer," he rasped. "I must stipulate that you are
+received here with reservations. Your presence is a trespass. This ranch
+is private property and&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"All right, Dad. That lets you out with Slade and Cochise," interrupted
+Carmena. "We'll all bear witness. Come in now. We're both half dead for
+want of food and sleep. Those devils ran us clear across the Basin."</p>
+
+<p>Lennon glanced at his rifle.</p>
+
+<p>"How about the two below?"</p>
+
+<p>"We might send down a pie to them," suggested the timid Elsie. "That
+would make Cochise feel better."</p>
+
+<p>To the vast surprise of Lennon Carmena took this preposterous proposal
+seriously.</p>
+
+<p>"All right, Blossom. But not a drop of tizwin, mind. This way, Jack."</p>
+
+<p>The doorway opened into a large living-room, homelike with bright-hued
+Navaho rugs, a quantity of cliff-dweller<a class="pagenum" name="page_60" id="page_60" title="60"></a> pottery, and a sufficiency of
+heavy, comfortable furniture hewn out of cedar. The chairs were seated
+and backed with tightly stretched rawhide. Several artistic pictures
+from periodicals were pasted on the stone walls. In one corner a pot was
+boiling over a charcoal brazier.</p>
+
+<p>As the fair-haired Elsie thrust a big pie into a loop-handled basket and
+hurried out, Carmena fetched two large bowls brimming with soup. While
+her back was turned Farley winked leeringly at the visitor and offered
+him a half-emptied whiskey flask. Carmena was in time to see Lennon
+refuse the drink. Her fatigue-bent shoulders straightened to a
+deep-drawn breath, and her sunken eyes glowed softly.</p>
+
+<p>Cool water from a sweating jar and rich meat broth thickened with beans
+and corn were, at last, equal to the task of satisfying even so ravenous
+a hunger and thirst as Lennon's. Elsie had come back with her basket
+empty. She set to waiting upon Carmena and "Brother Jack" with shy
+delight.</p>
+
+<p>The other visitors, down below, evidently had not been displeased by the
+gift of the pie. There was no resumption of the firing. Lennon felt that
+he understood the reason, when the girl divided another pie between him
+and Carmena. It was made of dewberries, sweetened with honey.<a class="pagenum" name="page_61" id="page_61" title="61"></a></p>
+
+<p>Lennon found his eyelids beginning to droop. At a word from Carmena,
+Farley led him to a cool dark inner room. He curtly pointed out a rude
+bed-frame across which had been stretched a rawhide. Lennon fell asleep
+the moment he lay down upon the elastic bed.</p>
+
+<hr class="major" />
+<div style="margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 1em">
+<a class="pagenum" name="page_62" id="page_62" title="62"></a>
+<a name="CRAFT_AND_CRUELTY_1593" id="CRAFT_AND_CRUELTY_1593"></a>
+<h2>CHAPTER VII</h2>
+<h3>CRAFT AND CRUELTY</h3>
+</div>
+
+<p>When Lennon wakened he was at first so stiff and sore that he could
+hardly turn over. Yet his strength had in good part returned to him, and
+he was aware of a grateful feeling of refreshment and well-being.</p>
+
+<p>Someone had covered him over with a finely woven old Navaho rug. In
+pushing it off he noticed a fresh bandage on his wounded hand and the
+arm above. Under the cloth was an aromatic resinous salve. He next
+discovered that his boots and socks had been taken off and his badly
+blistered feet washed and treated with a healing powder.</p>
+
+<p>He sat up on the side of the bedstead. Before him stood a chair draped
+with a towel and a change of coarse, but clean clothes. On the
+clean-swept floor were a pair of soft moccasins, a dishpan, a bar of
+soap, and a large jar of water.</p>
+
+<p>When he limped out of his bedroom he had "tubbed" himself as thoroughly
+as an Englishman and felt as ravenous as a wolf. Elsie was alone in the<a class="pagenum" name="page_63" id="page_63" title="63"></a>
+living room, deftly handling pots and pans on the charcoal brazier.</p>
+
+<p>"Good morning," he hailed. "Glad I'm just in time for breakfast."</p>
+
+<p>The girl upturned her wide blue eyes to him in a look of shy delight.</p>
+
+<p>"I heard you splashing about and I hustled," she replied. "But it's not
+breakfast&mdash;it's dinner."</p>
+
+<p>"So early as this?"</p>
+
+<p>"So late! You've slept all the rest of yesterday and all night and all
+morning. I thought you'd never wake. Sit down."</p>
+
+<p>"How about the others?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Dad just nibbles when he has his tizwin spells, and Mena ate hers
+mid-morning."</p>
+
+<p>The table top had been scrubbed. Lennon sat down at the nearest corner
+and fell to on the omelette and fried chicken, cream cheese, salad,
+cornbread and honey that she set before him. The food was all served in
+bowls and jugs of quaintly beautiful ancient cliff-dweller pottery.</p>
+
+<p>"There's no cream for your coffee," the girl apologized. "The milk
+soured. Mena was asleep, and I dassn't go down to the goats alone.
+Cochise has come back with all the bunch. Dad was cross not to get
+cream. He's cranky over his food."<a class="pagenum" name="page_64" id="page_64" title="64"></a></p>
+
+<p>"You say those red devils are all down there?"</p>
+
+<p>The girl cringed.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't&mdash;don't speak so loud. Cochise might hear you. He's stopped
+swearing. I lowered a whole basketful of pies to them. Carmena is
+getting ready to give him a big talking to. She&mdash;she won't let them get
+us."</p>
+
+<p>"That's good news," rallied Lennon.</p>
+
+<p>For the first time he was able to look away from his food long enough to
+notice that Elsie was wearing a fresh pretty frock of blue-dotted
+calico. He smiled at her amusedly.</p>
+
+<p>"Didn't you promise to be a sister to me&mdash;or something like that? Why
+not sit down with me and celebrate our escape?"</p>
+
+<p>The girl clasped her hands together in childlike delight.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, do you want me to be, really and truly? Only I don't know how to
+act to a brother. Sisters are different. They kiss each
+other&mdash;sometimes. If you don't mind, I'll just sit and watch. I had mine
+with Mena."</p>
+
+<p>With unconscious grace, she perched on the edge of the table.</p>
+
+<p>"You eat ever so much nicer than Cochise."</p>
+
+<p>"I should hope so&mdash;a wild Indian!"<a class="pagenum" name="page_65" id="page_65" title="65"></a></p>
+
+<p>"But he isn't. He's educated&mdash;he went to the Reservation school. He
+knows a whole lot. That's why he's never been sent up. They caught him
+only once. But Dad got him off. Dad's a lawyer, you know. He didn't want
+to go out and leave us, but he's so scarey he does everything Slade
+tells him."</p>
+
+<p>Lennon recalled Carmena's plea for him to help her father and sister. He
+thought he understood the situation.</p>
+
+<p>"So this Slade and the Indians are keeping all of you prisoners, here in
+the Hole, are they? Yet Carmena got out. Why hasn't she taken you and
+your Dad?"</p>
+
+<p>Elsie's big blue eyes rounded.</p>
+
+<p>"But they won't let us out&mdash;only one at a time, and I'm 'fraid to go
+alone, 'cause of Cochise. Besides, the Hole is Dad's ranch. He won't
+give it up and Slade keeps promising him his share of the profits, and
+it's a mighty flourishing business."</p>
+
+<p>"What, farming in a place like this?"</p>
+
+<p>"Course not. That's just for fodder. We're stockholders, Dad says. We
+con&mdash;conduct a stock exchange. Slade sells what the bunch maverick and
+brand-blot."</p>
+
+<p>The terms brought no enlightenment to Lennon. He was from the Atlantic
+coast.</p>
+
+<p>"You mean they deal in cattle?" he inquired.<a class="pagenum" name="page_66" id="page_66" title="66"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Cattle and horses&mdash;and tizwin," added Elsie, screwing up her luscious
+little mouth over the last word as if it had a bad taste.</p>
+
+<p>Lennon caught a half glimmer of the truth. But the girl's thoughts had
+flitted butterfly-fashion&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"I hope your feet don't hurt. Mena's were even rawer&mdash;awful bad. She
+just couldn't help crying when I sopped them with the tizwin. She says
+that's all it's good for. <i>I</i> never knew her to cry before. But you were
+too dead asleep to feel the smart. I'll have your boots oiled and your
+clothes cleaned before you need 'em."</p>
+
+<p>Quite naturally, Lennon inferred from this chatter that Elsie had first
+made Carmena comfortable and then, with innocent concern for him, had
+ventured into his room alone to treat his injured hand and feet.</p>
+
+<p>He laid down his fork to clasp one of her plump, capable little hands
+with grateful warmth.</p>
+
+<p>"It was most kind of you, Elsie, to care for my injuries."</p>
+
+<p>The grown-up child beamed at him radiantly.</p>
+
+<p>"I think you awful nice, Jack! I just knew I'd like you, the minute I
+set eyes on you."</p>
+
+<p>"My word!&mdash;when I looked like a dying tramp," teased Lennon.</p>
+
+<p>Carmena had not exaggerated. Elsie was sweet as<a class="pagenum" name="page_67" id="page_67" title="67"></a> honey and cuddlier than
+a kitten. He felt tempted to put a finger under her dainty up-tilted
+chin.</p>
+
+<p>"Now that I look more like a matinee idol, just how much more do you
+like me?" he bantered.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, heaps more than I liked the first pard Mena brought in. He was a
+cowman, and after they made him pay a whole lot to get loose, Mena set
+Cochise on him 'cause he wanted me to go away to live with him&mdash;like
+Slade. They filled him up with tizwin and left him out in the middle of
+the Basin, with only tizwin in his canteen. Mena said it served him
+right and dead men tell no tales."</p>
+
+<p>Lennon stiffened.</p>
+
+<p>"You can't mean to say your father and sister were parties to such an
+outrage&mdash;that they helped to rob a man and then abandon him to die of
+thirst?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why not?" demanded Elsie, with unexpected spirit. "He wasn't what Mena
+thought him. He was a <i>bad</i> cowman. He wanted to bring his bunch and
+shoot up the Hole and kill us all and make me go with him. You see how
+it was, don't you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," agreed Lennon, certain that he understood.</p>
+
+<p>His surmise was that Carmena had sought help from a neighbouring
+rancher, and the man had proved himself a scoundrel. Elsie had not
+mentioned any proposal of marriage. Whatever the lawlessness of<a class="pagenum" name="page_68" id="page_68" title="68"></a>
+Farley's Indian associates, they had apparently put the guilty man to
+ransom and then turned him loose to die in the desert, merely by way of
+vengeance for his attempted wrong against the girl.</p>
+
+<p>Yet both of the girls had given out that the partnership with the
+Apaches and the unknown Slade was by no means satisfactory. Farley
+feared his associates, and they would permit him and Carmena to leave
+the Hole only one at a time.</p>
+
+<p>On the other hand, when he first met Carmena, she had been alone on the
+trail, only a few miles from the railway. Why had she not galloped to
+the nearest station and led a sheriff's posse to free her father and
+sister? She knew that Cochise and his fellows were "bronchos."</p>
+
+<p>Across the train of Lennon's thoughts fell a black shadow of suspicion.
+Was it possible that the girl had acted as a decoy to lure him into this
+ill-omened Dead Hole? She had previously brought in another man, who had
+in effect been murdered, after paying ransom.</p>
+
+<p>In his own case, the girl had herself suffered far too much during their
+flight from the Apaches for the pursuit to have been a sham. But she may
+very well have had an arrangement with the renegades to lure a victim
+into the Basin; and then, untrustful of their bloodthirsty instincts,
+had fled with her prize to the Hole, so that he might be put to ransom.<a class="pagenum" name="page_69" id="page_69" title="69"></a></p>
+
+<p>The more Lennon pondered the situation, the more everything related to
+it appeared in a worse and worse light&mdash;everything and everybody, except
+the open-eyed innocent little Elsie. The Apaches admittedly were
+renegades. The absent Slade had been mentioned by no means favourably.
+Farley was far from prepossessing either in appearance or words or
+actions. As for Carmen, even the tender glances that he had surprised
+might be explained by the coquetry of a Delilah.</p>
+
+<p>Lennon rose from his chair with an appearance Of calm deliberation.</p>
+
+<p>"Would you be so kind as to bring me my rifle, Elsie?" he asked. "With
+smokeless powder a gun needs frequent cleaning and oiling."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. Carmena always keeps hers clean as a whistle. But Dad put yours
+away. He said he apprehended that you might become per&mdash;perturbed and
+commit an assault with a deadly weapon. He and Mena are talking things
+over now&mdash;&mdash; No, they're coming out. Want to hear Mena give it to
+Cochise?"</p>
+
+<p>The girl darted through the largest doorway. Lennon, still affecting
+cool indifference, stepped out after her into the long, bare anteroom
+whose rear wall Cochise and his mate had so angrily splashed with
+bullets.<a class="pagenum" name="page_70" id="page_70" title="70"></a></p>
+
+<p>Farley was crouched at the far side of the rope-ladder doorway. Carmena
+had bent her head to pass under the massive lintel. Lennon followed
+Elsie to the side of the doorway opposite Farley. The lawyer-ranchman
+appeared to cringe, yet he held to his position and even attempted an
+ingratiating smile as he rasped out a half-whispered, "G'day."</p>
+
+<p>Lennon gave him a curt nod and bent down to peer into the deep entrance.
+Carmena did not glance around. If she heard him, she gave no heed. She
+had seated herself upon a Navaho rug and was leaning forward to look
+over the cliff, with her hands on the sillstone at the brink. Down below
+Lennon could see only a single swarthy face, bound about the forehead
+with a wide cloth band. The other Indians were in nearer the base of the
+cliff.</p>
+
+<p>Instead of crouching in tense readiness to dodge back out of danger,
+Carmena gazed over at her late pursuers with serene fearlessness. Her
+rich contralto voice, no longer harsh from thirst, rang mockingly down
+the cliff:</p>
+
+<p>"Howdy, boys. Glad you've begun to cool off. Quite a warm run, wasn't
+it?"</p>
+
+<p>From below came an explosion of thick gutturals and hissings. Carmena
+flung out a hand in a gesture of refusal.<a class="pagenum" name="page_71" id="page_71" title="71"></a></p>
+
+<p>"No, I won't, Cochise. I'll talk American, and so will you&mdash;&mdash; And
+you'll speak decently, or we chop off. Sabe?"</p>
+
+<p>There followed a silence of several moments. Carmena's patience soon
+reached its snapping point. She frowned and started to draw back. The
+voice below called up, still thick and guttural, but speaking clear-cut
+English:</p>
+
+<p>"You lied. You said you catch another sucker."</p>
+
+<p>"I said I would fetch another man to the Hole, and I have done it. Any
+lie about that?" countered the girl.</p>
+
+<p>"Dam' plenty," came back an angry shout. "You knew what we want him
+for."</p>
+
+<p>"How about Slade? What'll he want him for? Haven't you any sense any
+more, Cochise? Have you forgotten how Dad had to get you loose? Don't
+you see you've got to keep on playing the game our way? Yours is out of
+date. Even in the days of your Uncle Cochise and Geronimo it didn't
+work."</p>
+
+<p>"They got a heap of fun."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, let me tell you one thing&mdash;the new man is my game, not yours. You
+had your chance and missed it. He stood up full of Gila monster poison
+and got away from you&mdash;threw you off his trail&mdash;tricked a bunch of
+Apache trailers&mdash;out-ran and out-thirsted you. Want me to tell that to
+Slade?"<a class="pagenum" name="page_72" id="page_72" title="72"></a></p>
+
+<p>The taunt was followed by another prolonged silence. Carmena smiled and
+tossed down first a bare corn cob and then a full ear.</p>
+
+<p>"Which will you have?" she asked. "Your way, you'll get the cob. My way,
+we'll all have a share of corn. A man who could fool and out-game you
+wouldn't make a poor partner to take into our business. We'll wait for
+Slade to decide."</p>
+
+<p>"You give me my woman, I wait," bargained the unseen Cochise.</p>
+
+<p>Carmena fairly blazed with anger. She hurled down another bare corncob.</p>
+
+<p>"She's not your woman. You sha'n't have her! We'll see what Slade says
+about that and about your running me across the Basin. You know you
+can't scare me. Now, is it fight, or do you back up?"</p>
+
+<p>The reply was a jabber of hissings and gutturals. Carmena jerked her
+hand about in swift signs and cried back in uncouth thick-tongued Apache
+words. The dispute at last ended in a sullen mutter from below and a
+sudden thudding of hoofs. The Apaches dashed out from under the cliff,
+loping their horses toward a corral over across to the left of the
+cornfields.</p>
+
+<p>Carmena drew back out of the deep doorway, with a look of profound
+relief. At sight of Lennon she smiled and caught up his wounded hand.<a class="pagenum" name="page_73" id="page_73" title="73"></a></p>
+
+<p>"I've made Cochise back up," she said. "We're safe from the bunch till
+Slade returns&mdash;only none of us can leave the Hole. How's your arm
+feeling?"</p>
+
+<p>The dark eyes were very clear and straightforward in their gaze. Lennon
+flushed with shame over his black suspicions. These renegade Apaches,
+and Slade as well, probably were bad men. Farley no doubt was in with
+them. But he appeared to be an unwilling associate, barred from escape
+by sickness, drink, and fear. Carmena had begged for help to get him and
+Elsie out of the Hole.</p>
+
+<p>Lennon permitted his hand to linger in her gentle clasp.</p>
+
+<p>"It seems to be much better," he replied to her question.</p>
+
+<p>"That's good. Let's hope it will be all right before Slade gets back.
+You heard me bluff off Cochise with the partnership talk?"</p>
+
+<p>Farley was backing across the room, gray-faced and trembling like a very
+old man.</p>
+
+<p>"Slade will be angered," he quavered. "I'll lose all&mdash;all!"</p>
+
+<p>"Leave him to me. I'll handle him," promised Carmena. "Remember what you
+agreed. Jack is to be a full partner."</p>
+
+<p>Lennon felt a sudden rekindling of suspicion.<a class="pagenum" name="page_74" id="page_74" title="74"></a></p>
+
+<p>"May I ask you to explain all this about a partnership?" he queried.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, of course," replied the girl. She drew close to him and lowered
+her voice.</p>
+
+<p>"Dad refuses to give up everything and leave the Hole. So I've allowed
+him to think you'll come in with the bunch. My idea is to bring about a
+split between Slade and Cochise. We'll then have a fighting chance. All
+we can do now is take things easy and get your hand in shape."</p>
+
+<p>"My rifle was taken by your father. I would rather like to&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Dad, hand over Jack's rifle," called the girl.</p>
+
+<p>Elsie glided across to the dark doorway through which Farley was
+disappearing. Within a few moments the missing rifle was thrust out to
+her. She brought it to Carmena, who handed it over to Lennon. A
+seemingly casual examination showed him that it had not been tampered
+with.</p>
+
+<p>His last flicker of suspicion died away.</p>
+
+<hr class="major" />
+<div style="margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 1em">
+<a class="pagenum" name="page_75" id="page_75" title="75"></a>
+<a name="CACTUS_CARMENA_1949" id="CACTUS_CARMENA_1949"></a>
+<h2>CHAPTER VIII</h2>
+<h3>CACTUS CARMENA</h3>
+</div>
+
+<p>Immediately after the armistice Carmena and Elsie went down to attend
+the goats and chickens that were penned in small enclosures a short
+distance up-valley from the cliff house. The girls also gathered a
+supply of fresh vegetables from a nearby kitchen garden. At dusk the
+rope ladder was hauled up.</p>
+
+<p>In the morning Carmena took Lennon to see the valley. She had roped a
+pair of ponies near the garden enclosure. Though the rifles were
+carried, no occasion arose that called for use of the weapons. The
+Apaches in charge of the stock merely grunted in response to Carmena's
+friendly greeting and stared stolidly as she and Lennon rode by.</p>
+
+<p>All the other Indians seemed to have left the valley. But Carmena said
+that guards were always posted in the two main exits. Escape up Devil's
+Chute with a horse was impossible.</p>
+
+<p>Beyond the narrow mouth of the Chute ca&ntilde;on the two skirted along the
+edge of the flourishing cornfields<a class="pagenum" name="page_76" id="page_76" title="76"></a> and the hay pastures of the lower
+valley. All the way they followed an irrigation canal of the ancient
+cliff dwellers that had been restored to use. It curved and twisted
+along the higher ground under the towering cliff walls.</p>
+
+<p>At the foot of the Hole the valley narrowed, funnel-like, into a rather
+wide box ca&ntilde;on. The ca&ntilde;on bed offered a broad level runway down which a
+horse could have sprinted at top speed.</p>
+
+<p>Carmena caught the glance of pleased surprise that Lennon fixed upon a
+heavy farm wagon that stood inside the mouth of the ca&ntilde;on.</p>
+
+<p>"It's not so easy as you think," she said. "There's a thirty-foot cliff
+about a mile down. Nothing has ever come in or gone out that way except
+by rope, and the windlass is always guarded. Hell Ca&ntilde;on is no easier. It
+forks, and the forks both fork twice, and there's only one branch you
+can get out through. We might be able to make it, either route. But
+there's Dad and Elsie."</p>
+
+<p>"You spoke of bringing about a difference between Cochise and Slade,"
+said Lennon. "What is your plan?"</p>
+
+<p>"It all depends. I have several ideas. One is to offer Slade a share in
+your copper-mine deal. But we'll hold that back. He knows that matters
+must<a class="pagenum" name="page_77" id="page_77" title="77"></a> soon come to a show-down with the bunch. Cochise has been getting
+harder to hold for the past three years. You know, he claims that Elsie
+belongs to him."</p>
+
+<p>Lennon stared in amazement.</p>
+
+<p>"What! your sister&mdash;that little pink and white blossom?"</p>
+
+<p>"But she's not really my sister. That's the pinch. Cochise brought her
+with him when he first came to the Hole, two years before Slade. He
+claimed he had found her over beyond Triple Butte. She was crazed from
+thirst&mdash;never has been able to remember what had happened or anything
+about her life before she came here."</p>
+
+<p>"My word! Has no inquiry ever been made for her? Did you not advertise?
+What were her clothes like?"</p>
+
+<p>"Rags and tatters. No one came. Nobody outside knows there is such a
+place as Dead Hole, except by vague report. Dad and I just happened to
+stumble into it. About advertising Elsie, we tried that some. There was
+no answer. We think she belonged to a stray family, out prospecting. The
+others must have died of thirst."</p>
+
+<p>"Or were murdered by Cochise," put in Lennon.</p>
+
+<p>Carmena's eyes narrowed.<a class="pagenum" name="page_78" id="page_78" title="78"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Maybe&mdash;maybe not. It was just after he jumped the Reservation. But he
+was only a sulky schoolboy then, playing hookey. Besides, he had not
+harmed the child. He worked for Dad and was right decent, till he got in
+with Slade and the&mdash;business started."</p>
+
+<p>Lennon was not to be diverted to another subject. The mystery of Elsie's
+parentage intrigued him. With the realization that the two girls were
+not of blood kin, Lennon found himself dwelling upon the differences
+between them. Elsie, cleared of any kinship to Farley, at once became in
+his thoughts a being of finer nature than her foster-sister.</p>
+
+<p>In contrast, Carmena now seemed to show distinctly the taint of Farley's
+blood. Her frank manner took on the tinge of boldness. Her vigour and
+strength now seemed mannish, if not coarse.</p>
+
+<p>Might not what he had taken for high spirit and courage be no more than
+callous hardihood? Was there not a certain garishness about her rich
+colouring? And was all the brown of her skin on the outside? Both her
+hair and eyes were dark, and there was her Spanish name&mdash;Carmena. Was
+she not, in part, of Mexican blood?</p>
+
+<p>Some hint of Lennon's thoughts may have shown in his expression.
+Otherwise the girl's next remark was pure coincidence:<a class="pagenum" name="page_79" id="page_79" title="79"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Ever since Slade added tizwin to the business, I've had to be pretty
+much the man of the family. He persuaded us that Dad would die without a
+lot of stimulant. That's how he got hold of Dad. Once the habit was
+fixed, I couldn't break Dad of it. With you here, I'm hoping he may
+remember his old grit and pride, and brace up."</p>
+
+<p>"But about your&mdash;foster-sister," said Lennon.</p>
+
+<p>"Isn't she just too sweet for anything!" broke in Carmena. "I've tried
+to be the cactus fence to guard her against the trampling beasts."</p>
+
+<p>"Such as this Cochise. You say he claims her?"</p>
+
+<p>"For the last three years. Indian girls marry young. He'd have kicked a
+way through the cactus fence before this, if it hadn't been for Slade.
+You know, Slade has his own bunch of Navaho punchers. So, you see,
+Cochise has to&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Carmena stopped to point across the upper end of the valley.</p>
+
+<p>"Talk of the devil&mdash;&mdash;" she exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>Over below the cliff house Lennon saw a small group of mounted men
+waiting for the basket that was being lowered to them on the hoist rope.</p>
+
+<p>"If it's only Elsie's pies; if only they haven't bluffed Dad into
+sending down a jug of tizwin!" murmured Carmena.<a class="pagenum" name="page_80" id="page_80" title="80"></a></p>
+
+<p>"We've been outplayed. We can't get back," said Lennon. "Shall I drive
+them off again with my rifle?"</p>
+
+<p>"No. Cochise agreed to wait for Slade. I'm going to make him stick to
+it. We'll ride on around. Maybe they'll not wait."</p>
+
+<p>The two had loped along under the precipices on the northwest side of
+the valley and were already near Hell Ca&ntilde;on, at the upper end. The mouth
+of the ca&ntilde;on belied its name. The bed, though rocky, was neither steep
+nor broken. Along the ledges of the cliff foot a canal had been chiseled
+in the solid rock by the cliff-dwellers. A small stream was flowing
+through it, down around the left corner of the ca&ntilde;on mouth.</p>
+
+<p>Carmena noticed the look of professional interest that Lennon fixed upon
+the ancient water way.</p>
+
+<p>"You're an engineer," she said. "Pretty good piece of irrigation work
+for those old mummies, isn't it? All we had to do was rebuild the intake
+dam and clean out the ditch. Here's the tank."</p>
+
+<p>The ponies slowed to a walk up the side of an enormous natural pothole,
+which the ancient builders had converted into a storage reservoir by
+means of an earthen dam.</p>
+
+<p>Carmena jumped her pony across the intake canal and loped ahead toward
+the cliff house. Lennon was<a class="pagenum" name="page_81" id="page_81" title="81"></a> too intent upon overtaking her to more than
+glance at the stand of rough-made beehives, the kitchen garden, and the
+goat and chicken sheds, past which his pony galloped.</p>
+
+<p>Carmena reined in to jerk her thumb at a tumbledown brush hut.</p>
+
+<p>"Our home, till Slade got up the cliff."</p>
+
+<p>"How?"</p>
+
+<p>"Piecing ladders together, one a-top the other. There are our callers;
+and it's pie, thank goodness. Keep your gun down. Shake hands, if they
+offer; but let me do the talking."</p>
+
+<p>"If you wish."</p>
+
+<p>"I do. The one all in white man's clothes is Cochise. Next him, with the
+Mex sombrero, is Pete. He's one of Slade's Navahos. He stands in with
+Cochise, and I stand in with him. Sabe?"</p>
+
+<p>"You mean he's your man&mdash;tips you off&mdash;all that?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. I think we'll be able to count on him later, when it comes to the
+show-down. Don't forget now: That run 'cross the Basin never happened.
+We're all heap good friends and pards."</p>
+
+<p>Lennon nodded. He did not fancy the situation, but he was willing for
+the time being to trust to his companion's lead. Side by side they rode
+up and stopped before the seven Indians. Lennon looked<a class="pagenum" name="page_82" id="page_82" title="82"></a> them over with
+the cool direct gaze of the dominant white man.</p>
+
+<p>Five of them were replicas of the herdsmen down the valley. Pete the
+Navaho&mdash;he of the Mexican sombrero&mdash;also wore Mexican leg-buttoned
+breeches and a red cotton shirt, the tails of which hung outside. He
+looked to be the youngest of the group. He and Cochise were the only
+ones who did not avoid Lennon's eye.</p>
+
+<p>Cochise the Apache leader proved a surprise to Lennon. He was as young
+as the white man and far from ugly. Though his head, under his old
+cowboy hat, was as square and massive as the cloth-bound heads of the
+other Apaches, and his shoulders were still broader, his face might have
+belonged to a Sicilian or Andalusian aristocrat&mdash;swarthy, bold-featured,
+and handsome.</p>
+
+<p>Carmena raised her voice in cheerful greeting: "How, boys!&mdash;<i>Bueno
+amigo</i>, Pete. Howdy, Cochise. Fine day. Hope the pie was good. Shake
+with Jack, our new partner."</p>
+
+<p>The Apache leader wiped the pie juice from his short, small hands upon
+his leather chaps, and replied with a show of geniality:</p>
+
+<p>"Howdy. Fine day. Glad to meet new pard. Shake."<a class="pagenum" name="page_83" id="page_83" title="83"></a></p>
+
+<p>Lennon offered his left hand. His bridle reins and rifle were loosely
+held in his bandaged right. Carmena was thrusting her rifle into its
+saddle-sheath. Instead of clasping hands, palm to palm, Cochise clutched
+Lennon's wrist in a grip that almost crushed the bones. His other hand
+closed on the hilt of a knife.</p>
+
+<p>"Sit still, Jack," murmured Carmena.</p>
+
+<p>The warning was needless. Lennon had not stirred in his saddle or made
+the slightest attempt to struggle.</p>
+
+<p>"Who's the liar now, Cochise?" reproached Carmena. "You said you'd wait
+till Slade came."</p>
+
+<p>"I catch your pard. I keep him till Slade come. Then I have my fun. You
+swap my woman for him, I let him go now."</p>
+
+<p>The girl smiled.</p>
+
+<p>"Maybe you'll let him go anyway, <i>amigo</i>. I've got you covered, and I
+figure the first bullet will go through that pie you just ate."</p>
+
+<p>The glittering black eyes of the Apache shot a sidelong glance down
+toward the girl's right hand. It had slipped into a pocket in the fold
+of her divided skirt. Her smile widened.</p>
+
+<p>"Think it over," she advised. "What happens to us won't be any fun to
+you after you've got yours."</p>
+
+<p>The steel-sinewed fingers that were clutched about Lennon's wrist
+opened.<a class="pagenum" name="page_84" id="page_84" title="84"></a></p>
+
+<p>"All dam' good joke&mdash;arm handshake," the Apache sought to explain away
+his treacherous attempt. "Make sure you got nerve. Sabe? Guess I got to
+go. Good-bye."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, do stay and visit a bit longer," Carmena smilingly urged him. "We
+can talk a while with you and Pete. But the others may as well be
+starting, don't you think?"</p>
+
+<p>Something in her pocket thrust up the fold of her skirt. Cochise
+muttered a word or two that sent the other Apaches loping off down the
+valley. When they were some distance away, Carmena nodded almost gaily:</p>
+
+<p>"Well, boys, I suppose the pie is all gone. So, if you feel you have to
+go, too.... Good-bye, Pete. Maybe you know, Cochise, it's sometimes a
+sign of bad luck to look back or drop off your horse."</p>
+
+<p>The two Indians wheeled their ponies and loped after the others.</p>
+
+<p>Cochise did not look back.</p>
+
+<hr class="major" />
+<div style="margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 1em">
+<a class="pagenum" name="page_85" id="page_85" title="85"></a>
+<a name="THE_MAN_WHO_WAS_2209" id="THE_MAN_WHO_WAS_2209"></a>
+<h2>CHAPTER IX</h2>
+<h3>THE MAN WHO WAS</h3>
+</div>
+
+<p>Lennon sprang from his pony and steadied his rifle across the saddle.
+Carmena drew in a deep breath.</p>
+
+<p>"That's right," she approved. "Keep him covered. Shoot if he turns&mdash;but
+not Pete."</p>
+
+<p>The Navaho had drawn rein to tail in behind the pony of his leader. He
+thrust a hand overhead in a swift sign gesture.</p>
+
+<p>"You see, Jack. I knew we could count on Pete. The boy thinks a good
+deal of me. He was ready to shoot Cochise in the back."</p>
+
+<p>"But you!" exclaimed Lennon. "That was ripping the way you&mdash;what d'you
+say?&mdash;got the drop on Cochise. My right hand is still too weak for a
+knockout blow."</p>
+
+<p>Carmena gravely drew a sheath knife from the pocket of her skirt.</p>
+
+<p>"He knows I usually carry my revolver," she said.</p>
+
+<p>Lennon stared.<a class="pagenum" name="page_86" id="page_86" title="86"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Your revolver wasn't in your pocket? Yet you sheathed your rifle!"</p>
+
+<p>"Didn't you notice his men had their guns pointed at us across their
+laps? Sheathing mine was what gave me the chance to bluff him. It's all
+right now. He won't try any more tricks this time."</p>
+
+<p>She sent a clear call ringing up the cliff. At once the hoist rope began
+to reeve down through the pulley of the crane. The rope ladder soon
+lowered from the other opening. Both saddles were fastened to the hoist
+hook. But Lennon thrust his rifle through the back of his cartridge
+belt.</p>
+
+<p>They found Farley in the doorway, nervously peering down the valley
+after the Indians.</p>
+
+<p>"Cochise was hiding in Devil's Chute until you rode out of sight," he
+quavered. "He demanded tizwin. I convinced him that Slade took away
+every drop. He then threatened to seize you for his woman and torture
+Mr. Lennon, if I did not send down Elsie. I postponed the decision until
+your return."</p>
+
+<p>"All right, Dad. We persuaded him to let us come up. But now we're here,
+I think we'll take no more rides till Slade comes."</p>
+
+<p>Lennon freed his rifle from the belt and stepped in through the doorway
+after the father and daughter. His first glance inside the cliff house
+showed him Elsie<a class="pagenum" name="page_87" id="page_87" title="87"></a> labouring at the windlass. He hastened to take the
+crank out of her plump little hands. His one-armed winding soon hoisted
+the saddles to the crane. The moment the load was safe, Elsie
+tremblingly lifted his hand to look at the blackening bruises left by
+Cochise's steel grip.</p>
+
+<p>"Does it&mdash;does it hurt much, Jack?" she whispered. "Once I saw him snap
+a dog's leg."</p>
+
+<p>Lennon smilingly denied the sharp pain of the strained ligaments. But
+inwardly his anger against Cochise hardened into enmity as he looked
+into the girl's innocent eyes and recalled that the brutal Apache
+considered her his woman.</p>
+
+<p>His reassurance brought instant relief to her volatile mind. She began
+to chatter gaily about how she and Carmena would entertain him during
+the wait for Slade. In this the older girl joined with cordial
+heartiness. Elsie displayed a high stack of women's magazines, for which
+Carmena was a regular subscriber. Every three or four months they were
+brought in from the nearest post office by Slade.</p>
+
+<p>Elsie fairly showered Lennon with na&iuml;ve questions about the faraway land
+of cities and green trees and vast stretches of water. Aside from the
+magazines and what had been told her by Farley and Carmena, she had no
+knowledge of the world outside the Hole.<a class="pagenum" name="page_88" id="page_88" title="88"></a></p>
+
+<p>Beneath Carmena's quiet manner Lennon discovered an interest as keen as
+that of her foster-sister and very much more intelligent. She had
+childhood memories of Ohio. Much to his distaste, she persuaded Farley
+to remain most of the day with them in the living room.</p>
+
+<p>But as the wreck that once had been a man listened to Lennon's talk,
+his bent shoulders began to straighten and his drink-bleared eyes
+cleared. By evening he was talking as one man of culture to another. He
+even showed occasional flashes of a once brilliant mind.</p>
+
+<p>Carmena took care to keep her father stimulated with frequent cups of
+coffee. The whiskey flask appeared to be quite forgotten. After supper,
+at his suggestion, Elsie brought out an old dog-eared set of
+Shakespeare. In the flaring light of a homemade tallow candle he read
+parts of "King Lear" and "Hamlet," with his rapt eyes frequently off the
+page for a dozen lines or more.</p>
+
+<p>Lennon's aversion to the broken old drunkard had by now mellowed to
+tolerance and a degree of pity. He realized what the man had been before
+sickness had pulled him down and drink degraded him. At times Farley's
+whiskey-shattered mind tended to wander. But Lennon good-humouredly
+helped Carmena<a class="pagenum" name="page_89" id="page_89" title="89"></a> to bridge the gaps. When her father's face became gray
+and drawn, the girl said he was sleepy and took him off to bed.</p>
+
+<p>She returned, to find Elsie perched on the arm of Lennon's chair. They
+were both peering at a magazine illustration, with their heads so close
+together that Elsie's yellow curls brushed Lennon's cheek.</p>
+
+<p>The warm glow in Carmena's eyes faded; her smiling lips tightened. Her
+voice vibrated with a touch of sharpness:</p>
+
+<p>"Sleep time, Blossom."</p>
+
+<p>Elsie sprang to her light feet with docile obedience. But she lingered
+to eye Lennon wistfully as he stood up to meet Carmena's level glance.</p>
+
+<p>"Aren't you going to say good night, Jack?" she coaxed. "Don't&mdash;don't
+brothers ever kiss their sisters good night?"</p>
+
+<p>Lennon cast a half-doubtful glance at the girl's unsmiling
+foster-sister, hesitated, caught Elsie's golden head between his hands
+and bent to kiss her forehead. She drew back, overcome with sudden
+shyness.</p>
+
+<p>Carmena held out a firm hand to Lennon.</p>
+
+<p>"Good night, Jack&mdash;and thank you for&mdash;Dad. It's two years since he has
+been anything like to-day."</p>
+
+<p>"The pleasure was mine," replied Lennon.<a class="pagenum" name="page_90" id="page_90" title="90"></a></p>
+
+<p>His tone was not uncordial, but his eyes had turned to watch Elsie dance
+across to one of the inner doorways that led into a short passage.
+Carmena swung around after her foster-sister, with her head well up and
+her boot heels briskly clicking on the stone floor.</p>
+
+<p>The discovery at his bedside of his own clothes thoroughly cleaned and
+his boots well oiled added a touch of gratitude to his tender,
+compassionate, delightful thoughts of Elsie. He lay awake for an hour or
+more, dwelling upon her dainty beauty and fascinating innocence.</p>
+
+<p>But the bleak gray light of dawn brought sober reflections. What
+interest could he have in the young girl other than to help her escape
+from the savage Cochise? She was a waif, of unknown parentage. Mentally
+she was little more than a child, and all her conscious experience had
+been confined to the environment of this crude desert valley.</p>
+
+<p>Lennon came out to breakfast with scant appetite. But his moodiness had
+company. Elsie sat at table tearful-eyed and drooping. Carmena's eyes
+were somber and her expression was hard. In reply to Lennon's polite
+inquiry for Farley she coldly replied that her father was not hungry.</p>
+
+<p>Through one of the outer slit windows of the living<a class="pagenum" name="page_91" id="page_91" title="91"></a> room Lennon saw a
+thin column of smoke down the valley toward the corral. Carmena answered
+his unspoken question:</p>
+
+<p>"They're brand-blotting the last bunch of cattle brought into the Hole."</p>
+
+<p>"Brand-blotting?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. You wouldn't care to see it&mdash;especially when Cochise takes part."</p>
+
+<p>Elsie uttered a smothered little gasp that quickened again all of
+Lennon's repressed tenderness and compassion. He looked around, trying
+to think of some means to divert her. His glance fell upon one of the
+bowls of ancient pottery.</p>
+
+<p>"May I ask you to show me the rest of this cliff house? Or are the other
+rooms in ruins?"</p>
+
+<p>Elsie instantly brightened.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no, course not. Only some of the top ones have tumbled in. Dad
+won't mind if we show Jack the mummies, will he, Mena?"</p>
+
+<p>"Fetch candles," directed Carmena, clearly as relieved as the others at
+the thought of diversion.</p>
+
+<p>They started to ramble through the interior of the cliff house, taking
+with them a light ladder to climb to the upper stories. In the lower
+rooms at the near end were stored quantities of corn on the cob, dried
+fruit, and vegetables, honey, dried beef, bacon, and other<a class="pagenum" name="page_92" id="page_92" title="92"></a> foods. The
+family was sufficiently stocked to withstand a half year's siege.</p>
+
+<p>The upper rooms were for the most part empty. Others showed only
+fragments of broken pottery. Some had been broken in through their side
+walls or were open above and littered with the d&eacute;bris of their roofs.
+Lennon surmised the existence of several sealed lower chambers, at the
+back.</p>
+
+<p>Carmena led the way down again and zigzagged through connected rooms
+toward the far end of the great community house. To the rear of the
+front row of rooms was a large chamber heaped with cliff-dweller
+mummies.</p>
+
+<p>"Slade had them all dumped in here," explained Carmena. "Like the
+Indians, Elsie is still scared of them. But they have been dead a long
+time, poor things. They'll not hurt anybody. They'd protect you,
+Blossom, if Cochise should get up the cliff and you hid in that corner.
+He thinks them bad medicine. Slade laughs at Indian spirits. He says
+that corn spirits are the only ones that can put a spell on a man."</p>
+
+<p>"They&mdash;they're an awful hold on Dad," quavered Elsie. "He didn't ever
+used to speak cross to me."</p>
+
+<p>In the flickering candle light Carmena's eyes glinted with a look that
+Lennon thought to be fierce resentment. She thrust past him to the
+doorway.<a class="pagenum" name="page_93" id="page_93" title="93"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Wait. I'll be back," she called.</p>
+
+<p>Elsie was tremblingly eager to follow, but Lennon lacked her fear of the
+desiccated builders of the cliff house. At one end of the room he had
+come upon what to him was a very interesting heap of their no less
+ancient possessions. Most of the beautiful old pottery had been smashed,
+but among the fragments Lennon found several ceremonial stones and
+tablets, a bone awl, many obsidian arrowheads, and a few broken
+turquoise ornaments.</p>
+
+<p>His search was cut short by the return of Carmena. She carried a modern
+Indian basket-vase that would have been very convenient for holding
+Lennon's collection. But she gave him no chance to ask for it. She
+stared in at him and Elsie from the doorway, her dark eyes glittering
+strangely in the candle light. Her lips were hardset in a bitter smile.</p>
+
+<p>"He's&mdash;asleep. Come," she said.</p>
+
+<p>Lennon followed the eager Elsie, who was vastly relieved to leave the
+mummy vault. Yet she was no less mystified than Lennon by her
+foster-sister's manner. She shrank back behind him when, after passing
+through two corn-stacked rooms near the far end of the cliff house,
+Carmena stopped before an entrance that had been closed with a door of
+heavy planks. The thick iron hasp was secured with a big padlock.<a class="pagenum" name="page_94" id="page_94" title="94"></a></p>
+
+<p>Carmena handed her candle to Lennon and took a key from her basket.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Mena!" whispered Elsie. "Oh, you can't be going to&mdash;to&mdash;&mdash; You know
+how angry Dad&mdash;and Slade&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>For answer, Carmena thrust the key into the padlock.</p>
+
+<hr class="major" />
+<div style="margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 1em">
+<a class="pagenum" name="page_95" id="page_95" title="95"></a>
+<a name="THE_SETTER_OF_TRAPS_2454" id="THE_SETTER_OF_TRAPS_2454"></a>
+<h2>CHAPTER X</h2>
+<h3>THE SETTER OF TRAPS</h3>
+</div>
+
+<p>The unlocked door squeaked shrilly on its hinges as it swung in before
+the heave of Carmena's shoulder. Elsie peeped fearfully back past
+Lennon. Carmena pushed on into the secret room.</p>
+
+<p>Lennon had expected to see some kind of treasure chamber. He stared
+blankly at the big object in the centre of the room&mdash;a complex object
+that somehow reminded him of his laboratory experiments in college. A
+step nearer, with his own and Carmena's candles upraised, gave him a
+clear view of the bulging copper boiler, the tubes and worm and
+fermenting vats. The air of the room was pervaded with a sour smell.</p>
+
+<p>At his exclamation Carmena gave him a sombre glance.</p>
+
+<p>"You see now?"</p>
+
+<p>"A still," he said. "This tizwin you've been talking about&mdash;it's
+moonshine whiskey. Your father&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"No&mdash;Slade!" broke in the girl with passionate emphasis. "He brought the
+thing into the Hole and<a class="pagenum" name="page_96" id="page_96" title="96"></a> forced Dad to run it. He's the one to
+blame&mdash;not Dad. He bootlegs it to the Indians."</p>
+
+<p>"Indians? That's a Federal penitentiary offense!"</p>
+
+<p>"What could we do? If he's convicted, he'll swear that Dad is just as
+guilty. You see why I couldn't go for the sheriff?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said Lennon; but he looked at Elsie.</p>
+
+<p>Carmena's face whitened.</p>
+
+<p>"If it hadn't been for Dad, there's no telling what Cochise would have
+done with her. Anyhow, he's my father."</p>
+
+<p>To this Lennon could make no answer. He turned again to stare at the big
+still. Fuel had been placed in the firebox, ready for lighting. Carmena
+knelt down before it and dipped her hand into the Indian basket. One
+after the other, she laid out the six sticks of dynamite and the caps
+and fuses that she had saved from Lennon's prospecting outfit.</p>
+
+<p>She looked up at him, gravely expectant.</p>
+
+<p>"You said you'd help us, Jack. I want this whole thing fixed so it will
+never make another drop of poison."</p>
+
+<p>"At once?"</p>
+
+<p>"No. They'd be sure we did it, and I figure&mdash;&mdash; Can you fix it so it
+will go off a quarter minute after the fire is lighted?"<a class="pagenum" name="page_97" id="page_97" title="97"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Oh-h, Mena!" cried Elsie. "What you going to do? You know Dad always
+lights the fire."</p>
+
+<p>"Never fear, Blossom. I'll take good care of Dad. If Jack does what I
+want, there'll be no more of the nasty tizwin to make Dad cross and
+sick."</p>
+
+<p>Lennon found himself regarding the girl with rekindled admiration for
+her ingenuity and daring.</p>
+
+<p>"So this is why you saved the dynamite?" he remarked. "Will it not be
+dangerous&mdash;I mean, to anger that man Slade, you know?"</p>
+
+<p>"Anything to save Dad&mdash;&mdash; If you're afraid, just tell me how to fix it.
+I'll do the work and take all blame&mdash;if it fails. You can go back with
+Elsie and be able to swear you didn't have a hand in it."</p>
+
+<p>The girl's tone was as contemptuous as when, at their first meeting on
+the trail, she had jeered him into cutting across the desert with her.
+He looked the still over with a professional eye.</p>
+
+<p>The chimney stones were laid in mud plaster. But the stones of the
+firebox, or furnace, were loose. On one side they extended out in a
+rough platform that held the water-cooled vat of the condensation worm.
+From the two-foot space between the furnace hole and the vat Lennon
+began to pull out the stones. He was able to make a hole down to the
+solid stone floor.</p>
+
+<p>A crack gave opening enough to thrust the stiff fuse<a class="pagenum" name="page_98" id="page_98" title="98"></a> from the firebox
+into the hole. To make certain of results, Lennon used three pieces of
+fuse, which were attached with caps to the sticks of dynamite, in the
+bottom of the hole. He then put the stones back in their places. The
+ends of the fuses were hidden by the tinder of the fuel in the firebox.</p>
+
+<p>When Lennon stood up and dusted off his hands, no slightest sign was
+left to betray that the charge of dynamite had been planted.</p>
+
+<p>"There you are," he said. "The fuses are cut for fifteen seconds, and
+they will start burning as soon as the tinder is fired."</p>
+
+<p>"You're sure the boiler will be blown up?" queried Carmena. "Your
+dynamite is out from under it, and there's all the rock in the way."</p>
+
+<p>Lennon smiled at her ignorance of explosives.</p>
+
+<p>"The stones will double the destruction. After that charge detonates,
+there will be a hole in the floor, a good deal of shattered stone, and
+some splinters and shreds of metal. Everything in the room will be
+smashed. Is that satisfactory?"</p>
+
+<p>Carmena shuddered as if seized with a fever chill, but pulled herself
+together. "All right. We'll go now."</p>
+
+<p>She picked up her basket and backed out after the others, scrutinizing
+the floor to make certain they had left nothing to tell of their visit.<a class="pagenum" name="page_99" id="page_99" title="99"></a></p>
+
+<p>"It's a secret, Blossom," she cautioned. "Promise you'll never tell any
+one?"</p>
+
+<p>"But&mdash;you'll have to tell Dad, Mena. He always goes in with Slade and
+Cochise to measure the mash&mdash;And you know he sometimes goes in first to
+start the cooking."</p>
+
+<p>"Didn't I say I'd take care of Dad?" reassured Carmena.</p>
+
+<p>Lennon stepped before her, his gray eyes wide with dread.</p>
+
+<p>"Wait," he demanded. "What is it you plan to do? Elsie says your
+father's partners&mdash;&mdash; But I have told you the dynamite will destroy
+everything in the room. If you scheme to get those men in there, give me
+that key. I shall not permit such a trap to remain."</p>
+
+<p>"Why not? You promised to help."</p>
+
+<p>"Not this way. It would be cold-blooded murder."</p>
+
+<p>"You say that when they&mdash;&mdash;?"</p>
+
+<p>Carmena checked her indignant protest and gazed down at her
+foster-sister.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, then, how if I use that blast to blow Slade and Cochise apart?"
+she inquired. "Suppose I make each think the other put the giant power
+in the furnace?"</p>
+
+<p>"Too great a risk. We will explode the charge at once, or draw it."</p>
+
+<p>Carmena's eyes flashed.<a class="pagenum" name="page_100" id="page_100" title="100"></a></p>
+
+<p>"No. They shall not make another drop of poison in that devilpot. But if
+we blew it up now, Slade will put the blame on us&mdash;&mdash; Tell you
+what&mdash;I'll just misplace the key. That will give us time to act after
+Slade comes."</p>
+
+<p>"Have I your promise you will not try to get him into that death trap?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>Back in the living room they became aware that the day was almost gone.
+Carmena asked Lennon to cover her from above with his rifle while she
+went down to milk the goats. He offered to change places with her, but
+had to confess that he did not know how to milk.</p>
+
+<p>The ladder had been drawn up. To save time, the girl directed Lennon to
+lower her by means of the hoist rope. Though there was no sign of an
+Indian nearer than the corral and she smiled at the suggestion of
+danger, he saw her slip her small revolver into the bosom of her dress.</p>
+
+<p>The moment the slackening of the hoist rope told him she had reached the
+ground he hurried with his rifle to an embrazured window in the living
+room. He looked down and saw her calmly walking away toward the goat
+pens. The goats flocked to nibble the salt that she had brought for
+them. She knelt down and started milking.<a class="pagenum" name="page_101" id="page_101" title="101"></a></p>
+
+<p>Elsie had already busied herself at the charcoal brazier. After a time,
+when her pots were simmering, she came to cuddle up in the window beside
+Lennon.</p>
+
+<p>"My goodness, but hasn't it been an awful nice day, Jack," she sighed in
+heartfelt contentment. "Mena is&mdash;is the best sister in all the whole
+world. But it's doubly nice to have a brother like you. Isn't it, just?"</p>
+
+<p>She snuggled her head against Lennon's right shoulder. He reached across
+and stroked her silky hair without looking away from the valley.</p>
+
+<p>"I am glad you like me, Blossom. You know, Carmena brought me to help
+her get you away from this place."</p>
+
+<p>"Me&mdash;and Dad, Jack. Don't forget Dad. Mena never does. And Dad won't
+ever give up the Hole, 'cause he said so. That's why Mena shot your
+burro to make you fight Cochise."</p>
+
+<p>Lennon chuckled.</p>
+
+<p>"Carmena came along after the Apache shot my burro."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, but that's the joke," tittered the girl, in her turn. "Mena was the
+'Pache. She shot your hat off and your burro to see how you'd behave,
+and when you didn't scare, she rode 'round to make you come with her."<a class="pagenum" name="page_102" id="page_102" title="102"></a></p>
+
+<p>The enlarged version struck Lennon as just so much the more
+preposterous.</p>
+
+<p>"To be sure," he made mock agreement. "Only, by the way, what was the
+point of the joke?"</p>
+
+<p>"You mean, why did she do it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. Why ruin a twelve-dollar sombrero and a ten-dollar burro?"</p>
+
+<p>"So's you'd get mad and fight Cochise, of course. She was desp'rit, so
+she told him she'd get another man into the Basin to be caught and made
+to pay. But she planned, when she signalled them, to warn you and slip
+away while you fought them."</p>
+
+<p>"Ripping!" praised Lennon. "Wonderful flight of fancy. And after the
+fight?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, that depends. You'd prob'ly been dead. But if you'd killed all that
+part of the bunch, Mena would have brought you into the Hole to shoot up
+the rest and make Slade quit."</p>
+
+<p>"I see. Quite in keeping with the burro. But why, then, did she help me
+run away?"</p>
+
+<p>Elsie's playful tone sobered.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, 'cause you couldn't fight, of course. After she signalled Cochise
+you went and got bit by the Gila monster and saved her life. Course she
+had to save you then."</p>
+
+<p>"Saved!" bantered Lennon. "A fact&mdash;a solid fact<a class="pagenum" name="page_103" id="page_103" title="103"></a> at last, in this sea of
+fiction. What a slip! I was beginning to fancy you quite a consistent
+fairy-tale tinker, Blossom. Take that last touch about her signalling
+Cochise. She sent a message by wireless, I presume."</p>
+
+<p>"Wireless? Is that what you call smoke signalling?"</p>
+
+<p>"Smoke?"&mdash;Before Lennon's mental vision flashed a vivid picture of the
+puffs of smoke rising into the noontime desert sky from the ridge near
+the waterhole&mdash;"Smoke signalling!"</p>
+
+<p>What a dupe he had been! Even now, when the truth had been spread out
+before his eyes, he had taken it for pure fiction. Yet every seeming
+absurdity in Elsie's account became credible the moment he considered
+the facts he knew, in the light of understanding.</p>
+
+<p>Though Carmena had made much of probable danger from the "bronchos," she
+had sent up those telltale puffs of smoke. During the flight across the
+Basin she had changed from boots to moccasins, which he now knew to be
+of Apache style, if not of Apache make. They would account for the
+moccasin print behind the crag from which his hat had been shot off and
+his burro killed. For her to cut down to her pony, pull on her boots,
+and ride around to the wash along the trail had been easy.<a class="pagenum" name="page_104" id="page_104" title="104"></a></p>
+
+<p>The purpose of her strange attack clearly had been to break up his
+prospecting trip by the death of the burro and to test whether he could
+and would fight. No less clear, now, was the subtle manner in which she
+had both spurred his daring with her derision and appealed to his
+chivalry for protection against the murderous bronchos. <b>All</b> the time
+Cochise and his band were over in the Basin, waiting for her to lure <b>a</b>
+victim within their power.</p>
+
+<p>On this point was it not probable that Elsie was mistaken? Had not
+Carmena's intention been to have her savage accomplices capture him and
+hold him for ransom? The game might well have included a pretended
+capture of herself, so that chivalry would lead him to pay a larger
+ransom.</p>
+
+<p>No&mdash;Elsie's explanation was the more probable. And he could trust her
+truthfulness. Whatever he might think of Carmena, this child-minded girl
+at least was absolutely innocent of any scheming. Her dread of Cochise
+could not possibly have been feigned.</p>
+
+<p>Even Carmena must be given her due. She had been driven desperate by the
+threats of Cochise to take Elsie as his squaw; and the partnership of
+her father in the illicit making and bootlegging of moonshine whiskey
+had prevented her from appealing to the law<a class="pagenum" name="page_105" id="page_105" title="105"></a> for protection. But, on the
+other hand, she had deliberately taken the risk of killing the first
+chance stranger that came along the Moqui trail&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>Lennon frowned as he pictured the hole through the crown of his
+sombrero. That had been an uncomfortably close shot. Why had not the
+girl met him face to face on the trail and frankly asked for his aid?
+Instead of that straightforward, above-board procedure, she had risked
+shooting him, had deceived him, had led him into a trap where he would
+have had to kill all the bronchos or be killed. In the first case,
+according to Elsie, she would have had him help her attack the rest of
+the Apaches in the Hole. But if he had been killed she undoubtedly had
+planned to put all the blame on him.</p>
+
+<p>He was no coward. As he mulled over the situation his eyes sparkled at
+the thought of how, with his long-range rifle, he might have out-fought
+Cochise and his followers. But that was not the rub. Carmena had treated
+him as a blind dupe&mdash;had thrown dust in his eyes and beguiled him into
+the double snare that she had set for him and Cochise.</p>
+
+<p>He would have been only too glad to take the venture with her if she had
+told him beforehand. But she had not trusted him. The accident of the
+Gila monster's bite alone had blocked her scheme to make him<a class="pagenum" name="page_106" id="page_106" title="106"></a> chance the
+sacrifice of his life in complete ignorance of her real purpose.</p>
+
+<p>With his hand disabled, he of course had become valueless at the time as
+a tool to rid her of Cochise. Yet there was the chance that he could be
+used in the Hole. That would account for the seeming devotion and
+self-sacrifice by which she had saved him from the Gila monster poison,
+from death by thirst, and from Apache torture.</p>
+
+<p>The prejudice that had been first implanted in Lennon's mind by the
+repulsiveness of the girl's drunken father now prevented him from making
+any allowances for her difficult position. Had it not been for her
+relationship to that weak-faced besotted moonshiner, Lennon might have
+stopped to consider how love for her foster-sister had driven her
+desperate, and how desperation might have kept her from telling the
+truth of the situation to the stranger on the trail.</p>
+
+<p>The average stranger would have referred her to the sheriff&mdash;and she
+loved her father. But Lennon could see only her lack of trust in him and
+her deceit.</p>
+
+<hr class="major" />
+<div style="margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 1em">
+<a class="pagenum" name="page_107" id="page_107" title="107"></a>
+<a name="CROSS_CURRENTS_2774" id="CROSS_CURRENTS_2774"></a>
+<h2>CHAPTER XI</h2>
+<h3>CROSS CURRENTS</h3>
+</div>
+
+<p>Elsie's childlike eyes had been watching the evening shadow of the
+cliffs creep along the valley after the retreating sunlight. Drawn at
+last by Lennon's tense silence, she looked up and saw his frown.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! oh, Jack!" she cried. "What is it? You look so cross! Is it&mdash;is it
+'cause what I told about Mena? Oh, it is! I know it is, the way you
+look! Oh, dear! Oh, dear! I'm 'fraid! It's a secret, and I promised not
+to tell. Mena was 'splaining all about you to Dad, and I heard&mdash;and now
+she'll be so cross at me if she knows I told! Please, please Jack,
+promise you won't tell her I told you!"</p>
+
+<p>Lennon put a comforting arm about the shoulders of the panic-stricken
+girl.</p>
+
+<p>"You dear little frightened bird! Don't be afraid, I will not tell. And
+remember, I am to be a real brother to you. No matter what any one says,
+you are to trust in my care and protection."</p>
+
+<p>One of Elsie's arms timidly stole up about his neck.<a class="pagenum" name="page_108" id="page_108" title="108"></a> From across the
+room sounded a hiccough that ended in a dry hacking cough. Lennon jerked
+his head around. The besotted face of Farley, ghastly white and
+blear-eyed, was leering at them through a hole in the rear wall.</p>
+
+<p>Before Lennon could free himself from the soft clasp of the girl's arm
+and dash across the room, the eavesdropper had disappeared. Elsie darted
+after Lennon to clutch his half-raised rifle.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't shoot&mdash;don't shoot!" she begged. "It's only Dad. He's having one
+of his spells. But he won't hurt you&mdash;not if you keep by me."</p>
+
+<p>Lennon peered through the hole in the wall. He made out the flaccid form
+of Farley, outstretched upon the stone floor in a drunken stupor. The
+man evidently had been on the verge of unconsciousness when he leered
+through the hole. The chance was slight that he would ever remember
+anything of what he had seen or heard.</p>
+
+<p>With a feeling of disgust that was not unmingled with relief, Lennon
+started back to the outer window. An odour of scorched food sent Elsie
+flying to her neglected pots. As half in the deep window embrazure,
+Lennon paused to watch her, the overhanging cliff ledges reverberated
+with an impatient call. He reluctantly turned his gaze away from the
+graceful<a class="pagenum" name="page_109" id="page_109" title="109"></a> little cook to look down below the window. Carmena stood
+waiting, with the end of the hoist rope looped about her.</p>
+
+<p>Lennon's steady winding at the windlass soon brought up the living load
+to the crane. Elsie darted out to swing her foster-sister around into
+the opening and take from her the brimming pail of goat's milk. Carmena
+looked down at Lennon's bandaged hand, which was gripped upon the crank
+of the windlass.</p>
+
+<p>"You ought to be careful," she gravely warned him. "Working won't help
+your hurt."</p>
+
+<p>"On the contrary, the wounds are fast healing, and use of the hand tends
+to bring back its strength. It is already much improved."</p>
+
+<p>"Good."</p>
+
+<p>"I shall leave off the bandages after to-night."</p>
+
+<p>Carmena's eyes narrowed.</p>
+
+<p>"No. You're to keep them on, and don't let any one else&mdash;even Dad&mdash;see
+your hand. The more helpless Slade and Cochise think you are, the
+better."</p>
+
+<p>To this Lennon readily agreed. His knowledge of the completeness with
+which the girl had duped him only added to his realization of her
+ability. But he promised himself that any advantage gained by his
+pretense of helplessness should be used only with a view to Elsie's
+benefit.<a class="pagenum" name="page_110" id="page_110" title="110"></a></p>
+
+<p>Such pity as he had felt for Farley before the discovery of the illicit
+whiskey-still was now smothered in disgust. He would fight for Elsie,
+but he would not lift a finger to help rid Dead Hole of Farley's
+boot-leg confederates.</p>
+
+<p>Carmena had turned about to peer down the half-shadowed valley.</p>
+
+<p>"I thought sure Slade would get here to-night," she said. "He's overdue
+already. Well, we can count on him for to-morrow. Maybe you had better
+let me hide your rifle."</p>
+
+<p>"Is that necessary?"</p>
+
+<p>Lennon's tone was more curt than he had intended. The girl entered the
+living room and went on through into a rear room.</p>
+
+<p>She did not come out again that evening, but sent word by Elsie that
+Farley was sick and needed nursing. Lennon was only too pleased to sup
+and visit alone with the younger girl. Elsie's piquant daintiness was
+more than ever fascinating to him. He spent a delightful evening, though
+at times his enjoyment was dampened by remembrance of the danger that
+threatened her.</p>
+
+<p>Carmena came to the breakfast table pale and weary-eyed. From her
+laconic remarks to Elsie, Lennon gathered that she had spent the night
+waiting<a class="pagenum" name="page_111" id="page_111" title="111"></a> upon her father. After forcing herself to eat a hasty meal, she
+came around the table and laid an old short-barreled revolver beside
+Lennon's bowl-plate.</p>
+
+<p>"It's Dad's," she said. "He's too sick to use it, anyhow. Put it in your
+pocket out of sight and have Elsie hide your rifle where either of you
+can readily get it. I saw the signal. Slade is coming."</p>
+
+<p>Elsie almost dropped the pot of fresh coffee that she was settling.
+Carmena took it and a kettle of hot water and went out without looking
+at Lennon.</p>
+
+<p>In the extreme corner of the room was a dutch-oven built of stone slabs.
+Elsie started a fire in it, placed large kettles of food on her brazier,
+and began to mix white flour dough.</p>
+
+<p>"Slade likes pies as much as Cochise&mdash;and white biscuits. That's why he
+brings us flour. He says he's going to make me his cook. It always gets
+Cochise awful mad."</p>
+
+<p>The bare suggestion that the doubtful partners of Farley were accustomed
+to imply ownership in the innocent, helpless girl brought an angry flush
+into Lennon's lean face. He unloaded the short-barreled revolver, made
+careful test of its action, and as carefully reloaded the old style
+cylinder. The weapon was well suited for hip-pocket wear. At the
+suggestion of Elsie, he hung his rifle under his bed.<a class="pagenum" name="page_112" id="page_112" title="112"></a></p>
+
+<p>Carmena half carried her father into the living-room and seated him in
+one of the big chairs. He was very white and shaky but rational. He had
+been bathed and dressed, and his eyes showed proof of soothing
+treatment. Though the sight and odour of the cooking nauseated him, he
+was braced by a drink made from some bitter desert herb known to the
+girls for its tonic effect.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, Dad, remember you're sick. Just sit here quietly and leave all the
+business to me," said Carmena. "Jack will keep you company."</p>
+
+<p>She looked at Lennon, cool-eyed and self-possessed.</p>
+
+<p>"Watch your bad arm, Mr. Lennon," she advised. "You don't want to go
+around with it loose like that. Elsie will fetch you a sling. I'm going
+to lower the ladder. Slade doesn't enjoy being made to wait."</p>
+
+<p>Elsie brought one of her floursack dish-towels, which Lennon, with mock
+seriousness, permitted her to knot over his shoulder in a sling. The
+loop of cloth extended along his arm from elbow to finger tips without
+hiding the bandages.</p>
+
+<p>Farley glowed at the sling with sour suspicion.</p>
+
+<p>"You climbed the ladder with that arm when you first came," he snapped.
+"There has been all this time for it to improve."</p>
+
+<p>"Do such poison wounds always improve?" parried<a class="pagenum" name="page_113" id="page_113" title="113"></a> Lennon. "I was willing
+to risk using the arm. But you heard what your daughter said."</p>
+
+<p>He went across the room to look from an outer window. A large band of
+horsemen was racing full tilt up the valley. They were already near. At
+their head rode Cochise and a big red-faced white man. As Lennon looked
+out at them Carmena swung down the rope ladder.</p>
+
+<p>The tall rangy American horse of the white man forged ahead of the
+Indian ponies and brought his rider under the cliff as Carmena reached
+the foot of the ladder. She called out to him in a tone of joyful
+greeting and hastened forward to offer her hand. The man ignored her
+welcome and jerked a thumb up at the window from which Lennon was
+looking.</p>
+
+<p>Cochise came galloping to the cliff foot with his band of Apaches and
+four or five Navahos. All reined their ponies to one side except
+Cochise. He sprang off to confront Carmena, with denunciatory words and
+gestures. The white man leisurely swung out of his saddle and took the
+attitude of a judge between the girl and Cochise. After no little
+disputing, he silenced the young Apache with a curt gesture and entered
+into a low-voiced conference with Carmena. Now and then Cochise broke in
+with guttural objections.</p>
+
+<p>At last the three seemed to reach some kind of an<a class="pagenum" name="page_114" id="page_114" title="114"></a> agreement. They
+started up the ladder, Carmena waiting until the last. The white man,
+who undoubtedly was the partner called Slade, led Cochise. The crisis
+over Lennon's presence in Dead Hole had come to a head. He felt certain
+that the period of waiting was about to end in some definite action
+either against himself or against the Apache leader.</p>
+
+<p>The meeting was by no means unpleasant. After a short pause Carmena led
+the visitors in from the big anteroom. Cochise cast a covert glance at
+Elsie, and with an air of stolid indifference to the others sat down at
+the table. Slade was neither silent nor stolid. He stared hard about the
+living room and bellowed over to Elsie, who was raking her pies out of
+the dutch oven:</p>
+
+<p>"Ho, howdy, Cookie Gal! 'Most ready to feed me, huh? Won't have to herd
+me to it. Lord, but I'm sick of Injun grub! Guess this trip I'll sure
+have to rope and brand you for my home corral!"</p>
+
+<p>Carmena broke in on this coarsely jovial banter with smiling deference:</p>
+
+<p>"You see it's as I told you, Mr. Slade&mdash;Dad is almost used up. But I'll
+act for him and&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Slade's ham-like hand came down upon Farley's stooped shoulder in a
+thwack that doubled the invalid over and set him to coughing.</p>
+
+<p>"Brace up, Dad," the trader-cowman rallied him<a class="pagenum" name="page_115" id="page_115" title="115"></a> in his bull voice.
+"You're not dead yet. Good thing for us your bark's worse'n your bite.
+Huh, Cochise?"</p>
+
+<p>His massive body shook with a roar of laughter at the joke.</p>
+
+<p>"This is Mr. Lennon&mdash;our guest," Carmena again interposed.</p>
+
+<p>The big trader swung around to stare down upon the guest. Lennon stood a
+good six feet in his boots, but Slade over-topped him by two or three
+inches and was no less thickset than tall. He looked Lennon straight in
+the eyes, crushed his left hand in a hearty grip, and greeted him in a
+tone of bluff cordiality.</p>
+
+<p>"So you're Carmena's new pard. Glad to see you in Dead Hole. She says
+you want to dicker with us."</p>
+
+<p>"I said he might want to," murmured the girl.</p>
+
+<p>Slade grinned genially at the guest's bandaged arm.</p>
+
+<p>"No might about it, Carmena. Your dad came into Dead Hole for his
+health. But I figger Lennon here knows it ain't no general health
+resort."</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Farley will tell you, I was in urgent need of a change from the
+Basin," drawled Lennon, as he languidly sank back into his chair. "Deuce
+take it! The results of a Gila monster's bite are more serious than I
+would have anticipated."</p>
+
+<p>"Sure&mdash;apt to be mighty serious, son, if you don't look out what you
+do," agreed Slade. "Guess,<a class="pagenum" name="page_116" id="page_116" title="116"></a> though, Carmena got you started off right.
+We'll see about it soon's I've fed. Here's my Cookie Gal dishing up."</p>
+
+<p>He thumped down at the table and voraciously fell to upon the food that
+Elsie hastened to serve him and Cochise. While he plied knife and spoon
+he chaffed the blushing girl with a familiarity that made Lennon's blood
+boil. Elsie's forced smile and murmured responses did not conceal the
+painfulness of her embarrassment.</p>
+
+<p>Yet Lennon's hot impulse to interpose was checked and cooled when he
+thought to look at Carmena. Like her father, she was smiling at Slade
+and at the same time covertly watching Cochise. The handsome face of the
+young Apache seemed utterly blank of all expression except gluttonish
+enjoyment of the food he was wolfing. But under the edge of the table
+Lennon saw his hand steal down and fondle the hilt of his sheath knife.</p>
+
+<p>The game was now evident. If the rivals were permitted to attack each
+other, one or both would almost certainly be killed. A murderous feud
+between their men would as certainly follow. Lennon's anger against the
+unpleasant pair was intense enough for him to consider the scheme
+justified, though its suggestion of treachery deepened his prejudice
+against Carmena.</p>
+
+<hr class="major" />
+<div style="margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 1em">
+<a class="pagenum" name="page_117" id="page_117" title="117"></a>
+<a name="A_BARGAIN_3038" id="A_BARGAIN_3038"></a>
+<h2>CHAPTER XII</h2>
+<h3>A BARGAIN</h3>
+</div>
+
+<p>During the meal prepared by Elsie a solemn avowal by Slade that the cook
+must go home with him brought the knife of Cochise half out of its
+sheath.</p>
+
+<p>Slade either did not see the movement, or, if he did, he contemptuously
+disregarded its menace. He had turned to Farley, his big red face and
+pale blue eyes suddenly sober.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Dad," he boomed, "guess we'd better hold a seance and git Brother
+Cochise back into a proper spiritual frame of mind. I got some
+converting work for him to go out and do."</p>
+
+<p>Cochise shot a side glance at Elsie.</p>
+
+<p>"You leave my woman&mdash;I go. Sabe?"</p>
+
+<p>The trader burst into his hoarse laugh.</p>
+
+<p>"Go to hell! Can't you take a joke? We're pards, ain't we? Can't I josh
+the gal without you gitting rattlesnakey? Don't suppose I meant it, do
+you? Come on, Dad. Git a hustle on you. We got to hold that seance."<a class="pagenum" name="page_118" id="page_118" title="118"></a></p>
+
+<p>He looked at Lennon with a hard smile.</p>
+
+<p>"We run a lodge here&mdash;&mdash; Spirits Order Secret Scotch Rites. We'll go
+into a seance and find out whether to initiate you."</p>
+
+<p>"Dad is too sick," interposed Carmena. "He can't help any. I'll take his
+place."</p>
+
+<p>"No. He's going to come, and you'll stick here," ordered Slade.</p>
+
+<p>Farley rose and tottered out into the anteroom with him and Cochise.
+Lennon sprang up beside the coolly smiling girl.</p>
+
+<p>"You've permitted them to go&mdash;knowing what will happen!"</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing will happen. I changed keys on Dad. He'll come back. Then I
+will go in his place."</p>
+
+<p>"You shall not," forbade Lennon. "I told you it would be murder."</p>
+
+<p>"How about Blossom?" queried the girl. "Slade isn't joking and you know
+now what he is like."</p>
+
+<p>Lennon looked at the prospective victim, hesitated, and tightened his
+jaw.</p>
+
+<p>"I must hold you to your promise. Set them upon each other, if you
+wish&mdash;&mdash; But it shall not be that other way."</p>
+
+<p>"If you hold me to my promise," said Carmena, her eyes hot with scorn.<a class="pagenum" name="page_119" id="page_119" title="119"></a></p>
+
+<p>She started to help Elsie clear the food-splattered table.</p>
+
+<p>Before many minutes Farley reeled in, speechless from terror. He
+collapsed into the first chair and held out a key in his wavering hand.
+Carmena looked at it, nodded understandingly, and hastened out, with a
+significant glance for Lennon.</p>
+
+<p>He was not altogether reassured. After a few moments he followed her
+along the front row of the cliff house rooms. He was close enough to
+hear the talk that followed when she joined Cochise and Slade at the
+padlocked door. The trader gruffly accepted her excuses for her father,
+but swore violently when the two keys that she had brought failed to
+open the lock.</p>
+
+<p>She explained how she had changed her father's clothes, and took upon
+herself all the blame with regard to the misplacing of the key. After
+much soothing talk, she at last quieted Slade by promising to have a
+given quantity of whiskey distilled before his next visit.</p>
+
+<p>"That'll do," he conceded. "Look out you don't forgit it, though, or
+I'll take it out of Dad's hide. Now, Cochise, you hit the high places
+for them hosses. Don't do no shooting this time. Just natchelly have 'em
+drift off. Git a move on you."<a class="pagenum" name="page_120" id="page_120" title="120"></a></p>
+
+<p>Had not Lennon been wearing moccasins, he must have been caught. As it
+was, he glided back through the many rooms, undetected.</p>
+
+<p>Farley had crept into his own room. His absence gave Lennon opportunity
+to calm Elsie's fears and comfort her with the promise that he would
+save her from both Slade and Cochise. The tread of heavy boots sent her
+scurrying out of the living room.</p>
+
+<p>Slade strode in after Carmena and jerked a chair around to where he
+could look close into Lennon's face.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, young man, what's this bunk about you and Carmena being pards?" he
+demanded. "What business you got in Dead Hole, anyhow? Cochise says you
+shot a hoss of hisn."</p>
+
+<p>"I told you how that started," interposed Carmena. "It wasn't our fault
+that Cochise flew off the handle. Jack had to shoot to save me as well
+as himself."</p>
+
+<p>Slade stared hard at the girl and then at Lennon.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, supposing the young devil did break loose. What of it? How about
+this pard bunk? That's what I want to know."</p>
+
+<p>"I fear that Miss Farley has found me rather a disappointment," put in
+Lennon, and he looked at his trussed arm.<a class="pagenum" name="page_121" id="page_121" title="121"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Not at all&mdash;just the other way 'round," Carmena glowingly asserted.
+"Figure it out for yourself, Mr. Slade. A man who could follow up a Gila
+monster bite by outrunning Cochise and his bunch across the Basin, and
+then make them back up. Can you wonder I think he's a man for us to tie
+to?"</p>
+
+<p>"If we needed a new pard," qualified Slade. "Fact is, we don't, and you
+know it. We got enough a'ready to do the work and split up our profits."</p>
+
+<p>Carmena cast a significant glance toward Elsie, who had ventured back to
+renew the fire in her oven.</p>
+
+<p>"How about Cochise getting out of hand? All the time it's harder to hold
+him. He's beginning to bristle up even to you."</p>
+
+<p>Slade's tobacco-stained teeth showed in a grin of contemptuous
+indifference.</p>
+
+<p>"Bah. I'll pull his head off if he gits sassy, and he knows it."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course. He'd have no show&mdash;unless a pot-shot or a knife in your
+back&mdash;&mdash; If only he was white!"</p>
+
+<p>"Surely you do not mean to say, Miss Farley, that Cochise would attack
+his own partner," Lennon backed up the girl's play. "I saw him pull out
+that long knife of his under the table, but imagined it was merely the
+Indian way of easing his feelings against Mr. Slade."<a class="pagenum" name="page_122" id="page_122" title="122"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Pulled his knife on me, did he?" bellowed the trader, in a sudden burst
+of anger.</p>
+
+<p>"And just because you dared speak kindly to Elsie," sympathized Carmena.</p>
+
+<p>Strange enough, the barbed sting appeared to quiet rather than enrage
+Slade. He laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"No four-flushing, Mena. Needn't try to pull the wool over my eyes. I
+can't run my business without Cochise, and you know it. You got to show
+me a deal with more in it, before you talk about a shift of pards. I'm
+running this shebang. There ain't no place for Lennon 'round Dead Hole.
+He best hit out back the way he come."</p>
+
+<p>Carmena's look told Lennon that he must make the next play. He thought
+quickly. If the girl was not mistaken, Slade would take Elsie away with
+him and chance the revenge of Cochise. The Apache might be appeased by
+permission to follow his intended victim back into the Basin.</p>
+
+<p>Had Lennon considered only himself he would have been willing to chance
+a fight with the renegade. But the mere thought of abandoning Elsie to
+either the Apache or this brutal trader was altogether unbearable.</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed, yes&mdash;to be sure, Mr. Slade," he blandly made reply. "If you do
+not desire me as a partner,<a class="pagenum" name="page_123" id="page_123" title="123"></a> I have no wish to remain here. Doubtless I
+shall not require your aid to find the mine for which I am looking."</p>
+
+<p>"Mine?" queried Slade, his pale eyes narrowing. "What mine?"</p>
+
+<p>"It's the lost lode," cut in Carmena, her rich voice quivering with
+eagerness. "I couldn't say anything until Jack spoke. He was headed for
+the mine when his burro was shot and we had to leave his outfit&mdash;thanks
+to Cochise. But he knows where to find the lost lode. Got it from
+Cripple Sim&mdash;back East. It's somewhere over near Triple Butte. You see
+now why I thought you'd be glad to have me bring Jack in as a partner?"</p>
+
+<p>The red face of the trader fairly glowed with geniality. He held out his
+beefy hand to Lennon.</p>
+
+<p>"Shake, pard. Why didn't you speak up sooner? I might have knowed you
+was O.K. But Carmena is only a gal, and we got to be careful of
+strangers in these parts. Bad place for hoss thieves and brand-blotters.
+That's why I put up with a mean Injun like Cochise. He and his bunch see
+to it we don't lose no stock."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, they're great on rounding up, and so far they have never committed
+any murders&mdash;that can be proved against them," put in Carmena, with an
+ironical smile. "Just the same, it wasn't their fault they<a class="pagenum" name="page_124" id="page_124" title="124"></a> didn't get
+Jack. Do you wonder he won't have them in on this lost-lode deal? Either
+he plays a lone hand, or we run Cochise out of the country."</p>
+
+<p>"My offer is ten thousand in cash," said Lennon. "The copper company
+pays me twice that and&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Copper, huh? What's a copper company got to do with a gold lode?"
+demanded Slade.</p>
+
+<p>"But Jack says the lost lode is copper, not gold," said Carmena. "Maybe
+we've been mistaken all these years. Sim told Jack it was a copper mine,
+and Sim ought to know."</p>
+
+<p>Lennon caught the significant glance that the girl covertly gave to
+Slade. He was seized with black doubt whether her scheming was against
+Slade or with Slade against himself. Yet he continued to play to her
+lead&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, the discoverer of the mine should know whether it was gold or
+copper."</p>
+
+<p>After some argument, Slade finally admitted that the old rumour about
+Cripple Sim's fabulously rich lost gold mine might be an "exaggeration."
+With much hemming and hawing, he then agreed that if the lost mine were
+rediscovered he would accept ten thousand dollars and rid Dead Hole of
+Cochise.</p>
+
+<p>"We might git up a company our own selves, Lennon, but we couldn't bring
+in any railroad to<a class="pagenum" name="page_125" id="page_125" title="125"></a> develop a <i>copper</i> mine," he repeated what Carmena
+had already remarked. "Take what you can git and be thankful, is my
+motto. Soon's we find that mine, you can count on me to run Cochise
+clean out of the country."</p>
+
+<p>Carmena drew in a deep quavering breath.</p>
+
+<p>"That's such a relief, Mr. Slade! I've been so afraid for Elsie. I know
+that Cochise figures on making off with her at the first chance."</p>
+
+<p>"He does, does he?" growled the trader. "Well, then, you're going to
+stick here and see he don't git no chance, while I go with our new pard.
+How's that, Lennon?"</p>
+
+<p>"Good enough," agreed Lennon.</p>
+
+<p>"Elsie and I will hunt up some tools," said Carmena and she hurried her
+foster-sister out into the store-rooms before Slade could voice an
+objection.</p>
+
+<p>He at once began to give Lennon a pessimistic account of the small
+profits and many risks and hardships of a trader's life in this arid
+land of mesas and ca&ntilde;ons. As for the cattle business, there was more
+work than money in it, what with mountain lions, wolves, and
+brand-blotters.</p>
+
+<p>Lennon checked himself on the point of asking the meaning of the strange
+term. He recalled that Elsie had said something about mavericking and
+brand-blotting<a class="pagenum" name="page_126" id="page_126" title="126"></a> by the Apaches. Unless Farley and the girls were
+conniving with Cochise, the Indian could not be carrying on any work in
+the Hole unknown to Slade, and he had just intimated that brand-blotting
+was some kind of harmful or criminal action.</p>
+
+<hr class="major" />
+<div style="margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 1em">
+<a class="pagenum" name="page_127" id="page_127" title="127"></a>
+<a name="THE_BLOSSOMING_3289" id="THE_BLOSSOMING_3289"></a>
+<h2>CHAPTER XIII</h2>
+<h3>THE BLOSSOMING</h3>
+</div>
+
+<p>At the supper table Slade returned to his jovial praises of Elsie as a
+cook. Under his bold admiring gaze the girl blushed much and ate little.
+Lennon kept his head with difficulty. To sit quiet and feign
+indifference required all his self-control.</p>
+
+<p>Farley had been brought in by Carmena. Toward the end of the meal Slade
+began to browbeat the abject, liquor-poisoned man. Lennon had no pity to
+spare for his broken-spirited host, but his compassion for Elsie and his
+growing anger against Slade soon received fresh stimulation.</p>
+
+<p>The trader made blunt demand that Farley should agree to give Elsie to
+him in marriage&mdash;Indian marriage. After considerable bullyragging,
+Farley weakly gave way. Carmena continued strongly to protest, but her
+plea was only for a legal marriage.</p>
+
+<p>Slade contended that one kind of marriage was as good as another. But he
+finally said he would wait and take Elsie out to where they could get a
+license<a class="pagenum" name="page_128" id="page_128" title="128"></a> and a minister. This would be immediately after the relocation
+of the mine and the driving off of Cochise.</p>
+
+<p>Lennon was more than satisfied over the final agreement. Once rid of
+Cochise and out of the Hole with Slade and Elsie, he felt certain of his
+ability to save the girl from a forced marriage. In keeping with his
+assumed indifference to the affair he changed the subject by inquiring
+when the start for Triple Butte would be made.</p>
+
+<p>"Daybreak," muttered Slade, and he fixed an intent gaze upon Elsie.
+"I'll be ready by then. I'll bunk with you to-night, Dad. Come in and
+we'll check up on business accounts."</p>
+
+<p>The moment the two older men left the living room Elsie burst into tears
+and began piteously imploring Lennon and Carmena to save her. Carmena
+clapped a hand over the quivering lips of the terrified girl and rushed
+her out of hearing of Slade.</p>
+
+<p>At the same time Lennon stepped out after the trader to keep him from
+turning back. The massive bulk of Slade shadowed the light of the candle
+that Farley was carrying into a second of the inner rooms.</p>
+
+<p>The trader looked back, but failed to see Lennon, who had stepped to one
+side of the living-room doorway. The bull voice rumbled in what was
+evidently intended for a murmur:<a class="pagenum" name="page_129" id="page_129" title="129"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Well, Dad, I guess Carmena ain't such a fool as you might expect from
+her being your gal. She sure got that tenderfoot roped mighty slick.
+Just wait and watch me hogtie the cripple. All I got to do is let him
+lead me to that there gold mine. Then I figger he's apt to git lost.
+Mebbe he believes that bunk about the lode being copper, and mebbe he
+don't. The point is, I git the mine, and he&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>The rest of the prediction was lost to Lennon. He went back into the
+living room and pulled his arm out of the sling to test his grip on
+Farley's short-barrelled revolver. His wounded hand had almost regained
+its full strength. As he replaced the arm in the sling Elsie peeped
+timidly into the room. She saw that he was alone and darted out to clasp
+his arm.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Jack, dear Jack!" she panted. "You&mdash;you won't let Slade take me
+either, will you? You promised about Cochise. But Carmena&mdash;she says
+Slade&mdash;that maybe I'll have to marry him&mdash;unless you have heaps of grit.
+He's no better than Cochise. But at least he's not an Indian, Mena
+says."</p>
+
+<p>Lennon patted the yellow locks of the girl's back-flung head.</p>
+
+<p>"Never fear, Blossom. We will take care of you. Where is Carmena?"</p>
+
+<p>"She's still looking for Dad's old pick for you. We<a class="pagenum" name="page_130" id="page_130" title="130"></a> found the pan and
+spade. Mena says Dad stumbled into Dead Hole 'cause he was looking for
+that lost gold mine of Cripple Sim's you're after. Then he went into
+stock."</p>
+
+<p>"Was he&mdash;did he&mdash;er&mdash;brand-blot before Slade came?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no. Slade and Cochise started the business. Cochise rounds up the
+hosses and cattle when Slade tells him of a good chance, and the 'Paches
+rustle 'em and bring 'em into the Hole and make the brands over, and
+then they run 'em out Hell Ca&ntilde;on, and Slade sells 'em under his other
+name. Dad's share is for the feed and the use of the Hole."</p>
+
+<p>For the first time Lennon's suspicions of the Dead Hole partners were
+clarified and confirmed. The gang were not only moonshiners but horse
+and cattle thieves. Slade was the ringleader and brains of the gang,
+while Cochise and his followers were the crafty and probably murderous
+rustlers and brand-blotters.</p>
+
+<p>Farley was a more or less willing accomplice. He may have been forced
+into the criminal partnership, but now refused to attempt an escape.
+Rather than give up his share of the loot, he chose to risk the great
+danger to his little foster-daughter.</p>
+
+<p>The realization that Slade was even more of a criminal than the
+moonshining and bootlegging had indicated,<a class="pagenum" name="page_131" id="page_131" title="131"></a> quickened Lennon's
+compassion for the girl. She was so artless and clinging and
+helpless&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>He put his free arm about her quivering shoulders. In a twinkling her
+hands were clasped about his neck and she was smiling up into his face
+in na&iuml;ve delight.</p>
+
+<p>"Dear, dear Jack!" she whispered. "You're just awful nice to me. I
+believe, really and truly, I love you even more than Mena."</p>
+
+<p>The girl was too childlike in mind to realize the meaning of her sweet
+emotion. Lennon made allowance for her innocence, but her allusion to
+Carmena startled him, though the words were ambiguous. Elsie may only
+have meant that she loved him more than she loved Carmena&mdash;not that she
+loved him more than Carmena loved him.</p>
+
+<p>The girl's upturned piquant face was more than tempting. Its flowerlike
+delicacy and prettiness and the glow in her wide blue eyes were more
+than he could withstand. He bent down and pressed a kiss upon her
+half-parted lips.</p>
+
+<p>"You darling!" he said. "You adorable little Blossom!"</p>
+
+<p>She sought shyly to draw away from him. He held her fast. The kiss had
+put an end to his last doubt.</p>
+
+<p>"Wait, dear, do not try to get away from me," he commanded. "I am going
+to keep you&mdash;always. Until<a class="pagenum" name="page_132" id="page_132" title="132"></a> I get you out of here&mdash;safe from Slade and
+Cochise&mdash;I shall be just your Brother Jack. But I love you, dear, and
+when we reach a town we shall be married."</p>
+
+<p>"O-o-oh! Then I'll belong to you&mdash;I'll be your woman?"</p>
+
+<p>"You will be my darling little wife. I will be good to you and take care
+of you&mdash;always."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, you dear, nice Jack! And Mena&mdash;she'll go along too and help take
+care of me and love us? Won't she? You know I couldn't ever bear to go
+away and leave Mena."</p>
+
+<p>Along with his amusement over the child's na&iuml;ve suggestion Lennon was
+conscious of an odd thrill. He remembered the look in Carmena's dark
+eyes when she saved him from the poison of the Gila monster and at the
+end of their desperate flight across the Basin. They had risked death
+together&mdash;and <i>she</i> was not a child.</p>
+
+<p>But close upon these pleasantly disquieting remembrances of the older
+girl came the harsh afterthought of his suspicions against her. He bent
+to kiss Elsie with almost aggressive fervour.</p>
+
+<p>From the doorway behind him came a stifled cry that might have been a
+sob. He held fast to Elsie and glanced over his shoulder. Carmena was
+standing<a class="pagenum" name="page_133" id="page_133" title="133"></a> in the doorway, with her head bent. As Lennon looked, she
+straightened and came toward him, cold-eyed and determined.</p>
+
+<p>"What are you doing, Jack Lennon?" she demanded. "I trusted you. I
+believed that you were not the kind to take advantage of Blossom. I
+thought you&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Elsie struggled free from Lennon to fling her arms about her
+foster-sister.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Mena, please, please don't be cross with Jack! I love him so,
+and&mdash;and he loves me back!"</p>
+
+<p>Lennon met Carmena's hard stare with a gaze no less cool and resolute.</p>
+
+<p>"Elsie is to be my wife," he declared. "I shall marry her as soon as
+possible."</p>
+
+<p>"Your wife? Marry her? You mean that?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>Carmena's fixed gaze wavered and sank. But almost immediately she looked
+up again, her eyes lustrous with soft radiance.</p>
+
+<p>"She is very precious to me, Jack. She deserves to be safe and happy all
+the rest of her life."</p>
+
+<p>Before Lennon could reply, the girl gently freed herself from Elsie and
+turned to go.</p>
+
+<p>"Pardon me&mdash;one moment, Miss Farley," appealed Lennon. "There is
+something I must tell you. I<a class="pagenum" name="page_134" id="page_134" title="134"></a> happened to overhear Slade speak to your
+father. He insists that the lost mine is a gold lode and proposes to
+take possession when I have led him to it."</p>
+
+<p>The girl smiled a bit mockingly.</p>
+
+<p>"What else could you expect?" she asked. "If he hadn't believed it a
+gold lode he wouldn't have made the deal with you. When you show him the
+copper, it will be up to you to hold him to his bargain. We have no
+chance unless he splits with Cochise."</p>
+
+<p>"Why not persuade your father to slip out of the Hole with us&mdash;start
+immediately? The Apaches have gone off. I'll engage to tie up Slade. We
+would have an all-night lead."</p>
+
+<p>"No," refused Carmena. "The Hole belongs to Dad. He will not leave it.
+Besides, there are at least three Apaches on watch in Hell Ca&ntilde;on."</p>
+
+<p>Lennon realized the uselessness of arguing with the girl. If, as he
+still half suspected, she was scheming with Slade, the less said about
+her father's share in the stock stealing the better.</p>
+
+<p>"Very well," he acquiesced. "I shall try to manage Slade. If he is
+unreasonable, I will do as I think best."</p>
+
+<p>"So will I," replied Carmena, her eyes sombre.</p>
+
+<p>"Come on, Blossom. Slade said he would leave at daybreak."</p>
+
+<p>She abruptly turned away, and made no remonstrance<a class="pagenum" name="page_135" id="page_135" title="135"></a> when Elsie offered
+her lips to Lennon for a good-night kiss.</p>
+
+<p>Left alone, he sat down in one of the big chairs and fell to planning
+how, after the relocation of the copper lode, he would make his escape.
+He would bring a sheriff's posse to arrest Slade and his fellow
+criminals. Elsie would then be freed from all danger, and the mine could
+be developed.</p>
+
+<hr class="major" />
+<div style="margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 1em">
+<a class="pagenum" name="page_136" id="page_136" title="136"></a>
+<a name="THE_PROWLER_3514" id="THE_PROWLER_3514"></a>
+<h2>CHAPTER XIV</h2>
+<h3>THE PROWLER</h3>
+</div>
+
+<p>From his plans for the breaking up of the criminal gang Lennon's
+thoughts drifted into pleasant reveries about his adorable little
+wife-to-be. Drowsiness crept upon him. When the lone candle on the table
+burned down, flickered, and went out, he was too sound asleep to waken.
+But his sleep was troubled with uneasy dreams.</p>
+
+<p>In the midst of a nightmare that lived over his flight from the bronchos
+across the desert, he was roused with a start to alert wakefulness. Some
+heavy-breathing creature was stealthily shuffling about in the black
+night of the unlighted room. A thump, followed by a muttered curse,
+betrayed the identity of the prowler. With utmost caution Lennon slipped
+his arm from the sling, drew Farley's revolver, and barricaded himself
+behind the chair. Slade shuffled nearer&mdash;so near that his
+whiskey-poisoned breath struck in Lennon's face. Again came a thud and a
+curse. The prowler had stubbed his stockinged toe against a chair leg.</p>
+
+<p>Lennon aimed the revolver toward the sound, in<a class="pagenum" name="page_137" id="page_137" title="137"></a> expectation of an
+upflaring match. Discovery would mean instant attack by the huge-framed
+scoundrel. Of that he had no doubt. Slade would not be groping about in
+the dark in this stealthy manner unless intent upon an evil purpose.</p>
+
+<p>But no match flamed. The shuffling feet moved past Lennon to the wall
+and along the wall toward the doorway that opened upon the short passage
+to the girl's room. No door barred the passage at either end. The
+purpose of the prowler was now unmistakable.</p>
+
+<p>For the second time Lennon had cause to be thankful that he had not
+changed to his boots. His moccasined feet noiselessly felt their way
+after the heavy-footed shuffler. Slade was already through the doorway
+into the passage. Lennon followed. The finger-tips of his outgroping
+left hand touched the back of the prowler.</p>
+
+<p>A startled grunt warned Lennon to dodge back a step and crouch. A
+heavier grunt told him of a violent out-clutch or blow, which, meeting
+only empty air, had wrenched the breath from the big body of the
+striker.</p>
+
+<p>Again Lennon pointed his revolver&mdash;and again the expected match failed
+to crackle and flare. Slade stood silent for several seconds, holding
+his breath.<a class="pagenum" name="page_138" id="page_138" title="138"></a> But Lennon was no less still. The tense listener expelled
+his pent-up breath in a grunt of disgust.</p>
+
+<p>"Huh! Must 'a' been the tizwin. Fools a man."</p>
+
+<p>Lennon straightened up and again groped with his hand as he heard Slade
+shuffle on along the passage. There was need of utmost caution. He did
+not wish to shoot. But he knew that the grip of Slade's thick arms would
+be as dangerous as the hug of a grizzly.</p>
+
+<p>This time the outstretched finger-tips barely grazed the prowler's
+shirt. Lennon took a quick step forward, clutched the back of Slade's
+neck as a guide for his blow, and struck him with the butt of the
+revolver under the right ear. The massive body of the trader slumped
+down as if hit by a sledge.</p>
+
+<p>The weight of the falling man dragged Lennon after. But the utter
+limpness of the body under him stayed his hand from a second blow. He
+thrust the revolver back into his pocket and grasped Slade under the
+armpits. The body remained flaccid even when dragged out of the passage.</p>
+
+<p>Lennon struck a match and bent low over the ghastly face of the man he
+had felled. The scoundrel was only stunned. Lennon's look of anxiety
+gave place to a stern smile. Though certain of the man's guilty
+intentions, he could not put an end to him.</p>
+
+<p>He again grasped the unconscious man and dragged<a class="pagenum" name="page_139" id="page_139" title="139"></a> him across the living
+room and out beside the crane of the hoist. A loop of the rope-end about
+the clumsy ankles, and two or three turns of the windlass lifted the
+inert body so that it dangled head downward.</p>
+
+<p>To swing the crane out through the opening and lower away on the rope
+was the easiest part of the undertaking. Lennon reversed the crank of
+the windlass, around and around, with purposeful deliberation. He hoped
+that Slade would recover consciousness while still swinging in mid-air.
+There was grim pleasure in the thought of how the scoundrel would first
+become aware of the dim starlit precipice beside him and then would
+rouse to the shame and danger of his hanging.</p>
+
+<p>When the rope was rather less than half unwound from the windlass Lennon
+paused to shift his grip on the crank. At the same moment a candle that
+had been masked by a blanket glowed out at him from the doorway of the
+living room. The muzzle of a small revolver thrust forward above the
+candle.</p>
+
+<p>"Hands up&mdash;quick&mdash;or I'll shoot," threatened a vibrant, low-pitched
+voice.</p>
+
+<p>The menace was very real. Most men would have obeyed the command and let
+Slade drop to a head-foremost smash on the cliff foot. Lennon cried back
+at the threatener without releasing his hold on the windlass:<a class="pagenum" name="page_140" id="page_140" title="140"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Pardon me, Miss Farley&mdash;I&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"You!" Holding up the candle, Carmena stepped in to peer about the big
+anteroom. "Way you were stooped over I mistook you for&mdash;&mdash; Almost fired.
+What you doing?"</p>
+
+<p>The query was charged with suspicion. Lennon thrust in the crank peg,
+folded his arms, and leaned against the windlass.</p>
+
+<p>"I met your father's partner wandering about, and thought he needed an
+airing."</p>
+
+<p>The girl stared from the windlass out along the taut rope.</p>
+
+<p>"You don't mean&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, dangling head down."</p>
+
+<p>"Dead?"</p>
+
+<p>"Merely knocked out&mdash;worse luck! But one way of restoring consciousness
+is to raise the feet above the head. He may wake up any moment and
+appreciate the situation."</p>
+
+<p>"Any moment?" cried Carmena. She half dropped her candlestick on the
+stone floor and sprang to the windlass. "Quick! We must haul him up
+before he comes to."</p>
+
+<p>Lennon did not budge.</p>
+
+<p>"No, Miss Farley. That beast shall not again set foot in this place
+until Elsie is safe away."<a class="pagenum" name="page_141" id="page_141" title="141"></a></p>
+
+<p>The girl's eyes widened. Her hand clutched and drew close across her
+rounded bosom the folds of the blanket that she had flung about her
+shoulders to cover her night gown. Her face paled and as quickly flushed
+scarlet.</p>
+
+<p>"I thought I heard sounds in the passage, but the rug curtain muffled
+them," she murmured. "Was he trying to&mdash;to&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Had been drinking," replied Lennon. "My regret now is that the blow did
+not kill him."</p>
+
+<p>"And leave us no chance against Cochise? He's the only living creature
+that Cochise fears. Can't you see we must make believe&mdash;must keep up
+with him until we are rid of the Apaches? Bad as he is, he's a white
+man. Cochise is a&mdash;devil! When he tired of Blossom, he'd give her to his
+men."</p>
+
+<p>Convinced against his will, Lennon began to wind in on the windlass.
+Carmena went to the edge of the cliff. When the body of Slade came
+spinning and swinging up out of the gloom she held down the light and
+peered anxiously at the knot that held the rope about his thick ankles.
+It showed no signs of slipping. His down-hung head wobbled up into the
+flickering light of the candle. The face was purple; the bloodshot eyes
+were glazed.</p>
+
+<p>Carmena swung in the crane and freed the rope the<a class="pagenum" name="page_142" id="page_142" title="142"></a> moment Lennon eased
+off. Slade was wheezing as if almost suffocated. At Carmena's urging,
+Lennon helped her drag the stupefied man back into the living room. The
+girl ran to fetch a bowl of water.</p>
+
+<p>"Loosen your clothes," she whispered in Lennon's ear. "Hide your
+moccasins&mdash;look as if you'd just jumped out of bed&mdash;get your arm back in
+the sling. That's it. Now lift his head and shoulders up against this
+chair."</p>
+
+<p>As Lennon raised the flaccid upper body, Carmena began to dash water
+into the purple face. The blotched skin gradually lightened to its
+natural red. The pale eyes lost their fishy glaze. They stared dazedly
+up into the deeply concerned face of Carmena. She flung the last cupful
+of water from the bowl. Slade roused enough to mumble virulent curses.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!" exclaimed Carmena, in a tone of sympathetic relief. "He's not
+dead&mdash;he's coming to. Oh, Mr. Slade, what happened? Did you fall against
+the table? Or was it a fit? You looked terribly black in the face, as if
+you'd had a fit. That's why I used the water. Jack held you up to drain
+the blood out of your head."</p>
+
+<p>Slade scowled at his helpers. Lennon frowned back at him but followed up
+the girl's lead.</p>
+
+<p>"Once saw a man taken with apoplexy&mdash;stroke of<a class="pagenum" name="page_143" id="page_143" title="143"></a> paralysis, you know. Not
+paralyzed are you? Try lifting your arms and legs?"</p>
+
+<p>Slade glowered morosely, but caught the look of concern in Carmena's
+face and stiffened with sudden alarm. She watched with an intent
+scrutiny as he gingerly lifted one limb after another.</p>
+
+<p>"Bunk!" he growled. "I ain't paralyzed. Needn't think you can con me."</p>
+
+<p>"Wait&mdash;your face!" warned the girl. "It looked queer. Try smiling."</p>
+
+<p>"No, it's all right now," said Lennon. "Sometimes these first strokes of
+apoplexy paralyze only for a few moments."</p>
+
+<p>Carmena changed her look of sympathy to one of sharp reproof.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't think it's that at all. You've just been working on our
+sympathies, Mr. Slade. Own up now. You took too much tizwin to know what
+you were about. You came in here for a drink of water and fell against
+the table corner."</p>
+
+<p>The glaring eyes of the trader narrowed in a look of crafty calculation.
+Lennon followed the man's thoughts by his expression. The effects of the
+moonshine whiskey, of the blow under his ear, and of the suffocation had
+not yet passed. They had left him lax and shaken and rather muddled. He
+had been<a class="pagenum" name="page_144" id="page_144" title="144"></a> given his fill for one night. Carmena's reproaches disarmed
+his suspicion that she and Lennon knew what he had been about. His
+guilty anger at the two subsided into derision of their blindness.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, what if I did git tanked up?" he growled. "It's my tizwin as much
+as Dad's, ain't it? I'm going back to bed to sleep it off."</p>
+
+<p>Lennon took the candle from Carmena.</p>
+
+<p>"Permit me to carry the light for you, Slade. Your hand is too unsteady.
+I'm not so sure about Miss Farley's explanation of your mishap. I still
+believe you had a stroke&mdash;not as heavy a stroke as it might have
+been&mdash;not fatal, you know, but heavy enough to put you down and out."</p>
+
+<p>Slade was staggering to his feet. Lennon followed him to the room where
+Farley lay sprawled in drunken slumber beside an empty whiskey jug. As
+soon as Slade had dropped upon the bed Lennon took the candle back to
+the living room. Carmena had gone.</p>
+
+<p>He gathered up an armful of Navaho rugs and moved one of the heavy
+chairs around to the doorway of the passage into the girl's room.</p>
+
+<hr class="major" />
+<div style="margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 1em">
+<a class="pagenum" name="page_145" id="page_145" title="145"></a>
+<a name="CROOKED_WAYS_3745" id="CROOKED_WAYS_3745"></a>
+<h2>CHAPTER XV</h2>
+<h3>CROOKED WAYS</h3>
+</div>
+
+<p>At gray dawn Elsie started to go out into the living room. Midway of the
+dusky passage her foot struck against a roundish object. She bent down
+to look. A dim form was lying in the passage, with feet against the
+chair that blocked the outer doorway.</p>
+
+<p>The girl's half shriek brought Lennon up at a bound, his revolver out.</p>
+
+<p>"Who's there?" he demanded.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh&mdash;oh, Jack!" the girl sobbed her relief.</p>
+
+<p>He clasped her to him protectingly.</p>
+
+<p>"All right, sweetheart&mdash;all right," he said, soothingly. "You see I have
+been here on watch. Slade&mdash;&mdash; But that is past. I see light outside. He
+will soon be leaving with me."</p>
+
+<p>Elsie clutched him, in renewed panic.</p>
+
+<p>"But I'm afraid! I don't want you to leave me, Jack. You'll never, never
+come back! I want to go along, too. If you leave me, I'm awful afraid
+Cochise'll catch me!"<a class="pagenum" name="page_146" id="page_146" title="146"></a></p>
+
+<p>"You dear little frightened Blossom! But I cannot take you now. You must
+stay with Carmena. She will keep you up here, safe from Cochise. I will
+come back&mdash;never fear. I will come back and take you away."</p>
+
+<p>"Take me&mdash;away from Dead Hole? Oh, how wonderful! Mena says I came from
+outside, where are all the book things and people&mdash;like you. I can't
+remember, but I'll just love to go out and see the wide world with
+you&mdash;and Mena&mdash;and Dad. Only Dad doesn't want to leave the Hole at all."</p>
+
+<p>"You shall go with me out of this place," replied Lennon. "I will bring
+the sheriff and have him arrest every member of this band of outlaws."</p>
+
+<p>The rug curtains of the inner room flung apart. Carmena sprang out into
+the passage. She drew her foster-sister away from Lennon with a grasp as
+resolute as it was gentle.</p>
+
+<p>"Go and start breakfast, Blossom," she directed. "The sooner they leave
+the better."</p>
+
+<p>Elsie darted to the doorway and disappeared. Lennon started after her.
+He was checked by a low-spoken command from Carmena:</p>
+
+<p>"Stop. I want a show-down from you, Jack Lennon. I heard what you said
+about the sheriff.<a class="pagenum" name="page_147" id="page_147" title="147"></a> Good thing Slade wasn't in earshot. You'd have a
+bullet in you by now. You may yet. What are you aiming to do?"</p>
+
+<p>"You say you heard me," said Lennon. "I spoke clearly."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you count Dad in the gang?"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you?"</p>
+
+<p>In the brightening light of red dawn Lennon saw the girl's eyes cloud
+with anguish. At sight of her grief and suffering a wave of compassion
+surged up within him. The flood overwhelmed and submerged all his
+prejudice against her.</p>
+
+<p>He started to express his pity and sympathy&mdash;only to be checked before
+the words could leave his lips. The girl's eyes were ablaze. Her mouth
+straightened in resolute lines.</p>
+
+<p>"All right, Mr. Lennon," she said. "You've shown your hand. Here's mine:
+You'll give your pledge to leave the sheriff out of this deal, or you'll
+never reach the trail."</p>
+
+<p>"Very kind of you, indeed, to warn me, Miss Farley. I presume you will
+tell Slade and Cochise to be ready if I attempt to escape."</p>
+
+<p>Though the girl's lips remained firm, her eyes again dilated with
+anguish. She turned about and groped her way into the inner room. Lennon
+felt an odd<a class="pagenum" name="page_148" id="page_148" title="148"></a> mingling of shame and regret, of anger and an emotion that
+went far beyond sympathy.</p>
+
+<p>Elsie soon came with a bowl of coffee, which Carmena had sent for Lennon
+to give to Slade. There was no need of words to make clear her wish to
+be rid of the visitors. Lennon found Slade lying as torpid as Farley.
+But the hot coffee roused him to morose alertness.</p>
+
+<p>Breakfast was served by Carmena, though her excuse for the absence of
+Elsie failed to satisfy the surly-tempered trader. The younger girl did
+not appear until Slade dropped the rope ladder and went scrambling down
+the cliff face. Carmena was already lowering Lennon's outfit to the
+trader's Navaho followers, who had come at dawn.</p>
+
+<p>With a last word to Elsie to be brave but careful until his return,
+Lennon gently freed himself from her clinging embrace, put his arm back
+in the sling, and stepped into the loop of the hoist rope. The girls
+lowered him to the cliff foot.</p>
+
+<p>The Navahos, who were dressed as Mexicans, already had the prospecting
+outfit lashed on a pack horse. At Lennon's request, Slade derisively
+ordered one of them to hold the tenderfoot's pony. Lennon nursed his arm
+and climbed into his saddle with a show of difficulty. The more awkward
+and disabled<a class="pagenum" name="page_149" id="page_149" title="149"></a> he could make himself appear to his travelling companions
+the better would be his chances later.</p>
+
+<p>Slade put spurs to his big horse and galloped off down the valley,
+leaving Lennon to trail behind with the Navahos. The pace did not
+slacken until the party raced down into the lower ca&ntilde;on and around a
+double turn to the drop in the bed.</p>
+
+<p>On the brink of the cliff was set a crane similar in design to the one
+at the cliff house but much larger. Hauled back, it was hidden from
+below by a corner of rock. Swung out, its block and tackle, operated by
+a one-pony windlass, could hoist or lower a two-pony load in the light
+basket cage woven of wire and withes. One of the three Apache guards
+hitched his pony to the windlass.</p>
+
+<p>Slade went down first, with his horse and Lennon and one of the Apaches.
+Before the horse was led through the cage door out upon the smooth
+ledges at the foot of the cliff the Apache fastened thick pads of
+rawhide upon his hoofs. This was also done for the ponies as they swung
+down, two by two, in the cage.</p>
+
+<p>Lennon had noted the arrangement and working of the crane and hoist with
+the eye of an engineer. When he turned his attention to the hoof pads,
+Slade gratuitously explained that the rawhide was needed to<a class="pagenum" name="page_150" id="page_150" title="150"></a> keep the
+horses from slipping on the ledges of the cliff. Lennon took this with a
+careless nod.</p>
+
+<p>He had already inferred the true reason for the practice. The ledges
+were neither slippery nor steep. But scratches made by ironshod hoofs on
+the rocks might have led expert trackers to suspect the hoisting of
+stolen stock up the cliff.</p>
+
+<p>Down where the bed was of loose stones and gravel a rough trail from the
+lower ca&ntilde;on twisted up a side gorge. Pursuers trailing a bunch of stolen
+cattle or horses would of course turn up the gorge. A glance or two at
+the sheer thirty-foot wall of the upstep in the bed of the main ca&ntilde;on
+would convince the most astute of cowboys that not even a puma could go
+up that way.</p>
+
+<p>At the edge of the trail the Apache took off the hoof-pads and returned
+to the cage. He was being hoisted up the cliff when Lennon loped after
+Slade down-trail around a sharp bend in the ca&ntilde;on.</p>
+
+<p>A hard ride down the ca&ntilde;on for five miles or more, then up a steep break
+and across cedar-dotted mesas, brought the party out to the Moqui trail
+shortly after mid-morning. Lennon frowned at the clear-marked trail.</p>
+
+<p>His plans as first made had been to cut and run for the railway the
+moment he should reach the main<a class="pagenum" name="page_151" id="page_151" title="151"></a> trail. But he had discovered that his
+pony was the slowest of the mounts and that the four Navahos always kept
+behind him. He could neither drop to the rear nor race ahead of Slade's
+big American thoroughbred.</p>
+
+<p>Slade turned to the right, away from the railway, and pushed the pace
+for another hour. The trail led through a rather wide valley. Near the
+head they came to a well-watered oasis of corn and bean fields. Across
+from the trail stood an abandoned Moqui pueblo.</p>
+
+<p>The ruins had been sufficiently restored to house Slade's trading
+establishment and the score or more families of his Navaho cowpunchers.
+The small storeroom was crowded with bales and boxes, but Lennon noticed
+that behind the front piles many of the boxes were empty. This
+legitimate business was more or less of a sham to cover the whiskey
+running.</p>
+
+<p>Slade's quarters in a half-detached group of stone rooms were somewhat
+incongruously furnished. A rather handsome but sad-eyed young Indian
+woman in a dirty blue wrapper covertly "dished up" a noon meal for her
+master and Lennon on the fly-covered table.</p>
+
+<p>The greasy warmed-over chile con carne, the half-cooked tortillas and
+the muddy coffee accounted for<a class="pagenum" name="page_152" id="page_152" title="152"></a> Slade's praises of Elsie as a cook. The
+Indian girl slunk and cowered under his curses. Whenever she passed him
+she cringed as if expectant of a blow. Lennon was doubly relieved when
+Slade's impatience to be off on the search for the lost lode hurried him
+out into the clean open air.</p>
+
+<p>The horses had been fed and watered and were waiting near the spring,
+beside a young peach tree. Slade paused to bellow guttural commands at a
+Navaho sheepherder who was driving a small flock down the valley.</p>
+
+<p>Lennon hastened ahead toward the spring, eager to seize his opportunity.
+He had only to secure his rifle, leap on Slade's big thoroughbred, and
+race away down the back trail. The American horse could easily outrun
+the Indian ponies. Once beyond rifle range of the pueblo his escape
+would be certain.</p>
+
+<p>The horses were soon only a few steps away. Lennon nerved himself for
+the dash. From behind a scraggly bunch of scrub that appeared too thin
+to screen even a coyote rose all four of Slade's personal retainers.
+Though they were as stolid and silent as wooden Indians, each had his
+rifle in hand. Lennon thought he caught a glitter of suspicion in their
+covert glances.</p>
+
+<p>Bitter as was his disappointment, he was quick to<a class="pagenum" name="page_153" id="page_153" title="153"></a> make the best of the
+situation. A sharp command and jerk of his thumb toward Slade led them
+to believe he had come for them at the order of their master.</p>
+
+<p>Slade hailed the tenderfoot with bluff cordiality when the mounted party
+loped up the slope to him.</p>
+
+<p>"Gitting het up, huh? You act like an old-timer on a gold stampede.
+Never before knew a prospector to go loco over copper."</p>
+
+<p>"You should bear in mind I am an engineer, not a prospector," replied
+Lennon. "If I am successful over this copper project and it proves to be
+as large as I have been led to expect, I shall have won a place well up
+in my profession."</p>
+
+<p>Slade grunted contemptuously and spurred his horse into a gallop. Within
+a mile he turned off trail to cut across country. Beyond the first
+mesas, which were a part of the trader-cowman's cattle range, came a
+jumbled waste of crags and broken ridges.</p>
+
+<p>On the edge of this devil's dooryard of bare rocks and no less dry and
+sterile ravines Slade gave over the lead to the oldest of his Navahos. A
+white man could have found his way only by blind chance through the maze
+of twisted clefts that seamed the unscalable cliffs and crags.<a class="pagenum" name="page_154" id="page_154" title="154"></a></p>
+
+<p>Lennon soon lost all sense of direction. He realized that he could not
+hope to find his way out of these worst of bad lands without a guide. He
+must put off his plans to escape until the return to the trail. He began
+to surmise that Cripple Sim's inability to relocate the lost lode may
+not have been due altogether to his maiming by Apache arrows.</p>
+
+<p>But this jagged waste that had kept the secret of the mine hidden for a
+generation would offer an impassable barrier to any railway. Unless an
+easier route could be found, the entire project was already proved
+hopeless. Even a vein of solid copper could not be worked at a profit if
+the metal had to be packed out on burros.</p>
+
+<p>Yet there remained the chance of another route to the lode; and Lennon
+was not minded to confide his disappointment to Slade. He spurred his
+pony to keep pace with the others. The sooner the mine was relocated and
+the party back at the trail, the sooner he could make his attempt to
+escape. After Elsie had been freed from her dangerous prison in Dead
+Hole he could take time to search for a feasible route to the mine.</p>
+
+<p>Toward sundown the old Navaho led the party clear of the shattered rock
+maze and up the side of a small mesa. From the table top Lennon saw the<a class="pagenum" name="page_155" id="page_155" title="155"></a>
+mighty towers of Triple Butte startlingly close ahead. Slade reined in
+to stare hard-eyed at the engineer.</p>
+
+<p>"There's your butte," he rumbled. "Which side do we head?"</p>
+
+<p>"North," replied Lennon, without a moment's hesitation.</p>
+
+<p>Though he had been lost since leaving the trail, he clearly remembered
+all the directions given by the old prospector as to the position of the
+lode in relation to Triple Butte. From the top of the mesa practical
+railway routes appeared to offer to the east and north of the great
+butte.</p>
+
+<p>Lennon studied the landscape until he noticed that the Navaho leader had
+headed south of east instead of north. Certain that his reply to Slade
+had been misunderstood, he spurred forward to explain that they were
+veering away from the lost lode.</p>
+
+<p>Slade rode on without a word of acknowledgment. The presence of the
+Navahos made his contemptuous silence doubly galling. Lennon took it as
+a foretaste of what was to come and masked his chagrin. For Elsie's
+sake, he could not afford to quarrel with Slade at this stage of the
+dangerous game that must be played.</p>
+
+<hr class="major" />
+<div style="margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 1em">
+<a class="pagenum" name="page_156" id="page_156" title="156"></a>
+<a name="THE_DROP_4015" id="THE_DROP_4015"></a>
+<h2>CHAPTER XVI</h2>
+<h3>THE DROP</h3>
+</div>
+
+<p>At sunset the reason for the guide's choice of route disclosed itself.
+The party came to a group of small springs.</p>
+
+<p>Lennon's throat had been parched for the last two hours. He spurred his
+jaded pony forward to the mesquite bushes where the Navahos were
+unsaddling, and slipped off to dip his empty canteen in the largest
+spring.</p>
+
+<p>The guide muttered gutturally to Slade who was staring up narrow-eyed at
+the broken shoulder of Triple Butte. He wrenched himself about to scowl
+at Lennon. The engineer had straightened and was raising the half-filled
+canteen to drink.</p>
+
+<p>"Hey, you!" bellowed Slade. "Drop that!"</p>
+
+<p>The bullying command was more than Lennon could endure. He waved the
+canteen ironically at the trader, turned half away, and put the opening
+to his mouth. Slade whipped out his revolver and fired. The canteen flew
+out of Lennon's hand and thumped down upon the stone beside the spring.<a class="pagenum" name="page_157" id="page_157" title="157"></a></p>
+
+<p>For a moment Lennon was so astonished that he stood motionless, staring
+down at the canteen. The water gushed and gurgled through the holes
+pierced through the middle of the vessel by the heavy bullet.</p>
+
+<p>The first coherent thought of the engineer was that Slade had intended
+to murder him. He put his hand to the pocket that held Farley's revolver
+and turned to face Slade. The trader's weapon was already back in its
+holster. His stained teeth showed in a wide grin.</p>
+
+<p>"May I ask what you mean by shooting at me?" demanded Lennon.</p>
+
+<p>Slade's mirth burst out in a roar of laughter.</p>
+
+<p>"Shooting at you&mdash;shooting <i>now</i>?" he jibed when he could speak. "You
+must figger I'm plumb loco. Any fool ought to know anybody would hold
+off till you located the mine. Even supposing I was going to plant you,
+I'd wait, wouldn't I, huh?"</p>
+
+<p>Lennon saw the point even clearer than the trader intended. He was
+supposed to take the piece of grim humour as a reassurance. The derisive
+banter was an unintentional notification that he could expect to be
+murdered immediately after the finding of the lost lode. But until then
+he must continue to play the dupe.</p>
+
+<p>"I must confess I do not fancy your Western jokes," he said. "You have
+spoiled a perfectly good canteen."<a class="pagenum" name="page_158" id="page_158" title="158"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Happens you're worth more to me than it; and you was dead set on
+filling up with that poison water," rejoined Slade.</p>
+
+<p>"Poison?"</p>
+
+<p>The old Navaho was drinking from the second spring, less than two paces
+away from the first. Lennon pointed at him.</p>
+
+<p>"Sure," said Slade. "It's not the only case I know of finding good water
+'longside arsenic, in a copper district."</p>
+
+<p>The actions of the Indians bore out the truth of their master's
+assertion, or at least proved that they believed the first spring
+poisonous. The horses were picketed well away from it and from the joint
+rill of the two springs, which trickled down slope a few yards before
+seeping away among the stones.</p>
+
+<p>The camp supper of bacon and flapjacks was soon followed by the
+spreading of blankets on the nearest stretches of sand. The Navahos went
+off to one side. Slade ordered Lennon to keep near him and carefully
+encircled their bedding-down place with the coils of a horsehair lariat.</p>
+
+<p>The purpose of the lariat became apparent to Lennon when he was roused
+by the chill of dawn. He saw one of the Navahos rake out of the embers
+of the evening's fire a torpid tarantula as big as his hand.<a class="pagenum" name="page_159" id="page_159" title="159"></a></p>
+
+<p>Lennon thought of Elsie's daintiness and soft ways. The girl was utterly
+out of keeping with this fierce land of desolation and thirst, of thorns
+and poison springs, of venomous reptiles and insects, of ferocious
+beasts and men. She did not belong and never would. She was a garden
+flower.</p>
+
+<p>Carmena was different. Her rich bloom was more like the flowers of the
+desert growths&mdash;the thorn-guarded yucca and needled cactus. There was
+nothing soft and cuddly about <i>her</i>.</p>
+
+<p>At the realization of where his thoughts were drifting, Lennon wrenched
+his mental focus back to Elsie. What concern could the fate of Carmena
+be to him? She belonged with her drunken, criminal father in Dead Hole.
+All thought and effort must be centred on the rescue of Elsie.</p>
+
+<p>After a hasty meal of flapjacks, bacon, and coffee, the party started
+out to work north around Triple Butte. The country was now unknown
+ground even to the old Navaho guide. But he showed great craft in
+puzzling out the directions given to him.</p>
+
+<p>An inner pocket hid the map that Lennon had brought from the East. He
+took care that Slade and the Navahos thought he was going by memory. Had
+he told of the map at any time after reaching Dead Hole he now felt
+certain that he never would<a class="pagenum" name="page_160" id="page_160" title="160"></a> have lived to get this near the mine. Slade
+would have taken the map and killed him out of hand. So at least Lennon
+believed.</p>
+
+<p>Once the party rounded upon the northern slopes of Triple Butte, the
+points described on the map became easily recognizable. All that
+remained to do was to ride around a spur ridge and slant into the valley
+that headed up between the western and central towers of the great
+butte. Here the searchers came upon trees and grass and running water.
+Farther up stood a small cabin, near a spring that had been blasted out
+and rimmed with rock to form a convenient basin.</p>
+
+<p>Lennon spurred forward beside Slade.</p>
+
+<p>"Promising. What?" he remarked.</p>
+
+<p>"Not what, but where?" growled the trader. "Hold on&mdash;that looks like an
+old burro trail."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. Up first ravine toward left edge of middle butte, half a mile to
+lode," Lennon quoted the last directions that he had read on the map.</p>
+
+<p>Slade signed for the Navahos to wait at the spring. A brutal jab of the
+spurs sent his horse bounding off at top speed. Lennon's pony was left
+behind until the leader wheeled into the first ravine and came up
+against a steep slide of loose rock. To force even the nimblest of
+mounts to attempt such an ascent would have meant risking a bad fall.<a class="pagenum" name="page_161" id="page_161" title="161"></a></p>
+
+<p>As Lennon loped his pony into the ravine the trader swore blasphemously
+and swung out of his saddle to scramble up the slide. Great as was his
+strength, it was offset by the fact that his weight tended to bring the
+loose stones sliding down at every step. Lennon was not only lighter and
+more agile but had the advantage of better wind.</p>
+
+<p>He was but a few steps below when Slade reached the head of the slide.
+Close above them the ascent was barred by high ledges that dropped off
+from the upper part of the ravine. Slade stared savagely at the dull
+reddish-brown face of the ledges. The metallic surface plainly showed
+the use of pick and dynamite. He uttered a furious oath as he turned
+upon Lennon.</p>
+
+<p>"You lying skunk!" he bellowed. "This ain't no gold mine!"</p>
+
+<p>All the way up the slide Lennon had perceived the copper in the float
+rock. He was prepared for the trader's outburst. Farley's revolver lay
+ready in his grasp, behind the sling on his right arm.</p>
+
+<p>"Have you&mdash;what do you call it?&mdash;gone loco?" he asked. "I told you
+distinctly my search was for a copper mine. The gold lode was your own
+fancy. You will now apologize for that term you used."<a class="pagenum" name="page_162" id="page_162" title="162"></a></p>
+
+<p>Had one of his Navahos made the demand, Slade could not have been more
+amazed. He gaped, dumbfounded. Then his rage burst out again with
+redoubled fury. But the sight of Lennon's revolver muzzle put an abrupt
+end to his violent curses.</p>
+
+<p>"Good enough," said Lennon. "Now my apology, if you please."</p>
+
+<p>The cool politeness of the request emphasized its deadly earnestness.
+Lennon was keen for an excuse to shoot the big scoundrel. The look in
+his eye was unmistakable.</p>
+
+<p>"All right," grunted Slade. "Have it your own way. I back up."</p>
+
+<p>"You apologize?"</p>
+
+<p>"Sure. Even a tenderfoot is entitled to that&mdash;when he gits the drop on
+you."</p>
+
+<p>"Quite true," agreed Lennon, and he thrust the revolver into his pocket.
+"Now, with regard to the lode, our next step will be&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"What'd you say you was to git from your copper company?" broke in
+Slade, suddenly straight-eyed and cordial.</p>
+
+<p>"Twenty thousand bonus for relocating the lode, and&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"You can draw on 'em for it?"</p>
+
+<p>"For half, at least. You shall have your ten<a class="pagenum" name="page_163" id="page_163" title="163"></a> thousand as soon as you
+rid the Farleys of Cochise and his gang. That was the agreement."</p>
+
+<p>The trader thwacked his beefy hand down on Lennon's shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>"That's a go, pard. I own up honest I figgered your talk of copper was
+all bunk. But I aim to stand by my bargains. Only you're sure now this
+here lode ain't no blind, are you? You ain't got that gold mine, too,
+hiding out hereabouts?"</p>
+
+<p>"I give you my word, Slade, this is the only mine or lode of which I
+know."</p>
+
+<p>Slade's look was more profane than a spoken curse.</p>
+
+<p>"Huh&mdash;another El Dorado lie roped and branded. Only thing to do is to go
+after that bonus of yours."</p>
+
+<p>"I must take samples and measurements for my report," said Lennon. "The
+company does not pay for the guesses of its engineers."</p>
+
+<p>None too willingly Slade took the end of the small steel-ribbon
+engineer's tape that was held out to him. Lennon measured the width of
+the copper ledges, noted the trend and dip of the immense lode, and
+calculated its thickness where exposed. Samples were then gathered.</p>
+
+<p>Upon the return down the slide the trader suddenly paused to point at
+the skull of a half-buried human skeleton.<a class="pagenum" name="page_164" id="page_164" title="164"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Huh," he grunted. "Cripple Sim didn't have no pard. But look at the
+pick&mdash;another prospector. Must 'a' stumbled on the mine. Lots of good it
+done him. See that hole? His pard plugged him through the head, streaked
+out, got lost, died. That's how I figger it."</p>
+
+<p>"Poor chap!" Lennon murmured his pity for the murdered man, and he
+lingered to cover over the skeleton with a pile of loose stones.</p>
+
+<p>At the spring he found the Indians cooking another round of flapjacks,
+bacon, and coffee. After the meal the party waited through the heat of
+mid-day while the horses cropped the grass along the banks of the spring
+rill.</p>
+
+<p>At first there seemed nothing of interest about the old cabin. The
+thatch had half blown off; the adobe-plastered stone fireplace and
+chimney had tumbled down, and sand had drifted in past the broken wattle
+door. But when Lennon went in to take advantage of the patch of shade
+that was offered, he was shocked to find the skeleton of a woman huddled
+in the far corner.</p>
+
+<p>Summoned by his call, Slade eyed the skeleton with callous indifference.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, what you kicking up such a fuss about?" he growled. "Mebbe it's a
+squaw&mdash;mebbe a white<a class="pagenum" name="page_165" id="page_165" title="165"></a> woman. What's the difference? Been dead eight or
+ten years, by the look of things. Must 'a' got hers same time as the
+man. We're lucky they didn't git our mine."</p>
+
+<p>The start back was made so late that the party did not reach the arsenic
+spring until dusk. Lennon had convinced himself that Slade planned to
+return to Dead Hole and at least make a pretense of earning the ten
+thousand dollars.</p>
+
+<p>His own scheme was to seize Slade's horse and make a run for the
+railway. But first he must wait to be guided back through the devil's
+dooryard of crags and clefts.</p>
+
+<p>He fell asleep with his hand upon the butt of his revolver and the
+revolver under his body. He awoke at dawn to find his wrists lashed
+together. One of the Navahos stood on guard beside him. The revolver was
+gone. Slade and the others were already eating.</p>
+
+<p>No food was brought to Lennon. But after he had been roughly tossed into
+his saddle by the Navahos, Slade brought a drink of water from the
+arsenic spring and offered it with mock hospitality.</p>
+
+<p>"It's a dry ride," he urged. "Take a good swaller, son. It'll keep you
+from gitting thirsty."</p>
+
+<p>Lennon looked at him steady-eyed.</p>
+
+<p>"May I ask what you expect to gain by this, Slade?"<a class="pagenum" name="page_166" id="page_166" title="166"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Gain?&mdash;me?" The trader stared back no less unwaveringly. "I just done
+it to save you gitting in trouble. You're too careless&mdash;way you handle a
+gun. Might hurt somebody one of these here days. Anyhow, this'll help
+you think things over. Sabe?"</p>
+
+<p>The poison water splashed down upon the dry rocks. Slade mounted, to
+ride off after the guide. The other Navahos lashed Lennon to his saddle
+and drove his pony before them, along with the pack horse.</p>
+
+<p>Though the old Navaho found a rather shorter way out through the jumble
+maze of the bad lands, Lennon's mouth and throat were dust dry and his
+tongue swollen before the party reached the trail.</p>
+
+<p>The thirst torture continued until the arrival at the pueblo. There
+Slade at last gave drink to his prisoner and disclosed his purpose, with
+a pretense of indignation.</p>
+
+<p>"You ought to be strung up for trying to shoot me, Lennon. But I'm an
+easy-going man&mdash;easy and forgiving. You only got to make out your report
+and send for that twenty thousand. When it comes on, I'll let you go."</p>
+
+<p>"Very kind of you, I'm sure," replied Lennon, after he had drained the
+last drop of water from the jar. "However, I am in no hurry to make my
+report. I shall send it on and draw your half of the money&mdash;after<a class="pagenum" name="page_167" id="page_167" title="167"></a> you
+have kept your bargain with regard to Cochise."</p>
+
+<p>Slade deliberately drew his revolver and aimed it between Lennon's eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Just remember, your riding in the way you did was to set you to
+thinking," he reminded. "This ain't no joke. Guess you'll agree now to
+git started on that report, huh?"</p>
+
+<p>Lennon smiled at the revolver and the still more menacing steel-white
+eyes that glared at him along the barrel.</p>
+
+<p>"Is it not time you set to thinking yourself, Slade?" he suggested.
+"Alive, I am worth ten thousand dollars to you, as soon as you keep your
+bargain. Dead, I would not be worth a penny to you or any one else."</p>
+
+<p>The brick red of the trader's big face purpled and the hand that gripped
+the revolver shook with the excess of his rage as he jammed the weapon
+back into its holster.</p>
+
+<p>"Wait," he said. "We'll see what Cochise can do to make you behave."</p>
+
+<hr class="major" />
+<div style="margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 1em">
+<a class="pagenum" name="page_168" id="page_168" title="168"></a>
+<a name="DEATH_PLAY_4326" id="DEATH_PLAY_4326"></a>
+<h2>CHAPTER XVII</h2>
+<h3>DEATH PLAY</h3>
+</div>
+
+<p>Fresh horses were saddled, and Lennon was tied on as before. His last
+hope of escape went glimmering. He realized that he had missed his one
+chance when the party first reached the main trail, coming out of Dead
+Hole.</p>
+
+<p>To have attacked even then would have been a desperate undertaking&mdash;one
+man against five. But he would have had at least a fighting chance. Now
+he was unarmed and bound, unable even to shift in the saddle.</p>
+
+<p>Slade set a hot pace that fast ate up the hard miles of the return
+trail. But no pony could carry his massive weight as had the horse.
+Before the main ca&ntilde;on was reached, his mount began to flag. Only the
+most merciless of rowelling could goad the jaded beast out of a jog
+except for short spurts. In the descent to the ca&ntilde;on the pony began to
+stumble badly. But Slade held him up with an iron grip on the
+jaw-breaking Spanish ring-bit.</p>
+
+<p>The smooth ca&ntilde;on bed was only a few yards below<a class="pagenum" name="page_169" id="page_169" title="169"></a> when, at the last sharp
+twist in the descent, the still air vibrated with a sibilant rattle.
+Slade's pony snorted and jumped sideways, leaving Lennon a clear view of
+the big diamond-back rattlesnake that lay coiled in the middle of the
+trail. The gaping jaws of the angry snake and the peculiar billowing of
+its body so fixed Lennon's gaze that he only half glimpsed the final
+stumble of Slade's pony.</p>
+
+<p>Unable to keep his footing among the loose stones of the side slope, the
+exhausted animal plunged headlong. Slade managed to fling himself clear,
+but fell prone on the sharp-edged stones. His nose was skinned and one
+cheek gashed. He bounded up, fairly beside himself with rage, and began
+to kick the head of the fallen pony.</p>
+
+<p>The luckless beast struggled to rise, got half to his feet, screamed,
+and fell over. Something about his hindquarters had been wrenched or
+torn or broken. Slade swore furiously and jerked out his revolver to
+fire repeatedly into the body of the struggling beast. The fourth shot
+was through the head.</p>
+
+<p>At the sudden stilling of his victim's struggles, the trader's half
+insane rage cooled from its mad heat without losing any of its
+virulence. One of the Navahos had dismounted and run forward to stone
+the rattlesnake. Slade uttered a guttural hissing<a class="pagenum" name="page_170" id="page_170" title="170"></a> command. Instead of
+crushing the snake, the Indian teased it with the butt of his leather
+quirt.</p>
+
+<p>The reptile lashed out in a vicious stroke. An instant later the Navaho
+straightened up with his hand gripped about the snake's neck close
+behind the deadly triangular head. He gave no heed to its five-foot body
+writhing and coiling about his bare arm.</p>
+
+<p>Slade swung up into the path and looked from the new prisoner to Lennon
+with a glint in his pale eyes as malignant as the cold glare of the
+snake.</p>
+
+<p>"You're one of these here science sharps," he jeered. "We'll have you
+test out if a Gila monster bite fixes a man against rattler poison."</p>
+
+<p>"Rather a costly experiment for you if I prove not to be immune,"
+rallied Lennon. "You must have a keen interest in science so to risk
+your ten thousand."</p>
+
+<p>"Mebbe. It ain't much of a gamble, though. I stand to rake in twenty
+thousand if I win, and you ain't liable to let it go as far as the
+bite."</p>
+
+<p>"Twenty thousand?" questioned Lennon. "If you take Cochise in on this
+blackmailing scheme, you will have to divide the proceeds with him. Why
+not keep your bargain and earn your half of the bonus without this risk
+of losing all?"</p>
+
+<p>The trader's eyes narrowed in crafty calculation. He looked about at the
+snake and then down at the<a class="pagenum" name="page_171" id="page_171" title="171"></a> slaughtered horse. A sudden grin twisted his
+coarse mouth.</p>
+
+<p>"You're right, son," he chuckled. "Why split the twenty with a dam'
+Apache? Ain't time now to make the Hole 'fore dark, anyhow&mdash;and here's
+our rawhide. We'll try out that science experiment right here."</p>
+
+<p>He signed for the man with the snake to go on down into the ca&ntilde;on bed.
+The other Indians were already unsaddling the dead burro. Slade muttered
+a command to them in the thick indistinct intonations of their language.
+They at once started to flay the pony.</p>
+
+<p>Slade led Lennon's mount down where the snake holder had halted beside a
+sangre de dragon tree. One of the Indians followed and began to cut
+stakes from the tree. The sap of the tree was as red as blood and so
+astringent that when Slade dabbed a little on his cheek the wound at
+once ceased to bleed.</p>
+
+<p>The flayers soon came with the limp rawhide. Slade turned along the
+ca&ntilde;on to a spot where the rays of the low western sun still slanted down
+between the cliffs. He spoke again in the Navaho tongue. The Indians
+drove a stake firmly into the sand and tied the rattlesnake to it with a
+three-foot thong cut from the pony skin.</p>
+
+<p>Lennon was now pulled from his pony and stretched out, face down, just
+beyond reach of the snake. Regardless<a class="pagenum" name="page_172" id="page_172" title="172"></a> of the bandage on his hand, his
+arms were jerked out sideways and fastened with yard-long thongs to
+stakes driven at right angles to a point a foot or so in front of his
+head. From stakes set on the opposite side of the snake several lines
+cut from the raw pony hide were flung across past the snake and bound to
+Lennon's arms at the shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>By hauling on the lines from ahead, the Indians dragged Lennon an inch
+at a time toward the snake. He heard the sharp ominous rattle, and
+twisted his head up out of the sand to face the danger. The snake had
+coiled in front of the first stake. Though its venomous head was drawn
+back, the long curved fangs of the gaping jaws were less than three feet
+before Lennon's eyes.</p>
+
+<p>Even as he looked up, the reptile shot forward straight at his face. He
+involuntarily blinked. In the same instant a drop of fluid spattered
+against his closed eyelid and he heard a soft thud in the sand close
+before his chin. A puff of dust whiffed up into his nostrils. It clotted
+the dew-like drop of liquid on his eyelid.</p>
+
+<p>He opened his eyes in a wide stare. The head of the big rattlesnake lay
+flat on the sand, less than eight inches before his face. It had lashed
+out to the full length of the thong. Had the thong broken, or<a class="pagenum" name="page_173" id="page_173" title="173"></a> even had
+its loop about the reptile's neck slipped, the poison-dripping fangs
+must have lashed Lennon's face.</p>
+
+<p>Intense as were the heat and dryness of the ca&ntilde;on bed, Lennon suddenly
+felt his skin bathed in clammy sweat. For the first time in his life he
+knew terror. He glared into the cold, malignant eyes of the snake and
+saw death, certain and horrible. Panic seized him. He writhed and dug
+his fingers and boot toes into the sand in a frantic attempt to work
+himself back away from the hideous forward-straining reptile.</p>
+
+<p>The desperate struggle was utterly futile. The lines ahead had been
+stretched taut and knotted fast to their stakes. With his arms
+outstretched he could get very little purchase for thrusting himself
+back against the elastic pull of the rawhide ropes.</p>
+
+<p>But he was no coward. Realization of his helplessness brought him the
+resignation of despair. With resignation came a stilling of his wild
+panic. Frantic terror gave way to reasoning thought.</p>
+
+<p>Had his torturer been Cochise, there might have been no room for hope.
+But Slade was a white man. He might prefer gold to the lust of torture.
+The death of his victim would mean the loss of the ransom money.
+Lennon's tense nerves and rigid muscles relaxed. He allowed his
+upward&mdash;and backward-strained head to<a class="pagenum" name="page_174" id="page_174" title="174"></a> sink down until one cheek rested
+upon the hot sand. The change of position brought the top of his head
+very close to the snake. But he trusted to Slade's avarice to see that
+he escaped the fangs.</p>
+
+<p>Slade and the Indians had been gloating upon the struggles and terror of
+their victim. At Lennon's quieting down the trader burst into a derisive
+laugh.</p>
+
+<p>"Sort of wilted a'ready, huh?" he jeered. "Well, you're wise to take a
+rest while you still got time. Rawhide shrinks a whole lot when it gits
+to drying. Only question is how much slower the rattler's whang strap'll
+shorten up than your lines."</p>
+
+<p>For the first time a clear perception of the real devilishness of the
+torture flashed into Lennon's abnormally active mind. He was to lie
+outstretched through the long hours, without food or water, while the
+shrinking rawhide dragged him with frightful slowness closer and closer
+to those fangs of death.</p>
+
+<p>The thong of the snake also would be contracting. But it was much the
+shorter, and therefore would shrink less. The uncertainty of how fast
+and how much the different fastenings would contract doubled the
+torturing knowledge that the shrinking must inevitably pull him within
+reach of the snake.</p>
+
+<p>Physical agony would then soon be added to the mental anguish of dread.
+For, once the snake's<a class="pagenum" name="page_175" id="page_175" title="175"></a> horny snout grazed the top of his head, he would
+be forced to keep his head raised, on penalty of being pierced by the
+fangs if he should seek to rest.</p>
+
+<p>Then was when Slade no doubt felt certain that the overstrained nerves
+of his victim would give way. Lennon foresaw that if worse came to
+worst, he must agree to terms. After holding up his head as long as his
+strength lasted, he would be forced to yield. Why not yield at once and
+save all the torture?</p>
+
+<p>As he asked himself the question, a grateful shadow swept down the
+ca&ntilde;on. The sun was setting. Lennon reconsidered his half-formed
+decision. During the night the rawhide might continue to shrink a little
+in the dry air, but the darkness and chill would quiet the snake. It
+would lie still until sunrise. Time enough to yield when yielding should
+become inevitable!</p>
+
+<p>"If you'll pardon me, Slade," he said, "I believe I'll take a nap. Good
+night. Pleasant dreams."</p>
+
+<p>Slade started to curse but ended in a derisive laugh.</p>
+
+<p>"Think you'll four-flush, huh? Well, we'll see after sun-up."</p>
+
+<p>He turned his back on the prisoner and walked over to where the old
+Navaho was starting a fire for the inevitable flapjacks, bacon, and
+coffee. The thought of food nauseated Lennon. But he would have given a
+thousand dollars for one of the canteens of water.<a class="pagenum" name="page_176" id="page_176" title="176"></a> Regardless of a hiss
+from the half-strangled snake, he laid his other cheek over on the
+cooling sand.</p>
+
+<p>After a time Slade came with a blazing stick for torch to wish him a
+mocking good night. Lennon smiled back at him with a show of confidence.
+The trader cursed but soon went off to roll in his blankets. This proved
+Lennon's surmise that the real test would not come before morning.</p>
+
+<p>He lay for a long time wide-eyed, forcing himself to consider in detail
+every aspect of the situation and to calculate his chances. Beyond
+question, Slade intended to murder him. But there was first the ransom
+money to be secured. Would he wait for it, as in the case of the cowman
+whom Elsie had told about? Or might he not fall into a rage and destroy
+his victim as he had killed the pony?</p>
+
+<p>If he could keep his temper, the probabilities were that he would
+prolong the torture until he had gained his end. After that might come a
+short respite for the victim.</p>
+
+<p>Lennon next recalled all he knew about snakes and their poison glands.
+After that he closed his eyes and relaxed both mentally and physically.
+The cool of nightfall had somewhat eased his thirst and the ache from
+the strain of the rawhide lines on his shoulders. He dozed off to
+sleep.<a class="pagenum" name="page_177" id="page_177" title="177"></a></p>
+
+<p>He was so far spent and his last thought so calm that he slept soundly
+all night. But the chill damp of dewfall roused him at the first graying
+of dawn. To the shivering of his cramped body from the cold was soon
+added a shudder of fear and loathing. Against his head, just above the
+forehead, was pressed a cold hard object&mdash;the snout of the rattlesnake.</p>
+
+<p>But the reptile was too torpid from the cold to strike. After a time the
+slight moistening of the rawhide by the dew enabled Lennon to force
+himself back nearly an inch. This was at sunrise. Slade came to gloat at
+his struggle.</p>
+
+<p>"Go it," he mocked. "Wiggle while you can. Both them lines and the
+rattler'll git busy soon's the sun hets up a bit. Excuse me while I
+feed. I'll git back in time for the fun."</p>
+
+<p>The breakfast fire was beside a patch of thorn scrub several yards away.
+Lennon watched until his enemy had sat down on the sand opposite the
+Navahos. He then lifted his head.</p>
+
+<p>The first rays of the sun had begun to warm the snake. At Lennon's
+movement it stirred sluggishly. The dull eyes began to brighten with the
+glare of returning life and anger. Lennon dropped his head forward.</p>
+
+<p>Enraged by the feigned attack, the snake struck.<a class="pagenum" name="page_178" id="page_178" title="178"></a> The long fangs came so
+near their mark that Lennon felt them or the snout pass through his
+hair. Spurts of venom from the overcharged poison glands sprayed in
+against his scalp.</p>
+
+<p>For the second time since being pegged out Lennon felt his skin go
+clammy with cold sweat. His flesh crept with horror. Death had grazed
+him by a fraction of an inch. Another stroke might break or loosen the
+snake's bond. Yet he nerved himself again and shook his head from side
+to side.</p>
+
+<p>The movement roused the snake to fury. It lashed out in stroke after
+stroke. But the very excess of the reptile's anger quickly exhausted its
+strength. The hideous head flattened down on the sand.</p>
+
+<p>A sideward glance told Lennon that his deadly play had not been heeded
+by Slade and the Navahos. But he knew he had no time to spare. He filled
+his parched mouth with sand and raised his head. The snake did not move.</p>
+
+<p>Lennon blew sand into the glaring eyes of the rattler. The jaws gaped
+angrily. He blew all the remaining sand in between the high-curved
+fangs. The snake struck viciously and sank down, inert. A film closed
+over the sand-filled eyes.</p>
+
+<p>By pulling himself forward, Lennon gained a little relaxing of the
+thongs that held his arms outstretched.<a class="pagenum" name="page_179" id="page_179" title="179"></a> He drew up his knees and flung
+his body up and forward. From a height of several inches his breast came
+down squarely upon the head of the snake, with all the weight of his
+body in the blow.</p>
+
+<p>When Slade rushed cursing from the fire, Lennon lay in what appeared to
+be a swoon, with the body of the rattlesnake writhing about his head. At
+the angry bellow of the trader the Indians came running to slash
+Lennon's bonds and jerk him away from the snake.</p>
+
+<p>Slade ripped out an astounded oath.</p>
+
+<p>"He's beaten the game!" he cried.</p>
+
+<p>The head of the reptile had been crushed.</p>
+
+<hr class="major" />
+<div style="margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 1em">
+<a class="pagenum" name="page_180" id="page_180" title="180"></a>
+<a name="THE_ATTACK_4621" id="THE_ATTACK_4621"></a>
+<h2>CHAPTER XVIII</h2>
+<h3>THE ATTACK</h3>
+</div>
+
+<p>The trader possibly may have been overcome with admiration for his
+victim's courage. More probably he was moved by the need to keep him
+alive for further torture. He signed one of the Navahos to use his
+canteen. Lennon had feigned unconsciousness in the hope of this result.</p>
+
+<p>He permitted a good quart of water to trickle down his parched throat
+before he showed signs of reviving. Even after he thought best to feign
+stupor no longer he made a show of great weakness. When jerked to his
+feet by the Indians, he tottered and crumpled down again. Slade swore,
+but ordered food and coffee brought.</p>
+
+<p>Lennon's tongue was still too swollen for him to eat much of the greasy
+solids. The strong coffee, however, both stimulated him and completed
+the quenching of his thirst. The old Navaho held the spout of the big
+tin coffee pot to his lips and poured until the last drop of muddy black
+fluid drained from the grounds.<a class="pagenum" name="page_181" id="page_181" title="181"></a></p>
+
+<p>The ponies were saddled, and Lennon was lifted upon his mount none too
+gently. He swayed in the saddle and clutched the horn. Slade made a sign
+for the prisoner's hands to be left unbound. During the ride up the
+ca&ntilde;on Lennon continued to feign weakness, lurching and swaying in the
+saddle.</p>
+
+<p>Slade had taken the pinto pony of the youngest Navaho, who rode double
+with one of the other men. The five miles to the cliff break in the
+ca&ntilde;on bed, down which they had been lowered in the basket, was covered
+at a lope.</p>
+
+<p>As the party came galloping to the under ledges Slade bellowed a
+deep-chested hail that boomed in loud reverberations upon the lofty
+precipices of the ca&ntilde;on sides. But no answering cry came down from the
+cliff, nor was there any sign of the hoist cage basket.</p>
+
+<p>The old Navaho raised a shrill quavering wail that carried like the howl
+of a coyote. Again the reverberating echoes ran up the precipices and
+slowly died out far above, and again no response came from the top of
+the cross barrier.</p>
+
+<p>"The lazy skunks!" growled Slade. "Off watch, huh? Keep me waiting, will
+they? I'll tan their dirty hides for 'em."</p>
+
+<p>He rode down ca&ntilde;on a few yards and emptied his<a class="pagenum" name="page_182" id="page_182" title="182"></a> revolver into the air,
+firing the shots in couples. This time the echoes had not died out
+skyward before a dark face with cloth-bound forehead peered down from
+the brink of the cross cliff. Slade roared up an angry command&mdash;and
+abruptly fell silent.</p>
+
+<p>The downlooker was making some quick gestures. Slade flung up his hand
+in an answering gesture. The signaller disappeared. Slade shouted an
+order to the best mounted of his men. The Navaho wheeled his pony and
+raced away down ca&ntilde;on on the back trail.</p>
+
+<p>The basket cage of the lift swung out over the cliff brink. It began to
+lower. Regardless of hoof marks, Slade spurred his pony up the foot
+ledges. Lennon followed with the others.</p>
+
+<p>A glance at the trader's face had told him danger was toward.</p>
+
+<p>Lennon could think of but two explanations. Either a band of vengeful
+cattlemen had discovered and attacked the rustlers' secret stronghold,
+or Cochise had returned and taken advantage of Slade's absence to carry
+out his designs against Elsie.</p>
+
+<p>The man sent back by Slade evidently was riding to summon reinforcements
+of Navahos from the pueblo. Whether they were to be used against the
+Apaches or to aid them against an outside posse was the question.<a class="pagenum" name="page_183" id="page_183" title="183"></a> If
+the first were the case, Lennon felt that he must be armed to fight.</p>
+
+<p>The thought of either Elsie or Carmena in the clutches of Cochise filled
+him with dread and horror. The suspense of the uncertainty was
+unbearable. He forced his pony up beside the trader's pinto while the
+basket cage was yet several feet overhead.</p>
+
+<p>"See here, Slade," he said, "you've given me a rough deal. But we're
+both white men. We can't permit Cochise to have Farley's girls. That is
+unthinkable. I'll agree to forget the snake. Give me my rifle and we'll
+go through with our bargain."</p>
+
+<p>"Like hell we will!" growled the trader. "Minute I turned my back you'd
+pot me."</p>
+
+<p>"No," pledged Lennon. "I give you my word."</p>
+
+<p>Slade continued to scowl with surly suspicion.</p>
+
+<p>"Guess we'll take a look first. Git a move on you. Pile in. No time to
+hoist the hosses."</p>
+
+<p>He swung from his saddle, with Lennon's rifle in one hand and his own in
+the other. Both cartridge belts were buckled about his massive body. He
+sprang into the wicker cage of the lift as it bumped upon the ledge.
+Lennon and the three Navahos crowded in after him.</p>
+
+<p>The Indian above peered over the cliff brink. At a signal from the
+Navaho he again vanished. The hoist rope tautened. With a creak, the
+cage scraped<a class="pagenum" name="page_184" id="page_184" title="184"></a> on the ledge and began to swing up the cliff face above
+the abandoned horses.</p>
+
+<p>To Lennon the ascent seemed maddeningly slow. The Navahos leaned against
+the wicker sides of the cage in stolid silence, their faces more than
+ever like bronze images. None cast a glance upward. But Slade could not
+hide his mingled uneasiness and anger.</p>
+
+<p>"Didn't think the young devil had the gall," he muttered. "Acting like
+he'd been bit by a hydrophoby skunk. Nothing meaner 'n a mad wolf. I'd
+'a' give him Carmena quick enough.... Learn her not to pass up a white
+man agin when she had her chance. But the young gal&mdash;&mdash; Blast Cochise.
+When I told him flat&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>The cage crept up over the brink of the cliff. One of the Navahos leaped
+high to grasp the guy rope of the crane. His pull swung crane and cage
+around toward the horse windlass. The moment the occupants jumped from
+the cage the Navaho allowed the crane to swing out again over the cliff
+edge. The pony that was hitched to the bar of the windlass started to
+lower the cage by reversing at a jog trot.</p>
+
+<p>Though the Indian with the pony wore an Apache head cloth, Lennon
+recognized his ugly young face at the first clear view. He was Pete, the
+Navaho who had been with the Apaches under the cliff house on the<a class="pagenum" name="page_185" id="page_185" title="185"></a> day
+that Cochise had trapped Lennon and Carmena. Slade's manner toward him
+was that of a half-distrustful master. He questioned him hastily in
+English.</p>
+
+<p>Pete answered haltingly, with frequent lapses into the gutturals and
+hissings of his native tongue. His eyes glittered with fierce
+excitement. Lennon gathered that Cochise and his men were in the midst
+of an attack on the cliff house. This would seem to prove that the girls
+were still safe&mdash;and would remain safe. How could the Apaches hope to
+scale the sheer cliff without aid from above?</p>
+
+<p>But Slade's scowl showed that the situation by no means pleased him. He
+mounted Pete's pony and rushed the party up to the head of the ca&ntilde;on.
+Instead of preparing to hold this position until the arrival of his
+reinforcements, he kept on up the valley at a jog trot. Once clear of
+the ca&ntilde;on, Lennon could make out the sound of distant shots echoing down
+the valley along the cliffs.</p>
+
+<p>Within the first half mile the rescuers came upon a drove of big
+American horses. Every one showed signs of cruel driving over rocks and
+through thornscrub and cactus. When they scented the Navahos they
+snorted with terror, and all but two managed to bolt clear.</p>
+
+<p>In a trice the Indians had each of the frightened pair<a class="pagenum" name="page_186" id="page_186" title="186"></a> bridled with a
+leather thong fast about the lower jaw. Pete mounted the better animal.
+Slade drew rein beside the other horse and glowered at Lennon.</p>
+
+<p>"How about it?" he demanded. "You said you'd back me up. How do I know I
+can count on you not knifing me?"</p>
+
+<p>"You have my word," replied Lennon, striving hard to repress his
+eagerness.</p>
+
+<p>The irregular firing up the valley became more rapid. Slade scowled and
+thrust out Lennon's high-power rifle.</p>
+
+<p>"It's a go&mdash;that new deal. Take your belt, too. Guess I can count on you
+till Cochise is made a good Indian."</p>
+
+<p>With the white men and Pete mounted and the unmounted Navahos each
+gripping the mane of a horse, the party rushed up the valley at
+redoubled speed. Midway Slade angled down into the bed of an arroyo that
+curved around on the right of the corral and up to the mouth of Hell
+Ca&ntilde;on. Though the horses were kept at a fast trot, the Navahos ran along
+beside them, seemingly without effort.</p>
+
+<p>As the head of the valley was neared, the irregular crackling roar of
+the rifle shots abruptly ceased. Lennon's heart skipped a beat. The
+sudden hush might mean that Cochise had given up his attack on<a class="pagenum" name="page_187" id="page_187" title="187"></a> the
+cliff house. On the other hand, it might be due to an overwhelming of
+the defense.</p>
+
+<p>Slade sent one of his men springing up the side of the arroyo. The
+Navaho glanced over the edge of the bank toward the cliff house and
+dashed obliquely back into the dry channel, his hand twisting in swift
+signs. Slade held on up the arroyo. Near the mouth of Hell Ca&ntilde;on he
+flung himself off and motioned Lennon to follow.</p>
+
+<p>The old Navaho led the way up the side of the reservoir, with Pete a
+close second. Near the top the leaders flattened down to crawl over the
+round of the ancient dam. The others crept after them. A muttered
+command from Slade had kept Lennon in the rear. But a sudden fresh
+outburst of shots cut short his frightful suspense. The Apaches had
+neither abandoned their attack nor had they yet captured the cliff
+house.</p>
+
+<p>Elation, mingled with renewed fear for the girls, sent Lennon scrambling
+up beside the leaders. He came to where they were peering over the crest
+of the dam. Slade growled a command for the fool tenderfoot to get down
+out of sight. But after Lennon's first look across the top of the
+embankment main force would have been required to drag him back.</p>
+
+<p>He had already guessed that Pete had stolen away<a class="pagenum" name="page_188" id="page_188" title="188"></a> down into the lower
+ca&ntilde;on, unknown to the Apaches. The only other explanation was that the
+Navaho had been posted as guard at the cross cliff. This was improbable,
+as the only need for watchers was to help in-comers up the otherwise
+impassable barrier. That Pete had not been missed was evident from the
+failure of the Apaches to oppose the rush of the rescuers up the valley.</p>
+
+<p>The mystery of how Cochise hoped to take the cliff house became clear to
+Lennon at the first glance. The ancient stronghold was less than half a
+mile away from the reservoir. In the crystal-clear air Lennon made out a
+crooked line of poles and what appeared to be three or four sacks of
+corn lying upon the cliff foot. Above these objects eight or nine
+Apaches were raising a long ladder of spliced poles against the face of
+the rock wall. The fallen poles were the shattered remains of a first
+ladder that had collapsed.</p>
+
+<p>The ladder raisers were protected in their work by the incessant
+shooting of the other members of the band. From a crescent of positions
+well out in the valley the riflemen poured a cross-fire of bullets into
+all the openings of the cliff house. The Indian at the nearest end of
+the crescent lay not more than a hundred yards beyond the far side of
+the reservoir.</p>
+
+<p>Even as Lennon grasped the plan of attack, the<a class="pagenum" name="page_189" id="page_189" title="189"></a> heavy-butted ladder came
+to an upright position directly under the main doorway of the cliff
+house. On the instant a pair of nimble Apaches scrambled to the top,
+dragging with them a shorter ladder. They hoisted it above them and
+spliced its foot to the head of the main one.</p>
+
+<p>No less swiftly, another ladder was passed up and lashed to the top of
+the second. The new top reached within two yards of the brink of the
+forty-foot cliff. A third Apache started to carry up a short ladder.
+After he passed the middle of the ascent, his weight, added to that of
+the men above, made the much-spliced main ladder bow and sway.</p>
+
+<p>One of the upper men crawled through the rungs to wedge himself between
+the top and the cliff. The third man handed up the short ladder and
+began to creep down again. The second topman gingerly hoisted the last
+link in the shaky line of ascent.</p>
+
+<p>The Apaches lying out from the cliff concentrated their fire on the
+opening above the ladder. For any one in the cliff house to have
+ventured into the doorway would have meant certain death.</p>
+
+<p>Protected by the storm of bullets, the topmost Apache held up the last
+ladder while his mate against the cliff spliced it fast. The top rung
+stood level with the sill of the doorway.<a class="pagenum" name="page_190" id="page_190" title="190"></a></p>
+
+<p>The third man had stopped his descent ten or fifteen feet below. As soon
+as the splicing was secure, the first man drew something from the belt
+of his breech-clout and started up the last rungs.</p>
+
+<p>Lennon could restrain himself no longer. He thrust his rifle forward to
+take aim. From beside him a big hairy red hand reached out to clutch the
+barrel. Slade's deep voice growled a command:</p>
+
+<p>"Wait! If they ain't got Carmena a'ready&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"But if once he gets in!" cried Lennon. "He must have a revolver!"</p>
+
+<p>"Knife too," added Slade. "Wait, though. We'll all put our sights on
+him. But don't shoot unless he gits half through the door."</p>
+
+<p>A glance at the Navahos showed Lennon that they were already taking aim.
+The trader clearly had some good reason for waiting. Lennon nodded.</p>
+
+<p>"Very well," he agreed.</p>
+
+<p>Slade drew back his hand. As Lennon again took aim he saw the first of
+the Apache attackers thrust up an arm to grasp the corner of the sill
+stone. The man paused while the riflemen poured an extra violent volley
+of bullets into the doorway. He then made a quick gesture.</p>
+
+<p>The shots continued, but they were aimed high. Otherwise the attacker
+must have been struck as he<a class="pagenum" name="page_191" id="page_191" title="191"></a> flung himself up before the opening. The
+catlike movement brought him head and shoulders above the sill. He
+twisted forward to writhe into the doorway. Lennon's finger started to
+crook against the trigger of his rifle. But he did not fire.</p>
+
+<p>Instead of thrusting forward, the Apache straightened upright with
+convulsive suddenness. His out-clutching arms beat the empty air. He
+toppled sideways and plunged headlong.</p>
+
+<p>"Through the brain!" chuckled Slade. "No, they ain't got Carmena&mdash;yet."</p>
+
+<hr class="major" />
+<div style="margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 1em">
+<a class="pagenum" name="page_192" id="page_192" title="192"></a>
+<a name="OUT_OF_THE_FRYING_PANmdashmdash_4907" id="OUT_OF_THE_FRYING_PANmdashmdash_4907"></a>
+<h2>CHAPTER XIX</h2>
+<h3>OUT OF THE FRYING PAN&mdash;&mdash;</h3>
+</div>
+
+<p>Before the falling Apache smashed down upon the cliff foot the man who
+had last climbed the long ladder made an upward rush. He was within half
+a dozen rungs of the top when a large round object rolled out of the
+doorway. With the quickness of a puma he swung off to one side.</p>
+
+<p>The big missile grazed past the dodger. Three or four yards farther down
+it crashed upon the ladder. All the mid section of the wobbly structure
+was shattered to flinders. The lower part slithered sideways along the
+cliff face, the upper part and the two climbers plunged downward.</p>
+
+<p>The cliffs rang with the yells of the ladder holders as they leaped
+away. They bounded like startled deer. But one was struck in the back by
+the splintered end of a falling ladder pole. He pitched on his face,
+rolled over, and lay as still as the fallen climbers.</p>
+
+<p>"Four!" exultantly exclaimed Slade. "Four&mdash;done up by a keg of water.
+And the three first"&mdash;Lennon had thought them sacks of corn at the foot<a class="pagenum" name="page_193" id="page_193" title="193"></a>
+of the ladder&mdash;"seven, and Pete with us&mdash;leaves less 'n twenty of 'em,
+counting Cochise. And mebbe Carmena has potted one or two more out in
+the scrub."</p>
+
+<p>"You'll attack?" asked Lennon.</p>
+
+<p>"Sure. No chance of holding Cochise after him losing them men. The
+others would turn on him like mad coyotes if he backed up. Just hold
+your hosses a bit, though, till I tell you."</p>
+
+<p>Lennon impatiently glanced away from his rifle sights. For the first
+time he saw that the Navahos were no longer alongside him. Pete was
+creeping aslant the dam toward the cliffs. The three others had circled
+to the left and were disappearing into the irrigation canal where it
+curved down valley below the reservoir.</p>
+
+<p>"Got to flush them snakes in the grass," explained Slade. "Pick your
+mark and wait. I'll start off with this here devil across the tank."</p>
+
+<p>The scattered ladder raisers were bunching again close under the cliff,
+to one side of the cliff house openings. One of them made signs to the
+outlying riflemen. The others began to work on the broken ladders. The
+firing had almost ceased.</p>
+
+<p>Slade moved a few yards along the dam. Lennon drew back his rifle,
+looked carefully at the lock and magazine, and took up a position from
+which he could<a class="pagenum" name="page_194" id="page_194" title="194"></a> fire with the greatest rapidity. He had been ready only
+a few minutes when from the irrigation canal, down the valley behind the
+Apache riflemen, came the reports of three shots, fired in rapid
+succession.</p>
+
+<p>A fourth shot roared from Slade's rifle. Lennon began to fire as fast as
+he could take aim. His mark was the group of Apaches on the cliff foot.
+One fell and lay motionless. Another tumbled over, but rebounded to join
+in the dash of his companions down the slope.</p>
+
+<p>The bare ledges of the cliff foot offered no shelter. The nearest cover
+was the ruined Farley ranch hut, a hundred yards or more away, in the
+direction of the reservoir. But as the Apaches raced for the refuge
+first one of their leaders and then another pitched to the ground.</p>
+
+<p>The others swerved and went flying out toward the irrigation canal. A
+burst of shots from the canal again forced them to swerve. They fled
+toward a patch of rocks and cactus in the direction of Devil's Chute.
+Only four reached the cover.</p>
+
+<p>As Lennon had emptied his magazine during the first few seconds, he knew
+that he could not have shot more than one of the fugitives. The three
+Navahos had spread out along the canal, and Pete had hidden at the
+ruined hut. They had the Apaches under fire<a class="pagenum" name="page_195" id="page_195" title="195"></a> from flank and rear. Slade
+had dodged down to run around the head of the reservoir and leap the
+inlet canal.</p>
+
+<p>The thwack and screech of a glanced bullet that flicked a spurt of
+gravel into Lennon's face, warned him that the Navahos were not doing
+all the firing. Though so many of the Apaches had been killed in the
+surprise of the counter attack, the survivors of the band still
+outnumbered the rescuers two or three to one.</p>
+
+<p>Lennon knew enough to creep back under the round of the dam. Once safe
+below the crest, he sprinted after Slade at top speed. He was under
+cover until he leaped the inlet canal and skirted along the natural rock
+rim on the far side of the reservoir.</p>
+
+<p>The problem now was to find a sheltered way from the brink of the rim
+over and down into the Farleys' kitchen garden. Slade had somehow made
+the crossing. He was safe in a position of vantage at the goat pens.</p>
+
+<p>Before Lennon could locate the sheltered line of descent he noticed that
+some of the shots sounded from farther down the valley. His first
+thought was that more Apaches were coming to join in the fight. Slade's
+reinforcements from the pueblo could not be expected before late in the
+day.<a class="pagenum" name="page_196" id="page_196" title="196"></a></p>
+
+<p>For a moment the situation appeared truly desperate. The odds were
+already heavy enough, without the addition of more Apaches. But a
+cautious peep over the rock rim disclosed to Lennon the happy truth.
+Out-man&oelig;uvred and cut off from the best cover, the Apaches were
+beginning to fall back down the valley.</p>
+
+<p>By close scrutiny, Lennon made out a brown form wriggling away behind a
+clump of cactus that shut off the view of Slade and the Navahos. At the
+second bullet from the high-power rifle the creeping Apache rolled over.
+There was no need for a third shot.</p>
+
+<p>After this hit Lennon saw not the slightest sign of the retreating band.
+But he continued to rake the rocks and cactus clumps with frequent
+shots, while the Navahos in the ditch followed along the flank of their
+half-exposed enemies.</p>
+
+<p>Lennon became aware that shots were being fired from the cliff house.
+Soon afterward he saw Slade rush boldly along the cliff foot. The
+Apaches were too intent upon flight to fire at the now distant enemies
+in their rear. One glance at the trader sent Lennon bounding up over the
+rim of rock and down the slope.</p>
+
+<p>The rope ladder dropped from the cliff house doorway. By the time Lennon
+reached the tumbledown<a class="pagenum" name="page_197" id="page_197" title="197"></a> ranch hut Slade was at the top of the ladder and
+Pete was beginning to climb. Lennon dashed on along the cliff foot. He
+gave no heed to the dead Apaches that lay huddled or sprawled amidst the
+wreckage of the wooden ladder poles and rungs. At the foot of the rope
+ladder he thrust his rifle through the back of his belt and swung up as
+fast as he could climb.</p>
+
+<p>Before he had ascended twenty feet a half-spent bullet thudded against
+the cliff face at his elbow. Another grazed his side. At least one of
+the distant Apaches had turned about and was making uncomfortably close
+shots at the climber. Lennon stopped short. A bullet struck less than a
+span above his head. He hurried on up by irregular jerks and dashes.</p>
+
+<p>More bullets struck around him. One seared his thigh. Owing, however,
+either to sheer good fortune or to his jerky ascent, he reached the top
+of the ladder without a serious wound.</p>
+
+<p>Pete lay flattened out in the doorway behind a sack of corn. He was
+firing down the valley. Lennon flung himself in past the young Navaho.
+Safe within the cliff house, he reeled against the massive wall and
+stood panting for breath.</p>
+
+<p>From the doorway of the living room came a happy cry. Elsie darted out
+to fling her arms about Lennon.<a class="pagenum" name="page_198" id="page_198" title="198"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Oh! oh! oh! You did get up, Jack&mdash;you did!" she cried. "Mena was
+dreadfully afraid for you. The 'Paches have killed one of Slade's
+punchers and are chasing the others back."</p>
+
+<p>Lennon kissed the quivering girl and thrust her from him to grasp his
+rifle.</p>
+
+<p>"We're safe now, Blossom. But I must help to cover the retreat of our
+men."</p>
+
+<p>He ran to the crane-hoist opening. Slade was crouched behind a barricade
+of corn-filled sacks, hotly blazing away down the valley. Lennon hurried
+on into the living room.</p>
+
+<p>Beside the nearest outer window Farley lay upon a pile of rugs very
+white and still. His neck and right leg were swathed in bandages. The
+rifle under the window showed that the broken drunkard had not lacked
+courage to join in the defense of his home.</p>
+
+<p>Carmena stood at the next window, too intent upon her firing to heed her
+exposed position. A bullet had grazed the side of her head. At sight of
+the blood trickling down on her cheek Lennon felt an almost irresistible
+impulse to run over and draw her out of danger.</p>
+
+<p>But the angle of the girl's rifle barrel told him that the fight was
+rapidly coming back up the valley. He sprang to Farley's window. As he
+looked down, the<a class="pagenum" name="page_199" id="page_199" title="199"></a> two Navahos broke from the last scant cover and came
+leaping and zigzagging up toward the cliff foot.</p>
+
+<p>Lennon thrust out his rifle and began to pump shots at the scrub and
+cactus clumps above which rose thin puffs of semi-smokeless powder. A
+bullet nipped the point of his shoulder. He jumped back to refill his
+magazine. Before he could again empty it, another bullet seared across
+the top of his head. He reeled and fell senseless.</p>
+
+<p>When he recovered consciousness he was first aware of the face of
+Carmena. In his first daze, he fancied that he was out on the far side
+of the Basin, lying upon the sand under the cliff where the Gila monster
+had bitten his hand. The girl's eyes were clouded with the same look of
+profound concern that he had then seen in their shadowy depths.</p>
+
+<p>But as his own gaze cleared he noticed two marked differences in her
+appearance. One of her pale cheeks was streaked with crimson, and the
+dark eyes were wide not with dread alone. They gazed down at him heavy
+with the anguish of mingled grief and yearning. He knew that he was
+looking into the girl's inmost heart.</p>
+
+<p>A hand was thrust between their faces&mdash;a little dimpled hand that held a
+bowl of red liquid. Elsie's voice quavered urgently:<a class="pagenum" name="page_200" id="page_200" title="200"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Let me fix your hurt with the dragon sap, Mena. He's alive again."</p>
+
+<p>Carmena's long lashes drooped upon her white cheeks. She drew back.
+Lennon turned aside his violently aching head. Across the living room he
+saw Pete cauterizing a bullet wound on the bare arm of a fellow Navaho
+with the astringent red sap of the sangre de dragon tree.</p>
+
+<p>Elsie noticed Lennon's roving look of inquiry.</p>
+
+<p>"They shot the other one on the ladder," she explained. "But Slade isn't
+hurt, and he hauled the ladder up. Cochise can't get us now."</p>
+
+<p>"Not now," whispered Carmena. "But if Slade&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Her low-pitched voice broke and hushed to a frightened silence.</p>
+
+<p>Slade swaggered in from the anteroom and stood grinning as if very well
+satisfied with what he saw.</p>
+
+<hr class="major" />
+<div style="margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 1em">
+<a class="pagenum" name="page_201" id="page_201" title="201"></a>
+<a name="INTO_THE_FIRE_5125" id="INTO_THE_FIRE_5125"></a>
+<h2>CHAPTER XX</h2>
+<h3>INTO THE FIRE</h3>
+</div>
+
+<p>Carmena rallied and smiled up at the big trader with a show of trustful
+confidence. "I knew you'd keep your part of the deal, Mr. Slade," she
+said. "You've fought off Cochise and saved us, and there's a good big
+hole in his bunch. All we need do now is wait for your punchers to come
+in and wipe out the rest."</p>
+
+<p>"Sure!" agreed Slade. "I done it. Now I got a dead cinch all 'round."</p>
+
+<p>He drew his revolver and twirled the cylinder as if to make certain that
+it had been fully reloaded.</p>
+
+<p>"Yep&mdash;a dead cinch. With me up here, Cochise won't try no more pole
+ladders. You and my Cookie Gal better hustle up some feed. Ain't had
+nothing but bacon and flapjacks since I left."</p>
+
+<p>Elsie fluttered across to light her charcoal brazier. But Carmena
+lingered beside Lennon.</p>
+
+<p>"Huh," muttered Slade. "Where'd sonny boy git hit? Ain't plunked bad, is
+he?"<a class="pagenum" name="page_202" id="page_202" title="202"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no. I&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"No, not fatal," Carmena broke in on Lennon's disclaimer of serious
+injury. She gave Slade a significant side glance.</p>
+
+<p>"No, I'm sure it won't prove fatal&mdash;just cut the bone a bit. Jack'll get
+over it all right if he keeps perfectly quiet."</p>
+
+<p>Slade's big face took on a look of solemn concern.</p>
+
+<p>"Quiet&mdash;huh? Can't let him take no risks. He's worth ten thousand to me.
+Here, you, Pete&mdash;and you&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>A guttural command in Navaho and a careless wave of the revolver brought
+Pete and his wounded but still active companion hurrying forward.</p>
+
+<p>Carmena sprang up and held out her arms to the trader. Lennon failed to
+see her face. He saw only how Slade swept his left arm about the girl
+and swung her around in a bearlike embrace. Lennon sought to leap up.
+The Navahos seized him on either side and forced him down again.</p>
+
+<p>He caught a glimpse of Carmena futilely clutching for Slade's throat.
+The big man burst into a bellow of contemptuous laughter and flung her
+from him.</p>
+
+<p>"Bah!" he jeered. "What you bucking about? Don't figger I want <i>you</i> any
+more, do you?"<a class="pagenum" name="page_203" id="page_203" title="203"></a></p>
+
+<p>"No&mdash;no, of course not. I&mdash;&mdash; But Jack's head&mdash;If you hogtie him&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Got to be kept quiet, ain't he? You said it yourself. What you hanging
+fire for, Pete?"</p>
+
+<p>The heavy revolver swung around in another seemingly careless gesture.
+Pete and the wounded Navaho hogtied Lennon with expert quickness.</p>
+
+<p>Slade shifted around to nudge Farley in the ribs with the toe of his
+cowhide boot. The badly wounded man stirred and opened his haggard eyes
+to blink at the disturber.</p>
+
+<p>"Has&mdash;Cochise&mdash;&mdash; What! you?" he murmured. "You have run off the devils?
+Girls safe?"</p>
+
+<p>"You bet they're safe, Dad. How you feeling? Looks like they plugged you
+pretty bad."</p>
+
+<p>"Very&mdash;very bad," gasped Farley. "I&mdash;do not expect to&mdash;survive."</p>
+
+<p>"Aw, keep a stiff upper lip. You'll pull through."</p>
+
+<p>Farley's discoloured eyelids quivered and drooped. Slade had been
+peering sideways at the rigidly posed Carmena. He laughed
+good-humouredly, put up his revolver, and grinned toward Elsie.</p>
+
+<p>"I smell grub&mdash;real grub. Carmena, you git over to the far window and
+keep a lookout while I feed up. Just leave your gun lie. We don't want
+to rile up Cochise till we git him cornered."<a class="pagenum" name="page_204" id="page_204" title="204"></a></p>
+
+<p>The girl looked at Lennon and hesitated. Slade rested his hand on his
+hip. She hurried off to the window toward which he had pointed.</p>
+
+<p>Seated alone at the table, the trader feasted upon the food set before
+him by Elsie. While he gormandized he tormented the shrinking girl with
+his coarse gallantry. When at last his gluttonous appetite was satisfied
+he called for another pie. Elsie obediently brought the last of her
+baking and bent over the corner of the table to set it before him.</p>
+
+<p>With the quickness of a striking grizzly, Slade lunged forward and
+clutched her soft round arm. At her startled shriek he wrenched his
+massive body half around and menaced everyone in the room with a
+sweeping wave of his revolver.</p>
+
+<p>Lennon had been bound too tightly to do more than writhe. Pete and his
+fellow Navaho stood as if turned to stone. But Farley had twisted about
+on the floor, and Carmena was springing away from her outlook window
+toward the table. The revolver barrel paused in line with her
+forward-rushing figure.</p>
+
+<p>"Stop!" bellowed Slade.</p>
+
+<p>The savage roar threatened instant death. Carmena came to a sudden halt.
+She stood panting and quivering, her face white, her eyes dilated with
+horror.<a class="pagenum" name="page_205" id="page_205" title="205"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Huh! Thought you'd rush me, did you?" growled the trader. "You didn't
+stop any too soon to save your bacon, you she-wildcat. Stand still now,
+or you'll git gentled with a club."</p>
+
+<p>"But&mdash;but, Mr. Slade&mdash;&mdash;" gasped the horror-stricken girl.
+"Blossom&mdash;she's only a child. She's so young and&mdash;and innocent! Oh,
+won't you&mdash;won't you please take me instead?"</p>
+
+<p>"You?" sneered the trader. "Jealous, are you? Well, you're too late now.
+Wouldn't take me when you had the chance. Now I wouldn't have you even
+if I couldn't git her."</p>
+
+<p>"But she&mdash;little Blossom! Oh, you can't&mdash;you can't be so heartless! You
+promised to wait&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Wait?" Slade jerked the half-fainting Elsie around the corner of the
+table.</p>
+
+<p>"Ain't I waited all this time? This is same as Injun country, and squaws
+mate-up young. I'm going to take my Cookie Gal now. Sabe? Injun marriage
+is good enough 'round these parts for any woman, white or red."</p>
+
+<p>"You&mdash;beast!" cried Carmena, and she flung herself at him in a fury of
+despair.</p>
+
+<p>A few seconds before he would have shot her down. Now, instead of
+firing, he released his hold on Elsie's arm and thrust out to meet the
+frantic rush of her<a class="pagenum" name="page_206" id="page_206" title="206"></a> foster-sister. The big red hand clutched fast on
+Carmena's throat and held her off at arm's length. Contemptuously
+heedless of her frenzied struggles, he fixed a hard stare on Pete.</p>
+
+<p>"You," he ordered, "git a hustle on. Rope this hellcat, pronto."</p>
+
+<p>Though Pete's hesitancy was almost imperceptible, Slade's revolver swung
+up toward him. The young Navaho sprang forward, jabbering to his fellow
+tribesman. As the two seized and started to bind Carmena, Slade grinned
+at her, derisively.</p>
+
+<p>"Guess you wish you hadn't," he jeered. "I'll learn you who's boss. How'll
+you like being let down to Cochise, huh?"</p>
+
+<p>The danger to Elsie had horrified and enraged Lennon no less than
+Carmena. He had been writhing in his rawhide bonds, in a furious
+struggle to break loose. Now he lay exhausted and hopeless, his wrists
+and ankles cut and bleeding from the cruelly tight thongs. Even the
+hideous threat against Carmena could not goad his flaccid muscles to
+renewed efforts.</p>
+
+<p>Behind him he heard a peculiar wheezing. He twisted his head about to
+look. Farley was creeping along the floor. As Lennon caught sight of
+him, the desperately wounded man clutched his rifle and straightened up
+on his knees. His ghastly face was<a class="pagenum" name="page_207" id="page_207" title="207"></a> blotched with angry purple. His
+sunken eyes flamed with vengeful fire. He raised the muzzle of the rifle
+toward Slade with the last flare of his failing strength.</p>
+
+<p>"You scoundrel!" he shrilled. "Harm my daughter, would you?"</p>
+
+<p>Slade's savage bellow was drowned in the crash of the rifle. The
+bull-like roar of the trader sharpened to a yell of pain. An instant
+later two answering shots came back at the swaying avenger.</p>
+
+<p>Farley fell upon his back, with his arms outflung crosswise and his
+glazing eyes upturned. As he lived, so he had died&mdash;futilely. Yet he had
+at least made the attempt to rise above his weakness and degeneracy. He
+had died like a man.</p>
+
+<p>Slade stood at the end of the table, mopping the base of his neck with
+his dirty neckerchief. The rifle had missed his jugular vein by little
+more than an inch. He cauterized the wound with sangre de dragon sap,
+cursing blasphemously and barking commands at the Navahos.</p>
+
+<p>Pete ran to signal from the nearest window. His companion hurried to
+make certain that Farley was dead. Slade shouldered past the half-bound
+Carmena and came to stare gloatingly down at Lennon. Between his thick
+legs Lennon saw Carmena twist about and roll over toward her
+terror-stricken sister. Slade<a class="pagenum" name="page_208" id="page_208" title="208"></a> was too intent upon mocking his other
+prisoner to look about at the girls.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, son, you seen what happened to Dad, trying to murder his pard,"
+he admonished. "Hope it'll be a warning to you. I'm a peaceful man. I
+got to have law and order. Cochise ripped loose with his bunch. You seen
+how I smashed his play. 'Fore night my Navahos'll clean up what's left
+of 'em all."</p>
+
+<p>Lennon choked down his rage and loathing. Not he alone was in the power
+of this brutal scoundrel. For the sake of the girls he must play for
+time.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, to be sure!" he said. "That was clever generalship on your part,
+Slade. As for Farley&mdash;you of course had to shoot him, in self-defense.
+But now all is settled. You will keep your word to go through with your
+bargain."</p>
+
+<p>"I will, will I, huh?"</p>
+
+<p>"How else? We have had our little misunderstandings. But you are a white
+man and you gave your word to go through with our deal."</p>
+
+<p>The trader's face blackened with a ferocious scowl.</p>
+
+<p>"Try to be funny with me, will you? I'll skin you alive!"</p>
+
+<p>"You misunderstood me, quite," said Lennon, soothingly. "How could I
+think other than that you intend to keep your bargain. I mentioned it
+because I wish<a class="pagenum" name="page_209" id="page_209" title="209"></a> to suggest an addition to the terms. If you will release
+Carmena and postpone your marriage to Elsie until we can get a license
+and a minister, I shall be pleased to give five thousand toward the
+bride's trousseau."</p>
+
+<p>For a long moment Slade stood glowering, morosely suspicious of the
+proposal. When he sensed its precise meaning, he burst into mocking
+laughter.</p>
+
+<p>"So that's what you're after, huh? Think you can bribe me, do you? Well,
+just let me tell you, sonny boy&mdash;when I want a squaw I take her. As for
+that she-wildcat, she's going down to Cochise right now. What's more,
+you're going with her if you don't agree to write that mine report and
+shell out the whole twenty thousand."</p>
+
+<p>"You devil!" cried Lennon. "I'll give you all&mdash;everything I possess&mdash;to
+save the girls from you. But if you harm either one of them&mdash;if you
+refuse to set them both free&mdash;you shall not have a dollar of my money."</p>
+
+<p>"Huh&mdash;I sha'n't, sha'n't I?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not a cent! You are a thief, a murderer, a liar&mdash;and you know it. Your
+word is not to be trusted. Take your choice. Kill me, or accept my
+pledge to pay you the money when you have brought me and the girls safe
+to the nearest town."<a class="pagenum" name="page_210" id="page_210" title="210"></a></p>
+
+<p>The corner of Slade's coarse lip drew up in a wolfish snarl.</p>
+
+<p>"Kill you? Just wait and see. Killing's a heap too easy. Wait till
+Cochise has had a little fun with you. Mebbe you won't agree to be
+reasonable then, huh?"</p>
+
+<p>The pale eyes of the trader glittered with cold malevolence as he swung
+around to the window from which Pete was signalling. He boldly thrust
+his head out and shouted to the Apaches in their own tongue. From below
+came an answering shout. Slade called down to them for several moments
+in hissing thick-tongued gutturals.</p>
+
+<p>When at last he drew back and faced about, his mouth was twisted in a
+grin of evil satisfaction. He stared across the room, blinked, and
+stared again, with his grin distorted into an angry grimace.</p>
+
+<p>Carmena lay where he had last seen her. But Elsie was nowhere in sight.</p>
+
+<hr class="major" />
+<div style="margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 1em">
+<a class="pagenum" name="page_211" id="page_211" title="211"></a>
+<a name="TREACHERY_5388" id="TREACHERY_5388"></a>
+<h2>CHAPTER XXI</h2>
+<h3>TREACHERY</h3>
+</div>
+
+<p>The inaction of the trader was brief. At his harsh question the wounded
+Navaho thrust out a slim finger toward one of the rear exits from the
+living room. Slade spoke a fierce command to Pete in the Navaho tongue
+and rushed out through the opening to which the Indian had pointed.</p>
+
+<p>Carmena uttered a horrified cry and sought to struggle up on her bound
+feet. As she fell, Pete and the other Navaho caught hold of her. They
+carried her out into the anteroom, without paying the slightest heed to
+Lennon's threats and pleadings. He writhed and twisted himself toward
+the doorway. Before he had reached the opening, the wounded Navaho
+bounded back into the room. He seized Lennon and dragged him out.</p>
+
+<p>Pete had squatted down to fasten a loop of the hoist rope about Carmena,
+who lay behind the sacks of corn that barricaded the crane-hoist
+entrance. She was speaking rapidly to the young Navaho in mingled<a class="pagenum" name="page_212" id="page_212" title="212"></a>
+Spanish and English. At sight of the other Navaho and Lennon she paused.</p>
+
+<p>Pete took the opportunity to mutter a sullen reply:</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Basta.</i> Slade, him bad med'cine. Me no fight him. You go Cochise, <i>muy
+pronto</i>."</p>
+
+<p>"Wait!" urged the girl. "You want me to be your woman. Remember what I
+promised if you'd help Slade to get up the ca&ntilde;on against Cochise. I'll
+promise more now. I'll give you all those horses and cattle&mdash;and I'll
+give you myself. Sabe? I'll be your woman."</p>
+
+<p>The Indian's eyes gleamed with avid desire. But he did not falter.</p>
+
+<p>"Woman no good, me dead."</p>
+
+<p>"Afraid&mdash;you girl!" taunted Carmena. "He's only a man. A single shot
+will kill him. You have only to&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Basta.</i> Him big devil. Me no shoot him. Him say you go Cochise, <i>muy
+pronto</i>."</p>
+
+<p>The stubborn coward turned away toward the windlass. Carmena glared
+after him in agonized desperation.</p>
+
+<p>"All right&mdash;all right, Pete!" she cried. "Lower me to Cochise. But
+listen! You needn't fight Slade or any one. You heard how he fooled
+Cochise&mdash;made him feel good by promising him me and Jack?"</p>
+
+<p>"Me send you down, pronto."<a class="pagenum" name="page_213" id="page_213" title="213"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Yes&mdash;yes. Only first, if you want me to be your woman, listen. You
+lower me, I make bargain with Cochise and&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>The rest of the fiercely urgent proposal was in Spanish. Pete came to a
+pause and cast a stealthy glance at his fellow Navaho. The man had
+dragged Lennon out past the windlass and turned back to grasp the crank
+handle.</p>
+
+<p>"You damn sure Cochise him no kill me? You no lie?" demanded Pete.</p>
+
+<p>"Won't you be proving you are his friend?" countered the girl. "You know
+Slade only half trusts you. He'll be sure to shoot you, soon as his
+punchers come. How about it? Do you promise? It's your only chance to
+get me, so long as you daren't tackle Slade yourself."</p>
+
+<p>"Slade, him big devil. Injun no can&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Just wait and see," broke in Carmena. "Remember, there'll be tizwin for
+you&mdash;all you can drink&mdash;heaps of tizwin!"</p>
+
+<p>"Ugh!" grunted Pete. "Slade no come. <i>Bueno</i>&mdash;me do him you say."</p>
+
+<p>He grunted to the other Navaho and swung the crane outward as the
+tightening rope lifted the girl above the sacks of corn. She disappeared
+from view below the barrier. The Navaho lowered away with<a class="pagenum" name="page_214" id="page_214" title="214"></a> a
+deliberation that set Lennon's teeth on edge. The strain on his nerves
+was not lessened by the total silence of the waiting Apaches down below.</p>
+
+<p>At last the rope slackened. After a brief pause it was rapidly wound in
+on the barrel of the windlass. Pete had already dragged Lennon to the
+opening and heaved him up on the barricade. When the rope loop came up
+to the crane, he jerked it in, made fast to Lennon, and shoved him off
+into space.</p>
+
+<p>Lennon plunged down nearly a dozen feet before the tautened rope stopped
+his fall with a violent jerk. He hung dangling, with nothing between him
+and the wreckage-strewn ledges of the cliff foot, thirty feet beneath.</p>
+
+<p>The first jerk had started his body to gyrating. The rapidity with which
+he was lowered increased the movement. By the time he reached the cliff
+foot he was spinning like a roast before an old-time fireplace.</p>
+
+<p>At first he had been able to make out Carmena standing in the midst of a
+close group of Apaches. But she and the Indians and the cliff wall had
+all merged into a blurred whirl before his dizzy eyes by the time he
+struck the cliff foot. With the slackening of the rope he rolled over,
+too giddy even to attempt to steady himself with his bound hands.</p>
+
+<p>While his eyes were yet too dazed for clear vision, he<a class="pagenum" name="page_215" id="page_215" title="215"></a> heard Carmena's
+voice, low-pitched and vibrant with passionate pleading:</p>
+
+<p>"... And him too, Cochise. I'm not asking you to give up your fun with
+him. Only wait till you've made sure of Slade. There's not a second to
+lose. You have us. We can't get away. But if you don't do what I ask,
+you won't get Slade. He'll be up there&mdash;safe&mdash;with your woman! And his
+Navahos will trap you here in the Hole."</p>
+
+<p>"You lie!" grunted the young Apache. "Slade send you down to git his
+noose on me. I haul up pony lift&mdash;hit out Hell Ca&ntilde;on&mdash;take you and white
+fool. Heap fun with you and him!"</p>
+
+<p>"What then?" queried Carmena. "You know you'll have Slade on your
+trail&mdash;Slade and a posse and the soldiers. Slade will have to wipe you
+out to cover up what we've been doing here. He'll lay it all on you and
+your bunch&mdash;all the stealing. Can't you see? If he can't wipe you out
+himself, he'll set the soldiers on your trail."</p>
+
+<p>Lennon looked up and saw before his clearing eyes the dark evilly
+handsome face of the Apache leader. It was as stolid as the faces of his
+incomprehending followers. But his black eyes were fierce with hate.</p>
+
+<p>"You lie!" he repeated. "You say, kill Slade. You say you no care what
+become of you."<a class="pagenum" name="page_216" id="page_216" title="216"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Because I know you, Cochise," cajoled the girl, her voice soft and
+confiding. "Weren't we friends before Slade came? Weren't we good to
+you? Remember how we kept you hid in the Hole and never told the Indian
+Agent? You'll not forget that. You'll treat me and Jack, my new pard,
+all right when I've helped you kill Slade."</p>
+
+<p>"Dam' friend&mdash;you," jeered the Indian. "You kept my woman."</p>
+
+<p>"What if I did? How about now? Do you want Slade to have her? You know
+he has been scheming all along to take her from you. Are you going to
+let him do it? Think about her&mdash;and about the tizwin&mdash;that tizwin hidden
+from you by Slade&mdash;barrels of tizwin! All yours if only you have the
+nerve to go up after Slade!"</p>
+
+<p>Cochise looked up the cliff, with a sudden ferocious scowl. Lennon was
+gasping for breath against the frightfulness of what he had heard. To
+save herself, Carmena was betraying her foster-sister to the fiendish
+savage. Elsie's fate in the hands of Slade was fearful enough without
+the added horror of what she would suffer in the hands of Cochise.</p>
+
+<p>"Carmena!" he cried. "Carmena, are you mad? Think of Blossom! What does
+it matter if we are tortured? Surely you can't intend&mdash;&mdash;"<a class="pagenum" name="page_217" id="page_217" title="217"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Why not?" cried back the girl, her face aflame with vengeful anger.
+"That big beast first ruined my father; now he has murdered him.
+Cochise, you'll have to choose quickly. Run off with us and have your
+fun, and have Slade trail you down; or kill him and get your woman and
+the tizwin&mdash;barrels of tizwin!"</p>
+
+<p>The young Apache plucked out his knife and sprang at the girl. A stroke
+slashed through the thongs that bound her wrists. Her ankles had already
+been freed. Cochise made a sharp upward gesture. Carmena shook her head
+and pointed to Lennon.</p>
+
+<p>"Let him lead the way up&mdash;unarmed," she suggested.</p>
+
+<p>The advantage of the plan was instantly grasped by the crafty Apache. At
+his command, two of his men cut loose Lennon's bonds and jerked him to
+his feet.</p>
+
+<p>"Wait, Carmena! Wait!" begged Lennon. "Think of Elsie!"</p>
+
+<p>But the girl had already signalled to those above. The rope ladder came
+slipping down the cliff face. Lennon fell silent. Protests were now
+useless. The lowering of the ladder laid the cliff stronghold open to
+the merciless Apaches.</p>
+
+<p>He turned away from the girl, full of loathing. Slade might possibly
+have refrained at the last moment from wronging Elsie. But Cochise&mdash;<a class="pagenum" name="page_218" id="page_218" title="218"></a>&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>There was no need of the Apache's prodding knife point to start him up
+the ladder. Though he did not relish having to act as a living shield
+for the attackers, he was more than willing to go first. Unluckily the
+tightness of his bonds had so bruised the ligaments of his wrists and
+ankles and left his limbs so numb that he had to climb with painful
+slowness.</p>
+
+<p>Cochise, following at his heels, cursed and jabbed his knife into
+Lennon's leg. The cruel goading stung the benumbed muscles to quicker
+action. Lennon sprinted up the ladder, clear of his torturer. A glance
+down the rungs showed him three Apaches below Cochise, and Carmena at
+the foot, waiting with the remainder of the band. The ladder would not
+safely bear more than five climbers at a time.</p>
+
+<p>Spurred even more by the plan that he had in mind than by the threat of
+the knife, Lennon sought to increase his lead over Cochise. But the
+Indian's wrists were not strained, and his flexible moccasins gave a
+better hold on the ladder rungs than Lennon's stiff boot soles. With the
+knife between his teeth, the young Apache swung up in swift pursuit.</p>
+
+<p>Instead of gaining, Lennon lost his lead. Another downward glance, as he
+grasped the last rung below the sill of the cliff house doorway, showed
+him that Cochise was again at his heels. He must change the<a class="pagenum" name="page_219" id="page_219" title="219"></a> tactics of
+his plan. He uttered a startled cry and pretended to slip down a rung.</p>
+
+<p>Cochise let go the ladder with one hand to jab his knife at Lennon's
+leg. Lennon jerked up the leg and kicked down with all his strength. The
+heel of his boot struck squarely in the upturned face of the Apache. The
+downward and outward force of the blow jerked loose Cochise's one-handed
+grip on the ladder. But even as he toppled backward, he crooked a leg
+with catlike quickness over one of the rungs.</p>
+
+<p>Lennon saw only that his enemy was falling. His hand had already groped
+over the edge of the sill. Without another downward glance, he flung
+himself up and into the doorway. The wild scramble and plunge all but
+drove him headlong over the sack of corn and against the menacing muzzle
+of Pete's rifle.</p>
+
+<p>That double traitor stood crouched at the inner side of the thick-walled
+entrance, torn between fear of Cochise and terror of Slade. Lennon had
+counted upon this dread and uncertainty of the young Navaho. He flung
+out his hands to him in urgent gestures.</p>
+
+<p>"Quick&mdash;quick!" he cried. "Cut loose the ladder! Cochise will kill you!
+He's coming! Cut the ladder!"</p>
+
+<p>The Indian shrank back to peer at the inner openings of the cliff
+house.<a class="pagenum" name="page_220" id="page_220" title="220"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Carmena&mdash;him no lie," he muttered. "Cochise kill 'um Slade."</p>
+
+<p>"But you first!" urged Lennon. "He will&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>The band of an Apache headress shot up above the edge of the door sill.
+Lennon sprang at Pete to clutch his knife. The Navaho flung up his
+rifle. A chance blow of the barrel sent Lennon staggering half across
+the anteroom.</p>
+
+<p>The Apache writhed up into the doorway and bounded over the sack of
+corn, his knife poised to strike. Pete whirled and fired from the hip.
+An instant later he was locked in the clutch of the yelling, slashing
+Apache. As they crashed down together in a furious death grapple, a
+second Apache came scrambling in over the cliff edge. Side by side with
+him appeared Cochise, the print of Lennon's boot-heel already blackening
+on his ferociously scowling forehead.</p>
+
+<p>Pete's rifle had fallen outward into the doorway, alongside the sack of
+corn. Lennon was unarmed. There was no time for him to wrest the knife
+from the wounded Apache and slash the ladder ropes. Cochise clutched
+Pete's rifle and started to swing it around. His companion thrust out a
+revolver.</p>
+
+<p>The shot missed Lennon by inches as he leaped to the side opposite the
+living room. He dashed out<a class="pagenum" name="page_221" id="page_221" title="221"></a> the first opening and started to run through
+the front row of rooms, shouting at the top of his voice.</p>
+
+<p>"Slade! Slade!" he yelled. "Cochise&mdash;Apaches! Defend yourself!"</p>
+
+<p>From the inner rooms on his right came back an angry bellow. "What the
+devil?"</p>
+
+<p>Lennon twisted aside through a black doorway. Farther in he saw a
+glimmer of light. Sharp turns through two more doorways brought him into
+a kiva, or sacred chamber of the cliff dwellers, that was lighted by a
+pair of candles. Slade stood beside the broken-edged entrance hole with
+drawn revolver. The wounded Navaho was peering down from a hole in the
+ceiling.</p>
+
+<p>"Elsie!" panted Lennon. "Hide her! Pete betrayed you! All the
+Apaches&mdash;coming up the ladder!"</p>
+
+<p>Slade sprang sideways along the figure-decorated wall of the kiva. He
+leaped to grasp the edge of the ceiling hole. The Navaho helped him draw
+up into the dark room above. As his feet swung clear Lennon leaped in
+turn to grasp the edge of the hole.</p>
+
+<p>"Give me a hand up," he called. "I'll help you defend Elsie."</p>
+
+<p>"Sure. You'll serve for wolf bait," jeered Slade.</p>
+
+<p>His big hand thrust down and tapped the butt of the heavy revolver on
+the top of Lennon's head.</p>
+
+<hr class="major" />
+<div style="margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 1em">
+<a class="pagenum" name="page_222" id="page_222" title="222"></a>
+<a name="THE_SACRIFICE_5671" id="THE_SACRIFICE_5671"></a>
+<h2>CHAPTER XXII</h2>
+<h3>THE SACRIFICE</h3>
+</div>
+
+<p>The treacherous blow was just hard enough to stun Lennon. His
+unconsciousness probably lasted only a few seconds. He roused to the
+sound of heavy firing and the pungent odour of powder. He opened his
+eyes.</p>
+
+<p>One of the candles had been extinguished. The other showed one wounded
+and two dead Apaches lying upon the floor of the kiva. At the entrance
+other attackers were stealthily thrusting in to fire at the hole in the
+ceiling. The flash of answering shots spewed out of the black space
+above the hole.</p>
+
+<p>Lennon had enough presence of mind to lie still. Dislodged by the
+fusillade of bullets, the dry materials of the ancient ceiling showered
+upon him. In the room above he heard the shriek of a mortally struck
+man. Another fusillade followed. Then a revolver came whirling down out
+of the darkness.</p>
+
+<p>The Apaches yelled and burst into the kiva. They rushed toward the hole,
+firing upward as fast as they could pump their magazines. Unnoticed in
+the excitement,<a class="pagenum" name="page_223" id="page_223" title="223"></a> Lennon rolled clear of their trampling feet and sought
+to grasp Slade's fallen revolver. A chance kick sent it out of his
+reach.</p>
+
+<p>Wild with blood-thirst, the last Apaches were trying to climb up the
+backs of those who had first leaped to seize the edge of the ceiling
+hole. Under the strain of their jerking weight one of the ancient beams
+gave way.</p>
+
+<p>Down crashed a part of the floor above. With it came Slade, bellowing
+with rage, bleeding from several wounds, and his right arm shattered.
+His massive body fell upon and knocked down two of the crowding Apaches.
+He staggered up and struck out with his maul-like fist.</p>
+
+<p>The voice of Cochise sounded above the din of the fight. The Apaches
+flung themselves at Slade like wolves attacking a maimed bull. But they
+used neither rifles nor knives. The trader was borne down by the weight
+of numbers and his left arm lashed fast to his backward twisted feet.</p>
+
+<p>Cochise had caught up the flickering candle. He sprang upon the back of
+another man and peered into the room above. When at last he jumped down
+his face was distorted with anger. He shook his knife in Slade's face.</p>
+
+<p>"Where you hide my woman?" he demanded.<a class="pagenum" name="page_224" id="page_224" title="224"></a></p>
+
+<p>"She hid herself," growled Slade. "I was still looking for her."</p>
+
+<p>"Big mouth&mdash;big lie!" scoffed Cochise, and he thrust the flame of the
+candle against Slade's nose.</p>
+
+<p>The trader puffed out the light. Lennon had been edging around toward
+the door. He took instant advantage of the darkness to slip out and run
+toward the living room. There he might hope to find a rifle and die
+fighting.</p>
+
+<p>In the anteroom he came face to face with a pair of Apaches, who stood
+on guard over Carmena. At their gestures, emphasized by half-raised
+rifles, he backed into the corner beside the girl. She flashed him a
+look of profound relief and put a tremulous hand on his arm.</p>
+
+<p>"Jack&mdash;I thought they'd killed you. Slade?"</p>
+
+<p>"Prisoner, like ourselves. But they've still to find Elsie&mdash;no thanks to
+you!"</p>
+
+<p>He drew away as if her touch were a pollution. She flushed, hesitated,
+and opened her lips to speak. With a burst of yells, the Apaches rushed
+in, dragging Slade in their midst.</p>
+
+<p>At sight of Lennon, Cochise wrinkled his bruised forehead in a scowl of
+evil satisfaction. But when he swaggered forward he looked only at
+Carmena.</p>
+
+<p>"Slade swear you hide my woman," he said.<a class="pagenum" name="page_225" id="page_225" title="225"></a></p>
+
+<p>"How could I?" replied Carmena. "He had me tied up and lowered to you.
+He was up here with her all that time."</p>
+
+<p>The face of the young Apache became impassive. He turned about and spoke
+softly to Slade. The trader, half dead from his wounds, raised his big
+head to mumble a denial.</p>
+
+<p>At a word from Cochise, one of his men ran to fetch Elsie's brazier from
+the living room. In the bottom of the brazier was still a bed of glowing
+coals. The Apaches cut free one of Slade's feet and started to thrust it
+in upon the fire.</p>
+
+<p>Carmena flung up her hands before her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"No!&mdash;no, Cochise!" she cried. "Kill him&mdash;he deserves to be killed! But
+not the torture&mdash;I can't bear it! I'll try to find Elsie for you. I
+think I know where she's hidden."</p>
+
+<p>Lennon stared, more than ever filled with horror of her treachery.</p>
+
+<p>"You&mdash;you!" he grasped. "That child&mdash;give her, to save that scoundrel?"</p>
+
+<p>"And ourselves," added Carmena, her lips curved in a cajoling smile at
+Cochise. "When I've found her&mdash;and the tizwin&mdash;we'll be friends. Won't
+we, Cochise?"</p>
+
+<p>"Sure. Dam' good friends," smoothly agreed the<a class="pagenum" name="page_226" id="page_226" title="226"></a> Apache. "You find my
+woman quick, I let you go. Sabe?"</p>
+
+<p>"<i>And</i> the tizwin&mdash;the barrels of tizwin," added Carmena. "Come on, all
+of us together&mdash;&mdash; You, too, Jack."</p>
+
+<p>She signed to the Apaches and called out a few words in their own thick
+guttural tongue.</p>
+
+<p>Lennon did not hang back. Great as was his abhorrence of the girl, he
+started forward beside her. Probably owing to his ready advance, he was
+not again bound, though Cochise ordered a pair of his followers to guard
+the white man. The other Apaches pressed close after the leaders, drawn
+by their fierce craving for tizwin.</p>
+
+<p>Regardless of Lennon's look of loathing, Carmena lighted a candle and
+led the way direct to the mummy room. From a ceiling beam of the room
+had been hung a crudely stuffed horned owl with wide-spread wings. At
+sight of the big gray-white bird and of the mummies even Cochise
+advanced less than a step inside the entrance.</p>
+
+<p>Carmena went in with the candle and methodically peered among and behind
+all the heaps of rubbish. When she came back to the entrance her dark
+brows were drawn together in a frown, as if she were puzzled and trying
+to think of another hiding place. She looked at Lennon with a level
+glance.<a class="pagenum" name="page_227" id="page_227" title="227"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Hereafter you will recall that the quick and the dead are associated,"
+she murmured.</p>
+
+<p>She faced about to the superstitious Apaches.</p>
+
+<p>"You see, Cochise. Your woman doesn't like these old dried spirits any
+more than you do. Come on."</p>
+
+<p>Cochise and his men drew back before her advancing candle. They had no
+fancy to be left in the darkness with the bird of night and the "dried
+spirits" of the ancient cliff dwellers. They were not so backward,
+however, in the other inner rooms to which Carmena led them. Where there
+was a ceiling hole, one or more readily mounted with the candle to
+search the space above.</p>
+
+<p>But nowhere was trace found of Elsie, though the candle had burned to a
+stub when the searchers reached the last inner room. They came from it
+into a front room, one exit of which was closed with a padlocked door of
+heavy planks. Lennon recognized the entrance to the still-room.</p>
+
+<p>Carmena handed a key to Cochise and stood shielding the flickering flame
+of the candle.</p>
+
+<p>"Maybe we'll find both together," she said. "It would have been just
+like Slade to lock your woman in with the tizwin."</p>
+
+<p>She added a guttural murmur in Apache. The Indians pushed forward as
+their leader snapped open<a class="pagenum" name="page_228" id="page_228" title="228"></a> the padlock. The heavy door swung open. All
+surged into the still-room except one of Lennon's guards, and he craned
+his neck to gape at the still. Into Lennon's ear breathed a faint
+whisper: "Keep back."</p>
+
+<p>A moment later Carmena was darting in after the Apaches. She took her
+shielding hand away from the candle to point at a pile of jugs behind
+the still. With the gesture she called out in Apache. Cochise and all
+the others rushed to dig into the pile of jugs. Carmena glided to the
+still and bent down. She thrust the candle into the opening of the
+firebox.</p>
+
+<p>For the first time Lennon grasped what the girl was about. And with that
+he realized in a flash all the cool courage and cleverness and
+self-sacrifice of the plan that she had schemed out against the brute
+force of Slade and the cruel cunning of Cochise. Elsie was safe hidden
+in the mummy room, Slade was dying or dead, and now she had lured
+Cochise and his murderous followers into the death trap!</p>
+
+<p>He saw the flare of the lighted tinder in the firebox. The fuse must
+already be burning. Yet the girl remained stooped before the still. She
+would be blown to pieces no less certainly than the Apaches.</p>
+
+<p>Lennon glanced desperately at his guard, who stood beside him in the
+doorway. The almost naked Apache<a class="pagenum" name="page_229" id="page_229" title="229"></a> was a mass of sinewy muscle, and his
+beady eyes were fixed upon the prisoner in alert watchfulness. Yet he
+was not quick enough to dodge Lennon's uppercut. He sprawled backward
+and struck his shock head upon the stone floor.</p>
+
+<p>Carmena had straightened and faced about. At sight of Lennon bounding
+toward her she thrust out her hands in a repellant gesture.</p>
+
+<p>He clutched her outflung hands and dragged her toward the door. From
+behind the still came an answering yell. Cochise and another Apache
+rushed around at the couple. Carmena lunged forward, to thrust Lennon at
+the doorway. Unbalanced by the shove, he stumbled over the Apache whom
+he had knocked senseless.</p>
+
+<p>Carmena fell, rolled to one side, and struggled to her knees as Cochise
+leaped to the doorway after Lennon. Behind them roared a deafening
+detonation.</p>
+
+<p>Though Lennon was out in the anteroom, he was hurled down by the force
+of the explosion. He staggered to his feet and faced about. In the thick
+of the smoke that spumed from the still-room Cochise bounded from the
+floor and came at him with upraised knife. Lennon barely saved himself
+by the quickest of side-stepping.</p>
+
+<p>Cochise shot past, whirled, and closed in with the<a class="pagenum" name="page_230" id="page_230" title="230"></a> fury of a wildcat.
+Lennon's parry of the knife stab was sheer luck, but not the blow that
+he drove to the solar plexus. Superb as was the physical condition of
+the young Apache, that solid jolt sent him reeling back, gasping for
+breath.</p>
+
+<p>Lennon closed and sought to wrest away the knife. He twisted down on the
+Apache's wrist. The knife fell to the floor. He bent to grasp it.
+Cochise dropped upon him and seized his throat. The slender sinewy hands
+tightened with frightful force. A few seconds of that throttling
+pressure would have brought unconsciousness to Lennon. In vain he sought
+to tear loose the strangle hold.</p>
+
+<p>He was on the verge of frantic flurry when his failing reason fixed upon
+the fact that there was a lump under his down-pressed back. By great
+effort he wrenched his body around. His groping hand grasped the fallen
+knife.</p>
+
+<p>At the second stroke the terrible clutch on his throat relaxed. Cochise
+twisted convulsively and rolled over on his back.</p>
+
+<p>Lennon wheezed, felt his throat, and jerked himself over, ready to drive
+the knife into the heart of his merciless enemy. Cochise lay inert, his
+mouth agape and his eyes rolled up so that only the whites could be
+seen. Lennon's deep-drawn sigh of satisfaction over<a class="pagenum" name="page_231" id="page_231" title="231"></a> that death-mask
+face caught in the midst and turned into a gasp. He flung himself about
+to the doorway of the still-room. Where the still had stood was now only
+a hole in the stone floor. He did not look too closely at the general
+wreckage.</p>
+
+<p>His half-dazed roving gaze fell upon Carmena. She lay as inert as
+Cochise and the Apache guard. Yet she was not dead. A fragment of stone
+or metal, or the shock of the explosion, had injured her back.</p>
+
+<p>He carried her out into the anteroom. She revived. But when she sought
+to rise, she sank back with an ominous limpness.</p>
+
+<p>"Carmena!" he cried. "Carmena&mdash;what is it? You're hurt!"</p>
+
+<p>She smiled up at him, her dark eyes radiant with infinite tenderness and
+devotion.</p>
+
+<p>"It's all right, Jack&mdash;all right," she murmured. "I wanted to do it&mdash;for
+Blossom&mdash;and you, dear. Now you are safe. The way up the ca&ntilde;on is clear.
+Take the right fork, then, each time, the left of the next forks. The
+trail is only a few miles west, over the mesas. You'll find Blossom in
+the mummy room. Hurry off with her before Slade's men come. Hurry&mdash;don't
+linger&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"You&mdash;&mdash;" broke in Lennon. "Can you think I would leave you here?"<a class="pagenum" name="page_232" id="page_232" title="232"></a></p>
+
+<p>"There's no other way. My back&mdash;I can't sit up, and my legs are numb. I
+can't move them."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll carry you, and there's the hoist rope."</p>
+
+<p>"No use. I couldn't ride."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll carry you," repeated Lennon.</p>
+
+<p>The girl laid a gently caressing hand on his arm.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you understand, dear? My back&mdash;it must be broken. We must think
+of Blossom. You must hurry off with her while there is time. Isn't it
+good that you love her?"</p>
+
+<p>Lennon uttered a choking cry and caught the girl up in his arms. He
+clasped her to him in an agony of love and remorse.</p>
+
+<p>"Carmena! To have thought so wrong of you&mdash;of you who were giving your
+life! I've been a fool&mdash;a blind fool. Forgive me! That child&mdash;&mdash; My God!
+I can't give you up&mdash;I'll <i>not</i> give you up!"</p>
+
+<p>"Then&mdash;you do&mdash;love me, Jack," sighed the girl. Her arms crept up about
+his neck. "You do love me&mdash;I'm glad now you did not let me die&mdash;at
+once&mdash;in there."</p>
+
+<p>"Not at all!" vowed Lennon. "Even though your back&mdash;&mdash; You'll not die."</p>
+
+<p>"I can't live&mdash;like this, dear. And there's Blossom. You must get her
+away before Slade's men&mdash;&mdash; But first find me my little pistol. I gave
+it to Blossom&mdash;to<a class="pagenum" name="page_233" id="page_233" title="233"></a> use if there was no other way left. Leave it with me,
+and hurry off with her while there's time. Hurry!"</p>
+
+<p>Lennon's clasp tightened.</p>
+
+<p>"No. I'll never leave you&mdash;never while&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>From the inner rooms of the cliff house came a burst of piercing
+childish shrieks. Carmena twisted about in Lennon's suddenly loosened
+embrace. There was a sound like the snap of a dry twig. Carmena screamed
+and fell over sideways in a deathlike faint.</p>
+
+<hr class="major" />
+<div style="margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 1em">
+<a class="pagenum" name="page_234" id="page_234" title="234"></a>
+<a name="OUT_OF_THE_PAST_5976" id="OUT_OF_THE_PAST_5976"></a>
+<h2>CHAPTER XXIII</h2>
+<h3>OUT OF THE PAST</h3>
+</div>
+
+<p>As Lennon knelt beside the swooning girl the shrieks rang nearer. Elsie
+came flying through the rear opening, in wild fright. Her dress was torn
+and her yellow hair full of dust and wooden bits. Lennon sprang up,
+certain that the Apache who had been wounded in the kiva was pursuing
+her.</p>
+
+<p>In her flurry she appeared to heed nothing until almost upon the body of
+Cochise. But one glance at the ghostly whites of the Apache's upturned
+eyes sent her shrinking backward, stricken to horrified silence. Her
+wild stare fixed first upon Carmena and then shifted to Lennon. With a
+shriek, she flung herself upon him, clutching him about the body in
+frantic terror.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! oh! Papa! Papa! Papa!" she screamed, in a childish treble. "Bad
+Indian! He's hurting mamma! He's choking mamma!"</p>
+
+<p>Lennon pressed her face hard against his breast to stifle her shrieks.<a class="pagenum" name="page_235" id="page_235" title="235"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Be still," he shouted. "Stop that noise. You're safe. Be still. Hear
+me? You're safe."</p>
+
+<p>Checked by the sternness of his voice the distracted girl hushed her
+hysterical cries. When he repeated that she was safe, she at last seemed
+to grasp the fact. Yet she continued to cling fast to him.</p>
+
+<p>"Tell me quick," he demanded. "Is an Indian following you?"</p>
+
+<p>"No-no-no!" she babbled. "It's mamma&mdash;he's choking her! He&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>The tremulous words broke off in a gasp of astonishment. The wild blue
+eyes stared up at Lennon in bewildered lack of recognition.</p>
+
+<p>"Why&mdash;why, you're not my papa!" she cried.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course not, Blossom. I'm Jack&mdash;Brother Jack. Don't you know me?"</p>
+
+<p>The girl shrank back.</p>
+
+<p>"You're not my brother. Let me go. I haven't any brother. I never saw
+you before."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Blossom!" came a cry beside them.</p>
+
+<p>Lennon's glance darted aslant.</p>
+
+<p>Carmena had risen to a sitting position with her arms outstretched
+toward Elsie. Her face was white from pain, and she was swaying&mdash;but she
+was sitting upright. Realization of what that meant burst upon Lennon
+like a flood of golden sunshine.<a class="pagenum" name="page_236" id="page_236" title="236"></a></p>
+
+<p>He dropped on his knees to fling a supporting arm about the girl's
+shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>"Dearest, it's not true&mdash;not true that you&mdash;&mdash; Your back! You're able to
+rise!"</p>
+
+<p>Carmena lowered her gaze from her bewildered sister.</p>
+
+<p>"What, I&mdash;&mdash;" she murmured. "Why, so I am! There was a snap, and then,
+oh, such a pain! It must be the bone had only slipped. That twist
+snapped it back into place."</p>
+
+<p>"But the pain, dear?"</p>
+
+<p>"It's getting better. It's good pain. It proves I'm alive again&mdash;all
+alive. Raise me up, Jack. I want to see if I can stand."</p>
+
+<p>He lifted her with utmost gentleness. Her teeth clenched upon her lip.
+But, once she was upright, the pain again eased. She was delighted to
+find that she could stand with no more than half support from him.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes&mdash;all alive," she repeated and she turned to Elsie. "With a brace
+I'll be able to rise. Blossom, you can bind on&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not Blossom. I'm&mdash;I'm Elsie Lane," faltered the younger girl. "And
+you're not my mamma, no more than he's my papa."</p>
+
+<p>Lennon and Carmena stared at each other questioningly. The girl seemed
+rational, yet clearly she<a class="pagenum" name="page_237" id="page_237" title="237"></a> recognized neither of them. Carmena was first
+to catch an inkling of the truth.</p>
+
+<p>"No, dear," she soothed. "Of course we're not your papa and mamma. Of
+course you're Elsie Lane. But we want to help you. We are your friends,
+dear. What has happened? Tell us."</p>
+
+<p>The girl stared from them to her surroundings, more than ever
+bewildered. But the hideous gape of Cochise's mouth and his upturned
+glassy eyes drew from her a whimpering cry. She shrank around to hide
+behind Lennon and clutch his arm.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! That man&mdash;that bad Indian&mdash;he came after papa found old Sim's mine,
+and mamma fed him, and&mdash;and then he choked her, and I ran to get papa,
+and papa was lying down at the bottom, with an awful red hole in his
+head&mdash;and I ran back to mamma&mdash;and she was dead. The bad Indian was
+chasing our ponies. I was 'fraid he'd kill me, too, and I ran and ran
+and ran, right up past the middle tower of the giant's castle and down
+the other side, and I got awful thirsty. Then&mdash;then I went to sleep&mdash;and
+when I woke up the roof was falling on me and it was night, and when I
+got out here, you weren't my papa and mamma, but there was that bad
+Indian."</p>
+
+<p>Lennon needed no verification of the tragedy that the girl evidently
+remembered as having occurred<a class="pagenum" name="page_238" id="page_238" title="238"></a> only a few hours past. Before his mental
+vision rose the gruesome images of the skeleton at the foot of the mine
+slide and the skeleton in the cabin.</p>
+
+<p>"I've been blind," he murmured to Carmena. "Sim told me that nine years
+ago he gave maps of his mine and the Triple Butte region to a doctor
+named Lane."</p>
+
+<p>Carmena was gazing yearningly at the unresponsive Elsie.</p>
+
+<p>"All these years!" she sighed. "First her childhood all a blank to her,
+and now all the years with me lost! I'm a stranger to her&mdash;to my little
+Blossom! Oh, Jack!"</p>
+
+<p>"Give her time. She will remember. Such cases are not unknown,"
+comforted Lennon. He turned to Elsie.</p>
+
+<p>"Listen, dear. I found your papa and mamma and buried them. Now I have
+killed the bad Indian. But you have been sick&mdash;out of your head&mdash;a long
+time. This lady&mdash;Carmena&mdash;has taken care of you and she loves you."</p>
+
+<p>The child-minded girl peered up at her foster-sister.</p>
+
+<p>"You&mdash;you love me? But I know it. You look at me like mamma does."</p>
+
+<p>Carmena smiled radiantly. Lennon hastened to add an urgent appeal.<a class="pagenum" name="page_239" id="page_239" title="239"></a></p>
+
+<p>"She is hurt, Elsie, and more bad Indians are coming. Won't you help me
+get her safe away from here?"</p>
+
+<p>The request diverted the girl's thoughts before she could yield again to
+panic. Instead of going frantic and becoming a drag upon Lennon's
+efforts, she helped support Carmena through to the hoist room.</p>
+
+<p>Slade was lying as the Apaches had left him, beside the charcoal
+brazier, his left arm still lashed behind to his right foot. He had died
+from his wounds. As they passed by, Lennon shielded Elsie from the
+unpleasant sight. But Carmena looked full at the big twisted body of the
+man who had ruined and murdered her father.</p>
+
+<p>"He deserved it all and more&mdash;far more," she murmured. "First to make
+Dad believe the brand-blotting was a part of his honest cattle business,
+and then&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"What's that?" interrupted Lennon. "You mean he deceived your father? I
+did not understand it that way."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. He lied. Dad was an Easterner like yourself. Slade had him
+incriminated before he knew it was stock stealing. Then he forced tizwin
+making upon us. You know the consequences to poor Dad. And what if the
+big beast had found Blossom! Oh, I should have waited for Cochise to
+torture him. But I could not bear it."<a class="pagenum" name="page_240" id="page_240" title="240"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Because you are yourself, Carmena&mdash;as tender-hearted as you are strong
+and brave and wise."</p>
+
+<p>"Silly, you mean&mdash;to lose a single moment now in talk. Put me down here.
+I can get to the hoist. Hurry with Elsie&mdash;get saddles, food, your rifle.
+Hurry! We must get out of the Hole before Slade's punchers come."</p>
+
+<p>Lennon eased the girl to the floor and ran into the living room. Elsie
+darted after him. Nor did she stop to be directed. She went straight to
+her food cupboard, without paying the slightest heed to the outstretched
+body of the luckless Farley. Lennon threw a rug over the pitiful form
+and hastened to drag three saddles and as many canteens out to the
+hoist.</p>
+
+<p>Carmena had crept back close to the body of Slade. She waved Lennon to
+hurry. He ran back for his rifle and the food. Elsie already had packed
+two pairs of saddlebags with flour, bacon, and dried meat, and was
+unlashing the broad stiff hair girth from another saddle.</p>
+
+<p>"Here's just the thing to brace Mena's back," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"Good enough. It will go round her two or three times and&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Lennon stopped short to stare at the eager girl.</p>
+
+<p>"Why Blossom, you call her Mena&mdash;and you went direct to the food
+cupboard. You've remembered all!"<a class="pagenum" name="page_241" id="page_241" title="241"></a></p>
+
+<p>The girl gazed up at him, wide-eyed.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, did I? Have I! I did it without thinking. It just seemed natural.
+But my name isn't Blossom&mdash;and it's&mdash;it's awful queer&mdash;I never saw this
+place before."</p>
+
+<p>"You have," contradicted Lennon. "It has been a long, long dream, little
+Blossom. You are beginning to remember it now."</p>
+
+<p>"O-oh&mdash;like a dream&mdash;&mdash; It does seem as if everything&mdash;and you&mdash;you're
+Brother Jack, who was going to marry me. But how silly&mdash;when I'm only
+ten years old! Of course it's just all a dream."</p>
+
+<p>Lennon caught at the point&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, yes, that's a dream, only a dream about our marrying. You've been
+dreaming for years, and now you're much older than ten&mdash;much older. But
+that other is only a fancy&mdash;a mistake. It's Mena I'm to marry, and
+you're to be our dear little sister. Remember, I'm to be your
+brother&mdash;your Brother Jack."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll remember," promised Elsie. "You're good, like her. You buried papa
+and mamma and you killed that bad Indian."</p>
+
+<p>A cry from Carmena sent Lennon bounding out into the anteroom, with his
+rifle ready to fire. The girl had crouched low behind the massive body
+of Slade. She pointed to the far corner of the room and shrilled
+warningly:<a class="pagenum" name="page_242" id="page_242" title="242"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Look out, Jack! Cochise!&mdash;there in the window!"</p>
+
+<p>Lennon dashed straight at the dark opening where he had seen the gray
+face of Farley on his first coming to the cliff house. He thrust in the
+muzzle of his rifle and then his head. Though shadowed, the inner room
+was light enough for him to see that it was empty. He went back to
+Carmena.</p>
+
+<p>"No one there," he said. "Just your fancy, dear. You're
+nervous&mdash;overwrought. But no wonder. The sooner we're down and away from
+here, the better."</p>
+
+<p>"Wait. First take this," replied Carmena. She held up a thick-padded
+leather belt.</p>
+
+<p>"Slade's," she explained. "I guessed he might be carrying it. It's his
+money-belt, stuffed with big bills. He lied about the partnership
+bank-account. Take it, Jack&mdash;for Elsie and me. It's ours by rights. He
+cheated us of our heritage. We have to leave Dad's ranch."</p>
+
+<p>The belt was already fast about Lennon's waist. Elsie appeared, dragging
+the saddlebags and the girth. Lennon brought the wide cinch to wrap
+around Carmena's waist. The double fold lashed fast with the straps made
+a broad stiff corsage support for her wrenched back.</p>
+
+<p>In quick succession, Lennon then lowered, over the sacks of corn in the
+hoist opening, first Elsie, then the outfit, and lastly Carmena. She
+asked to see her father,<a class="pagenum" name="page_243" id="page_243" title="243"></a> but Lennon dissuaded her. He thought best that
+her last impression of Slade's victim should be the broken man's
+redeeming flare of vengeful love and fatherhood.</p>
+
+<p>The moment the slackening hoist rope told him that Elsie had steadied
+her foster-sister down upon the cliff foot, Lennon ran to descend the
+rope ladder. Time was passing, and there was still much to be done. He
+must catch and saddle three good horses. Slade's punchers might not come
+for four or five hours. But the earlier the start of the fugitives, the
+better would be their chance of escape if the Navahos should seek to
+track them down.</p>
+
+<p>Elsie had drawn Carmena away from the heap of saddles and bags to a seat
+on a ledge. As Lennon sprang toward them from the foot of the shaking
+ladder Carmena called out and pointed over his head. One rope of the
+ladder had sagged as if broken. A moment later the ladder came
+slithering down the cliff face.</p>
+
+<p>"Cut&mdash;That face in the window&mdash;Cochise! He's not dead!" cried Carmena.
+"Oh, Jack, if you hadn't come down fast! He tried to make you fall!"</p>
+
+<p>Lennon was already running out to aim his rifle at the doorway from
+which the ladder had fallen. There was no sign of the ladder-cutter. Out
+of the side of his eye Lennon saw the crane swing back into<a class="pagenum" name="page_244" id="page_244" title="244"></a> the other
+opening and the hoist rope jerk upward. He swung his rifle to that side.</p>
+
+<p>The top sack of corn in the barricade slewed out over the brink. It
+toppled and came plunging downward. Above it a dark head came into
+sight, half out-thrust over the top of the other sacks.</p>
+
+<p>Lennon fired up past the falling bag of grain. The head jerked upward,
+twisted, and lay still on the edge of the barricade, as the sack of corn
+thudded and burst on the cliff foot within two feet of the saddles. To
+make doubly certain, Lennon sent up another bullet, as well-aimed as the
+first.</p>
+
+<p>His lips were set in a smile of stern satisfaction as he came to where
+Elsie was cowering in the arms of Carmena.</p>
+
+<p>"You were right&mdash;as usual," he said. "The knife could only have knocked
+him out for a time. He must have played 'possum. But he was disabled.
+Crawled after us&mdash;couldn't get a gun till we left and too eager to
+wait&mdash;thought we'd be under the hoist. Yet why he should have exposed
+himself&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"His wounds," divined Carmena. "The strain of heaving over the sack was
+too much for him. He collapsed. You're sure you didn't miss him, Jack?"</p>
+
+<p>"No. Through the head&mdash;same as he shot Blossom's father."</p>
+
+<hr class="major" />
+<div style="margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 1em">
+<a class="pagenum" name="page_245" id="page_245" title="245"></a>
+<a name="HIS_DAUGHTERS_FATHER_6275" id="HIS_DAUGHTERS_FATHER_6275"></a>
+<h2>CHAPTER XXIV</h2>
+<h3>HIS DAUGHTER'S FATHER</h3>
+</div>
+
+<p>Carmena stroked the dishevelled Elsie's yellow locks.</p>
+
+<p>"There, there, sweetheart," she said soothingly. "The fighting is all
+over. The bad Indian really is dead this time. You've no more need to be
+frightened. Brother Jack and I will take care of you."</p>
+
+<p>Elsie gazed up into the loving dark eyes of her comforter.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, of course, Mena, when you've always&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>The blue eyes suddenly widened.</p>
+
+<p>"But&mdash;but not always&mdash;papa and mamma&mdash;it seems only yesterday&mdash;&mdash; No,
+you&mdash;all these years&mdash;&mdash; But then I can't be only ten! My goodness, what
+a funny rumbly-wumble in my head&mdash;just like two dreams mixed up&mdash;only
+they're real&mdash;both of them!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, both real&mdash;all real, Blossom."</p>
+
+<p>"Except one thing," hastily put in Lennon. "It is Carmena whom I am
+going to marry, Elsie. Remember that."<a class="pagenum" name="page_246" id="page_246" title="246"></a></p>
+
+<p>The girl looked at him, blushing and dimpling with shy delight.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, it'll be ever so much nicer, 'cause then I can be just your dear
+little sister, and Mena loves you a thousand times more."</p>
+
+<p>Carmena's cheeks flooded with scarlet, but she faced Lennon with a look
+of unflinching candour.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Jack, I do. I tricked you into the Basin. For Dad's sake, I was
+ready to lead you to almost certain death from Cochise and his bunch.
+But after that Gila monster I loved you&mdash;I put you above all else except
+Blossom's safety and Dad's good name."</p>
+
+<p>Lennon glowed back at her, proud that he had won the love of such a
+woman, yet humble over the consciousness of how he had misjudged her.</p>
+
+<p>"You had no thought for yourself," he said. "You would have given your
+life&mdash;and more. You failed to save your father's life, but we shall save
+his name. Did Slade's Navahos share in the stock stealing?"</p>
+
+<p>"Only Pete. Of the others, Slade's four bodyguards alone knew about the
+Hole. But, once in, any of the punchers can trail us."</p>
+
+<p>"No," declared Lennon. "To be sure, there is one of the four left. But
+what if he does bring the punchers? All I need do is catch a pony, ride
+down the valley, and haul up the lift in the lower ca&ntilde;on."<a class="pagenum" name="page_247" id="page_247" title="247"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Of course!" agreed Carmena. "What a loon I've been not to think of it
+myself! Of course, Cochise would have done it if we hadn't got the bunch
+up the cliff when we did. It will take the Navahos till noon to-morrow
+to ride all the way back and round to the head of Hell Ca&ntilde;on."</p>
+
+<p>"Good enough," said Lennon. "That solves all our difficulties. We can go
+out the ca&ntilde;on to-night and have a long start for the railway. There we
+will report how Slade and your father have been killed in a fight with a
+band of Apache stock thieves."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Jack! And Slade's Navahos will scatter when they hear he is dead,
+and they'll never talk. They're Indians. But the stock here in the Hole,
+what if the sheriff wants to investigate?"</p>
+
+<p>Lennon pointed upward.</p>
+
+<p>"If he should manage to get into the cliff house, there's nothing
+incriminating left. The dynamite obliterated the still. As for the
+stock, we will drive it out with us and deliver it up as part of the
+loot retaken by us from the thieves."</p>
+
+<p>Carmena put Elsie aside and rose to lay her hands on Lennon's shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>"Now I know for sure you love me," she said. "You love me enough to
+forget Dad as you knew him and to remember only that he was my father.
+You<a class="pagenum" name="page_248" id="page_248" title="248"></a> would shield his good name as you would shield your own. Yet I am
+the daughter of a rustler, of a moonshiner, of a drunken criminal."</p>
+
+<p>"No," denied Lennon. "You are the daughter of an unfortunate gentleman,
+who paid bitterly for his mistakes&mdash;who gave his life in an attempt to
+save you and the child whom he had taken in and sheltered. Let God judge
+whether he was not far more victim than wrongdoer."</p>
+
+<p>"But the daughter of a weak man&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Lennon smiled into her troubled eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"You glory of the desert&mdash;you cactus blossom! It was your very strength
+that repelled me, like the spines of the cactus. I never had known your
+like. I thought a woman must be weak and clinging."</p>
+
+<p>He cast a smiling glance at the wide-eyed Elsie.</p>
+
+<p>"But now, dear, I know that the bloom of the desert thorn may be even
+more fragrant and lovely than any garden flower."</p>
+
+<p style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:3em; text-align:center;'>THE END</p>
+
+<div class='center'>
+    <img src='images/illus-end.png' alt="" />
+</div>
+
+<p class='caption center'>THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS<br />GARDEN CITY, N. Y.</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Bloom of Cactus, by Robert Ames Bennet
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@@ -0,0 +1,6726 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Bloom of Cactus, by Robert Ames Bennet
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Bloom of Cactus
+
+Author: Robert Ames Bennet
+
+Illustrator: Ralph Pallen Coleman
+
+Release Date: August 8, 2007 [EBook #22270]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BLOOM OF CACTUS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+[Illustration: "Lennon elevated his rifle and sent a parting shot over
+the heads of the fleeing riders"]
+
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+BLOOM OF CACTUS
+
+By
+ROBERT AMES BENNET
+
+Frontispiece by
+RALPH PALLEN COLEMAN
+
+Garden City New York
+DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
+1920
+
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+Copyright, 1919, by Doubleday, Page & Company
+All Rights Reserved, including that of translation into
+foreign languages, including the Scandinavian
+
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+CONTENTS
+
+CHAPTER                               PAGE
+
+I. Ambushed                              3
+II. Off Trail                           13
+III. The Gila Monster                   24
+IV. Pards in Peril                      35
+V. Dead Hole                            47
+VI. Her Folks                           55
+VII. Craft and Cruelty                  62
+VIII. Cactus Carmena                    75
+IX. The Man Who Was                     85
+X. The Setter of Traps                  95
+XI. Cross Currents                     107
+XII. A Bargain                         117
+XIII. The Blossoming                   127
+XIV. The Prowler                       136
+XV. Crooked Ways                       145
+XVI. The Drop                          156
+XVII. Death Play                       168
+XVIII. The Attack                      180
+XIX. Out of the Frying Pan--           192
+XX. Into the Fire                      201
+XXI. Treachery                         211
+XXII. The Sacrifice                    222
+XXIII. Out of the Past                 234
+XXIV. His Daughter's Father            245
+
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+
+
+
+BLOOM OF CACTUS
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+AMBUSHED
+
+
+As Lennon drove his heavily packed burro over the round of the ridge
+above the camp spring, all the desolate Arizona waste around him was
+transformed by the splendour of dawn. Up out of mysterious velvety
+blue-black valleys loomed the massive purple-walled fortresses and
+cities of the mountain giants, guarded by titanic skyward towering
+pyramids and turrets of exquisite rose pink.
+
+The burro was not interested in scenery or light effects. He topped the
+ridge and plodded slowly down the steep trail on the far side. Lennon
+lingered to enjoy the glorious illusion of the view.
+
+All too soon, as the glaring sun cleared the high plateau on the eastern
+horizon, the ethereal colours of daybreak faded. The magic towers and
+pyramids lowered and shrank in bulk until they became only bald rugged
+peaks and buttes.
+
+No less remorselessly the flood of hot white sunrays burned away the
+shadow tapestry of the valleys. In place of the cool mysterious vales
+there were left only scorched gulleys and dry washes sparsely set with
+greasewood and sagebrush and cactus.
+
+Yet the interest in Lennon's alert gray eyes increased rather than
+lessened as he swung away down slope after his burro. The trail he was
+following was very old. Above almost every arable valley bottom the
+heights were crested with the stone ruins of ancient pueblos. Not
+improbably, Coronado or others of the early Spanish explorers had ridden
+this trail, west and north around the great bend, into the territory of
+the Moquis and Navahos.
+
+Within the memory of settlers not yet white-haired, more than one
+war-party of renegade Apaches had sneaked along the ancient way in
+search of victims. Every few yards of the bad lands offered perfect
+lurking places for liers-in-wait along the trail.
+
+Lennon glanced at the butt of his rifle in its sheath on the burro's
+pack. He recalled the tales of the old prospector whose copper mine he
+was seeking to rediscover. But his glance was only momentary. He knew
+that twenty-seven years had passed since the last murderous Indian
+outbreak in this land of desolation.
+
+In those days a lone prospector would never have thought of tramping
+this trail without his rifle ready in hand, and the hammer at half cock.
+Lennon began to whistle a dance tune as he sauntered unconcernedly at
+the heels of his slow-moving burro up a rise and along a badly broken
+rocky slope.
+
+They came down into a sandy wash that curved out of the mass of jagged
+ridges on the north. When midway across the bottom of the arroyo Lennon
+heard a sharp ping close above his ear--his sombrero whirled from his
+head. Before the hat struck the sand the rocky sides of the wash
+reverberated with the report of a rifle shot.
+
+Lennon had never before been under fire, yet his reaction to the shot
+was almost instantaneous. One jump brought him alongside the burro. He
+crouched below the level of the pack and clutched the butt of his
+sheathed rifle. Again the gulley walls reverberated. The burro dropped
+dead, with a bullet through his head.
+
+As the beast fell, Lennon hit the sand almost at the same moment, his
+rifle gripped in his right hand. Flattened out behind the inert body of
+the burro, he peered around the end of the pack. A bullet thwacked in
+the sand close at his right. He thought he could see a haze of
+semi-smokeless powder vapour above a jagged crag up-slope where the wash
+twisted in a sharp bend. He fired four shots in quick succession at
+promising notches in the crag.
+
+Immediately after his fourth shot an arm and rifle were thrust up above
+the rock in a convulsive gesture, then suddenly disappeared. No more
+bullets came pinging down the arroyo.
+
+Lennon gathered himself together and bounded on across the bottom of the
+wash to where the trail ran up a small side gully. From the gully he
+started to creep with cautious slowness up the left bank of the arroyo,
+under cover of the rocks and jutting points.
+
+Now crawling, now springing from rock to rock, he worked his way half up
+to the crag, yet failed to catch a single glimpse of the lier-in-wait or
+to draw another shot. His conviction that he had killed the lurker
+became so firm that he stood erect to cover the remaining distance at a
+rush.
+
+From down across the arroyo came a sharp clatter of hoofs. He whirled,
+with his rifle at his shoulder. Over the barrel he saw a scraggy pony
+loping down into the wash along the trail of the burro. The pony's rider
+was armed with a rifle. Lennon took quick aim--only to drop the muzzle
+of his weapon. The rider had flung up a gauntleted hand, palm outward. A
+musical feminine hail rang aslant the arroyo:
+
+"_Wa-hoo!_ Friend! Don't shoot!"
+
+Lennon had already perceived that the rider was a woman. He jumped clear
+of the bank and sprinted down the rocky, sandy bed of the wash.
+
+"Get off!" he shouted. "Hide behind your horse--quick! Danger."
+
+The rider brought her pony to an abrupt halt below the dead burro and
+dropped out of her saddle on the far side. Only her old cowboy sombrero,
+the bottom of her khaki divided-skirt and her high laced boots were
+visible to Lennon.
+
+With a startled snort, the ewe-necked pony plunged and backed around,
+clear of his motionless mistress. Lennon's first glance showed him that
+she was young and more than pretty. He was already leaping over the dead
+burro and brought up close before the girl to shield her with his body.
+
+"Down!" he cried. "Down, before he fires!"
+
+The dark eyes of the girl met his anxious look with a cool, level gaze.
+Her cheeks were ruddy with rich colour under their deep coat of tan. The
+corners of her rather large, but shapely mouth quirked in an amused half
+smile.
+
+"Don't tell me you're not a tenderfoot," she rallied, in a softly
+vibrant, contralto voice. "I heard shots, so came a-running. Your
+attacker must have vamosed, else you'd have collected lead on the
+jump."
+
+"That's so," agreed Lennon. "Only I really think I nailed the beggar.
+Yet you must take no chances. Get under cover while I make sure."
+
+"You've already done that--standing here ten seconds without drawing a
+shot. When a mountain lion misses his game first crack, he sometimes is
+so shamed he clears out. Same way with a broncho Apache."
+
+"Apache? But I thought all Indians were now on reservations."
+
+The girl dropped the reins of her skittish, snorting pony and picked up
+Lennon's new sombrero. Through the middle of the high peak was a neatly
+drilled bullet hole.
+
+"Poor shot--for an Apache," she said. "Good, though, for ventilation."
+
+The dry humour of this brought a twinkle into the Easterner's gray eyes.
+He took the hat from her outstretched gloved hand, but paused with it
+half raised to his close-cropped head.
+
+"If you'll permit me ... my name is Lennon--Jack Lennon--mining
+engineer."
+
+"Engineer is all right, but can you shoot?" queried the girl.
+
+"I have had pretty good luck with running deer. This is my first man."
+
+"All right, Mr. Lennon. I'm going up to look for signs. Come along if
+you want to."
+
+"No, you must stay here. I insist----"
+
+But the girl was already swinging away up the bed of the arroyo, her
+spurs jingling on the stones. Lennon started to block the way but
+changed his mind when he perceived her amused smile. Instead of trying
+to stop her, he attempted to take the lead. The girl quickened her pace.
+
+He had lowered more than one record in his college track meets; but the
+girl was accustomed to rough ground, and he was not. She was still side
+by side with him when he dashed up around the bend in the arroyo.
+
+Both held their rifles ready to fire as they rushed the rear ledges of
+the jagged crag. From the upper side the slopes around were all open to
+view. Lennon came to a panting halt and stared about in frank surprise.
+He had fully expected to see the limp form of a dead Apache lying on the
+rocks.
+
+The girl sprang past him into a niche of the crag and bent to pick up a
+cartridge shell.
+
+"A thirty-two," she said. "Same calibre as my rifle.... And look at this
+track--Apache-made moccasin. Easy to tell the print from that of a Pima
+or Moqui."
+
+To Lennon the track was only a small narrow blur.
+
+"I was right," added the girl. "No trace of blood. You scored a clean
+miss and the bird has flown. All safe around here now, but may be
+dangerous on the trail ahead. Happens I know that a bunch of bronchos
+are loose over this way. They're looking for trouble."
+
+"Bronchos? You mean wild horses--mustangs?"
+
+"No--Apaches. Renegades are called bronchos. What do you figure on doing
+now, with your burro dead? Out prospecting, I noticed by your outfit.
+What were you heading up this way for, anyhow? The agents don't want
+prospectors on the Moqui or Navaho reservations."
+
+"But I didn't intend to cross the boundary," explained Lennon. "About
+seventy miles on around this trail bend, I was to strike in eastward to
+a three-towered mountain. Old friend of mine discovered a big copper
+vein there in the early 'Nineties. A party of Indians ran him out of the
+country and so maimed him that he never could return."
+
+"Why, that must be Cripple Sim and his----" The girl checked herself and
+tightened her lips. "Well, what you going to do about it? Hike back to
+the railroad?"
+
+"Certainly--to get another burro. We might return together for mutual
+protection, unless you'd rather trust to your pony's heels."
+
+The girl looked him up and down with sharp appraisal.
+
+There was no hint of timidity in his smile.
+
+"Don't figure there's any joke about a bunch of bronchos," she said.
+"They like to kill just for pure devilment, and when they can make it
+without risk, their choice of game is a white man."
+
+"Or woman," put in Lennon, no longer smiling.
+
+"Choicer still. But a man will do. How about that hole in your hat?
+Hadn't you better catch the first train East, and keep going?"
+
+Lennon flushed, rallied himself, and smiled.
+
+"I didn't come to Arizona for my health. I might say it was on business,
+but I've no objection to a bit of sport on the side."
+
+The dark eyes of the girl flashed with a look of almost fierce
+intensity.
+
+"I'll call your bluff," she challenged. "We'll see if you're
+four-flushing. Dead Hole--Dad's ranch--is only a few miles southeast of
+Triple Butte, the mountain you're headed for. I know the short cut
+across the Basin. Want to come along?"
+
+"The Indians," protested Lennon. "No, do not misunderstand me, please.
+It is all right for a man to take chances. But a girl like you----"
+
+"Like me? Well, the kind of girl I am is this--I'm going home. I've no
+mind to back up. Good-bye, Mr. Jack Lennon."
+
+He was beside her again before she had reached the bed of the arroyo.
+
+"I have a compass," he said. "Perhaps I'll get to your ranch even if
+your pony outruns me. Only trouble, I can't lug both tools and food."
+
+The girl stopped short to draw off her glove and offer him her strong
+white hand.
+
+"I'm Carmena Farley. I don't like rattlers, coyotes, or quitters."
+
+"I may prove to be a quitter, Miss Farley, but I'd like at least to be
+entered for the game."
+
+The dark-eyed daughter of Arizona looked at him searchingly.
+
+"You will be risking the highest of all stakes--your life," she warned.
+
+Lennon smiled. "Oh, no; not the highest. There are other things more
+precious."
+
+"Maybe," she assented. "But not everybody would agree with you."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+OFF TRAIL
+
+
+By the time the two reached the dead burro again the somber mood of the
+girl had lightened.
+
+"First thing is to sort over your pack," she said. "We'll cull out
+what's not needed."
+
+The girths of the packsaddle were cut loose, and the animal was dragged
+clear of the pack. When Lennon's very creditable diamond-hitch had been
+thrown off, the girl overhauled the pack and made quick decisions.
+
+"We'll leave most of the flour. You can stock up at the ranch with
+cornmeal. Same with your cooking outfit. Throw out all but one drill and
+all the giant powder--no, keep half a dozen sticks."
+
+"But, Miss Farley, I can't begin to lug a quarter of----"
+
+"Don't forget my pony," cut in Carmena.
+
+"He can't carry you and all this truck of mine," remonstrated Lennon.
+"I'll not permit you to walk. You must have hurt your foot. I saw you
+limp."
+
+"I'm not asking your permission, thanks."
+
+As she unbuckled her spurs Lennon noticed that the girl's boots were not
+built with the usual cowboy high heels. They would be suitable for
+walking.
+
+The pony had wandered some distance down the wash, cunningly twitching
+his trailing reins to one side, clear of his hoofs. While Lennon started
+to cache his packsaddle and the other discarded articles of his outfit,
+Carmena went after her would-be stray, limping and gingerly picking her
+steps when she saw that the young man's back was turned. After catching
+her pony she crouched down behind a corner of rock to unlace her boots.
+They came off with difficulty.
+
+Inside the boots, she had been wearing a pair of curious high-top
+boot-moccasins with thick back-doubled toes. In a twinkling she stripped
+off the moccasins and thrust them down into the bottom of one of the
+saddlebags. With her feet uncramped and easy in her relaced boots, she
+sprang into the saddle and loped back up the trail.
+
+Lennon's cache was a cavity under an overhanging ledge. Before he had
+blocked the opening to his satisfaction with fragments of rock the rest
+of his outfit had been securely packed upon the pony by Carmena. Nothing
+was left out except rifles, cartridge-belts and two half-gallon canteens
+of water.
+
+"Keep your gun loaded and never put all your water on your horse." The
+girl gave her companion the two first maxims of desert travel. "Come
+along. No use trying to hide your cache or your trail from Apaches. Only
+another Apache can do that. It's high time we hit out, anyhow."
+
+To the surprise of Lennon, she started up the arroyo. When he joined
+her, the pony, whose reins had been tied to the pack, snorted and shied.
+But at a call from Carmena, the skittish beast followed his mistress up
+the arroyo like a dog.
+
+"How about the chance of running into that murderous savage if we go
+this way?" Lennon inquired.
+
+"You might be safer if you hurried back to the railroad," replied
+Carmena, and she swung the steepening side of the arroyo.
+
+Lennon's lips tightened. He did not again question his guide's choice of
+route. But, like her, he held his rifle ready as they came up over the
+round of a stony ridge. Though neither could see the slightest sign of
+lurking Indians, Carmena hastened to lead her pony across the ridge
+crest and down the other side.
+
+When safe below the skyline the girl broke into a dog trot. She held to
+the pace, on a long slant along the ridge side, until they came up into
+the mouth of a small canon. Between the bald ledges of the dry channel
+were bars of sand and gravel. Lennon pointed to the hoofprints of a
+horse that had come down the canon at a gallop.
+
+"This must be the trail of our renegade," he said.
+
+Carmena paused to fix him with a somber gaze.
+
+"The whole bunch of bronchos may be up here, but it's the only way into
+the Basin; and, once in, they may get behind us. Now's your chance to
+quit--your last chance."
+
+This time Lennon was ready for her.
+
+"Lead on, Miss Macduff, and--perhaps you know the rest of the
+quotation."
+
+"Yes," gloomily retorted the girl. "Don't blame me if we meet up with
+those broncs. The joke will be on you."
+
+"How about your safety? Wouldn't you have a better chance if mounted?"
+
+"Want to back out, do you?"
+
+"By no means. My idea is to dump the pack from your pony. Then, if we
+are attacked, I may be able to hold the renegades while you gallop off."
+
+The girl's rich colour deepened into a flush. The thick fringe of her
+lashes swept down to hide the glow in her eyes. Without a word she swung
+ahead, on up the canon. Though not a little puzzled over her abruptness,
+Lennon felt certain that she had been far from displeased by his
+matter-of-fact suggestion.
+
+He had no chance to urge the desirability of his plan. At his first
+rather loud-spoken remonstrance Carmena flung back at him a curt gesture
+for silence and led on at a quickened pace. Her swift ascent slackened
+only at the twists of the narrowing canon; at these she would swing in
+close to the inner side of the bends and creep around, with her rifle
+half raised.
+
+By mid-morning the bed of the canon had become much rougher and steeper.
+The pony, for all his goat-like agility and sure-footedness, found
+difficulty in scrambling up some of the ledges.
+
+Neither the rapid pace nor the climbing bothered Lennon. But between the
+burning heat and his very natural excitement over Carmena's stealthy
+bearing at the turns, he became keyed to rather a high pitch.
+
+After a last sharp turn, the canon broadened and flared out in a
+trough-like valley at the top of a high, cedar-clad, ridge-rimmed mesa.
+
+"Wait!" Lennon exclaimed. "Look ahead, Miss Farley--all bare and open!
+Not a bit of shelter until we cross to the trees!"
+
+The girl faced about, her red lips twisted in a smile of contempt, but
+her eyes clouded with disappointment.
+
+"I told you, down at the lower end, it was your last chance to quit."
+
+"Quite true. I've burnt my bridges. The question now is one of advance,
+not retreat. What if there are Indian watchers on those ridges? Would it
+not be best for me to hold their attention by going straight up the open
+valley, while you take the horse around through the cedars?"
+
+Carmena met his proposal with a chuckle that brought a flush into
+Lennon's lean face. But her troubled eyes had cleared and there was a
+note of relief underlying her mirth.
+
+"What's the matter with you, too, keeping under cover?" she rallied.
+"Besides, we don't go to the head of the valley. We slant up to the left
+through that notch in the ridge."
+
+This banter, coupled with the assurance that the girl knew exactly what
+she was about, cooled Lennon's excitement. His high strung nerves
+relaxed.
+
+"No need to remind you I'm a tenderfoot," he jibed at himself. "Coming
+up the canon I've been shooting Apaches at every bend."
+
+The mirth left Carmena's face. Her lips straightened in hard lines and
+her eyes flashed.
+
+"It's no joke," she said. "I'm right glad you're steadying down. If we
+meet that bunch of bronchos, there's just one thing to do--shoot first.
+It'll be time enough to ask questions afterward. Is that clear?"
+
+"Perfectly, Miss Farley. I have you to consider, and I presume no
+peaceful Indians come into these bad lands."
+
+"Pimas and Moquis cut their hair square across the forehead. If you see
+any others, shoot--to kill!"
+
+"I will," said Lennon, certain that he understood the cause of the
+girl's almost fierce insistence. He knew that the treatment of captured
+women by renegade Indians is a far worse fate than death.
+
+Carmena took note of his set jaw, drew in a deep breath, and swung
+around to angle up the slope at the side of the canon head. Half an hour
+of winding advance through the midst of the scraggly low-growing trees
+brought them to the notch in the rim-ridge. Below this break the mesa
+side pitched steeply into a great basin that was blotched with white
+alkali flats, wave-marked with sand dunes, and broken with jagged hills
+and skeleton-like ridges.
+
+The air was so dry and clear that even far out in the Basin, many miles
+away, Lennon could distinguish patches of green. Nearer at hand appeared
+blurs of a grayish vegetation. But at his pleased exclamation Carmena
+told him that he was looking at no oasis. What he saw was only the green
+of mesquite and palo verde, the fluted columns of the giant sahuaro, and
+the gray of sagebrush. In all that wide waste of desolation no
+trickling rill or even the smallest of pools glinted under the fierce
+rays of the mid-day sun.
+
+Over beyond the north side of the Basin, above the lesser peaks and
+buttes, appeared a higher mountain. The top, dwarfed by distance but as
+clear cut in outline as a cameo, was divided into three thick tower-like
+masses.
+
+"There's your Triple Butte," said Carmena.
+
+"What! So near as that? We can make it by mid-afternoon."
+
+The girl smiled. "You might, if you hurried enough. It's only forty
+miles away on a beeline."
+
+Lennon stared, openly incredulous: "Forty miles?"
+
+"Near fifty-five by way of the water-holes--forty to the ranch. We'll
+strike for the nearest tank. I've noticed your canteen has been empty
+some time. Here's mine."
+
+Though Lennon's throat was parched, he sought to refuse the offered
+canteen, which was still half full. Carmena dropped it at his feet and
+began to zigzag down the mesa side.
+
+Noon had passed before they gained the foot of the steep slope. Carmena
+followed out along a ridge of bare rock, past scattered growths of
+thornscrub and cactus, to where windblown sand lay in sterile drifts
+alongside the ledges. Here she turned up a narrow cleft of the ridge and
+entered the mouth of a small cave.
+
+She knelt to dip her hat down a hole in the bottom of the cave. The hat
+came up brimful of water. She drank deeply, refilled the hat, and backed
+out past Lennon to water the eager pony.
+
+"I'll thank you to fill the canteens and give the bronc as much more as
+he can drink," she directed. "There's firewood on around that point of
+rocks. Keep your gun handy."
+
+Lennon was already drinking from a refilled canteen. He found the
+cliff-shaded water of the spring pure and deliciously cool. The watering
+of the pony took no little time and patience. Though the beast was too
+thirsty to show any of his former skittishness, Lennon's sombrero was
+leaky from the bullet holes.
+
+When at last he drove the pony on along Carmena's trail, he noticed tiny
+cloudlets of dark smoke, like the puffs of a giant's pipe, rising
+straight up in the still air from behind the point of rocks. By the time
+he rounded the corner the smoke had thinned and lightened to an almost
+invisible haze.
+
+A bright little fire of dry sticks was blazing in a sandy hollow.
+Carmena knelt beside it, leaning on the muzzle of her rifle. Her dark
+eyes were gazing off across the desert basin in a look that betrayed
+both eagerness and dread.
+
+"Hello. Ready for the frying pan?" sang out Lennon. Then he perceived
+the tenseness of the girl's attitude and hastened to swing up his rifle.
+"What is it? Sighted another Apache?"
+
+"No. But I put greasewood on the fire. You saw the smoke?"
+
+"A few puffs--yes."
+
+The girl rose and eyed him somberly.
+
+"Few puffs, you say.... If that bunch of bronchos is anywhere within
+fifteen miles--with a clear view this way--we can expect a visit."
+
+"Should we not cut and run?"
+
+"Why? We couldn't hide our tracks. Even if the devils aren't mounted,
+they'd soon overtake us. An Indian can lope along all day, like a
+coyote."
+
+Lennon looked deliberately around at the ridge and sat down to clean and
+reload his rifle. Carmena's eyes flashed.
+
+"You've got the idea," she said. "We'll eat and back up to the spring.
+The cave is an easy place to hold. You said you can shoot?"
+
+"Rather well. Very long range rifle, too. I've knocked over a caribou
+with it at nearly a mile, up on Hudson Bay."
+
+Carmena glanced at the high-power weapon and then raised her flashing
+eyes to gaze over the bent head of its owner. Midway out across the
+desolate Basin, from the top of a craggy hill to the right of the line
+of Triple Butte, puffs of smoke were rising into the cloudless
+steel-blue sky.
+
+The girl hastened to loosen her pony's pack and take from her saddlebags
+a frying pan, several slices of bacon, and a big chunk of corn pone.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE GILA MONSTER
+
+
+The bacon was ready almost as soon as Lennon's rifle. Carmena rose from
+beside the embers of the fire with the pan and corn bread.
+
+"Fetch the canteens," she directed. "We'll eat over here under that
+overhanging rock."
+
+But at the edge of the shade, below the outjutting cliff ledge, she
+stopped short with her gaze fixed upon an object close to the
+sand-sculptured wall of rock.
+
+"Ever see a Gila monster?" she queried.
+
+"No. You don't mean to say--really----"
+
+Lennon had sprung forward beside her. His curious eyes at once perceived
+the hideous, thickset lizard that lay flattened upon the shadowed sand
+as if in a torpor. The reptile's dirty orange-mottled black body was as
+loathsome as its venomous blunt-nosed head.
+
+"Big specimen--almost two feet long," remarked Carmena. "Hold on. Don't
+shoot. That sure would tell the bronchos where we are."
+
+"But if we are to eat here?" questioned Lennon. "I don't fancy the
+company of this sweet wiggler--not that I believe the wild yarns about
+them. All lizards are non-poisonous. No poison glands have ever been
+found in the mouth of these so-called monsters."
+
+"Just look and see," rejoined the girl. "But look in the lower jaw.
+Trouble is, you science sharps expected to find hollow fangs and the
+sacs above, like a rattler's. Do you know why a Gila monster flops on
+his back when he bites? It's to let the loose poison in his lower jaw
+drain into the hollow teeth."
+
+"Really?"
+
+The girl faced him with a challenging look.
+
+"If they turn over, it's as bad as being struck by a six-foot
+diamond-back. They lock their jaws, and the poison---- But I've seen a
+man snap the head off one of those big snakes. Let's see if you have the
+nerve to toss this little lizard outside."
+
+Lennon's smile faded as he perceived that the girl was in sober earnest.
+Very naturally he hesitated. He was not given to bravado, and even
+without her assertion that the reptile was deadly poisonous, he would
+have loathed to touch so repulsive a creature.
+
+But there is no spur so galling as the derisive smile of a comely young
+woman. Lennon dropped his rifle, walked in beside the Gila monster, and
+suddenly clutching the lizard in mid-body, flung it several yards out
+upon the sun-scorched sand. The girl's scorn gave place to a look of
+grave approval.
+
+"You'll do," she said. "Fact is, they're so sluggish in the shade you
+didn't run the slightest risk. You couldn't know that, though. Yes,
+you'll do. Only don't try playing with the fellow out there in the sun.
+The light livens them up."
+
+The advice was needless. Lennon felt quite ready to sit down beside the
+girl and start eating, though he first rubbed his hands thoroughly in
+the sand. Neither had much to say. They were alike intent upon
+satisfying their keen hunger and keeping a sharp lookout against the
+chance of an attack.
+
+After a time Lennon noticed that the Gila monster had crawled up on a
+little sand ridge in the full glare of the mid-day sun. It was viciously
+snapping its jaws and twitching its thick head from side to side.
+Carmena gave no heed to the angered reptile. She was gazing off toward
+the jagged hill from which had risen the distant smoke puffs.
+
+As the girl finished her share of the hearty food she leaned sideways,
+with her ungloved hand on the sand at the edge of the cliff shadow. Like
+the hand, her wrist was white and well rounded. She drew off her old
+sombrero.
+
+Lennon's gaze lifted to the wealth of dark hair that lay coiled about
+her shapely head. The girl was neither pretty nor beautiful, yet there
+was a certain handsomeness about her strong features.
+
+Out of the tail of his eye Lennon caught a glimpse of a black and orange
+blur streaking toward them over the hot sand. He had seen many darting
+lizards that day. But none had moved more swiftly than the clumsily
+built Gila monster now darted at the disturbers of his torpor. There was
+no time for thought. Lennon sensed that the reptile aimed to strike at
+Carmena's bared wrist.
+
+"Jump!" he cried, and flung himself forward to block the attack with his
+out-thrust right hand.
+
+An instant later the Gila monster snapped its gaping jaws together on
+the fleshy edge of Lennon's palm. It whirled over upon its back. Caught
+outstretched and almost prone upon the ground, Lennon sought to wrench
+his hand free and draw away. The heavy lizard was dragged along with its
+crooked legs futilely clawing the air. But its powerful jaws remained
+clenched on the hand with bulldog tenacity.
+
+A voice shrilled in Lennon's ear: "Hold still! Hold still!"
+
+Carmena stooped over the writhing monster to thrust the muzzle of a
+small revolver against the side of its lower jaw. The bullet shattered
+the jaw and blew it half off. A vigorous kick hurled the now harmless
+reptile aside.
+
+Lennon had started to raise himself to a sitting position. Carmena flung
+herself upon her knees and caught up his torn hand to her red lips. She
+sucked hard at the wounds----
+
+With the suddenness of a dropped veil, the hot, white glare of the
+desert noon went black before Lennon's eyes. He sank down upon the sand,
+unconscious.
+
+When the light of returning life glimmered back into his brain, he first
+was dimly aware of a pale Madonna face that appeared to hover close
+above him. His clearing gaze gradually made out the girl's features.
+There was no colour even in her lips. Her eyes were wide with grief and
+dread.
+
+She saw the dawning consciousness in his eyes.
+
+"Jack!" she whispered--"Jack!--You haven't left me--you won't leave me!"
+
+"Who--what's the matter?---- Oh, that----"
+
+He sought to raise his right arm. It was strangely numb and heavy. The
+girl lifted it from her lap, where it had been lying. He saw that her
+silk handkerchief had been knotted around his bared forearm and twisted
+very tight with the barrel of the little revolver. From the tourniquet
+down, the arm and wrist and hand were black, and beginning to swell.
+The lacerations torn in the side of the palm by the Gila monster's
+fangs appeared to be clotted with purple blood.
+
+"I rubbed in snake medicine--permanganate of potash crystals," quavered
+the girl. "That'll kill the poison and not hurt you a bit. You're all
+right now--only we'll have to ease off a little on your arm. Take some
+good deep breaths."
+
+Though sick and giddy and still faint, Lennon forced himself to obey. He
+rallied sufficiently to sit up. Carmena loosened the tourniquet and
+briskly rubbed his swollen hand and arm. The tingling pain of returning
+circulation roused him like a stimulant. But the poison had not all been
+sucked from the wounds or counteracted in the veins by the permanganate.
+Before the girl could again twist tight the tourniquet he sank down for
+the second time, unconscious.
+
+Out of the utter blankness of oblivion he first dreamed that he was
+alternately swimming through a rough sea and rocking in a wave-tossed
+boat---- A gush of water dashed into his face--then the sea appeared to
+solidify into dry sand. He became conscious that Carmena was violently
+rolling him from side to side and slapping his face. She paused in this
+punishment to pump his arms above his head, forcing the air in and out
+of his lungs.
+
+He struggled feebly to free himself. The girl jerked him to a sitting
+position and, with a desperate output of lithe strength, grasped his
+body from behind to heave him upright. He gained his feet, but was far
+too giddy to stand alone. The girl clasped his left arm about her neck
+and rushed him out beside the pony.
+
+"Brace up!" she breathlessly implored him. "Grip hold of his mane with
+your good hand. We'll have to hit out. The broncs are coming."
+
+She ran back to snatch up Lennon's sombrero, the rifles and one of the
+canteens. The other had been emptied into Lennon's face. Out again she
+darted to clap the sombrero on his drenched head and steady him with a
+hand on the tourniquet. A guttural command started the pony off at a
+walk. The direction chosen by his mistress was northwest, aslant the
+Basin, almost at right angles to the jagged hill where she had seen the
+smoke puffs.
+
+For a while Lennon tottered and reeled like a drunken man. Time and
+again he stumbled and would have sunk down upon the hot sand but for the
+convulsive clutch of his left hand on the pony's mane and the strong
+support of Carmena at his other side. He was giddy and nauseated and
+leaden-footed. Every step required an agonized effort of will power.
+
+Yet the exertion of walking proved the best of treatment for him.
+Before half a mile had been covered, his head had cleared and his
+strength was fast returning. To offset this benefit, his arm was now
+blacker than ever and rapidly swelling. Carmena gave him a copious drink
+from the canteen, hesitated, glanced toward the smoke hill, and came to
+a desperate decision.
+
+"We can't let that arm go," she said. "The tie must come off. Get ready
+for a rush."
+
+At her command, the pony quickened his pace to a jog trot. As they ran
+along beside him Carmena untwisted her revolver from the tourniquet.
+This time Lennon did not lose consciousness. Either the remaining poison
+had been almost destroyed by the permanganate or else his previous
+reactions to the venom had rendered him partly immune.
+
+Though the nausea and giddiness again threatened to overcome him, the
+support of Carmena and her pony kept him steadied. Very soon the run
+under the hot sun had him panting for breath. His highly oxygenized
+blood gushed through his arteries in a veritable stream of life. His
+face glistened with a profuse sweat.
+
+Carmena held to the pace until he fell down, gasping for water and
+completely exhausted. The wonder was that he had been able to do so much
+after the terrible shock of the Gila monster poison. They had come into
+the midst of scattered mesquite trees, which offered a degree of cover.
+Carmena first tied up the pony, then opened the half gallon canteen for
+Lennon.
+
+While he sought to quench his fierce thirst, she hastily threw off the
+pony's loosened pack. Silk tent, blankets, prospector's tools,
+packsacks, bacon, flour--all were discarded. From her saddlebags she
+dumped half of her own bacon and all but a pint of cornmeal. Into its
+place she slipped the half dozen sticks of dynamite, with their fuses
+and caps.
+
+One of Lennon's full gallon canteens was slung to the saddlehorn,
+opposite the horsehair rope. From its mate the girl refilled the smaller
+canteen, which Lennon had already more than half emptied. She took a
+deep drink and then carefully closed both canteens.
+
+"Sorry, but we must cut it close on water," she said. "The bronchos have
+us headed off from the other tanks. With your hand useless, we can't
+fight. We'll have to swing around through the dry side of the Basin. No
+time to lose! They'll be on our trail before long."
+
+Lennon sprang to his feet.
+
+"Mount your horse and ride as fast as you can," he ordered. "I'll trot
+along after you. Don't bother about me. I can shoot well enough
+left-handed to hold off the beggars until dark."
+
+Carmena suddenly came close to him, her eyes aglow with soft radiance.
+She caught up his injured hand. It was still swollen and bleeding, but
+the purple-black discoloration had lightened to red; her deft fingers
+tore a strip from her handkerchief and bound up the ragged wounds.
+
+"There. Now you'll get on and ride," she said. "You don't suppose I'll
+leave you to those devils, after you saved my life!"
+
+"But it is you who have saved mine, Miss Farley."
+
+"To say that--when you jammed your hand into the monster's mouth! If he
+had bit me I'd have had no show at all. You didn't know how to treat the
+poison. No. Either the bronchos will get us both, or we're going to win
+through to the ranch together."
+
+"But, Miss Farley----"
+
+The heat-flush in the girl's tanned cheeks deepened to rose.
+
+"I never before knew a man like you, Jack. Won't you call me Carmena?"
+
+The candid directness of this rather took Lennon's breath. But the girl
+was of the desert--efficient, resolute, crude in dress, yet rich
+coloured as the bloom of the red-flowered cactus. She had saved him
+from the horrible death of the Gila monster's poison and was now intent
+upon saving him from even worse fate at the hands of the murderous
+Apaches.
+
+He caught up her willing hand in an eager clasp.
+
+"Carmena!--To have a girl like you for pal--it's simply ripping!"
+
+"Pal?" she repeated the word after him, as if not quite certain of its
+meaning. "Oh, you mean pard. Yes, we're partners now--for this deal at
+least--whether it means life or death."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+PARDS IN PERIL
+
+
+As Lennon's clasp relaxed, the girl's tightened. She drew him toward the
+pony.
+
+"You've got to ride," she said. "You can't stand the pace. That poison
+is no joke. Don't want to hold me back, do you?"
+
+The question overcame Lennon's reluctance. The girl had refused to leave
+him, and she was right about the poison. He could endure the severe pain
+of his wounded hand, but he was still weak and badly shaken from the
+effects of the venom. Unless he rode he would be a drag upon her.
+
+"Very well," he agreed, and he permitted her to help him clamber up into
+the saddle.
+
+No time was lost over lengthening the stirrup leathers. Carmena handed
+him his rifle and the half-emptied gallon canteen, caught up the small
+one and her own rifle, and started off in lead of the pony. Her easy
+swinging stride, though seemingly unhurried, covered the ground faster
+than the pony could walk. Every little while the animal had to break
+into a jog to catch up with her.
+
+At the far end of the scattered mesquite growth Carmena edged off to the
+left, down a shallow wash that brought them around to the west side of a
+ridge. Under cover of the gaunt earth-rib of worn rock she headed north,
+straight for the distant towers of Triple Butte.
+
+The deceptive green of occasional palo-verde bushes now gave place to
+the columns of the giant sahuaro. The fluted, leafless stems of these
+high-towering cactus candelabras bristled with fierce thorns, yet each
+was crowned with the glory of a gorgeous foot-wide blossom.
+
+Over the loose hot sand, amidst this shadeless mockery of a forest,
+Carmena swung steadily along at her graceful stride. Her movements
+seemed as lacking in effort as the lope of a coyote or the bound of a
+cat. Lennon would not have realized how greatly she was exerting herself
+had he not seen how frequently she drank from her canteen.
+
+No one of white blood, however thoroughly inured to thirst, can walk
+fast under the blistering sun, in the bone-dry air of the desert,
+without need of much water. Lennon, though riding, was no less parched
+than the girl. He was fresh from a moist climate, and the Gila monster
+poison had put him into a feverish condition. Hard as he tried, he could
+not resist drinking. His canteen was emptied even sooner than
+Carmena's.
+
+This was little past mid-afternoon. They had left the sahuaros behind
+and were coming down among widely scattered salt bushes to the border of
+an utterly barren alkali flat. For the first time since the stop in the
+mesquite, Carmena halted her quick advance. But it was not to rest. The
+feverish crimson of Lennon's face sobered her reassuring smile. She
+peered searchingly back along the trail, glanced at the sun, and hastily
+transferred to their empty canteens all but a quart from the full
+canteen on the saddlehorn.
+
+"We've got to make it last till sundown, Jack," she warned. "Then, if
+only we can hold our lead, we'll be able to keep going all night."
+
+Lennon drew out two half dollars. "How about trying these in our
+mouths?"
+
+"They'll help," she replied, and she took one. "Be ready to tie your
+neckerchief over your nose, soon as we strike the alkali."
+
+The wisdom of this advice was evident when they started out across the
+snow-white flat. Every step stirred up clouds of alkali dust that hung
+about the fugitives like thick smoke. The impalpable powder penetrated
+their clothes, smarted in their eyes, and all but choked them, even
+behind the veiling neckerchiefs.
+
+Before they had half crossed the fearful dust flat Carmena was walking
+as slowly as the pony. At the far side she sank down beside a
+thick-stemmed cactus. Lennon, half delirious from fever, sought to
+spring off, with the vague idea of forcing her to ride. He succeeded
+only in tumbling upon the sand. The startled pony shied clear. With a
+smothered cry, Carmena leaped up to grasp his bridle.
+
+"Close call!" she gasped at Lennon. "If he'd made off--no show for us at
+all."
+
+Lennon was too far gone for speech. His canteen was already half empty.
+Carmena gave him a sip from her own and dragged him around until his
+head lay in the small blot of shade made by a cactus stem. Half an hour
+passed before he was able to get back into the saddle. But the rest
+appeared to have fully restored the girl's strength. She set off at a
+pace that again forced the pony into an occasional jog.
+
+After a time the sheltering ridge ran down into the sandy level of the
+desert. Yet Carmena continued to find a route protected by inequalities
+of the ground or by growths of cactus and thorn scrub from any eyes that
+might be peering across the Basin. As the sun sank nearer to the western
+rim of buttes and mesas she kept an ever closer watch to the rear. Her
+own and Lennon's canteens were again empty and her seemingly tireless
+stride was at last beginning to flag.
+
+By the time the lower edge of the sun touched the rim of the Basin the
+fugitives had come opposite a long range of broken hills. Carmena
+dragged herself wearily up over an out-thrust spur ridge. Lennon was
+swaying in the saddle, and his tongue, like hers, had begun to swell.
+But the girl did not offer to open the canteen on the saddlehorn.
+
+At the top of the ridge she hurried the pony down below the skyline and
+crept back to peer over a ledge. Far to the rear, across the
+shadow-streaked waste, her anxious eyes sighted a group of moving dots.
+She ran to seize the pony's bridle and urge him into a jog.
+
+"Must hurry!" she rasped in a thirst-harshened voice. "They're trailing
+us--on the lope!"
+
+The alarm shocked Lennon out of his semi-delirium. His relaxing grip on
+the rifle tightened. He straightened in the saddle. Carmena did not look
+back at him. She was turning into the mouth of a wash that appeared to
+head over toward the far side of the hills. Half a mile up the wash the
+gravelly bottom changed to loose stones. Carmena smashed the smaller
+canteen and tossed it off to one side.
+
+Some distance farther along the footing became all rock. Carmena stopped
+on a flat ledge and flung the big canteen she was carrying as far as she
+could up the arroyo. She then changed from her boots to the long-legged
+moccasins that she had hidden in one of the saddlebags. No less hastily
+she cut strips from the Navaho saddleblanket to tie over the pony's
+lightly shod hoofs.
+
+The sun had now been down for several minutes, and the clear desert
+twilight was beginning to fade. Carmena turned the pony and carefully
+led him at an easy angle up a flight of solid step ledges on the side of
+the arroyo. Half circling a hill, she descended another arroyo that ran
+northwest, back down into the level desert.
+
+By the time the edge of the broken ground had been reached dusk was
+deepening into night. Carmena halted and eased Lennon down out of the
+saddle. Water, trickled a few drops at a time between his cracked lips,
+gradually soothed his swollen tongue and parched throat. His fever was
+already subsiding in the coolness of nightfall.
+
+Carmena gave him almost half of the remaining quart of water. A half
+pint more she used to rinse her own mouth and moisten the nostrils of
+the pony. The few sips left were held in reserve.
+
+Scant as was the water ration, it enabled both the girl and Lennon to
+suck at lumps of raw bacon. They lay silently mouthing and chewing the
+greasy fat, their rifles ready and their ears alert for the slightest
+thud of approaching hoofs. But no sound broke the deathlike stillness of
+the desert night.
+
+"Looks like we fooled 'em," whispered Carmena. "They must have found the
+canteens--figured we'd gone desperate with thirst and headed on across
+for the nearest water hole. Can you mount again?"
+
+Lennon dragged himself to his feet.
+
+"You're wonderful!" he murmured. "If you'd leave me here--I'm only a
+drag. You could ride at a gallop----"
+
+She grasped his arm and pushed him around beside the horse.
+
+"Don't be looney. We can go all night without a drop. Count on me to
+out-travel the pony till sun-up. Get on. You don't suppose I'm going
+back on my pard, do you?"
+
+There was no room for argument. Lennon's condition was still so serious
+that she had to help him into the saddle. With the pony in lead, she set
+out straight toward the North Star.
+
+Before many miles Lennon caught himself lapsing into a doze. He had
+almost dropped his rifle. To make certain against its loss, he thrust it
+into his cartridge belt like a pistol. After this he drowsed off again
+into a half torpor of sleep and exhaustion. Some automatic functioning
+of his subconscious mind kept him balanced in the saddle.
+
+When at last he roused from the stupor it was to a miserable
+realization of pain and weariness and cold. A bleak gray light was
+filtering over the eastern rim of mesas down into the blackness of the
+Basin. Dry as was this land of desolation, it was not so utterly arid as
+the sea-level deserts of the lower Colorado.
+
+Lennon shivered and forced open his heavy eyelids. He first made out the
+bowed figure of Carmena plodding along, with one backward-dragged hand
+noosed in the reins of the weary pony. The gray light gradually
+brightened. He saw that the girl was swaying, almost staggering. He
+forced out a hoarse cry:
+
+"Stop!"
+
+The call broke the hypnotic spell of motion that alone had enabled the
+girl to keep placing one leaden foot before the other. She tottered and
+sank down and lay still. Lennon dropped out of the saddle to bend over
+her. Like the knees of the pony, the girl's moccasins were torn with the
+thorns of cacti and desert bushes, against which they had struck in the
+dark.
+
+She had not fainted. Her dark eyes gazed up at Lennon, wide with an
+anguish of self-reproach.
+
+"Used up--can't make it," she whispered. "No chance for both--after
+sun-up. Ride hard toward Triple Butte."
+
+Lennon's reply was to open the canteen and hold it to her lips. Only a
+few drops were left when she managed to thrust it away. He put his
+uninjured arm about her slender waist and lifted her to her feet.
+
+"Ride--your turn," he commanded. "I walk. Never say die!"
+
+Her sunken eyes lighted with a faint glow. A last flicker of strength
+enabled her, with his help, to pull herself into the saddle. Lennon
+caught up her rifle and started off toward Triple Butte in desperate
+haste.
+
+An hour after sunrise found him still staggering forward almost at a dog
+trot. The northern border mesas of the Basin were now only a short
+distance ahead. But already his swollen tongue was beginning to blacken
+in his mouth. When at last he came to the foot of the lower mesa he
+could barely totter.
+
+Carmena rode up alongside. She huskily whispered for him to hand over
+her rifle and grasp the stirrup leather. He had not dragged along beside
+the pony more than a hundred paces when a jerk on the reins headed the
+weary beast around into the mouth of a broad canon. Carmena uttered a
+sharp cry and pointed ahead. Near the base of the canon wall a dark
+patch on the ledges was shimmering in the sunrays.
+
+Hope flared high in the hearts of the perishing fugitives--only to
+flicker and die out again in utter despair. The black patch was
+water--a tiny spring that seeped from a horizontal crevice between the
+stratas of rock--but its trickle was spread out in a paper-thin sheet
+down the sloping lower ledges. At their foot it vanished in the dry sand
+of the canon bed.
+
+They could cool their swollen tongues and so obtain temporary relief
+from their suffering. But they could not suck up enough water to quench
+their terrible thirst. Nor could they collect in the canteen even a gill
+of water to take with them.
+
+Lennon, however, was an engineer. Even while hope fled from him, his
+eyes were peering around with the scrutiny of a trained observer and
+thinker.
+
+His roving gaze fixed upon a bank a little way out from the canon mouth.
+He staggered down to it and came back with a handful of dry clay. This
+he spread out upon the least tilted of the wet ledges. By patting and
+scraping he soon had a little ball that kneaded like putty in his eager
+fingers.
+
+Carmena already had perceived his purpose and was hurrying to fetch a
+heaping hatful of the dry clay. Before many minutes they had built a
+little concave dam, in which the down-seeping water slowly but steadily
+collected.
+
+When at last they had quenched their thirst Lennon took his rifle and
+went to sit under a shady ledge where he could look out into the Basin.
+Carmena lingered at the spring to water the pony and fill the canteen.
+She then gave all the cornmeal to the beast and brought slices of raw
+bacon to share with Lennon.
+
+He clasped the hand in which she held out his first slice.
+
+"So we made it, after all. Good work?"
+
+"Yes, we made it, Jack!" she exulted. "Close shave--but worth the risk.
+I know now for sure you're a man, a real man!"
+
+Her glowing eyes brought a deeper red into Lennon's sunburnt face.
+
+"I'm still pretty much of a tenderfoot," he protested. "And there's this
+game arm. I'd rather run than fight."
+
+The girl smiled.
+
+"That's all right till you get back the use of your hand. But it won't
+hurt to show those bronchos the range of your rifle. They're coming a
+bit too fast to suit us."
+
+Lennon stared out across the open plain. Rather more than a mile away a
+dozen or more riders were loping along the trail of the fugitives.
+
+The sights slid up on Lennon's rifle. He put the butt to his left
+shoulder and rested the barrel across a rock. The first bullet raised a
+puff of dust a little to the left of the Indians. The second must have
+shrieked close over their heads. They wheeled their ponies and scattered
+out in fanlike formation.
+
+Lennon's fourth shot caught one of the ponies broadside. The beast
+tumbled over and lay motionless. Its rider dashed behind a cactus. The
+rest of the Apaches wrenched their ponies about and raced to get back
+beyond range. They had not bargained on a rifle that could shoot so far.
+A renegade prefers to kill without risk to himself.
+
+"That's enough," chuckled Carmena. "There's no cover for 'em unless they
+crawl up afoot. Some will ride around and climb the mesa. Time we were
+moving. Come on. We'll beat 'em into the Hole."
+
+Lennon elevated his rifle and sent a parting shot over the heads of the
+fleeing riders. When he came running back into the canon mouth Carmena
+had the canteen swung to the saddlehorn and was lacing on her boots, in
+place of the torn moccasins.
+
+After a last deep drink from the pool and another sombreroful for the
+pony, the little dam was carefully scraped off the ledge and the clay
+covered with a loose boulder. The Apaches would be able to lap the wet
+stone but not to drink. They were not engineers or dam builders.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+DEAD HOLE
+
+
+The race up the canon was far different from the terrible flight of the
+previous day and the misery of the night. The cool spring water had been
+very refreshing, lofty cliffs shadowed the canon bed from the hot
+morning sunrays, and the pain of Lennon's lacerated hand had eased to a
+dull ache. He took turn about with Carmena, riding and running.
+
+The canon bottom was fairly smooth. For more than an hour the fugitives
+raced up the great cleft between the towering precipices and past narrow
+side canons. At last they came to a break in the sheer walls. The cliff
+on the right leaned back in a series of terraces that formed a broken
+giant stairway to the top of the mesa.
+
+Carmena led the pony up a sloping shelf ledge. The line of ascent picked
+out by her practised eye proved unexpectedly easy. As they climbed in
+steep zigzags from terrace to terrace Lennon trailed behind. Carmena
+noticed his frequent glances down into the canon bottom.
+
+"Don't worry," she said. "They didn't rush the canon mouth--they
+crawled. If any circled and climbed the mesa, the side canons cut 'em
+off from us. We'll beat 'em to the Hole."
+
+"The Hole--we'll find help there?" queried Lennon.
+
+"Slade is away. But I figure we'll be safe enough, once we get in.
+There's Dad and--my sister."
+
+"If they are at all like you, Carmena!"
+
+The girl paused on a ledge to gaze down at him with a somber, clouded
+look that brightened into a tender smile.
+
+"Elsie is as much like me as a lily is like a cactus. No thorns about
+_her_. She's cuddlier than a kitten. Eyes bluer than forget-me-nots,
+Jack; hair yellow as corn silk. She's only eighteen and sweet as honey."
+
+"I'm picturing an angel," bantered Lennon. "Your father must be a fine
+man to have two such daughters."
+
+The flush in the girl's tanned cheeks deepened. But the soft glow of her
+eyes faded and left them dull and haggard.
+
+"Dad's been unlucky all 'round," she murmured. "Not his fault, either.
+He came West for his health--almost died--one lung gone."
+
+"Hard lines," sympathized Lennon. "Ranch work can't be easy for a sick
+man."
+
+The girl climbed to another terrace before she replied:
+
+"That's not the worst of it. Slade came six years ago--when we were
+starving. Dad got in with him. He can't break loose. If only we could
+get away, Dad would be all right."
+
+"Yes?" said Lennon.
+
+Carmena remained silent until he came panting up after her to the top of
+the steepest ascent. While he paused to catch his breath she opened the
+canteen. They were by now badly in need of a drink. Before starting on
+up the ledges she met Lennon's smiling gaze with a look of tremulous
+appeal.
+
+"Dad used to be a lawyer," she faltered. "If only you'll try to like him
+and--and help."
+
+"Of course!" exclaimed Lennon. "Aren't we pals? You're pulling me
+through this scrape. Perhaps I can pull him out of his hole. You called
+it Dead Hole, didn't you?"
+
+"Yes," murmured the girl. "That's the name and--it fits."
+
+"You've stood by me. I'll stand by you," Lennon pledged himself. "We'll
+look for that copper mine together. I'm working for a big copper
+syndicate. If I relocate the mine I am to receive twenty thousand in
+cash and ten per cent. of the stock. Your half of the cash should pull
+your dad out of his hole."
+
+The girl's eyes dilated.
+
+"Don't--don't tell Dad!" she gasped. "It's not the money I want. You
+don't sabe. Promise you won't say a word to Dad about the money--or the
+mine?"
+
+"Why, if you do not wish me----"
+
+"Not a word--not the barest hint! Promise!"
+
+"Very well. Only----"
+
+"You'll learn all too soon!" she murmured, and she started quickly up
+the last ascent.
+
+When they rounded the brink, twelve hundred feet above the canon bed,
+the girl did not linger to talk. She dropped the pony's reins and
+started off at a jog across the hot, level, cedar-dotted top of the
+mesa.
+
+Lennon galloped ahead of her, tied the pony, and ran on afoot. Carmena
+copied the maneuver. In this manner, taking turn about, they covered the
+ground almost as fast as if both had been mounted. As each drank from
+the canteen at every stop and Carmena twice wet the nostrils of the
+pony, none was yet exhausted when, at the end of five or six miles, the
+girl headed down into a quickly narrowing valley.
+
+The funnel-shaped trough pinched to a steep chute between precipices
+that leaned closer together overhead the deeper the fugitives descended.
+The bed of the narrow mountain crack became even more steep. In places
+the pony had to jump like a goat down five and six-foot ledges. Time and
+again he slid on his haunches. At the worst place of all the beast was
+saved from certain destruction only by snubbing his horsehair picket
+rope around a corner of rock and so easing his descent to better
+footing.
+
+But, as Carmena remarked, the steeper the grade the sooner it was ended.
+They came down into the bottom of the lower canon, bruised and exhausted
+but with no bones broken.
+
+"Almost there," panted Carmena, and she reeled ahead along the
+boulder-strewn bed of the chasm.
+
+At the second turn the cliff ended in a vertical slit-glare of sunlight.
+The pony whinnied. Carmena led the way out into an oval cliff-walled
+valley, two or three miles long and half as broad.
+
+First to strike Lennon's desert-starved eyes was the vivid grateful
+verdure of irrigated cornfields. Beyond, in browning hay meadows, grazed
+a herd of cattle and twenty or thirty head of horses. Three quarters of
+a mile to the left, in a cavity forty feet up the rock wall and well
+under an overhang of the towering precipices, nestled a group of stone
+ruins.
+
+Lennon pointed toward the ancient buildings.
+
+"Cliff dwellings, I take it."
+
+"Yes--I told Elsie to be ready with the ladder. We'll make it in time
+for the call of Cochise."
+
+Before Lennon could inquire the meaning of this, she sprang upon the
+pony and loped along the cliff foot toward the cliff ruins. As Lennon
+jogged after her he saw a rope ladder slide down the under cliff,
+followed by a rope reeved through a crane that thrust out from another
+opening in the facade of the cliff building.
+
+Carmena's saddle and bags, saddle blanket and rifle, and the
+canteen--all were fast to the hoisting rope when Lennon came staggering
+and panting up beside the girl. She pointed toward the head of the
+valley and caught the rifle from him to tie it on the load.
+
+"A miss is as good as a mile," she said. "We'll just have time to get
+up. Cochise and Pete must have ridden over around and come down Hell
+Canon. Ours was Devil's Chute."
+
+Lennon frowned at the pair of riders who were racing swiftly down aslant
+from the head of the valley.
+
+"We'll be ready to pick them off," he said. "There's no cover under
+here."
+
+"Too late for that," sighed Carmena. "Dad won't let us.
+Besides--Pete----"
+
+"But when the murderers have tried to kill you!--And they'll steal all
+his cattle."
+
+The girl winced and looked down.
+
+"No. You see Dad--he is friends with all the--Indians hereabouts. I'll
+be safe enough now, soon as Cochise cools off. It's only a question of
+you."
+
+"I see!" exclaimed Lennon. "You know the renegades. You would have been
+safe at the first. You have risked your own life just to save mine. I'll
+never forget that, Carmena."
+
+"If only--if only you'll remember--when you know!" she whispered, and
+she turned to start up the rope ladder.
+
+As Lennon stepped forward after her he noticed that the saddle load had
+already been hoisted above his reach and was rapidly going higher.
+
+A rope ladder draped upon the face of a smooth rock wall and unfastened
+below is at best not easy to climb. Lennon had to crook his right elbow
+through the rungs to get any use of his injured arm. But the riders
+racing swiftly across the head of the valley would soon be within short
+rifle range. Lennon's left hand was only a few rungs below Carmena's
+boot heels all the way up the ladder.
+
+At the top the girl pulled herself in over the worn stone sill of a
+massive-walled doorway. As Lennon scrambled up and through the deep
+entrance after her he glimpsed a thin gray face, with bleary red eyes
+and loose lips, leering at him out of the darkness of an inner room.
+
+To the right, a little way back from the next opening, a small
+fair-haired girl was rapidly winding in on a miner's windlass. She
+stopped to tug at a rope. The crane swung around into the entrance with
+the saddle and rifles.
+
+Carmena had already faced about to haul the ladder up the cliff. Lennon
+caught hold with his left hand to help her. They had gathered in less
+than ten yards when a bullet whizzed between their heads and splattered
+on the stone wall at the rear of the room. Carmena hooked the ladder
+over a peg at the side of the doorway and forcibly dragged Lennon out of
+the opening.
+
+Two more bullets whizzed in, one of them angling up close over the sill.
+Had it come a moment sooner Lennon must have been struck. Carmena's hand
+shook and her voice quavered, though she sought to speak in an
+unconcerned tone:
+
+"That's warmer than I expected at this stage of the game. Guess Cochise
+is feeling pretty bad in his heart. We'll have to let him cool down
+awhile."
+
+"Why not return his compliments?" suggested Lennon. "We can easily pick
+off both of the devils without exposing ourselves."
+
+"And get the rest of the bunch down on us! No, Jack, they've got us
+holed up. We might slip away before the others came but they'd make a
+clean sweep of the stock and everything else. Come and meet Elsie.
+Cochise will soon tire of wasting cartridges."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+HER FOLKS
+
+
+The fair-haired girl was cowering behind the massive front wall of the
+cliff house. At every shot from the rifles of the infuriated Apaches she
+crouched lower. Carmena held out reassuring arms to her.
+
+"There, there, Blossom," she soothed. "You've no need to be scared."
+
+The trembler sprang to clasp the neck of the older girl.
+
+"Oh, Mena, Mena!" she sobbed. "I'm so glad you're back! It's been awful!
+Dad had one of his spells; and now, with Cochise angry----"
+
+"We'll manage him--never fear. He's stopped shooting already. Quit your
+shaking. I don't want Jack to think you a silly little rabbit."
+
+For the first time the panic-stricken girl appeared to realize that
+Lennon was a stranger. She lifted her head from Carmena's bosom to stare
+at him with innocent childish wonderment. Her piquant little face was
+flowerlike in its delicate contours and apricot tinting; her big blue
+eyes were the pure intense blue of alpine forget-me-nots. No line of her
+pretty face bore the slightest resemblance to Carmena's comely but
+strong features.
+
+"O-o-oh!" she voiced her amazement. "He's new--and he's white!"
+
+"Yes, but he and I are pards," Carmena reassured her. "Shake hands. He
+has come to help us."
+
+"To help us?" The young girl held out a timid hand. "You--you won't side
+with Cochise? You won't let him take me?"
+
+"'Course he won't," put in Carmena. "Didn't I tell you we're pards? His
+name is Jack Lennon, and he's a real man."
+
+Lennon was pressing the soft little hand of the younger girl.
+
+"So you are Sister Elsie," he said. "Carmena is right. I will not side
+with Cochise--if that's our hot friend down below."
+
+The girl's rosebud lips parted in a smile of wondering delight.
+
+"You called me sister! Then you'll be my brother--my Brother Jack!"
+
+Lennon was astonished that any girl more than fourteen could be so
+naive. Yet the effect was more than charming.
+
+"I'll be only too happy, if Carmena has no objection."
+
+He glanced up into the face of the older girl and surprised a look not
+meant for him to see. As the down-drooping lashes veiled her dark eyes a
+deep blush glowed under the tan of her dust-grimed, haggard face. The
+realization of the meaning of that blush and glance sobered Lennon.
+
+The girl had known him a scant seven-and-twenty hours. But in that full
+day had been packed more intense peril and emotion than many couples
+share in a lifetime. He had saved her and she him. Together they had
+suffered agonies of thirst and exhaustion, and together they had cheated
+the murderous Apaches. Even now, down beneath them at the foot of this
+ancient cliff refuge, the leader of the renegades was futilely cursing.
+
+Lennon was a white man, and he had proved himself not a quitter. The
+girl had been overwrought by their terrible flight. That she should
+fancy herself beginning to fall in love with him was quite
+understandable. The discovery of the fact set his jaded nerves to
+tingling with a pleasant thrill even as he realized the awkwardness of
+the situation.
+
+By way of diversion, he stepped around to take his rifle from the
+saddle. As he straightened up with it the muzzle of a double-barreled
+shotgun thrust out at him from a small slit window in the end wall of
+the room. Behind the gun, framed deep by the thick stone of the window
+casing, he saw the leering gray face that he had first caught a glimpse
+of in another opening at the opposite end of the room.
+
+A thin dry voice that was shrill with fear snarled at him:
+
+"Hands up! Drop that gun!"
+
+Carmena flung herself between Lennon and the threatening muzzle.
+
+"Don't shoot, Dad! He's a friend!" she cried.
+
+Over her shoulder Lennon saw the reddened eyes blink and the muscles of
+the gray face twitch. The muzzle of the shotgun wavered.
+
+"Put your gun down, Dad," Carmena ordered. "Mr. Lennon and I are
+partners. Come out here and meet him."
+
+Both face and gun disappeared. After several moments a smallish
+gray-haired man shuffled out through the doorway on the right of the
+window and scurried across the opening into which the crane had swung
+its load. As he unbent his emaciated body to face the visitor his breath
+was heavy with the fumes of whiskey.
+
+Lennon knew without looking that Carmena's eyes were fixed upon him in
+mute appeal. He had given her his promise to help her father. There was
+no betrayal of repugnance in the friendly offer of his hand.
+
+"My name is Lennon, Mr. Farley. Your daughter tells me you were a
+lawyer. I'm a professional man myself--engineer."
+
+Farley stiffened to a show of dignity.
+
+"I am still a lawyer," he rasped. "I must stipulate that you are
+received here with reservations. Your presence is a trespass. This ranch
+is private property and----"
+
+"All right, Dad. That lets you out with Slade and Cochise," interrupted
+Carmena. "We'll all bear witness. Come in now. We're both half dead for
+want of food and sleep. Those devils ran us clear across the Basin."
+
+Lennon glanced at his rifle.
+
+"How about the two below?"
+
+"We might send down a pie to them," suggested the timid Elsie. "That
+would make Cochise feel better."
+
+To the vast surprise of Lennon Carmena took this preposterous proposal
+seriously.
+
+"All right, Blossom. But not a drop of tizwin, mind. This way, Jack."
+
+The doorway opened into a large living-room, homelike with bright-hued
+Navaho rugs, a quantity of cliff-dweller pottery, and a sufficiency of
+heavy, comfortable furniture hewn out of cedar. The chairs were seated
+and backed with tightly stretched rawhide. Several artistic pictures
+from periodicals were pasted on the stone walls. In one corner a pot was
+boiling over a charcoal brazier.
+
+As the fair-haired Elsie thrust a big pie into a loop-handled basket and
+hurried out, Carmena fetched two large bowls brimming with soup. While
+her back was turned Farley winked leeringly at the visitor and offered
+him a half-emptied whiskey flask. Carmena was in time to see Lennon
+refuse the drink. Her fatigue-bent shoulders straightened to a
+deep-drawn breath, and her sunken eyes glowed softly.
+
+Cool water from a sweating jar and rich meat broth thickened with beans
+and corn were, at last, equal to the task of satisfying even so ravenous
+a hunger and thirst as Lennon's. Elsie had come back with her basket
+empty. She set to waiting upon Carmena and "Brother Jack" with shy
+delight.
+
+The other visitors, down below, evidently had not been displeased by the
+gift of the pie. There was no resumption of the firing. Lennon felt that
+he understood the reason, when the girl divided another pie between him
+and Carmena. It was made of dewberries, sweetened with honey.
+
+Lennon found his eyelids beginning to droop. At a word from Carmena,
+Farley led him to a cool dark inner room. He curtly pointed out a rude
+bed-frame across which had been stretched a rawhide. Lennon fell asleep
+the moment he lay down upon the elastic bed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+CRAFT AND CRUELTY
+
+
+When Lennon wakened he was at first so stiff and sore that he could
+hardly turn over. Yet his strength had in good part returned to him, and
+he was aware of a grateful feeling of refreshment and well-being.
+
+Someone had covered him over with a finely woven old Navaho rug. In
+pushing it off he noticed a fresh bandage on his wounded hand and the
+arm above. Under the cloth was an aromatic resinous salve. He next
+discovered that his boots and socks had been taken off and his badly
+blistered feet washed and treated with a healing powder.
+
+He sat up on the side of the bedstead. Before him stood a chair draped
+with a towel and a change of coarse, but clean clothes. On the
+clean-swept floor were a pair of soft moccasins, a dishpan, a bar of
+soap, and a large jar of water.
+
+When he limped out of his bedroom he had "tubbed" himself as thoroughly
+as an Englishman and felt as ravenous as a wolf. Elsie was alone in the
+living room, deftly handling pots and pans on the charcoal brazier.
+
+"Good morning," he hailed. "Glad I'm just in time for breakfast."
+
+The girl upturned her wide blue eyes to him in a look of shy delight.
+
+"I heard you splashing about and I hustled," she replied. "But it's not
+breakfast--it's dinner."
+
+"So early as this?"
+
+"So late! You've slept all the rest of yesterday and all night and all
+morning. I thought you'd never wake. Sit down."
+
+"How about the others?"
+
+"Oh, Dad just nibbles when he has his tizwin spells, and Mena ate hers
+mid-morning."
+
+The table top had been scrubbed. Lennon sat down at the nearest corner
+and fell to on the omelette and fried chicken, cream cheese, salad,
+cornbread and honey that she set before him. The food was all served in
+bowls and jugs of quaintly beautiful ancient cliff-dweller pottery.
+
+"There's no cream for your coffee," the girl apologized. "The milk
+soured. Mena was asleep, and I dassn't go down to the goats alone.
+Cochise has come back with all the bunch. Dad was cross not to get
+cream. He's cranky over his food."
+
+"You say those red devils are all down there?"
+
+The girl cringed.
+
+"Don't--don't speak so loud. Cochise might hear you. He's stopped
+swearing. I lowered a whole basketful of pies to them. Carmena is
+getting ready to give him a big talking to. She--she won't let them get
+us."
+
+"That's good news," rallied Lennon.
+
+For the first time he was able to look away from his food long enough to
+notice that Elsie was wearing a fresh pretty frock of blue-dotted
+calico. He smiled at her amusedly.
+
+"Didn't you promise to be a sister to me--or something like that? Why
+not sit down with me and celebrate our escape?"
+
+The girl clasped her hands together in childlike delight.
+
+"Oh, do you want me to be, really and truly? Only I don't know how to
+act to a brother. Sisters are different. They kiss each
+other--sometimes. If you don't mind, I'll just sit and watch. I had mine
+with Mena."
+
+With unconscious grace, she perched on the edge of the table.
+
+"You eat ever so much nicer than Cochise."
+
+"I should hope so--a wild Indian!"
+
+"But he isn't. He's educated--he went to the Reservation school. He
+knows a whole lot. That's why he's never been sent up. They caught him
+only once. But Dad got him off. Dad's a lawyer, you know. He didn't want
+to go out and leave us, but he's so scarey he does everything Slade
+tells him."
+
+Lennon recalled Carmena's plea for him to help her father and sister. He
+thought he understood the situation.
+
+"So this Slade and the Indians are keeping all of you prisoners, here in
+the Hole, are they? Yet Carmena got out. Why hasn't she taken you and
+your Dad?"
+
+Elsie's big blue eyes rounded.
+
+"But they won't let us out--only one at a time, and I'm 'fraid to go
+alone, 'cause of Cochise. Besides, the Hole is Dad's ranch. He won't
+give it up and Slade keeps promising him his share of the profits, and
+it's a mighty flourishing business."
+
+"What, farming in a place like this?"
+
+"Course not. That's just for fodder. We're stockholders, Dad says. We
+con--conduct a stock exchange. Slade sells what the bunch maverick and
+brand-blot."
+
+The terms brought no enlightenment to Lennon. He was from the Atlantic
+coast.
+
+"You mean they deal in cattle?" he inquired.
+
+"Cattle and horses--and tizwin," added Elsie, screwing up her luscious
+little mouth over the last word as if it had a bad taste.
+
+Lennon caught a half glimmer of the truth. But the girl's thoughts had
+flitted butterfly-fashion----
+
+"I hope your feet don't hurt. Mena's were even rawer--awful bad. She
+just couldn't help crying when I sopped them with the tizwin. She says
+that's all it's good for. _I_ never knew her to cry before. But you were
+too dead asleep to feel the smart. I'll have your boots oiled and your
+clothes cleaned before you need 'em."
+
+Quite naturally, Lennon inferred from this chatter that Elsie had first
+made Carmena comfortable and then, with innocent concern for him, had
+ventured into his room alone to treat his injured hand and feet.
+
+He laid down his fork to clasp one of her plump, capable little hands
+with grateful warmth.
+
+"It was most kind of you, Elsie, to care for my injuries."
+
+The grown-up child beamed at him radiantly.
+
+"I think you awful nice, Jack! I just knew I'd like you, the minute I
+set eyes on you."
+
+"My word!--when I looked like a dying tramp," teased Lennon.
+
+Carmena had not exaggerated. Elsie was sweet as honey and cuddlier than
+a kitten. He felt tempted to put a finger under her dainty up-tilted
+chin.
+
+"Now that I look more like a matinee idol, just how much more do you
+like me?" he bantered.
+
+"Oh, heaps more than I liked the first pard Mena brought in. He was a
+cowman, and after they made him pay a whole lot to get loose, Mena set
+Cochise on him 'cause he wanted me to go away to live with him--like
+Slade. They filled him up with tizwin and left him out in the middle of
+the Basin, with only tizwin in his canteen. Mena said it served him
+right and dead men tell no tales."
+
+Lennon stiffened.
+
+"You can't mean to say your father and sister were parties to such an
+outrage--that they helped to rob a man and then abandon him to die of
+thirst?"
+
+"Why not?" demanded Elsie, with unexpected spirit. "He wasn't what Mena
+thought him. He was a _bad_ cowman. He wanted to bring his bunch and
+shoot up the Hole and kill us all and make me go with him. You see how
+it was, don't you?"
+
+"Yes," agreed Lennon, certain that he understood.
+
+His surmise was that Carmena had sought help from a neighbouring
+rancher, and the man had proved himself a scoundrel. Elsie had not
+mentioned any proposal of marriage. Whatever the lawlessness of
+Farley's Indian associates, they had apparently put the guilty man to
+ransom and then turned him loose to die in the desert, merely by way of
+vengeance for his attempted wrong against the girl.
+
+Yet both of the girls had given out that the partnership with the
+Apaches and the unknown Slade was by no means satisfactory. Farley
+feared his associates, and they would permit him and Carmena to leave
+the Hole only one at a time.
+
+On the other hand, when he first met Carmena, she had been alone on the
+trail, only a few miles from the railway. Why had she not galloped to
+the nearest station and led a sheriff's posse to free her father and
+sister? She knew that Cochise and his fellows were "bronchos."
+
+Across the train of Lennon's thoughts fell a black shadow of suspicion.
+Was it possible that the girl had acted as a decoy to lure him into this
+ill-omened Dead Hole? She had previously brought in another man, who had
+in effect been murdered, after paying ransom.
+
+In his own case, the girl had herself suffered far too much during their
+flight from the Apaches for the pursuit to have been a sham. But she may
+very well have had an arrangement with the renegades to lure a victim
+into the Basin; and then, untrustful of their bloodthirsty instincts,
+had fled with her prize to the Hole, so that he might be put to ransom.
+
+The more Lennon pondered the situation, the more everything related to
+it appeared in a worse and worse light--everything and everybody, except
+the open-eyed innocent little Elsie. The Apaches admittedly were
+renegades. The absent Slade had been mentioned by no means favourably.
+Farley was far from prepossessing either in appearance or words or
+actions. As for Carmen, even the tender glances that he had surprised
+might be explained by the coquetry of a Delilah.
+
+Lennon rose from his chair with an appearance Of calm deliberation.
+
+"Would you be so kind as to bring me my rifle, Elsie?" he asked. "With
+smokeless powder a gun needs frequent cleaning and oiling."
+
+"Yes. Carmena always keeps hers clean as a whistle. But Dad put yours
+away. He said he apprehended that you might become per--perturbed and
+commit an assault with a deadly weapon. He and Mena are talking things
+over now---- No, they're coming out. Want to hear Mena give it to
+Cochise?"
+
+The girl darted through the largest doorway. Lennon, still affecting
+cool indifference, stepped out after her into the long, bare anteroom
+whose rear wall Cochise and his mate had so angrily splashed with
+bullets.
+
+Farley was crouched at the far side of the rope-ladder doorway. Carmena
+had bent her head to pass under the massive lintel. Lennon followed
+Elsie to the side of the doorway opposite Farley. The lawyer-ranchman
+appeared to cringe, yet he held to his position and even attempted an
+ingratiating smile as he rasped out a half-whispered, "G'day."
+
+Lennon gave him a curt nod and bent down to peer into the deep entrance.
+Carmena did not glance around. If she heard him, she gave no heed. She
+had seated herself upon a Navaho rug and was leaning forward to look
+over the cliff, with her hands on the sillstone at the brink. Down below
+Lennon could see only a single swarthy face, bound about the forehead
+with a wide cloth band. The other Indians were in nearer the base of the
+cliff.
+
+Instead of crouching in tense readiness to dodge back out of danger,
+Carmena gazed over at her late pursuers with serene fearlessness. Her
+rich contralto voice, no longer harsh from thirst, rang mockingly down
+the cliff:
+
+"Howdy, boys. Glad you've begun to cool off. Quite a warm run, wasn't
+it?"
+
+From below came an explosion of thick gutturals and hissings. Carmena
+flung out a hand in a gesture of refusal.
+
+"No, I won't, Cochise. I'll talk American, and so will you---- And
+you'll speak decently, or we chop off. Sabe?"
+
+There followed a silence of several moments. Carmena's patience soon
+reached its snapping point. She frowned and started to draw back. The
+voice below called up, still thick and guttural, but speaking clear-cut
+English:
+
+"You lied. You said you catch another sucker."
+
+"I said I would fetch another man to the Hole, and I have done it. Any
+lie about that?" countered the girl.
+
+"Dam' plenty," came back an angry shout. "You knew what we want him
+for."
+
+"How about Slade? What'll he want him for? Haven't you any sense any
+more, Cochise? Have you forgotten how Dad had to get you loose? Don't
+you see you've got to keep on playing the game our way? Yours is out of
+date. Even in the days of your Uncle Cochise and Geronimo it didn't
+work."
+
+"They got a heap of fun."
+
+"Well, let me tell you one thing--the new man is my game, not yours. You
+had your chance and missed it. He stood up full of Gila monster poison
+and got away from you--threw you off his trail--tricked a bunch of
+Apache trailers--out-ran and out-thirsted you. Want me to tell that to
+Slade?"
+
+The taunt was followed by another prolonged silence. Carmena smiled and
+tossed down first a bare corn cob and then a full ear.
+
+"Which will you have?" she asked. "Your way, you'll get the cob. My way,
+we'll all have a share of corn. A man who could fool and out-game you
+wouldn't make a poor partner to take into our business. We'll wait for
+Slade to decide."
+
+"You give me my woman, I wait," bargained the unseen Cochise.
+
+Carmena fairly blazed with anger. She hurled down another bare corncob.
+
+"She's not your woman. You sha'n't have her! We'll see what Slade says
+about that and about your running me across the Basin. You know you
+can't scare me. Now, is it fight, or do you back up?"
+
+The reply was a jabber of hissings and gutturals. Carmena jerked her
+hand about in swift signs and cried back in uncouth thick-tongued Apache
+words. The dispute at last ended in a sullen mutter from below and a
+sudden thudding of hoofs. The Apaches dashed out from under the cliff,
+loping their horses toward a corral over across to the left of the
+cornfields.
+
+Carmena drew back out of the deep doorway, with a look of profound
+relief. At sight of Lennon she smiled and caught up his wounded hand.
+
+"I've made Cochise back up," she said. "We're safe from the bunch till
+Slade returns--only none of us can leave the Hole. How's your arm
+feeling?"
+
+The dark eyes were very clear and straightforward in their gaze. Lennon
+flushed with shame over his black suspicions. These renegade Apaches,
+and Slade as well, probably were bad men. Farley no doubt was in with
+them. But he appeared to be an unwilling associate, barred from escape
+by sickness, drink, and fear. Carmena had begged for help to get him and
+Elsie out of the Hole.
+
+Lennon permitted his hand to linger in her gentle clasp.
+
+"It seems to be much better," he replied to her question.
+
+"That's good. Let's hope it will be all right before Slade gets back.
+You heard me bluff off Cochise with the partnership talk?"
+
+Farley was backing across the room, gray-faced and trembling like a very
+old man.
+
+"Slade will be angered," he quavered. "I'll lose all--all!"
+
+"Leave him to me. I'll handle him," promised Carmena. "Remember what you
+agreed. Jack is to be a full partner."
+
+Lennon felt a sudden rekindling of suspicion.
+
+"May I ask you to explain all this about a partnership?" he queried.
+
+"Why, of course," replied the girl. She drew close to him and lowered
+her voice.
+
+"Dad refuses to give up everything and leave the Hole. So I've allowed
+him to think you'll come in with the bunch. My idea is to bring about a
+split between Slade and Cochise. We'll then have a fighting chance. All
+we can do now is take things easy and get your hand in shape."
+
+"My rifle was taken by your father. I would rather like to----"
+
+"Dad, hand over Jack's rifle," called the girl.
+
+Elsie glided across to the dark doorway through which Farley was
+disappearing. Within a few moments the missing rifle was thrust out to
+her. She brought it to Carmena, who handed it over to Lennon. A
+seemingly casual examination showed him that it had not been tampered
+with.
+
+His last flicker of suspicion died away.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+CACTUS CARMENA
+
+
+Immediately after the armistice Carmena and Elsie went down to attend
+the goats and chickens that were penned in small enclosures a short
+distance up-valley from the cliff house. The girls also gathered a
+supply of fresh vegetables from a nearby kitchen garden. At dusk the
+rope ladder was hauled up.
+
+In the morning Carmena took Lennon to see the valley. She had roped a
+pair of ponies near the garden enclosure. Though the rifles were
+carried, no occasion arose that called for use of the weapons. The
+Apaches in charge of the stock merely grunted in response to Carmena's
+friendly greeting and stared stolidly as she and Lennon rode by.
+
+All the other Indians seemed to have left the valley. But Carmena said
+that guards were always posted in the two main exits. Escape up Devil's
+Chute with a horse was impossible.
+
+Beyond the narrow mouth of the Chute canon the two skirted along the
+edge of the flourishing cornfields and the hay pastures of the lower
+valley. All the way they followed an irrigation canal of the ancient
+cliff dwellers that had been restored to use. It curved and twisted
+along the higher ground under the towering cliff walls.
+
+At the foot of the Hole the valley narrowed, funnel-like, into a rather
+wide box canon. The canon bed offered a broad level runway down which a
+horse could have sprinted at top speed.
+
+Carmena caught the glance of pleased surprise that Lennon fixed upon a
+heavy farm wagon that stood inside the mouth of the canon.
+
+"It's not so easy as you think," she said. "There's a thirty-foot cliff
+about a mile down. Nothing has ever come in or gone out that way except
+by rope, and the windlass is always guarded. Hell Canon is no easier. It
+forks, and the forks both fork twice, and there's only one branch you
+can get out through. We might be able to make it, either route. But
+there's Dad and Elsie."
+
+"You spoke of bringing about a difference between Cochise and Slade,"
+said Lennon. "What is your plan?"
+
+"It all depends. I have several ideas. One is to offer Slade a share in
+your copper-mine deal. But we'll hold that back. He knows that matters
+must soon come to a show-down with the bunch. Cochise has been getting
+harder to hold for the past three years. You know, he claims that Elsie
+belongs to him."
+
+Lennon stared in amazement.
+
+"What! your sister--that little pink and white blossom?"
+
+"But she's not really my sister. That's the pinch. Cochise brought her
+with him when he first came to the Hole, two years before Slade. He
+claimed he had found her over beyond Triple Butte. She was crazed from
+thirst--never has been able to remember what had happened or anything
+about her life before she came here."
+
+"My word! Has no inquiry ever been made for her? Did you not advertise?
+What were her clothes like?"
+
+"Rags and tatters. No one came. Nobody outside knows there is such a
+place as Dead Hole, except by vague report. Dad and I just happened to
+stumble into it. About advertising Elsie, we tried that some. There was
+no answer. We think she belonged to a stray family, out prospecting. The
+others must have died of thirst."
+
+"Or were murdered by Cochise," put in Lennon.
+
+Carmena's eyes narrowed.
+
+"Maybe--maybe not. It was just after he jumped the Reservation. But he
+was only a sulky schoolboy then, playing hookey. Besides, he had not
+harmed the child. He worked for Dad and was right decent, till he got in
+with Slade and the--business started."
+
+Lennon was not to be diverted to another subject. The mystery of Elsie's
+parentage intrigued him. With the realization that the two girls were
+not of blood kin, Lennon found himself dwelling upon the differences
+between them. Elsie, cleared of any kinship to Farley, at once became in
+his thoughts a being of finer nature than her foster-sister.
+
+In contrast, Carmena now seemed to show distinctly the taint of Farley's
+blood. Her frank manner took on the tinge of boldness. Her vigour and
+strength now seemed mannish, if not coarse.
+
+Might not what he had taken for high spirit and courage be no more than
+callous hardihood? Was there not a certain garishness about her rich
+colouring? And was all the brown of her skin on the outside? Both her
+hair and eyes were dark, and there was her Spanish name--Carmena. Was
+she not, in part, of Mexican blood?
+
+Some hint of Lennon's thoughts may have shown in his expression.
+Otherwise the girl's next remark was pure coincidence:
+
+"Ever since Slade added tizwin to the business, I've had to be pretty
+much the man of the family. He persuaded us that Dad would die without a
+lot of stimulant. That's how he got hold of Dad. Once the habit was
+fixed, I couldn't break Dad of it. With you here, I'm hoping he may
+remember his old grit and pride, and brace up."
+
+"But about your--foster-sister," said Lennon.
+
+"Isn't she just too sweet for anything!" broke in Carmena. "I've tried
+to be the cactus fence to guard her against the trampling beasts."
+
+"Such as this Cochise. You say he claims her?"
+
+"For the last three years. Indian girls marry young. He'd have kicked a
+way through the cactus fence before this, if it hadn't been for Slade.
+You know, Slade has his own bunch of Navaho punchers. So, you see,
+Cochise has to----"
+
+Carmena stopped to point across the upper end of the valley.
+
+"Talk of the devil----" she exclaimed.
+
+Over below the cliff house Lennon saw a small group of mounted men
+waiting for the basket that was being lowered to them on the hoist rope.
+
+"If it's only Elsie's pies; if only they haven't bluffed Dad into
+sending down a jug of tizwin!" murmured Carmena.
+
+"We've been outplayed. We can't get back," said Lennon. "Shall I drive
+them off again with my rifle?"
+
+"No. Cochise agreed to wait for Slade. I'm going to make him stick to
+it. We'll ride on around. Maybe they'll not wait."
+
+The two had loped along under the precipices on the northwest side of
+the valley and were already near Hell Canon, at the upper end. The mouth
+of the canon belied its name. The bed, though rocky, was neither steep
+nor broken. Along the ledges of the cliff foot a canal had been chiseled
+in the solid rock by the cliff-dwellers. A small stream was flowing
+through it, down around the left corner of the canon mouth.
+
+Carmena noticed the look of professional interest that Lennon fixed upon
+the ancient water way.
+
+"You're an engineer," she said. "Pretty good piece of irrigation work
+for those old mummies, isn't it? All we had to do was rebuild the intake
+dam and clean out the ditch. Here's the tank."
+
+The ponies slowed to a walk up the side of an enormous natural pothole,
+which the ancient builders had converted into a storage reservoir by
+means of an earthen dam.
+
+Carmena jumped her pony across the intake canal and loped ahead toward
+the cliff house. Lennon was too intent upon overtaking her to more than
+glance at the stand of rough-made beehives, the kitchen garden, and the
+goat and chicken sheds, past which his pony galloped.
+
+Carmena reined in to jerk her thumb at a tumbledown brush hut.
+
+"Our home, till Slade got up the cliff."
+
+"How?"
+
+"Piecing ladders together, one a-top the other. There are our callers;
+and it's pie, thank goodness. Keep your gun down. Shake hands, if they
+offer; but let me do the talking."
+
+"If you wish."
+
+"I do. The one all in white man's clothes is Cochise. Next him, with the
+Mex sombrero, is Pete. He's one of Slade's Navahos. He stands in with
+Cochise, and I stand in with him. Sabe?"
+
+"You mean he's your man--tips you off--all that?"
+
+"Yes. I think we'll be able to count on him later, when it comes to the
+show-down. Don't forget now: That run 'cross the Basin never happened.
+We're all heap good friends and pards."
+
+Lennon nodded. He did not fancy the situation, but he was willing for
+the time being to trust to his companion's lead. Side by side they rode
+up and stopped before the seven Indians. Lennon looked them over with
+the cool direct gaze of the dominant white man.
+
+Five of them were replicas of the herdsmen down the valley. Pete the
+Navaho--he of the Mexican sombrero--also wore Mexican leg-buttoned
+breeches and a red cotton shirt, the tails of which hung outside. He
+looked to be the youngest of the group. He and Cochise were the only
+ones who did not avoid Lennon's eye.
+
+Cochise the Apache leader proved a surprise to Lennon. He was as young
+as the white man and far from ugly. Though his head, under his old
+cowboy hat, was as square and massive as the cloth-bound heads of the
+other Apaches, and his shoulders were still broader, his face might have
+belonged to a Sicilian or Andalusian aristocrat--swarthy, bold-featured,
+and handsome.
+
+Carmena raised her voice in cheerful greeting: "How, boys!--_Bueno
+amigo_, Pete. Howdy, Cochise. Fine day. Hope the pie was good. Shake
+with Jack, our new partner."
+
+The Apache leader wiped the pie juice from his short, small hands upon
+his leather chaps, and replied with a show of geniality:
+
+"Howdy. Fine day. Glad to meet new pard. Shake."
+
+Lennon offered his left hand. His bridle reins and rifle were loosely
+held in his bandaged right. Carmena was thrusting her rifle into its
+saddle-sheath. Instead of clasping hands, palm to palm, Cochise clutched
+Lennon's wrist in a grip that almost crushed the bones. His other hand
+closed on the hilt of a knife.
+
+"Sit still, Jack," murmured Carmena.
+
+The warning was needless. Lennon had not stirred in his saddle or made
+the slightest attempt to struggle.
+
+"Who's the liar now, Cochise?" reproached Carmena. "You said you'd wait
+till Slade came."
+
+"I catch your pard. I keep him till Slade come. Then I have my fun. You
+swap my woman for him, I let him go now."
+
+The girl smiled.
+
+"Maybe you'll let him go anyway, _amigo_. I've got you covered, and I
+figure the first bullet will go through that pie you just ate."
+
+The glittering black eyes of the Apache shot a sidelong glance down
+toward the girl's right hand. It had slipped into a pocket in the fold
+of her divided skirt. Her smile widened.
+
+"Think it over," she advised. "What happens to us won't be any fun to
+you after you've got yours."
+
+The steel-sinewed fingers that were clutched about Lennon's wrist
+opened.
+
+"All dam' good joke--arm handshake," the Apache sought to explain away
+his treacherous attempt. "Make sure you got nerve. Sabe? Guess I got to
+go. Good-bye."
+
+"Oh, do stay and visit a bit longer," Carmena smilingly urged him. "We
+can talk a while with you and Pete. But the others may as well be
+starting, don't you think?"
+
+Something in her pocket thrust up the fold of her skirt. Cochise
+muttered a word or two that sent the other Apaches loping off down the
+valley. When they were some distance away, Carmena nodded almost gaily:
+
+"Well, boys, I suppose the pie is all gone. So, if you feel you have to
+go, too.... Good-bye, Pete. Maybe you know, Cochise, it's sometimes a
+sign of bad luck to look back or drop off your horse."
+
+The two Indians wheeled their ponies and loped after the others.
+
+Cochise did not look back.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+THE MAN WHO WAS
+
+
+Lennon sprang from his pony and steadied his rifle across the saddle.
+Carmena drew in a deep breath.
+
+"That's right," she approved. "Keep him covered. Shoot if he turns--but
+not Pete."
+
+The Navaho had drawn rein to tail in behind the pony of his leader. He
+thrust a hand overhead in a swift sign gesture.
+
+"You see, Jack. I knew we could count on Pete. The boy thinks a good
+deal of me. He was ready to shoot Cochise in the back."
+
+"But you!" exclaimed Lennon. "That was ripping the way you--what d'you
+say?--got the drop on Cochise. My right hand is still too weak for a
+knockout blow."
+
+Carmena gravely drew a sheath knife from the pocket of her skirt.
+
+"He knows I usually carry my revolver," she said.
+
+Lennon stared.
+
+"Your revolver wasn't in your pocket? Yet you sheathed your rifle!"
+
+"Didn't you notice his men had their guns pointed at us across their
+laps? Sheathing mine was what gave me the chance to bluff him. It's all
+right now. He won't try any more tricks this time."
+
+She sent a clear call ringing up the cliff. At once the hoist rope began
+to reeve down through the pulley of the crane. The rope ladder soon
+lowered from the other opening. Both saddles were fastened to the hoist
+hook. But Lennon thrust his rifle through the back of his cartridge
+belt.
+
+They found Farley in the doorway, nervously peering down the valley
+after the Indians.
+
+"Cochise was hiding in Devil's Chute until you rode out of sight," he
+quavered. "He demanded tizwin. I convinced him that Slade took away
+every drop. He then threatened to seize you for his woman and torture
+Mr. Lennon, if I did not send down Elsie. I postponed the decision until
+your return."
+
+"All right, Dad. We persuaded him to let us come up. But now we're here,
+I think we'll take no more rides till Slade comes."
+
+Lennon freed his rifle from the belt and stepped in through the doorway
+after the father and daughter. His first glance inside the cliff house
+showed him Elsie labouring at the windlass. He hastened to take the
+crank out of her plump little hands. His one-armed winding soon hoisted
+the saddles to the crane. The moment the load was safe, Elsie
+tremblingly lifted his hand to look at the blackening bruises left by
+Cochise's steel grip.
+
+"Does it--does it hurt much, Jack?" she whispered. "Once I saw him snap
+a dog's leg."
+
+Lennon smilingly denied the sharp pain of the strained ligaments. But
+inwardly his anger against Cochise hardened into enmity as he looked
+into the girl's innocent eyes and recalled that the brutal Apache
+considered her his woman.
+
+His reassurance brought instant relief to her volatile mind. She began
+to chatter gaily about how she and Carmena would entertain him during
+the wait for Slade. In this the older girl joined with cordial
+heartiness. Elsie displayed a high stack of women's magazines, for which
+Carmena was a regular subscriber. Every three or four months they were
+brought in from the nearest post office by Slade.
+
+Elsie fairly showered Lennon with naive questions about the faraway land
+of cities and green trees and vast stretches of water. Aside from the
+magazines and what had been told her by Farley and Carmena, she had no
+knowledge of the world outside the Hole.
+
+Beneath Carmena's quiet manner Lennon discovered an interest as keen as
+that of her foster-sister and very much more intelligent. She had
+childhood memories of Ohio. Much to his distaste, she persuaded Farley
+to remain most of the day with them in the living room.
+
+But as the wreck that once had been a man listened to Lennon's talk,
+his bent shoulders began to straighten and his drink-bleared eyes
+cleared. By evening he was talking as one man of culture to another. He
+even showed occasional flashes of a once brilliant mind.
+
+Carmena took care to keep her father stimulated with frequent cups of
+coffee. The whiskey flask appeared to be quite forgotten. After supper,
+at his suggestion, Elsie brought out an old dog-eared set of
+Shakespeare. In the flaring light of a homemade tallow candle he read
+parts of "King Lear" and "Hamlet," with his rapt eyes frequently off the
+page for a dozen lines or more.
+
+Lennon's aversion to the broken old drunkard had by now mellowed to
+tolerance and a degree of pity. He realized what the man had been before
+sickness had pulled him down and drink degraded him. At times Farley's
+whiskey-shattered mind tended to wander. But Lennon good-humouredly
+helped Carmena to bridge the gaps. When her father's face became gray
+and drawn, the girl said he was sleepy and took him off to bed.
+
+She returned, to find Elsie perched on the arm of Lennon's chair. They
+were both peering at a magazine illustration, with their heads so close
+together that Elsie's yellow curls brushed Lennon's cheek.
+
+The warm glow in Carmena's eyes faded; her smiling lips tightened. Her
+voice vibrated with a touch of sharpness:
+
+"Sleep time, Blossom."
+
+Elsie sprang to her light feet with docile obedience. But she lingered
+to eye Lennon wistfully as he stood up to meet Carmena's level glance.
+
+"Aren't you going to say good night, Jack?" she coaxed. "Don't--don't
+brothers ever kiss their sisters good night?"
+
+Lennon cast a half-doubtful glance at the girl's unsmiling
+foster-sister, hesitated, caught Elsie's golden head between his hands
+and bent to kiss her forehead. She drew back, overcome with sudden
+shyness.
+
+Carmena held out a firm hand to Lennon.
+
+"Good night, Jack--and thank you for--Dad. It's two years since he has
+been anything like to-day."
+
+"The pleasure was mine," replied Lennon.
+
+His tone was not uncordial, but his eyes had turned to watch Elsie dance
+across to one of the inner doorways that led into a short passage.
+Carmena swung around after her foster-sister, with her head well up and
+her boot heels briskly clicking on the stone floor.
+
+The discovery at his bedside of his own clothes thoroughly cleaned and
+his boots well oiled added a touch of gratitude to his tender,
+compassionate, delightful thoughts of Elsie. He lay awake for an hour or
+more, dwelling upon her dainty beauty and fascinating innocence.
+
+But the bleak gray light of dawn brought sober reflections. What
+interest could he have in the young girl other than to help her escape
+from the savage Cochise? She was a waif, of unknown parentage. Mentally
+she was little more than a child, and all her conscious experience had
+been confined to the environment of this crude desert valley.
+
+Lennon came out to breakfast with scant appetite. But his moodiness had
+company. Elsie sat at table tearful-eyed and drooping. Carmena's eyes
+were somber and her expression was hard. In reply to Lennon's polite
+inquiry for Farley she coldly replied that her father was not hungry.
+
+Through one of the outer slit windows of the living room Lennon saw a
+thin column of smoke down the valley toward the corral. Carmena answered
+his unspoken question:
+
+"They're brand-blotting the last bunch of cattle brought into the Hole."
+
+"Brand-blotting?"
+
+"Yes. You wouldn't care to see it--especially when Cochise takes part."
+
+Elsie uttered a smothered little gasp that quickened again all of
+Lennon's repressed tenderness and compassion. He looked around, trying
+to think of some means to divert her. His glance fell upon one of the
+bowls of ancient pottery.
+
+"May I ask you to show me the rest of this cliff house? Or are the other
+rooms in ruins?"
+
+Elsie instantly brightened.
+
+"Oh, no, course not. Only some of the top ones have tumbled in. Dad
+won't mind if we show Jack the mummies, will he, Mena?"
+
+"Fetch candles," directed Carmena, clearly as relieved as the others at
+the thought of diversion.
+
+They started to ramble through the interior of the cliff house, taking
+with them a light ladder to climb to the upper stories. In the lower
+rooms at the near end were stored quantities of corn on the cob, dried
+fruit, and vegetables, honey, dried beef, bacon, and other foods. The
+family was sufficiently stocked to withstand a half year's siege.
+
+The upper rooms were for the most part empty. Others showed only
+fragments of broken pottery. Some had been broken in through their side
+walls or were open above and littered with the debris of their roofs.
+Lennon surmised the existence of several sealed lower chambers, at the
+back.
+
+Carmena led the way down again and zigzagged through connected rooms
+toward the far end of the great community house. To the rear of the
+front row of rooms was a large chamber heaped with cliff-dweller
+mummies.
+
+"Slade had them all dumped in here," explained Carmena. "Like the
+Indians, Elsie is still scared of them. But they have been dead a long
+time, poor things. They'll not hurt anybody. They'd protect you,
+Blossom, if Cochise should get up the cliff and you hid in that corner.
+He thinks them bad medicine. Slade laughs at Indian spirits. He says
+that corn spirits are the only ones that can put a spell on a man."
+
+"They--they're an awful hold on Dad," quavered Elsie. "He didn't ever
+used to speak cross to me."
+
+In the flickering candle light Carmena's eyes glinted with a look that
+Lennon thought to be fierce resentment. She thrust past him to the
+doorway.
+
+"Wait. I'll be back," she called.
+
+Elsie was tremblingly eager to follow, but Lennon lacked her fear of the
+desiccated builders of the cliff house. At one end of the room he had
+come upon what to him was a very interesting heap of their no less
+ancient possessions. Most of the beautiful old pottery had been smashed,
+but among the fragments Lennon found several ceremonial stones and
+tablets, a bone awl, many obsidian arrowheads, and a few broken
+turquoise ornaments.
+
+His search was cut short by the return of Carmena. She carried a modern
+Indian basket-vase that would have been very convenient for holding
+Lennon's collection. But she gave him no chance to ask for it. She
+stared in at him and Elsie from the doorway, her dark eyes glittering
+strangely in the candle light. Her lips were hardset in a bitter smile.
+
+"He's--asleep. Come," she said.
+
+Lennon followed the eager Elsie, who was vastly relieved to leave the
+mummy vault. Yet she was no less mystified than Lennon by her
+foster-sister's manner. She shrank back behind him when, after passing
+through two corn-stacked rooms near the far end of the cliff house,
+Carmena stopped before an entrance that had been closed with a door of
+heavy planks. The thick iron hasp was secured with a big padlock.
+
+Carmena handed her candle to Lennon and took a key from her basket.
+
+"Oh, Mena!" whispered Elsie. "Oh, you can't be going to--to---- You know
+how angry Dad--and Slade----"
+
+For answer, Carmena thrust the key into the padlock.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+THE SETTER OF TRAPS
+
+
+The unlocked door squeaked shrilly on its hinges as it swung in before
+the heave of Carmena's shoulder. Elsie peeped fearfully back past
+Lennon. Carmena pushed on into the secret room.
+
+Lennon had expected to see some kind of treasure chamber. He stared
+blankly at the big object in the centre of the room--a complex object
+that somehow reminded him of his laboratory experiments in college. A
+step nearer, with his own and Carmena's candles upraised, gave him a
+clear view of the bulging copper boiler, the tubes and worm and
+fermenting vats. The air of the room was pervaded with a sour smell.
+
+At his exclamation Carmena gave him a sombre glance.
+
+"You see now?"
+
+"A still," he said. "This tizwin you've been talking about--it's
+moonshine whiskey. Your father----"
+
+"No--Slade!" broke in the girl with passionate emphasis. "He brought the
+thing into the Hole and forced Dad to run it. He's the one to
+blame--not Dad. He bootlegs it to the Indians."
+
+"Indians? That's a Federal penitentiary offense!"
+
+"What could we do? If he's convicted, he'll swear that Dad is just as
+guilty. You see why I couldn't go for the sheriff?"
+
+"Yes," said Lennon; but he looked at Elsie.
+
+Carmena's face whitened.
+
+"If it hadn't been for Dad, there's no telling what Cochise would have
+done with her. Anyhow, he's my father."
+
+To this Lennon could make no answer. He turned again to stare at the big
+still. Fuel had been placed in the firebox, ready for lighting. Carmena
+knelt down before it and dipped her hand into the Indian basket. One
+after the other, she laid out the six sticks of dynamite and the caps
+and fuses that she had saved from Lennon's prospecting outfit.
+
+She looked up at him, gravely expectant.
+
+"You said you'd help us, Jack. I want this whole thing fixed so it will
+never make another drop of poison."
+
+"At once?"
+
+"No. They'd be sure we did it, and I figure---- Can you fix it so it
+will go off a quarter minute after the fire is lighted?"
+
+"Oh-h, Mena!" cried Elsie. "What you going to do? You know Dad always
+lights the fire."
+
+"Never fear, Blossom. I'll take good care of Dad. If Jack does what I
+want, there'll be no more of the nasty tizwin to make Dad cross and
+sick."
+
+Lennon found himself regarding the girl with rekindled admiration for
+her ingenuity and daring.
+
+"So this is why you saved the dynamite?" he remarked. "Will it not be
+dangerous--I mean, to anger that man Slade, you know?"
+
+"Anything to save Dad---- If you're afraid, just tell me how to fix it.
+I'll do the work and take all blame--if it fails. You can go back with
+Elsie and be able to swear you didn't have a hand in it."
+
+The girl's tone was as contemptuous as when, at their first meeting on
+the trail, she had jeered him into cutting across the desert with her.
+He looked the still over with a professional eye.
+
+The chimney stones were laid in mud plaster. But the stones of the
+firebox, or furnace, were loose. On one side they extended out in a
+rough platform that held the water-cooled vat of the condensation worm.
+From the two-foot space between the furnace hole and the vat Lennon
+began to pull out the stones. He was able to make a hole down to the
+solid stone floor.
+
+A crack gave opening enough to thrust the stiff fuse from the firebox
+into the hole. To make certain of results, Lennon used three pieces of
+fuse, which were attached with caps to the sticks of dynamite, in the
+bottom of the hole. He then put the stones back in their places. The
+ends of the fuses were hidden by the tinder of the fuel in the firebox.
+
+When Lennon stood up and dusted off his hands, no slightest sign was
+left to betray that the charge of dynamite had been planted.
+
+"There you are," he said. "The fuses are cut for fifteen seconds, and
+they will start burning as soon as the tinder is fired."
+
+"You're sure the boiler will be blown up?" queried Carmena. "Your
+dynamite is out from under it, and there's all the rock in the way."
+
+Lennon smiled at her ignorance of explosives.
+
+"The stones will double the destruction. After that charge detonates,
+there will be a hole in the floor, a good deal of shattered stone, and
+some splinters and shreds of metal. Everything in the room will be
+smashed. Is that satisfactory?"
+
+Carmena shuddered as if seized with a fever chill, but pulled herself
+together. "All right. We'll go now."
+
+She picked up her basket and backed out after the others, scrutinizing
+the floor to make certain they had left nothing to tell of their visit.
+
+"It's a secret, Blossom," she cautioned. "Promise you'll never tell any
+one?"
+
+"But--you'll have to tell Dad, Mena. He always goes in with Slade and
+Cochise to measure the mash--And you know he sometimes goes in first to
+start the cooking."
+
+"Didn't I say I'd take care of Dad?" reassured Carmena.
+
+Lennon stepped before her, his gray eyes wide with dread.
+
+"Wait," he demanded. "What is it you plan to do? Elsie says your
+father's partners---- But I have told you the dynamite will destroy
+everything in the room. If you scheme to get those men in there, give me
+that key. I shall not permit such a trap to remain."
+
+"Why not? You promised to help."
+
+"Not this way. It would be cold-blooded murder."
+
+"You say that when they----?"
+
+Carmena checked her indignant protest and gazed down at her
+foster-sister.
+
+"Well, then, how if I use that blast to blow Slade and Cochise apart?"
+she inquired. "Suppose I make each think the other put the giant power
+in the furnace?"
+
+"Too great a risk. We will explode the charge at once, or draw it."
+
+Carmena's eyes flashed.
+
+"No. They shall not make another drop of poison in that devilpot. But if
+we blew it up now, Slade will put the blame on us---- Tell you
+what--I'll just misplace the key. That will give us time to act after
+Slade comes."
+
+"Have I your promise you will not try to get him into that death trap?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Back in the living room they became aware that the day was almost gone.
+Carmena asked Lennon to cover her from above with his rifle while she
+went down to milk the goats. He offered to change places with her, but
+had to confess that he did not know how to milk.
+
+The ladder had been drawn up. To save time, the girl directed Lennon to
+lower her by means of the hoist rope. Though there was no sign of an
+Indian nearer than the corral and she smiled at the suggestion of
+danger, he saw her slip her small revolver into the bosom of her dress.
+
+The moment the slackening of the hoist rope told him she had reached the
+ground he hurried with his rifle to an embrazured window in the living
+room. He looked down and saw her calmly walking away toward the goat
+pens. The goats flocked to nibble the salt that she had brought for
+them. She knelt down and started milking.
+
+Elsie had already busied herself at the charcoal brazier. After a time,
+when her pots were simmering, she came to cuddle up in the window beside
+Lennon.
+
+"My goodness, but hasn't it been an awful nice day, Jack," she sighed in
+heartfelt contentment. "Mena is--is the best sister in all the whole
+world. But it's doubly nice to have a brother like you. Isn't it, just?"
+
+She snuggled her head against Lennon's right shoulder. He reached across
+and stroked her silky hair without looking away from the valley.
+
+"I am glad you like me, Blossom. You know, Carmena brought me to help
+her get you away from this place."
+
+"Me--and Dad, Jack. Don't forget Dad. Mena never does. And Dad won't
+ever give up the Hole, 'cause he said so. That's why Mena shot your
+burro to make you fight Cochise."
+
+Lennon chuckled.
+
+"Carmena came along after the Apache shot my burro."
+
+"Oh, but that's the joke," tittered the girl, in her turn. "Mena was the
+'Pache. She shot your hat off and your burro to see how you'd behave,
+and when you didn't scare, she rode 'round to make you come with her."
+
+The enlarged version struck Lennon as just so much the more
+preposterous.
+
+"To be sure," he made mock agreement. "Only, by the way, what was the
+point of the joke?"
+
+"You mean, why did she do it?"
+
+"Yes. Why ruin a twelve-dollar sombrero and a ten-dollar burro?"
+
+"So's you'd get mad and fight Cochise, of course. She was desp'rit, so
+she told him she'd get another man into the Basin to be caught and made
+to pay. But she planned, when she signalled them, to warn you and slip
+away while you fought them."
+
+"Ripping!" praised Lennon. "Wonderful flight of fancy. And after the
+fight?"
+
+"Oh, that depends. You'd prob'ly been dead. But if you'd killed all that
+part of the bunch, Mena would have brought you into the Hole to shoot up
+the rest and make Slade quit."
+
+"I see. Quite in keeping with the burro. But why, then, did she help me
+run away?"
+
+Elsie's playful tone sobered.
+
+"Why, 'cause you couldn't fight, of course. After she signalled Cochise
+you went and got bit by the Gila monster and saved her life. Course she
+had to save you then."
+
+"Saved!" bantered Lennon. "A fact--a solid fact at last, in this sea of
+fiction. What a slip! I was beginning to fancy you quite a consistent
+fairy-tale tinker, Blossom. Take that last touch about her signalling
+Cochise. She sent a message by wireless, I presume."
+
+"Wireless? Is that what you call smoke signalling?"
+
+"Smoke?"--Before Lennon's mental vision flashed a vivid picture of the
+puffs of smoke rising into the noontime desert sky from the ridge near
+the waterhole--"Smoke signalling!"
+
+What a dupe he had been! Even now, when the truth had been spread out
+before his eyes, he had taken it for pure fiction. Yet every seeming
+absurdity in Elsie's account became credible the moment he considered
+the facts he knew, in the light of understanding.
+
+Though Carmena had made much of probable danger from the "bronchos," she
+had sent up those telltale puffs of smoke. During the flight across the
+Basin she had changed from boots to moccasins, which he now knew to be
+of Apache style, if not of Apache make. They would account for the
+moccasin print behind the crag from which his hat had been shot off and
+his burro killed. For her to cut down to her pony, pull on her boots,
+and ride around to the wash along the trail had been easy.
+
+The purpose of her strange attack clearly had been to break up his
+prospecting trip by the death of the burro and to test whether he could
+and would fight. No less clear, now, was the subtle manner in which she
+had both spurred his daring with her derision and appealed to his
+chivalry for protection against the murderous bronchos. All the time
+Cochise and his band were over in the Basin, waiting for her to lure a
+victim within their power.
+
+On this point was it not probable that Elsie was mistaken? Had not
+Carmena's intention been to have her savage accomplices capture him and
+hold him for ransom? The game might well have included a pretended
+capture of herself, so that chivalry would lead him to pay a larger
+ransom.
+
+No--Elsie's explanation was the more probable. And he could trust her
+truthfulness. Whatever he might think of Carmena, this child-minded girl
+at least was absolutely innocent of any scheming. Her dread of Cochise
+could not possibly have been feigned.
+
+Even Carmena must be given her due. She had been driven desperate by the
+threats of Cochise to take Elsie as his squaw; and the partnership of
+her father in the illicit making and bootlegging of moonshine whiskey
+had prevented her from appealing to the law for protection. But, on the
+other hand, she had deliberately taken the risk of killing the first
+chance stranger that came along the Moqui trail----
+
+Lennon frowned as he pictured the hole through the crown of his
+sombrero. That had been an uncomfortably close shot. Why had not the
+girl met him face to face on the trail and frankly asked for his aid?
+Instead of that straightforward, above-board procedure, she had risked
+shooting him, had deceived him, had led him into a trap where he would
+have had to kill all the bronchos or be killed. In the first case,
+according to Elsie, she would have had him help her attack the rest of
+the Apaches in the Hole. But if he had been killed she undoubtedly had
+planned to put all the blame on him.
+
+He was no coward. As he mulled over the situation his eyes sparkled at
+the thought of how, with his long-range rifle, he might have out-fought
+Cochise and his followers. But that was not the rub. Carmena had treated
+him as a blind dupe--had thrown dust in his eyes and beguiled him into
+the double snare that she had set for him and Cochise.
+
+He would have been only too glad to take the venture with her if she had
+told him beforehand. But she had not trusted him. The accident of the
+Gila monster's bite alone had blocked her scheme to make him chance the
+sacrifice of his life in complete ignorance of her real purpose.
+
+With his hand disabled, he of course had become valueless at the time as
+a tool to rid her of Cochise. Yet there was the chance that he could be
+used in the Hole. That would account for the seeming devotion and
+self-sacrifice by which she had saved him from the Gila monster poison,
+from death by thirst, and from Apache torture.
+
+The prejudice that had been first implanted in Lennon's mind by the
+repulsiveness of the girl's drunken father now prevented him from making
+any allowances for her difficult position. Had it not been for her
+relationship to that weak-faced besotted moonshiner, Lennon might have
+stopped to consider how love for her foster-sister had driven her
+desperate, and how desperation might have kept her from telling the
+truth of the situation to the stranger on the trail.
+
+The average stranger would have referred her to the sheriff--and she
+loved her father. But Lennon could see only her lack of trust in him and
+her deceit.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+CROSS CURRENTS
+
+
+Elsie's childlike eyes had been watching the evening shadow of the
+cliffs creep along the valley after the retreating sunlight. Drawn at
+last by Lennon's tense silence, she looked up and saw his frown.
+
+"Oh! oh, Jack!" she cried. "What is it? You look so cross! Is it--is it
+'cause what I told about Mena? Oh, it is! I know it is, the way you
+look! Oh, dear! Oh, dear! I'm 'fraid! It's a secret, and I promised not
+to tell. Mena was 'splaining all about you to Dad, and I heard--and now
+she'll be so cross at me if she knows I told! Please, please Jack,
+promise you won't tell her I told you!"
+
+Lennon put a comforting arm about the shoulders of the panic-stricken
+girl.
+
+"You dear little frightened bird! Don't be afraid, I will not tell. And
+remember, I am to be a real brother to you. No matter what any one says,
+you are to trust in my care and protection."
+
+One of Elsie's arms timidly stole up about his neck. From across the
+room sounded a hiccough that ended in a dry hacking cough. Lennon jerked
+his head around. The besotted face of Farley, ghastly white and
+blear-eyed, was leering at them through a hole in the rear wall.
+
+Before Lennon could free himself from the soft clasp of the girl's arm
+and dash across the room, the eavesdropper had disappeared. Elsie darted
+after Lennon to clutch his half-raised rifle.
+
+"Don't shoot--don't shoot!" she begged. "It's only Dad. He's having one
+of his spells. But he won't hurt you--not if you keep by me."
+
+Lennon peered through the hole in the wall. He made out the flaccid form
+of Farley, outstretched upon the stone floor in a drunken stupor. The
+man evidently had been on the verge of unconsciousness when he leered
+through the hole. The chance was slight that he would ever remember
+anything of what he had seen or heard.
+
+With a feeling of disgust that was not unmingled with relief, Lennon
+started back to the outer window. An odour of scorched food sent Elsie
+flying to her neglected pots. As half in the deep window embrazure,
+Lennon paused to watch her, the overhanging cliff ledges reverberated
+with an impatient call. He reluctantly turned his gaze away from the
+graceful little cook to look down below the window. Carmena stood
+waiting, with the end of the hoist rope looped about her.
+
+Lennon's steady winding at the windlass soon brought up the living load
+to the crane. Elsie darted out to swing her foster-sister around into
+the opening and take from her the brimming pail of goat's milk. Carmena
+looked down at Lennon's bandaged hand, which was gripped upon the crank
+of the windlass.
+
+"You ought to be careful," she gravely warned him. "Working won't help
+your hurt."
+
+"On the contrary, the wounds are fast healing, and use of the hand tends
+to bring back its strength. It is already much improved."
+
+"Good."
+
+"I shall leave off the bandages after to-night."
+
+Carmena's eyes narrowed.
+
+"No. You're to keep them on, and don't let any one else--even Dad--see
+your hand. The more helpless Slade and Cochise think you are, the
+better."
+
+To this Lennon readily agreed. His knowledge of the completeness with
+which the girl had duped him only added to his realization of her
+ability. But he promised himself that any advantage gained by his
+pretense of helplessness should be used only with a view to Elsie's
+benefit.
+
+Such pity as he had felt for Farley before the discovery of the illicit
+whiskey-still was now smothered in disgust. He would fight for Elsie,
+but he would not lift a finger to help rid Dead Hole of Farley's
+boot-leg confederates.
+
+Carmena had turned about to peer down the half-shadowed valley.
+
+"I thought sure Slade would get here to-night," she said. "He's overdue
+already. Well, we can count on him for to-morrow. Maybe you had better
+let me hide your rifle."
+
+"Is that necessary?"
+
+Lennon's tone was more curt than he had intended. The girl entered the
+living room and went on through into a rear room.
+
+She did not come out again that evening, but sent word by Elsie that
+Farley was sick and needed nursing. Lennon was only too pleased to sup
+and visit alone with the younger girl. Elsie's piquant daintiness was
+more than ever fascinating to him. He spent a delightful evening, though
+at times his enjoyment was dampened by remembrance of the danger that
+threatened her.
+
+Carmena came to the breakfast table pale and weary-eyed. From her
+laconic remarks to Elsie, Lennon gathered that she had spent the night
+waiting upon her father. After forcing herself to eat a hasty meal, she
+came around the table and laid an old short-barreled revolver beside
+Lennon's bowl-plate.
+
+"It's Dad's," she said. "He's too sick to use it, anyhow. Put it in your
+pocket out of sight and have Elsie hide your rifle where either of you
+can readily get it. I saw the signal. Slade is coming."
+
+Elsie almost dropped the pot of fresh coffee that she was settling.
+Carmena took it and a kettle of hot water and went out without looking
+at Lennon.
+
+In the extreme corner of the room was a dutch-oven built of stone slabs.
+Elsie started a fire in it, placed large kettles of food on her brazier,
+and began to mix white flour dough.
+
+"Slade likes pies as much as Cochise--and white biscuits. That's why he
+brings us flour. He says he's going to make me his cook. It always gets
+Cochise awful mad."
+
+The bare suggestion that the doubtful partners of Farley were accustomed
+to imply ownership in the innocent, helpless girl brought an angry flush
+into Lennon's lean face. He unloaded the short-barreled revolver, made
+careful test of its action, and as carefully reloaded the old style
+cylinder. The weapon was well suited for hip-pocket wear. At the
+suggestion of Elsie, he hung his rifle under his bed.
+
+Carmena half carried her father into the living-room and seated him in
+one of the big chairs. He was very white and shaky but rational. He had
+been bathed and dressed, and his eyes showed proof of soothing
+treatment. Though the sight and odour of the cooking nauseated him, he
+was braced by a drink made from some bitter desert herb known to the
+girls for its tonic effect.
+
+"Now, Dad, remember you're sick. Just sit here quietly and leave all the
+business to me," said Carmena. "Jack will keep you company."
+
+She looked at Lennon, cool-eyed and self-possessed.
+
+"Watch your bad arm, Mr. Lennon," she advised. "You don't want to go
+around with it loose like that. Elsie will fetch you a sling. I'm going
+to lower the ladder. Slade doesn't enjoy being made to wait."
+
+Elsie brought one of her floursack dish-towels, which Lennon, with mock
+seriousness, permitted her to knot over his shoulder in a sling. The
+loop of cloth extended along his arm from elbow to finger tips without
+hiding the bandages.
+
+Farley glowed at the sling with sour suspicion.
+
+"You climbed the ladder with that arm when you first came," he snapped.
+"There has been all this time for it to improve."
+
+"Do such poison wounds always improve?" parried Lennon. "I was willing
+to risk using the arm. But you heard what your daughter said."
+
+He went across the room to look from an outer window. A large band of
+horsemen was racing full tilt up the valley. They were already near. At
+their head rode Cochise and a big red-faced white man. As Lennon looked
+out at them Carmena swung down the rope ladder.
+
+The tall rangy American horse of the white man forged ahead of the
+Indian ponies and brought his rider under the cliff as Carmena reached
+the foot of the ladder. She called out to him in a tone of joyful
+greeting and hastened forward to offer her hand. The man ignored her
+welcome and jerked a thumb up at the window from which Lennon was
+looking.
+
+Cochise came galloping to the cliff foot with his band of Apaches and
+four or five Navahos. All reined their ponies to one side except
+Cochise. He sprang off to confront Carmena, with denunciatory words and
+gestures. The white man leisurely swung out of his saddle and took the
+attitude of a judge between the girl and Cochise. After no little
+disputing, he silenced the young Apache with a curt gesture and entered
+into a low-voiced conference with Carmena. Now and then Cochise broke in
+with guttural objections.
+
+At last the three seemed to reach some kind of an agreement. They
+started up the ladder, Carmena waiting until the last. The white man,
+who undoubtedly was the partner called Slade, led Cochise. The crisis
+over Lennon's presence in Dead Hole had come to a head. He felt certain
+that the period of waiting was about to end in some definite action
+either against himself or against the Apache leader.
+
+The meeting was by no means unpleasant. After a short pause Carmena led
+the visitors in from the big anteroom. Cochise cast a covert glance at
+Elsie, and with an air of stolid indifference to the others sat down at
+the table. Slade was neither silent nor stolid. He stared hard about the
+living room and bellowed over to Elsie, who was raking her pies out of
+the dutch oven:
+
+"Ho, howdy, Cookie Gal! 'Most ready to feed me, huh? Won't have to herd
+me to it. Lord, but I'm sick of Injun grub! Guess this trip I'll sure
+have to rope and brand you for my home corral!"
+
+Carmena broke in on this coarsely jovial banter with smiling deference:
+
+"You see it's as I told you, Mr. Slade--Dad is almost used up. But I'll
+act for him and----"
+
+Slade's ham-like hand came down upon Farley's stooped shoulder in a
+thwack that doubled the invalid over and set him to coughing.
+
+"Brace up, Dad," the trader-cowman rallied him in his bull voice.
+"You're not dead yet. Good thing for us your bark's worse'n your bite.
+Huh, Cochise?"
+
+His massive body shook with a roar of laughter at the joke.
+
+"This is Mr. Lennon--our guest," Carmena again interposed.
+
+The big trader swung around to stare down upon the guest. Lennon stood a
+good six feet in his boots, but Slade over-topped him by two or three
+inches and was no less thickset than tall. He looked Lennon straight in
+the eyes, crushed his left hand in a hearty grip, and greeted him in a
+tone of bluff cordiality.
+
+"So you're Carmena's new pard. Glad to see you in Dead Hole. She says
+you want to dicker with us."
+
+"I said he might want to," murmured the girl.
+
+Slade grinned genially at the guest's bandaged arm.
+
+"No might about it, Carmena. Your dad came into Dead Hole for his
+health. But I figger Lennon here knows it ain't no general health
+resort."
+
+"Miss Farley will tell you, I was in urgent need of a change from the
+Basin," drawled Lennon, as he languidly sank back into his chair. "Deuce
+take it! The results of a Gila monster's bite are more serious than I
+would have anticipated."
+
+"Sure--apt to be mighty serious, son, if you don't look out what you
+do," agreed Slade. "Guess, though, Carmena got you started off right.
+We'll see about it soon's I've fed. Here's my Cookie Gal dishing up."
+
+He thumped down at the table and voraciously fell to upon the food that
+Elsie hastened to serve him and Cochise. While he plied knife and spoon
+he chaffed the blushing girl with a familiarity that made Lennon's blood
+boil. Elsie's forced smile and murmured responses did not conceal the
+painfulness of her embarrassment.
+
+Yet Lennon's hot impulse to interpose was checked and cooled when he
+thought to look at Carmena. Like her father, she was smiling at Slade
+and at the same time covertly watching Cochise. The handsome face of the
+young Apache seemed utterly blank of all expression except gluttonish
+enjoyment of the food he was wolfing. But under the edge of the table
+Lennon saw his hand steal down and fondle the hilt of his sheath knife.
+
+The game was now evident. If the rivals were permitted to attack each
+other, one or both would almost certainly be killed. A murderous feud
+between their men would as certainly follow. Lennon's anger against the
+unpleasant pair was intense enough for him to consider the scheme
+justified, though its suggestion of treachery deepened his prejudice
+against Carmena.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+A BARGAIN
+
+
+During the meal prepared by Elsie a solemn avowal by Slade that the cook
+must go home with him brought the knife of Cochise half out of its
+sheath.
+
+Slade either did not see the movement, or, if he did, he contemptuously
+disregarded its menace. He had turned to Farley, his big red face and
+pale blue eyes suddenly sober.
+
+"Well, Dad," he boomed, "guess we'd better hold a seance and git Brother
+Cochise back into a proper spiritual frame of mind. I got some
+converting work for him to go out and do."
+
+Cochise shot a side glance at Elsie.
+
+"You leave my woman--I go. Sabe?"
+
+The trader burst into his hoarse laugh.
+
+"Go to hell! Can't you take a joke? We're pards, ain't we? Can't I josh
+the gal without you gitting rattlesnakey? Don't suppose I meant it, do
+you? Come on, Dad. Git a hustle on you. We got to hold that seance."
+
+He looked at Lennon with a hard smile.
+
+"We run a lodge here---- Spirits Order Secret Scotch Rites. We'll go
+into a seance and find out whether to initiate you."
+
+"Dad is too sick," interposed Carmena. "He can't help any. I'll take his
+place."
+
+"No. He's going to come, and you'll stick here," ordered Slade.
+
+Farley rose and tottered out into the anteroom with him and Cochise.
+Lennon sprang up beside the coolly smiling girl.
+
+"You've permitted them to go--knowing what will happen!"
+
+"Nothing will happen. I changed keys on Dad. He'll come back. Then I
+will go in his place."
+
+"You shall not," forbade Lennon. "I told you it would be murder."
+
+"How about Blossom?" queried the girl. "Slade isn't joking and you know
+now what he is like."
+
+Lennon looked at the prospective victim, hesitated, and tightened his
+jaw.
+
+"I must hold you to your promise. Set them upon each other, if you
+wish---- But it shall not be that other way."
+
+"If you hold me to my promise," said Carmena, her eyes hot with scorn.
+
+She started to help Elsie clear the food-splattered table.
+
+Before many minutes Farley reeled in, speechless from terror. He
+collapsed into the first chair and held out a key in his wavering hand.
+Carmena looked at it, nodded understandingly, and hastened out, with a
+significant glance for Lennon.
+
+He was not altogether reassured. After a few moments he followed her
+along the front row of the cliff house rooms. He was close enough to
+hear the talk that followed when she joined Cochise and Slade at the
+padlocked door. The trader gruffly accepted her excuses for her father,
+but swore violently when the two keys that she had brought failed to
+open the lock.
+
+She explained how she had changed her father's clothes, and took upon
+herself all the blame with regard to the misplacing of the key. After
+much soothing talk, she at last quieted Slade by promising to have a
+given quantity of whiskey distilled before his next visit.
+
+"That'll do," he conceded. "Look out you don't forgit it, though, or
+I'll take it out of Dad's hide. Now, Cochise, you hit the high places
+for them hosses. Don't do no shooting this time. Just natchelly have 'em
+drift off. Git a move on you."
+
+Had not Lennon been wearing moccasins, he must have been caught. As it
+was, he glided back through the many rooms, undetected.
+
+Farley had crept into his own room. His absence gave Lennon opportunity
+to calm Elsie's fears and comfort her with the promise that he would
+save her from both Slade and Cochise. The tread of heavy boots sent her
+scurrying out of the living room.
+
+Slade strode in after Carmena and jerked a chair around to where he
+could look close into Lennon's face.
+
+"Now, young man, what's this bunk about you and Carmena being pards?" he
+demanded. "What business you got in Dead Hole, anyhow? Cochise says you
+shot a hoss of hisn."
+
+"I told you how that started," interposed Carmena. "It wasn't our fault
+that Cochise flew off the handle. Jack had to shoot to save me as well
+as himself."
+
+Slade stared hard at the girl and then at Lennon.
+
+"Well, supposing the young devil did break loose. What of it? How about
+this pard bunk? That's what I want to know."
+
+"I fear that Miss Farley has found me rather a disappointment," put in
+Lennon, and he looked at his trussed arm.
+
+"Not at all--just the other way 'round," Carmena glowingly asserted.
+"Figure it out for yourself, Mr. Slade. A man who could follow up a Gila
+monster bite by outrunning Cochise and his bunch across the Basin, and
+then make them back up. Can you wonder I think he's a man for us to tie
+to?"
+
+"If we needed a new pard," qualified Slade. "Fact is, we don't, and you
+know it. We got enough a'ready to do the work and split up our profits."
+
+Carmena cast a significant glance toward Elsie, who had ventured back to
+renew the fire in her oven.
+
+"How about Cochise getting out of hand? All the time it's harder to hold
+him. He's beginning to bristle up even to you."
+
+Slade's tobacco-stained teeth showed in a grin of contemptuous
+indifference.
+
+"Bah. I'll pull his head off if he gits sassy, and he knows it."
+
+"Of course. He'd have no show--unless a pot-shot or a knife in your
+back---- If only he was white!"
+
+"Surely you do not mean to say, Miss Farley, that Cochise would attack
+his own partner," Lennon backed up the girl's play. "I saw him pull out
+that long knife of his under the table, but imagined it was merely the
+Indian way of easing his feelings against Mr. Slade."
+
+"Pulled his knife on me, did he?" bellowed the trader, in a sudden burst
+of anger.
+
+"And just because you dared speak kindly to Elsie," sympathized Carmena.
+
+Strange enough, the barbed sting appeared to quiet rather than enrage
+Slade. He laughed.
+
+"No four-flushing, Mena. Needn't try to pull the wool over my eyes. I
+can't run my business without Cochise, and you know it. You got to show
+me a deal with more in it, before you talk about a shift of pards. I'm
+running this shebang. There ain't no place for Lennon 'round Dead Hole.
+He best hit out back the way he come."
+
+Carmena's look told Lennon that he must make the next play. He thought
+quickly. If the girl was not mistaken, Slade would take Elsie away with
+him and chance the revenge of Cochise. The Apache might be appeased by
+permission to follow his intended victim back into the Basin.
+
+Had Lennon considered only himself he would have been willing to chance
+a fight with the renegade. But the mere thought of abandoning Elsie to
+either the Apache or this brutal trader was altogether unbearable.
+
+"Indeed, yes--to be sure, Mr. Slade," he blandly made reply. "If you do
+not desire me as a partner, I have no wish to remain here. Doubtless I
+shall not require your aid to find the mine for which I am looking."
+
+"Mine?" queried Slade, his pale eyes narrowing. "What mine?"
+
+"It's the lost lode," cut in Carmena, her rich voice quivering with
+eagerness. "I couldn't say anything until Jack spoke. He was headed for
+the mine when his burro was shot and we had to leave his outfit--thanks
+to Cochise. But he knows where to find the lost lode. Got it from
+Cripple Sim--back East. It's somewhere over near Triple Butte. You see
+now why I thought you'd be glad to have me bring Jack in as a partner?"
+
+The red face of the trader fairly glowed with geniality. He held out his
+beefy hand to Lennon.
+
+"Shake, pard. Why didn't you speak up sooner? I might have knowed you
+was O.K. But Carmena is only a gal, and we got to be careful of
+strangers in these parts. Bad place for hoss thieves and brand-blotters.
+That's why I put up with a mean Injun like Cochise. He and his bunch see
+to it we don't lose no stock."
+
+"Yes, they're great on rounding up, and so far they have never committed
+any murders--that can be proved against them," put in Carmena, with an
+ironical smile. "Just the same, it wasn't their fault they didn't get
+Jack. Do you wonder he won't have them in on this lost-lode deal? Either
+he plays a lone hand, or we run Cochise out of the country."
+
+"My offer is ten thousand in cash," said Lennon. "The copper company
+pays me twice that and----"
+
+"Copper, huh? What's a copper company got to do with a gold lode?"
+demanded Slade.
+
+"But Jack says the lost lode is copper, not gold," said Carmena. "Maybe
+we've been mistaken all these years. Sim told Jack it was a copper mine,
+and Sim ought to know."
+
+Lennon caught the significant glance that the girl covertly gave to
+Slade. He was seized with black doubt whether her scheming was against
+Slade or with Slade against himself. Yet he continued to play to her
+lead----
+
+"Yes, the discoverer of the mine should know whether it was gold or
+copper."
+
+After some argument, Slade finally admitted that the old rumour about
+Cripple Sim's fabulously rich lost gold mine might be an "exaggeration."
+With much hemming and hawing, he then agreed that if the lost mine were
+rediscovered he would accept ten thousand dollars and rid Dead Hole of
+Cochise.
+
+"We might git up a company our own selves, Lennon, but we couldn't bring
+in any railroad to develop a _copper_ mine," he repeated what Carmena
+had already remarked. "Take what you can git and be thankful, is my
+motto. Soon's we find that mine, you can count on me to run Cochise
+clean out of the country."
+
+Carmena drew in a deep quavering breath.
+
+"That's such a relief, Mr. Slade! I've been so afraid for Elsie. I know
+that Cochise figures on making off with her at the first chance."
+
+"He does, does he?" growled the trader. "Well, then, you're going to
+stick here and see he don't git no chance, while I go with our new pard.
+How's that, Lennon?"
+
+"Good enough," agreed Lennon.
+
+"Elsie and I will hunt up some tools," said Carmena and she hurried her
+foster-sister out into the store-rooms before Slade could voice an
+objection.
+
+He at once began to give Lennon a pessimistic account of the small
+profits and many risks and hardships of a trader's life in this arid
+land of mesas and canons. As for the cattle business, there was more
+work than money in it, what with mountain lions, wolves, and
+brand-blotters.
+
+Lennon checked himself on the point of asking the meaning of the strange
+term. He recalled that Elsie had said something about mavericking and
+brand-blotting by the Apaches. Unless Farley and the girls were
+conniving with Cochise, the Indian could not be carrying on any work in
+the Hole unknown to Slade, and he had just intimated that brand-blotting
+was some kind of harmful or criminal action.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+THE BLOSSOMING
+
+
+At the supper table Slade returned to his jovial praises of Elsie as a
+cook. Under his bold admiring gaze the girl blushed much and ate little.
+Lennon kept his head with difficulty. To sit quiet and feign
+indifference required all his self-control.
+
+Farley had been brought in by Carmena. Toward the end of the meal Slade
+began to browbeat the abject, liquor-poisoned man. Lennon had no pity to
+spare for his broken-spirited host, but his compassion for Elsie and his
+growing anger against Slade soon received fresh stimulation.
+
+The trader made blunt demand that Farley should agree to give Elsie to
+him in marriage--Indian marriage. After considerable bullyragging,
+Farley weakly gave way. Carmena continued strongly to protest, but her
+plea was only for a legal marriage.
+
+Slade contended that one kind of marriage was as good as another. But he
+finally said he would wait and take Elsie out to where they could get a
+license and a minister. This would be immediately after the relocation
+of the mine and the driving off of Cochise.
+
+Lennon was more than satisfied over the final agreement. Once rid of
+Cochise and out of the Hole with Slade and Elsie, he felt certain of his
+ability to save the girl from a forced marriage. In keeping with his
+assumed indifference to the affair he changed the subject by inquiring
+when the start for Triple Butte would be made.
+
+"Daybreak," muttered Slade, and he fixed an intent gaze upon Elsie.
+"I'll be ready by then. I'll bunk with you to-night, Dad. Come in and
+we'll check up on business accounts."
+
+The moment the two older men left the living room Elsie burst into tears
+and began piteously imploring Lennon and Carmena to save her. Carmena
+clapped a hand over the quivering lips of the terrified girl and rushed
+her out of hearing of Slade.
+
+At the same time Lennon stepped out after the trader to keep him from
+turning back. The massive bulk of Slade shadowed the light of the candle
+that Farley was carrying into a second of the inner rooms.
+
+The trader looked back, but failed to see Lennon, who had stepped to one
+side of the living-room doorway. The bull voice rumbled in what was
+evidently intended for a murmur:
+
+"Well, Dad, I guess Carmena ain't such a fool as you might expect from
+her being your gal. She sure got that tenderfoot roped mighty slick.
+Just wait and watch me hogtie the cripple. All I got to do is let him
+lead me to that there gold mine. Then I figger he's apt to git lost.
+Mebbe he believes that bunk about the lode being copper, and mebbe he
+don't. The point is, I git the mine, and he----"
+
+The rest of the prediction was lost to Lennon. He went back into the
+living room and pulled his arm out of the sling to test his grip on
+Farley's short-barrelled revolver. His wounded hand had almost regained
+its full strength. As he replaced the arm in the sling Elsie peeped
+timidly into the room. She saw that he was alone and darted out to clasp
+his arm.
+
+"Oh, Jack, dear Jack!" she panted. "You--you won't let Slade take me
+either, will you? You promised about Cochise. But Carmena--she says
+Slade--that maybe I'll have to marry him--unless you have heaps of grit.
+He's no better than Cochise. But at least he's not an Indian, Mena
+says."
+
+Lennon patted the yellow locks of the girl's back-flung head.
+
+"Never fear, Blossom. We will take care of you. Where is Carmena?"
+
+"She's still looking for Dad's old pick for you. We found the pan and
+spade. Mena says Dad stumbled into Dead Hole 'cause he was looking for
+that lost gold mine of Cripple Sim's you're after. Then he went into
+stock."
+
+"Was he--did he--er--brand-blot before Slade came?"
+
+"Oh, no. Slade and Cochise started the business. Cochise rounds up the
+hosses and cattle when Slade tells him of a good chance, and the 'Paches
+rustle 'em and bring 'em into the Hole and make the brands over, and
+then they run 'em out Hell Canon, and Slade sells 'em under his other
+name. Dad's share is for the feed and the use of the Hole."
+
+For the first time Lennon's suspicions of the Dead Hole partners were
+clarified and confirmed. The gang were not only moonshiners but horse
+and cattle thieves. Slade was the ringleader and brains of the gang,
+while Cochise and his followers were the crafty and probably murderous
+rustlers and brand-blotters.
+
+Farley was a more or less willing accomplice. He may have been forced
+into the criminal partnership, but now refused to attempt an escape.
+Rather than give up his share of the loot, he chose to risk the great
+danger to his little foster-daughter.
+
+The realization that Slade was even more of a criminal than the
+moonshining and bootlegging had indicated, quickened Lennon's
+compassion for the girl. She was so artless and clinging and
+helpless----
+
+He put his free arm about her quivering shoulders. In a twinkling her
+hands were clasped about his neck and she was smiling up into his face
+in naive delight.
+
+"Dear, dear Jack!" she whispered. "You're just awful nice to me. I
+believe, really and truly, I love you even more than Mena."
+
+The girl was too childlike in mind to realize the meaning of her sweet
+emotion. Lennon made allowance for her innocence, but her allusion to
+Carmena startled him, though the words were ambiguous. Elsie may only
+have meant that she loved him more than she loved Carmena--not that she
+loved him more than Carmena loved him.
+
+The girl's upturned piquant face was more than tempting. Its flowerlike
+delicacy and prettiness and the glow in her wide blue eyes were more
+than he could withstand. He bent down and pressed a kiss upon her
+half-parted lips.
+
+"You darling!" he said. "You adorable little Blossom!"
+
+She sought shyly to draw away from him. He held her fast. The kiss had
+put an end to his last doubt.
+
+"Wait, dear, do not try to get away from me," he commanded. "I am going
+to keep you--always. Until I get you out of here--safe from Slade and
+Cochise--I shall be just your Brother Jack. But I love you, dear, and
+when we reach a town we shall be married."
+
+"O-o-oh! Then I'll belong to you--I'll be your woman?"
+
+"You will be my darling little wife. I will be good to you and take care
+of you--always."
+
+"Oh, you dear, nice Jack! And Mena--she'll go along too and help take
+care of me and love us? Won't she? You know I couldn't ever bear to go
+away and leave Mena."
+
+Along with his amusement over the child's naive suggestion Lennon was
+conscious of an odd thrill. He remembered the look in Carmena's dark
+eyes when she saved him from the poison of the Gila monster and at the
+end of their desperate flight across the Basin. They had risked death
+together--and _she_ was not a child.
+
+But close upon these pleasantly disquieting remembrances of the older
+girl came the harsh afterthought of his suspicions against her. He bent
+to kiss Elsie with almost aggressive fervour.
+
+From the doorway behind him came a stifled cry that might have been a
+sob. He held fast to Elsie and glanced over his shoulder. Carmena was
+standing in the doorway, with her head bent. As Lennon looked, she
+straightened and came toward him, cold-eyed and determined.
+
+"What are you doing, Jack Lennon?" she demanded. "I trusted you. I
+believed that you were not the kind to take advantage of Blossom. I
+thought you----"
+
+Elsie struggled free from Lennon to fling her arms about her
+foster-sister.
+
+"Oh, Mena, please, please don't be cross with Jack! I love him so,
+and--and he loves me back!"
+
+Lennon met Carmena's hard stare with a gaze no less cool and resolute.
+
+"Elsie is to be my wife," he declared. "I shall marry her as soon as
+possible."
+
+"Your wife? Marry her? You mean that?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Carmena's fixed gaze wavered and sank. But almost immediately she looked
+up again, her eyes lustrous with soft radiance.
+
+"She is very precious to me, Jack. She deserves to be safe and happy all
+the rest of her life."
+
+Before Lennon could reply, the girl gently freed herself from Elsie and
+turned to go.
+
+"Pardon me--one moment, Miss Farley," appealed Lennon. "There is
+something I must tell you. I happened to overhear Slade speak to your
+father. He insists that the lost mine is a gold lode and proposes to
+take possession when I have led him to it."
+
+The girl smiled a bit mockingly.
+
+"What else could you expect?" she asked. "If he hadn't believed it a
+gold lode he wouldn't have made the deal with you. When you show him the
+copper, it will be up to you to hold him to his bargain. We have no
+chance unless he splits with Cochise."
+
+"Why not persuade your father to slip out of the Hole with us--start
+immediately? The Apaches have gone off. I'll engage to tie up Slade. We
+would have an all-night lead."
+
+"No," refused Carmena. "The Hole belongs to Dad. He will not leave it.
+Besides, there are at least three Apaches on watch in Hell Canon."
+
+Lennon realized the uselessness of arguing with the girl. If, as he
+still half suspected, she was scheming with Slade, the less said about
+her father's share in the stock stealing the better.
+
+"Very well," he acquiesced. "I shall try to manage Slade. If he is
+unreasonable, I will do as I think best."
+
+"So will I," replied Carmena, her eyes sombre.
+
+"Come on, Blossom. Slade said he would leave at daybreak."
+
+She abruptly turned away, and made no remonstrance when Elsie offered
+her lips to Lennon for a good-night kiss.
+
+Left alone, he sat down in one of the big chairs and fell to planning
+how, after the relocation of the copper lode, he would make his escape.
+He would bring a sheriff's posse to arrest Slade and his fellow
+criminals. Elsie would then be freed from all danger, and the mine could
+be developed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+THE PROWLER
+
+
+From his plans for the breaking up of the criminal gang Lennon's
+thoughts drifted into pleasant reveries about his adorable little
+wife-to-be. Drowsiness crept upon him. When the lone candle on the table
+burned down, flickered, and went out, he was too sound asleep to waken.
+But his sleep was troubled with uneasy dreams.
+
+In the midst of a nightmare that lived over his flight from the bronchos
+across the desert, he was roused with a start to alert wakefulness. Some
+heavy-breathing creature was stealthily shuffling about in the black
+night of the unlighted room. A thump, followed by a muttered curse,
+betrayed the identity of the prowler. With utmost caution Lennon slipped
+his arm from the sling, drew Farley's revolver, and barricaded himself
+behind the chair. Slade shuffled nearer--so near that his
+whiskey-poisoned breath struck in Lennon's face. Again came a thud and a
+curse. The prowler had stubbed his stockinged toe against a chair leg.
+
+Lennon aimed the revolver toward the sound, in expectation of an
+upflaring match. Discovery would mean instant attack by the huge-framed
+scoundrel. Of that he had no doubt. Slade would not be groping about in
+the dark in this stealthy manner unless intent upon an evil purpose.
+
+But no match flamed. The shuffling feet moved past Lennon to the wall
+and along the wall toward the doorway that opened upon the short passage
+to the girl's room. No door barred the passage at either end. The
+purpose of the prowler was now unmistakable.
+
+For the second time Lennon had cause to be thankful that he had not
+changed to his boots. His moccasined feet noiselessly felt their way
+after the heavy-footed shuffler. Slade was already through the doorway
+into the passage. Lennon followed. The finger-tips of his outgroping
+left hand touched the back of the prowler.
+
+A startled grunt warned Lennon to dodge back a step and crouch. A
+heavier grunt told him of a violent out-clutch or blow, which, meeting
+only empty air, had wrenched the breath from the big body of the
+striker.
+
+Again Lennon pointed his revolver--and again the expected match failed
+to crackle and flare. Slade stood silent for several seconds, holding
+his breath. But Lennon was no less still. The tense listener expelled
+his pent-up breath in a grunt of disgust.
+
+"Huh! Must 'a' been the tizwin. Fools a man."
+
+Lennon straightened up and again groped with his hand as he heard Slade
+shuffle on along the passage. There was need of utmost caution. He did
+not wish to shoot. But he knew that the grip of Slade's thick arms would
+be as dangerous as the hug of a grizzly.
+
+This time the outstretched finger-tips barely grazed the prowler's
+shirt. Lennon took a quick step forward, clutched the back of Slade's
+neck as a guide for his blow, and struck him with the butt of the
+revolver under the right ear. The massive body of the trader slumped
+down as if hit by a sledge.
+
+The weight of the falling man dragged Lennon after. But the utter
+limpness of the body under him stayed his hand from a second blow. He
+thrust the revolver back into his pocket and grasped Slade under the
+armpits. The body remained flaccid even when dragged out of the passage.
+
+Lennon struck a match and bent low over the ghastly face of the man he
+had felled. The scoundrel was only stunned. Lennon's look of anxiety
+gave place to a stern smile. Though certain of the man's guilty
+intentions, he could not put an end to him.
+
+He again grasped the unconscious man and dragged him across the living
+room and out beside the crane of the hoist. A loop of the rope-end about
+the clumsy ankles, and two or three turns of the windlass lifted the
+inert body so that it dangled head downward.
+
+To swing the crane out through the opening and lower away on the rope
+was the easiest part of the undertaking. Lennon reversed the crank of
+the windlass, around and around, with purposeful deliberation. He hoped
+that Slade would recover consciousness while still swinging in mid-air.
+There was grim pleasure in the thought of how the scoundrel would first
+become aware of the dim starlit precipice beside him and then would
+rouse to the shame and danger of his hanging.
+
+When the rope was rather less than half unwound from the windlass Lennon
+paused to shift his grip on the crank. At the same moment a candle that
+had been masked by a blanket glowed out at him from the doorway of the
+living room. The muzzle of a small revolver thrust forward above the
+candle.
+
+"Hands up--quick--or I'll shoot," threatened a vibrant, low-pitched
+voice.
+
+The menace was very real. Most men would have obeyed the command and let
+Slade drop to a head-foremost smash on the cliff foot. Lennon cried back
+at the threatener without releasing his hold on the windlass:
+
+"Pardon me, Miss Farley--I----"
+
+"You!" Holding up the candle, Carmena stepped in to peer about the big
+anteroom. "Way you were stooped over I mistook you for---- Almost fired.
+What you doing?"
+
+The query was charged with suspicion. Lennon thrust in the crank peg,
+folded his arms, and leaned against the windlass.
+
+"I met your father's partner wandering about, and thought he needed an
+airing."
+
+The girl stared from the windlass out along the taut rope.
+
+"You don't mean----"
+
+"Yes, dangling head down."
+
+"Dead?"
+
+"Merely knocked out--worse luck! But one way of restoring consciousness
+is to raise the feet above the head. He may wake up any moment and
+appreciate the situation."
+
+"Any moment?" cried Carmena. She half dropped her candlestick on the
+stone floor and sprang to the windlass. "Quick! We must haul him up
+before he comes to."
+
+Lennon did not budge.
+
+"No, Miss Farley. That beast shall not again set foot in this place
+until Elsie is safe away."
+
+The girl's eyes widened. Her hand clutched and drew close across her
+rounded bosom the folds of the blanket that she had flung about her
+shoulders to cover her night gown. Her face paled and as quickly flushed
+scarlet.
+
+"I thought I heard sounds in the passage, but the rug curtain muffled
+them," she murmured. "Was he trying to--to----"
+
+"Had been drinking," replied Lennon. "My regret now is that the blow did
+not kill him."
+
+"And leave us no chance against Cochise? He's the only living creature
+that Cochise fears. Can't you see we must make believe--must keep up
+with him until we are rid of the Apaches? Bad as he is, he's a white
+man. Cochise is a--devil! When he tired of Blossom, he'd give her to his
+men."
+
+Convinced against his will, Lennon began to wind in on the windlass.
+Carmena went to the edge of the cliff. When the body of Slade came
+spinning and swinging up out of the gloom she held down the light and
+peered anxiously at the knot that held the rope about his thick ankles.
+It showed no signs of slipping. His down-hung head wobbled up into the
+flickering light of the candle. The face was purple; the bloodshot eyes
+were glazed.
+
+Carmena swung in the crane and freed the rope the moment Lennon eased
+off. Slade was wheezing as if almost suffocated. At Carmena's urging,
+Lennon helped her drag the stupefied man back into the living room. The
+girl ran to fetch a bowl of water.
+
+"Loosen your clothes," she whispered in Lennon's ear. "Hide your
+moccasins--look as if you'd just jumped out of bed--get your arm back in
+the sling. That's it. Now lift his head and shoulders up against this
+chair."
+
+As Lennon raised the flaccid upper body, Carmena began to dash water
+into the purple face. The blotched skin gradually lightened to its
+natural red. The pale eyes lost their fishy glaze. They stared dazedly
+up into the deeply concerned face of Carmena. She flung the last cupful
+of water from the bowl. Slade roused enough to mumble virulent curses.
+
+"Oh!" exclaimed Carmena, in a tone of sympathetic relief. "He's not
+dead--he's coming to. Oh, Mr. Slade, what happened? Did you fall against
+the table? Or was it a fit? You looked terribly black in the face, as if
+you'd had a fit. That's why I used the water. Jack held you up to drain
+the blood out of your head."
+
+Slade scowled at his helpers. Lennon frowned back at him but followed up
+the girl's lead.
+
+"Once saw a man taken with apoplexy--stroke of paralysis, you know. Not
+paralyzed are you? Try lifting your arms and legs?"
+
+Slade glowered morosely, but caught the look of concern in Carmena's
+face and stiffened with sudden alarm. She watched with an intent
+scrutiny as he gingerly lifted one limb after another.
+
+"Bunk!" he growled. "I ain't paralyzed. Needn't think you can con me."
+
+"Wait--your face!" warned the girl. "It looked queer. Try smiling."
+
+"No, it's all right now," said Lennon. "Sometimes these first strokes of
+apoplexy paralyze only for a few moments."
+
+Carmena changed her look of sympathy to one of sharp reproof.
+
+"I don't think it's that at all. You've just been working on our
+sympathies, Mr. Slade. Own up now. You took too much tizwin to know what
+you were about. You came in here for a drink of water and fell against
+the table corner."
+
+The glaring eyes of the trader narrowed in a look of crafty calculation.
+Lennon followed the man's thoughts by his expression. The effects of the
+moonshine whiskey, of the blow under his ear, and of the suffocation had
+not yet passed. They had left him lax and shaken and rather muddled. He
+had been given his fill for one night. Carmena's reproaches disarmed
+his suspicion that she and Lennon knew what he had been about. His
+guilty anger at the two subsided into derision of their blindness.
+
+"Well, what if I did git tanked up?" he growled. "It's my tizwin as much
+as Dad's, ain't it? I'm going back to bed to sleep it off."
+
+Lennon took the candle from Carmena.
+
+"Permit me to carry the light for you, Slade. Your hand is too unsteady.
+I'm not so sure about Miss Farley's explanation of your mishap. I still
+believe you had a stroke--not as heavy a stroke as it might have
+been--not fatal, you know, but heavy enough to put you down and out."
+
+Slade was staggering to his feet. Lennon followed him to the room where
+Farley lay sprawled in drunken slumber beside an empty whiskey jug. As
+soon as Slade had dropped upon the bed Lennon took the candle back to
+the living room. Carmena had gone.
+
+He gathered up an armful of Navaho rugs and moved one of the heavy
+chairs around to the doorway of the passage into the girl's room.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+CROOKED WAYS
+
+
+At gray dawn Elsie started to go out into the living room. Midway of the
+dusky passage her foot struck against a roundish object. She bent down
+to look. A dim form was lying in the passage, with feet against the
+chair that blocked the outer doorway.
+
+The girl's half shriek brought Lennon up at a bound, his revolver out.
+
+"Who's there?" he demanded.
+
+"Oh--oh, Jack!" the girl sobbed her relief.
+
+He clasped her to him protectingly.
+
+"All right, sweetheart--all right," he said, soothingly. "You see I have
+been here on watch. Slade---- But that is past. I see light outside. He
+will soon be leaving with me."
+
+Elsie clutched him, in renewed panic.
+
+"But I'm afraid! I don't want you to leave me, Jack. You'll never, never
+come back! I want to go along, too. If you leave me, I'm awful afraid
+Cochise'll catch me!"
+
+"You dear little frightened Blossom! But I cannot take you now. You must
+stay with Carmena. She will keep you up here, safe from Cochise. I will
+come back--never fear. I will come back and take you away."
+
+"Take me--away from Dead Hole? Oh, how wonderful! Mena says I came from
+outside, where are all the book things and people--like you. I can't
+remember, but I'll just love to go out and see the wide world with
+you--and Mena--and Dad. Only Dad doesn't want to leave the Hole at all."
+
+"You shall go with me out of this place," replied Lennon. "I will bring
+the sheriff and have him arrest every member of this band of outlaws."
+
+The rug curtains of the inner room flung apart. Carmena sprang out into
+the passage. She drew her foster-sister away from Lennon with a grasp as
+resolute as it was gentle.
+
+"Go and start breakfast, Blossom," she directed. "The sooner they leave
+the better."
+
+Elsie darted to the doorway and disappeared. Lennon started after her.
+He was checked by a low-spoken command from Carmena:
+
+"Stop. I want a show-down from you, Jack Lennon. I heard what you said
+about the sheriff. Good thing Slade wasn't in earshot. You'd have a
+bullet in you by now. You may yet. What are you aiming to do?"
+
+"You say you heard me," said Lennon. "I spoke clearly."
+
+"Do you count Dad in the gang?"
+
+"Don't you?"
+
+In the brightening light of red dawn Lennon saw the girl's eyes cloud
+with anguish. At sight of her grief and suffering a wave of compassion
+surged up within him. The flood overwhelmed and submerged all his
+prejudice against her.
+
+He started to express his pity and sympathy--only to be checked before
+the words could leave his lips. The girl's eyes were ablaze. Her mouth
+straightened in resolute lines.
+
+"All right, Mr. Lennon," she said. "You've shown your hand. Here's mine:
+You'll give your pledge to leave the sheriff out of this deal, or you'll
+never reach the trail."
+
+"Very kind of you, indeed, to warn me, Miss Farley. I presume you will
+tell Slade and Cochise to be ready if I attempt to escape."
+
+Though the girl's lips remained firm, her eyes again dilated with
+anguish. She turned about and groped her way into the inner room. Lennon
+felt an odd mingling of shame and regret, of anger and an emotion that
+went far beyond sympathy.
+
+Elsie soon came with a bowl of coffee, which Carmena had sent for Lennon
+to give to Slade. There was no need of words to make clear her wish to
+be rid of the visitors. Lennon found Slade lying as torpid as Farley.
+But the hot coffee roused him to morose alertness.
+
+Breakfast was served by Carmena, though her excuse for the absence of
+Elsie failed to satisfy the surly-tempered trader. The younger girl did
+not appear until Slade dropped the rope ladder and went scrambling down
+the cliff face. Carmena was already lowering Lennon's outfit to the
+trader's Navaho followers, who had come at dawn.
+
+With a last word to Elsie to be brave but careful until his return,
+Lennon gently freed himself from her clinging embrace, put his arm back
+in the sling, and stepped into the loop of the hoist rope. The girls
+lowered him to the cliff foot.
+
+The Navahos, who were dressed as Mexicans, already had the prospecting
+outfit lashed on a pack horse. At Lennon's request, Slade derisively
+ordered one of them to hold the tenderfoot's pony. Lennon nursed his arm
+and climbed into his saddle with a show of difficulty. The more awkward
+and disabled he could make himself appear to his travelling companions
+the better would be his chances later.
+
+Slade put spurs to his big horse and galloped off down the valley,
+leaving Lennon to trail behind with the Navahos. The pace did not
+slacken until the party raced down into the lower canon and around a
+double turn to the drop in the bed.
+
+On the brink of the cliff was set a crane similar in design to the one
+at the cliff house but much larger. Hauled back, it was hidden from
+below by a corner of rock. Swung out, its block and tackle, operated by
+a one-pony windlass, could hoist or lower a two-pony load in the light
+basket cage woven of wire and withes. One of the three Apache guards
+hitched his pony to the windlass.
+
+Slade went down first, with his horse and Lennon and one of the Apaches.
+Before the horse was led through the cage door out upon the smooth
+ledges at the foot of the cliff the Apache fastened thick pads of
+rawhide upon his hoofs. This was also done for the ponies as they swung
+down, two by two, in the cage.
+
+Lennon had noted the arrangement and working of the crane and hoist with
+the eye of an engineer. When he turned his attention to the hoof pads,
+Slade gratuitously explained that the rawhide was needed to keep the
+horses from slipping on the ledges of the cliff. Lennon took this with a
+careless nod.
+
+He had already inferred the true reason for the practice. The ledges
+were neither slippery nor steep. But scratches made by ironshod hoofs on
+the rocks might have led expert trackers to suspect the hoisting of
+stolen stock up the cliff.
+
+Down where the bed was of loose stones and gravel a rough trail from the
+lower canon twisted up a side gorge. Pursuers trailing a bunch of stolen
+cattle or horses would of course turn up the gorge. A glance or two at
+the sheer thirty-foot wall of the upstep in the bed of the main canon
+would convince the most astute of cowboys that not even a puma could go
+up that way.
+
+At the edge of the trail the Apache took off the hoof-pads and returned
+to the cage. He was being hoisted up the cliff when Lennon loped after
+Slade down-trail around a sharp bend in the canon.
+
+A hard ride down the canon for five miles or more, then up a steep break
+and across cedar-dotted mesas, brought the party out to the Moqui trail
+shortly after mid-morning. Lennon frowned at the clear-marked trail.
+
+His plans as first made had been to cut and run for the railway the
+moment he should reach the main trail. But he had discovered that his
+pony was the slowest of the mounts and that the four Navahos always kept
+behind him. He could neither drop to the rear nor race ahead of Slade's
+big American thoroughbred.
+
+Slade turned to the right, away from the railway, and pushed the pace
+for another hour. The trail led through a rather wide valley. Near the
+head they came to a well-watered oasis of corn and bean fields. Across
+from the trail stood an abandoned Moqui pueblo.
+
+The ruins had been sufficiently restored to house Slade's trading
+establishment and the score or more families of his Navaho cowpunchers.
+The small storeroom was crowded with bales and boxes, but Lennon noticed
+that behind the front piles many of the boxes were empty. This
+legitimate business was more or less of a sham to cover the whiskey
+running.
+
+Slade's quarters in a half-detached group of stone rooms were somewhat
+incongruously furnished. A rather handsome but sad-eyed young Indian
+woman in a dirty blue wrapper covertly "dished up" a noon meal for her
+master and Lennon on the fly-covered table.
+
+The greasy warmed-over chile con carne, the half-cooked tortillas and
+the muddy coffee accounted for Slade's praises of Elsie as a cook. The
+Indian girl slunk and cowered under his curses. Whenever she passed him
+she cringed as if expectant of a blow. Lennon was doubly relieved when
+Slade's impatience to be off on the search for the lost lode hurried him
+out into the clean open air.
+
+The horses had been fed and watered and were waiting near the spring,
+beside a young peach tree. Slade paused to bellow guttural commands at a
+Navaho sheepherder who was driving a small flock down the valley.
+
+Lennon hastened ahead toward the spring, eager to seize his opportunity.
+He had only to secure his rifle, leap on Slade's big thoroughbred, and
+race away down the back trail. The American horse could easily outrun
+the Indian ponies. Once beyond rifle range of the pueblo his escape
+would be certain.
+
+The horses were soon only a few steps away. Lennon nerved himself for
+the dash. From behind a scraggly bunch of scrub that appeared too thin
+to screen even a coyote rose all four of Slade's personal retainers.
+Though they were as stolid and silent as wooden Indians, each had his
+rifle in hand. Lennon thought he caught a glitter of suspicion in their
+covert glances.
+
+Bitter as was his disappointment, he was quick to make the best of the
+situation. A sharp command and jerk of his thumb toward Slade led them
+to believe he had come for them at the order of their master.
+
+Slade hailed the tenderfoot with bluff cordiality when the mounted party
+loped up the slope to him.
+
+"Gitting het up, huh? You act like an old-timer on a gold stampede.
+Never before knew a prospector to go loco over copper."
+
+"You should bear in mind I am an engineer, not a prospector," replied
+Lennon. "If I am successful over this copper project and it proves to be
+as large as I have been led to expect, I shall have won a place well up
+in my profession."
+
+Slade grunted contemptuously and spurred his horse into a gallop. Within
+a mile he turned off trail to cut across country. Beyond the first
+mesas, which were a part of the trader-cowman's cattle range, came a
+jumbled waste of crags and broken ridges.
+
+On the edge of this devil's dooryard of bare rocks and no less dry and
+sterile ravines Slade gave over the lead to the oldest of his Navahos. A
+white man could have found his way only by blind chance through the maze
+of twisted clefts that seamed the unscalable cliffs and crags.
+
+Lennon soon lost all sense of direction. He realized that he could not
+hope to find his way out of these worst of bad lands without a guide. He
+must put off his plans to escape until the return to the trail. He began
+to surmise that Cripple Sim's inability to relocate the lost lode may
+not have been due altogether to his maiming by Apache arrows.
+
+But this jagged waste that had kept the secret of the mine hidden for a
+generation would offer an impassable barrier to any railway. Unless an
+easier route could be found, the entire project was already proved
+hopeless. Even a vein of solid copper could not be worked at a profit if
+the metal had to be packed out on burros.
+
+Yet there remained the chance of another route to the lode; and Lennon
+was not minded to confide his disappointment to Slade. He spurred his
+pony to keep pace with the others. The sooner the mine was relocated and
+the party back at the trail, the sooner he could make his attempt to
+escape. After Elsie had been freed from her dangerous prison in Dead
+Hole he could take time to search for a feasible route to the mine.
+
+Toward sundown the old Navaho led the party clear of the shattered rock
+maze and up the side of a small mesa. From the table top Lennon saw the
+mighty towers of Triple Butte startlingly close ahead. Slade reined in
+to stare hard-eyed at the engineer.
+
+"There's your butte," he rumbled. "Which side do we head?"
+
+"North," replied Lennon, without a moment's hesitation.
+
+Though he had been lost since leaving the trail, he clearly remembered
+all the directions given by the old prospector as to the position of the
+lode in relation to Triple Butte. From the top of the mesa practical
+railway routes appeared to offer to the east and north of the great
+butte.
+
+Lennon studied the landscape until he noticed that the Navaho leader had
+headed south of east instead of north. Certain that his reply to Slade
+had been misunderstood, he spurred forward to explain that they were
+veering away from the lost lode.
+
+Slade rode on without a word of acknowledgment. The presence of the
+Navahos made his contemptuous silence doubly galling. Lennon took it as
+a foretaste of what was to come and masked his chagrin. For Elsie's
+sake, he could not afford to quarrel with Slade at this stage of the
+dangerous game that must be played.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+THE DROP
+
+
+At sunset the reason for the guide's choice of route disclosed itself.
+The party came to a group of small springs.
+
+Lennon's throat had been parched for the last two hours. He spurred his
+jaded pony forward to the mesquite bushes where the Navahos were
+unsaddling, and slipped off to dip his empty canteen in the largest
+spring.
+
+The guide muttered gutturally to Slade who was staring up narrow-eyed at
+the broken shoulder of Triple Butte. He wrenched himself about to scowl
+at Lennon. The engineer had straightened and was raising the half-filled
+canteen to drink.
+
+"Hey, you!" bellowed Slade. "Drop that!"
+
+The bullying command was more than Lennon could endure. He waved the
+canteen ironically at the trader, turned half away, and put the opening
+to his mouth. Slade whipped out his revolver and fired. The canteen flew
+out of Lennon's hand and thumped down upon the stone beside the spring.
+
+For a moment Lennon was so astonished that he stood motionless, staring
+down at the canteen. The water gushed and gurgled through the holes
+pierced through the middle of the vessel by the heavy bullet.
+
+The first coherent thought of the engineer was that Slade had intended
+to murder him. He put his hand to the pocket that held Farley's revolver
+and turned to face Slade. The trader's weapon was already back in its
+holster. His stained teeth showed in a wide grin.
+
+"May I ask what you mean by shooting at me?" demanded Lennon.
+
+Slade's mirth burst out in a roar of laughter.
+
+"Shooting at you--shooting _now_?" he jibed when he could speak. "You
+must figger I'm plumb loco. Any fool ought to know anybody would hold
+off till you located the mine. Even supposing I was going to plant you,
+I'd wait, wouldn't I, huh?"
+
+Lennon saw the point even clearer than the trader intended. He was
+supposed to take the piece of grim humour as a reassurance. The derisive
+banter was an unintentional notification that he could expect to be
+murdered immediately after the finding of the lost lode. But until then
+he must continue to play the dupe.
+
+"I must confess I do not fancy your Western jokes," he said. "You have
+spoiled a perfectly good canteen."
+
+"Happens you're worth more to me than it; and you was dead set on
+filling up with that poison water," rejoined Slade.
+
+"Poison?"
+
+The old Navaho was drinking from the second spring, less than two paces
+away from the first. Lennon pointed at him.
+
+"Sure," said Slade. "It's not the only case I know of finding good water
+'longside arsenic, in a copper district."
+
+The actions of the Indians bore out the truth of their master's
+assertion, or at least proved that they believed the first spring
+poisonous. The horses were picketed well away from it and from the joint
+rill of the two springs, which trickled down slope a few yards before
+seeping away among the stones.
+
+The camp supper of bacon and flapjacks was soon followed by the
+spreading of blankets on the nearest stretches of sand. The Navahos went
+off to one side. Slade ordered Lennon to keep near him and carefully
+encircled their bedding-down place with the coils of a horsehair lariat.
+
+The purpose of the lariat became apparent to Lennon when he was roused
+by the chill of dawn. He saw one of the Navahos rake out of the embers
+of the evening's fire a torpid tarantula as big as his hand.
+
+Lennon thought of Elsie's daintiness and soft ways. The girl was utterly
+out of keeping with this fierce land of desolation and thirst, of thorns
+and poison springs, of venomous reptiles and insects, of ferocious
+beasts and men. She did not belong and never would. She was a garden
+flower.
+
+Carmena was different. Her rich bloom was more like the flowers of the
+desert growths--the thorn-guarded yucca and needled cactus. There was
+nothing soft and cuddly about _her_.
+
+At the realization of where his thoughts were drifting, Lennon wrenched
+his mental focus back to Elsie. What concern could the fate of Carmena
+be to him? She belonged with her drunken, criminal father in Dead Hole.
+All thought and effort must be centred on the rescue of Elsie.
+
+After a hasty meal of flapjacks, bacon, and coffee, the party started
+out to work north around Triple Butte. The country was now unknown
+ground even to the old Navaho guide. But he showed great craft in
+puzzling out the directions given to him.
+
+An inner pocket hid the map that Lennon had brought from the East. He
+took care that Slade and the Navahos thought he was going by memory. Had
+he told of the map at any time after reaching Dead Hole he now felt
+certain that he never would have lived to get this near the mine. Slade
+would have taken the map and killed him out of hand. So at least Lennon
+believed.
+
+Once the party rounded upon the northern slopes of Triple Butte, the
+points described on the map became easily recognizable. All that
+remained to do was to ride around a spur ridge and slant into the valley
+that headed up between the western and central towers of the great
+butte. Here the searchers came upon trees and grass and running water.
+Farther up stood a small cabin, near a spring that had been blasted out
+and rimmed with rock to form a convenient basin.
+
+Lennon spurred forward beside Slade.
+
+"Promising. What?" he remarked.
+
+"Not what, but where?" growled the trader. "Hold on--that looks like an
+old burro trail."
+
+"Yes. Up first ravine toward left edge of middle butte, half a mile to
+lode," Lennon quoted the last directions that he had read on the map.
+
+Slade signed for the Navahos to wait at the spring. A brutal jab of the
+spurs sent his horse bounding off at top speed. Lennon's pony was left
+behind until the leader wheeled into the first ravine and came up
+against a steep slide of loose rock. To force even the nimblest of
+mounts to attempt such an ascent would have meant risking a bad fall.
+
+As Lennon loped his pony into the ravine the trader swore blasphemously
+and swung out of his saddle to scramble up the slide. Great as was his
+strength, it was offset by the fact that his weight tended to bring the
+loose stones sliding down at every step. Lennon was not only lighter and
+more agile but had the advantage of better wind.
+
+He was but a few steps below when Slade reached the head of the slide.
+Close above them the ascent was barred by high ledges that dropped off
+from the upper part of the ravine. Slade stared savagely at the dull
+reddish-brown face of the ledges. The metallic surface plainly showed
+the use of pick and dynamite. He uttered a furious oath as he turned
+upon Lennon.
+
+"You lying skunk!" he bellowed. "This ain't no gold mine!"
+
+All the way up the slide Lennon had perceived the copper in the float
+rock. He was prepared for the trader's outburst. Farley's revolver lay
+ready in his grasp, behind the sling on his right arm.
+
+"Have you--what do you call it?--gone loco?" he asked. "I told you
+distinctly my search was for a copper mine. The gold lode was your own
+fancy. You will now apologize for that term you used."
+
+Had one of his Navahos made the demand, Slade could not have been more
+amazed. He gaped, dumbfounded. Then his rage burst out again with
+redoubled fury. But the sight of Lennon's revolver muzzle put an abrupt
+end to his violent curses.
+
+"Good enough," said Lennon. "Now my apology, if you please."
+
+The cool politeness of the request emphasized its deadly earnestness.
+Lennon was keen for an excuse to shoot the big scoundrel. The look in
+his eye was unmistakable.
+
+"All right," grunted Slade. "Have it your own way. I back up."
+
+"You apologize?"
+
+"Sure. Even a tenderfoot is entitled to that--when he gits the drop on
+you."
+
+"Quite true," agreed Lennon, and he thrust the revolver into his pocket.
+"Now, with regard to the lode, our next step will be----"
+
+"What'd you say you was to git from your copper company?" broke in
+Slade, suddenly straight-eyed and cordial.
+
+"Twenty thousand bonus for relocating the lode, and----"
+
+"You can draw on 'em for it?"
+
+"For half, at least. You shall have your ten thousand as soon as you
+rid the Farleys of Cochise and his gang. That was the agreement."
+
+The trader thwacked his beefy hand down on Lennon's shoulder.
+
+"That's a go, pard. I own up honest I figgered your talk of copper was
+all bunk. But I aim to stand by my bargains. Only you're sure now this
+here lode ain't no blind, are you? You ain't got that gold mine, too,
+hiding out hereabouts?"
+
+"I give you my word, Slade, this is the only mine or lode of which I
+know."
+
+Slade's look was more profane than a spoken curse.
+
+"Huh--another El Dorado lie roped and branded. Only thing to do is to go
+after that bonus of yours."
+
+"I must take samples and measurements for my report," said Lennon. "The
+company does not pay for the guesses of its engineers."
+
+None too willingly Slade took the end of the small steel-ribbon
+engineer's tape that was held out to him. Lennon measured the width of
+the copper ledges, noted the trend and dip of the immense lode, and
+calculated its thickness where exposed. Samples were then gathered.
+
+Upon the return down the slide the trader suddenly paused to point at
+the skull of a half-buried human skeleton.
+
+"Huh," he grunted. "Cripple Sim didn't have no pard. But look at the
+pick--another prospector. Must 'a' stumbled on the mine. Lots of good it
+done him. See that hole? His pard plugged him through the head, streaked
+out, got lost, died. That's how I figger it."
+
+"Poor chap!" Lennon murmured his pity for the murdered man, and he
+lingered to cover over the skeleton with a pile of loose stones.
+
+At the spring he found the Indians cooking another round of flapjacks,
+bacon, and coffee. After the meal the party waited through the heat of
+mid-day while the horses cropped the grass along the banks of the spring
+rill.
+
+At first there seemed nothing of interest about the old cabin. The
+thatch had half blown off; the adobe-plastered stone fireplace and
+chimney had tumbled down, and sand had drifted in past the broken wattle
+door. But when Lennon went in to take advantage of the patch of shade
+that was offered, he was shocked to find the skeleton of a woman huddled
+in the far corner.
+
+Summoned by his call, Slade eyed the skeleton with callous indifference.
+
+"Well, what you kicking up such a fuss about?" he growled. "Mebbe it's a
+squaw--mebbe a white woman. What's the difference? Been dead eight or
+ten years, by the look of things. Must 'a' got hers same time as the
+man. We're lucky they didn't git our mine."
+
+The start back was made so late that the party did not reach the arsenic
+spring until dusk. Lennon had convinced himself that Slade planned to
+return to Dead Hole and at least make a pretense of earning the ten
+thousand dollars.
+
+His own scheme was to seize Slade's horse and make a run for the
+railway. But first he must wait to be guided back through the devil's
+dooryard of crags and clefts.
+
+He fell asleep with his hand upon the butt of his revolver and the
+revolver under his body. He awoke at dawn to find his wrists lashed
+together. One of the Navahos stood on guard beside him. The revolver was
+gone. Slade and the others were already eating.
+
+No food was brought to Lennon. But after he had been roughly tossed into
+his saddle by the Navahos, Slade brought a drink of water from the
+arsenic spring and offered it with mock hospitality.
+
+"It's a dry ride," he urged. "Take a good swaller, son. It'll keep you
+from gitting thirsty."
+
+Lennon looked at him steady-eyed.
+
+"May I ask what you expect to gain by this, Slade?"
+
+"Gain?--me?" The trader stared back no less unwaveringly. "I just done
+it to save you gitting in trouble. You're too careless--way you handle a
+gun. Might hurt somebody one of these here days. Anyhow, this'll help
+you think things over. Sabe?"
+
+The poison water splashed down upon the dry rocks. Slade mounted, to
+ride off after the guide. The other Navahos lashed Lennon to his saddle
+and drove his pony before them, along with the pack horse.
+
+Though the old Navaho found a rather shorter way out through the jumble
+maze of the bad lands, Lennon's mouth and throat were dust dry and his
+tongue swollen before the party reached the trail.
+
+The thirst torture continued until the arrival at the pueblo. There
+Slade at last gave drink to his prisoner and disclosed his purpose, with
+a pretense of indignation.
+
+"You ought to be strung up for trying to shoot me, Lennon. But I'm an
+easy-going man--easy and forgiving. You only got to make out your report
+and send for that twenty thousand. When it comes on, I'll let you go."
+
+"Very kind of you, I'm sure," replied Lennon, after he had drained the
+last drop of water from the jar. "However, I am in no hurry to make my
+report. I shall send it on and draw your half of the money--after you
+have kept your bargain with regard to Cochise."
+
+Slade deliberately drew his revolver and aimed it between Lennon's eyes.
+
+"Just remember, your riding in the way you did was to set you to
+thinking," he reminded. "This ain't no joke. Guess you'll agree now to
+git started on that report, huh?"
+
+Lennon smiled at the revolver and the still more menacing steel-white
+eyes that glared at him along the barrel.
+
+"Is it not time you set to thinking yourself, Slade?" he suggested.
+"Alive, I am worth ten thousand dollars to you, as soon as you keep your
+bargain. Dead, I would not be worth a penny to you or any one else."
+
+The brick red of the trader's big face purpled and the hand that gripped
+the revolver shook with the excess of his rage as he jammed the weapon
+back into its holster.
+
+"Wait," he said. "We'll see what Cochise can do to make you behave."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+DEATH PLAY
+
+
+Fresh horses were saddled, and Lennon was tied on as before. His last
+hope of escape went glimmering. He realized that he had missed his one
+chance when the party first reached the main trail, coming out of Dead
+Hole.
+
+To have attacked even then would have been a desperate undertaking--one
+man against five. But he would have had at least a fighting chance. Now
+he was unarmed and bound, unable even to shift in the saddle.
+
+Slade set a hot pace that fast ate up the hard miles of the return
+trail. But no pony could carry his massive weight as had the horse.
+Before the main canon was reached, his mount began to flag. Only the
+most merciless of rowelling could goad the jaded beast out of a jog
+except for short spurts. In the descent to the canon the pony began to
+stumble badly. But Slade held him up with an iron grip on the
+jaw-breaking Spanish ring-bit.
+
+The smooth canon bed was only a few yards below when, at the last sharp
+twist in the descent, the still air vibrated with a sibilant rattle.
+Slade's pony snorted and jumped sideways, leaving Lennon a clear view of
+the big diamond-back rattlesnake that lay coiled in the middle of the
+trail. The gaping jaws of the angry snake and the peculiar billowing of
+its body so fixed Lennon's gaze that he only half glimpsed the final
+stumble of Slade's pony.
+
+Unable to keep his footing among the loose stones of the side slope, the
+exhausted animal plunged headlong. Slade managed to fling himself clear,
+but fell prone on the sharp-edged stones. His nose was skinned and one
+cheek gashed. He bounded up, fairly beside himself with rage, and began
+to kick the head of the fallen pony.
+
+The luckless beast struggled to rise, got half to his feet, screamed,
+and fell over. Something about his hindquarters had been wrenched or
+torn or broken. Slade swore furiously and jerked out his revolver to
+fire repeatedly into the body of the struggling beast. The fourth shot
+was through the head.
+
+At the sudden stilling of his victim's struggles, the trader's half
+insane rage cooled from its mad heat without losing any of its
+virulence. One of the Navahos had dismounted and run forward to stone
+the rattlesnake. Slade uttered a guttural hissing command. Instead of
+crushing the snake, the Indian teased it with the butt of his leather
+quirt.
+
+The reptile lashed out in a vicious stroke. An instant later the Navaho
+straightened up with his hand gripped about the snake's neck close
+behind the deadly triangular head. He gave no heed to its five-foot body
+writhing and coiling about his bare arm.
+
+Slade swung up into the path and looked from the new prisoner to Lennon
+with a glint in his pale eyes as malignant as the cold glare of the
+snake.
+
+"You're one of these here science sharps," he jeered. "We'll have you
+test out if a Gila monster bite fixes a man against rattler poison."
+
+"Rather a costly experiment for you if I prove not to be immune,"
+rallied Lennon. "You must have a keen interest in science so to risk
+your ten thousand."
+
+"Mebbe. It ain't much of a gamble, though. I stand to rake in twenty
+thousand if I win, and you ain't liable to let it go as far as the
+bite."
+
+"Twenty thousand?" questioned Lennon. "If you take Cochise in on this
+blackmailing scheme, you will have to divide the proceeds with him. Why
+not keep your bargain and earn your half of the bonus without this risk
+of losing all?"
+
+The trader's eyes narrowed in crafty calculation. He looked about at the
+snake and then down at the slaughtered horse. A sudden grin twisted his
+coarse mouth.
+
+"You're right, son," he chuckled. "Why split the twenty with a dam'
+Apache? Ain't time now to make the Hole 'fore dark, anyhow--and here's
+our rawhide. We'll try out that science experiment right here."
+
+He signed for the man with the snake to go on down into the canon bed.
+The other Indians were already unsaddling the dead burro. Slade muttered
+a command to them in the thick indistinct intonations of their language.
+They at once started to flay the pony.
+
+Slade led Lennon's mount down where the snake holder had halted beside a
+sangre de dragon tree. One of the Indians followed and began to cut
+stakes from the tree. The sap of the tree was as red as blood and so
+astringent that when Slade dabbed a little on his cheek the wound at
+once ceased to bleed.
+
+The flayers soon came with the limp rawhide. Slade turned along the
+canon to a spot where the rays of the low western sun still slanted down
+between the cliffs. He spoke again in the Navaho tongue. The Indians
+drove a stake firmly into the sand and tied the rattlesnake to it with a
+three-foot thong cut from the pony skin.
+
+Lennon was now pulled from his pony and stretched out, face down, just
+beyond reach of the snake. Regardless of the bandage on his hand, his
+arms were jerked out sideways and fastened with yard-long thongs to
+stakes driven at right angles to a point a foot or so in front of his
+head. From stakes set on the opposite side of the snake several lines
+cut from the raw pony hide were flung across past the snake and bound to
+Lennon's arms at the shoulder.
+
+By hauling on the lines from ahead, the Indians dragged Lennon an inch
+at a time toward the snake. He heard the sharp ominous rattle, and
+twisted his head up out of the sand to face the danger. The snake had
+coiled in front of the first stake. Though its venomous head was drawn
+back, the long curved fangs of the gaping jaws were less than three feet
+before Lennon's eyes.
+
+Even as he looked up, the reptile shot forward straight at his face. He
+involuntarily blinked. In the same instant a drop of fluid spattered
+against his closed eyelid and he heard a soft thud in the sand close
+before his chin. A puff of dust whiffed up into his nostrils. It clotted
+the dew-like drop of liquid on his eyelid.
+
+He opened his eyes in a wide stare. The head of the big rattlesnake lay
+flat on the sand, less than eight inches before his face. It had lashed
+out to the full length of the thong. Had the thong broken, or even had
+its loop about the reptile's neck slipped, the poison-dripping fangs
+must have lashed Lennon's face.
+
+Intense as were the heat and dryness of the canon bed, Lennon suddenly
+felt his skin bathed in clammy sweat. For the first time in his life he
+knew terror. He glared into the cold, malignant eyes of the snake and
+saw death, certain and horrible. Panic seized him. He writhed and dug
+his fingers and boot toes into the sand in a frantic attempt to work
+himself back away from the hideous forward-straining reptile.
+
+The desperate struggle was utterly futile. The lines ahead had been
+stretched taut and knotted fast to their stakes. With his arms
+outstretched he could get very little purchase for thrusting himself
+back against the elastic pull of the rawhide ropes.
+
+But he was no coward. Realization of his helplessness brought him the
+resignation of despair. With resignation came a stilling of his wild
+panic. Frantic terror gave way to reasoning thought.
+
+Had his torturer been Cochise, there might have been no room for hope.
+But Slade was a white man. He might prefer gold to the lust of torture.
+The death of his victim would mean the loss of the ransom money.
+Lennon's tense nerves and rigid muscles relaxed. He allowed his
+upward--and backward-strained head to sink down until one cheek rested
+upon the hot sand. The change of position brought the top of his head
+very close to the snake. But he trusted to Slade's avarice to see that
+he escaped the fangs.
+
+Slade and the Indians had been gloating upon the struggles and terror of
+their victim. At Lennon's quieting down the trader burst into a derisive
+laugh.
+
+"Sort of wilted a'ready, huh?" he jeered. "Well, you're wise to take a
+rest while you still got time. Rawhide shrinks a whole lot when it gits
+to drying. Only question is how much slower the rattler's whang strap'll
+shorten up than your lines."
+
+For the first time a clear perception of the real devilishness of the
+torture flashed into Lennon's abnormally active mind. He was to lie
+outstretched through the long hours, without food or water, while the
+shrinking rawhide dragged him with frightful slowness closer and closer
+to those fangs of death.
+
+The thong of the snake also would be contracting. But it was much the
+shorter, and therefore would shrink less. The uncertainty of how fast
+and how much the different fastenings would contract doubled the
+torturing knowledge that the shrinking must inevitably pull him within
+reach of the snake.
+
+Physical agony would then soon be added to the mental anguish of dread.
+For, once the snake's horny snout grazed the top of his head, he would
+be forced to keep his head raised, on penalty of being pierced by the
+fangs if he should seek to rest.
+
+Then was when Slade no doubt felt certain that the overstrained nerves
+of his victim would give way. Lennon foresaw that if worse came to
+worst, he must agree to terms. After holding up his head as long as his
+strength lasted, he would be forced to yield. Why not yield at once and
+save all the torture?
+
+As he asked himself the question, a grateful shadow swept down the
+canon. The sun was setting. Lennon reconsidered his half-formed
+decision. During the night the rawhide might continue to shrink a little
+in the dry air, but the darkness and chill would quiet the snake. It
+would lie still until sunrise. Time enough to yield when yielding should
+become inevitable!
+
+"If you'll pardon me, Slade," he said, "I believe I'll take a nap. Good
+night. Pleasant dreams."
+
+Slade started to curse but ended in a derisive laugh.
+
+"Think you'll four-flush, huh? Well, we'll see after sun-up."
+
+He turned his back on the prisoner and walked over to where the old
+Navaho was starting a fire for the inevitable flapjacks, bacon, and
+coffee. The thought of food nauseated Lennon. But he would have given a
+thousand dollars for one of the canteens of water. Regardless of a hiss
+from the half-strangled snake, he laid his other cheek over on the
+cooling sand.
+
+After a time Slade came with a blazing stick for torch to wish him a
+mocking good night. Lennon smiled back at him with a show of confidence.
+The trader cursed but soon went off to roll in his blankets. This proved
+Lennon's surmise that the real test would not come before morning.
+
+He lay for a long time wide-eyed, forcing himself to consider in detail
+every aspect of the situation and to calculate his chances. Beyond
+question, Slade intended to murder him. But there was first the ransom
+money to be secured. Would he wait for it, as in the case of the cowman
+whom Elsie had told about? Or might he not fall into a rage and destroy
+his victim as he had killed the pony?
+
+If he could keep his temper, the probabilities were that he would
+prolong the torture until he had gained his end. After that might come a
+short respite for the victim.
+
+Lennon next recalled all he knew about snakes and their poison glands.
+After that he closed his eyes and relaxed both mentally and physically.
+The cool of nightfall had somewhat eased his thirst and the ache from
+the strain of the rawhide lines on his shoulders. He dozed off to
+sleep.
+
+He was so far spent and his last thought so calm that he slept soundly
+all night. But the chill damp of dewfall roused him at the first graying
+of dawn. To the shivering of his cramped body from the cold was soon
+added a shudder of fear and loathing. Against his head, just above the
+forehead, was pressed a cold hard object--the snout of the rattlesnake.
+
+But the reptile was too torpid from the cold to strike. After a time the
+slight moistening of the rawhide by the dew enabled Lennon to force
+himself back nearly an inch. This was at sunrise. Slade came to gloat at
+his struggle.
+
+"Go it," he mocked. "Wiggle while you can. Both them lines and the
+rattler'll git busy soon's the sun hets up a bit. Excuse me while I
+feed. I'll git back in time for the fun."
+
+The breakfast fire was beside a patch of thorn scrub several yards away.
+Lennon watched until his enemy had sat down on the sand opposite the
+Navahos. He then lifted his head.
+
+The first rays of the sun had begun to warm the snake. At Lennon's
+movement it stirred sluggishly. The dull eyes began to brighten with the
+glare of returning life and anger. Lennon dropped his head forward.
+
+Enraged by the feigned attack, the snake struck. The long fangs came so
+near their mark that Lennon felt them or the snout pass through his
+hair. Spurts of venom from the overcharged poison glands sprayed in
+against his scalp.
+
+For the second time since being pegged out Lennon felt his skin go
+clammy with cold sweat. His flesh crept with horror. Death had grazed
+him by a fraction of an inch. Another stroke might break or loosen the
+snake's bond. Yet he nerved himself again and shook his head from side
+to side.
+
+The movement roused the snake to fury. It lashed out in stroke after
+stroke. But the very excess of the reptile's anger quickly exhausted its
+strength. The hideous head flattened down on the sand.
+
+A sideward glance told Lennon that his deadly play had not been heeded
+by Slade and the Navahos. But he knew he had no time to spare. He filled
+his parched mouth with sand and raised his head. The snake did not move.
+
+Lennon blew sand into the glaring eyes of the rattler. The jaws gaped
+angrily. He blew all the remaining sand in between the high-curved
+fangs. The snake struck viciously and sank down, inert. A film closed
+over the sand-filled eyes.
+
+By pulling himself forward, Lennon gained a little relaxing of the
+thongs that held his arms outstretched. He drew up his knees and flung
+his body up and forward. From a height of several inches his breast came
+down squarely upon the head of the snake, with all the weight of his
+body in the blow.
+
+When Slade rushed cursing from the fire, Lennon lay in what appeared to
+be a swoon, with the body of the rattlesnake writhing about his head. At
+the angry bellow of the trader the Indians came running to slash
+Lennon's bonds and jerk him away from the snake.
+
+Slade ripped out an astounded oath.
+
+"He's beaten the game!" he cried.
+
+The head of the reptile had been crushed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+THE ATTACK
+
+
+The trader possibly may have been overcome with admiration for his
+victim's courage. More probably he was moved by the need to keep him
+alive for further torture. He signed one of the Navahos to use his
+canteen. Lennon had feigned unconsciousness in the hope of this result.
+
+He permitted a good quart of water to trickle down his parched throat
+before he showed signs of reviving. Even after he thought best to feign
+stupor no longer he made a show of great weakness. When jerked to his
+feet by the Indians, he tottered and crumpled down again. Slade swore,
+but ordered food and coffee brought.
+
+Lennon's tongue was still too swollen for him to eat much of the greasy
+solids. The strong coffee, however, both stimulated him and completed
+the quenching of his thirst. The old Navaho held the spout of the big
+tin coffee pot to his lips and poured until the last drop of muddy black
+fluid drained from the grounds.
+
+The ponies were saddled, and Lennon was lifted upon his mount none too
+gently. He swayed in the saddle and clutched the horn. Slade made a sign
+for the prisoner's hands to be left unbound. During the ride up the
+canon Lennon continued to feign weakness, lurching and swaying in the
+saddle.
+
+Slade had taken the pinto pony of the youngest Navaho, who rode double
+with one of the other men. The five miles to the cliff break in the
+canon bed, down which they had been lowered in the basket, was covered
+at a lope.
+
+As the party came galloping to the under ledges Slade bellowed a
+deep-chested hail that boomed in loud reverberations upon the lofty
+precipices of the canon sides. But no answering cry came down from the
+cliff, nor was there any sign of the hoist cage basket.
+
+The old Navaho raised a shrill quavering wail that carried like the howl
+of a coyote. Again the reverberating echoes ran up the precipices and
+slowly died out far above, and again no response came from the top of
+the cross barrier.
+
+"The lazy skunks!" growled Slade. "Off watch, huh? Keep me waiting, will
+they? I'll tan their dirty hides for 'em."
+
+He rode down canon a few yards and emptied his revolver into the air,
+firing the shots in couples. This time the echoes had not died out
+skyward before a dark face with cloth-bound forehead peered down from
+the brink of the cross cliff. Slade roared up an angry command--and
+abruptly fell silent.
+
+The downlooker was making some quick gestures. Slade flung up his hand
+in an answering gesture. The signaller disappeared. Slade shouted an
+order to the best mounted of his men. The Navaho wheeled his pony and
+raced away down canon on the back trail.
+
+The basket cage of the lift swung out over the cliff brink. It began to
+lower. Regardless of hoof marks, Slade spurred his pony up the foot
+ledges. Lennon followed with the others.
+
+A glance at the trader's face had told him danger was toward.
+
+Lennon could think of but two explanations. Either a band of vengeful
+cattlemen had discovered and attacked the rustlers' secret stronghold,
+or Cochise had returned and taken advantage of Slade's absence to carry
+out his designs against Elsie.
+
+The man sent back by Slade evidently was riding to summon reinforcements
+of Navahos from the pueblo. Whether they were to be used against the
+Apaches or to aid them against an outside posse was the question. If
+the first were the case, Lennon felt that he must be armed to fight.
+
+The thought of either Elsie or Carmena in the clutches of Cochise filled
+him with dread and horror. The suspense of the uncertainty was
+unbearable. He forced his pony up beside the trader's pinto while the
+basket cage was yet several feet overhead.
+
+"See here, Slade," he said, "you've given me a rough deal. But we're
+both white men. We can't permit Cochise to have Farley's girls. That is
+unthinkable. I'll agree to forget the snake. Give me my rifle and we'll
+go through with our bargain."
+
+"Like hell we will!" growled the trader. "Minute I turned my back you'd
+pot me."
+
+"No," pledged Lennon. "I give you my word."
+
+Slade continued to scowl with surly suspicion.
+
+"Guess we'll take a look first. Git a move on you. Pile in. No time to
+hoist the hosses."
+
+He swung from his saddle, with Lennon's rifle in one hand and his own in
+the other. Both cartridge belts were buckled about his massive body. He
+sprang into the wicker cage of the lift as it bumped upon the ledge.
+Lennon and the three Navahos crowded in after him.
+
+The Indian above peered over the cliff brink. At a signal from the
+Navaho he again vanished. The hoist rope tautened. With a creak, the
+cage scraped on the ledge and began to swing up the cliff face above
+the abandoned horses.
+
+To Lennon the ascent seemed maddeningly slow. The Navahos leaned against
+the wicker sides of the cage in stolid silence, their faces more than
+ever like bronze images. None cast a glance upward. But Slade could not
+hide his mingled uneasiness and anger.
+
+"Didn't think the young devil had the gall," he muttered. "Acting like
+he'd been bit by a hydrophoby skunk. Nothing meaner 'n a mad wolf. I'd
+'a' give him Carmena quick enough.... Learn her not to pass up a white
+man agin when she had her chance. But the young gal---- Blast Cochise.
+When I told him flat----"
+
+The cage crept up over the brink of the cliff. One of the Navahos leaped
+high to grasp the guy rope of the crane. His pull swung crane and cage
+around toward the horse windlass. The moment the occupants jumped from
+the cage the Navaho allowed the crane to swing out again over the cliff
+edge. The pony that was hitched to the bar of the windlass started to
+lower the cage by reversing at a jog trot.
+
+Though the Indian with the pony wore an Apache head cloth, Lennon
+recognized his ugly young face at the first clear view. He was Pete, the
+Navaho who had been with the Apaches under the cliff house on the day
+that Cochise had trapped Lennon and Carmena. Slade's manner toward him
+was that of a half-distrustful master. He questioned him hastily in
+English.
+
+Pete answered haltingly, with frequent lapses into the gutturals and
+hissings of his native tongue. His eyes glittered with fierce
+excitement. Lennon gathered that Cochise and his men were in the midst
+of an attack on the cliff house. This would seem to prove that the girls
+were still safe--and would remain safe. How could the Apaches hope to
+scale the sheer cliff without aid from above?
+
+But Slade's scowl showed that the situation by no means pleased him. He
+mounted Pete's pony and rushed the party up to the head of the canon.
+Instead of preparing to hold this position until the arrival of his
+reinforcements, he kept on up the valley at a jog trot. Once clear of
+the canon, Lennon could make out the sound of distant shots echoing down
+the valley along the cliffs.
+
+Within the first half mile the rescuers came upon a drove of big
+American horses. Every one showed signs of cruel driving over rocks and
+through thornscrub and cactus. When they scented the Navahos they
+snorted with terror, and all but two managed to bolt clear.
+
+In a trice the Indians had each of the frightened pair bridled with a
+leather thong fast about the lower jaw. Pete mounted the better animal.
+Slade drew rein beside the other horse and glowered at Lennon.
+
+"How about it?" he demanded. "You said you'd back me up. How do I know I
+can count on you not knifing me?"
+
+"You have my word," replied Lennon, striving hard to repress his
+eagerness.
+
+The irregular firing up the valley became more rapid. Slade scowled and
+thrust out Lennon's high-power rifle.
+
+"It's a go--that new deal. Take your belt, too. Guess I can count on you
+till Cochise is made a good Indian."
+
+With the white men and Pete mounted and the unmounted Navahos each
+gripping the mane of a horse, the party rushed up the valley at
+redoubled speed. Midway Slade angled down into the bed of an arroyo that
+curved around on the right of the corral and up to the mouth of Hell
+Canon. Though the horses were kept at a fast trot, the Navahos ran along
+beside them, seemingly without effort.
+
+As the head of the valley was neared, the irregular crackling roar of
+the rifle shots abruptly ceased. Lennon's heart skipped a beat. The
+sudden hush might mean that Cochise had given up his attack on the
+cliff house. On the other hand, it might be due to an overwhelming of
+the defense.
+
+Slade sent one of his men springing up the side of the arroyo. The
+Navaho glanced over the edge of the bank toward the cliff house and
+dashed obliquely back into the dry channel, his hand twisting in swift
+signs. Slade held on up the arroyo. Near the mouth of Hell Canon he
+flung himself off and motioned Lennon to follow.
+
+The old Navaho led the way up the side of the reservoir, with Pete a
+close second. Near the top the leaders flattened down to crawl over the
+round of the ancient dam. The others crept after them. A muttered
+command from Slade had kept Lennon in the rear. But a sudden fresh
+outburst of shots cut short his frightful suspense. The Apaches had
+neither abandoned their attack nor had they yet captured the cliff
+house.
+
+Elation, mingled with renewed fear for the girls, sent Lennon scrambling
+up beside the leaders. He came to where they were peering over the crest
+of the dam. Slade growled a command for the fool tenderfoot to get down
+out of sight. But after Lennon's first look across the top of the
+embankment main force would have been required to drag him back.
+
+He had already guessed that Pete had stolen away down into the lower
+canon, unknown to the Apaches. The only other explanation was that the
+Navaho had been posted as guard at the cross cliff. This was improbable,
+as the only need for watchers was to help in-comers up the otherwise
+impassable barrier. That Pete had not been missed was evident from the
+failure of the Apaches to oppose the rush of the rescuers up the valley.
+
+The mystery of how Cochise hoped to take the cliff house became clear to
+Lennon at the first glance. The ancient stronghold was less than half a
+mile away from the reservoir. In the crystal-clear air Lennon made out a
+crooked line of poles and what appeared to be three or four sacks of
+corn lying upon the cliff foot. Above these objects eight or nine
+Apaches were raising a long ladder of spliced poles against the face of
+the rock wall. The fallen poles were the shattered remains of a first
+ladder that had collapsed.
+
+The ladder raisers were protected in their work by the incessant
+shooting of the other members of the band. From a crescent of positions
+well out in the valley the riflemen poured a cross-fire of bullets into
+all the openings of the cliff house. The Indian at the nearest end of
+the crescent lay not more than a hundred yards beyond the far side of
+the reservoir.
+
+Even as Lennon grasped the plan of attack, the heavy-butted ladder came
+to an upright position directly under the main doorway of the cliff
+house. On the instant a pair of nimble Apaches scrambled to the top,
+dragging with them a shorter ladder. They hoisted it above them and
+spliced its foot to the head of the main one.
+
+No less swiftly, another ladder was passed up and lashed to the top of
+the second. The new top reached within two yards of the brink of the
+forty-foot cliff. A third Apache started to carry up a short ladder.
+After he passed the middle of the ascent, his weight, added to that of
+the men above, made the much-spliced main ladder bow and sway.
+
+One of the upper men crawled through the rungs to wedge himself between
+the top and the cliff. The third man handed up the short ladder and
+began to creep down again. The second topman gingerly hoisted the last
+link in the shaky line of ascent.
+
+The Apaches lying out from the cliff concentrated their fire on the
+opening above the ladder. For any one in the cliff house to have
+ventured into the doorway would have meant certain death.
+
+Protected by the storm of bullets, the topmost Apache held up the last
+ladder while his mate against the cliff spliced it fast. The top rung
+stood level with the sill of the doorway.
+
+The third man had stopped his descent ten or fifteen feet below. As soon
+as the splicing was secure, the first man drew something from the belt
+of his breech-clout and started up the last rungs.
+
+Lennon could restrain himself no longer. He thrust his rifle forward to
+take aim. From beside him a big hairy red hand reached out to clutch the
+barrel. Slade's deep voice growled a command:
+
+"Wait! If they ain't got Carmena a'ready----"
+
+"But if once he gets in!" cried Lennon. "He must have a revolver!"
+
+"Knife too," added Slade. "Wait, though. We'll all put our sights on
+him. But don't shoot unless he gits half through the door."
+
+A glance at the Navahos showed Lennon that they were already taking aim.
+The trader clearly had some good reason for waiting. Lennon nodded.
+
+"Very well," he agreed.
+
+Slade drew back his hand. As Lennon again took aim he saw the first of
+the Apache attackers thrust up an arm to grasp the corner of the sill
+stone. The man paused while the riflemen poured an extra violent volley
+of bullets into the doorway. He then made a quick gesture.
+
+The shots continued, but they were aimed high. Otherwise the attacker
+must have been struck as he flung himself up before the opening. The
+catlike movement brought him head and shoulders above the sill. He
+twisted forward to writhe into the doorway. Lennon's finger started to
+crook against the trigger of his rifle. But he did not fire.
+
+Instead of thrusting forward, the Apache straightened upright with
+convulsive suddenness. His out-clutching arms beat the empty air. He
+toppled sideways and plunged headlong.
+
+"Through the brain!" chuckled Slade. "No, they ain't got Carmena--yet."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+OUT OF THE FRYING PAN----
+
+
+Before the falling Apache smashed down upon the cliff foot the man who
+had last climbed the long ladder made an upward rush. He was within half
+a dozen rungs of the top when a large round object rolled out of the
+doorway. With the quickness of a puma he swung off to one side.
+
+The big missile grazed past the dodger. Three or four yards farther down
+it crashed upon the ladder. All the mid section of the wobbly structure
+was shattered to flinders. The lower part slithered sideways along the
+cliff face, the upper part and the two climbers plunged downward.
+
+The cliffs rang with the yells of the ladder holders as they leaped
+away. They bounded like startled deer. But one was struck in the back by
+the splintered end of a falling ladder pole. He pitched on his face,
+rolled over, and lay as still as the fallen climbers.
+
+"Four!" exultantly exclaimed Slade. "Four--done up by a keg of water.
+And the three first"--Lennon had thought them sacks of corn at the foot
+of the ladder--"seven, and Pete with us--leaves less 'n twenty of 'em,
+counting Cochise. And mebbe Carmena has potted one or two more out in
+the scrub."
+
+"You'll attack?" asked Lennon.
+
+"Sure. No chance of holding Cochise after him losing them men. The
+others would turn on him like mad coyotes if he backed up. Just hold
+your hosses a bit, though, till I tell you."
+
+Lennon impatiently glanced away from his rifle sights. For the first
+time he saw that the Navahos were no longer alongside him. Pete was
+creeping aslant the dam toward the cliffs. The three others had circled
+to the left and were disappearing into the irrigation canal where it
+curved down valley below the reservoir.
+
+"Got to flush them snakes in the grass," explained Slade. "Pick your
+mark and wait. I'll start off with this here devil across the tank."
+
+The scattered ladder raisers were bunching again close under the cliff,
+to one side of the cliff house openings. One of them made signs to the
+outlying riflemen. The others began to work on the broken ladders. The
+firing had almost ceased.
+
+Slade moved a few yards along the dam. Lennon drew back his rifle,
+looked carefully at the lock and magazine, and took up a position from
+which he could fire with the greatest rapidity. He had been ready only
+a few minutes when from the irrigation canal, down the valley behind the
+Apache riflemen, came the reports of three shots, fired in rapid
+succession.
+
+A fourth shot roared from Slade's rifle. Lennon began to fire as fast as
+he could take aim. His mark was the group of Apaches on the cliff foot.
+One fell and lay motionless. Another tumbled over, but rebounded to join
+in the dash of his companions down the slope.
+
+The bare ledges of the cliff foot offered no shelter. The nearest cover
+was the ruined Farley ranch hut, a hundred yards or more away, in the
+direction of the reservoir. But as the Apaches raced for the refuge
+first one of their leaders and then another pitched to the ground.
+
+The others swerved and went flying out toward the irrigation canal. A
+burst of shots from the canal again forced them to swerve. They fled
+toward a patch of rocks and cactus in the direction of Devil's Chute.
+Only four reached the cover.
+
+As Lennon had emptied his magazine during the first few seconds, he knew
+that he could not have shot more than one of the fugitives. The three
+Navahos had spread out along the canal, and Pete had hidden at the
+ruined hut. They had the Apaches under fire from flank and rear. Slade
+had dodged down to run around the head of the reservoir and leap the
+inlet canal.
+
+The thwack and screech of a glanced bullet that flicked a spurt of
+gravel into Lennon's face, warned him that the Navahos were not doing
+all the firing. Though so many of the Apaches had been killed in the
+surprise of the counter attack, the survivors of the band still
+outnumbered the rescuers two or three to one.
+
+Lennon knew enough to creep back under the round of the dam. Once safe
+below the crest, he sprinted after Slade at top speed. He was under
+cover until he leaped the inlet canal and skirted along the natural rock
+rim on the far side of the reservoir.
+
+The problem now was to find a sheltered way from the brink of the rim
+over and down into the Farleys' kitchen garden. Slade had somehow made
+the crossing. He was safe in a position of vantage at the goat pens.
+
+Before Lennon could locate the sheltered line of descent he noticed that
+some of the shots sounded from farther down the valley. His first
+thought was that more Apaches were coming to join in the fight. Slade's
+reinforcements from the pueblo could not be expected before late in the
+day.
+
+For a moment the situation appeared truly desperate. The odds were
+already heavy enough, without the addition of more Apaches. But a
+cautious peep over the rock rim disclosed to Lennon the happy truth.
+Out-manoeuvred and cut off from the best cover, the Apaches were
+beginning to fall back down the valley.
+
+By close scrutiny, Lennon made out a brown form wriggling away behind a
+clump of cactus that shut off the view of Slade and the Navahos. At the
+second bullet from the high-power rifle the creeping Apache rolled over.
+There was no need for a third shot.
+
+After this hit Lennon saw not the slightest sign of the retreating band.
+But he continued to rake the rocks and cactus clumps with frequent
+shots, while the Navahos in the ditch followed along the flank of their
+half-exposed enemies.
+
+Lennon became aware that shots were being fired from the cliff house.
+Soon afterward he saw Slade rush boldly along the cliff foot. The
+Apaches were too intent upon flight to fire at the now distant enemies
+in their rear. One glance at the trader sent Lennon bounding up over the
+rim of rock and down the slope.
+
+The rope ladder dropped from the cliff house doorway. By the time Lennon
+reached the tumbledown ranch hut Slade was at the top of the ladder and
+Pete was beginning to climb. Lennon dashed on along the cliff foot. He
+gave no heed to the dead Apaches that lay huddled or sprawled amidst the
+wreckage of the wooden ladder poles and rungs. At the foot of the rope
+ladder he thrust his rifle through the back of his belt and swung up as
+fast as he could climb.
+
+Before he had ascended twenty feet a half-spent bullet thudded against
+the cliff face at his elbow. Another grazed his side. At least one of
+the distant Apaches had turned about and was making uncomfortably close
+shots at the climber. Lennon stopped short. A bullet struck less than a
+span above his head. He hurried on up by irregular jerks and dashes.
+
+More bullets struck around him. One seared his thigh. Owing, however,
+either to sheer good fortune or to his jerky ascent, he reached the top
+of the ladder without a serious wound.
+
+Pete lay flattened out in the doorway behind a sack of corn. He was
+firing down the valley. Lennon flung himself in past the young Navaho.
+Safe within the cliff house, he reeled against the massive wall and
+stood panting for breath.
+
+From the doorway of the living room came a happy cry. Elsie darted out
+to fling her arms about Lennon.
+
+"Oh! oh! oh! You did get up, Jack--you did!" she cried. "Mena was
+dreadfully afraid for you. The 'Paches have killed one of Slade's
+punchers and are chasing the others back."
+
+Lennon kissed the quivering girl and thrust her from him to grasp his
+rifle.
+
+"We're safe now, Blossom. But I must help to cover the retreat of our
+men."
+
+He ran to the crane-hoist opening. Slade was crouched behind a barricade
+of corn-filled sacks, hotly blazing away down the valley. Lennon hurried
+on into the living room.
+
+Beside the nearest outer window Farley lay upon a pile of rugs very
+white and still. His neck and right leg were swathed in bandages. The
+rifle under the window showed that the broken drunkard had not lacked
+courage to join in the defense of his home.
+
+Carmena stood at the next window, too intent upon her firing to heed her
+exposed position. A bullet had grazed the side of her head. At sight of
+the blood trickling down on her cheek Lennon felt an almost irresistible
+impulse to run over and draw her out of danger.
+
+But the angle of the girl's rifle barrel told him that the fight was
+rapidly coming back up the valley. He sprang to Farley's window. As he
+looked down, the two Navahos broke from the last scant cover and came
+leaping and zigzagging up toward the cliff foot.
+
+Lennon thrust out his rifle and began to pump shots at the scrub and
+cactus clumps above which rose thin puffs of semi-smokeless powder. A
+bullet nipped the point of his shoulder. He jumped back to refill his
+magazine. Before he could again empty it, another bullet seared across
+the top of his head. He reeled and fell senseless.
+
+When he recovered consciousness he was first aware of the face of
+Carmena. In his first daze, he fancied that he was out on the far side
+of the Basin, lying upon the sand under the cliff where the Gila monster
+had bitten his hand. The girl's eyes were clouded with the same look of
+profound concern that he had then seen in their shadowy depths.
+
+But as his own gaze cleared he noticed two marked differences in her
+appearance. One of her pale cheeks was streaked with crimson, and the
+dark eyes were wide not with dread alone. They gazed down at him heavy
+with the anguish of mingled grief and yearning. He knew that he was
+looking into the girl's inmost heart.
+
+A hand was thrust between their faces--a little dimpled hand that held a
+bowl of red liquid. Elsie's voice quavered urgently:
+
+"Let me fix your hurt with the dragon sap, Mena. He's alive again."
+
+Carmena's long lashes drooped upon her white cheeks. She drew back.
+Lennon turned aside his violently aching head. Across the living room he
+saw Pete cauterizing a bullet wound on the bare arm of a fellow Navaho
+with the astringent red sap of the sangre de dragon tree.
+
+Elsie noticed Lennon's roving look of inquiry.
+
+"They shot the other one on the ladder," she explained. "But Slade isn't
+hurt, and he hauled the ladder up. Cochise can't get us now."
+
+"Not now," whispered Carmena. "But if Slade----"
+
+Her low-pitched voice broke and hushed to a frightened silence.
+
+Slade swaggered in from the anteroom and stood grinning as if very well
+satisfied with what he saw.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+INTO THE FIRE
+
+
+Carmena rallied and smiled up at the big trader with a show of trustful
+confidence. "I knew you'd keep your part of the deal, Mr. Slade," she
+said. "You've fought off Cochise and saved us, and there's a good big
+hole in his bunch. All we need do now is wait for your punchers to come
+in and wipe out the rest."
+
+"Sure!" agreed Slade. "I done it. Now I got a dead cinch all 'round."
+
+He drew his revolver and twirled the cylinder as if to make certain that
+it had been fully reloaded.
+
+"Yep--a dead cinch. With me up here, Cochise won't try no more pole
+ladders. You and my Cookie Gal better hustle up some feed. Ain't had
+nothing but bacon and flapjacks since I left."
+
+Elsie fluttered across to light her charcoal brazier. But Carmena
+lingered beside Lennon.
+
+"Huh," muttered Slade. "Where'd sonny boy git hit? Ain't plunked bad, is
+he?"
+
+"Oh, no. I----"
+
+"No, not fatal," Carmena broke in on Lennon's disclaimer of serious
+injury. She gave Slade a significant side glance.
+
+"No, I'm sure it won't prove fatal--just cut the bone a bit. Jack'll get
+over it all right if he keeps perfectly quiet."
+
+Slade's big face took on a look of solemn concern.
+
+"Quiet--huh? Can't let him take no risks. He's worth ten thousand to me.
+Here, you, Pete--and you----"
+
+A guttural command in Navaho and a careless wave of the revolver brought
+Pete and his wounded but still active companion hurrying forward.
+
+Carmena sprang up and held out her arms to the trader. Lennon failed to
+see her face. He saw only how Slade swept his left arm about the girl
+and swung her around in a bearlike embrace. Lennon sought to leap up.
+The Navahos seized him on either side and forced him down again.
+
+He caught a glimpse of Carmena futilely clutching for Slade's throat.
+The big man burst into a bellow of contemptuous laughter and flung her
+from him.
+
+"Bah!" he jeered. "What you bucking about? Don't figger I want _you_ any
+more, do you?"
+
+"No--no, of course not. I---- But Jack's head--If you hogtie him----"
+
+"Got to be kept quiet, ain't he? You said it yourself. What you hanging
+fire for, Pete?"
+
+The heavy revolver swung around in another seemingly careless gesture.
+Pete and the wounded Navaho hogtied Lennon with expert quickness.
+
+Slade shifted around to nudge Farley in the ribs with the toe of his
+cowhide boot. The badly wounded man stirred and opened his haggard eyes
+to blink at the disturber.
+
+"Has--Cochise---- What! you?" he murmured. "You have run off the devils?
+Girls safe?"
+
+"You bet they're safe, Dad. How you feeling? Looks like they plugged you
+pretty bad."
+
+"Very--very bad," gasped Farley. "I--do not expect to--survive."
+
+"Aw, keep a stiff upper lip. You'll pull through."
+
+Farley's discoloured eyelids quivered and drooped. Slade had been
+peering sideways at the rigidly posed Carmena. He laughed
+good-humouredly, put up his revolver, and grinned toward Elsie.
+
+"I smell grub--real grub. Carmena, you git over to the far window and
+keep a lookout while I feed up. Just leave your gun lie. We don't want
+to rile up Cochise till we git him cornered."
+
+The girl looked at Lennon and hesitated. Slade rested his hand on his
+hip. She hurried off to the window toward which he had pointed.
+
+Seated alone at the table, the trader feasted upon the food set before
+him by Elsie. While he gormandized he tormented the shrinking girl with
+his coarse gallantry. When at last his gluttonous appetite was satisfied
+he called for another pie. Elsie obediently brought the last of her
+baking and bent over the corner of the table to set it before him.
+
+With the quickness of a striking grizzly, Slade lunged forward and
+clutched her soft round arm. At her startled shriek he wrenched his
+massive body half around and menaced everyone in the room with a
+sweeping wave of his revolver.
+
+Lennon had been bound too tightly to do more than writhe. Pete and his
+fellow Navaho stood as if turned to stone. But Farley had twisted about
+on the floor, and Carmena was springing away from her outlook window
+toward the table. The revolver barrel paused in line with her
+forward-rushing figure.
+
+"Stop!" bellowed Slade.
+
+The savage roar threatened instant death. Carmena came to a sudden halt.
+She stood panting and quivering, her face white, her eyes dilated with
+horror.
+
+"Huh! Thought you'd rush me, did you?" growled the trader. "You didn't
+stop any too soon to save your bacon, you she-wildcat. Stand still now,
+or you'll git gentled with a club."
+
+"But--but, Mr. Slade----" gasped the horror-stricken girl.
+"Blossom--she's only a child. She's so young and--and innocent! Oh,
+won't you--won't you please take me instead?"
+
+"You?" sneered the trader. "Jealous, are you? Well, you're too late now.
+Wouldn't take me when you had the chance. Now I wouldn't have you even
+if I couldn't git her."
+
+"But she--little Blossom! Oh, you can't--you can't be so heartless! You
+promised to wait----"
+
+"Wait?" Slade jerked the half-fainting Elsie around the corner of the
+table.
+
+"Ain't I waited all this time? This is same as Injun country, and squaws
+mate-up young. I'm going to take my Cookie Gal now. Sabe? Injun marriage
+is good enough 'round these parts for any woman, white or red."
+
+"You--beast!" cried Carmena, and she flung herself at him in a fury of
+despair.
+
+A few seconds before he would have shot her down. Now, instead of
+firing, he released his hold on Elsie's arm and thrust out to meet the
+frantic rush of her foster-sister. The big red hand clutched fast on
+Carmena's throat and held her off at arm's length. Contemptuously
+heedless of her frenzied struggles, he fixed a hard stare on Pete.
+
+"You," he ordered, "git a hustle on. Rope this hellcat, pronto."
+
+Though Pete's hesitancy was almost imperceptible, Slade's revolver swung
+up toward him. The young Navaho sprang forward, jabbering to his fellow
+tribesman. As the two seized and started to bind Carmena, Slade grinned
+at her, derisively.
+
+"Guess you wish you hadn't," he jeered. "I'll learn you who's boss. How'll
+you like being let down to Cochise, huh?"
+
+The danger to Elsie had horrified and enraged Lennon no less than
+Carmena. He had been writhing in his rawhide bonds, in a furious
+struggle to break loose. Now he lay exhausted and hopeless, his wrists
+and ankles cut and bleeding from the cruelly tight thongs. Even the
+hideous threat against Carmena could not goad his flaccid muscles to
+renewed efforts.
+
+Behind him he heard a peculiar wheezing. He twisted his head about to
+look. Farley was creeping along the floor. As Lennon caught sight of
+him, the desperately wounded man clutched his rifle and straightened up
+on his knees. His ghastly face was blotched with angry purple. His
+sunken eyes flamed with vengeful fire. He raised the muzzle of the rifle
+toward Slade with the last flare of his failing strength.
+
+"You scoundrel!" he shrilled. "Harm my daughter, would you?"
+
+Slade's savage bellow was drowned in the crash of the rifle. The
+bull-like roar of the trader sharpened to a yell of pain. An instant
+later two answering shots came back at the swaying avenger.
+
+Farley fell upon his back, with his arms outflung crosswise and his
+glazing eyes upturned. As he lived, so he had died--futilely. Yet he had
+at least made the attempt to rise above his weakness and degeneracy. He
+had died like a man.
+
+Slade stood at the end of the table, mopping the base of his neck with
+his dirty neckerchief. The rifle had missed his jugular vein by little
+more than an inch. He cauterized the wound with sangre de dragon sap,
+cursing blasphemously and barking commands at the Navahos.
+
+Pete ran to signal from the nearest window. His companion hurried to
+make certain that Farley was dead. Slade shouldered past the half-bound
+Carmena and came to stare gloatingly down at Lennon. Between his thick
+legs Lennon saw Carmena twist about and roll over toward her
+terror-stricken sister. Slade was too intent upon mocking his other
+prisoner to look about at the girls.
+
+"Well, son, you seen what happened to Dad, trying to murder his pard,"
+he admonished. "Hope it'll be a warning to you. I'm a peaceful man. I
+got to have law and order. Cochise ripped loose with his bunch. You seen
+how I smashed his play. 'Fore night my Navahos'll clean up what's left
+of 'em all."
+
+Lennon choked down his rage and loathing. Not he alone was in the power
+of this brutal scoundrel. For the sake of the girls he must play for
+time.
+
+"Yes, to be sure!" he said. "That was clever generalship on your part,
+Slade. As for Farley--you of course had to shoot him, in self-defense.
+But now all is settled. You will keep your word to go through with your
+bargain."
+
+"I will, will I, huh?"
+
+"How else? We have had our little misunderstandings. But you are a white
+man and you gave your word to go through with our deal."
+
+The trader's face blackened with a ferocious scowl.
+
+"Try to be funny with me, will you? I'll skin you alive!"
+
+"You misunderstood me, quite," said Lennon, soothingly. "How could I
+think other than that you intend to keep your bargain. I mentioned it
+because I wish to suggest an addition to the terms. If you will release
+Carmena and postpone your marriage to Elsie until we can get a license
+and a minister, I shall be pleased to give five thousand toward the
+bride's trousseau."
+
+For a long moment Slade stood glowering, morosely suspicious of the
+proposal. When he sensed its precise meaning, he burst into mocking
+laughter.
+
+"So that's what you're after, huh? Think you can bribe me, do you? Well,
+just let me tell you, sonny boy--when I want a squaw I take her. As for
+that she-wildcat, she's going down to Cochise right now. What's more,
+you're going with her if you don't agree to write that mine report and
+shell out the whole twenty thousand."
+
+"You devil!" cried Lennon. "I'll give you all--everything I possess--to
+save the girls from you. But if you harm either one of them--if you
+refuse to set them both free--you shall not have a dollar of my money."
+
+"Huh--I sha'n't, sha'n't I?"
+
+"Not a cent! You are a thief, a murderer, a liar--and you know it. Your
+word is not to be trusted. Take your choice. Kill me, or accept my
+pledge to pay you the money when you have brought me and the girls safe
+to the nearest town."
+
+The corner of Slade's coarse lip drew up in a wolfish snarl.
+
+"Kill you? Just wait and see. Killing's a heap too easy. Wait till
+Cochise has had a little fun with you. Mebbe you won't agree to be
+reasonable then, huh?"
+
+The pale eyes of the trader glittered with cold malevolence as he swung
+around to the window from which Pete was signalling. He boldly thrust
+his head out and shouted to the Apaches in their own tongue. From below
+came an answering shout. Slade called down to them for several moments
+in hissing thick-tongued gutturals.
+
+When at last he drew back and faced about, his mouth was twisted in a
+grin of evil satisfaction. He stared across the room, blinked, and
+stared again, with his grin distorted into an angry grimace.
+
+Carmena lay where he had last seen her. But Elsie was nowhere in sight.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+TREACHERY
+
+
+The inaction of the trader was brief. At his harsh question the wounded
+Navaho thrust out a slim finger toward one of the rear exits from the
+living room. Slade spoke a fierce command to Pete in the Navaho tongue
+and rushed out through the opening to which the Indian had pointed.
+
+Carmena uttered a horrified cry and sought to struggle up on her bound
+feet. As she fell, Pete and the other Navaho caught hold of her. They
+carried her out into the anteroom, without paying the slightest heed to
+Lennon's threats and pleadings. He writhed and twisted himself toward
+the doorway. Before he had reached the opening, the wounded Navaho
+bounded back into the room. He seized Lennon and dragged him out.
+
+Pete had squatted down to fasten a loop of the hoist rope about Carmena,
+who lay behind the sacks of corn that barricaded the crane-hoist
+entrance. She was speaking rapidly to the young Navaho in mingled
+Spanish and English. At sight of the other Navaho and Lennon she paused.
+
+Pete took the opportunity to mutter a sullen reply:
+
+"_Basta._ Slade, him bad med'cine. Me no fight him. You go Cochise, _muy
+pronto_."
+
+"Wait!" urged the girl. "You want me to be your woman. Remember what I
+promised if you'd help Slade to get up the canon against Cochise. I'll
+promise more now. I'll give you all those horses and cattle--and I'll
+give you myself. Sabe? I'll be your woman."
+
+The Indian's eyes gleamed with avid desire. But he did not falter.
+
+"Woman no good, me dead."
+
+"Afraid--you girl!" taunted Carmena. "He's only a man. A single shot
+will kill him. You have only to----"
+
+"_Basta._ Him big devil. Me no shoot him. Him say you go Cochise, _muy
+pronto_."
+
+The stubborn coward turned away toward the windlass. Carmena glared
+after him in agonized desperation.
+
+"All right--all right, Pete!" she cried. "Lower me to Cochise. But
+listen! You needn't fight Slade or any one. You heard how he fooled
+Cochise--made him feel good by promising him me and Jack?"
+
+"Me send you down, pronto."
+
+"Yes--yes. Only first, if you want me to be your woman, listen. You
+lower me, I make bargain with Cochise and----"
+
+The rest of the fiercely urgent proposal was in Spanish. Pete came to a
+pause and cast a stealthy glance at his fellow Navaho. The man had
+dragged Lennon out past the windlass and turned back to grasp the crank
+handle.
+
+"You damn sure Cochise him no kill me? You no lie?" demanded Pete.
+
+"Won't you be proving you are his friend?" countered the girl. "You know
+Slade only half trusts you. He'll be sure to shoot you, soon as his
+punchers come. How about it? Do you promise? It's your only chance to
+get me, so long as you daren't tackle Slade yourself."
+
+"Slade, him big devil. Injun no can----"
+
+"Just wait and see," broke in Carmena. "Remember, there'll be tizwin for
+you--all you can drink--heaps of tizwin!"
+
+"Ugh!" grunted Pete. "Slade no come. _Bueno_--me do him you say."
+
+He grunted to the other Navaho and swung the crane outward as the
+tightening rope lifted the girl above the sacks of corn. She disappeared
+from view below the barrier. The Navaho lowered away with a
+deliberation that set Lennon's teeth on edge. The strain on his nerves
+was not lessened by the total silence of the waiting Apaches down below.
+
+At last the rope slackened. After a brief pause it was rapidly wound in
+on the barrel of the windlass. Pete had already dragged Lennon to the
+opening and heaved him up on the barricade. When the rope loop came up
+to the crane, he jerked it in, made fast to Lennon, and shoved him off
+into space.
+
+Lennon plunged down nearly a dozen feet before the tautened rope stopped
+his fall with a violent jerk. He hung dangling, with nothing between him
+and the wreckage-strewn ledges of the cliff foot, thirty feet beneath.
+
+The first jerk had started his body to gyrating. The rapidity with which
+he was lowered increased the movement. By the time he reached the cliff
+foot he was spinning like a roast before an old-time fireplace.
+
+At first he had been able to make out Carmena standing in the midst of a
+close group of Apaches. But she and the Indians and the cliff wall had
+all merged into a blurred whirl before his dizzy eyes by the time he
+struck the cliff foot. With the slackening of the rope he rolled over,
+too giddy even to attempt to steady himself with his bound hands.
+
+While his eyes were yet too dazed for clear vision, he heard Carmena's
+voice, low-pitched and vibrant with passionate pleading:
+
+"... And him too, Cochise. I'm not asking you to give up your fun with
+him. Only wait till you've made sure of Slade. There's not a second to
+lose. You have us. We can't get away. But if you don't do what I ask,
+you won't get Slade. He'll be up there--safe--with your woman! And his
+Navahos will trap you here in the Hole."
+
+"You lie!" grunted the young Apache. "Slade send you down to git his
+noose on me. I haul up pony lift--hit out Hell Canon--take you and white
+fool. Heap fun with you and him!"
+
+"What then?" queried Carmena. "You know you'll have Slade on your
+trail--Slade and a posse and the soldiers. Slade will have to wipe you
+out to cover up what we've been doing here. He'll lay it all on you and
+your bunch--all the stealing. Can't you see? If he can't wipe you out
+himself, he'll set the soldiers on your trail."
+
+Lennon looked up and saw before his clearing eyes the dark evilly
+handsome face of the Apache leader. It was as stolid as the faces of his
+incomprehending followers. But his black eyes were fierce with hate.
+
+"You lie!" he repeated. "You say, kill Slade. You say you no care what
+become of you."
+
+"Because I know you, Cochise," cajoled the girl, her voice soft and
+confiding. "Weren't we friends before Slade came? Weren't we good to
+you? Remember how we kept you hid in the Hole and never told the Indian
+Agent? You'll not forget that. You'll treat me and Jack, my new pard,
+all right when I've helped you kill Slade."
+
+"Dam' friend--you," jeered the Indian. "You kept my woman."
+
+"What if I did? How about now? Do you want Slade to have her? You know
+he has been scheming all along to take her from you. Are you going to
+let him do it? Think about her--and about the tizwin--that tizwin hidden
+from you by Slade--barrels of tizwin! All yours if only you have the
+nerve to go up after Slade!"
+
+Cochise looked up the cliff, with a sudden ferocious scowl. Lennon was
+gasping for breath against the frightfulness of what he had heard. To
+save herself, Carmena was betraying her foster-sister to the fiendish
+savage. Elsie's fate in the hands of Slade was fearful enough without
+the added horror of what she would suffer in the hands of Cochise.
+
+"Carmena!" he cried. "Carmena, are you mad? Think of Blossom! What does
+it matter if we are tortured? Surely you can't intend----"
+
+"Why not?" cried back the girl, her face aflame with vengeful anger.
+"That big beast first ruined my father; now he has murdered him.
+Cochise, you'll have to choose quickly. Run off with us and have your
+fun, and have Slade trail you down; or kill him and get your woman and
+the tizwin--barrels of tizwin!"
+
+The young Apache plucked out his knife and sprang at the girl. A stroke
+slashed through the thongs that bound her wrists. Her ankles had already
+been freed. Cochise made a sharp upward gesture. Carmena shook her head
+and pointed to Lennon.
+
+"Let him lead the way up--unarmed," she suggested.
+
+The advantage of the plan was instantly grasped by the crafty Apache. At
+his command, two of his men cut loose Lennon's bonds and jerked him to
+his feet.
+
+"Wait, Carmena! Wait!" begged Lennon. "Think of Elsie!"
+
+But the girl had already signalled to those above. The rope ladder came
+slipping down the cliff face. Lennon fell silent. Protests were now
+useless. The lowering of the ladder laid the cliff stronghold open to
+the merciless Apaches.
+
+He turned away from the girl, full of loathing. Slade might possibly
+have refrained at the last moment from wronging Elsie. But Cochise----
+
+There was no need of the Apache's prodding knife point to start him up
+the ladder. Though he did not relish having to act as a living shield
+for the attackers, he was more than willing to go first. Unluckily the
+tightness of his bonds had so bruised the ligaments of his wrists and
+ankles and left his limbs so numb that he had to climb with painful
+slowness.
+
+Cochise, following at his heels, cursed and jabbed his knife into
+Lennon's leg. The cruel goading stung the benumbed muscles to quicker
+action. Lennon sprinted up the ladder, clear of his torturer. A glance
+down the rungs showed him three Apaches below Cochise, and Carmena at
+the foot, waiting with the remainder of the band. The ladder would not
+safely bear more than five climbers at a time.
+
+Spurred even more by the plan that he had in mind than by the threat of
+the knife, Lennon sought to increase his lead over Cochise. But the
+Indian's wrists were not strained, and his flexible moccasins gave a
+better hold on the ladder rungs than Lennon's stiff boot soles. With the
+knife between his teeth, the young Apache swung up in swift pursuit.
+
+Instead of gaining, Lennon lost his lead. Another downward glance, as he
+grasped the last rung below the sill of the cliff house doorway, showed
+him that Cochise was again at his heels. He must change the tactics of
+his plan. He uttered a startled cry and pretended to slip down a rung.
+
+Cochise let go the ladder with one hand to jab his knife at Lennon's
+leg. Lennon jerked up the leg and kicked down with all his strength. The
+heel of his boot struck squarely in the upturned face of the Apache. The
+downward and outward force of the blow jerked loose Cochise's one-handed
+grip on the ladder. But even as he toppled backward, he crooked a leg
+with catlike quickness over one of the rungs.
+
+Lennon saw only that his enemy was falling. His hand had already groped
+over the edge of the sill. Without another downward glance, he flung
+himself up and into the doorway. The wild scramble and plunge all but
+drove him headlong over the sack of corn and against the menacing muzzle
+of Pete's rifle.
+
+That double traitor stood crouched at the inner side of the thick-walled
+entrance, torn between fear of Cochise and terror of Slade. Lennon had
+counted upon this dread and uncertainty of the young Navaho. He flung
+out his hands to him in urgent gestures.
+
+"Quick--quick!" he cried. "Cut loose the ladder! Cochise will kill you!
+He's coming! Cut the ladder!"
+
+The Indian shrank back to peer at the inner openings of the cliff
+house.
+
+"Carmena--him no lie," he muttered. "Cochise kill 'um Slade."
+
+"But you first!" urged Lennon. "He will----"
+
+The band of an Apache headress shot up above the edge of the door sill.
+Lennon sprang at Pete to clutch his knife. The Navaho flung up his
+rifle. A chance blow of the barrel sent Lennon staggering half across
+the anteroom.
+
+The Apache writhed up into the doorway and bounded over the sack of
+corn, his knife poised to strike. Pete whirled and fired from the hip.
+An instant later he was locked in the clutch of the yelling, slashing
+Apache. As they crashed down together in a furious death grapple, a
+second Apache came scrambling in over the cliff edge. Side by side with
+him appeared Cochise, the print of Lennon's boot-heel already blackening
+on his ferociously scowling forehead.
+
+Pete's rifle had fallen outward into the doorway, alongside the sack of
+corn. Lennon was unarmed. There was no time for him to wrest the knife
+from the wounded Apache and slash the ladder ropes. Cochise clutched
+Pete's rifle and started to swing it around. His companion thrust out a
+revolver.
+
+The shot missed Lennon by inches as he leaped to the side opposite the
+living room. He dashed out the first opening and started to run through
+the front row of rooms, shouting at the top of his voice.
+
+"Slade! Slade!" he yelled. "Cochise--Apaches! Defend yourself!"
+
+From the inner rooms on his right came back an angry bellow. "What the
+devil?"
+
+Lennon twisted aside through a black doorway. Farther in he saw a
+glimmer of light. Sharp turns through two more doorways brought him into
+a kiva, or sacred chamber of the cliff dwellers, that was lighted by a
+pair of candles. Slade stood beside the broken-edged entrance hole with
+drawn revolver. The wounded Navaho was peering down from a hole in the
+ceiling.
+
+"Elsie!" panted Lennon. "Hide her! Pete betrayed you! All the
+Apaches--coming up the ladder!"
+
+Slade sprang sideways along the figure-decorated wall of the kiva. He
+leaped to grasp the edge of the ceiling hole. The Navaho helped him draw
+up into the dark room above. As his feet swung clear Lennon leaped in
+turn to grasp the edge of the hole.
+
+"Give me a hand up," he called. "I'll help you defend Elsie."
+
+"Sure. You'll serve for wolf bait," jeered Slade.
+
+His big hand thrust down and tapped the butt of the heavy revolver on
+the top of Lennon's head.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+THE SACRIFICE
+
+
+The treacherous blow was just hard enough to stun Lennon. His
+unconsciousness probably lasted only a few seconds. He roused to the
+sound of heavy firing and the pungent odour of powder. He opened his
+eyes.
+
+One of the candles had been extinguished. The other showed one wounded
+and two dead Apaches lying upon the floor of the kiva. At the entrance
+other attackers were stealthily thrusting in to fire at the hole in the
+ceiling. The flash of answering shots spewed out of the black space
+above the hole.
+
+Lennon had enough presence of mind to lie still. Dislodged by the
+fusillade of bullets, the dry materials of the ancient ceiling showered
+upon him. In the room above he heard the shriek of a mortally struck
+man. Another fusillade followed. Then a revolver came whirling down out
+of the darkness.
+
+The Apaches yelled and burst into the kiva. They rushed toward the hole,
+firing upward as fast as they could pump their magazines. Unnoticed in
+the excitement, Lennon rolled clear of their trampling feet and sought
+to grasp Slade's fallen revolver. A chance kick sent it out of his
+reach.
+
+Wild with blood-thirst, the last Apaches were trying to climb up the
+backs of those who had first leaped to seize the edge of the ceiling
+hole. Under the strain of their jerking weight one of the ancient beams
+gave way.
+
+Down crashed a part of the floor above. With it came Slade, bellowing
+with rage, bleeding from several wounds, and his right arm shattered.
+His massive body fell upon and knocked down two of the crowding Apaches.
+He staggered up and struck out with his maul-like fist.
+
+The voice of Cochise sounded above the din of the fight. The Apaches
+flung themselves at Slade like wolves attacking a maimed bull. But they
+used neither rifles nor knives. The trader was borne down by the weight
+of numbers and his left arm lashed fast to his backward twisted feet.
+
+Cochise had caught up the flickering candle. He sprang upon the back of
+another man and peered into the room above. When at last he jumped down
+his face was distorted with anger. He shook his knife in Slade's face.
+
+"Where you hide my woman?" he demanded.
+
+"She hid herself," growled Slade. "I was still looking for her."
+
+"Big mouth--big lie!" scoffed Cochise, and he thrust the flame of the
+candle against Slade's nose.
+
+The trader puffed out the light. Lennon had been edging around toward
+the door. He took instant advantage of the darkness to slip out and run
+toward the living room. There he might hope to find a rifle and die
+fighting.
+
+In the anteroom he came face to face with a pair of Apaches, who stood
+on guard over Carmena. At their gestures, emphasized by half-raised
+rifles, he backed into the corner beside the girl. She flashed him a
+look of profound relief and put a tremulous hand on his arm.
+
+"Jack--I thought they'd killed you. Slade?"
+
+"Prisoner, like ourselves. But they've still to find Elsie--no thanks to
+you!"
+
+He drew away as if her touch were a pollution. She flushed, hesitated,
+and opened her lips to speak. With a burst of yells, the Apaches rushed
+in, dragging Slade in their midst.
+
+At sight of Lennon, Cochise wrinkled his bruised forehead in a scowl of
+evil satisfaction. But when he swaggered forward he looked only at
+Carmena.
+
+"Slade swear you hide my woman," he said.
+
+"How could I?" replied Carmena. "He had me tied up and lowered to you.
+He was up here with her all that time."
+
+The face of the young Apache became impassive. He turned about and spoke
+softly to Slade. The trader, half dead from his wounds, raised his big
+head to mumble a denial.
+
+At a word from Cochise, one of his men ran to fetch Elsie's brazier from
+the living room. In the bottom of the brazier was still a bed of glowing
+coals. The Apaches cut free one of Slade's feet and started to thrust it
+in upon the fire.
+
+Carmena flung up her hands before her eyes.
+
+"No!--no, Cochise!" she cried. "Kill him--he deserves to be killed! But
+not the torture--I can't bear it! I'll try to find Elsie for you. I
+think I know where she's hidden."
+
+Lennon stared, more than ever filled with horror of her treachery.
+
+"You--you!" he grasped. "That child--give her, to save that scoundrel?"
+
+"And ourselves," added Carmena, her lips curved in a cajoling smile at
+Cochise. "When I've found her--and the tizwin--we'll be friends. Won't
+we, Cochise?"
+
+"Sure. Dam' good friends," smoothly agreed the Apache. "You find my
+woman quick, I let you go. Sabe?"
+
+"_And_ the tizwin--the barrels of tizwin," added Carmena. "Come on, all
+of us together---- You, too, Jack."
+
+She signed to the Apaches and called out a few words in their own thick
+guttural tongue.
+
+Lennon did not hang back. Great as was his abhorrence of the girl, he
+started forward beside her. Probably owing to his ready advance, he was
+not again bound, though Cochise ordered a pair of his followers to guard
+the white man. The other Apaches pressed close after the leaders, drawn
+by their fierce craving for tizwin.
+
+Regardless of Lennon's look of loathing, Carmena lighted a candle and
+led the way direct to the mummy room. From a ceiling beam of the room
+had been hung a crudely stuffed horned owl with wide-spread wings. At
+sight of the big gray-white bird and of the mummies even Cochise
+advanced less than a step inside the entrance.
+
+Carmena went in with the candle and methodically peered among and behind
+all the heaps of rubbish. When she came back to the entrance her dark
+brows were drawn together in a frown, as if she were puzzled and trying
+to think of another hiding place. She looked at Lennon with a level
+glance.
+
+"Hereafter you will recall that the quick and the dead are associated,"
+she murmured.
+
+She faced about to the superstitious Apaches.
+
+"You see, Cochise. Your woman doesn't like these old dried spirits any
+more than you do. Come on."
+
+Cochise and his men drew back before her advancing candle. They had no
+fancy to be left in the darkness with the bird of night and the "dried
+spirits" of the ancient cliff dwellers. They were not so backward,
+however, in the other inner rooms to which Carmena led them. Where there
+was a ceiling hole, one or more readily mounted with the candle to
+search the space above.
+
+But nowhere was trace found of Elsie, though the candle had burned to a
+stub when the searchers reached the last inner room. They came from it
+into a front room, one exit of which was closed with a padlocked door of
+heavy planks. Lennon recognized the entrance to the still-room.
+
+Carmena handed a key to Cochise and stood shielding the flickering flame
+of the candle.
+
+"Maybe we'll find both together," she said. "It would have been just
+like Slade to lock your woman in with the tizwin."
+
+She added a guttural murmur in Apache. The Indians pushed forward as
+their leader snapped open the padlock. The heavy door swung open. All
+surged into the still-room except one of Lennon's guards, and he craned
+his neck to gape at the still. Into Lennon's ear breathed a faint
+whisper: "Keep back."
+
+A moment later Carmena was darting in after the Apaches. She took her
+shielding hand away from the candle to point at a pile of jugs behind
+the still. With the gesture she called out in Apache. Cochise and all
+the others rushed to dig into the pile of jugs. Carmena glided to the
+still and bent down. She thrust the candle into the opening of the
+firebox.
+
+For the first time Lennon grasped what the girl was about. And with that
+he realized in a flash all the cool courage and cleverness and
+self-sacrifice of the plan that she had schemed out against the brute
+force of Slade and the cruel cunning of Cochise. Elsie was safe hidden
+in the mummy room, Slade was dying or dead, and now she had lured
+Cochise and his murderous followers into the death trap!
+
+He saw the flare of the lighted tinder in the firebox. The fuse must
+already be burning. Yet the girl remained stooped before the still. She
+would be blown to pieces no less certainly than the Apaches.
+
+Lennon glanced desperately at his guard, who stood beside him in the
+doorway. The almost naked Apache was a mass of sinewy muscle, and his
+beady eyes were fixed upon the prisoner in alert watchfulness. Yet he
+was not quick enough to dodge Lennon's uppercut. He sprawled backward
+and struck his shock head upon the stone floor.
+
+Carmena had straightened and faced about. At sight of Lennon bounding
+toward her she thrust out her hands in a repellant gesture.
+
+He clutched her outflung hands and dragged her toward the door. From
+behind the still came an answering yell. Cochise and another Apache
+rushed around at the couple. Carmena lunged forward, to thrust Lennon at
+the doorway. Unbalanced by the shove, he stumbled over the Apache whom
+he had knocked senseless.
+
+Carmena fell, rolled to one side, and struggled to her knees as Cochise
+leaped to the doorway after Lennon. Behind them roared a deafening
+detonation.
+
+Though Lennon was out in the anteroom, he was hurled down by the force
+of the explosion. He staggered to his feet and faced about. In the thick
+of the smoke that spumed from the still-room Cochise bounded from the
+floor and came at him with upraised knife. Lennon barely saved himself
+by the quickest of side-stepping.
+
+Cochise shot past, whirled, and closed in with the fury of a wildcat.
+Lennon's parry of the knife stab was sheer luck, but not the blow that
+he drove to the solar plexus. Superb as was the physical condition of
+the young Apache, that solid jolt sent him reeling back, gasping for
+breath.
+
+Lennon closed and sought to wrest away the knife. He twisted down on the
+Apache's wrist. The knife fell to the floor. He bent to grasp it.
+Cochise dropped upon him and seized his throat. The slender sinewy hands
+tightened with frightful force. A few seconds of that throttling
+pressure would have brought unconsciousness to Lennon. In vain he sought
+to tear loose the strangle hold.
+
+He was on the verge of frantic flurry when his failing reason fixed upon
+the fact that there was a lump under his down-pressed back. By great
+effort he wrenched his body around. His groping hand grasped the fallen
+knife.
+
+At the second stroke the terrible clutch on his throat relaxed. Cochise
+twisted convulsively and rolled over on his back.
+
+Lennon wheezed, felt his throat, and jerked himself over, ready to drive
+the knife into the heart of his merciless enemy. Cochise lay inert, his
+mouth agape and his eyes rolled up so that only the whites could be
+seen. Lennon's deep-drawn sigh of satisfaction over that death-mask
+face caught in the midst and turned into a gasp. He flung himself about
+to the doorway of the still-room. Where the still had stood was now only
+a hole in the stone floor. He did not look too closely at the general
+wreckage.
+
+His half-dazed roving gaze fell upon Carmena. She lay as inert as
+Cochise and the Apache guard. Yet she was not dead. A fragment of stone
+or metal, or the shock of the explosion, had injured her back.
+
+He carried her out into the anteroom. She revived. But when she sought
+to rise, she sank back with an ominous limpness.
+
+"Carmena!" he cried. "Carmena--what is it? You're hurt!"
+
+She smiled up at him, her dark eyes radiant with infinite tenderness and
+devotion.
+
+"It's all right, Jack--all right," she murmured. "I wanted to do it--for
+Blossom--and you, dear. Now you are safe. The way up the canon is clear.
+Take the right fork, then, each time, the left of the next forks. The
+trail is only a few miles west, over the mesas. You'll find Blossom in
+the mummy room. Hurry off with her before Slade's men come. Hurry--don't
+linger----"
+
+"You----" broke in Lennon. "Can you think I would leave you here?"
+
+"There's no other way. My back--I can't sit up, and my legs are numb. I
+can't move them."
+
+"I'll carry you, and there's the hoist rope."
+
+"No use. I couldn't ride."
+
+"I'll carry you," repeated Lennon.
+
+The girl laid a gently caressing hand on his arm.
+
+"Don't you understand, dear? My back--it must be broken. We must think
+of Blossom. You must hurry off with her while there is time. Isn't it
+good that you love her?"
+
+Lennon uttered a choking cry and caught the girl up in his arms. He
+clasped her to him in an agony of love and remorse.
+
+"Carmena! To have thought so wrong of you--of you who were giving your
+life! I've been a fool--a blind fool. Forgive me! That child---- My God!
+I can't give you up--I'll _not_ give you up!"
+
+"Then--you do--love me, Jack," sighed the girl. Her arms crept up about
+his neck. "You do love me--I'm glad now you did not let me die--at
+once--in there."
+
+"Not at all!" vowed Lennon. "Even though your back---- You'll not die."
+
+"I can't live--like this, dear. And there's Blossom. You must get her
+away before Slade's men---- But first find me my little pistol. I gave
+it to Blossom--to use if there was no other way left. Leave it with me,
+and hurry off with her while there's time. Hurry!"
+
+Lennon's clasp tightened.
+
+"No. I'll never leave you--never while----"
+
+From the inner rooms of the cliff house came a burst of piercing
+childish shrieks. Carmena twisted about in Lennon's suddenly loosened
+embrace. There was a sound like the snap of a dry twig. Carmena screamed
+and fell over sideways in a deathlike faint.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+OUT OF THE PAST
+
+
+As Lennon knelt beside the swooning girl the shrieks rang nearer. Elsie
+came flying through the rear opening, in wild fright. Her dress was torn
+and her yellow hair full of dust and wooden bits. Lennon sprang up,
+certain that the Apache who had been wounded in the kiva was pursuing
+her.
+
+In her flurry she appeared to heed nothing until almost upon the body of
+Cochise. But one glance at the ghostly whites of the Apache's upturned
+eyes sent her shrinking backward, stricken to horrified silence. Her
+wild stare fixed first upon Carmena and then shifted to Lennon. With a
+shriek, she flung herself upon him, clutching him about the body in
+frantic terror.
+
+"Oh! oh! Papa! Papa! Papa!" she screamed, in a childish treble. "Bad
+Indian! He's hurting mamma! He's choking mamma!"
+
+Lennon pressed her face hard against his breast to stifle her shrieks.
+
+"Be still," he shouted. "Stop that noise. You're safe. Be still. Hear
+me? You're safe."
+
+Checked by the sternness of his voice the distracted girl hushed her
+hysterical cries. When he repeated that she was safe, she at last seemed
+to grasp the fact. Yet she continued to cling fast to him.
+
+"Tell me quick," he demanded. "Is an Indian following you?"
+
+"No-no-no!" she babbled. "It's mamma--he's choking her! He----"
+
+The tremulous words broke off in a gasp of astonishment. The wild blue
+eyes stared up at Lennon in bewildered lack of recognition.
+
+"Why--why, you're not my papa!" she cried.
+
+"Of course not, Blossom. I'm Jack--Brother Jack. Don't you know me?"
+
+The girl shrank back.
+
+"You're not my brother. Let me go. I haven't any brother. I never saw
+you before."
+
+"Oh, Blossom!" came a cry beside them.
+
+Lennon's glance darted aslant.
+
+Carmena had risen to a sitting position with her arms outstretched
+toward Elsie. Her face was white from pain, and she was swaying--but she
+was sitting upright. Realization of what that meant burst upon Lennon
+like a flood of golden sunshine.
+
+He dropped on his knees to fling a supporting arm about the girl's
+shoulders.
+
+"Dearest, it's not true--not true that you---- Your back! You're able to
+rise!"
+
+Carmena lowered her gaze from her bewildered sister.
+
+"What, I----" she murmured. "Why, so I am! There was a snap, and then,
+oh, such a pain! It must be the bone had only slipped. That twist
+snapped it back into place."
+
+"But the pain, dear?"
+
+"It's getting better. It's good pain. It proves I'm alive again--all
+alive. Raise me up, Jack. I want to see if I can stand."
+
+He lifted her with utmost gentleness. Her teeth clenched upon her lip.
+But, once she was upright, the pain again eased. She was delighted to
+find that she could stand with no more than half support from him.
+
+"Yes--all alive," she repeated and she turned to Elsie. "With a brace
+I'll be able to rise. Blossom, you can bind on----"
+
+"I'm not Blossom. I'm--I'm Elsie Lane," faltered the younger girl. "And
+you're not my mamma, no more than he's my papa."
+
+Lennon and Carmena stared at each other questioningly. The girl seemed
+rational, yet clearly she recognized neither of them. Carmena was first
+to catch an inkling of the truth.
+
+"No, dear," she soothed. "Of course we're not your papa and mamma. Of
+course you're Elsie Lane. But we want to help you. We are your friends,
+dear. What has happened? Tell us."
+
+The girl stared from them to her surroundings, more than ever
+bewildered. But the hideous gape of Cochise's mouth and his upturned
+glassy eyes drew from her a whimpering cry. She shrank around to hide
+behind Lennon and clutch his arm.
+
+"Oh! That man--that bad Indian--he came after papa found old Sim's mine,
+and mamma fed him, and--and then he choked her, and I ran to get papa,
+and papa was lying down at the bottom, with an awful red hole in his
+head--and I ran back to mamma--and she was dead. The bad Indian was
+chasing our ponies. I was 'fraid he'd kill me, too, and I ran and ran
+and ran, right up past the middle tower of the giant's castle and down
+the other side, and I got awful thirsty. Then--then I went to sleep--and
+when I woke up the roof was falling on me and it was night, and when I
+got out here, you weren't my papa and mamma, but there was that bad
+Indian."
+
+Lennon needed no verification of the tragedy that the girl evidently
+remembered as having occurred only a few hours past. Before his mental
+vision rose the gruesome images of the skeleton at the foot of the mine
+slide and the skeleton in the cabin.
+
+"I've been blind," he murmured to Carmena. "Sim told me that nine years
+ago he gave maps of his mine and the Triple Butte region to a doctor
+named Lane."
+
+Carmena was gazing yearningly at the unresponsive Elsie.
+
+"All these years!" she sighed. "First her childhood all a blank to her,
+and now all the years with me lost! I'm a stranger to her--to my little
+Blossom! Oh, Jack!"
+
+"Give her time. She will remember. Such cases are not unknown,"
+comforted Lennon. He turned to Elsie.
+
+"Listen, dear. I found your papa and mamma and buried them. Now I have
+killed the bad Indian. But you have been sick--out of your head--a long
+time. This lady--Carmena--has taken care of you and she loves you."
+
+The child-minded girl peered up at her foster-sister.
+
+"You--you love me? But I know it. You look at me like mamma does."
+
+Carmena smiled radiantly. Lennon hastened to add an urgent appeal.
+
+"She is hurt, Elsie, and more bad Indians are coming. Won't you help me
+get her safe away from here?"
+
+The request diverted the girl's thoughts before she could yield again to
+panic. Instead of going frantic and becoming a drag upon Lennon's
+efforts, she helped support Carmena through to the hoist room.
+
+Slade was lying as the Apaches had left him, beside the charcoal
+brazier, his left arm still lashed behind to his right foot. He had died
+from his wounds. As they passed by, Lennon shielded Elsie from the
+unpleasant sight. But Carmena looked full at the big twisted body of the
+man who had ruined and murdered her father.
+
+"He deserved it all and more--far more," she murmured. "First to make
+Dad believe the brand-blotting was a part of his honest cattle business,
+and then----"
+
+"What's that?" interrupted Lennon. "You mean he deceived your father? I
+did not understand it that way."
+
+"Yes. He lied. Dad was an Easterner like yourself. Slade had him
+incriminated before he knew it was stock stealing. Then he forced tizwin
+making upon us. You know the consequences to poor Dad. And what if the
+big beast had found Blossom! Oh, I should have waited for Cochise to
+torture him. But I could not bear it."
+
+"Because you are yourself, Carmena--as tender-hearted as you are strong
+and brave and wise."
+
+"Silly, you mean--to lose a single moment now in talk. Put me down here.
+I can get to the hoist. Hurry with Elsie--get saddles, food, your rifle.
+Hurry! We must get out of the Hole before Slade's punchers come."
+
+Lennon eased the girl to the floor and ran into the living room. Elsie
+darted after him. Nor did she stop to be directed. She went straight to
+her food cupboard, without paying the slightest heed to the outstretched
+body of the luckless Farley. Lennon threw a rug over the pitiful form
+and hastened to drag three saddles and as many canteens out to the
+hoist.
+
+Carmena had crept back close to the body of Slade. She waved Lennon to
+hurry. He ran back for his rifle and the food. Elsie already had packed
+two pairs of saddlebags with flour, bacon, and dried meat, and was
+unlashing the broad stiff hair girth from another saddle.
+
+"Here's just the thing to brace Mena's back," she said.
+
+"Good enough. It will go round her two or three times and----"
+
+Lennon stopped short to stare at the eager girl.
+
+"Why Blossom, you call her Mena--and you went direct to the food
+cupboard. You've remembered all!"
+
+The girl gazed up at him, wide-eyed.
+
+"Oh, did I? Have I! I did it without thinking. It just seemed natural.
+But my name isn't Blossom--and it's--it's awful queer--I never saw this
+place before."
+
+"You have," contradicted Lennon. "It has been a long, long dream, little
+Blossom. You are beginning to remember it now."
+
+"O-oh--like a dream---- It does seem as if everything--and you--you're
+Brother Jack, who was going to marry me. But how silly--when I'm only
+ten years old! Of course it's just all a dream."
+
+Lennon caught at the point----
+
+"Yes, yes, that's a dream, only a dream about our marrying. You've been
+dreaming for years, and now you're much older than ten--much older. But
+that other is only a fancy--a mistake. It's Mena I'm to marry, and
+you're to be our dear little sister. Remember, I'm to be your
+brother--your Brother Jack."
+
+"I'll remember," promised Elsie. "You're good, like her. You buried papa
+and mamma and you killed that bad Indian."
+
+A cry from Carmena sent Lennon bounding out into the anteroom, with his
+rifle ready to fire. The girl had crouched low behind the massive body
+of Slade. She pointed to the far corner of the room and shrilled
+warningly:
+
+"Look out, Jack! Cochise!--there in the window!"
+
+Lennon dashed straight at the dark opening where he had seen the gray
+face of Farley on his first coming to the cliff house. He thrust in the
+muzzle of his rifle and then his head. Though shadowed, the inner room
+was light enough for him to see that it was empty. He went back to
+Carmena.
+
+"No one there," he said. "Just your fancy, dear. You're
+nervous--overwrought. But no wonder. The sooner we're down and away from
+here, the better."
+
+"Wait. First take this," replied Carmena. She held up a thick-padded
+leather belt.
+
+"Slade's," she explained. "I guessed he might be carrying it. It's his
+money-belt, stuffed with big bills. He lied about the partnership
+bank-account. Take it, Jack--for Elsie and me. It's ours by rights. He
+cheated us of our heritage. We have to leave Dad's ranch."
+
+The belt was already fast about Lennon's waist. Elsie appeared, dragging
+the saddlebags and the girth. Lennon brought the wide cinch to wrap
+around Carmena's waist. The double fold lashed fast with the straps made
+a broad stiff corsage support for her wrenched back.
+
+In quick succession, Lennon then lowered, over the sacks of corn in the
+hoist opening, first Elsie, then the outfit, and lastly Carmena. She
+asked to see her father, but Lennon dissuaded her. He thought best that
+her last impression of Slade's victim should be the broken man's
+redeeming flare of vengeful love and fatherhood.
+
+The moment the slackening hoist rope told him that Elsie had steadied
+her foster-sister down upon the cliff foot, Lennon ran to descend the
+rope ladder. Time was passing, and there was still much to be done. He
+must catch and saddle three good horses. Slade's punchers might not come
+for four or five hours. But the earlier the start of the fugitives, the
+better would be their chance of escape if the Navahos should seek to
+track them down.
+
+Elsie had drawn Carmena away from the heap of saddles and bags to a seat
+on a ledge. As Lennon sprang toward them from the foot of the shaking
+ladder Carmena called out and pointed over his head. One rope of the
+ladder had sagged as if broken. A moment later the ladder came
+slithering down the cliff face.
+
+"Cut--That face in the window--Cochise! He's not dead!" cried Carmena.
+"Oh, Jack, if you hadn't come down fast! He tried to make you fall!"
+
+Lennon was already running out to aim his rifle at the doorway from
+which the ladder had fallen. There was no sign of the ladder-cutter. Out
+of the side of his eye Lennon saw the crane swing back into the other
+opening and the hoist rope jerk upward. He swung his rifle to that side.
+
+The top sack of corn in the barricade slewed out over the brink. It
+toppled and came plunging downward. Above it a dark head came into
+sight, half out-thrust over the top of the other sacks.
+
+Lennon fired up past the falling bag of grain. The head jerked upward,
+twisted, and lay still on the edge of the barricade, as the sack of corn
+thudded and burst on the cliff foot within two feet of the saddles. To
+make doubly certain, Lennon sent up another bullet, as well-aimed as the
+first.
+
+His lips were set in a smile of stern satisfaction as he came to where
+Elsie was cowering in the arms of Carmena.
+
+"You were right--as usual," he said. "The knife could only have knocked
+him out for a time. He must have played 'possum. But he was disabled.
+Crawled after us--couldn't get a gun till we left and too eager to
+wait--thought we'd be under the hoist. Yet why he should have exposed
+himself----"
+
+"His wounds," divined Carmena. "The strain of heaving over the sack was
+too much for him. He collapsed. You're sure you didn't miss him, Jack?"
+
+"No. Through the head--same as he shot Blossom's father."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+HIS DAUGHTER'S FATHER
+
+
+Carmena stroked the dishevelled Elsie's yellow locks.
+
+"There, there, sweetheart," she said soothingly. "The fighting is all
+over. The bad Indian really is dead this time. You've no more need to be
+frightened. Brother Jack and I will take care of you."
+
+Elsie gazed up into the loving dark eyes of her comforter.
+
+"Why, of course, Mena, when you've always----"
+
+The blue eyes suddenly widened.
+
+"But--but not always--papa and mamma--it seems only yesterday---- No,
+you--all these years---- But then I can't be only ten! My goodness, what
+a funny rumbly-wumble in my head--just like two dreams mixed up--only
+they're real--both of them!"
+
+"Yes, both real--all real, Blossom."
+
+"Except one thing," hastily put in Lennon. "It is Carmena whom I am
+going to marry, Elsie. Remember that."
+
+The girl looked at him, blushing and dimpling with shy delight.
+
+"Oh, it'll be ever so much nicer, 'cause then I can be just your dear
+little sister, and Mena loves you a thousand times more."
+
+Carmena's cheeks flooded with scarlet, but she faced Lennon with a look
+of unflinching candour.
+
+"Yes, Jack, I do. I tricked you into the Basin. For Dad's sake, I was
+ready to lead you to almost certain death from Cochise and his bunch.
+But after that Gila monster I loved you--I put you above all else except
+Blossom's safety and Dad's good name."
+
+Lennon glowed back at her, proud that he had won the love of such a
+woman, yet humble over the consciousness of how he had misjudged her.
+
+"You had no thought for yourself," he said. "You would have given your
+life--and more. You failed to save your father's life, but we shall save
+his name. Did Slade's Navahos share in the stock stealing?"
+
+"Only Pete. Of the others, Slade's four bodyguards alone knew about the
+Hole. But, once in, any of the punchers can trail us."
+
+"No," declared Lennon. "To be sure, there is one of the four left. But
+what if he does bring the punchers? All I need do is catch a pony, ride
+down the valley, and haul up the lift in the lower canon."
+
+"Of course!" agreed Carmena. "What a loon I've been not to think of it
+myself! Of course, Cochise would have done it if we hadn't got the bunch
+up the cliff when we did. It will take the Navahos till noon to-morrow
+to ride all the way back and round to the head of Hell Canon."
+
+"Good enough," said Lennon. "That solves all our difficulties. We can go
+out the canon to-night and have a long start for the railway. There we
+will report how Slade and your father have been killed in a fight with a
+band of Apache stock thieves."
+
+"Oh, Jack! And Slade's Navahos will scatter when they hear he is dead,
+and they'll never talk. They're Indians. But the stock here in the Hole,
+what if the sheriff wants to investigate?"
+
+Lennon pointed upward.
+
+"If he should manage to get into the cliff house, there's nothing
+incriminating left. The dynamite obliterated the still. As for the
+stock, we will drive it out with us and deliver it up as part of the
+loot retaken by us from the thieves."
+
+Carmena put Elsie aside and rose to lay her hands on Lennon's shoulders.
+
+"Now I know for sure you love me," she said. "You love me enough to
+forget Dad as you knew him and to remember only that he was my father.
+You would shield his good name as you would shield your own. Yet I am
+the daughter of a rustler, of a moonshiner, of a drunken criminal."
+
+"No," denied Lennon. "You are the daughter of an unfortunate gentleman,
+who paid bitterly for his mistakes--who gave his life in an attempt to
+save you and the child whom he had taken in and sheltered. Let God judge
+whether he was not far more victim than wrongdoer."
+
+"But the daughter of a weak man----"
+
+Lennon smiled into her troubled eyes.
+
+"You glory of the desert--you cactus blossom! It was your very strength
+that repelled me, like the spines of the cactus. I never had known your
+like. I thought a woman must be weak and clinging."
+
+He cast a smiling glance at the wide-eyed Elsie.
+
+"But now, dear, I know that the bloom of the desert thorn may be even
+more fragrant and lovely than any garden flower."
+
+THE END
+
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------
+
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