CHAPTER IVPARDS 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 thefar 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 therim 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 thesaddlebags. 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 amiserable 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 managedto 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 ledgewhere 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 arock. 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 VDEAD 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 abouther. 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 hishaunches. 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 aminer'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 VIHER 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 itthe 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 eyeswere 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-dwellerpottery, 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 VIICRAFT 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 theliving 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.Inever 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 ashoney 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 abadcowman. 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 ofFarley'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.