CHAPTER VIIICACTUS 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 cornfieldsand 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 mustsoon 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 wastoo 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 lookedthem 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 IXTHE 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 Elsielabouring 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 Carmenato 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 livingroom 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 otherfoods. 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 XTHE 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 andforced 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 fusefrom 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 factat 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.Allthe time Cochise and his band were over in the Basin, waiting for her to lureavictim 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 lawfor 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 himchance 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 XICROSS 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 gracefullittle 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 waitingupon 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?" parriedLennon. "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 anagreement. 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 himin 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.