CHAPTER XIIA 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 theydidn'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 todevelop acoppermine," 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-blottingby 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 XIIITHE 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 licenseand 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. Wefound 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. UntilI 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—andshewas 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 standingin 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. Ihappened 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 remonstrancewhen 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 XIVTHE 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, inexpectation 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 draggedhim 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 themoment 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 ofparalysis, 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 beengiven 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 XVCROOKED 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 oddmingling 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 disabledhe 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 tokeep 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 maintrail. 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 forSlade'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 tomake 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 themighty 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.