Bloom of Cactus Part 16

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 blus.h.i.+ng girl with a familiarity that made Lennon's blood boil. Elsie's forced smile and murmured responses did not conceal the painfulness of her embarra.s.sment.

Yet Lennon's hot impulse to interpose was checked and cooled when he thought to look at Carmena. Like her father, she was smiling at Slade and at the same time covertly watching Cochise. The handsome face of the young Apache seemed utterly blank of all expression except gluttonish enjoyment of the food he was wolfing. But under the edge of the table Lennon saw his hand steal down and fondle the hilt of his sheath knife.

The game was now evident. If the rivals were permitted to attack each other, one or both would almost certainly be killed. A murderous feud between their men would as certainly follow. Lennon's anger against the unpleasant pair was intense enough for him to consider the scheme justified, though its suggestion of treachery deepened his prejudice against Carmena.

CHAPTER XII

A BARGAIN

During the meal prepared by Elsie a solemn avowal by Slade that the cook must go home with him brought the knife of Cochise half out of its sheath.

Slade either did not see the movement, or, if he did, he contemptuously disregarded its menace. He had turned to Farley, his big red face and pale blue eyes suddenly sober.

"Well, Dad," he boomed, "guess we'd better hold a seance and git Brother Cochise back into a proper spiritual frame of mind. I got some converting work for him to go out and do."

Cochise shot a side glance at Elsie.

"You leave my woman--I go. Sabe?"

The trader burst into his hoa.r.s.e laugh.

"Go to h.e.l.l! 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 rea.s.sured. 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 quant.i.ty 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 natch.e.l.ly 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 a.s.serted.

"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 sa.s.sy, 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.