Bloom of Cactus Part 7

"I see!" exclaimed Lennon. "You know the renegades. You would have been safe at the first. You have risked your own life just to save mine. I'll never forget that, Carmena."

"If only--if only you'll remember--when you know!" she whispered, and she turned to start up the rope ladder.

As Lennon stepped forward after her he noticed that the saddle load had already been hoisted above his reach and was rapidly going higher.

A rope ladder draped upon the face of a smooth rock wall and unfastened below is at best not easy to climb. Lennon had to crook his right elbow through the rungs to get any use of his injured arm. But the riders racing swiftly across the head of the valley would soon be within short rifle range. Lennon's left hand was only a few rungs below Carmena's boot heels all the way up the ladder.

At the top the girl pulled herself in over the worn stone sill of a ma.s.sive-walled doorway. As Lennon scrambled up and through the deep entrance after her he glimpsed a thin gray face, with bleary red eyes and loose lips, leering at him out of the darkness of an inner room.

To the right, a little way back from the next opening, a small fair-haired girl was rapidly winding in on a miner's windla.s.s. She stopped to tug at a rope. The crane swung around into the entrance with the saddle and rifles.

Carmena had already faced about to haul the ladder up the cliff. Lennon caught hold with his left hand to help her. They had gathered in less than ten yards when a bullet whizzed between their heads and splattered on the stone wall at the rear of the room. Carmena hooked the ladder over a peg at the side of the doorway and forcibly dragged Lennon out of the opening.

Two more bullets whizzed in, one of them angling up close over the sill.

Had it come a moment sooner Lennon must have been struck. Carmena's hand shook and her voice quavered, though she sought to speak in an unconcerned tone:

"That's warmer than I expected at this stage of the game. Guess Cochise is feeling pretty bad in his heart. We'll have to let him cool down awhile."

"Why not return his compliments?" suggested Lennon. "We can easily pick off both of the devils without exposing ourselves."

"And get the rest of the bunch down on us! No, Jack, they've got us holed up. We might slip away before the others came but they'd make a clean sweep of the stock and everything else. Come and meet Elsie.

Cochise will soon tire of wasting cartridges."

CHAPTER VI

HER FOLKS

The fair-haired girl was cowering behind the ma.s.sive front wall of the cliff house. At every shot from the rifles of the infuriated Apaches she crouched lower. Carmena held out rea.s.suring arms to her.

"There, there, Blossom," she soothed. "You've no need to be scared."

The trembler sprang to clasp the neck of the older girl.

"Oh, Mena, Mena!" she sobbed. "I'm so glad you're back! It's been awful!

Dad had one of his spells; and now, with Cochise angry----"

"We'll manage him--never fear. He's stopped shooting already. Quit your shaking. I don't want Jack to think you a silly little rabbit."

For the first time the panic-stricken girl appeared to realize that Lennon was a stranger. She lifted her head from Carmena's bosom to stare at him with innocent childish wonderment. Her piquant little face was flowerlike in its delicate contours and apricot tinting; her big blue eyes were the pure intense blue of alpine forget-me-nots. No line of her pretty face bore the slightest resemblance to Carmena's comely but strong features.

"O-o-oh!" she voiced her amazement. "He's new--and he's white!"

"Yes, but he and I are pards," Carmena rea.s.sured her. "Shake hands. He has come to help us."

"To help us?" The young girl held out a timid hand. "You--you won't side with Cochise? You won't let him take me?"

"'Course he won't," put in Carmena. "Didn't I tell you we're pards? His name is Jack Lennon, and he's a real man."

Lennon was pressing the soft little hand of the younger girl.

"So you are Sister Elsie," he said. "Carmena is right. I will not side with Cochise--if that's our hot friend down below."

The girl's rosebud lips parted in a smile of wondering delight.

"You called me sister! Then you'll be my brother--my Brother Jack!"

Lennon was astonished that any girl more than fourteen could be so nave. Yet the effect was more than charming.

"I'll be only too happy, if Carmena has no objection."

He glanced up into the face of the older girl and surprised a look not meant for him to see. As the down-drooping lashes veiled her dark eyes a deep blush glowed under the tan of her dust-grimed, haggard face. The realization of the meaning of that blush and glance sobered Lennon.

The girl had known him a scant seven-and-twenty hours. But in that full day had been packed more intense peril and emotion than many couples share in a lifetime. He had saved her and she him. Together they had suffered agonies of thirst and exhaustion, and together they had cheated the murderous Apaches. Even now, down beneath them at the foot of this ancient cliff refuge, the leader of the renegades was futilely cursing.

Lennon was a white man, and he had proved himself not a quitter. The girl had been overwrought by their terrible flight. That she should fancy herself beginning to fall in love with him was quite understandable. The discovery of the fact set his jaded nerves to tingling with a pleasant thrill even as he realized the awkwardness of the situation.

By way of diversion, he stepped around to take his rifle from the saddle. As he straightened up with it the muzzle of a double-barreled shotgun thrust out at him from a small slit window in the end wall of the room. Behind the gun, framed deep by the thick stone of the window casing, he saw the leering gray face that he had first caught a glimpse of in another opening at the opposite end of the room.

A thin dry voice that was shrill with fear snarled at him:

"Hands up! Drop that gun!"

Carmena flung herself between Lennon and the threatening muzzle.

"Don't shoot, Dad! He's a friend!" she cried.

Over her shoulder Lennon saw the reddened eyes blink and the muscles of the gray face twitch. The muzzle of the shotgun wavered.

"Put your gun down, Dad," Carmena ordered. "Mr. Lennon and I are partners. Come out here and meet him."

Both face and gun disappeared. After several moments a smallish gray-haired man shuffled out through the doorway on the right of the window and scurried across the opening into which the crane had swung its load. As he unbent his emaciated body to face the visitor his breath was heavy with the fumes of whiskey.

Lennon knew without looking that Carmena's eyes were fixed upon him in mute appeal. He had given her his promise to help her father. There was no betrayal of repugnance in the friendly offer of his hand.

"My name is Lennon, Mr. Farley. Your daughter tells me you were a lawyer. I'm a professional man myself--engineer."

Farley stiffened to a show of dignity.

"I am still a lawyer," he rasped. "I must stipulate that you are received here with reservations. Your presence is a trespa.s.s. This ranch is private property and----"

"All right, Dad. That lets you out with Slade and Cochise," interrupted Carmena. "We'll all bear witness. Come in now. We're both half dead for want of food and sleep. Those devils ran us clear across the Basin."

Lennon glanced at his rifle.

"How about the two below?"