Bloom of Cactus Part 9

He laid down his fork to clasp one of her plump, capable little hands with grateful warmth.

"It was most kind of you, Elsie, to care for my injuries."

The grown-up child beamed at him radiantly.

"I think you awful nice, Jack! I just knew I'd like you, the minute I set eyes on you."

"My word!--when I looked like a dying tramp," teased Lennon.

Carmena had not exaggerated. Elsie was sweet as honey and cuddlier than a kitten. He felt tempted to put a finger under her dainty up-tilted chin.

"Now that I look more like a matinee idol, just how much more do you like me?" he bantered.

"Oh, heaps more than I liked the first pard Mena brought in. He was a cowman, and after they made him pay a whole lot to get loose, Mena set Cochise on him 'cause he wanted me to go away to live with him--like Slade. They filled him up with tizwin and left him out in the middle of the Basin, with only tizwin in his canteen. Mena said it served him right and dead men tell no tales."

Lennon stiffened.

"You can't mean to say your father and sister were parties to such an outrage--that they helped to rob a man and then abandon him to die of thirst?"

"Why not?" demanded Elsie, with unexpected spirit. "He wasn't what Mena thought him. He was a _bad_ cowman. He wanted to bring his bunch and shoot up the Hole and kill us all and make me go with him. You see how it was, don't you?"

"Yes," agreed Lennon, certain that he understood.

His surmise was that Carmena had sought help from a neighbouring rancher, and the man had proved himself a scoundrel. Elsie had not mentioned any proposal of marriage. Whatever the lawlessness of Farley's Indian a.s.sociates, they had apparently put the guilty man to ransom and then turned him loose to die in the desert, merely by way of vengeance for his attempted wrong against the girl.

Yet both of the girls had given out that the partners.h.i.+p with the Apaches and the unknown Slade was by no means satisfactory. Farley feared his a.s.sociates, and they would permit him and Carmena to leave the Hole only one at a time.

On the other hand, when he first met Carmena, she had been alone on the trail, only a few miles from the railway. Why had she not galloped to the nearest station and led a sheriff's posse to free her father and sister? She knew that Cochise and his fellows were "bronchos."

Across the train of Lennon's thoughts fell a black shadow of suspicion.

Was it possible that the girl had acted as a decoy to lure him into this ill-omened Dead Hole? She had previously brought in another man, who had in effect been murdered, after paying ransom.

In his own case, the girl had herself suffered far too much during their flight from the Apaches for the pursuit to have been a sham. But she may very well have had an arrangement with the renegades to lure a victim into the Basin; and then, untrustful of their bloodthirsty instincts, had fled with her prize to the Hole, so that he might be put to ransom.

The more Lennon pondered the situation, the more everything related to it appeared in a worse and worse light--everything and everybody, except the open-eyed innocent little Elsie. The Apaches admittedly were renegades. The absent Slade had been mentioned by no means favourably.

Farley was far from prepossessing either in appearance or words or actions. As for Carmen, even the tender glances that he had surprised might be explained by the coquetry of a Delilah.

Lennon rose from his chair with an appearance Of calm deliberation.

"Would you be so kind as to bring me my rifle, Elsie?" he asked. "With smokeless powder a gun needs frequent cleaning and oiling."

"Yes. Carmena always keeps hers clean as a whistle. But Dad put yours away. He said he apprehended that you might become per--perturbed and commit an a.s.sault with a deadly weapon. He and Mena are talking things over now---- No, they're coming out. Want to hear Mena give it to Cochise?"

The girl darted through the largest doorway. Lennon, still affecting cool indifference, stepped out after her into the long, bare anteroom whose rear wall Cochise and his mate had so angrily splashed with bullets.

Farley was crouched at the far side of the rope-ladder doorway. Carmena had bent her head to pa.s.s under the ma.s.sive lintel. Lennon followed Elsie to the side of the doorway opposite Farley. The lawyer-ranchman appeared to cringe, yet he held to his position and even attempted an ingratiating smile as he rasped out a half-whispered, "G'day."

Lennon gave him a curt nod and bent down to peer into the deep entrance.

Carmena did not glance around. If she heard him, she gave no heed. She had seated herself upon a Navaho rug and was leaning forward to look over the cliff, with her hands on the sillstone at the brink. Down below Lennon could see only a single swarthy face, bound about the forehead with a wide cloth band. The other Indians were in nearer the base of the cliff.

Instead of crouching in tense readiness to dodge back out of danger, Carmena gazed over at her late pursuers with serene fearlessness. Her rich contralto voice, no longer harsh from thirst, rang mockingly down the cliff:

"Howdy, boys. Glad you've begun to cool off. Quite a warm run, wasn't it?"

From below came an explosion of thick gutturals and hissings. Carmena flung out a hand in a gesture of refusal.

"No, I won't, Cochise. I'll talk American, and so will you---- And you'll speak decently, or we chop off. Sabe?"

There followed a silence of several moments. Carmena's patience soon reached its snapping point. She frowned and started to draw back. The voice below called up, still thick and guttural, but speaking clear-cut English:

"You lied. You said you catch another sucker."

"I said I would fetch another man to the Hole, and I have done it. Any lie about that?" countered the girl.

"Dam' plenty," came back an angry shout. "You knew what we want him for."

"How about Slade? What'll he want him for? Haven't you any sense any more, Cochise? Have you forgotten how Dad had to get you loose? Don't you see you've got to keep on playing the game our way? Yours is out of date. Even in the days of your Uncle Cochise and Geronimo it didn't work."

"They got a heap of fun."

"Well, let me tell you one thing--the new man is my game, not yours. You had your chance and missed it. He stood up full of Gila monster poison and got away from you--threw you off his trail--tricked a bunch of Apache trailers--out-ran and out-thirsted you. Want me to tell that to Slade?"

The taunt was followed by another prolonged silence. Carmena smiled and tossed down first a bare corn cob and then a full ear.

"Which will you have?" she asked. "Your way, you'll get the cob. My way, we'll all have a share of corn. A man who could fool and out-game you wouldn't make a poor partner to take into our business. We'll wait for Slade to decide."

"You give me my woman, I wait," bargained the unseen Cochise.

Carmena fairly blazed with anger. She hurled down another bare corncob.

"She's not your woman. You sha'n't have her! We'll see what Slade says about that and about your running me across the Basin. You know you can't scare me. Now, is it fight, or do you back up?"

The reply was a jabber of hissings and gutturals. Carmena jerked her hand about in swift signs and cried back in uncouth thick-tongued Apache words. The dispute at last ended in a sullen mutter from below and a sudden thudding of hoofs. The Apaches dashed out from under the cliff, loping their horses toward a corral over across to the left of the cornfields.

Carmena drew back out of the deep doorway, with a look of profound relief. At sight of Lennon she smiled and caught up his wounded hand.

"I've made Cochise back up," she said. "We're safe from the bunch till Slade returns--only none of us can leave the Hole. How's your arm feeling?"

The dark eyes were very clear and straightforward in their gaze. Lennon flushed with shame over his black suspicions. These renegade Apaches, and Slade as well, probably were bad men. Farley no doubt was in with them. But he appeared to be an unwilling a.s.sociate, barred from escape by sickness, drink, and fear. Carmena had begged for help to get him and Elsie out of the Hole.

Lennon permitted his hand to linger in her gentle clasp.

"It seems to be much better," he replied to her question.

"That's good. Let's hope it will be all right before Slade gets back.

You heard me bluff off Cochise with the partners.h.i.+p talk?"

Farley was backing across the room, gray-faced and trembling like a very old man.