HER FOLKS
The fair-haired girl was cowering behind the massive front wall of the
cliff house. At every shot from the rifles of the infuriated Apaches she
crouched lower. Carmena held out reassuring 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 reassured 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
naive. 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 trespass. 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?"
"We might send down a pie to them," suggested the timid Elsie. "That
would make Cochise feel better."
To the vast surprise of Lennon Carmena took this preposterous proposal
seriously.
"All right, Blossom. But not a drop of tizwin, mind. This way, Jack."
The doorway opened into a large living-room, homelike with bright-hued
Navaho rugs, a quantity of cliff-dweller pottery, and a sufficiency of
heavy, comfortable furniture hewn out of cedar. The chairs were seated
and backed with tightly stretched rawhide. Several artistic pictures
from periodicals were pasted on the stone walls. In one corner a pot was
boiling over a charcoal brazier.
As the fair-haired Elsie thrust a big pie into a loop-handled basket and
hurried out, Carmena fetched two large bowls brimming with soup. While
her back was turned Farley winked leeringly at the visitor and offered
him a half-emptied whiskey flask. Carmena was in time to see Lennon
refuse the drink. Her fatigue-bent shoulders straightened to a
deep-drawn breath, and her sunken eyes glowed softly.
Cool water from a sweating jar and rich meat broth thickened with beans
and corn were, at last, equal to the task of satisfying even so ravenous
a hunger and thirst as Lennon's. Elsie had come back with her basket
empty. She set to waiting upon Carmena and "Brother Jack" with shy
delight.
The other visitors, down below, evidently had not been displeased by the
gift of the pie. There was no resumption of the firing. Lennon felt that
he understood the reason, when the girl divided another pie between him
and Carmena. It was made of dewberries, sweetened with honey.
Lennon found his eyelids beginning to droop. At a word from Carmena,
Farley led him to a cool dark inner room. He curtly pointed out a rude
bed-frame across which had been stretched a rawhide. Lennon fell asleep
the moment he lay down upon the elastic bed.