CRAFT AND CRUELTY
When Lennon wakened he was at first so stiff and sore that he could
hardly turn over. Yet his strength had in good part returned to him, and
he was aware of a grateful feeling of refreshment and well-being.
Someone had covered him over with a finely woven old Navaho rug. In
pushing it off he noticed a fresh bandage on his wounded hand and the
arm above. Under the cloth was an aromatic resinous salve. He next
discovered that his boots and socks had been taken off and his badly
blistered feet washed and treated with a healing powder.
He sat up on the side of the bedstead. Before him stood a chair draped
with a towel and a change of coarse, but clean clothes. On the
clean-swept floor were a pair of soft moccasins, a dishpan, a bar of
soap, and a large jar of water.
When he limped out of his bedroom he had "tubbed" himself as thoroughly
as an Englishman and felt as ravenous as a wolf. Elsie was alone in the
living room, deftly handling pots and pans on the charcoal brazier.
"Good morning," he hailed. "Glad I'm just in time for breakfast."
The girl upturned her wide blue eyes to him in a look of shy delight.
"I heard you splashing about and I hustled," she replied. "But it's not
breakfast--it's dinner."
"So early as this?"
"So late! You've slept all the rest of yesterday and all night and all
morning. I thought you'd never wake. Sit down."
"How about the others?"
"Oh, Dad just nibbles when he has his tizwin spells, and Mena ate hers
mid-morning."
The table top had been scrubbed. Lennon sat down at the nearest corner
and fell to on the omelette and fried chicken, cream cheese, salad,
cornbread and honey that she set before him. The food was all served in
bowls and jugs of quaintly beautiful ancient cliff-dweller pottery.
"There's no cream for your coffee," the girl apologized. "The milk
soured. Mena was asleep, and I dassn't go down to the goats alone.
Cochise has come back with all the bunch. Dad was cross not to get
cream. He's cranky over his food."
"You say those red devils are all down there?"
The girl cringed.
"Don't--don't speak so loud. Cochise might hear you. He's stopped
swearing. I lowered a whole basketful of pies to them. Carmena is
getting ready to give him a big talking to. She--she won't let them get
us."
"That's good news," rallied Lennon.
For the first time he was able to look away from his food long enough to
notice that Elsie was wearing a fresh pretty frock of blue-dotted
calico. He smiled at her amusedly.
"Didn't you promise to be a sister to me--or something like that? Why
not sit down with me and celebrate our escape?"
The girl clasped her hands together in childlike delight.
"Oh, do you want me to be, really and truly? Only I don't know how to
act to a brother. Sisters are different. They kiss each
other--sometimes. If you don't mind, I'll just sit and watch. I had mine
with Mena."
With unconscious grace, she perched on the edge of the table.
"You eat ever so much nicer than Cochise."
"I should hope so--a wild Indian!"
"But he isn't. He's educated--he went to the Reservation school. He
knows a whole lot. That's why he's never been sent up. They caught him
only once. But Dad got him off. Dad's a lawyer, you know. He didn't want
to go out and leave us, but he's so scarey he does everything Slade
tells him."
Lennon recalled Carmena's plea for him to help her father and sister. He
thought he understood the situation.
"So this Slade and the Indians are keeping all of you prisoners, here in
the Hole, are they? Yet Carmena got out. Why hasn't she taken you and
your Dad?"
Elsie's big blue eyes rounded.
"But they won't let us out--only one at a time, and I'm 'fraid to go
alone, 'cause of Cochise. Besides, the Hole is Dad's ranch. He won't
give it up and Slade keeps promising him his share of the profits, and
it's a mighty flourishing business."
"What, farming in a place like this?"
"Course not. That's just for fodder. We're stockholders, Dad says. We
con--conduct a stock exchange. Slade sells what the bunch maverick and
brand-blot."
The terms brought no enlightenment to Lennon. He was from the Atlantic
coast.
"You mean they deal in cattle?" he inquired.
"Cattle and horses--and tizwin," added Elsie, screwing up her luscious
little mouth over the last word as if it had a bad taste.
Lennon caught a half glimmer of the truth. But the girl's thoughts had
flitted butterfly-fashion----
"I hope your feet don't hurt. Mena's were even rawer--awful bad. She
just couldn't help crying when I sopped them with the tizwin. She says
that's all it's good for. _I_ never knew her to cry before. But you were
too dead asleep to feel the smart. I'll have your boots oiled and your
clothes cleaned before you need 'em."
Quite naturally, Lennon inferred from this chatter that Elsie had first
made Carmena comfortable and then, with innocent concern for him, had
ventured into his room alone to treat his injured hand and feet.
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 associates, 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 partnership with the
Apaches and the unknown Slade was by no means satisfactory. Farley
feared his associates, 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 assault 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 pass under the massive 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 associate, 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 partnership talk?"
Farley was backing across the room, gray-faced and trembling like a very
old man.
"Slade will be angered," he quavered. "I'll lose all--all!"
"Leave him to me. I'll handle him," promised Carmena. "Remember what you
agreed. Jack is to be a full partner."
Lennon felt a sudden rekindling of suspicion.
"May I ask you to explain all this about a partnership?" he queried.
"Why, of course," replied the girl. She drew close to him and lowered
her voice.
"Dad refuses to give up everything and leave the Hole. So I've allowed
him to think you'll come in with the bunch. My idea is to bring about a
split between Slade and Cochise. We'll then have a fighting chance. All
we can do now is take things easy and get your hand in shape."
"My rifle was taken by your father. I would rather like to----"
"Dad, hand over Jack's rifle," called the girl.
Elsie glided across to the dark doorway through which Farley was
disappearing. Within a few moments the missing rifle was thrust out to
her. She brought it to Carmena, who handed it over to Lennon. A
seemingly casual examination showed him that it had not been tampered
with.
His last flicker of suspicion died away.