THE SETTER OF TRAPS
The unlocked door squeaked shrilly on its hinges as it swung in before
the heave of Carmena's shoulder. Elsie peeped fearfully back past
Lennon. Carmena pushed on into the secret room.
Lennon had expected to see some kind of treasure chamber. He stared
blankly at the big object in the centre of the room--a complex object
that somehow reminded him of his laboratory experiments in college. A
step nearer, with his own and Carmena's candles upraised, gave him a
clear view of the bulging copper boiler, the tubes and worm and
fermenting vats. The air of the room was pervaded with a sour smell.
At his exclamation Carmena gave him a sombre glance.
"You see now?"
"A still," he said. "This tizwin you've been talking about--it's
moonshine whiskey. Your father----"
"No--Slade!" broke in the girl with passionate emphasis. "He brought the
thing into the Hole and forced Dad to run it. He's the one to
blame--not Dad. He bootlegs it to the Indians."
"Indians? That's a Federal penitentiary offense!"
"What could we do? If he's convicted, he'll swear that Dad is just as
guilty. You see why I couldn't go for the sheriff?"
"Yes," said Lennon; but he looked at Elsie.
Carmena's face whitened.
"If it hadn't been for Dad, there's no telling what Cochise would have
done with her. Anyhow, he's my father."
To this Lennon could make no answer. He turned again to stare at the big
still. Fuel had been placed in the firebox, ready for lighting. Carmena
knelt down before it and dipped her hand into the Indian basket. One
after the other, she laid out the six sticks of dynamite and the caps
and fuses that she had saved from Lennon's prospecting outfit.
She looked up at him, gravely expectant.
"You said you'd help us, Jack. I want this whole thing fixed so it will
never make another drop of poison."
"At once?"
"No. They'd be sure we did it, and I figure---- Can you fix it so it
will go off a quarter minute after the fire is lighted?"
"Oh-h, Mena!" cried Elsie. "What you going to do? You know Dad always
lights the fire."
"Never fear, Blossom. I'll take good care of Dad. If Jack does what I
want, there'll be no more of the nasty tizwin to make Dad cross and
sick."
Lennon found himself regarding the girl with rekindled admiration for
her ingenuity and daring.
"So this is why you saved the dynamite?" he remarked. "Will it not be
dangerous--I mean, to anger that man Slade, you know?"
"Anything to save Dad---- If you're afraid, just tell me how to fix it.
I'll do the work and take all blame--if it fails. You can go back with
Elsie and be able to swear you didn't have a hand in it."
The girl's tone was as contemptuous as when, at their first meeting on
the trail, she had jeered him into cutting across the desert with her.
He looked the still over with a professional eye.
The chimney stones were laid in mud plaster. But the stones of the
firebox, or furnace, were loose. On one side they extended out in a
rough platform that held the water-cooled vat of the condensation worm.
From the two-foot space between the furnace hole and the vat Lennon
began to pull out the stones. He was able to make a hole down to the
solid stone floor.
A crack gave opening enough to thrust the stiff fuse from the firebox
into the hole. To make certain of results, Lennon used three pieces of
fuse, which were attached with caps to the sticks of dynamite, in the
bottom of the hole. He then put the stones back in their places. The
ends of the fuses were hidden by the tinder of the fuel in the firebox.
When Lennon stood up and dusted off his hands, no slightest sign was
left to betray that the charge of dynamite had been planted.
"There you are," he said. "The fuses are cut for fifteen seconds, and
they will start burning as soon as the tinder is fired."
"You're sure the boiler will be blown up?" queried Carmena. "Your
dynamite is out from under it, and there's all the rock in the way."
Lennon smiled at her ignorance of explosives.
"The stones will double the destruction. After that charge detonates,
there will be a hole in the floor, a good deal of shattered stone, and
some splinters and shreds of metal. Everything in the room will be
smashed. Is that satisfactory?"
Carmena shuddered as if seized with a fever chill, but pulled herself
together. "All right. We'll go now."
She picked up her basket and backed out after the others, scrutinizing
the floor to make certain they had left nothing to tell of their visit.
"It's a secret, Blossom," she cautioned. "Promise you'll never tell any
one?"
"But--you'll have to tell Dad, Mena. He always goes in with Slade and
Cochise to measure the mash--And you know he sometimes goes in first to
start the cooking."
"Didn't I say I'd take care of Dad?" reassured Carmena.
Lennon stepped before her, his gray eyes wide with dread.
"Wait," he demanded. "What is it you plan to do? Elsie says your
father's partners---- But I have told you the dynamite will destroy
everything in the room. If you scheme to get those men in there, give me
that key. I shall not permit such a trap to remain."
"Why not? You promised to help."
"Not this way. It would be cold-blooded murder."
"You say that when they----?"
Carmena checked her indignant protest and gazed down at her
foster-sister.
"Well, then, how if I use that blast to blow Slade and Cochise apart?"
she inquired. "Suppose I make each think the other put the giant power
in the furnace?"
"Too great a risk. We will explode the charge at once, or draw it."
Carmena's eyes flashed.
"No. They shall not make another drop of poison in that devilpot. But if
we blew it up now, Slade will put the blame on us---- Tell you
what--I'll just misplace the key. That will give us time to act after
Slade comes."
"Have I your promise you will not try to get him into that death trap?"
"Yes."
Back in the living room they became aware that the day was almost gone.
Carmena asked Lennon to cover her from above with his rifle while she
went down to milk the goats. He offered to change places with her, but
had to confess that he did not know how to milk.
The ladder had been drawn up. To save time, the girl directed Lennon to
lower her by means of the hoist rope. Though there was no sign of an
Indian nearer than the corral and she smiled at the suggestion of
danger, he saw her slip her small revolver into the bosom of her dress.
The moment the slackening of the hoist rope told him she had reached the
ground he hurried with his rifle to an embrazured window in the living
room. He looked down and saw her calmly walking away toward the goat
pens. The goats flocked to nibble the salt that she had brought for
them. She knelt down and started milking.
Elsie had already busied herself at the charcoal brazier. After a time,
when her pots were simmering, she came to cuddle up in the window beside
Lennon.
"My goodness, but hasn't it been an awful nice day, Jack," she sighed in
heartfelt contentment. "Mena is--is the best sister in all the whole
world. But it's doubly nice to have a brother like you. Isn't it, just?"
She snuggled her head against Lennon's right shoulder. He reached across
and stroked her silky hair without looking away from the valley.
"I am glad you like me, Blossom. You know, Carmena brought me to help
her get you away from this place."
"Me--and Dad, Jack. Don't forget Dad. Mena never does. And Dad won't
ever give up the Hole, 'cause he said so. That's why Mena shot your
burro to make you fight Cochise."
Lennon chuckled.
"Carmena came along after the Apache shot my burro."
"Oh, but that's the joke," tittered the girl, in her turn. "Mena was the
'Pache. She shot your hat off and your burro to see how you'd behave,
and when you didn't scare, she rode 'round to make you come with her."
The enlarged version struck Lennon as just so much the more
preposterous.
"To be sure," he made mock agreement. "Only, by the way, what was the
point of the joke?"
"You mean, why did she do it?"
"Yes. Why ruin a twelve-dollar sombrero and a ten-dollar burro?"
"So's you'd get mad and fight Cochise, of course. She was desp'rit, so
she told him she'd get another man into the Basin to be caught and made
to pay. But she planned, when she signalled them, to warn you and slip
away while you fought them."
"Ripping!" praised Lennon. "Wonderful flight of fancy. And after the
fight?"
"Oh, that depends. You'd prob'ly been dead. But if you'd killed all that
part of the bunch, Mena would have brought you into the Hole to shoot up
the rest and make Slade quit."
"I see. Quite in keeping with the burro. But why, then, did she help me
run away?"
Elsie's playful tone sobered.
"Why, 'cause you couldn't fight, of course. After she signalled Cochise
you went and got bit by the Gila monster and saved her life. Course she
had to save you then."
"Saved!" bantered Lennon. "A fact--a solid fact at last, in this sea of
fiction. What a slip! I was beginning to fancy you quite a consistent
fairy-tale tinker, Blossom. Take that last touch about her signalling
Cochise. She sent a message by wireless, I presume."
"Wireless? Is that what you call smoke signalling?"
"Smoke?"--Before Lennon's mental vision flashed a vivid picture of the
puffs of smoke rising into the noontime desert sky from the ridge near
the waterhole--"Smoke signalling!"
What a dupe he had been! Even now, when the truth had been spread out
before his eyes, he had taken it for pure fiction. Yet every seeming
absurdity in Elsie's account became credible the moment he considered
the facts he knew, in the light of understanding.
Though Carmena had made much of probable danger from the "bronchos," she
had sent up those telltale puffs of smoke. During the flight across the
Basin she had changed from boots to moccasins, which he now knew to be
of Apache style, if not of Apache make. They would account for the
moccasin print behind the crag from which his hat had been shot off and
his burro killed. For her to cut down to her pony, pull on her boots,
and ride around to the wash along the trail had been easy.
The purpose of her strange attack clearly had been to break up his
prospecting trip by the death of the burro and to test whether he could
and would fight. No less clear, now, was the subtle manner in which she
had both spurred his daring with her derision and appealed to his
chivalry for protection against the murderous bronchos. All the time
Cochise and his band were over in the Basin, waiting for her to lure a
victim within their power.
On this point was it not probable that Elsie was mistaken? Had not
Carmena's intention been to have her savage accomplices capture him and
hold him for ransom? The game might well have included a pretended
capture of herself, so that chivalry would lead him to pay a larger
ransom.
No--Elsie's explanation was the more probable. And he could trust her
truthfulness. Whatever he might think of Carmena, this child-minded girl
at least was absolutely innocent of any scheming. Her dread of Cochise
could not possibly have been feigned.
Even Carmena must be given her due. She had been driven desperate by the
threats of Cochise to take Elsie as his squaw; and the partnership of
her father in the illicit making and bootlegging of moonshine whiskey
had prevented her from appealing to the law for protection. But, on the
other hand, she had deliberately taken the risk of killing the first
chance stranger that came along the Moqui trail----
Lennon frowned as he pictured the hole through the crown of his
sombrero. That had been an uncomfortably close shot. Why had not the
girl met him face to face on the trail and frankly asked for his aid?
Instead of that straightforward, above-board procedure, she had risked
shooting him, had deceived him, had led him into a trap where he would
have had to kill all the bronchos or be killed. In the first case,
according to Elsie, she would have had him help her attack the rest of
the Apaches in the Hole. But if he had been killed she undoubtedly had
planned to put all the blame on him.
He was no coward. As he mulled over the situation his eyes sparkled at
the thought of how, with his long-range rifle, he might have out-fought
Cochise and his followers. But that was not the rub. Carmena had treated
him as a blind dupe--had thrown dust in his eyes and beguiled him into
the double snare that she had set for him and Cochise.
He would have been only too glad to take the venture with her if she had
told him beforehand. But she had not trusted him. The accident of the
Gila monster's bite alone had blocked her scheme to make him chance the
sacrifice of his life in complete ignorance of her real purpose.
With his hand disabled, he of course had become valueless at the time as
a tool to rid her of Cochise. Yet there was the chance that he could be
used in the Hole. That would account for the seeming devotion and
self-sacrifice by which she had saved him from the Gila monster poison,
from death by thirst, and from Apache torture.
The prejudice that had been first implanted in Lennon's mind by the
repulsiveness of the girl's drunken father now prevented him from making
any allowances for her difficult position. Had it not been for her
relationship to that weak-faced besotted moonshiner, Lennon might have
stopped to consider how love for her foster-sister had driven her
desperate, and how desperation might have kept her from telling the
truth of the situation to the stranger on the trail.
The average stranger would have referred her to the sheriff--and she
loved her father. But Lennon could see only her lack of trust in him and
her deceit.